Lethal Heating: 02/26/21

26/02/2021

To Stop Climate Disaster, Make Ecocide An International Crime. It's The Only Way

The Guardian - Jojo Mehta | Julia Jackson

Outlawing ecocide would hold governments and corporations accountable for environmental negligence. We can’t wait

Smoke rises from an illegally lit fire in an Amazon rainforest reserve in Pará State, Brazil. Photograph: Carl de Souza/AFP/Getty Images

The Paris agreement is failing.

Yet there is new hope for preserving a livable planet: the growing global campaign to criminalize ecocide can address the root causes of the climate crisis and safeguard our planet – the common home of all humanity and, indeed, all life on Earth.

Nearly five years after the negotiation of the landmark Paris agreement to limit greenhouse gas emissions and associated global warming to “well below 2.0C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5C”, we are experiencing drastically accelerating warming. 2020 was the second warmest year on record, following the record-setting 2019.

Carbon in the atmosphere reached 417 parts per million (ppm) – the highest in the last 3m years.Even if we magically flipped a switch to a fully green economy tomorrow, there is still enough carbon in the atmosphere to continue warming the planet for decades.

The science is clear: without drastic action to limit temperature rise below 1.5C, the Earth, and all life on it, including all human beings, will suffer devastating consequences.

Yet only two countries – Morocco and the Gambia – are on track to meet the 1.5C target. The largest emitters, including the United States, China, Russia and Saudi Arabia, are putting the world on course for 4C.

At that rate, the polar ice caps will melt, causing dramatic sea level rise that will – in combination with other devastating effects like strengthening storms and droughts – cause mass famine, displacement and extinction.

Currently, much of humanity feels hopeless, but the establishment of ecocide as a crime offers something for people to get behind. Enacting laws against ecocide, as is under consideration in a growing number of jurisdictions, offers a way to correct the shortcomings of the Paris agreement.

Whereas Paris lacks sufficient ambition, transparency and accountability, the criminalization of ecocide would be an enforceable deterrent.

Outlawing ecocide would also address a key root cause of global climate change: the widespread destruction of nature, which, in addition to increasing greenhouse gas emissions, has devastating impacts on global health, food and water security, and sustainable development – to name a few.

Ecocide shares its roots with other landmark concepts in international law, including genocide. Indeed, ecocide and genocide often go hand in hand. Around the globe, ecological destruction is also decimating indigenous communities.

To give just a few cases: Brazil’s Yanomami are facing mercury poisoning generated by the 20,000 illegal miners in their territories. 87% of Native Alaskan villages are experiencing climate-related erosion, even as they face growing calls to drill on their lands.

Conviction for ecocide would require demonstrating willful disregard for the consequences of actions such as deforestation, reckless drilling and mining.

This threshold implicates a number of global and corporate leaders through their complicity in deforesting the Amazon and Congo basins, drilling recklessly in the Arctic and the Niger delta, or permitting unsustainable palm oil plantations in south-east Asia, among other destructive practices.

As a term, “ecocide” dates to 1970, when Arthur Galston, an American botanist, used it to describe the appalling effects of Agent Orange on the vast forests of Vietnam and Cambodia. On the 50th anniversary of the concept, we can take heart in the growing civic will to officially make ecocide an international crime.

Already, citizens, scientists and youth activists including Greta Thunberg are calling on global leaders to introduce ecocide at the international criminal court (ICC).

Following the lead of climate-vulnerable ocean states Vanuatu and the Maldives in December 2019, President Emmanuel Macron of France vowed to champion it on the international stage last June and has proposed a version of it in French law.

Finland and Belgium both expressed interest during the ICC’s annual assembly, and Spain’s parliamentary foreign affairs committee has issued recommendations to consider it.

The EU has also voted to encourage its recognition by member states. And Pope Francis was ahead of the game in November 2019 when he called for ecocide to become an international crime against peace.

The Stop Ecocide Foundation has recently convened a panel of heavyweight international lawyers to draft a robust legal definition of ecocide which this growing list of states can seriously consider proposing as an amendment to the ICC’s Rome Statute.

Criminalizing ecocide gives us the unprecedented chance to create a protective measure with legal teeth that could deter reckless leaders from damaging, short-sighted policies creating accountability in a way that Paris does not.

Just as important, we could motivate corporations to make dramatic shifts away from an unacceptable status quo that too often favors the destruction of nature for short-term profits.

As ecocide becomes an impending legal reality, corporate leaders would be forced to adapt, and quickly, re-examining the way they do business and make decisions with our planet in mind.

But ecocide would not just be a punitive measure for corporate leaders. It would also offer considerable opportunities for new sustainable ventures.

The pristine areas that ecocide targets – virgin forests, wetlands and our oceans – are precisely the places that have value far beyond mere extractive industries, including in sustainably developing new pharmaceuticals that may help in the current Covid-19 pandemic and in future pandemics.

