30/09/2020

(AU) David Attenborough Urges The World To Act On Climate Change

ABC 7:30 - Leigh Sales

David Attenborough is probably the world's best known naturalist. He has written and produced dozens of documentaries, delighting generations of TV viewers. But for the past few years he's had a much more urgent mission - convincing the world to take action on climate change.



Transcript

LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER:
He's probably the world's best-known naturalist and he has written and produced dozens of documentaries, delighting generations of TV viewers.

DAVID ATTENBOROUGH:
We're so similar. Their sight, their hearing, their sense of smell - they're so similar to ours that we see the world in the same way as they do.

MICHAL KURTYKA, PRESIDENT, COP24:
Please welcome, Sir David Attenborough.

LEIGH SALES:
But for the past few years, he has had a much more urgent mission - convincing the world to take action on climate change.

DAVID ATTENBOROUGH:
We are facing a man-made disaster of global scale.

LEIGH SALES:
Sir David, in your book, A Life On Our Planet, you write, "We live our comfortable lives in the shadow of a disaster of our own making." What do you mean by that?

SIR DAVID ATTENBOROUGH, NATURALIST AND BROADCASTER:
Well, I mean that we are living more comfortably, more of us are living more comfortably than ever in history.
I mean, we are living in a controlled temperature, or at least most of us are, or lots of us are, certainly, I won't do the figures, but humanity by and large has taken what it wants from the natural world and built its own construct, its own surroundings, which we tend to think of our world and now we are realising that it isn't our world, actually.
We don't control as much as we think we do, and we are heading for disaster, because we think, we have thought that we could simply take whatever we wanted if it was there.

LEIGH SALES:
When you say, "Heading for disaster," what do you think are the most pressing threats?

DAVID ATTENBOROUGH:
One that is lurking is that the icecaps are going to melt. For the first time now you can sail from the Pacific into the Atlantic across the North Pole in the summer and before long it looks as though you are going to be able to do that the year round and if you do that, the consequences, that is what people call a tipping point, when in fact it is not reversible.
If you are going to have all of those thousands of tons of freshwater in the icecaps, melting and going into the sea, rising the sea level, changing the salinity, changing the climate and the way the winds circulate around the world, you are interrupting and changing a fundamental rhythm that our world has lived with for centuries, millennia, and what the consequences will be is anybody's guess.

LEIGH SALES:
To be blunt, messages like yours have so far failed. Political leaders have failed to act decisively, the public is insufficiently motivated to force them to do so. Why do you think that is, and what's the answer?

DAVID ATTENBOROUGH:
Why it hasn't happened is because it's not going to happen tomorrow. It's going to happen the day after tomorrow, and newspapers and ourselves, I mean, let's not blame newspapers, but we ourselves are concerned with what happens tomorrow, that seems urgent and if someone says, look a little farther down the road, oh, yes, we ought to be doing something about that, and then something else happens, and we need to deal with that tomorrow.
This problem has been delayed again, and yet again, and yet again, and if we go on delaying it, it will be tomorrow and then it will be too late.


LEIGH SALES:
Your new BBC series is "Extinction: The Facts". In the history of the world, species have always become extinct. What's different now?

DAVID ATTENBOROUGH:
What's different now is that they're becoming, hundreds of species are becoming extinct together, right now. I mean, the dinosaurs was an unearthly body hitting the earth suddenly and that was one big effort.
Previous extinctions happened over centuries and even the dying out of the dinosaurs took several decades, we know, if not more than that.
But this is happening right now, and it's happening and it can be happening very, very quickly indeed across every aspect of the world's life.

LEIGH SALES:
Nobody can really travel with ease at the moment but let's say you could magically click your heels and transport yourself to anywhere you wanted to be in the world. Where would you go?

DAVID ATTENBOROUGH:
I wouldn't mind being on your side of the world, really. I have a great time when I come to Australia and I've been to Australia fairly regular and I haven't now and I doubt whether I shall be able to do so again because of the restrictions on air travel and one thing and another.
But I've had marvellous times in Australia particularly up north, up in Arnhem Land and down on the Queensland coast, but also in the south. I mean, listening to lyre birds is one of the great experiences of life. It is unbelievable. You probably have.
Well, for me it is just echoes in the mind and just sitting there and hearing this fantastic bird singing this huge range of all the bird calls that's around and then, on top of that, imitating the chainsaws that are cutting down the very forests in which it lives. I mean that's a heart-rending thing to hear, which I have.

LEIGH SALES:
You are 94 now. When you survey the landscape of your life from this vantage point, what most stands out to you?

