Lethal Heating: January 2020

31/01/2020

(AU) Morrison Questions Importance Of Global Climate Treaties, To Treat Symptoms Of Climate Change

RenewEconomy - Michael Mazengarb

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has appeared to downplay the importance of major international climate change agreements in a speech to the National Press Club, that further flags his intention to focus on treating the symptoms of climate change, rather than addressing the cause.
Morrison used his speech to outline how his government will respond to the ongoing bushfire crisis and renewed calls for the government to increase action on climate change by focusing on resilience and adaptation.
“This summer is the latest chapter in the often harsh realities of living in this amazing continent. Building our national resilience means building our ability to resist, absorb, accommodate, recover, and transform in the face of such events,” Morrison said.
“And this includes the effects of longer, hotter, drier summers. Practical action on mitigation through reduced emissions needs to go hand in hand with practical action on climate resilience and adaptation.”
Despite dedicating a substantial portion of his speech speaking about the Coalition government’s need to work to adapt and increase resilience to the impacts of climate change, Morrison offered no new commitments from the governments in terms of policy or funding.
The speech further signals an intention to focus attention on the responses to the impacts and symptoms of climate change, rather than taking preventative action by accelerating reductions in Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions and encouraging other countries to do the same.
“Even under the most ambitious global emissions reductions targets, mitigation and adaptation both contribute to resilience. Mitigation reduces the risk and adaptation is how we prepare for the climate risk we cannot reduce.”
“We have to give them the room to adjust and not cut off response options like in gas exploration and development that help them move forward. The answer is not more taxes, and increased global bureaucracy,” Morrison added.
While Morrison is adopting a new rhetoric, with a seemingly greater focus on building resilience to climate change fuelled disasters like bushfires and drought, the Coalition government has a long track record of cutting funding to climate change adaptation bodies.
The Coalition ceased funding to the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility in 2017, a dedicated body established to examine how Australia can adapt to climate change. The Coalition also significantly cut funding to the CSIRO, leading to the science body cutting back its climate adaptation and resilience research.
A 2017 report from Deloitte Access Economics estimated that the average annual cost of natural disasters to the Australian economy in the decade to 2016 was $18.2 billion per year, or the equivalent to 1.2% of average gross domestic product. Deloitte expects the economic cost to grow to $39 billion per year on average by 2050, as the impacts of climate change continue to grow.
Despite this, in his speech Morrison suggested it was potentially futile for Australia to try and force other countries to reduce their emissions, and promoted the often repeated message of the coal lobby that Australia is doing the world a service by selling its coal to other countries.
“Of course, we know that Australia on its own cannot control the world’s climate as Australia accounts for just 1.3 per cent of global emissions. We also know that no fire event can be attributed to the actions of any one country on emissions reduction,” Morrison said.
“You will not reduce the number of coal-fired power stations in the world by forcing the shutdown of Australian coal mines in Australia and jobs that go with them,” Morrison added. “Other countries will just buy the coal from somewhere else, often poor quality with greater environmental and climate impacts.”
The National Press Club speech was Morrison’s first major speech of 2020, and the Prime Minister will hope it will help set the agenda before federal Parliament resumes in early February, after his leadership attracted immense scrutiny over a challenging summer for much of Australia.
It was a speech that was quickly slammed by environmental groups, who see the shift in focus from the Morrison government as being intended as a tactic to distract from the need to phase-out Australia’s coal industry.
“We know that climate change has exacerbated Australia’s current bushfire crisis, and yet the Prime Minister is now calling to add more fossil fuels to the fire,” Greenpeace Australia Pacific’s Dr Nikola Casule said.
“This is yet another move in a string of logic-defying false solutions to the climate crisis proposed by the Prime Minister, instead of meaningfully committing to reduce Australia’s emissions, which are driven by burning coal, oil and gas.”
“No amount of resilience building or adaptation will prepare Australia for the full brunt of global warming of 3 degrees or more – which is the trajectory we are on,” Australian Conservation Foundation’s climate change campaigner Suzanne Harter added.
Morrison appeared to question the value of global climate change agreements, like the Paris Agreement, reached in 2016, by suggesting they were too soft on some countries, and therefore it wasn’t worth Australia attempting to any additional heavy lifting to reduce global emissions.
“Agreements globally actually endorse massive increases in emissions, some from some of the world’s largest and growing economies. So understandably, this test the patience of people in countries like Australia, particularly in regional areas who asked the question, ‘why does their job have to be exported and their incomes exported to other countries?’, Morrison said.
“While global emissions under those arrangements are allowed to rise for so many, these contradictions and limitations need to be acknowledged.”
Underlining this, Morrison went on to praise the United States for the emissions reductions it has achieved, largely driven by a move towards gas away from coal, despite the Trump administration’s plans to withdraw from the Paris Agreement.
“It’s worth noting that the United States has achieved higher rights of emissions reduction than many of the nations that are signatories to the Paris Agreement,” Morrison said.
“All of this is the climate action we need now, building dams, developing new crop varieties, improving planning for natural disasters is climate action now, the science tells us the effects of emissions already in the atmosphere will continue to be filled in coming decades,” Morrison told the National Press Club.
Morrison was greeted at the National Press Club by protesters from the Canberra University Students for Climate Justice, who called on the Prime Minister to ramp up the federal government’s efforts on climate change and clean energy.
“We need an immediate and rapid transition away from fossil fuels. Firefighting services and the cost of the recovery, including compensation for victims, should be paid for by the fossil fuel companies that caused this catastrophe,” coordinator Grace Hill said.

