Lethal Heating: 02/13/21

13/02/2021

Former Australian PMs Put Murdoch In The Hot Seat On Climate Change

The media magnate’s empire, offering a platform to sceptical voices, is accused of holding significant sway in this arena

© Harry Haysom

“Citizens around the world need to take consumer action against [Rupert] Murdoch’s products,” says Kevin Rudd, former Australian centre-left prime minister. “This guy is one of the greatest enemies of climate change action on the planet.”

Australia’s former centre-right prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, who has allied with Rudd against Murdoch, tells me: “The most effective voice for climate denialism in the English-speaking world has been Murdoch’s.”

The mogul’s son James, speaking more broadly, recently criticised unnamed “media property owners . . . who know the truth but choose instead to propagate lies”.

For all the anxiety about fake news on social media, disinformation on climate seems to stem disproportionately from one old man using old media.

This is the most hopeful moment yet for global action on climate. The world’s three biggest powers have set targets for net-zero carbon emissions: the US and EU by 2050, China by 2060. Yet Rudd and Turnbull believe action requires confronting Murdoch. How central is he to climate inaction, and can he be confronted?

Murdoch probably does shape rightwing views on climate. In an Ipsos Mori survey of 20 countries in 2014, the three countries with least belief in man-made climate change were his main markets of the US, Britain and Australia.

British attitudes have since improved, but the US and Australia retain large fringes of climate deniers, reports YouGov. These two countries have helped block consensus in international summits on climate.

Murdoch, says Rudd, “isn’t just an Australian problem, or even an Anglosphere one. Murdoch has become a planetary problem.”

The mogul owns more than half of Australia’s newspaper industry, plus the TV channel Sky News. Rudd says Murdoch’s media try to intimidate opponents into silence.

“They target you individually, as a political leader, or even a Swedish schoolgirl. They seek to eviscerate your character. My response is: ‘Bugger you, we’re fighting back.’”

Disinformation on climate seems to stem disproportionately from one old man using old media
But how much can Murdoch influence the US, where his Fox News averaged just 3.6 million primetime viewers in 2020?

Rudd replies: “In both Australia and the US, he has progressively moved centre-right parties to the far right” by radicalising their base. Murdoch’s media also help set agendas for rightwing social media.

The approach taken varies, from downright climate denial to cheerleading for hydrocarbon industries to casting climate as a cultural-economic issue.

Rudd says Murdoch’s Australian tabloids follow the line that “politically correct centre-left politicians who try to act on climate change are going to take your jobs”.

A News Corp Australia spokesperson insists its publications recognise climate change “is real” and reflect “the different viewpoints being expressed”. They reject the criticisms of News Corp, adding it has not sought to silence anyone on these issues, nor moved Australian politics to the far right.

They accuse Rudd and Turnbull of past political failings, saying: “They are now seeking to rewrite history — and why they did not achieve climate action — to hide their own shortcomings.”

Murdoch faces rising scrutiny in Australia. Jamie Smyth

Turnbull says Murdoch’s media treat climate “not as a matter of physics, but a matter of identity or belief”. He summarises Murdoch’s recent legacy as “Donald Trump, Brexit and climate denialism”.

When Turnbull saw the president and the mogul together, he found Trump “deferential, almost obsequious, to Murdoch”. Trump even wanted to invite Murdoch to his bilateral discussion with Turnbull. Perhaps Trump is just another radicalised Fox viewer.

What motivates Murdoch?

Rudd says: “He is an ideologist of the far-right on climate but also in terms of a view of what the Anglosphere should be in global politics. Look at how he campaigned in the Iraq war. He is a tax minimalist, a regulation minimalist, and he’s fatally addicted to the aphrodisiac of power.”

Though Murdoch turns 90 in March, Rudd doesn’t expect a biological solution. “The succession’s determined and it’s going to be [his son] Lachlan Murdoch. And [he] is stitched at the hip to far-right politics in the US and Australia.”

Newer far-right media, such as QAnon conspiracy sites, may leave Murdoch behind. Fox has shed viewers since its recent separation from Trump. January’s Trumpist attack on Washington happened without Murdoch’s support. His decades of propaganda have unleashed forces he cannot control. Fox risks ending up inside the far-right tiger.

The Rise of the Murdoch Dynasty

Now the Australian senate is holding an inquiry into media ownership and bias, after Rudd launched a popular online petition calling for a royal commission into media diversity. Turnbull and Rudd want more.

