15/06/2021

(AU The Guardian) Michael McCormack Says Coal Here To Stay As G7 Countries Commit To Decarbonised Power By The 2030s

The Guardian - 

Coal ‘pays for a lot of barista machines’ for inner-city cafes and will play a part for many years to come, acting prime minister says

As G7 summit commits members to phasing out government support for fossil fuel, acting prime minister, Michael McCormack, says coal is here to stay and ‘we will decide what’s in Australia’s best interests’. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP

The deputy prime minister Michael McCormack has declared coal will be around for “many more years to come” as trade ministers from Australia and the UK launch a last-ditch effort to resolve lingering disputes before announcing in-principle support for a bilateral trade deal.

McCormack’s bullish comments on the future of coal on Monday follow an agreement by the G7 over the weekend to end government support for coal-fired power stations by the end of the year. Scott Morrison attended the G7 summit in Cornwall.

Morrison is now due in London for a separate program with the British prime minister Boris Johnson, with trade an important focus. The expectation is Morrison and Johnson will commit in-principle to a new bilateral free trade deal between the UK and Australia when they meet on Tuesday afternoon.

Scott Morrison inks G7 deals with Japan and Germany to develop lower-emissions technology.  Read more

But the free trade agreement is not yet a done deal. Trade ministers are continuing efforts to resolve disputes about agriculture and labour market mobility.

Dan Tehan and his British counterpart Liz Truss are due to meet again on Monday night in an effort to clear remaining obstacles.

Morrison and Tehan have been signalling consistently they will not sign a deal that contains insufficient market access for Australian producers.

On Sunday, Australia’s trade minister said it was in the interests of both countries to reach a “comprehensive deal”. But Tehan said if agreement wasn’t reached by Tuesday “we’ll take more time” because “we have to get this right”.

The climate crisis took centre stage on the final day of the G7 summit in Cornwall.

But Morrison stuck to his preferred approach of focusing on technologies such as hydrogen, rather than signing up to more ambitious medium or long-term emission reduction commitments. Over the weekend Australia signed deals with Japan and Germany to develop technology to help reach “a net zero emissions future”.

Australia’s lack of ambition is now very obviously at odds with actions being undertaken by other major developed economies ahead of the Cop26 in Glasgow late this year.

The weekend G7 summit communique committed members to “accelerating efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions and keep the 1.5C global warming threshold within reach, strengthening adaptation and resilience to protect people from the impacts of climate change, halting and reversing biodiversity loss, mobilising finance and leveraging innovation to reach these goals”.

G7 countries committed to achieving “an overwhelmingly decarbonised power system in the 2030s” within their jurisdictions, and phasing out “new direct government support for international carbon-intensive fossil fuel energy as soon as possible”.

The communique also noted that continued global investment in unabated coal power generation was incompatible with keeping 1.5C within reach. It said international investments in unabated coal “must stop now, and we commit now to an end to new direct government support for unabated international thermal coal power generation by the end of 2021”.

Asked about the G7 stance on Monday, the nationals leader Michael McCormack, who is the acting prime minister while Morrison is in the UK and France, told reporters the Morrison government would “do things based on what’s right for Australia”.

Scott Morrison denied one-on-one with Joe Biden as Boris Johnson joins meeting. Read more
“We will do things based on what’s right for Australian households and factories and farms so that they don’t have to pay any more for their electricity than what they otherwise should have,” the acting prime minister said.

Even though Australia is a signatory to the Paris agreement which requires global action to limit global warming to well below 2C, preferably to 1.5C, compared to pre-industrial levels, McCormack said it was “all well and good for other countries in the world to have these outcomes and these determinations – that’s for them to decide”.

“We will decide what’s best for Australia in Australia’s national interest,” McCormack said, adding the government wanted to “make sure that we’ve got a manufacturing sector in Australia”.

McCormack said coal had “a part to play for many more years to come”. He noted export earnings from the coal industry paid for “a lot” of schools and hospitals.

“It pays for a lot of barista machines that produces the coffee that inner-city people sit and talk about the death of coal,” the acting prime minister said.

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(AU Crikey) Who Stared Who Down? G7 Meeting Leaves Australia Out In The Cold On Climate

Crikey - 

Boris Johnson and Scott Morrison at the G7 summit (Image: EPA/Neil Hall)
While mainstream media outlets were claiming in advance that Scott Morrison was “ready to stare down G7 on climate change” and “will warn G7 nations not to put carbon tariffs on trade“, the outcome of the G7 summit only served to demonstrate how wholly out of touch Australia is with international climate action.

The G7 communique was criticised by climate action advocates for being far too weak; Greenpace UK insisted it “reheated old promises” and that Boris Johnson had “peppered his plan with hypocrisy, rather than taking real action to tackle the climate and nature emergency” (and that was nothing compared to the criticism on vaccines).