DAVID ATTENBOROUGH:
In my life? Well, I suppose, it's quite a conventional reply, but it is the true one so I might as well say it, I mean, what stands out was the time I met what I thought were wild gorillas, mountain gorillas that was in Rwanda, and it stands out because I'm not allowed to forget it!
I mean, we filmed it and I wasn't expecting to get that close to them and for them to come out of the forest and then sit on me, I can honestly, truthfully say, I wasn't for a microsecond concerned.
I mean, there was this animal who could rip my arm off if it wanted to, you know, and yet there she was, she just sat alongside and put her hand on my head and put her finger in my mouth and looked inside my mouth and just - unbelievable.
And then her son, her young son, came and sat on my legs, and started pulling my shoelaces apart and how long I sat there, I mean, it was, it was certainly the most meaningful first encounter with another animal that I've ever had.

LEIGH SALES:
Well, you and your team have brought many magical moments like that one to the public, thank you for them and thank you for your time this evening.

DAVID ATTENBOROUGH:
Okay, thank you.


"We've overrun the planet" - Sir David Attenborough speaks in an exclusive interview with BBC Breakfast

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(AU) What Are The Key Technologies In The Coalition's Low Emissions Roadmap, And Can They Deliver?

The Guardian - 

From clean hydrogen, energy storage and low-carbon materials to carbon capture and storage, and soil carbon

The Coalition’s Low Emissions Technology Statement has won a mixed response from energy experts. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP

The Coalition government this week released its much-anticipated Low Emissions Technology Statement that targeted five different technologies for rapid development:
  • clean hydrogen
  • energy storage
  • low-carbon materials (steel and aluminium)carbon capture and
  • storage and soil carbon
The plan was immediately criticised by many experts for shunning proven renewable energy generation, but others were cautiously optimistic. Here we take a closer look at some of the key technologies mentioned and whether they can deliver.

‘Clean’ hydrogen


It may be a colourless gas, but the industry has a colourful way of talking about hydrogen. In the simplest terms, “brown hydrogen” is turning coal into gas from which hydrogen can be extracted.

An alternative method, and the one the government is spruiking, relies on creating hydrogen using natural gas via a process known as steam-methane reforming (natural gas is primarily made up of methane).

How does it work?

In this process, high-temperature steam (up to 1,000C) reacts with methane under pressure (equivalent to about 25 atmospheres) in the presence of a catalyst, such as nickel, to produce hydrogen, carbon monoxide, and a relatively small amount of carbon dioxide – emissions which the government is hoping can be captured and stored underground.

This method of hydrogen production has been around since the 1930s, so it is relatively well understood, and is now used in more than 90% of all hydrogen production worldwide.

“Green hydrogen” is made using an electrolyser to run an electrical current through water separating it into hydrogen and oxygen. The electricity needed is provided by renewable energy such as wind or solar, eventually allowing for the creation of carbon-neutral industrial products including green steel.

Why does this matter?

It is not possible to decarbonise by electrifying everything. Some industrial processes such as steel or glass making require extremely high temperatures. While this process has relied on coal in the past, hydrogen can serve as a replacement. Hydrogen also has promise as an aviation fuel and in other modes of transport.

What’s the catch?

The government wants to generate hydrogen for under $2 a kilogram as fast as possible. Though it claims agnosticism as to method, it says hydrogen in Australia will be made by coal or natural gas in the short-term and then “underpinned” by carbon, capture and storage (CCS) to deliver “clean hydrogen”.

Dr Emma Aisbett, associate director at the Australian National University’s Grand Challenge Zero-Carbon Energy for the Asia-Pacific, says this may be harder to achieve than the government anticipates as the price of gas grows with demand.

“On the one hand they’re saying they need to get the price of gas down, but on other hand they’re planning to increase demand that will increase the price of gas,” Aisbett says.

The other issue the damage it may do to “brand Australia”.

“Truly green hydrogen is already in use and is likely to become cost-competitive with hydrogen produced from gas in the near future, particularly in locations such as Australia which have the ability to produce very cheap renewable energy,” Aisbett says. “So within a decade we can expect investments in CCS for capture of carbon from reforming fossil fuels could be redundant.”

Carbon capture and storage


The basic principle of CCS is simple enough: carbon dioxide is extracted directly from the atmosphere or siphoned off from an industrial byproduct and bottled up in a void deep within the earth.

Has it been done?

Internationally the International Energy Association says there are 20 commercial CCS projects worldwide, with 30 more in development amounting to a $27bn investment. While the field has become heavily politicised it does have potential uses.

According the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, such “negative emissions” technologies are needed to help remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

The catch?

Price. The government aims to reduce the cost of CCS to $20 a tonne, but fossil fuel companies have been working on CCS for decades and not come near this.

Done poorly, the process of capturing, transporting and locking away carbon dioxide may generate more CO2 than what it stores. Then there are questions about long-term responsibility, especially given the potential for leaks.

The places where CCS is most successfully used are actually in oilfields where pumping carbon dioxide back into the field helps extract more oil, which is not exactly helpful in acting on climate change.

On top of this, there are inherent limits. There are a finite number of geological formations that can be used for CCS, making them a scarce resource that should only be reserved for the most essential industrial processes that are hard to decarbonise – in other words, probably not hydrogen fuels or electricity generation.