Turnbull says advertisers in Murdoch’s media should be asked “how they justify supporting platforms that have done so much damage to democracy”.

Rudd is campaigning for a boycott of what he calls “Murdoch’s major cash cow in Australia”, the housing website realestate.com.au. He says: “That’s a concrete course of action, which I believe is causing a level of anxiety within News Corporation headquarters.”

I point out to him that extending that principle worldwide might mean boycotting Murdoch’s sports broadcasters.

Rudd says: “We’ve joined the fight. Who will win, not sure, but we’re going to give them a run for their money.”

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(AU) Productivity Commission Says New Australian Water Deal Must Recognise Climate Change

The Guardian - Anne Davies

Federal and state governments are being urged to respond to the effects of the climate crisis and to Indigenous rights to water

File photo of the Darling Barka river. The Productivity Commission says governments need to acknowledge climate change will challenge existing water sharing agreements. Photograph: Jenny Evans/Getty Images

States and the federal government should forge a new compact on water policy that explicitly recognises climate change, and which sets “triggers” for rapid policy responses, the Productivity Commission has said.

Releasing its draft report on national water reform, the commission has called for a substantial overhaul of the 17-year-old National Water Initiative, a bedrock document that commits the states and federal government to working together on water policy as well as outlining a work program for the future.

In particular, the commission wants explicit recognition that climate change will challenge existing agreements on sharing water between states and between users, towns, agriculture and the environment.

The commission has also called for much more meaningful recognition of Indigenous rights to water.

Commissioner Dr Jane Doolan said: “It is time for our governments to once again lead the way on developing a new national water policy and agree a pathway to meet these challenges.

“We can expect an estimated additional 11 million people living in capital cities by 2050, and climate change is likely to mean significant reductions in water availability for most of the country and an increase in the frequency and severity of droughts and floods across the nation.”

The commission wants to see governments commit, by way of a new National Water Initiative, to plans and policies for responding to the effects of climate change.

It also wants governments to agree to climate change triggers that would prompt a review of water agreements and policies.

The Murray-Darling Basin plan, one of the outcomes of the 2003 National Water Initiative, has been criticised because it does not contain any mechanisms to acknowledge the impact of climate change.

While it is said to be a dynamic plan, most of the changes over its 13-year lifespan have involved giving more water to agriculture and halting buybacks of water for the environment because of its socio-economic impact, which is a recognised reason for adjusting the plan.

But without an explicit mechanism to take account of climate change, the plan has struggled to deal with evidence of environmental disasters such as the fish kills in the Darling. The plan has not been adjusted to take account of the more frequent droughts, longer periods when the Darling ceases to flow, and the new reality of lower inflows into the river system.

The current plan is scheduled to run until 2027.

Doolan said the science on the likely impacts of climate change on water supplies had established more variable rainfall was likely in the north, and hotter, drier conditions in the south of eastern Australia, where much of the country’s agribusiness is located.

“There needs to be a mechanism to reassess the balance between environmental and consumptive uses when it is clear that this is required – for example, if climate change means that the previously agreed balance no longer meets the objectives for either the environment or consumptive users,” the report says.

It suggests that this could be a hydrological trigger, such as a fall in streamflows and groundwater resources, or an ecological trigger, where agreed long-term ecological outcomes are clearly not being achieved. Both would require monitoring and evaluation.

But the critical finding of the Productivity Commission is that this needs to be agreed in advance by the states and the commonwealth.

It also wants all states to commit to drought management plans.

“The millennium drought and recent drought in New South Wales and Queensland revealed a number of shortcomings in the current water management arrangements in information, planning and compliance that exacerbated the impact of these droughts on environmental assets and other water users,” the report says.

The report suggests states need to commit to plans to deal with water scarcity, priorities for water sharing and actions relating to meeting critical human and environmental needs. These could include rules to limit water extraction, protecting critically low flows to protect critical habitats and protecting flows when it does rain again.

In addition, there needs to be a clear hierarchy of water uses, prioritising critical human needs, then critical environmental needs. Consideration must also be given to water quality, it says.

Doolan also wants the next agreement to put detailed plans around how the states and the federal government will deliver on earlier, more vague commitments to recognise cultural water rights.

“It needs to recognise the importance of water in the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people ,” Doolan said.

“All states have signed up to Closing the Gap,” she said. “The aspirations of First Nations people on water have grown and are now much better articulated.”

