Lethal Heating: 09/22/20

22/09/2020

(AU) Scott Morrison Refuses To Commit To Net Zero Carbon Emissions By 2050

ABC News - Stephanie Dalzell

Scott Morrison says he is focused on technology that lowers emissions rather than "the politics of these commitments".

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has refused to commit to a target of net zero carbon emissions by 2050, despite describing it as "achievable".

Ahead of the release of the Federal Government's long-awaited technology roadmap for the energy sector this week, Mr Morrison said zero net emissions would be achieved in the second half of this century.

But when pressed by ABC Insiders host David Speers about a commitment to a 2050 target, Mr Morrison said he was more committed to investing in technology.

"I'm more interested in the doing," he said.

"I know people get very focused on the politics of these commitments, but what I'm focused on is on the technology that delivers lower emissions, lower cost and more jobs.

"That's what actually matters to people, that's what changes their lives, and so that's what we're delivering. And when we make a commitment, we meet it. And we don't just meet it we beat it."

Net zero emissions means every tonne of man-made greenhouse gas that is emitted must be matched by a tonne removed from the atmosphere.

Anthony Albanese has restated Labor's pledge to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050. (AAP: Bianca De Marchi)

More than 70 countries have adopted the 2050 target. Individually, every Australian state has also signed up to net zero emissions by 2050 — either as a target or goal.

Labor leader Anthony Albanese has also pledged to meet a target of net zero emissions by 2050 but has yet to detail how Australia would get there.

But federally, the Coalition has long been divided over climate change and energy policy, with some Government backbenchers deeply opposed to any 2050 target.

It has also previously said it will not sign up to net zero emissions without knowing what the costs are.

The Coalition last week announced it would broaden the scope of government agencies set up to invest in renewables, by allowing it to fund new low-emissions technology.

Mr Morrison said the policy would help the Government achieve the target of net zero emissions, without specifically mandating it.

"Our policy is to achieve that in the second half of this century, and we'll certainly achieve that, and that's why this week's announcements were so important because it was about the technology we need to invest in now, which will make it a reality, particularly on the other side of 2030 and I think even the sort of target you've talked about, then becomes absolutely achievable," he said.

"I'm interested in doing the things that make that happen. And I think that is very achievable."

Mr Albanese said the Coalition was still struggling to settle on energy policy, sending the wrong signal to investors.

"The problem with the Prime Minister's position is that he's creating massive uncertainty as well, which is a disincentive to invest," he said.

"The Government says they're going to have a roadmap — but to a destination they don't have.

"A roadmap without a destination is a road to nowhere."

Energy shortfall revised down

Last week, Energy Minister Angus Taylor and Mr Morrison said 1,000 megawatts of new dispatchable energy was needed to replace the Liddell power station before it closed in 2023.

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But the Government then released the advice it received in April from a task force set up to assess the impact of Liddell's closure, which did not find that 1,000 megawatts of additional dispatchable electricity would be needed, and instead, listed projects that would be sufficient to maintain power grid reliability when Liddell shut.

On Insiders, Mr Morrison appeared to revise the figure down.

"Well, there's about 250 megawatts, or thereabouts, that we believe are going to be necessary to fill that plan out. And we can do that, and deliver it on the ground, and that's important," he said.

"A lot of people can talk projects but they've got to get approved, they've got to be built in time, and you can get a gas-fired power station built in that time and delivered when it'll be there. It won't be on the wish list, it'll be on the done list."

Mr Albanese accused the Government of constantly changing its position on energy policy.

"Now Scott Morrison is saying it might be 250 [megawatts] that's needed, and we're neutral about what the technology will be to fill that void," he said.

"The Prime Minister has to explain how it is that people, companies, can bid for that process."

Links

(USA) Global Warming And The Presidential Election

The Economist

Joe Biden is on course to make fighting global warming his signature issue

THIS WEEK America’s oldest magazine offered its first-ever presidential endorsement. “We do not do this lightly,” said Scientific American, in explaining its decision to come out for Joe Biden. But what choice did it have?

The country is gripped by two science-related catastrophes, a global pandemic and global warming. Donald Trump downplays the first on a good day (as America’s death-count approaches 200,000, he predicts it will soon “go away”) and denies that humans are causing the second.