Soil carbon


“Soil carbon” refers to the amount of decomposing plant matter in soil. Gardeners and soil scientists know this “organic matter” as a measure of soil quality, but thinking about soil as a carbon sink may offer another way to soak up CO2.

Some projections suggest it has the potential to trap 9bn tonnes of CO2 each year globally. But this process takes time, and can be quickly undone. Some calculations suggest 150bn tonnes of soil carbon has been lost since the advent of agriculture.

How does it work?

While Tuesday’s statement talks about soil carbon, more specifically it aims to bring the price of measuring organic matter down below $3 a hectare on the basis it may better open ways to use soil to lock away carbon. One approach is to develop fine-tuned sensors that sit permanently within the soil to collect data in real time, which can then be used to generate accurate models of the landscape.

The attraction of the government to soil carbon is partly political. The cost of measurement was a factor that made its emissions reductions fund – that pays farmers to increase the carbon stored in soil – uneconomic.

Dr Annette Cowie, principal research scientist in New South Wales Department of Primary Industries’ climate branch says while achieving a cost of $3 a hectare is unlikely, driving down the cost is necessary as until it changes farmers and soil scientists are flying blind.

“Organic matter is hard to build up and easy to lose,” Cowie says. “We have the technical capacity to measure it easily, but not cheaply.

“Soil carbon is quite variable. It changes depending on geology and geography. [Right now] you need to collect a lot of samples to get a good reading, multiple samples per hectare and then send it all to a lab.”

The verdict


By focusing purely on short-term developments, the Coalition is pinning its response to climate change on a sudden technological breakthrough – without doing the necessary heavy lifting.

As an exercise in green industry policy – where government attempts to drive industrial and technological development – this is welcomed in some quarters. The problem is that the Coalition remains wedded to ideas like CCS and so has set aside $18bn as an implicit subsidy for fossil fuel industry.

“Wind and solar are mature technologies that can produce energy cheaper than coal or gas,” Aisbett says. “The remaining market failures inhibiting emissions reduction are mainly around how to integrate, store and use this cheap, clean energy.

“This is where government policy and taxpayer resources should be directed. The emphasis on the use of dirty, expensive energy from gas, and ways to make it more expensive though slightly cleaner in the technology roadmap is not technology neutral and not an efficient use of taxpayer money.”

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China Changes The Game On Climate Action, For Renewables And For Coal

RenewEconomy - 



China’s newly announced commitment to achieving carbon neutrality by 2060 is set to be a game-changer, both for a renewables industry that will be tasked with an unprecedented roll-out of new wind, solar and storage capacity, as well as the fundamental shift it represents in the geopolitical environment of international climate change negotiations.

The scale of a Chinese commitment to achieving zero net emissions cannot be underestimated. Official greenhouse gas measurements place China as the world’s largest emitter, at almost 12,500 million tonnes a year, representing more than a quarter of all global emissions, almost double the emissions of the United States and more than 20-times larger than those of Australia.

To meet its new target, China will need to undertake an unprecedented deployment of zero-emissions technologies, building upon the country’s already significant portfolio of wind and solar capacity. To give a sense of the scale of the shift that will be needed; China currently consumes around 7,250 TWh of electricity, more than 25-times Australia’s total electricity demand.

Conservative estimates suggest that China could require thousands of gigawatts of new wind and solar capacity to be added over the next four decades just to shift existing electricity demand to zero emissions sources, before demand growth is taken into account, and presumes its current fleet of nuclear and hydroelectricity plants are maintained.

China will need to replace its 1,300GW fleet of coal generators and around 85GW of gas generation with zero emissions sources.

It would also require an unprecedented deployment of storage infrastructure, through the construction of new shorter-term battery storage capacity and an expansion of China’s hydroelectric capacity to provide pumped-hydro energy storage capacity.

It also spells doom for Australia’s coal sector, with China ranking as Australia’s second-largest export market for coal, purchasing around $15 billion worth of Australian coal annually.

In revealing the target in an address to the United Nations General Assembly last week, Chinese president Xi Jinping tied the need to act on climate change and to invest in new technologies with the need to drive economic development in a post-Covid-19 recovery.

“China will scale up its Intended Nationally Determined Contributions by adopting more vigorous policies and measures,” Xi Jinping said. “We aim to have CO2 emissions peak before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060.

“We call on all countries to pursue innovative, coordinated, green and open development for all, seize the historic opportunities presented by the new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation, achieve a green recovery of the world economy in the post-COVID era and thus create a powerful force driving sustainable development.”

Climate Action Tracker, which assesses national climate policies against the level of action required to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement and keep global warming to within safe levels, estimated that China’s target would lower global warming projections by around 0.2 to 0.3°C.

“This is the most important announcement on global climate policy in at least the last five years,” NewClimate Institute’s Niklas Höhne said, which partners with Climate Action Tracker.

