(AU) John Hewson: The Morrison Government Has Abrogated Responsibility For The Climate Crisis To The States

The Guardian - John Hewson

It has fallen to the states to lead with more realistic targets, strategies and attempted policy responses

Scott Morrison is ‘wasting even more time trying to wedge the opposition and the states’, writes John Hewson. Photograph: Darrian Traynor/Getty Images

Author Dr John Hewson AM is an honorary professor at the Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University, and is a former leader of the Liberal party.

A colleague commented to me recently: “Where would we be without the states leading and driving the response to Covid-19?”

It made me think. To cut through all the spin, point-scoring and blame-shifting. Sure, there was the national cabinet and Scott Morrison’s attempt to forge a national, collaborative response, but so much of the heavy lifting was actually done by the states.

Even in areas where our national government has traditionally had clear, overarching responsibility, such as quarantine and aged care, Morrison stepped back, finding it easier to concede, criticise and blame, rather than act.

Of course mistakes are made, and finger-pointing is easy, but none of this “argie- bargie” is in the national interest.

So it is too with the response to a far more significant challenge: climate. Again it has fallen to the states to lead with more realistic targets, strategies and attempted policy responses.

Of course, it would be preferable to have a coordinated national response, but the Morrison government has ignored the significance and urgency of the challenge and abrogated this responsibility. It has again created a leadership vacuum, which the states, rightly or wrongly, are attempting to fill.

Energy is the current political focus, with states such as New South Wales and Victoria forging ahead with net zero emissions targets and various strategies to accelerate the transition to renewables, but causing disquiet with the regulators, major industry players, as well as the Morrison government.

In recent days we have seen the national energy minister Angus Taylor pushing for the states to be “transparent” with their energy plans, industry players crying about “market distortions” (which of course they have been more than happy to exploit), and regulators seeking clear “market principles” and more detail as to transition strategies.

The outcome? A hotchpotch of market forces, regulation, vested interests and confusion, pretty much as was generated against the former South Australian government led by Jay Weatherill, or in the tortuous process around the national energy guarantee, with the result being unreliability of supply and households and businesses overcharged.

Clearly, if the Morrison government were true to its ideological roots, claiming to be “conservative” (believing in small government, limited regulation and market forces), they would step back, develop an appropriate framework for the market to set a “price on carbon”, with a commitment to address the “transition frictions” in certain communities, and let the industry players get on to deliver the transition to cheaper, low emissions, dispatchable renewables with cost-effective storage.

Yet the government prefers to play politics, threatens “big sticks”, falsely claims easy achievement of its modest Paris commitments, and resists longer-term targets and commitments, all while promising cheap and reliable power. Such behaviour guarantees the continuation of our global status as a “laggard”. They hide behind their slogan “Technology Not Taxes” when, ironically, their technology roadmap would be more believable, accelerated and more effective with a carbon price.

The NSW proposals for power infrastructure – renewable energy zones to house a range of renewable energy generation and storage projects, with consumer protections, “reverse auctions” to provide off-take certainty to power generators, and supportive grants – are understandable and have some merit, but raise serious questions as to the “fit” with the grid, the inflexibility and cost of pumped hydro storage, general uncertainty as to how the system will actually work, and whether it will be cost-effective and reliable for consumers.

Meanwhile, the Morrison government and its fossil fuel mates are off on a completely different track, pretending that there is a viable case for more new coal-fired power, and still a case for new gas generation as a “transition”, even though renewables are much cheaper, major banks are reluctant to finance, major insurers are reluctant to insure such projects and investors suspect they will be stranded assets within a decade.

The Morrison government is also committed to storage via Snowy Hydro 2.0 even though it just doesn’t stack up commercially, according to Aemo wouldn’t be needed until about 2042, and is geographically inflexible relative to a sensible and cost-effective development of storage along the grid.

Clearly, there is an urgent imperative for national leadership on not only the transition to renewables in the power sector, but also the essential transitions across all the emitting sectors, especially transport, agriculture, buildings and industrial processes.

This leadership must start with an honest assessment of the climate challenge for a country such as Australia ranking as the 5th or 6th largest global emitter when our fossil fuel exports are taken into account. Our Paris commitments are about half what was recommended by the Climate Change Authority – we need to roughly halve emissions by 2030, and again by 2040, to get near net zero emissions by 2050.