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Quiet Australians Decide It Is Time To Speak Up On Climate Change Action

ABC News - Tracy Bowden

Rod and Margot Cunich hold vigils outside Dave Sharma's electoral office. (Supplied: Simon Cunich)

Key points

Concern about climate change has become a key political issue for a growing number Australians
A perceived lack of government action has prompted many people to protest for the first time in their lives
Many new demonstrators are looking for an alternative to rowdy mass demonstrations

For the first time in his life, semi-retired lawyer Rod Cunich is so angry about a political issue he feels he needs to take action.
Concern about climate change has prompted him and his GP wife Margot to take to the streets.

"We decided we need to stand up and try to motivate people who ordinarily wouldn't be motivated, those quiet people who sit by, are concerned and do nothing," he told 7.30.

"I hope it is going to bring people like us, what we call quiet Australians, to ask their local members … to advocate for us and ask for proper climate change policy," Margot Cunich added.
They are just two of an emerging group of new activists.

'Ordinary Australians'

Rob Henderson's placard among other signs at the vigil. (Supplied: Simon Cunich)

It was a smoky summer holiday, as bushfires raged on the south coast of New South Wales, that sparked the Cunichs into action.
"We spent the whole ten days being locked inside because of smoke and then our PM being overseas and coming back and down-playing the role of climate change in the fires," Mr Cunich said.
But the couple was looking for an alternative to the large, often rowdy, protests being staged on the issue.
They organised a quiet protest outside the office of their federal MP, Liberal member Dave Sharma, in Sydney's eastern suburbs.
"I look at the protests and I think, they're young activists or old activists who can be easily dismissed as ratbags doing their own thing, we can ignore them. And I've been guilty of that," he said.
"We want to distinguish ourselves from those groups and say, look, we're just ordinary Australians, we're not radical but our votes count."
The self-described swinging voter took out an ad promoting the vigil in his local newspaper and set up a Facebook page.
There were many messages of support in response, but they also struck major opposition from climate change deniers.

"I haven't had a death threat but a lot of things not far short of that," Mr Cunich said.

On the day, more than 250 people turned up, many of them taking part in something like it for the very first time.
"I saw the note going out about quiet Australians and I thought, there's no excuse for not showing up," demonstrator Kirsten Dreese told 7.30.
"If you're quiet, if you're an introvert like me, we should all be doing something."
Rob Henderson was another novice protester.
"It's a first for me holding up a placard, that's for sure," he told 7.30, while holding up a sign reading, "Quiet Australians sick of hot air".

A growing issue

Erin Remblance has become an active climate change protester because of her three children. (ABC News: Nikki Tugwell)

Erin Remblance, a mother of three young children, has also decided to take action, but in a different way.
Two years ago, she knew little about the details of climate change.
"I wouldn't have even described myself as being an environmentalist or a [greenie]," she told 7.30.
"I'd never been to a protest, that wasn't my style."
But, now she's attended a series of major protests and strikes in Sydney and has made practical changes to reduce the family's carbon emissions.
"I assumed [climate change] was being looked after. I wrongly assumed the governments would look after us and do the things that were right," she said.

10 years of climate policy inertia

Ten years ago one man's plan blew apart Australia's two great parties irrevocably just as they teetered toward consensus on climate change, the most divisive issue of the Australian political century.

"Now I've become aware that actually that's not happening and there needs to be more leadership on this issue.

"I'm fighting for my children's futures."

The latest survey by research group IPSOS shows a jump in concern for the environment.
The proportion of Australians citing climate change as their key concern jumped from 24 per cent in May 2019 to 41 per cent in January this year, coming in ahead of issues such as healthcare and the cost of living.
Dan Evans from IPSOS says the research also shows a broader age group aware of the issue.
"Older Australians, the Boomer cohort, are becoming more concerned," Dan Evans from IPSOS told 7.30.
"But in a broad sense, everyone's a bit more concerned.
"At the federal election that was the fourth most important issue facing the nation, now it's clearly the top concern."

Is the Government doing enough?

