(AU) Climate Change-Driven Disasters Making Insurance Premiums Too Dear For Farmers

ABC Rural - Jane McNaughton

Peter Holding is a mixed farmer from Harden, NSW, and member of Farmers for Climate Action. (ABC News: Anna Vidot) 

Key Points A NSW farmer says the fossil fuel industry is effectively killing the agriculture sector Insurance premiums are being driven to unaffordable levels by the impacts of climate change The Insurance Council of Australia says 80 per cent of Australian homes are underinsured — and that figure's likely higher in the bush

Australian farmers are facing increasingly frequent droughts, floods, hailstorms and bushfires, resulting in insurance premiums rising to the point where cancelling or underinsuring are the only options.

Climate change has already cost farmers more than $1 billion since 2000, according to ABARES.

Third-generation lamb and cropping farmer Peter Holding said government inaction on global warming could have disastrous flow-on effects to the agriculture industry.

"Climate change poses a cataclysmic set of challenges for farmers," the Farmers for Climate Action member said.

"It's pretty severe and it's getting worse.

"As the frequency [of natural disasters] increases, the insurance premiums are just going to go up — there's no doubt about that."

The southern New South Wales farmer and volunteer firefighter said prolonged fire seasons are just one example of how climate change is affecting agricultural practices.

"The Canberra fires in 2003 was when we first saw the phenomenal firestorm effect," he said.

"And that's getting more common."

Fire surrounds a homestead during the Canberra fires in January 17, 2003. (Copyright: Jeff Cutting)

Rising risks, rising costs

Insurance Council of Australia spokesman Campbell Fuller said the industry was worried about the effects of man-made climate change.

"The insurance industry is very aware of concerns in the rural sector about climate change, natural disasters and about access to insurance," he said.

"Insurers gather the latest available data from governments, especially around bushfire exposure and flood exposure, as well as seasonal forecasts from the Bureau of Meteorology."

Mr Fuller says insurers build a robust picture of the seasonal exposure that properties have per annum, which is then is priced into premiums.

"As the climate changes, and as risks are reassessed, that logically leads to changes in premiums to reflect the risks," he said.

Effect of climate variability on average farm profits 1949-50 to 2018-19 at current farms and commodity prices.(Supplied: ABARES)

'No silver bullet'

Mr Fuller said appropriate land use and resilient infrastructure in areas of higher risk to natural disasters needed to be prioritised.

"Changes in risk that can be predicted by climate change modelling need to be taken into account," he said.

"In many parts of Australia there's plenty of evidence that primary producers are taking measures to reduce the risks to their properties into their own hands."

Eighty per cent of Australian households are underinsured, and Mr Fuller says that percentage is probably much higher in rural areas.

This banana plantation at Taylors Arm, west of Macksville, was destroyed by fire in 2019. (ABC Rural: Claire Wheaton)

"Underinsurance and non-insurance is an issue in rural areas, and it is a constant concern to the industry as well as regulators and government agencies," he said.

"When properties are not insured, communities can struggle to rebuild after natural disasters and the burden falls more heavily on charities and government in the recovery phase."

Mr Fuller said farmers were likely to insure infrastructure such as their homes, sheds and equipment, but fences, livestock and crops were less likely to be included.

"There is no real silver bullet here," he said.

"It's a combination of actions that need to take place at a community level, and involving all levels of government."

Mr Holding said the cost of premiums meant insurance was not an option for some producers.

"I've had to pull back the farm's scale an awful lot to cut debt and make sure that we're still viable," he said.

Valuable farm machinery was destroyed by fire on the Duff beef and soybean property in the Upper Macleay Valley in 2019. (Supplied: Carolyn Duff)

Fossil fuels 'undermining' agriculture

Financial strain is not the only issue climate change has delivered to farmers.

"Unfortunately we're getting less good years and a lot more variability," Mr Holding said.

"There's a lot of impacts and I can't see it stopping any time soon.

"The droughts are just continuing, since the turn of the century we've had [so many years] of drought, interlaced with floods."

This map shows the decline of winter rainfall across southern Australia over the past 20 years. (Supplied: CSIRO/BOM)

Mr Holding said although farmers had "been adapting since the day they invented the plough", it would become impossible if the rate of environmental change continued to increase.

"Cutting emissions is the only option there, and that means moving away from fossil fuels — but the government seems wedded to that," he said.

"The fossil fuel industry is creating emissions and that is slowly but surely making agriculture unviable.

"We've cut the emissions from livestock probably in half, farmers in cropping areas have done all sorts of things to reduce the use of diesel and better use fertilisers.

"So farmers are working on all of these problems to cut their own emissions, but we definitely need some quick action to reduce the emissions of fossil fuel."