The essential transitions can be effectively and fairly planned and managed over the next three decades. With Joe Biden as the new US president the global pace will quicken markedly. It is grossly irresponsible for Morrison to duck this responsibility, wasting even more time trying to wedge the opposition and the states.

Links Malcolm Turnbull says Morrison was 'dazzled and duchessed' by Trump on climate policy
Australia's climate record labelled 'simply embarrassing' and among worst of G20 nations

(AU) Climate Change Producing Dangerous Heat Stress In Workplaces

Australia Institute Centre for Future Work - James Stanford

New research has confirmed that climate change is contributing to the growing problem of heat stress in a wide range of Australian workplaces.

A report released today by the Centre for Future Work provides first-hand accounts of dangerous levels of heat stress experienced in a range of occupations – including construction, outdoor maintenance work, and food delivery riders.

Heat Stress in Construction. Image©Getty Images

The report, by a team of authors based at the Climate Justice Research Centre at UTS in Sydney, interviewed workers and trade union officials in several industries, and confirmed that working in excess heat is becoming a more common occupational health and safety risk. The report documents the negative effects of excess heat on physical health, mental alertness, and stress. It also compiled an inventory of union initiatives and workplace best practices for reducing and manage the risks of heat stress.

Key findings:

• Heat stress poses serious health and safety risks for many workers across Australia, and Australia must act on the causes of rising temperatures and changing weather patterns.


• Four key groups of workers are at high risk of heat stress:
  • Workers who work inside, in environments with poor climate control, or whose work requires them to be exposed to heat and humidity;
  • Outdoor workers, especially those who are weather-exposed;
  • Workers moving between different climates as part of their work (i.e., moving between extreme heat and cold); and
  • Workers whose roles expose them to situational extreme heat, such as emergency workers and firefighters.
  
  
• Current labour protections, including health and safety laws, are inadequate.
  • Many workers say that OHS policies might appear to offer protection, but in practice it is simply not the case.
  • Workers say that employers do not want work to stop even when heat stress risk is very high, and that employers priorise productivity over worker health and safety.
  • The hazardous heatwaves, air quality, and bushfire smoke over the recent Black Summer has emphasised the inadequacy of current OHS regulations.
  
  
• The conditions of a person’s employment fundamentally shape their experience of heat stress. Workers who are employed casually, who work in labour hire arrangements, or who are gig workers, often have less capacity to take action on the effects of heat stress.


• Recommendations include:
  
  • The Australian Federal and State Governments must urgently review the management of the current and likely impacts of climate change for workers, and develop national and state-based regulatory frameworks that provide strong protection in relation to heat stress and bushfire smoke.
  
  
  • Governments and employers must be required to provide adequate resourcing for at-risk workers.
  
  
  • Policymakers should strengthen current laws to ensure workers do not lose income when unable to work due to heat stress.

“Last year’s devastating Black Summer bushfires highlighted that for many workers across Australia, appropriate policies and plans are not always in place to ensure that they are protected from dangerous heat stress related conditions that could cause illness or injury to themselves or others,” said Dr. Elizabeth Humphrys, associate at the Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work and co-author of the report.

“Workers need to be afforded greater protections to ensure their health and safety are paramount in extreme heat conditions. Our research shows that current workplace conditions are woefully inadequate, while climate change will only serve to make conditions worse.

“To protect workers and the wider community, not only must policymakers act to mitigate the impacts of heat stress, but they must also act on the causes of the climate heating, itself.”

“Our research shows that while existing OHS rules are supposed to protect workers against heat stress in theory, in practice those standards are not adequate, and they are poorly enforced.”

“Many workers say that employers do not want work to stop even when heat stress is very high, and that employers prioritise productivity over workers’ health.”

“Improving workplace practices for identifying and managing heat stress, and empowering workers to refuse work under unsafe heat conditions, must be urgent priorities for employers, trade unions, and regulators.”