The crowd outside Dave Sharma's electoral office demanding action on climate change. (Supplied: Simon Cunich)

Wentworth MP Dave Sharma declined 7.30's request for an interview.
But Prime Minister Scott Morrison has consistently said the Government is acting to reduce emissions and insists Australia will "meet and beat the emissions reduction targets".
Daniel Wild, from the free-market think-tank the Institute of Public Affairs, understands the demonstrators' concerns about the bushfires this summer but says the Government is already acting.
"One of the points these protesters seem to be making is that Australia isn't doing anything when it comes to reducing emissions," he told 7.30.
"Well, that's just not true.
"Australia has the deepest cuts to emissions per capita under the Paris (climate) Agreement, which is the Government's policy."
Rod and Margot Cunich don't believe it is enough.
They are planning quiet demonstrations every four weeks for as long as it takes and they want others across the nation to follow their lead.
"It's non-partisan, we don't care who the politician is," he said.
"Every single politician, in our view, should be taking climate change seriously and doing something about it."

Links

We Can’t Recall The Planet If We Mess Up: Climate Change Is Risky Business

Washington Post - Rob Motta | Jim White

A man stands in a flooded street in Miami on Sept. 10, 2017, as Hurricane Irma hits the area. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)

If we handled climate risk the way that businesses manage risk every day, we would have tackled climate change a long, long time ago. But that’s not how we as a society are responding — even though the potential consequences are a lot worse than most business risks.
Consider how climate change risk is expressed in key reports like those from the U.S. National Climate Assessment (NCA) and the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The NCA says there is at least a two-thirds chance that your asthma or hay fever will get worse because of climate change. There’s a more than 90 percent probability that extreme precipitation (think flooding) will increase in frequency and intensity. What about heat waves increasing? There’s a 99 percent probability. In fact, heat waves kill more people than any other weather-related event in the United States.
What about rising sea level? Under our current emissions trajectory, the NCA says there is a 2 in 3 chance that between $66 billion and $106 billion of real estate will be underwater by 2050. And we mean literally underwater.
How do we handle these risks from climate change? Not very well. We want more data, more proof that the risks are real before acting.
Let’s contrast that with how businesses handle risks. Companies would not be content with a 66 percent chance that a fire will start in their building, or a 66 percent chance that the wheels will fall off a new car they release to production. That’s an untenable level of risk.
How do we know this? Because we know of the tools companies use and the level of risk they are willing to tolerate. One tool used extensively is a Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA). An FMEA is used to assess the risk of failure of every component in a product (like every bolt), and the consequences of that failure to the overall product (like the car).
The FMEA scale goes from 1 to 10, with 10 being worst case and one being what the engineers and designers shoot for. A 10 rating corresponds to a 10 percent or greater probability, a nine to a 5 percent probability and a two rating corresponds to a 0.0001 percent probability or lower. A one rating corresponds to zero probability. So the automotive designers strive for a 0.0001 percent probability of failure, or better. Wow! Meanwhile, we are talking 66 percent, 90 percent and 99 percent probabilities with climate change, and we have done little so far to mitigate these risks.
In contrast to the automotive world, it seems like we want climate scientists to strive for 100 percent certainty. It’s like saying, “I want you to be 100 percent certain the wheel is going to fall off my car before you take any action.”
Risk is generally expressed as the probability multiplied by the impact. It is the combination of these two variables that determines the level of risk. So a high probability risk with a small impact might not be a significant concern. But a high probability risk with big impact is a real problem.
The wheel falling off your car has a big impact. So is your house being underwater. In both cases, we want to drive the probability as low as possible. And there is one big difference between the wheel falling off your car and climate risk. When the auto company makes a mistake and a risk occurs, they can recall the vehicles and fix the problem. You cannot recall the sea lapping at your front door or the air that your asthmatic child is breathing.
It’s like we are speaking two different languages. I guess the risk of destroying the climate, and a good part of Earth, is not as worrisome to us as the risk to an individual car.
One of the most worrisome risks of all with climate change is that the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets will start to collapse this century, triggering up to eight feet of rising sea level by 2100 and putting the fate of our low-lying coastal cities in peril. Can you imagine trying to relocate millions of people inland? How many people will suffer? Who will pay the cost?
What’s that probability? Nobody really knows for sure, but a recent survey of climate scientists who specialize in rising sea level put it at 5 percent. Multiply that by the cost of all the infrastructure in harm’s way. The same study indicated almost 200 million people would be displaced. Nothing to worry about, right? No need to take action.
Let us make it clear: We are not criticizing scientists for the way they express risks. We certainly want scientists to have high confidence before we accept a new wing design on a plane or that new prescription drug. But climate change is different. We have already gone way beyond what the business industry would react to. We can’t recall the planet if we mess up. So let’s get on with it and stop asking the scientists for ever higher certainty in their predictions. That’s a recipe for beyond disaster.

