(AU Canberra Times) Australia Can No Longer Bluff Its Neighbours On Climate Change

Canberra Times - Gordon Peake | Siobhan McDonnell

A flood-damaged road in Dili on April 4. Picture: Gabinete Secretario Estado Protecao Civil

Authors Dr Gordon Peake is a visitor at the ANU's School of Global Governance and host of the Memorandum of Understanding podcast on international development. Dr Siobhan McDonnell is a senior lecturer at the ANU's Crawford School of Public Policy and a negotiator on climate change for the Republic of Vanuatu.

Aerial shots of Dili after this month's Easter Sunday floods made Timor-Leste's capital look like Venice, with brownish waterways where once there had been roads.

The flood has caused at least 36 deaths, more than 14,000 people are displaced and there is significant damage to infrastructure. Some parts of the country are still cut off. With COVID-19 now circulating in the community, things are only likely to get worse.

The Timor-Leste government has declared a state of calamity and is calling for international help. Australia has pledged to assist one of our nearest neighbours, just as it helped out in Vanuatu this time last year when Tropical Cyclone Harold struck. 

But there's a mordant irony here: the Dili floods and the increasing intensity and regularity of tropical cyclones buffeting the Pacific are direct consequences of climate change.

In helping out after the fact, Australia is like a firefighter holding a hose with one hand and a box of matches in another. 

It's only going to get worse. With global temperatures already having risen more than 1 degree since pre-industrial levels, climate science predicts the Pacific will experience both increases in the frequency and intensity of extreme rainfall causing flooding, as well as an increase in the intensity of tropical cyclones.

Increasingly, our nearest neighbours are calling Australia's bluff and are asking for more than aid after the disaster. They are asking that Australia make meaningful commitments to addressing climate change.

Australian policy towards climate change is based on triage. Throughout the Pacific, and in Timor-Leste, Australia is ploughing big money into "resilience programs" aimed at "climate adaptation", with buzzwordy names such as "Community-based Climate Change Action Grants" and "Building Resilience to a Changing Climate and Environment" - referred to as BRACCE, an ominously accurate acronym. 

Australia is presently spending $50 million on an Australian Humanitarian Partnership intended to make communities bearing the brunt of climate change "Disaster READY". The organisation's website is filled with glowing tributes from cheerful villagers. 

In Vanuatu, as we talked about in the Memorandum of Understanding podcast earlier this week, much of this work involves establishing community disaster and climate change committees (CDCCCs), which perform a Herculean list of tasks in preparing for disasters, managing the relief effort and engaging in climate change adaptation work. These village committee members perform these roles unpaid, and largely unrecognised.

But when the rains start to fall and the winds start to lash, surprise surprise: villagers find they aren't so "Disaster READY" after all. It would be hard to conceive what the villagers and city-dwellers of Timor-Leste were meant to do to be resilient in the face of the large-scale flooding that submerged whole sectors of the city. 

In Vanuatu, and elsewhere in the Pacific, the impact of repeat category 5 cyclones over a five-year timespan meant the rebuilding after Tropical Cyclone Pam was barely completed before Tropical Cyclone Harold hit.

The scale of these weather events is beyond any local-level resilience and risk-management training, all of which focuses the attention on communities to solve these problems, which are fundamentally related to the geopolitics of climate emissions.

The American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote: "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function."

By that criteria, governments such as Australia have the most exceptional "intelligence": helping out with the aid and climate change programming in the region while simultaneously being the major carbon emitter.

Increasingly, Pacific leadership is calling Australia to account. In 2018, the Pacific Island Forum - the top-level gathering for all Pacific leaders - issued the Boe Declaration, which named climate change as the greatest security threat facing the region. 

This is not something that can be tackled with Australia's current package of support - resilience initiatives, increased defence co-operation and the opening of security colleges - or with diplomatic pussyfooting.

Australia can no longer bluff its way on climate change. It needs to offer more than Band-Aid solutions. Like the title of the Kainaki II Declaration, signed off by all Pacific leaders and Scott Morrison at an ill-tempered Pacific Island Forum meeting in Tuvalu in 2019, the region continues to call for "Urgent Climate Action Now". 

In the words of Vanuatu's opposition leader, Ralph Regenvanu, following the Tuvalu meeting: "In the context of the pressing climate threat that faces the Pacific, Australia must understand that relationships in the region are not just about the funding of projects ... the Pacific wants action on climate change and we want it now."