She said the new National Water Initiative should include an entire section that deals with how states will deliver on cultural values by providing a much bigger say for Indigenous people in water policy. But she also flagged the need for economic rights to water, which can likely only be achieved by buying back water for Indigenous communities.

The federal government committed $40m to establish and support First Nations investment in cultural and economic water entitlements in 2018 but it was part of a deal that saw environmental water recovery targets for the northern basin of the Murray-Darling cut by 70GL, following pressure from farmers.

A committee has been established to work with Indigenous groups on concrete proposals for the National Water Initiative.

The Productivity Commission also wants to see governments commit to a more rigorous process for water infrastructure projects.

The NSW and federal governments have committed $1bn to the Wyangala and Dungowan dams without a business case or an environmental assessment of their impact on river systems.

The $500m pipeline from the Murray to supply water to Broken Hill was commenced without any business case.

Doolan said the federal government had earmarked $3.5bn for the National Water Infrastructure Development Fund and had already spent $1.6bn.

“We need to get the best bang for our buck,” she said, including for regional “town water supplies as well as for agriculture”.

In the face of growing urban populations, the Productivity Commission also wants to see the states commit to better and more science-based development of urban water resources, with all options on the table.

In the past some state governments have ruled out recycling of wastewater for drinking supplies, fearing a voter backlash, even though recycling is done safely around the world.

The commission is seeking comment on its draft report.

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(USA) Youths Say They Won't Give Up On Climate Change Initiative After Court Turns Back Lawsuit

San Francisco Chronicle - Bob Egelko

A federal appeals court refused Wednesday to revive a lawsuit by 21 young people demanding government action against climate change, reaffirming a ruling that judges have no power to order such action.

Youth plaintiffs in the Juliana vs. the United States climate change lawsuit gather in a federal courthouse for a hearing with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Portland, Ore., in June 2019. The court Wednesday refused to revive the lawsuit. © Robin Loznak / Associated Press 2019

The suit was filed in 2015 by plaintiffs ranging in age from 8 to 19. Saying some had seen their homes and schools flooded because of warming temperatures and others had been harmed by smoke from wildfires, they argued that the government was violating their constitutional rights to life and liberty by approving continued oil, gas and coal development.

A federal judge in Oregon refused to dismiss the suit but was overruled in January 2020 by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. Although climate change is potentially catastrophic, the remedy the youths seek — requiring the government to move toward a carbon-free energy system by mid-century — is beyond the powers of the judiciary, the court said in a 2-1 ruling that it described as reluctant.

Lawyers for the youths asked the full appeals court for a new hearing before a larger panel. On Wednesday, the court said the request had failed to gain a majority among the 25 judges taking part in the vote. It did not disclose the vote total but said four judges — M. Margaret McKeown, Daniel Collins, Daniel Bress and Lawrence VanDyke — did not participate, for reasons the court did not specify.

Supporters attend a June 2019 rally for young people whose lawsuit charges that U.S. energy policies are causing climate change and hurting their future. © Steve Dipaola / Associated Press 2019

The youths will seek review from the Supreme Court and will also invite President Biden’s administration to the negotiating table, their lawyers said. Former President Donald Trump described as a “hoax” the scientific consensus that humans are responsible for climate change.

But Biden has promised to work toward carbon-free power production by 2035, stopped issuing oil and gas drilling permits on federal land, rejoined the Paris climate accord and named former Secretary of State John Kerry as his envoy on climate change.

The ruling deprives people in the nine states covered by the Ninth Circuit of “the ability to seek a resolution of a real controversy with their government, and hear a controversy about harm to the health and safety of children,” said attorney Julia Olson of the nonprofit Our Children’s Trust. “That travesty cannot stand.”

“I hope that President Joe Biden will understand the crisis we’re in, stop fighting our claims and our rights, and will decide to come to the settlement table in our case,” one of the youths, Sahara V., said in a statement released by the lawyers.

In last year’s ruling, Judge Andrew Hurwitz said the changes the lawsuit seeks would require “a fundamental transformation of this country’s energy system, if not that of the industrialized world.” The youths must instead make their case to the president and Congress, he said.

In dissent, U.S. District Judge Josephine Staton of Santa Ana, temporarily assigned to the appeals court, said the courts may not be able to undo climate change but can require the government to take meaningful action. “The Constitution does not condone the nation’s willful destruction,” she said.

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