True leaders in the public and private sector would much prefer ethical, sustainable and long-term value creation that does not exploit nature or humanity. By outlawing bad actors, we will empower many more good ones.

As a global community, we cannot wait for more warning signs or the “right moment”. Last year alone has seen devastating examples of ecocide: fires ravaging the Amazon, the Congo basin, Australia, Alaska and Siberia all at unprecedented rates; a large oil spill in Ecuador; and unending, accelerating plastic pollution, which could weigh up to 1.3bn tons by 2040.

Unfortunately, under cover of Covid-19, ecocide has accelerated. Deforestation in the Amazon basin increased by 50% in the first quarter of 2020, with rampant fires reaching a 13-year high in June.

In the midst of a global pandemic that demonstrates humanity’s shared vulnerability – and our need to work together collectively in the face of crisis – we must begin to understand that what we do to our ecosystems, we do to ourselves.

Indeed, the meaning of ecocide is fully encapsulated by its etymology. It comes from the Greek oikos (home) and the Latin cadere (to kill). Ecocide is literally “killing our home”.

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(AU) Game, Set, Match: Calling Time On Climate Inaction

Sport is a major part of Australian culture.

Every weekend, millions of Australians participate in, watch or discuss sport.

Sporting legends are idolised and our national teams and clubs are revered.

But Australia’s summer of sport is under threat from climate change.

Driven largely by the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas), climate change is worsening extreme weather events and disrupting Australian sport.

Game, Set, Match: Calling Time on Climate Inaction describes how climate change is affecting sport in Australia, and how sport can also be a powerful force for change.

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Key Findings

1. Australia’s summer of sport is under threat from climate change.

Climate change, driven largely by the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas), is worsening extreme weather events and disrupting Australian sport.
Australia’s summer sports calendar, which includes Big Bash League (BBL) cricket, AFLW games, the Tour Down Under cycling race, the Australian Open tennis, A and W-League football and community sports is threatened by climate change.

2. By 2040, heatwaves in Sydney and Melbourne could reach highs of 50°C, threatening the viability of summer sport as it is currently played.

Heatwaves are becoming hotter, lasting longer and occurring more often.
While 2010-2019 was the warmest decade over the past century, it is also likely to be the coolest decade of the century ahead.
2019 was Australia’s warmest year on record, with 33 days that exceeded 39°C – more than the total number between 1960 and 2018.
If global emissions continue to increase, Australian sports will have to make significant changes, such as playing summer games in the evening or switching schedules to spring and autumn.

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3. No athlete, whether an elite professional or a community player, is immune to our increasingly hot summers, which are a health hazard for those playing and watching sport.

Climate change is driving longer and more intense bushfire seasons, exposing athletes and spectators to dangerous air pollution, for which professional players are a particularly sensitive group.
Many athletes and spectators have fallen seriously ill following exposure to extreme heat in recent years. For example:
- Tennis: Temperatures at the Australian Open Tennis in Melbourne have repeatedly hit +40°C with games suspended and players taken to hospital. In 2014, almost 1,000 spectators were treated for heat exhaustion.
- Triathlon: On 2 March 2016, temperatures reached 34°C in Penrith during the NSW All Schools Triathlon Championships at the nearby Sydney International Regatta Centre. Paramedics were called following reports of nine people suffering from heat exposure during the event.
- Cricket: In January 2018, at the Sydney Ashes Test, England’s captain Joe Root was hospitalised as air temperature hit 41.9°C. In December 2019, New Zealand cancelled part of a warmup match in Melbourne because the temperature was forecast to reach 45°C.
Prolonged drought in Australia has resulted in an increase in shoulder injuries due to sport being played on harder, rain-parched grounds. For example, shoulder injuries increased by 23 percent in 2001 (during the Millennium Drought), compared to 1994 levels.

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4. Australian sport is worth $50 billion to the economy and employs over 220,000 people, but governments are not adequately prepared for escalating climate risks.

None of Australia’s major sports plans, including the Federal Government’s first national sports plan, discuss or tackle the implications of climate change on sport.
Climate disruption is a growing cost for sport in Australia, including infrastructure maintenance and rising insurance premiums.
Elite venues may be able to afford expensive upgrades, but local venues will not.
Australia can help protect sport by becoming part of the global solution to climate change by rapidly and deeply reducing its greenhouse gas emissions and transitioning to renewable energy and storage.

5. Sport is a contributor to climate change, but it can also be an integral part of the solution.

Sporting clubs and codes contribute to climate change but can rapidly cut their own greenhouse gas emissions by changing the way they build venues, power events, travel and by cutting waste.
Athletes and other sporting leaders can become powerful advocates for change, both within sport and outside of it, by using their star appeal to educate and influence others.
Professional and community sports can switch sponsorship from fossil fuel-backed companies to ones that invest in climate solutions.
All sporting codes and leagues should have science-based, regularly updated policies that cover heat, bushfire smoke and other extreme weather events to protect athletes and spectators.