Australia's failure to act on climate change creates growing costs both at home and abroad. Cutesy-named initiatives aren't enough.

Links

• (AU) Australia Trails Pacific Nations In Fight Against Climate Change
• (AU) 'Sacrificial Canary': Fiji Warns Australia Not To Let Pacific Sink
• (AU) Pacific Leaders Condemn Australia's Climate Target As 'One Of The Weakest' In Open Letter
• 'Happy To Pay Lip Service': Fiji PM Calls Out Australia At UN Conference
• Scott Morrison's Climate Pact With The Pacific 'Family' Exposes The Hollowness Of His Words 
• Enele Sopoaga: Scott Morrison made us a promise. We desperately need him to keep it
• Ben Oquist: Australia's recovery has not been gas-fired
• 'The endgame': New net-zero target needed to avoid climate catastrophe
• Boe Declaration on Regional Security
• Fiftieth Pacific Islands Forum Communiqué (pdf)

(Reuters) Carbon Recyclers: How Ocean Ecosystems Help Fight Climate Change

Reuters

Ocean ecosystems play a critical role in carbon storage and oxygen generation. Some of these ecosystems are under threat; others remain unexplored. Understanding how key players such as whales, plankton, seagrasses and other forms of sea life interact sheds light on Earth’s carbon cycle.

Samuel Granados, Reuters

HOW CARBON IS CAPTURED

Key to life

Carbon, a chemical element, is found in all organic matter on Earth, from the plants and animals alive today to fossil fuels buried underground.

 It’s a key building block in the foods we eat, and in Earth’s most abundant greenhouse gases — carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4). Sunshine reflected off the planet’s surface back into the atmosphere causes those gas molecules to vibrate, warming the atmosphere. More CO2 leads to more warming, causing climate change.

The carbon cycle

Animals release carbon in the form of CO2 when they breathe, while plants take in that gas along with sunshine to produce energy, a process called photosynthesis.

Carbon dioxide also dissolves in seawater, where it is absorbed by seagrasses and algae. Seagrasses, which are plants adapted to live in the sea, are different from kelp and other algae in that they have roots, veins, leaves — and even flowers and fruits.

Seagrass meadows

Seagrass meadows serve as excellent breeding grounds for sea mammals and habitats for baby fish. But scientists have estimated the world’s seagrass stocks are declining by about 7% per year.

For millennia, Earth’s natural systems kept carbon levels balanced in the environment. Industrial activities including the burning of fossil fuels, however, have increased atmospheric CO2 levels by nearly 50%, from 280 parts per million just over a century ago to about 417 ppm today. 

That’s caused ocean CO2 levels to rise, making waters more acidic. But seagrasses can provide a buffer against that, too. By reducing the acidity of surrounding waters, seagrass ecosystems help protect animals with shells or external skeletons.

In the sunlit surface layer of oceans

Like land plants and seagrasses, microscopic marine algae known as phytoplankton also feed on CO2 and use photosynthesis to produce energy.

They live in both saltwater and freshwater environments, drifting freely with currents. And like plants, they also release oxygen, contributing at least 50% of the oxygen to Earth’s atmosphere.

CARBON IS TRANSFORMED

The food web

Seagrasses and phytoplankton near the ocean’s surface form the base of the aquatic food chain as they produce their own food, and then serve as food to others.

When carbon dioxide is consumed during photosynthesis, the carbon is incorporated in the phytoplankton and seagrasses, in the same way carbon is stored in the wood and leaves of a tree.

Carbon is then transferred to different layers of the ocean as primary producers are eaten by other organisms, which themselves reproduce, generate waste and die. 

Body parts

Some plankton combine calcium and dissolved carbonates to form a calcium carbonate protective coating like the shells and other body parts of coral, clams or oysters.

Whales for example can absorb tons of carbon as their diet consists mainly of plankton and tiny shrimplike crustaceans called krill. A single whale can absorb around 33 tonnes, or 33,000 kilograms, of CO2 on average in its life while a tree can take in up to 22 kgs of CO2 a year.

Nutrient circulation

Phytoplankton, like land plants, require nutrients such as nitrate or calcium. They also need iron, which is scarce in large areas of the ocean. But when whales defecate, they release iron as well as other important nutrients like nitrogen in their feces.

