(AU SMH) United Nations Set To Decide Climate Claims By Torres Strait Islanders Against Australia

Sydney Morning Herald - Anthony Galloway

As world leaders met in south-west England to discuss future climate change commitments, priest Stanley Marama didn’t need any reminding about the reality of rising tides.

Less than 100 metres from the Anglican church on Boigu Island in the Torres Strait sits a sacred place where the local population conducted ceremonies for thousands of years. But not any more - it is now completely under water.

Thursday Island resident Stanley Cook remembers the time when him and his elders would be able to predict the weather and tides by the size of the moon. Now he believes this is no longer possible due to climate change.

Boigu is one of Australia’s most northerly islands, just a five-minute boat ride from the Papua New Guinea mainland.

Marama says rising sea levels have already taken much from the low-lying islands in the northern part of the Torres Strait, including the sacred site on Boigu.

“That’s the place our forefathers and warriors camped at and spied from. They spied at the warriors from New Guinea,” Marama says. “There’s no chance to get it back.”

Australians are probably more aware of the rising tide issues facing Pacific Island nations than they are about the situation confronting their own country - but the existential threat facing some Torres Strait islands is just as stark.

Marama, 53, now fears the island’s cemetery will be completely submerged in the coming years unless the current trend can be stopped.

Reverend Stanley Marama (centre) during the Mabo Day event on Boigu Island in the Torres Strait on June 3. Credit: Kate Geraghty

He says a recently constructed sea wall will help stem the tide, but only for so long.

“The sea wall is only a Band-Aid, the water is still coming in. And I want to see from our perspective the water stop completely from coming into our community.”

Marama is one of eight claimants in a landmark action submitted to the United Nations, which claims the Australian government has violated their fundamental human rights by failing to adequately address climate change.

As the UN’s Human Rights Committee prepares to hand down its findings as early as next month, members of the Torres Strait Eight want the federal government to act now.

Dereece Cook swings on a rope tied to a tree at his home on the foreshore of Thursday Island watched by his brother Traquiin Cook. Credit: Kate Geraghty

Marama says he fears the 270 residents of Boigu Island will be forced to relocate within his lifetime.

“We need the government to help us - we don’t want to lose our lifestyle, culture and tradition. And we don’t want to lose our ancestral remains in the cemetery,” he says. “It worries me because the government has to do something about it and help us. We are a part of Australia.”

Donniella Warria aged 9 years old plays on the Bach Beach as the sun sets on Thursday Island. Credit: Kate Geraghty

The Australian government is rejecting the complaint on the grounds that it cannot be held individually responsible for climate change because it is a global problem.

Southeast of Boigu lies Warrior Island - or “Tudu” Island in the traditional language.

No one lives on Warrior Island anymore, but there are graves situated throughout which are now being flooded.

Ned David, 55, lives on the main administrative hub of Thursday Island, but his family is from Warrior. He may have been one of the last people to properly live on the island - when he camped there for four months in the late 1990s.

“A lot of our ancestors are buried in part of the island and they get washed away,” he says.

David, chair of the Gur A Baradharaw Kod (GBK) Sea and Land Council, which is the coordinating body for the traditional owners of the Torres Strait region, was integral in organising the UN claim.

Weeks after the 29th anniversary of the landmark Mabo decision in the High Court, David says the history of Torres Strait Islanders shows they are regularly forced to turn to the justice system to get their message across.

“I just think we need to shine a light on the First Nations people who are more vulnerable than any other group in Australia. I sincerely believe that,” he says.

David would like Prime Minister Scott Morrison to visit the Torres Strait to discuss climate change and rising sea levels saying he would prefer a “collaborative” approach, rather than an “adversarial” one.

He says Australia needs to commit to a target to achieve net zero emissions by 2050, but his islands face a more immediate problem.

Fishermen in the Torres Strait such as Stanley Cook Jnr say they have noticed a significant change in the weather patterns in their lifetime. Credit: Kate Geraghty

As a child, David remembers body surfing every afternoon on Bach Beach, on Thursday Island. His children don’t believe him.

