03/10/2020

China's Zero Emissions Target Puts Australia On Notice

Sydney Morning Herald - Eryk Bagshaw | Mike Foley

Australia's former top climate diplomat has warned China's net-zero emissions target will leave Australia behind, threatening future trade deals and its influence in the Pacific as the Morrison government becomes wedged between the US and China on climate action.

Howard Bamsey, who was Australia's special envoy on climate change during the Rudd government, said the announcement from President Xi Jinping last week had turned the politics of emissions reduction into a sharp economic and diplomatic issue.

Chengde Iron and Steel Co, 200 kilometres north-east of Beijing, in September. Credit: Sanghee Liu

Professor Bamsey, who was also Australia's ambassador for the environment under the Howard government, said the new policy "pulls the rug out from under the argument" that Australia's domestic climate goals do not need to accelerate because China was yet to increase its ambitions.

"It's clear now China is accepting a leadership role," he said. "Xi made the announcement. That carries all the weight of the state and party."

The coronavirus has forced this year's United Nations Glasgow Climate Change Conference to be rescheduled to November 2021, turning Australia's international emissions obligations into a major election flashpoint. The earliest month a federal election can be held is August 2021 and voters are expected to go to the polls by the end of next year.

China, which is simultaneously the world's largest polluter and biggest producer of renewable energy, pledged to go carbon neutral by 2060 at the UN General Assembly last week.

Chinese President Xi Jinping remotely addresses the 75th session of the United Nations General Assembly. Credit: AP

There was no detail accompanying the announcement and analysis of Chinese government data by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air has raised doubts it will actually achieve the target, citing a rapid rebound in May after the coronavirus lockdown that saw emissions grow by up to 5 per cent year-on-year.

The country is also still building half-a-dozen new coal-fired power plants to stimulate the economy and remains the world's largest coal user, triggering smog outbreaks in major cities and putting pressure on the government to deliver blue skies for workers.

Coal consumption by region
Exajoules
Source: BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2020

China's coal consumption accounted for 51.7 per cent of global use in 2019 and grew by 2.3 per cent last year, according to BP data, a greater rate than its 1.7 per cent annual average between 2008-2018.

"The proposal of this goal is to force China itself to improve and face this problem," said Ma Jun, director of Beijing's Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs. "Secondly, it brings pressure to other large-emitters who are unwilling to face this promise."

Renewables consumption by region
Exajoules
*Commonwealth of Independent States
Source: BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2020

Chinese industry leaders have called for a shift from subsidies to market-driven policies for the surging renewable sector as Beijing prepares to unveil details of the policy in its 14th Five Year Plan in October.

"Every kilowatt added now is a burden after 2030," Professor Yuan Jiahai of North China Electric Power University told the 2020 China Blue Sky Observation Forum last week.

Australia's former special envoy for climate change Howard Bamsey. Credit: Melissa Stiles

The Morrison government has an economy-wide commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 26 to 28 per cent on 2005 levels by 2030 but has no target beyond that.

It has been criticised for its plan to use carryover credits from the previous Kyoto agreement to meet the obligations established at the Paris UN conference in 2016.

Labor has also yet to define what target it will set. Mark Butler, the opposition's climate change spokesman, told the ABC on Monday that the global effect of Xi's announcement was "seismic", as China becomes for "clean energy in the 21st century what America was for IT in the 1990s."

Professor Bamsey said the UK, European Union and a potential Biden presidency will pressure Australia to match their climate goals ahead of Glasgow.

"We are an internationally connected economy and we will have to adopt the policies of our trading partners, including our main partner in China," he said. "We won't be able to continue to provide goods and services and ignore the climate dimension."

Jake Sullivan, an advisor to Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, told the Lowy Institute in September that a Biden presidency would rally the nations of the world to "elevate their ambition".

"In that regard he will hold countries like China accountable for doing more but he is also going to push our friends to do more as well, to step up and fulfil their responsibilities for what is fundamentally a global problem," he said.

The director of the European Union's Centre of Excellence at RMIT, Bruce Wilson, said China's pledge would increase pressure on Australia as it attempts to negotiate free trade deals with the EU and Britain.

"If anyone is trying to do a trade deal with the EU, the Paris deal is non-negotiable," he said.

Professor Wilson said it was still not clear if the EU would accept Australia's use of Kyoto carryover credits to meet its obligations and said a "carbon border tax" was on the agenda for countries not compliant with the EU's environmental standards.

"If you are exporting an emissions heavy product into Europe there will be a tax on that," he said.


The harshest impacts of climate change are still devastating the world's environments despite the coronavirus pandemic bringing the world to a halt in 2020, a UN report says.

The harshest impacts of climate change are still devastating the world's environments despite the coronavirus pandemic bringing the world to a halt in 2020, a UN report says.

Chief negotiators from the EU and Australia were expected to brief stakeholders about progress on the trade deal on Wednesday afternoon.