Links

30/01/2020

Top Academics Write To Morrison Government Asking For 'Deep Cuts' To Australia's Greenhouse Gas Emissions

ABC News - Michael Slezak

The academics have called Australia "ground zero" for climate impacts and climate policy uncertainty. (ABC News: Michael Barnett)

Key points

Australia's top academics say research has identified what technologies are needed to address the solution
Angus Taylor stands by the track record of the Federal Government on the issue
Researchers believe Australia can be a world leader on the issue if governments accept the need for action

Eighty of Australia's top academics have written an open letter declaring an "urgent need for deep cuts" to Australia's greenhouse gas emissions following the current unprecedented bushfire crisis.
The group of Australian Research Council (ARC) Laureate Fellows describe Australia as "ground zero for both climate impacts and climate policy uncertainty" and warn that without strong action on climate change, the world may not support human societies "in their current form and maintain human well-being".
They say research has identified what policies and technologies are needed to address the solution but "what is lacking is the courage to implement them at the required scale".
The letter calls on Australian governments to "acknowledge the gravity of the threat posed by climate change driven by human activities" and "reduce greenhouse gas emissions in time to safeguard against catastrophe".

"We owe this to younger generations and those who come after them, who will bear the brunt of our decisions."

The letter, signed by 80 past and present ARC Laureate Fellows, notes that decades ago, scientists warned that the impacts we're seeing now, like the bushfire crisis, were coming.
It is only the second time the group of Australia's top academics have taken such action. The first was in December last year when 50 of them wrote in defence of whistleblowers who raised concerns about international students on ABC's Four Corners.

More than just fire management
The letter was coordinated by Professor Steven Sherwood, a climate scientist from the University of New South Wales, and includes top academics in fields including economics, healthcare, history and law, as well as many different scientific disciplines.

Professor Steven Sherwood has called for action on greenhouse gas emissions. (Supplied: UNSW)

"We're a small group that has been selected by the Australian Research Council as the top researchers in our respective fields," Professor Sherwood said.
"It's a good group to think about all aspects of the problem — it's not just a science problem. It's a problem that spans all of those areas."
They call on governments to do more than just focus on adaptation to future fires.
Adaptation isn't enough, they say, since the world is still warming and is "only at the beginning of the climate change phenomenon."
"The current impacts are happening with just one [degree] Celsius of global temperature increase, but we are set for the best part of another degree even if very strong international action is taken to reduce emissions."
"If strong action is not taken, environmental degradation and social disruption will be much greater and in many cases adaptation will no longer be achievable.

"It would be naive to assume that such a world will still support human societies in their current form and maintain human well-being."

Opportunity for Australia

The researchers note that Australia cannot fix the problem on its own, but argue Australia's "visibility as ground zero for both climate impacts and climate policy uncertainty" means we could become a leader on the issue."Doing so will aid our economy, strengthen our standing in international affairs and relations with neighbours, and help secure Australia and the world from the impacts of climate change."

Emissions Reduction Minister Angus Taylor has backed the Morrison Government's record on climate change. (ABC News: Marco Catalano)

Professor Sherwood noted the transition could be painful for some communities and they will require assistance.
"For example, we probably need to provide economic support to coal-mining regions," Professor Sherwood said.

"Many mining jobs are set to disappear no matter what our governments do, so this would be a concern even if we didn't care about the planet's future."

The letter concludes: "We call on all governments to acknowledge the gravity of the threat posed by climate change driven by human activities, and to support and implement evidence-based policy responses to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in time to safeguard against catastrophe.
"We owe this to younger generations and those who come after them, who will bear the brunt of our decisions."
"It's an urgent problem and a problem where the political sphere isn't moving fast enough," Professor Sherwood added.
In a statement, Emissions Reduction Minister Angus Taylor said the Federal Government has a track record of which "all Australians could be proud".
"We have beaten our first Kyoto target, we are on track to overachieve on our 2020 target by 411 Mt and the most recent projections published in December 2019 show we are on track to beat our 2030 target."

Links

Climate Change Splits The Public Into Six Groups. Understanding Them Is Key To Future Action

ABC Radio National - Rebecca Huntley (Big Ideas)

We must create a chorus of different communities demanding a viable future. (Getty: Mark Evans)

Rebecca Huntley

Dr Rebecca Huntley is an adjunct senior lecturer at the School of Social Sciences at the University of New South Wales.
A researcher on social trends, Dr Huntley presents The History Listen on RN each week.
This article is an edited extract of the Oration given by Dr Huntley at the University of Melbourne. It was recorded and broadcast by ABC RN's Big Ideas program.

In Australia there is now widespread public acceptance of the reality of climate change; we seem to see its effects almost hourly.
But the electorate still votes for political parties with environment policies that I would call recalcitrant, and with significant groups of climate deniers in their ranks.
The issue of climate change has become a battle of ideologies, values and worldviews, something that has become much more pronounced in the last decade thanks to our political class and to parts of the media.
Knowing what we know about human beings, our psychological and evolutionally makeup, there's no evidence that these divisions are going to be broken down by more scientific evidence or just the passage of time — not that we have much time to spare.
And we should not assume that as climate change becomes worse, these divisions will start to heal.
For these reasons, I have long been keen to understand the ways people respond to climate change — and the language we need to use to convince people to take action.