Links

• (AU) Climate Change Has Cut Australian Farm Profits By 22% A Year Over Past 20 Years, Report Says
• (AU) Climate Change Slashes More Than $1 Billion From Farm Production Value Over Past 20 Years: ABARES
• Fear Of Drought, Flood And Fires Leads Farmers To Plea For Urgent Action On Climate Change
• Insurers Urge Morrison To Take On Climate Action
• Climate Change Predicted To Wipe $571 Billion Off Property Values
• Australian Insurer QBE To Exit Thermal Coal Over Climate Change
• Climate Change Could Make Insurance Too Expensive For Most People – Report 
• Australian Insurers Say 'Act Now' On Climate Change
• From shiraz to Wagyu, fires and floods have ruined Australia's fresh food image. So what happens now?
• Are farmers getting climate change support?

(AU) Australia Is About To Blow A Once-In-A-Generation Opportunity

Sydney Morning Herald - Kevin Rudd | Patrick Suckling

Authors Kevin Rudd is president of the Asia Society Policy Institute and was the 26th prime minister of Australia. Patrick Suckling was Australia’s Ambassador for the Environment and recently joined Pollination, a specialist climate investment and advisory firm.

As the International Monetary Fund recently underlined in sharply revising down global growth prospects, recovering from the biggest peacetime shock to the global economy since the Great Depression will be a long haul.

There is a global imperative to put in place the strongest, most durable economic recovery.

This is not a time for governments to retreat.

Recovery will require massive and sustained support.

Beijing is approving plans for new coal-fired power plants at the fastest rate since 2015. Credit: Getty

At the same time, spending decisions by governments now will shape our economic future for decades to come. In other words, we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity and can’t blow it.

But it’s looking like we might. This is because too few stimulus packages globally are reaping the double-dividend of both investing in growth and jobs, and in the transition to low emissions, more climate-resilient economies. And in Australia, this means we risk lagging even further behind the rest of the world as a result.

As Australia’s summer of hell demonstrated, climate change is only getting worse. It remains the greatest threat to our future welfare and economic prosperity.

And while the world has legitimately been preoccupied with COVID-19, few have noticed that this year is on track to be the warmest in recorded history. Perhaps even fewer still have also made the connection between climate and biodiversity habitat loss and the outbreak of infectious diseases.

Stimulus decisions that do not address this climate threat therefore don’t just sell us short; they sell us out. And they cut against the grain of the global economy. This is the irreducible logic that flows from the 2015 Paris Agreement to which the world – including Australia – signed up.

Unfortunately, as things stand today, many of the biggest stimulus efforts around the world are in danger of failing this logic.

For example, the US economic recovery is heavily focused on high-emitting industries. The same is true in China, India, Japan and the large South-East Asian economies.

In fact, Beijing is approving plans for new coal-fired power plants at the fastest rate since 2015. And whether these plants are now actually built by China’s regional and provincial governments is increasingly becoming the global bellwether for whether we will emerge from this crisis better or worse off in the global fight against climate change.

And for our own part, Australia’s COVID Recovery Commission has placed limited emphasis on renewables despite advances in energy storage technology and plummeting costs.

But as we know from our experience in the global financial crisis more than a decade ago, it is entirely possible to design an economic recovery that is also good for the planet. This means investing in clean energy, energy efficiency systems, new transport systems, more sustainable homes and buildings, and improved agricultural production, water and waste management.

In fact, as the management consultancy McKinsey recently found, government spending on renewable energy technology creates five more jobs per million dollars than spending on fossil fuels.

Despite these cautionary tales, there are thankfully also bright spots. Take the European Union and its €750 billion ($A122 billion) stimulus package. It will invest heavily in areas such as energy efficiency, turbocharging renewable energy, accelerating hydrogen technology, rolling out clean transport and promoting the circular economy.

To be fair, China is also emphasising new infrastructure such as electric transport in its $US500 billion ($A716 billion) stimulus package. India is doubling down on its world-leading renewable energy investments.

Indonesia has announced a major investment in solar energy. And Japan and South Korea are now announcing climate transition spending. But whether these are just bright spots among a dark haze of pollution or genuinely light the way is the key question that confronts these economies.

In Australia, the government has confirmed significant investment in pumped-hydro power for Snowy 2.0. The government has also indicated acceleration of important projects such as the Marinus Link to ensure more renewable energy from Tasmania for the mainland. But much more is now needed.

An obvious starting point could be a nation-building stimulus investment around our decrepit energy system. By now the federal and state governments have a much stronger grasp of what we need for success, encouragingly evident in the recent $2 billion Commonwealth-NSW government package for better energy access, security and affordability.

Turbocharging this with a stimulus package for more renewable energy and storage of all sorts (including hydrogen), alongside extension and stabilisation technology for the electricity grid, and investment in dramatically improving energy efficiency would – literally and figuratively – power our economy forward.

In the aftermath of the drought and bushfires, another obvious area for nation-building investment is our land sector. Farm productivity can be dramatically improved by precision agriculture and regenerative farming while building resilience to drought.

New sources of revenue for farmers can be created through soil carbon and forest carbon farming. Carbon trading from these activities internationally is set to be worth hundreds of billions of dollars over the coming decade.

Importantly, the Australian business community is not merely calling for policy certainty but is ushering in change itself.