During a visit to Sacramento this week, to acknowledge the wildfires that have so far incinerated over 5m acres of forest and thousands of homes and killed at least 35 people, he assured a roomful of silent, serious Californians that global warming was about to go into reverse.

In a speech delivered in Delaware the same day, Mr Biden meanwhile underlined his determination to introduce at a national level the policies to combat climate change that America, almost uniquely among Western democracies, still lacks.

Where Barack Obama made the issue secondary to health-care coverage, and Hillary Clinton put it behind immigration and other promised reforms, Mr Biden promises to make tackling climate change his priority. His proposals, with an important caveat, reflect that degree of urgency.

There is no starker contrast between the Republican president and his Democratic challenger than on this issue.

The climate plan Mr Biden released in July includes faster, deeper cuts to America’s carbon emissions than either of his Democratic predecessors envisaged.

Mr Biden promises a commitment to decarbonising the electricity grid by 2035. To that end, he pledges among other things to invest $2trn in renewable energy and other technologies over four years. He would also commit America to cutting its emissions to net zero by 2050.

Mr Obama’s failure to enshrine a much more modest commitment—an 80% emissions reduction by 2050—indicates how bold that would be. Yet, if backed by a Democratic-controlled Congress, Mr Biden would probably have a much better chance of making progress on the issue than Mr Obama had.

That is chiefly because his party is desperate for him to do so. Before covid-19 hit, the combination of Mr Trump’s denials with ever-worsening wildfires, hurricanes and floods had made Democratic voters increasingly likely to cite climate change as their main concern. And Mr Biden, a master at hewing to his party’s shifting currents, has further hardened this environmental consensus by using it to bridge the rifts exposed by his nomination.

His appointment of John Kerry and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—emblems of the centre-left and activist left—to co-chair his climate-policy shop was evidence of that. So is the heterodox nature of his proposals.

For example, though he dispensed with the socialism-by-stealth of the left’s Green New Deal—which included guaranteed jobs and Medicare-for-All—he has mollified Ms Ocasio-Cortez’s faction by emphasising environmental justice, as well as with the scale of his ambition. Labour unions are reassured by his stress on job creation in low-carbon industries.

Centrists are thrilled that he has bucked the left by remaining open to nuclear power and to the possibility of making fossil fuels safe by capturing the gases they emit when burned.

In a sign of how the climate-policy debate often scrambles ideological positions, moderate Democrats are also largely responsible for limiting the scope of market mechanisms—either a cap-and-trade scheme or a carbon tax—in Mr Biden’s plan.

Democratic leaders in Congress consider them desirable but unsellable. Hence the more regulatory approach laid out in a 547-page climate plan released by House Democrats in June. While allowing for the possibility of a nationwide carbon tax—as Mr Biden’s plan does—it lays more emphasis on the sector-by-sector low-carbon standards adopted in California—including zero-emissions from cars, as well as power stations, by 2035. Mr Biden’s plan follows suit.

Implicit in the way it is designed to have maximum Democratic appeal is an assumption that a Biden administration could count on no Republican support. That is a reasonable precaution. While Democrats and independents have become more concerned about climate change, opinion on the right has hardly moved. Like Mr Trump, half of moderate and 75% of conservative Republicans deny the link between human activity and global warming.

At the same time, any Republican tempted to break with his or her party should not find Mr Biden’s proposals off-putting. His emphases on growth and technology are hard to argue with. The recent rise of renewables industries—which employ a lot of people in Republican states—has also made them less divisive. And the fact that Mr Biden would probably jam much of his promised $2trn splurge into a broad, post-virus stimulus package would provide moderate Republicans with additional cover on their right flanks.

The politics and economics of climate change may thus, for once, be coming into alignment. The issue has already gone some way to making sense of Mr Biden’s unexciting candidacy. One of its overarching promises is to salvage Mr Obama’s legacy, then improve upon it; the former president’s climate record is in dire need of both services. Another is to rebuild America’s economy at home and reputation abroad; Mr Biden’s climate plan could help do both.

But there’s no escaping the flames

The lurking caveat to this upbeat prospect is that the regulatory approach he is pushing will almost certainly deliver much slower, more partial and more inefficient progress than he predicts. America is not California.

