25/01/2020

(AU) Australia Singled Out For Climate 'Denial' At Doomsday Clock Event

Sydney Morning Herald - Matthew Knott

Washington: Former California governor Jerry Brown has blasted the Australian government's "utter and absolute" denial of the threat of climate change at an event warning the world is closer than ever before to a man-made apocalypse.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists on Thursday (Friday AEDT) announced it was moving its famous Doomsday Clock closer to midnight than at any point in its 73-year history because of the growing risk of climate change, nuclear war and disinformation.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the hands of the Doomsday Clock to 100 Seconds to Midnight. Credit:The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Several speakers at the announcement in Washington DC held up the Australian bushfire crisis as an example of the extreme and deadly weather events that will become more common unless the world dramatically reduces its carbon emissions.
Brown, who oversaw the response to California's most destructive wildfire crisis in 2018, told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age he had no hope the Morrison government would become a global leader on tackling climate change.
"The Australian government is in utter and complete denial," he said.
"Under its current leadership, Australia is fostering denial in an incredibly mendacious way.
"Until Australians throw out their current leaders they will continue this way ... It's time to wake up."
Brown is the longest serving governor in the history of California, which has almost 40 million residents - more than any other US state. He served two terms beginning in 1975 before returning to office again in 2010.
Jerry Brown, right, visiting wildfire-damaged regions in California with US President Donald Trump in 2018. Credit:AP
Brown made climate change his signature issue, suing the Trump administration over its environmental policies and mandating 100 per cent carbon-free electricity in the state by 2045.
He is now executive chair of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which moved its Doomsday Clock forward to 100 seconds to midnight. This is the first time it has passed the two-minute mark since it was launched in 1947.
Rachel Bronson, chief executive of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, said: "We are now expressing how close the world is to catastrophe in seconds, not hours or even minutes.
"We now face a true emergency - an absolutely unacceptable state of world affairs that has eliminated any margin for error or further delay."


The RBA is warning climate change could lead to the next global financial break down.

Sivan Kartha, a senior scientist at the Stockholm Environment Institute, said: "To test the limits of earth's habitable temperature is madness. It's a madness akin to the nuclear madness that is again threatening the world."
He said extreme weather events over the past year were a portent of what was to come unless the world takes drastic action on climate change.
"Wildfires raged from the Arctic to Australia," Kartha said.
"They now persist with an unprecedented intensity, extent and duration that makes them harder to contain ... The very idea of a limited fire season is becoming a thing of the past."
Former United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon said: 'From the US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and the Iran nuclear deal, to deadlock at nuclear disarmament talks and paralysis at the UN security council, our mechanisms for collaboration are being undermined when we need them most."
Speaking from the World Economic Forum's annual meting in Davos, Switzerland, Finance Minister Mathias Cormann defended Australia's record on climate change.
"We have a very ambitious climate change policy, we are absolutely committed to effective action on climate change," Cormann told CNBC.
"We are a large continent with a small population, so considering the emissions reduction targets we’ve committed to on a per capita basis we will be more than halving emissions and indeed we will be reducing the emissions intensity in our economy by two-thirds.
"That is more ambitious than the UK, than Canada, than New Zealand, than many other countries around the world."

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(AU) Reserve Bank Urged To Battle 'Green Swan' Risks Of Climate Change

ABC News - Stephen Letts

The value of stranded fossil fuel assets worldwide could be as high as $26 trillion. (ABC News: Michael Barnett)
Key points
  • Climate change has the potential to spark the next major global financial crisis according to the BIS
  • Central banks' mandates for maintaining financial stability meant they are likely to become "climate rescuers' of last resort"
  • The BIS argues central banks like the RBA may have to bail out the fossil fuel industry 
The Reserve Bank may have to take over stranded coal mines and coal-fired power stations to fulfil its mandate for financial stability, according to one of the world's most powerful financial institutions, the Bank for International Settlements.
The BIS, which is owned by the world's 60 largest central banks (including the RBA) and is commonly referred to as the "central banks' central bank", said climate change may well spark the next great global financial crisis and regulators needed to address the potential risks urgently.
In a major study released from its Geneva headquarters, BIS general manager Agustín Carstens argued the financial stability mandates at the heart of central bank operations around the world meant they needed to be involved in mitigating the financial risks posed by climate change.
"In the worst case scenario, central banks may have to confront a situation where they are called upon by their local constituencies to intervene as climate rescuers of last resort," the BIS report warned.
"For example, a new financial crisis caused by green swan events severely affecting the financial health of the banking and insurance sectors could force central banks to intervene and buy a large set of carbon-intensive assets and/or assets stricken by physical impacts."
The BIS uses the "green swan" concept as climate-change alternative to the term "black swan", used to to describe unexpected and extreme occurrences that have major effects, which could be anything from terrorist attacks to disruptive technologies or a natural disaster.