“This would mean that China, responsible for a quarter of the worlds greenhouse gas emissions, would phase out any conventional use of coal, oil and gas by the middle of the century, unthinkable a few years ago.”

Analyst estimates suggest China’s target could lead to as much as 215 billion tonnes of avoided emissions by 2060, while helping to boost China’s GDP growth by as much as 5 per cent, driven by the huge investment required to build the new wind and solar projects needed to achieve the target. It will have a dramatic impact on China’s emissions trajectory, as evidenced by projections prepared by Carbon Brief.

However, China’s announcement could have an even wider reaching impact, achieving more than just a reduction in China’s own emissions, by placing pressure on other big emitters to ramp up the strength of their own targets.

Analysts at the World Resources Institute said the target would have massive ramifications in the geopolitical environment around climate action.

“This announcement will send positive shockwaves through diplomatic circles and should prompt greater climate ambition from other major emitters,” the World Resources Institute’s vice president for climate and economics Helen Mountford said.

“The case for ambitious climate action is stronger than ever and can deliver a strong economic recovery from COVID-19. Bold climate policy measures can grow China’s economy, create jobs and position the country well to compete and lead in a low-carbon 21st century economy.”

With China committing to achieving the zero emissions goal by 2060, and a prospective Biden administration promising to commit the United States to net-zero emissions no later than 2050, the Morrison government is becoming increasingly isolated in its refusal to adopt a zero emissions target.

This is a refusal that has again been reiterated in recent weeks, with prime minister Scott Morrison saying that he would not commit to a net zero emissions target by 2050, as has been advocated for by both environmental and business groups alike, instead pointing to the comparatively vague wording contained within the Paris Agreement that requires zero net emissions to be achieved sometime in the ‘second half of the century’.

Federal energy and emissions reduction minister Angus Taylor told ABC’s 730 report that he did not think the Paris Agreement even required individual countries to commit to achieving zero net emissions, suggesting instead that this was a ‘global commitment’.

“There is not, as you say, a commitment from individual countries in Paris to be net zero by 2050,” Taylor said. “The commitment is a global commitment to get to net zero in the second half of the century, and that’s why technology is so critical. We want to bring that forward to as soon as possible, but ultimately this is a global commitment and it’s going to require global solutions.”

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29/09/2020

(AU) Climate Change Action Stymied By Australian Business Lobby, UK Think Tank Finds

ABC News - Elysse Morgan


Extended interview with Edward Collins (Elysse Morgan)

Key Points
  • A new report finds the Minerals Council of Australia is the "single largest negative influence on Australian climate-related policy"
  • The Business Council of Australia, two state-based minerals councils and the main oil and gas lobby group are also fingered in the report
  • InfluenceMap, which wrote the report, has previously found Australia's climate policies are consistent with a 3-4 degrees Celsius temperature rise
A UK-based climate think tank has named the Minerals Council of Australia, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the NSW Minerals Council as the three organisations most responsible for undermining climate policy in Australia.

Mining giants BHP, Santos, Rio Tinto and Glencore were found to have the most concentrated network of links to industry associations that "continue to work against Paris-aligned policy for Australia".

The new report was written by InfluenceMap, which was launched shortly before the Paris Agreement in 2015 and provides data and analysis to major shareholders and investors on how businesses are affecting climate policy around the world.

It is a think tank funded by environmentally focused charities and organisations, including the IKEA Foundation and the European Union.

The report into Australia's industry associations and their climate policy footprint finds three-quarters of Australia's most influential industry associations are having an overwhelmingly negative impact on climate policy, taking positions against climate regulations and promoting a pro-fossil-fuels agenda.

The report also argues there has been limited public scrutiny of these activities.

Minerals Council 'single largest negative influence'

InfluenceMap looked at 20 industry associations — including the Minerals Council of Australia (MCA), the Business Council of Australia (BCA), the NSW and Queensland minerals councils, and the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association (APPEA) — based on their active involvement in climate and energy policy.

The report cites the MCA's recent advocacy for reduced taxes and faster project approval for mining, its opposition to strong international climate commitments, and its calls to water down clean-energy targets as some of the evidence against it.

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. Read more 
It highlights the BCA's push for the Government to support gas as part of the energy transition, that it has opposed renewable-energy policies in favour of "technology-neutral" policies and lobbied against state-based renewables targets.

The report notes the Minerals Council of Australia is the "single largest negative influence on Australian climate-related policy", while the BCA was named as the fourth biggest drag.

This is perhaps surprising given the BCA states publicly: "We support the need for a market-based carbon price to drive the transition and incentivise investment in low and no-emissions technology."

It also says it supports the science of climate change, the Paris Agreement, and investment in technology to get Australia to a net-zero-emissions future.

But the InfluenceMap report finds, despite the positive public statements it has made, the group's actions show it "continues to oppose Paris-aligned climate policy".

Shareholder pressure ramping up

The report comes as activists and shareholder groups increase their pressure on companies, demanding boards take a more active approach to reducing emissions and review the lobby groups they belong to.

