Lethal Heating: 11/12/20

12/11/2020

(AU) Australia Should Cut Emissions Quickly And Lead World In Renewable Energy, Incoming Chief Scientist Says

Physicist Dr Cathy Foley will be tasked with gathering evidence to guide a potential rapid shift away from fossil fuels

Dr Cathy Foley, who takes up her role as Australia’s chief scientist in January. ‘We need to move as quickly as we can using all the tools to lower emissions and be bold and ambitious in doing that.’ Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian

Australia’s incoming chief scientist wants the country to be a global renewable energy leader and “bold and ambitious” in rapidly cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

Physicist Dr Cathy Foley, who will replace Dr Alan Finkel in January, told Guardian Australia she believed the Morrison government was serious about rapidly shifting the country to a low-emissions economy.

Foley, who is currently the chief scientist at CSIRO, will enter the role at a time when a global pandemic has pushed the importance of scientific advice to new heights.

But she will also be tasked with compiling and curating scientific evidence to guide a potential rapid shift away from fossil fuels to a low-emissions economy.

“Of course I want Australia to be a low-emissions economy, but I want us to be a world leader in renewable energy, such as hydrogen, and what I’m hearing from government is that they want the same thing,” she said.

“We need to move as quickly as we can using all the tools to lower emissions and be bold and ambitious in doing that.”

The Morrison government has so far refused to set a target to reach net zero emissions by 2050 – a goal now endorsed by key trading partners, including Japan and South Korea, as well as US president-elect Joe Biden.

The UN’s climate panel says the world’s greenhouse gas emissions need to reach net zero by 2050 to have a 66% chance of keeping global warming below 1.5C.

But when asked what advice she would give the government on the target, Foley said: “I’m not in the job yet and I have not done my own gathering of information. I’m not in a position to say I can assess the situation.

“But I can say [is] we know Australia is committed to reducing emissions and Australia is committed to delivering on its commitments of the Paris agreement and we are seeing the government recognising this.”

Finkel has advocated for increasing the amount of gas in Australia’s electricity grid to lower emissions and support renewables – a position he was forced to defend in August after climate scientists wrote an open letter saying it was at odds with the Paris climate agreement.

Foley said: “The people who signed that letter are eminent scientists coming from a scientific perspective, but they are not necessarily business people.

“The gas issue is complex. Alan’s position on gas is it will help reduce emissions more quickly and get more wind and solar more quickly. He is just providing the evidence from what he has garnered.”

She said her role would be to make sure the voices of environmental science were heard, but to also “bring them to the other parts of the argument to see why an outcome has landed where it has”.

“I think pragmatic is not the right word. It’s about being a boundary spanner … that’s what’s tricky in the chief scientist role.”

Foley is a multi-award winning physicist specialising in the use of super-conductors to locate mineral deposits. She has worked at CSIRO for 36 years.

CSIRO’s chief executive, Larry Marshall, said her appointment was a “testament to Cathy’s personal scientific excellence”. Finkel said he was honoured to be followed “by such an esteemed person”.

Foley told Guardian Australia she had been asked to apply for the role but had not expected to get the job.

“The [science minister Karen Andrews] and the prime minister said they want to make sure there’s independent information that’s as unbiased as possible – gathering scientific information from wherever is needed on an issue or question and then give them frank and fearless advice to use to navigate the issue at hand.

“They may use the advice or not, but it’s important to realise the response to how they use it may require me to be pragmatic, but it’s the government of the day that makes the policy and the decisions.”

She said while science was “one small part of the big picture when a big decision has to be made”, Australia had closely followed expert advice to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic “and has had a good outcome”.

She acknowledged that misinformation on issues such as climate change science were a problem – where evidence and information could be cherry-picked – and said the country needed a campaign to help the public understand the scientific process.

But she also welcomed the steps being taken by social media platforms in flagging posts that contained misinformation.

“I think [social media] has played a major role in misinformation being easily accessible and getting a life of its own,” she said.

She hoped social media had now “gone through the wild teenage years” and was now “developing some maturity”.

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(AU) Joel Fitzgibbon And How Coal And Climate Change Caused Split In Labor Ranks

ABC News - Jake Lapham | Hannah Palmer | Kylie Morris

Joel Fitzgibbon has held the seat of Hunter in NSW coal country since succeeding his father, Eric, in 1996. (ABC News: Nick Haggarty)

And then he was gone.

Joel Fitzgibbon may have announced his departure from the shadow cabinet today, but his course was set 18 months ago.

At the May 2019 federal election, Mr Fitzgibbon came close to losing the seat of Hunter in NSW's industrial heartland, one which Labor has held since Federation.

He survived a 22 per cent swing against him, as blue-collar voters opted for an ex-miner One Nation candidate rather than the son of Cessnock, whose father, Eric, held the seat before him.

That near loss has helped define the role Mr Fitzgibbon has played in the shadow cabinet as Labor's agriculture and resources spokesperson.

Mr Fitzgibbon says the ALP is out of touch

He cast himself as a thorn in the side of climate change progressives, determined to remind his party of what he calls its diverse membership, with the goal, he says, of ensuring the electability of a Labor government.

And while he says he supports the party's 2050 target for net-zero carbon emissions, he worries it risks losing votes from Labor's traditional industrial support base and undo its electoral chances.

Meryl Swanson, who holds the neighbouring seat of Paterson for the ALP, told ABC Newcastle she was disappointed but not surprised by Mr Fitzgibbon's decision to leave the shadow cabinet, that he had indeed told her that he'd planned to leave in May last year.

She said Mr Fitzgibbon had done well by working people in his electorate and looked forward to him continuing as an MP.

The coal industry dominates the workforce in the Hunter region. (ABC Rural: Michael Pritchard)

Hunter coal at a crossroad

The Hunter electorate is coal country.