Six groups of people

I have spent the past 15 years listening to Australians talk about climate change. (Supplied: Rebecca Huntley)

Last year I spent time with researchers at the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, which has conducted countless scientific studies on public opinion and behaviour around climate change.
Much of what they do is informed by the Six Americas study, a segmentation first conducted in 2009.
It measures the American public's climate change beliefs, attitudes, risk perceptions, motivations, values, policy preferences, behaviours — including voting patterns and media consumption — and underlying barriers to action.
It groups the public into six different segments, varying in size and well differentiated in terms of their attitudes to climate change and their views about action.

The Alarmed: This group is fully convinced of the reality and seriousness of climate change and already taking individual, consumer, and political action to address it.
The Concerned: This group is also convinced that the globe is warming and that it's a serious problem, but have not yet engaged with the issue personally, including not always voting for political parties with strong climate policies.
The Cautious, the Disengaged and the Doubtful: These groups represent different stages of understanding and acceptance of the problem. None are actively involved.
The Dismissive: This group is very sure that climate change is not happening, and often actively involved as opponents of a national effort to reduce emissions. Some of them are in significant positions of power in government, industry and the media.

The public is grouped into six segments depending on their attitudes to climate change and their views about action. (Supplied: Yale Program on Climate Change Communication)

As someone who has spent about 15 years listening to Australians talk about climate change, this approach immediately resonated with me. It made sense.
The qualitative research I've done has revealed the extent to which attitudes about climate are informed not by an understanding of science, but by world views, values, political identification, social and cultural conditioning and gender identity.

Shifting segments
As I contemplated this Six Americas study, the mammoth task of the climate change movement was taking shape in my mind.
We need to increase the Alarmed cohort, absolutely no doubt.
But we also need to develop and hone their skills of talking to others not of the same mindset.
And we need to provide social and emotional support as many of them — many of us — struggle with feelings of grief, dread and burning anger about what's happening to the planet and the response of many of our political leaders.

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We need to shift more of the Concerned group into the Alarmed group.
We need to find a way to convince the Cautious that urgent action is necessary.
This, very difficultly, often requires language that isn't fraught with tones of crisis. More on this in a moment.
We need to engage the Disengaged — probably the hardest task of all, because it requires us to rebuild their faith that our democratic institutions are capable and willing to do something about it.
And finally — in my opinion, and I say this with no trepidation whatsoever — we need to drive the Dismissive group out of positions of power in our government, stop the flow of their donations into our political parties, and find smarter ways to engage with them in the media, including social media.

What underpins our response to climate change?
There is an Australian version of the Six Americas study, led by Donald W Hine from the University of New England.
It took a similar approach and came up with five groups — which echo the Yale segments but without the Disengaged.
It was conducted in 2013 — a relatively long time ago given all that's happened since — but remains highly valuable because it takes into account a broader range of cognitive and emotional factors that underpin human responses to climate change.
These include:

How close do people feel to climate change effects?
Do they see local manifestations or not, and do they identify them as being connected to climate change?
Do they feel an emotional connection to nature?
How much do they trust climate change authorities or authorities in general?
How much do their self-reported feelings of shame, guilt, anger and fear condition them to respond in certain ways to the climate change issue and remain open or closed to solutions?

These are now the questions I ask myself in the process of developing, conducting and analysing any research on climate change.

How climate change has impacted
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Language matters
I've also spent a lot of time wondering about the efficacy of the language around climate change, around emergency, crisis and urgency.
The facts of climate change and the need for rapid response absolutely merit these terms.
To not use them seems to be more than a sin of omission but an outright lie to the public about the scale of the threat and what's at stake.
Those in the Alarmed group feel more than comfortable with this message.
Some of the Concerned group respond well to messages of urgency, and others not so well.
But the language of crisis and emergency can actually turn off those who are Disengaged and Cautious, and make them more critical of attempts to address climate change.

The ABC's Australia Talks survey found people in Queensland and the NT are more conservative on environmental issues. (Getty: Virginia Star)

These people can have a strong belief that the issue is overplayed by the media and "politicised".
They dislike the gloom and doom tone of the debate, its remote and inaccessible language, and the fact they feel guilty and depressed when listening to climate change messages.
They rightfully question whether our political and business leaders have the capacity or the desire to ensure that any transition to an economy built on renewables doesn't penalise already struggling groups in our society.
My research has taught me important lessons about climate change communication: be solution-focused and positive, understand the values of the people you are trying to convince, do not fuel division and conflict, and relate solutions to our sources of happiness and common concern.
The challenge is how to activate cooperative values rather than competitive values.
In my view, we must stress what we have in common: the desire for secure work, safe neighbourhoods, a good standard of living, security and happiness — whatever that might look like for different groups of people.