As a result of shareholder pressure, BHP has reviewed its membership of organisations such as the BCA and MCA every year since 2017.

Just last month, BHP announced new global climate policy standards, including national emissions reduction targets consistent with the Paris Agreement, and further scrutiny of its lobby group membership.

It faces a vote at its annual general meeting on a recommendation the mining giant suspends memberships of industry associations that have advocated for COVID-19 economic stimulus measures inconsistent with the Paris Agreement's goals.

BHP's board has not endorsed the item, stating: "It does not take account of recent changes to BHP's approach to industry associations." The mining giant is aiming to make changes from within the tent.

In August it adopted policy positions, including net-zero emissions by 2050, and indicated it expected its positions to be reflected by associations it was a member of.

However, "the Big Australian" fares poorly in InfluenceMap's analysis.

"BHP has done a lot on the transparency front recently and I'm sure investors will see that as a positive step, but this assessment is really looking at them and their impact," report author Edward Collins told ABC's The Business.

"So that ranking for BHP is really coming from the fact that they have the largest network of links to industry associations that we judge to be the most negatively influential in Australia and, although we factor in the fact that they have distanced themselves from some of those positions, they've still come out as the worst in our analysis due to the strength and number of those links."

As with BHP, Rio Tinto is also facing shareholder pressure, as is Woodside Energy, which is Australia's largest oil and gas producer.

COVID-19 response highlights transparency problems

The analysis does not include the policy response to the pandemic and, in particular, the "gas-led recovery" pushed by energy sector veterans Nev Power and Andrew Liveris, who sit on the Federal Government's hand-picked economic advisory panel.

Gas-fired path to COVID recovery?
The Federal Government's National COVID Coordination Commission has a lot of gas industry players involved, and it appears to be showing in its policy recommendations. Read more
Mr Collins said the Government's urgent response to the need for stimulus out of COVID-19, and the potential for influential lobby groups to direct policy, only increased the need for transparency.

"One thing we are quite keen on is more meaningful transparency measures so external parties can understand the relationships between companies and government policy institutions and how these influences are taking place," he said.

"It would hopefully make our job redundant in the future."

InfluenceMap's 2019 report found Australian representative groups featured disproportionately among the world's most damaging lobbyists on climate.

According to a consortium of science institutes behind the Climate Action Tracker, Australia is headed for an 8 per cent increase in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, which would be aligned with global a temperature increase between 3 and 4 degrees Celsius if replicated globally.

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Pakistan’s Most Terrifying Adversary Is Climate Change

New York Times - Fatima Bhutto

The country debates women’s honor inexhaustibly but pays little attention to the ferocious and imminent dangers of climate disasters.

Karachi, the commercial capital of Pakistan, was flooded in August after the heaviest rains in decades. Credit...Shahzaib Akber/EPA, via Shutterstock

Author
Fatima Bhutto, an essayist and novelist from Pakistan, is the author, most recently, of the novel “The Runaways".
Karachi is home. My bustling, chaotic city of about 20 million people on the Arabian Sea is an ethnically and religiously diverse metropolis and the commercial capital of Pakistan, generating more than half of the country’s revenue.

Over the decades, Karachi has survived violent sectarian strife, political violence between warring groups claiming the city and terrorism. Karachi has survived its gangsters sparring with rocket launchers; its police force, more feared than common criminals; its rulers and bureaucrats committed to rapacious, bottomless corruption. Now Karachi faces its most terrifying adversary: climate change.

In August, Karachi’s stifling summer heat was heavy and pregnant. The sapodilla trees and frangipani leaves were lush and green; the Arabian Sea, quiet and distant, had grown muddy. When the palm fronds started to sway, slowly, the city knew the winds had picked up and rain would follow. Every year the monsoons come — angrier and wilder — lashing the unprepared city. Studies show that climate change is causing monsoons to be more intense and less predictable, and cover larger areas of land for longer periods of time.

On Aug. 27, Karachi received nearly nine inches of monsoon rain, the highest amount of rainfall ever in a single day. Nineteen inches of rain fell in August, according to the meteorological officials. It is enough to drown a city that has no functioning drainage, no emergency systems and no reliable health care (except for those who can pay). Thousands of homes and settlements of the poor were subsumed and destroyed, and more than 100 people were killed.

A traders association estimated that the submerging of markets and warehouses damaged goods worth 25 billion Pakistani rupees, or about $150 million. Local papers estimated that with Karachi at a standstill for a week, in some congested areas for longer, Pakistan’s gross domestic product suffered daily losses of $449 million — a number that didn’t include the enormous informal economy. The World Bank estimates that 15 percent of gross domestic product of the Sindh province (Karachi is its capital) is lost every year to environmental damage and climate change.

Pakistan is the fifth most climate vulnerable nation in the world. Between 1998 and 2018, according to the Global Climate Risk Index, the country is estimated to have lost nearly 10,000 lives to climate-related disasters and suffered losses amounting to about $4 billion from 152 extreme weather events in that period. Analysts have estimated Pakistan’s climate migrants over the past decade at around 30 million people.