Professor Wilson said a post-Brexit free trade deal between the EU and UK would have flow-on effects for any separate Australian negotiations with Britain.
"They won't be able to say we have these environmental standards with the EU but different ones with Australia," he said.

China's escalation is also set to have implications for Australia's diplomatic position in the Pacific, where it has been attempting to manage China's rising influence among some of its closest neighbours.

"From both sides of Parliament Australian politicians aren't understanding it, they approach climate change like it's just another issue for our Pacific counterparts. What Australian politicians do often miss is this issue is personal," said Professor Bamsey.

"It concerns Pacific politicians when they get out of bed, they can see the changes to the future of their country when they look out the window."

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(AU) New ANU Centre To Target Bushfires Through Satellites, GPS-Guided Water Gliders

Canberra Times - Peter Brewer

ANU Professor Robert Mahony, who specialises in aerial robotics, with a scaled-down prototype of his autonomous aerial water glider. Picture: ANU

A centre of excellence will be established at the ANU in Canberra which will roll out a network of infra-red heat-sensing cameras, autonomous water-carrying gliders and, within a few years, satellite systems to provide an early bushfire detection and suppression system.

The $6 million dollar partnership between the ANU and telecommunications company Optus had its gestation in November last year and over the next four years will develop into a networked system which, at its fruition, will have a dedicated geostationary satellite "watching over" the continent for bushfire outbreaks.

The head of the project, Dr Marta Yebra, said this technology-based solution would use multiple platforms to tackle the bushfire detection issue, starting by working with the Rural Fire Service to mount long-range, heat-sensing cameras across the ACT's four established fire towers in readiness for the coming season.

"In optimal conditions, the cameras can detect up to 10 kilometres so they will be a very useful addition in the short term," she said.

"Later we can look to expanding the network to 10 cameras so we can cover much larger areas of the ACT and even beyond."

The next element to the program coming in 2022 is so-called "cube sats", tiny satellites which would loop in polar orbits over areas of south-eastern Australia and take a couple of high-resolution images on each pass, providing regular aerial views of any bushfire outbreaks which need targeting and suppressing before they grow larger.

Dr Marta Yebra, head of the bushfire detection and suppression project. Picture: ANU

"We still have to design and build these small satellites, but this technology is already common and now, having a technical partnership with Optus, this is a very reachable goal," Dr Yebra said.

The final and most effective tool in the detection network is a planned geostationary satellite which would sit over the continent and watch for outbreaks, using image resolution down to 100 metres.

The Optus-ANU collaboration is the starting point for a major national network of partners. The network will include the ACT RFS, billionaire Twiggy Forrest's Minderoo Foundation and the ACT Parks and Conservation Service, with other organisations able to join.

The program will bring the appointment of a joint chair for Bushfire Research and Innovation, and the establishment of a research and innovation fund.

The ANU researchers will also tackle early bushfire suppression issue in a non-traditional way, characterised by Professor Rob Mahony's low-cost, GPS-targeted gliders which, built at full scale, could each carry 500 litres of water and saturate specific targets, such as a tree ignited by a dry lightning strike.

ANU Professor Robert Mahony with his prototype aerial water glider. Picture: ANU

"What we know is that many large bushfires start small and are triggered by dry lightning strikes in remote bushland, which is vary hard for fire crews to get into," Dr Mahoney said.

An engineer who specialises in aerial robotics, Prof Mahoney said the gliders could be built using dense cardboard and off-the-shelf avionic components at low cost - around $500 each - and launched from a high-flying cargo aircraft, decelerated and split open by a parachute to disperse and mist the water right over the burning target.

"We are aiming for a smart, low-cost solution which can be launched in difficult flying conditions, is GPS-targeted and has between a 45- to 60-second drop time before the parachute in the tail deploys," he said.

"The deceleration from the chute then breaks open the nose cone carrying the water; we believe we could effectively target a six- to eight-square-metre radius around a single burning tree."

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(USA) The Debate Was A Disaster. But Hey, Climate Change Came Up

WIRED - Matt Simon

The good news: The presidential debate addressed global warming. The bad news: Trump dodged it, especially when it came to wildfires.

Photograph: Kent Nishimura/Getty Images

Near the end of last night’s catastrophic “presidential” debate, moderator Chris Wallace lobbed a surprising question at Donald Trump: “What do you believe about the science of climate change? And what will you do in the next four years to confront it?”

It was surprising because, for one thing, it wasn’t on the list of questions Wallace told the campaigns he’d be asking. For another, climate change typically rests out of view at the very bottom of the dumpster fire that is modern American politics.

And more significantly, after an hour and a half of nearly constant interruptions and insults, mostly from Trump, what followed was a discussion that inched toward civility.

“It was kind of interesting that that was the most watchable part of the entire debate, I think,” says University of California, Los Angeles climate scientist Daniel Swain. “And that seems to be something that other people have noticed, too. It was the part of the debate with fewest interruptions. I don't know—maybe that's because Trump just hadn't prepared for it at all and didn't really know what to say.”