A Biden administration’s sector-by-sector carbon standards would draw a storm of legal challenges, stalling them and making them vulnerable to partisan judges and hostile successors. That is not to knock Mr Biden’s plans unduly; they may well be as bold as is politically feasible.

But what is feasible in America’s dysfunctional politics is likely to be much less than the country—and in this instance the world—requires.

Links

(AU) Commission For The Human Future Calls For Action On Global Catastrophic Risks

Canberra Times - Alex Crowe

Dark Emu author Bruce Pascoe has joined a growing list of prominent Australians calling for action to prevent further disaster.

Bruce Pascoe describes the newly green forest growing through the burned-out bushland where he's pulled over on the road 10 minutes from his home in Mallacoota.

"When I drove through here on January 1 where I'm parked right now was totally black - parts were still on fire," he said.

"Yet now she has produced another forest. The old trees are here with new growth. That's the power of the Earth to recover."

Mr Pascoe is a writer of Tasmanian, Bunurong and Yuin descent who lives on a farm in the Victorian coastal community which saw scores of tourists evacuated via Navy vessels this past summer.

The Dark Emu author has since joined prominent Australians calling for urgent action on what they've acknowledged as 10 major threats to humanity's survival.

Mr Pascoe, alongside Sydney mayor Clover Moore, former governor-general Quentin Bryce and rocker Jimmy Barnes, have agreed bushfires and the pandemic are a "dress rehearsal for what awaits us".

"It doesn't mitigate the tragedy but if we can realise that the way we conduct our societies around the world lends itself to this type of virus, maybe we can look at how we behave on the planet," he said.

"Like all Aboriginal people I believe that the Earth is our mother and my first and foremost concern is for her health. If we look after the health of the Earth everything else that is good about humanity will follow."

Bruce Pascoe

The growing list of signatories have responded to a commission's report, following a roundtable held at the Australian National University in March bringing together leading experts across health, climate change, economics and public policy, which identified 10 potentially catastrophic global risks.

The threats include pandemics, ecosystem collapse, rising food insecurity, nuclear weapons and global warming.

Mr Pascoe said rising temperatures and rising sea levels impacted Indigenous people around the world.

"It will affect Aboriginal people right around Australia because global warming will reduce the world's economy and Aboriginal people have such a tenuous hold within that economy any way," he said.

"The deterioration in the environment is very important in Aboriginal justice because Aboriginal communities rely so much on those natural resources."

Mr Pascoe was working for the Country Fire Association over summer when the bushfires hit his town of around 8000.

Although his wasn't one of the 140 homes in Mallacoota lost over summer, they did lose their crops, sheds and fences.

Yet as neighbours call out their greetings while passing on the road he admits he was a silly bugger to have driven with his dogs on New Year's Day.

He acknowledged his "survival guilt".

"So many of my neighbours and friends lost their houses and I survived, my dogs survived," he said.

"Considering the scale of the disaster, I'm incredibly lucky."

Chairman John Hewson said the commission aimed to start a national conversation on the threats humanity faced and how they could be addressed.

Bruce Pascoe

"The list is long and deadly: climate change, nuclear war, water and food shortages and of course pandemics," Professor Hewson said.

"We need to act and we need to act now."

Mr Pascoe said it was time we took responsibility for the planet the way Aboriginal people had done for more than 120,000 years.

"If we can we'll have prospering health, we'll have a prospering economy and we'll have prospering societies," he said.

"It's a no-brainer to think that if we look after our world our world will flourish. Australia can tolerate fire but we never want to see fire like that again."

Earth's 10 Major Threats

Decline of key natural resources and a resource crisis, especially in water
Collapse of ecosystems and the mass extinction of species
Human population growth and demand, beyond the Earth's carrying capacity
Global warming, sea level rise and changes in the Earth's climate, affecting all human activity
Universal pollution of the Earth system and all life by chemicals
Rising food insecurity and failing nutritional quality
Nuclear arms and other weapons of mass destruction
Pandemics of new and untreatable disease
Advent of powerful, uncontrolled technologies
National and global failure to understand and act preventively on these risks

Links - Commission For The Human Future Articles