The next global financial crisis?
The BIS Green Swan report argued current risk assessment and climate change models cannot anticipate accurately enough the form that climate-related risks will take and the "potentially extremely financially disruptive events that could be behind the next systemic financial crisis."
The value of the world's stranded fossil fuel reserves is massive but difficult to pin down according to the report, ranging from Carbon Tracker's $US1.6 trillion ($2.3 trillion) estimate to the International Renewable Energy Agency's 2017 calculation of $US18 trillion ($26 trillion).
"Under an abrupt transition scenario (e.g. with significant stranded assets), financial assets could be subject to a change in investors' perception of profitability," the BIS warned.
"This loss in market value can potentially lead to fire sales, which could trigger a financial crisis."
The Morrison Government risks being stranded at the intersection of climate change related disasters and their economic fallout, writes Ian Verrender.
Due to investments in and loans to fossil fuel producers, financial risks would spread throughout global markets leading to a mass of defaults and tightening banks' liquidity and ability to lend, in much the same way as the contagion caused by the collapse of the US subprime mortgage sector spread rapidly worldwide during the 2008 financial crisis.
While the BIS found there is much central banks can do, it noted they cannot act in isolation.
It said central banks should more involved coordinating climate change actions among major players — governments, the private sector and the international community.
The report found key areas for central bank involvement included:
  • Climate mitigation policies such as carbon pricing;
  • Integrating sustainability into financial practices and accounting frameworks;
  • Developing new financial mechanisms at the international level.
"Green swan events may force central banks to intervene as 'climate rescuers of last resort' and buy large sets of devalued assets, to save the financial system once more," it warned.
"However, the biophysical foundations of such a crisis and its potentially irreversible impacts would quickly show the limits of this 'wait and see' strategy.
"On the other hand, central banks cannot — and should not — simply replace governments and private actors to make up for their insufficient action, despite growing social pressures to do so."

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Greta Thunberg Clashes With US Treasury Secretary In Davos

The Guardian - 

Greta Thunberg has been in Davos to push for immediate, radical change on the climate emergency. Photograph: Denis Balibouse/Reuters

In an attempt to slap down the climate emergency movement, Steven Mnuchin pretended not to know who Thunberg was, before dismissing her concerns as ill-informed.
Asked whether calls for public and private-sector divestment from fossil fuel companies would threaten US growth, Mnuchin jibed: “Is she the chief economist? Who is she, I’m confused” – before clarifying that he was joking.
“After she goes and studies economics in college she can come back and explain that to us,” Mnuchin added, at a press conference at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Thunberg, 17, responded by tweeting a graph from a UN report showing how the world’s remaining carbon budget will be used up by 2027 unless global emissions are curbed. “My gap year ends in August, but it doesn’t take a college degree in economics to realise that our remaining 1,5° carbon budget and ongoing fossil fuel subsidies and investments don’t add up,” she pointed out.
Mnuchin’s comments expose the huge gulf that still exists between climate activists and the White House. Pressed on the climate emergency, Mnuchin insisted that environmental issues are “clearly complicated”.
He said: “When I was allowed to drive I had a Tesla. I drove in California. I liked it.
“But nobody focuses on how that electricity is made and what happens to the storage and the environmental issues on all these batteries.”
He also claimed the US was showing leadership in tackling emissions – but through its private sector rather than government. President Trump believes in clean air and water, and a clean environment, Mnuchin insisted, but also believes that more attention should be paid to the environmental damage caused by China and India.

'What will you tell your children?': Greta Thunberg blasts climate inaction at Davos.

People who call for divestment should remember there are “significant economic issues, issues with jobs”, he continued. “Many economies are transitioning to more efficient and cleaner energy. That doesn’t have to be all renewables.”

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