A funeral being held in Karachi, Pakistan, in August for some victims of the flood caused by relentless monsoon rains. Credit...Fareed Khan/Associated Press





There is no end to the catalog of climate disasters affecting my country. The glaciers in the Hindu Kush, the Himalayas and the Karakoram in northern Pakistan are melting at an accelerated pace. If the emission trends and temperature rises continue unabated, these mountains could lose between a third to two-thirds of their ice fields by 2100. The result will be catastrophic: By 2050, the increased melting will result in landslides, heavy flooding, dam bursts and soil erosion. After the glaciers have melted away, drought and famine will follow.

The terror of our coming era will be born of heat and fire and ice. Some years ago, I was in a village in Sindh after a massive flood had devastated it. Thousands were displaced overnight. The blistering heat soaked the faces of displaced young women in sweat thick like glycerin. I was unsure what would be more lethal — the drowning or the heat.

Not far from that drowned village in Sindh is the city of Jacobabad, where temperatures in the summer run as high as 124 degrees Fahrenheit. It is the hottest city in Asia, if not the world. Jacobabad has long electricity blackouts. Its poor die as they toil in the fields.

Temperature increases have brought plague after plague in rural areas. This year has brought Pakistan the most devastating locust infestations in nearly 30 years. The insects destroyed entire harvests, causing the government to call a national emergency as winter crops were decimated, resulting in losses of $2.5 billion. The locusts descend like a haze, so thick that from a distance it looked like a soft pink fog. Because of heavy rains and cyclones, there has been unprecedented breeding of locusts in the United Arab Emirates. They traveled to us from the Arabian Peninsula.

This is a climate war between the large industrial superpowers, financial predators that have polluted and poisoned our planet for profit, and the poor, who have done the least damage but will pay all of the consequences. Pakistan is responsible for less than 1 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, but its people will bear the burden of the world’s deadliest polluters. If nothing is done to mitigate global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the World Bank, 800 million people in South Asia will be at risk of amplified poverty, homelessness and hunger.

The World Bank has identified Karachi as one the planet’s climate hot spots. Temperatures across South Asia are estimated to rise by 3.9 degrees Fahrenheit in the next 30 years. Karachi is already struggling with poor road connectivity, dire educational facilities and limited market access. Its already pathetic public health system will plummet. The rich might buy generators for electricity, pay for water tanks and rely on expensive hospitals, but the poor will continue to be devastated.

Pakistan’s current government is speaking about climate change, but it is a conversation that has come too late, unaccompanied by serious action. In 1947, Pakistan was 33 percent forest. Today, we have tree cover of just about 4 percent, all because of deforestation. This destruction, largely caused by the illegal logging by timber mafias, has silted up our waterways and left us undefended against floods and storms.

The country can easily be whipped into hysteria over supposed religious infractions committed by minorities and can debate women’s modesty and honor inexhaustibly, but it has little attention for the ferocious and imminent dangers of climate change.

Karachi’s rainfall, like the rising temperatures, is a consequence of the raging climate war. We have sat by and watched how cities die: slowly. We didn’t watch closely enough when the villages sank and struggled. But it is clear now that this is how a planet burns, one fire at a time, one degree hotter until eventually all that remains will be the chalky bones of Karachi’s ancient saints, buried on disappeared cliffs.

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Climate Primer: How To Talk About Climate Change

Reuters - Laurie Goering

Want to have a productive conversation about climate risk? Be respectful, look for common ground and always offer solutions, says climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe



LONDON - Climate change-related threats - from record wildfires to worsening heatwaves, floods and storms - are affecting more and more people around the world. So why aren't we acting on the increasingly evident changes around us?

One reason is too many people still see climate change as a faraway threat - one their children or grandchildren, people in distant countries or polar bears will face, but not one that will hit them personally, or that needs attention now.

Others are simply too busy to give the issue much attention - or they understand the deadly risks but don't know how to act effectively to reduce them. Depressed and frightened, they switch off engaging.

"For most of us, scaring the pants off us doesn't move us forward. It causes us to freeze. That's how our brains are hard-wired," says Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist and climate communication expert at Texas Tech University.

So how do we get more people to understand and engage with climate risks in a productive way, so the threats can be reduced?

Hayhoe says it's as simple as talking to others - not about climate change but about the things they care about, whether it's less snow on the ski slopes, saving money on fuel bills or keeping asthmatic kids safe when forest fire smoke spreads.

"Talking about it is so powerful," she said. "Our voice is a massively underestimated agent of change. We all have a voice we can use in some way."

Hayhoe should know: As the wife of an evangelical Christian pastor, a resident of hugely conservative Lubbock, Texas, and someone who regularly engages with climate change doubters on social media, she has the conversations every day.