The liquid plume then stimulates phytoplankton growth, attracting fish and other organisms in a phenomenon known as the “whale pump”.

CARBON SINK

Recycle

Crustaceans and fish transport carbon and nutrients by feeding in surface waters during the day and then migrating down the water column and excreting in deeper waters at night.

 When critters die, the carbon and nutrients in their bodies either becomes part of the food chain or sinks to the ocean floor.

Carbon is stored

At the bottom of the ocean, bacteria works to decompose the carbon fixed in the soft and hard tissues of organisms. When mollusks and other carbon-rich organisms die, their shells and body parts can accumulate in ocean sediments, forming carbonate-rich deposits.

Locked away

Seagrasses also trap carbon in underwater sediments around their roots, stems and leaves.

The grasses store twice as much carbon per square mile as tropical forests do on land. As seagrasses die, the carbon gets locked into the sediment, where it can persist for thousands of years.

 While covering only 0.1% of the ocean bed, seagrass ecosystems account for 10%–18% of the carbon buried in the oceans, according to a January 2020 study in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science.

When whale carcasses sink to the seafloor, the carbon in their carcasses can create a feast for deep-sea critters and also be buried in marine sediments.

Ocean deposits are by far the biggest sinks of carbon on the planet. After long periods of time, these deposits can alter physically and chemically to become rocks and sediments themselves.

Links

• Humanity’s Immense Impact On Earth’s Climate And Carbon Cycle
• Has World Started To Take Climate Change Fight Seriously?
• (USA) Manhattan’s Famous Digital Clock Is Now Counting Down To Climate Disaster
• Carbon Footprints Are Hard To Understand — Here’s What You Need To Know
• The World’s Climate Catastrophe Worsens Amid The Pandemic
• (AU) Carbon Road Map Winning Few Friends, Little Influence
• Experts Urge Further Climate Action As Lockdown Triggers 'Extreme' Emissions Drop

(USA CBS News) Science Journalist Says Planet Is "On The Verge Of Another Mass Extinction"

CBS News - Grace Segers

Elizabeth Kolbert, staff writer for the New Yorker and author of the book "The Sixth Extinction," which won the Pulitzer Prize, warns that the planet is "on the verge of another mass extinction" in large part due to climate change.

   

There have been five major mass extinctions in the last 500 million years, Kolbert explained to CBS News chief Washington correspondent Major Garrett in an interview for this week's episode of "The Takeout" podcast.

The world is currently in a "moment of very elevated extinction rate," and if rates continue at this high level, the planet could face an event comparable to the extinction of the dinosaurs in the near future.

Listen to this episode on ART19

"We are on the verge of another major mass extinction, unless we change course dramatically," Kolbert said.

"The question of how much we're responsible for it is pretty much 100%. We have no reason to believe we would be seeing these elevated extinction rates were it not for all the ways we are changing the planet faster than other species can evolve, to adapt to."

Kolbert has written a new book, "Under A White Sky," which was published in February. The book looks at some of the people who are trying to reverse the effects of climate change by intervening in nature.

One example she cites is the group of scientists in Australia trying to create "super coral" that can resist a hotter climate. There have recently been instances of mass coral bleaching due to climate change.

"This is happening more and more as our impacts become greater and greater and the consequences become larger and larger," Kolbert said about human intervention in the natural world.

"We're increasingly faced with situations where the options aren't great."

Kolbert also noted that there are many benefits to the conditions that have exacerbated climate change, such as advancement in technology.

"It can be true that we as individuals and even that human society overall has benefited from technology, and it can also be true that there are many consequences that are dangerous," she said.

Kolbert added that the solutions to reversing some of the damage to the planet are not "going to be perfect."

"We have to realize that there's a lot of damage that's been done that's kind of baked into this system," Kolbert said.

"We can leave a serious problem for our kids or we can leave a disastrous problem for our kids."

Links

• Elizabeth Kolbert: The Sixth Extinction
• Elizabeth Kolbert: Under A White Sky
• Elizabeth Kolbert staff writer at The New Yorker
• Elizabeth Kolbert: Wikipedia
• ‘Rolling Stone Interview: Special Edition’ With Climate Journalist Elizabeth Kolbert