A transformative moment
We also need to find ways to shift those in the large Concerned segment into the Alarmed cohort.
A moment from my own recent past shows it is possible.
In December 2018 I woke up, made myself a cup of coffee and turned on the TV.
I saw hundreds of teenagers skipping school and protesting in the streets about climate change, with handmade signs that spanned from the serious and angry to the humorous and profane.
"There are no jobs on a dead planet." "You're burning our future." And my favourite: "Why should we go to the school if you won't listen to the educated?"

After watching young people strike, I made a decision at that moment to put climate change at the heart of everything I do. (ABC News: Jedda Costa)

As I sat sipping my coffee, I thought to myself, "Good on those kids telling the powers that be, the older generation, that they need to do more about climate change."
And then it hit me. At almost 50 years of age, I am part of that older generation, part of that generation with a platform and a voice some of these young people don't have yet.
It was as if those teenagers were speaking to me.
In that moment something shifted inside me, a sensation hard to describe and yet I can recall it now with clarity. It actually felt physical. I felt like they were telling me to do something.
And so I made a decision at that moment to put climate change at the heart of everything I do: in my work, as a parent, as a consumer, as a citizen.
It's a factor in every decision I make about the research jobs I will accept, about the energy that I will have in my house, about the transport that I will take, about the food that I will eat and about where I will invest my superannuation.
This transformative moment, the moment I tipped from concerned to genuinely alarmed, didn't happen because I read an ICCP report or sat through a presentation from a climate scientist about CO2 levels.
I reacted to a crowd of children holding up signs in the streets, girls who were only a few years older than my eldest daughter. Suddenly it became very personal.
That I can make a contribution to this movement, probably the most important in our history, is such a relief to me and helps me manage the angst that overwhelms me from time to time in the night.
My first task is to understand how we maintain our optimism as we move deeper into a climate change-affected future.
I, we, can protest, change the terms of our super fund, install solar panels, and vote for parties with strong climate policies — or any climate policies, really.

We have to stop voting for parties who don't have sufficient climate policies. (Getty: Martin Ollman)

But one of the most important things we can do is understand why other people feel the way they do about climate change, and learn to talk to them effectively.
What we need are thousands, millions, of everyday conversations about climate change.
That will help enlarge the ranks of the Concerned, engage the Disengaged and make the Cautious more convinced of the need for action.
This will then expose those who dismiss both the science and the solutions, the denialists — who are today a minority, albeit a powerful one — as what they are: out of step with the rest of us, determined to put our collective wellbeing and our way of life at risk.
We must not let their voices be the loudest in the public arena.
We must create a chorus of different communities united in asking, indeed demanding, that we act now to preserve a liveable world and a viable future.

Links

Inequality Makes Climate Crisis Much Harder To Tackle

The Guardian - Larry Elliott

What Davos didn’t face up to is that we can’t expect poor people to make all the sacrifices

Greta Thunberg (second from right) and other young climate activists at Davos last week. Photograph: Markus Schreiber/AP

For those perched at the top of the mountain, the view is perfectly clear. Climate change is the issue of the moment and has to be tackled without delay. Governments, companies and individuals are all going to have to adjust to the new reality.
Anybody who is not with the agenda – for example, Donald Trump – is either mad or bad. There was a big US delegation to Davos last week but it found itself isolated – in public, at least – on the climate emergency. The annual meeting of the World Economic Forum found Greta Thunberg’s call to arms much more compelling.
Later in the year there will be a much more important event than the World Economic Forum: the UN climate change summit (COP26) in Glasgow. In Davos it was hard to move without hearing the phrase “race against time”.
Almost 15 years ago Nick Stern, then head of the UK Government Economic Service, produced a report on the economics of climate change in which he called the failure to deal with a heating planet the greatest market failure of all time. He argued that the benefits of early action outweighed the costs.
Last week Prof Stern, now chair of the ESRC Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy and the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change at the London School of Economics, said the threat was now being taken a lot more seriously. There were four reasons for that.
First there was evidence, after a 1C increase in temperatures since pre-industrial times, of the failure to act. “We are seeing some pretty nasty stuff already,” he said.
Second, the scientific evidence was now clear that there was a big difference – for example, in the length of droughts – between a 1.5C and a 2C increase in temperatures.
Third, the education system was producing a generation of young people across the world well versed in climate, sustainability and environmental issues, and they were putting pressure on their parents to act. Young people wanted to know why the economics profession had been slow to include climate risks into their models, which was a justifiable criticism, Stern said. Only a tiny fraction of the papers published in economics journals have related to sustainability.