The Australian Industry Group has called for a stronger climate-focused recovery. And in recent days, our largest private energy generator, AGL, has announced a significant strengthening of its commitment to climate transition, linking performance pay to progress in the company’s goal of achieving net-zero emissions by 2050 – a goal that BHP, Qantas and every Australian state and territory has signed up to. HESTA has announced it will be the first major Australian superannuation fund to align its investment portfolio to this end.

These sorts of decisions are being replicated at a growing rate by companies around the world and show that business is leading.

It is time for governments – including our own – to do the same. Whether we can use this crisis as an opportunity to emerge better equipped to tackle critical global challenges remains to be seen, but it rests on many of the decisions to be taken in the months to come.

Links

• World Economic Outlook Update, June 2020: A Crisis Like No Other, An Uncertain Recovery
• Study: Climate Change Crisis Requires Less Growth-Oriented Global Economy
• Our Pandemic Response Was A Disaster. We Can't Afford To Make The Same Mistakes With Climate Change
• The Economic Theory That Could Fuel A Climate Change Revolution
• Why It Doesn’t Make Economic Sense To Ignore Climate Change In Our Recovery From The Pandemic
• In The Midst Of An Economic Crisis, Can 'Degrowth' Provide An Answer?
• (AU) Want An Economic Tonic, Mr Morrison? Use That Stimulus Money To Turbocharge Renewables
• (US) Think This Pandemic Is Bad? We Have Another Crisis Coming
• Strengthen Worldwide Climate Commitments To Improve Economy, Study Finds

(AU) Climate Change Is The Greatest Threat

Canberra Times - Editorial

Australia's next bushfire season is just around the corner. Picture: Karleen Minney

While the world was preoccupied with an ever increasing number of coronavirus cases this week, a hugely significant scientific report was allowed to pass under-reported and unremarked.

This was the study of the 2020 Siberian heatwave by World Weather Attribution, a group of scientists who have been monitoring extreme weather events for years.

The heatwave had contributed to raising the world's average temperature to the second highest on record for the period from January to May this year.

WWA said Siberia had experienced "unusually high temperatures", including a record-breaking 38 degrees celsius in the town of Verkhoyansk on June 20, causing wide-scale impacts including "wildfires, loss of permafrost, and invasion of pests".

The Russian government was forced to declare a state of emergency in response to these disasters. It is believed that at least 56 Megatons of carbon dioxide was released into the atmosphere in June alone. There has also been an explosion in the population of Siberian silk moths with massive swarms causing further damage to forests, making them even more prone to fire.

While all of this, and reports food supplies are being affected with fish swimming deeper in search of cooler water, is alarming, the real cause for concern is the finding the prolonged heatwave had been made "600 times more likely as a result of human-induced climate change".

"Even with climate change, the prolonged heat was a very rare event expected to occur less than once every 130 years," the report said. "The results for the town of Verkhoyansk shows that the record breaking June temperatures were also made much more likely - upwards of many thousands of times [by climate change]."

The scientists said if the heat wave, the result of a strong jet stream moving warm air over the region, had occurred in 1900 instead of 2020, temperatures would have been at least two degrees celsius lower.

Siberia is one of the most fragile environments on earth due to the adaptation of plants and animals to year-round low temperatures.

It has vast reserves of methane gas, a potent greenhouse gas, locked beneath the permafrost.

Melting permafrost has also been blamed for damage to infrastructure, including fuel pipelines. This has led to other environmental disasters across the region.

And, while it is a given that the climate deniers will dismiss the report as "bunkum" and "fake news", those who actually know what they are talking about have no such doubts.

Michael Wehner, a senior scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory - who was not involved in the study - said the methodology was "state of the art" and that the findings were, if anything, "conservative".

If, as many believe, temperatures in Arctic and Antarctic regions are "canaries in the coal mine", this latest report is a warning that should not be ignored. Given it comes on top of linkages between Australia's spring and summer bushfires and man-made global heating, it is yet another argument for this country to do much more to reduce to carbon dioxide emissions as a matter of urgency.

And let's not forget, if 2019 was anything to go by, our next bushfire season is just around the corner.

While the federal government has done a commendable job in seeking the best possible expert advice on the coronavirus and then following it, it has yet to do the same with climate and energy policy. That has to change. Coronavirus is a crisis, climate change is an existential threat.

Links

• Siberian heatwave of 2020 almost impossible without climate change
• Siberian heat streak and Arctic temperature record virtually ‘impossible’ without global warming, study says
• ‘Zombie fires’ are erupting in Alaska and likely Siberia, signaling severe Arctic fire season may lie ahead
• NASA Images Show Extreme Heat And Fires Raging Across Siberia
• Arctic Circle Sees 'Highest-Ever' Recorded Temperatures
• Devastating Simulations Say Sea Ice Will Be Completely Gone In Arctic Summers By 2050
• The Arctic May Have Crossed Key Threshold, Emitting Billions Of Tons Of Carbon Into The Air, In A Long-Dreaded Climate Feedback