Here are her top tips for having a productive conversation about climate change, from a Reuters online event with her this week:

Start with your own communities

Whether you're a football fan or a parent, a diving enthusiast or a knitter, talking to people you know, spend time with and share interests with is likely where you'll have the best conversations.

If you're an atheist, trying to engage church-goers about obligations in scripture to protect the earth isn't likely to get you very far, Hayhoe notes.

Search for common ground

Maybe you're both gardeners battling new pests and diseases in your roses, or parents of teenagers wanting to ditch school on Fridays to attend climate protests. People are more inclined to listen to others they see as like themselves.

"You have to get to know them, what makes them tick, what incentivises them, what they get really excited about," she said. "Then connect the dots to climate change."

Climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe joins Reuters to discuss to discuss climate change, our ability to tackle the challenge and whether society can adapt to a warming planet.

Talk about their concerns - not just climate change

Don't start off with a lecture. Listen and look for opportunities to talk about how global warming may be affecting their concerns.

Perhaps you're both worried that heatwaves are making it harder for you to run the marathons you love, or that the lengthening allergy season means your children need to take more medicine.

"Don't hit people with facts," Hayhoe said. "Show why it matters to them in the places where they live - and what people are already doing to fix this problem."

Start with mutual respect - don't judge what they say or do

You may be a devoted cyclist concerned by their passion for SUVs, but keeping an open mind, listening and maintaining genuine respect is crucial to helping the other person do the same and consider what you have to say.

Don't "wave a bony finger of judgment at someone," Hayhoe warns.

Always offer solutions and action

Helping someone understand the scale of the climate crisis - and then leaving them with nothing to do about it - is debilitating and unhelpful, Hayhoe says.

If the person you're speaking with runs a clubhouse or other facility, talk about how installing solar panels could save operating cash.

Chat about good, high-earning alternatives to investing pension funds in fossil fuels, or offer to accompany drivers to try out safe bicycle routes.

Encourage them to contact elected representatives about their concerns, or join a community effort to protect forests or cut food waste.

"Action is the antidote to anxiety and despair," she said. "If we present the risks without what we can do about it, we’re doing people a disservice."

 Accept that some people simply won't listen

Surveys of U.S. attitudes toward climate change by the Yale Program on Climate Communications show nearly 60% of people are either "alarmed" or "concerned" about the problem.

But at the other end of the spectrum are the 10% of Americans "dismissive" of climate risks.

"We all have an uncle or a cousin or an old college roommate or a neighbour" who falls into that category - someone whose identity is bound up with rejecting that climate change is real or a worry, Hayhoe said.

In those cases, "if an angel from God appeared in front of them with brand new tablets of stone saying global warming is real… they would dismiss them too," she said.

How to engage with such people on climate issues? It's best not to bother, she says. The other 90% of people are out there, and may be more ready to listen and engage than you think.

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28/09/2020

The 12 Arguments Every Climate Denier Uses – And How To Debunk Them

VICE - Imogen West-Knights

"But what about China?"

Photo: David Cliff/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

In Europe, you don’t often rub shoulders with someone who doesn’t believe in climate change. Although climate change denial is alive and well in America – not least in the White House – people here mostly accept that climate change is, to some degree, happening.

But that doesn’t mean climate denialism has gone away. Instead, according to new research from the University of Cardiff, it has simply changed shape, into something they call “discourses of delay”.

These 12 arguments, favoured by politicians and industry figures, are a more subtle way of downplaying the need for action on climate change than full-on denialism, but no less corrosive to efforts to mitigate damaging climate effects. And they’re filtering into the public consciousness rapidly.

Rather than arguing that climate change isn’t happening, now you hear people arguing that it’s too late, too difficult, too controversial, too unfair, too hasty, to take serious action on climate change.

How do you debunk these arguments when you hear them? Tackling these types of misinformation is no mean feat; often they’re put forward in good faith.

But explaining to someone the fallacies behind these common discourses of delay can work as what Dr. William Lamb, one of the authors of the Cardiff paper, calls an “inoculation strategy” against future misinformation on climate change.

Here are their 12 discourses of delay, and what you can say to challenge them.

 1. “Ultimately, it’s individuals and consumers who are responsible for taking action”

This narrative first came from the fossil fuel industry. “They funded carbon footprint calculators,” Dr John Cook, a research professor at the Centre for Climate Change Communication, tells me, “and my hat off to them for coming up with an incredibly effective PR strategy to distract the public from the real need, to transform how we create energy.”

It’s not pointless to try to avoid plastic, or to limit your meat consumption but we’ll never convince everybody to do that, plus there are socio-economic reasons why it isn’t possible for everyone. Even if we did, it would be like trying to drain the ocean with a pipette compared to systemic change in polluting industries. One hundred companies are responsible for 71 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions.

 2. “The UK’s carbon footprint is tiny compared to China’s, so it doesn’t make sense for us to take action, at least until they do”

The report calls this “whataboutism”. The farming industry points the finger at the car industry, and vice versa. Politicians point out that their nation’s global carbon dioxide output is only small (in the UK it’s between 1 and 2 percent of the world total) and so justify inaction.