From Newcastle, where ships load up with thermal coal for Japan and Korea on every tide, to small townships in the lower Hunter, still hurting from the closure of old underground pits, and the new beacons of resource extraction of Singleton and Muswellbrook, ringed by vast open-cut operations.

Dwindling demand for thermal coal and the impact of COVID-19 have hit local mines in recent months, causing Peabody to slash 50 per cent of the workforce at its Wambo mine, while BHP looks to sell its Mount Arthur open-cut project.

Mr Fitzgibbon threw his support behind controversial new mining projects, such as the Dartbrook expansion and Maxwell underground mine that are under assessment by planning authorities.

International energy analyst Tim Buckley said Mr Fitzgibbon's views became incompatible with Labor policy.

"At its simplest, it's the interests of an existing job as opposed to the future wellbeing of the Australian economy and the many jobs that will come from that," he said.

"Joel is responding to the vested interests of several thousand current employees in an industry that is in terminal decline."

Despite this, Muswellbrook Chamber of Commerce president Mike Kelly believes Mr Fitzgibbon has stood up for the community, economy and business interests in the Hunter region.

"As a representative of an electorate, he has to acknowledge and support the issues that are important to the whole of the community and important to the Hunter's economy," Mr Kelly said.

"[Mr Fitzgibbon] has taken a position which seems perfectly logical to me."

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‘Hypocrites And Greenwash’: Greta Thunberg Blasts Leaders Over Climate Crisis

The Guardian - Damian Carrington

Leaders are happy to set targets for decades ahead, but flinch when immediate action is needed, she says

Greta Thunberg: ‘The climate crisis is just one symptom of a much larger crisis.’ Photograph: Jessica Gow/AP

Greta Thunberg has blasted politicians as hypocrites and international climate summits as empty words and greenwash.

Until humanity admits it has failed to tackle the climate crisis and begins treating it as an emergency like the coronavirus pandemic, society will be unable to stop global heating, she said.

In an interview with the Guardian, Thunberg said leaders were happy to set targets for decades into the future, but flinched when immediate action to cut emissions was needed. She said there was not a politician on the planet promising the climate action required: “If only,” said the teenager, who will turn 18 in January.

But she is inspired by the millions of students who have taken up the school strike she began by herself in Sweden 116 weeks ago. Since then she has addressed the UN and become the world’s most prominent climate campaigner. She also has hope: “We can treat a crisis like a crisis, as we have seen because of the coronavirus. Treating the climate crisis like a crisis – that could change everything overnight.”

Thunberg said the scale and speed of the emissions reductions needed to keep global temperature close to the limit set by the Paris climate agreement are so great that they cannot be achieved by the normal operation of society. “Our whole society would just shut down and too many people would suffer,” she said.

“So the first thing we need to do is understand we are in an emergency [and] admit the fact that we have failed – humanity collectively has failed – because you can’t solve a crisis that you don’t understand,” Thunberg said.

A vital UN climate summit had been scheduled to begin on Monday in Glasgow but has been postponed for a year because of Covid-19. Thunberg, however, said she was not disappointed by the delay: “As long as we don’t treat the climate crisis like a crisis, we can have as many conferences as we want, but it will just be negotiations, empty words, loopholes and greenwash.”

She is also unimpressed with pledges by nations including the UK, China and Japan to reach net zero by 2050 or 2060. “They mean something symbolically, but if you look at what they actually include, or more importantly exclude, there are so many loopholes. We shouldn’t be focusing on dates 10, 20 or even 30 years in the future. If we don’t reduce our emissions now, then those distant targets won’t mean anything because our carbon budgets will be long gone.”

Thunberg is particularly scathing about the EU’s MEPs who in October approved almost €400bn (£360bn) in subsidies for farmers, the majority of which has weak or non-existent green conditions attached. Agriculture is responsible for about a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions, and Thunberg said: “It is a disaster for the climate and for biodiversity.”

She said MEPs had asked for her support in September when the EU was deciding its target for emissions cuts by 2030. “When it’s about something that is in 10 years’ time, they are more than happy to vote for it because that doesn’t really impact them. But when it’s something that actually has an effect, right here right now, they don’t want to touch it. It really shows the hypocrisy.”

Thunberg said she will back the best party available when she reaches voting age, but that there were no politicians she rates as good: “If only. I wish there was one politician or one party that was strong enough on these issues. Imagine how easy it would be if you could just support a politician.”

Justice is at the heart of her campaigning, Thunberg said. “That is the root of all this,” she said. “That’s why we are fighting for climate justice, social justice. They are so interlinked, you can’t have one without the other.”

“The climate crisis is just one symptom of a much larger crisis, [including] the loss of biodiversity, the loss of fertile soil but also including inequality and threats to democracy,” she said. “These are symptoms that we are not living sustainably: we have reached the end of the road.”

On campaigning, Thunberg said: “We need to do everything we can to push in the right direction. But I don’t see the point of being optimistic or pessimistic, I’m just realistic. That doesn’t mean I’m not happy, I’m very happy. You need to have fun, and I’m having much more now than before I started campaigning for this. When your life gets meaning you become happy.”

She said she was inspired by fellow school strikers. “It is so inspiring to see them because they are so determined and so brave,” Thunberg said. “In some countries, they even get arrested for striking. For instance, Arshak Makichyan in Russia, he had troubles with the police, but he just continues because he knows what he’s doing is right. And then also in places like China, Howey Ou is incredibly brave.”

The school strikers brought headline-grabbing crowds to the streets of cities and towns around the world before the coronavirus pandemic, but are now largely confined to online activism. “We are still around and we will have to keep pushing, unfortunately. But we will. We’re not planning to go away,” Thunberg said.

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