“As I got older we started noticing stuff - the northwesterly, the monsoon, it didn’t seem to gel with how we grew up as kids,” he says.

Thursday resident Stanley Cook snr, a keen fisherman and gardener, says when he was a child the rainy season was October, November and December and it came without fail.

Stanley Cook prepares to dig a hole to plant taro in the backyard of his home on the coastline on Thursday Island. Credit: Kate Geraghty

“Now we get the rain late, January or February. But it’s all over the place,” he says. “Before that, we could tell the wind, the tides and the weather - now we can’t. We’re just guessing.“

At the moment, the rising tide is the only constant.

Links

• (AU ABC) For These Torres Strait Islanders, Climate Change Is Already Here — And They're Urging The Government To Do More
• (AU) Australia Asks UN To Dismiss Torres Strait Islanders' Claim Climate Change Affects Their Human Rights
• The Torres Strait Islanders Taking 'World-First Climate Change Case' to UN
• 'The island is being eaten': how climate change is threatening the Torres Strait
• 'It’s our right to be here': the Torres Strait Islanders fighting to save their homes from a rising sea
• Torres Strait Islanders take climate change complaint to the United Nations
• While my island nation sinks, Australia is doing nothing to solve climate change
• Torres Strait doctors issue call to arms over climate change impact on Indigenous health

(AU The Guardian) Wealthy Countries’ Climate Shift Leaves Australia Isolated From Closest Allies

The Guardian - Adam Morton

While the G7 calls for a ‘green revolution’ to deal with an ‘existential crisis’, it is no clearer if Scott Morrison will formally embrace a net zero target

The Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, with his British counterpart, Boris Johnson, at the G7 summit in Cornwall on the weekend. Photograph: Hollie Adams/EPA

In an Australian context, the climate message from the weekend G7 summit is clear: the world’s biggest and richest democracies are acknowledging what the science demands and pledging to act in a way they haven’t before. The contrast with the debate in Canberra is growing.

The commitments from the G7 have come later than they should have. Activists are understandably sceptical about whether their actions will rise to meet the leaders’ words, and critical of the failure to announce long-promised climate funding to help developing countries. Caution ahead of the major UN summit in Glasgow in November, known as Cop26, is justified and necessary.

But the focus has shifted remarkably in recent months to the need for urgent action. While many questions are still to be answered, major countries including the US and Japan have joined the EU and Britain in supporting green proposals that would have been difficult to imagine a few months ago.

Michael McCormack says coal here to stay as G7 countries commit to decarbonised power by the 2030s. Read more

This doesn’t apply to Australia, one of four guest nations at the talks.

When Scott Morrison was asked in a post-summit media conference about a G7 declaration that public financing of unabated coal-fired power must stop this year, his first instinct was to stress that his government was not a signatory (he later added it had no plans to put money into coal generation at home).

Before the summit, some in the British government had hope that the guests – which also included India, South Korea and South Africa – might sign up to a “G7+” communique that strengthened the global climate push.

Any thought of that was dropped in the lead-up after the gap on climate between the members and their guests widened as the major economies became more ambitious.

The G7 communique is worth a read. The leaders of the UK, US, Japan, Germany, France, Italy and Canada describe climate change as an “existential threat”. They have committed to collectively cut emissions roughly in half between 2010 and 2030 – in the ballpark of what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggested developed countries would need to do to keep a post-industrial age temperature rise of 1.5C within reach.

They say dealing with the problem requires a “green revolution” that involves not only cutting emissions but funding global adaptation, halting and reversing biodiversity loss and creating jobs through both “policy and technological transformation”. The pledge on net zero emissions is now to reach it “as soon as possible and by 2050 at the latest”.

It means significant action before 2030 is vital. All G7 governments have increased their targets in recent months, reflecting a pledge in the Paris agreement to ratchet up commitments. The emissions reductions promised by the US, UK and EU are now double that proposed by the Morrison government. More policies are promised before Cop26.