Firstly, every country could make a version of this argument, and if they did, there would be no hope to limit climate change.

Secondly, that 1 to 2 percent figure is misleading, because per capita emissions in the UK are relatively high – about five times as high as India's, for instance.

Thirdly, as a technologically and economically advanced nation, we are more able to take action than many other nations, and we have an additional historical responsibility to do so as a country that has polluted a great deal in the past.

 3. “But if we start to reduce emissions, other countries will just take advantage of that to increase their emissions”

You can challenge the narrative that we are necessarily giving something up by lowering our carbon emissions.

“There are a lot of benefits to be gained in our everyday lives from mitigating climate change, in terms of reducing local air pollution, more active travel, not spending so much money on fuel bills and so on,” says Lamb.

 4. “People are developing new, green technology right now, we just need to wait for it”

If only. The aviation industry is particularly good at manipulating this argument, so good in fact that Matt Hancock recently claimed that “electric planes are on the horizon”.

They aren’t. Or maybe they will be, in several decades time, but the IPCC finding is that we need to half our emissions in the next ten years.

“You have to demonstrate that these technologies are going to be available in the timeframe that matters,” says Lamb, and at present, climate friendly planes are a pie in the sky.

 5. “We’ve already declared a climate emergency and set ambitious targets”

Targets are emphatically not policies. As a global community, we are extremely bad at meeting environmental targets. Earlier this month, it was announced that humanity has missed every single one of the 2010 Aichi goals to protect world wildlife and ecosystems.

 6. “We need to work with fossil fuel companies, their fuel is becoming more efficient and we’ll need them as a stopgap before widespread renewable energy use in the future”

This kind of greenwashing is “at the heart of industry pushback against regulation”, says the Cardiff report. It is not a foregone conclusion that we need fossil fuels for now in order to transition into using renewables in the future:

“We can leapfrog it straight to renewables,” Cook tells me.

And we don’t have the time for a gentle climb down from fossil fuels: it’s ten years.

 7. “People respond best to voluntary policies, and we shouldn’t try to force people to do anything”

Or in other words, what we need is carrots, not sticks. Things like funding high-speed rail to substitute flights, and not frequent flyer levies.

But restrictive measures are a normal and accepted part of life already. Seatbelts, for instance, are a restrictive measure enforced by law for the safety of drivers and their passengers, and the car industry pushed back against them hard when they were introduced.

They also can and should be used in conjunction with incentives, it’s not an either/or.

 8. “Taking action on climate change will generate huge social costs. The most vulnerable people in our society will suffer the most from increased taxation”

These are legitimate concerns if put forward in good faith. But, as Cook says, often this is “a straw man argument attacking a basically non-existent version of climate policies,” which are often designed with social justice in mind to ensure that this doesn't happen.

In any case, you don’t have to increase taxation on the poorest people in society to mitigate climate change. Reducing the cost of train tickets is a good example. And frequent flier levies are a tax on the wealthiest people in our society, who by definition can afford it.

The most vulnerable in society are also the most negatively affected in terms of their health by continuing to burn fossil fuels – coal plants are near poorer parts of the country – and so in fact have the most to gain from green policy.

 9. “Abandoning fossil fuels would slow the growth that has lifted billions of people out of poverty”

Unfortunately, this argument is often a leveraging of human suffering to protect the interests of fossil fuel giants. If we actually cared about the plight of these people, we would be providing renewable energy technology patent free. And fossil fuels are already causing drastic damage to lives in the global south.

 10. “We shouldn’t act until we’re sure we’ve got perfectly-crafted policies to address climate change”

We are more sure about the impacts and future risks of climate change than we are about cigarettes harming human health, and yet we enact policy to limit people smoking.

We don’t need total certainty about outcomes to commit to climate policy, and we don’t require it in any other field of big government decisions, for example, going to war or, dare I say it, exiting the European Union.

Taking decisive action on climate change is going to cause a great deal less suffering than either of those examples.

 11. “Any effective measure to reduce emissions would run counter to human nature and the way we live now, and so it would be impossible to implement in a democratic society”

This is a difficult one, to be fair. We have failed, so far, to change the way we live enough to avert climate disaster. But searching for a way through the challenges is not as impossible as this argument makes it seem.

One way to counter this argument, Lamb says, is to look at historical analogies, social justice or civil rights movements, for instance, which have successfully “shifted opinion and shifted policies in the past”.

 12. “It’s too late to prevent catastrophic climate change and we should get ready to adapt or die”

Climate change is not a binary, of either having climate change or not. “We have already committed ourselves to some climate impacts” says Cook, “but it's not locked in just how bad it will be.”

You could also argue that there’s a moral failing in taking this view. We in Western Europe, or North America aren’t the first or the most severely affected by climate change, and giving up is giving up on all the people who don’t happen to live where we do.

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