Links

• REPORT Heat Stress and Work in the Era of Climate Change: What We Know, and What We Need to Learn
• Construction Workers in a Climate Precarious World
• Heat in the Streets: Mapping the Lived Experience of Heat Stress of Climate-exposed Workers Towards Developing a Thriving and Resilient City
• Heat Stress and On-Demand Work: The Experience of Food Delivery and Courier Cyclists
• Guide for managing the risks of working in heat
• Climate change increases workplace heat stress, affecting work capacity and occupational health
• Impacts of Climate Change on Outdoor Workers and Their Safety: Some Research Priorities
• Climate Change impacts on Workplace Heat Extremes: Health Risk Estimates and Adaptive Options

Into Thicker Air And Onto Thinner Ice: How Climate Change Is Affecting Mount Everest

Smithsonian Magazine - Rasha Aridi

Researchers have documented that the high-altitude air is gaining more oxygen and large glaciers are melting at rapid rates

A white cloud floats over the top of Mount Everest at dusk. (Photo by Frank Bienewald/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Despite being the highest point on Earth, Mount Everest still can't escape the effects of climate change. The only place that punctures the stratosphere—Everest's peak reaches 29,035 feet above sea level—has an atmosphere so thin that it leaves mountaineers gasping for breath and glaciers so big that they stretch for miles on end. But both of those elements are changing fast.

According to two new studies published today in iScience and One Earth, the air pressure near Everest's summit is rising, making more oxygen available to breathe, and glaciers are melting at unprecedented rates, leading to more meltwater. The changes will impact climbers scaling the peak and local people who live in the shadow of it.

"Some of the lower Himalayan regions are fairly well studied, but a place like Everest is less studied because it's just so hard to do work up there." says Aurora Elmore, a climate scientist at the National Geographic Society. "There's a big gap in the research, especially above 5,000 meters [16, 404 feet]—and Everest is 8,850 meters [29,035 feet]. That huge three kilometers of elevation has been under studied."

To learn more about the highest reaches of the world, last year Elmore helped organize an expedition that sent a team of 34 scientists to Mount Everest to collect glaciological and meteorological data by installing the highest weather stations in the world. The expedition provided the data for both of the new studies, each of which Elmore co-authored.

At 8,430 meters above sea level, the high-altitude expedition team celebrates after setting up the world's highest operating automated weather station during the National Geographic and Rolex Perpetual Planet Everest Expedition. For more info on the expedition, go to www.NatGeo.com/Everest. (Photo by Mark Fisher, National Geographic)

In a study published in iScience, Elmore and a team of scientists set out to document how the atmospheric pressure on Everest has fluctuated since the 1970s. Each year, around 800 people attempt to summit Mount Everest, but after ascending 21,325 feet, the air gets so thin that most climbers turn to bottled oxygen to help them breathe. Only a handful of mountaineers attempt to climb it without supplemental oxygen. But that may get easier, as climate change is causing the air to slowly thicken, which means more oxygen is available at higher altitudes.

When temperature rises, molecules move faster. And when these molecules start to collide with each other, pressure increases. More pressure means more molecules, making more oxygen available to breathe, says lead author Tom Matthews, a climate scientist at Loughborough University in the U.K.

To analyze the changes in the atmosphere, Matthews and his team collected data using those weather stations they installed on the Everest expedition in 2019. They coupled their newly collected data with analyses produced by the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting to reconstruct what the climate was like on Everest from 1979 to 2020.

Matthews and his team then used the climate data to model how the atmosphere around Everest has changed over time and how it will continue to change as the planet warms. Their models suggest that if global temperatures increase by 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels—which the planet is on track to meet as early as 2050—the maximum rate of oxygen consumption on Everest would increase by 5 percent. It may seem like a subtle shift, but that's enough to be the difference between life and death for a mountaineer standing at Everest's peak. "Some people would find [thicker air] as a good consequence of climate change," Matthews says with a laugh. "I think that's stretching it a little bit."

The real surprise of this study, Matthews says, is learning how dramatically the atmospheric pressure on Everest can vary. From the 40 years of data, the team picked out the day with the lowest air pressure on record and compared it to the day with the highest. The difference was huge, Matthews says, with oxygen availability between the two days being equivalent to an elevation change of 2,460 feet.

And the climate can vary remarkably within a span of a few days, he says. On one day, the air at the summit can feel breathable without supplemental oxygen; a few days later, the pressure can plunge to thin, sharp, mid-winter-like air, making it unclimbable. This means that for climbers planning to forego supplemental oxygen and push their bodies to the absolute limits, they must pay close attention to oxygen forecasts. For example, if climbers leave basecamp on a day when an oxygenless summit would be physiologically possible and then arrive a week later when the pressure has bottomed out, it could be a "real horror show," Matthews says.