Finally, Stern noted, an awareness was growing that there is a more attractive way of doing things. The days of the internal combustion engine were numbered, the cost of solar energy had collapsed and there had been dramatic advances in battery-storage technology.
Yet the chances are that Glasgow will not deliver as much as the scientists say is necessary. In part that’s because some important countries, including the US, Brazil, Australia and Saudi Arabia most prominently, will resist pressure to make the commitments that are needed.
But it is also because the view from the bottom of the mountain is hazier than the view from the top. Consider why Emmanuel Macron did not show up at Davos this year. The French president took precisely the kind of action deemed necessary to tackle the climate emergency – whacking up the cost of driving fossil-fuelled vehicles – only to find the country erupt into protest.
The message to Macron from those on low incomes was clear: don’t talk to us about the end of the world until you have told us how to make ends meet at the end of the month.
Trump and his team see things through the lens of the yellow vest protesters. When Olaf Scholz, Germany’s finance minister, said his government was committed to taxing carbon emissions more heavily, the US treasury secretary, Steve Mnuchin, replied: “If you want to put taxes on people, go ahead and put a carbon tax. That is a tax on hardworking people.”
It’s easy to dismiss Mnuchin’s comments as those of a politician with his head in the sand, but he has a point. Speedy action to tackle the climate emergency requires political action. But political action will only be possible if governments can carry their voters with them. And that is not going to be possible if the measures enacted appear to be all pain and no gain.
The Stern report came out in 2006 and it is now 2020. In the intervening years there has been a whopping financial crisis, and a decade in which living standards for the majority of people have moved sideways. It is much easier to worry about the future of the planet if you are comfortably off and don’t have to rely on a food bank.
The problem – and this goes to the heart of what is wrong with Davos – is that nobody really wants to confront the issue of inequality. There was plenty of hand-wringing about the climate crisis, much talk about the need for higher investment in new technologies, and a lot of head-scratching about weak growth. What there wasn’t – as usual – was any willingness to adopt the obvious solutions.
Any sensible person observing the World Economic Forum annual meeting from the outside would come up with the following analysis: working people are going to be less terrified about new technology if they are represented by a trade union.
Growth would be higher, and less dependent on debt, if workers were able to bargain collectively. Public support for more rapid action to fight global heating would be stronger under a more progressive tax system. Entrepreneurs would develop new green technologies more quickly if governments set more onerous targets for reductions in carbon emissions.
All these notions are anathema to those running multinational corporations. They hate the idea of trade unions, they are ideological in their opposition to stronger states, and they recoil from the idea that they should pay more tax.
But if poor people are expected to make all the sacrifices, expect some resistance. And expect the battle ahead to be long and hard.

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29/01/2020

What Was Said At Davos On Climate Change

New York Times

Global leaders attending the World Economic Forum in Switzerland agree that a rapid response is needed to stave off disaster.

Credit...World Economic Forum, via Associated Press

As the effects of climate change are increasing around the world, so is talk about solutions — from businesses, governments, nonprofits, individuals (especially young ones), scientists and others. While there are many advocates for change, most experts would say progress needs to be much faster to avert global disaster.
At the World Economic Forum in Davos last week, climate change was at the top of the agenda. Talks took place in open panel discussions, hallways and private meeting rooms. Businesses and global leaders like Jane Goodall and Prince Charles made some commitments. Below are excerpts from panels and speeches, which have been edited and condensed.

Urban Truths: Unlocking Net Zero Pathways for Cities
The panel, a collaboration of The New York Times with support from Wellcome Trust and BCG Digital Ventures, was led by Somini Sengupta, a Times climate reporter, and looked at the climate health nexus through the strategic lens of cities. The panelists were Kate Brandt, the sustainability officer at Google; Christiana Figueres, a diplomat from Costa Rica; and Maria Neira, director of the public health, environment and social determinants of health department of the World Health Organization.

Somini Sengupta, New York Times climate reporter
Ms. Sengupta: We, city people, have a disproportionately large carbon footprint, emitting 70 percent, give or take, of emissions. We represent 50 percent of the population and emit 70 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. So how are cities going to adapt to what is already a hotter planet, and how are cities going to do the heavy lifting of mitigating emissions? That’s what we’re really here to talk about.

diplomat, Costa Rica. Credit...Markus Schreiber/Associated Press
Ms. Figueres: All of our cities, and I know very few that are not, are congested, polluted, completely unhealthy environments. And that is an assault on our human right to health and to breathe clean air, simply put. Now it’s not so easy, obviously, to go from there to a system where all vehicles — and this is the ideal — all vehicles are shared, and hopefully not owned, and clean, and where there is efficient, clean, interconnected public transport. Because you will never get any public transport, whether it be buses, or whatever, that take you from A to B; you will always have to interconnect.

Maria Neira, World Health Organization. Credit...Salvatore Di Nolfi/EPA, via Shutterstock
Dr. Neira: If you are the mayor of a big city and you want to do something about mobility in the city, it will be very unpopular in certain ways. That’s why you need to convene a kind of working group where you involve citizens, involve mothers who are dealing every day with a child with asthma, involve all of those with health data to try to put maybe in a less painful way the life expectancy that you are losing if you live in, for example, New Delhi.