What Trump did say was that he wants “crystal-clean water and air,” which might be a tall order given that he’s gutted the Environmental Protection Agency. Also, the Paris Agreement, which the US abandoned during his presidency, was a disaster, he added.

As for the wildfires currently ravaging the western states? “The forest floors are loaded up with trees, dead trees that are years old and they're like tinder,” Trump said. “And leaves and everything else. You drop a cigarette in there, the whole forest burns down. You've got to have forest management.”

When Wallace pressed him on whether he believes human-made greenhouse gas emissions cause climate change, Trump said: “I think a lot of things do. But I think to an extent, yes. I think to an extent, yes. But I also think we have to do better management of our forests.”

It’s a common refrain from Trump, who tends to boil down the extremely complex problem of wildfires into a singular issue: Western states aren’t doing enough to fix their forests. (Never mind that the Feds manage 60 percent of California’s forests, a quarter of Oregon’s, and 44 percent of Washington’s.)

Fire season after fire season, Trump calls out the mismanagement of forests. Why, exactly? “I don't know what he has in mind—he probably doesn't know either,” says fire historian Stephen Pyne. “He's just looking for attention, he's just shouting. But the people behind him, I think, want to open up the public domain—national forests and so on—to more logging. Logging does not help fire protection. It does the opposite.”

That’s because logging companies aren’t interested in removing all the brush that grows between large trees. “Logging takes the big stuff and leaves the little,” Pyne says. “Fire burns the little stuff and leaves the big. So the next time you see a forest moonscape that's been blasted by fire, what is standing? What is standing are the tree trunks that logging would have taken out. They're not contributing to the fire.”

Indigenous people in the Western states have a long history of land management practices that involve deliberately setting fires to, in a sense, reset ecosystems. It clears the way for new growth, which attracts large herbivores, which make for good food. Then, without so much fuel to burn, wildfires sparked naturally by lightning don’t burn so intensely.

But as more and more people have crowded into the American West, the modern approach has moved away from prevention and toward reaction—defending cities and homes. Firefighting agencies have been under increasing pressure to quickly squelch wildfires to protect human populations. By not letting fires eat through a landscape’s brush, we’ve in turn let the little stuff build up in western forests.

A lot of folks call this policy “fire suppression,” a different tactic than outright prevention, since there’s no way to keep all fires from starting. But, says Pyne, the more appropriate term would be fire exclusion. “It's not just that we're putting out fires—we're not lighting them anymore,” he says.

So the West is overgrown, and now it’s unbearably hot. Climate change has caused more intense droughts, desiccating whole landscapes, because a warmer atmosphere sucks more moisture out of plants.

With humans pushing developments farther and farther into the wilderness, that means more opportunities for ignition. Power lines are particularly problematic, throwing off sparks that have ignited some of California’s biggest and deadliest blazes, like 2018’s Camp Fire.

Because the landscape is so loaded with fuels, and the climate is so much hotter, even naturally-occurring wildfires can quickly turn into blazes of unprecedented size and intensity. This August, a freak thunderstorm system rolled through California, setting dozens of huge wildfires, including the state’s biggest one ever by far, the August Complex, which has burned nearly a million acres and is not yet 50 percent contained.

Indeed, five of California's six largest recorded fires have burned in the last two months. Up and down the West Coast, fires have been loading the atmosphere with smoke, turning the Bay Area orange and creating an unprecedented public health crisis as the Covid-19 pandemic, extreme heat, and bad air collide.

“There's this real desire for a singular villain in the wildfire story right now,” says Swain. “And the difficult part is there isn't one. Climate change is really important. But it's not just climate change.” It’s about overdevelopment and fire exclusion, too. “The problem,” he adds, “is that all the contributing factors are acting in the same direction to make the situation significantly worse.”

The solution is multifaceted, fire experts say. Firefighting agencies in the West need to embrace “good” fires, prescribed burns that clear out overgrown and desiccated brush. They need to make defensible space around individual homes and whole towns. Utility companies have got to keep their equipment from malfunctioning and igniting blazes.

As the planet continues to warm, the worst is likely yet to come for the West. But that doesn’t mean the situation is hopeless: Changing policies to avoid any warming we can will bring some relief.

When Wallace asked Joe Biden about his plans, the former vice president ran through his program to get the country to net zero emissions by building out a green energy infrastructure and adding 500,000 public charging stations to encourage the adoption of electric vehicles.

In the process, Biden said, building up the clean energy industry would create a new labor force. “Not only not costing people jobs—creating jobs, creating millions of good-paying jobs,” he said. “Not 15 bucks an hour, but prevailing wage, by having a new infrastructure that in fact is green.”

These were all policies he’d already outlined on his campaign website, sure. But the fact that Wallace bothered to ask was an important moment in the political discourse.

Among Democrats, at least, 9 out of 10 say climate change is a major threat to the US. “Which is remarkable given that there are truly other major, very short-term problems that need to be addressed, like in the next year or two,” says Swain. “And yet, it's still up there at the top of a lot of people's lists.”

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