"What really struck me about this study is that climate change may be impacting the conditions on Mount Everest, and the acceptable conditions on Mount Everest for climbers, in more ways that we have already understood," says Kimberley Miner, a climate risk scientist at the University of Maine who was not involved with this study. "Looking at the way that oxygen is affected in the higher alpine environments [is] something that probably doesn't strike people immediately when you talk about climate change, but these secondary impacts could have very specific effects on climbers and mountaineers [and are] also just as significant."

Although atmospheric changes on Everest aren't visible to the eye, the havoc that climate change is wreaking on glaciers is crystal clear to those living in the region.

"The melting ice in the Himalayas is already alarming," says Pasang Dolma Sherpa, the executive director of the Center for Indigenous Peoples' Research and Development in Kathmandu, Nepal. A few weeks ago, she went hiking in a nearby community, and the local people told her, "Oh, by this time [of year] we used to have already white mountains, but now you see all black." And the floods caused by melting glaciers—which were once rare—are now happening more regularly and unpredictably, she says.

The study published today in One Earth reports just how dramatically glaciers have thinned since the 1960s—in some areas by as much as 490 feet. A team of scientists led by glaciologist Owen King, a research fellow at the University of St Andrews in the U.K., used archived satellite images and old surveys dating back to the 1960s to build a baseline dataset from which to compare future glacier melt. The images came from ten different years spread out between 1962 and 2019.

A member of the National Geographic and Rolex Perpetual Planet Everest Expedition team takes a sample from a rock outcrop next to the Khumbu Icefall above Everest Base Camp. For more info on the expedition, go to www.NatGeo.com/Everest. (Photo by Freddie Wilkinson, National Geographic)

The team studied 79 glaciers—including the Khumbu Glacier, the highest glacier in the world—and found that between 2009 and 2018, glaciers thinned at nearly twice the rate that they did in the 1960s. And some estimates suggest that a few glaciers have areas on them that have likely lost half of their thickness since the 60s.

The average temperature from 2000 to 2016 is about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the average between 1975 and 2000. Although rising temperatures are the primary drivers of glacier thinning, other big factors are at play, King says. As the glaciers retreat, they often leave behind rocky debris and expose cliffs and troughs on the mountainsides. The exposed rocks absorb more radiation from the sun, melting the adjacent ice. The melted water then seeps into the troughs created by the retreating glaciers, creating small ponds. The ponds melt the surrounding ice, and more water fills the ponds. Ultimately, clusters of ponds join up and form huge glacial lakes. As a result, more than 400 new lakes formed between 1990 and 2015, King says.

Heidi Steltzer, a mountain scientist at Fort Lewis College in Colorado who wasn't involved in the study, says the results are concerning, given the persistent ice loss across the study area.

In addition to the 18 Indigenous communities residing in the Himalayas, nearly two billion people depend on the mountain range for a source of freshwater. As melting accelerates, it puts that once-steady source of water in jeopardy, threatening the lives and livelihoods of nearly a fifth of the world's population.

And although faster melting might mean more water, "it's only a good thing for a little bit of time," Elmore says. If water melts too fast, it arrives in the form of floods, which communities in the region are already experiencing. "They are reaping the repercussions of a global climatic change that they are not major contributors to," she says.

But despite being on the frontlines of climate change, the Indigenous peoples in the Himalayas are often left out of research, climate strategy dialogues and policy making, Sherpa says. "The studies that help people understand the resources they have and the choices [they have] to adapt are just as important as a study of ice loss," Steltzer says. "And maybe that's the next study to come." 

Links

• A comprehensive look at the effects of climate change on Mount Everest 
• Climate scientists turn Mount Everest into a lab
• Climate Change, Plastics Threaten World’s Tallest Peak
• Climate change thinning glaciers, increasing oxygen levels at Mount Everest
• Climate change has led to a chilling discovery on Mount Everest. 
• Climate change, human impacts altering Everest faster, more significantly than previously known
• Human Face Of A Himalayan Climate Crisis
• An Urgent Call To Protect The World's "Third Pole"