Let's go for gold on climate action

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(AU) Joe Biden's Climate Envoy Admits US And Australia Not On 'Same Page'

The Guardian - Daniel Hurst | Adam Morton

John Kerry’s comments, including a call for a faster exit from coal power, add to pressure on the Coalition to do more

John Kerry made mention of Australia and the part it played at a deadlocked 2019 climate conference during an extended conversation with Al Gore posted online. Photograph: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

Joe Biden’s climate envoy, John Kerry, has publicly acknowledged “differences” between the United States and Australia in tackling the climate crisis while calling for a faster exit from coal-fired power.

Kerry’s comments highlighted the increased pressure on Australia to commit to do more before this year’s Glasgow climate conference even though the Morrison government maintains it is “playing its part”.

With the Coalition currently wrestling with internal divisions on whether to formally commit to net zero by 2050, a spokesperson for the minister for emissions reduction, Angus Taylor, said the US agreed with Australia on the need for “practical solutions”.

Taylor’s spokesperson declined to specifically address Kerry’s view that “coal has got to phase down faster”.

Kerry, the former US secretary of state who is now leading Biden’s effort to drive urgent action on the climate crisis, has echoed other global leaders in describing the 2020s as a “make or break” decade in which all countries needed to cut emissions more quickly.

In an event last weekend marking his country’s return to the Paris agreement, Kerry said the US needed to regain credibility by adopting a strong new target for 2030, due to be announced in April. He said he would work “in a collegiate manner with other countries around the world”, before specifically mentioning Australia and the part it played at a deadlocked 2019 climate conference.

“For instance, I’ve talked to Australia – we had a very good conversation,” Kerry said in an extended conversation with former US vice-president Al Gore posted online over the weekend.

“Australia has had some differences with us, we’ve not been able to get on the same page completely. That was one of the problems in Madrid as you recall, together with Brazil.”

That was a reference to COP25 in Madrid in December 2019, when parties to the Paris agreement were aiming to agree on the rulebook for implementing it. Australia was accused by some countries of blocking progress when it refused to drop a plan to use controversial carbon credits from the unrelated Kyoto Protocol to meet its 2030 Paris target.

Brazil was also accused of preventing agreement through its insistence that it be allowed a different type of Kyoto-era credits that led to accusations it was “double-counting” emissions cuts.

Laurence Tubiana, a former French environment minister and architect of the Paris accord, at the time described using carryover credits as “cheating” and said Australia seemed to be “willing in a way to destroy the whole system”.

Over recent months, Australia has attempted to pivot on climate policy, saying it no longer expects to need to use the credits to reach its 2030 emissions pledge.

Scott Morrison has also argued he hopes to achieve net zero as soon as possible, preferably by 2050, but has not explicitly committed to it. The suggestion he might triggered outrage from some from Nationals MPs but an increasing number of Australia’s trading partners have embraced the goal.

When approached for a response to Kerry’s comments, Taylor’s spokesperson said the pair had “a friendly and positive conversation” in late January.

The spokesperson said Australia welcomed the Biden administration’s return to the Paris agreement “and the increasing global focus on the practical solutions that will make global net zero achievable”.

Taylor’s spokesperson said it aligned with Australia’s technology investment roadmap, which had been discussed between Biden and Morrison.

“Australia is playing its part in the global response to climate change by meeting and beating our international targets,” Taylor’s spokesperson said. “When we make commitments, we meet them. Action and outcomes are what matter, and our track record is one that all Australians can be proud of.”

Australia has been criticised for setting targets that ignored what scientists say is necessary. Its first target under the Kyoto Protocol allowed an 8% increase in emissions, and its second target was a 5% cut.

Before joining the Paris agreement, the then Abbott government was advised by the Climate Change Authority that it should set a 2030 target equivalent to at least a 45% and up to a 65% cut compared with 2005 emissions levels. It instead opted for between 26% and 28%.

Official projections released in December suggested the Morrison government was not on track to meet this goal under existing measurable policies. The former finance minister, Mathias Cormann, has been forced to defend the government’s climate record during his current campaign to lead the OECD.

In the weekend event, Kerry outlined the importance of increasing ambition on climate action “on a global basis” for “our children’s sake and our grandkids’ sake”.

He noted the US, China, the European Union and India together accounted for more than 60% of emissions, and none of those nations was doing enough, but that also applied to “many others at lower levels of emission”.

The Glasgow climate conference in November will be preceded by Biden hosting a leaders’ climate meeting on 22 April. Both aim to significantly increase international resolve to address the problem.

Kerry said the US summit would focus on getting the 17 nations that produce the vast majority of emissions, including Australia, to commit to reaching net zero by 2050 and setting a roadmap this decade that would explain how they would accelerate action to keep alive the possibility of limiting global heating to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.

The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, discussed climate policy with his Australian, Japanese and Indian counterparts in last week’s Quad talks.

Biden said late last week countries could “no longer delay or do the bare minimum to address climate change” because it was “a global, existential crisis, and we’ll all suffer the consequences if we fail”.

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