Credit...Vaughn Ridley/Sportsfile for Web Summit, via Getty Images
Ms. Brandt: And I think that’s interesting, too, about getting street-by-street air quality data. What we’re seeing in cities around the world is it’s often the most urban populations who have the worst air quality. So when you actually have that granularity of data, it becomes very stark and very clear that there are issues, and there are opportunities to address them, and you can really see that disparity actually in the air quality data.

Averting a Climate Apocalypse
Greta Thunberg, a Swedish teenager and climate activist, made the opening remarks at a Times panel, “Averting a Climate Apocalypse,” moderated by Rebecca Blumenstein, deputy managing editor of The Times, with Ma Jun, the director of the Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs in China; Oliver Bäte, the chief executive of Allianz; Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, coordinator of the Association of Peul Women and Autochthonous Peoples of Chad; and Rajiv Shah, president of the Rockefeller Foundation.

Rebecca Blumenstein, deputy managing editor New York Times
Ms. Blumenstein: Five years after the Paris Accord, governments need to reset their goals and businesses are finally and quickly talking about setting goals. We have top voices from across the world to discuss the urgency of the situation and next steps. But we are going to start with some words from Greta Thunberg, who made headlines around the world last year by saying here at Davos that our house is on fire.

Greta Thunberg, Swedish teenager and climate activist. Credit...Alessandro Della Valle/EPA, via Shutterstock
Ms. Thunberg: I joined a group of climate activists demanding that you, the world’s most powerful and influential business and political leaders, begin to take the action needed. We demand, at this year’s World Economic Forum, participants from all companies, banks, institutions and governments immediately halt all investments in fossil fuel exploration and extraction; immediately end all fossil fuel subsidies; and immediately and completely divest from fossil fuels. We don’t want these things done by 2050 or 2030 or even 2021. We want this done now.

Credit...Denis Balibouse/Reuters
Mr. Ma: China’s emissions [goals] have not been accomplished. We’re still burning half of the world’s coal. We need to do more. But now, at this moment, we’re facing the economic downturn locally and globally. We’re facing the [trade]war and also the withdrawal by the U.S. government from the Paris agreement. All these are not helpful. So we need to find innovative solutions which tap into the market power, which can balance growth and protection. But all this needs people to join the efforts. So with that, I truly salute the efforts to raise public awareness.

IbrahimCredit...Hanna Bardo/EPA, via Shutterstock
Ms. Ibrahim: This is today. This is our reality. When the forest is barren in Australia, in the Amazon, it’s forest that is disappearing. Back in my region, it’s people that are dying. Dying because of the climate change. Losing their lives. They would not think about the future. When people talk about 2050, for me, I’m like, really? Seriously. By 2050, there’s no solution for this planet. We need it now.

Credit...Mike Cohen for The New York Times
Mr. Shah: Climate change today bears its brunt mostly on the bottom two billion people on the planet. And so our commitment to Paris, our commitment to be serious and urgent and taking actions to meet those targets, is not just about protecting the future. It is also about protecting today people who rely on climate, environment and those natural resources to survive and to thrive.

Oliver Bäte, Allianz. Credit...Denis Balibouse/Reuters
Mr. Bäte: In the past it was always governments demanding business to change business models and then we had to adapt. Today, unfortunately, I believe that governments are behind the curve behind us. I can only speak for my home country. We always talk about the plans when we would get out of coal. But we’re discussing dates. We’re not discussing action. And what we are trying to do is put real action behind it.

One Trillion Trees
Jane Goodall, the renowned British anthropologist, gave her support to the World Economic Forum’s initiative One Trillion Trees, which supports the growing, restoring and conserving of a trillion trees worldwide by 2030.

Jane Goodall, British anthropologist. Credit...Alessandro Della Valle/Keystone, via Associated Press
Ms Goodall: The reason I think that the one trillion tree project is so exciting is, people say to me all the time what can I do? What’s one thing I can do? You can plant a tree, and whether you plant the tree in your own backyard or whether you pay to have trees planted in Tanzania, or if it’s urban or rural, you know it’s something you can do.

Sustainable Markets
Prince Charles came to the World Economic Forum after a nearly three-decade absence, with a 10-point Sustainable Markets plan that would include setting clear plans for governments and businesses to reach net zero in their carbon emissions and rooting out “perverse subsidies” that prevent the global economy from becoming more sustainable.

Credit...Fabrice Coffrini/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Global warming, climate change and the devastating loss of biodiversity are the greatest threats humanity has ever faced and one largely of our own creation. I have dedicated much of my life to the restoration of harmony between humanity, nature and the environment, and to the encouragement of corporate, social and environmental responsibility. But now it is time to take it to the next level. To secure a future and to prosper, we need to evolve our economic model. It is not a lack of capital that is holding us back, but rather the way in which we deploy it.
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