So what did the communique commit to? The G7 “seeks to limit the rise in global temperatures to 1.5 degrees” and “net zero no later than 2050, halving our collective emissions over the two decades to 2030”.

That was backed by a commitment “to achieve an overwhelmingly decarbonised power system in the 2030s and to actions to accelerate this. Internationally, we commit to aligning official international financing with the global achievement of net zero GHG emissions no later than 2050 and for deep emissions reductions in the 2020s”.

And given “continued global investment in unabated coal power generation is incompatible with keeping 1.5°C within reach we stress that international investments in unabated coal must stop now”.

$3b-plus pumped into fossil fuels this year. Is that ‘adapting to climate change’? Read More
Morrison — despite months of headlines to the contrary from the press gallery — continues to reject any date for net zero at all. Australia’s emissions reduction commitment  — which Morrison falsely says we will “meet and beat” — is just 26% by 2030, half that of the G7.

And his government continues to support new coal-fired power — via a handout to Shine Energy to investigate a new coal-fired power plant, its offer to donor Trevor St Baker’s Delta Energy to fund an upgrade of the Vales Point coal-fired plant, and its attempts to force owners to keep unviable and unreliable coal plants operating.

Thus Australia is positioned as far behind even a watered-down, inadequate G7 commitment to accelerate decarbonisation, including shutting down coal-fired power and achieving 50% emissions reduction by 2030.

Rather than “staring down the G7”, whatever that means, Morrison’s only response was to announce a partnership with Japan — another coal straggler — on “decarbonisation through technology”, in which the two countries agreed to “collaborate and coordinate together”.

Sadly, Morrison couldn’t escape reality on this either — the statement pointedly notes that Japan has committed to net zero by 2050. For those keeping count, Japan is also committed to a 46% reduction in emissions from 2013 levels by 2030. We can’t even keep up with the laggards.

The other press release was the announcement of a “Declaration of Intent between the Government of Australia and the Government of Germany on the Australia-Germany Hydrogen Accord” to fund some hydrogen trials.

Hydrogen is one of the government’s “good” technologies to achieve emissions reduction, along with carbon capture and, if they could ever get their way, “small modular” nuclear power.

“Good” in that it is commercially unviable, will take far too long to make a difference on climate even in the unlikely event it is successful, and will enable the major fossil fuel industries to continue emitting, and donating, for decades to come. And as opposed to “bad” technologies that exist now, are proven to work, are cheaper than all fossil fuel systems, and which don’t donate to the Coalition.

The two releases serve to illustrate a basic rule of thumb about the Morrison government — whenever there’s a significant policy challenge, the answer is always a media release, not substantive action.

Morrison, meanwhile, couldn’t even get a one-on-one meeting with President Biden, who insisted Boris Johnson be in the room with him. Perhaps Biden remembers that Morrison literally campaigned for Donald Trump. Or perhaps he sees little point in wasting time with a man so resolutely stuck in the past.

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(UK UNILAD) David Attenborough Warns Humans ‘On Verge Of Destabilising The Entire Planet’

UNILAD - Cameron Frew

PA Images/NASA
Sir David Attenborough told world leaders that humans are on the ‘verge of destabilising the entire planet’ if we don’t take appropriate action on climate change.

Leaders from the G7 group – UK, US, Canada, Japan, France, Germany and Italy – have been meeting to discuss the pandemic, vaccines, Brexit and the environment.


Sir David Attenborough urges G7 leaders to prioritise tackling the climate emergency
The renowned documentarian and naturalist has been vocal on global warming in recent years. Ahead of the summit, he warned of the dying ‘natural world’ and how crucial the coming years will be in helping Earth recover from the strain humans have placed it under. Ahead of Boris Johnson, Joe Biden, Angela Merkel and others gathering in Cornwall, Attenborough said: ‘The natural world today is greatly diminished. That is undeniable. Our climate is warming fast. That is beyond doubt. Our societies and nations are unequal and that is sadly plain to see.’

‘But the question science forces us to address specifically in 2021 is whether as a result of these intertwined facts we are on the verge of destabilising the entire planet. If that is so, then the decisions we make this decade – in particular the decisions made by the most economically advanced nations – are the most important in human history,’ he added. As per BBC News, the leaders are committing to phase out the funding of coal plants, as well as offering up to £2 billion to developing countries stop using fossil fuels.

However, Teresa Anderson from Action Aid said: ‘Rich countries have so far failed to deliver on climate finance pledges. The majority of what has been provided so far has been in the form of loans, which are pushing vulnerable countries further into debt and poverty.’

Attenborough will serve as People’s Advocate at the COP26 conference later this year, where firmer financial plans on climate change are expected.

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