While the rhetoric at the summit avoided the implicit criticism of recent months – when Morrison was refused a speaking slot at a British and French-run global ambition climate summit and described as being not on “the same page” on the issue by the Biden administration – it has left Australia more isolated from its closest allies.

Morrison did not increase the country’s emissions reduction commitments or promise action that would cut CO₂ anytime soon. He continues to lean hard on debunked claims that Australia is doing more than other countries and suggests international allies have a history of not living up to climate commitments.

The latter point is repeated despite expert analysis finding that, in most cases, it isn’t true. Until recently, the real issue has been a spectacular lack of ambition in countries making commitments, not them failing to live up to what was promised. Australia is still stuck in the lack of ambition phase.

It bears repeating: the emissions reductions since 2005 that the Morrison government likes to boast of overwhelmingly happened when Labor was in power – mostly due to a drop in forest destruction in Queensland and a decline in native forestry.

Cheap solar and wind are having some impact in electricity generation despite a lack of federal policy to support them, but coal still provides about two-thirds of power, and there has been no structural shift away from fossil fuels in transport, industry and mining.

The government is increasing subsidies to gas, including hundreds of millions of dollars allocated in last month’s budget, despite the International Energy Agency warning the world should no longer be investing in new gas fields if it hopes to keep open a “narrow window” to limit global heating to 1.5C.

Morrison is due to give an opening address (by video) for an oil and gas industry conference hosted by the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association in Perth on Tuesday.

The area the government is in step with the G7 on climate is in its support for technology. The communique promised a “technology-driven transition to net zero” – language that appears to line up with the coalition’s “technology not taxes” approach.

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

Australia is working on agreements to develop clean technology with several countries, including deals with Germany and Japan announced over the weekend.

The former appears more developed, including a $50m taxpayer-funded commitment to work together on green hydrogen, an area that the Germans have already backed with billions of dollars.

The Japanese deal appears focused on reducing emissions from fossil fuel production rather than backing zero-emissions technology.

Neither should be dismissed – new commercial solutions will be vital – but, with no timeframes or emissions reduction goals attached, they are hard to assess.

Meanwhile, green solutions already exist in many areas, notably electricity generation, transport, industrial efficiency, and commercial and residential heating and cooling. The G7 communique acknowledges this in emphasising the need for policies that cut emissions now in these and other areas.

Among the questions left after Morrison’s G7 appearance is whether the government will join the 100-plus countries that have already set a net zero emissions target for 2050.

For months, he has strongly resisted growing international pressure for Australia to do more, saying Australia will set its own path. There is no evidence that has changed.

But the prime minister’s language continues to evolve in a way that suggests he understands the world has moved beyond a point where a 2050 net zero goal without anything to back it up is enough.

Speaking after the summit, Morrison told reporters it was already “very clear that we are moving towards net zero” and the “new energy economy is coming”.

Perhaps most interestingly, he volunteered he had a “very, very, very informative discussion” with the Italian prime minister, Mario Draghi, who he had previously met when Morrison was treasurer and Draghi the head of the European Central Bank.

He said they discussed “the direction of financial markets, bond markets and how they are working and pricing in and positioning for the new energy economy” and concluded “they’re economic realities that Australia has to address”.

One interpretation of this is the prime minister increasingly understands the world is moving pretty fast and recognises that can’t be ignored forever. But what he plans to do about it in the short term, if anything, remains a mystery.

Links

• Wealthy countries’ climate shift leaves Australia isolated from closest allies
• Why is Australia building a $600m gas power plant as world experts warn against fossil fuels?
• Australian governments ‘shooting themselves in the foot’ with EV policies
• The 2021 federal budget was light on climate and environment measures. But here’s what you should know
• Scott Morrison says gas will ‘always’ be a major contributor to Australia’s prosperity
• Rich countries urged to come up with detailed plans to cut emissions
• Michael McCormack says coal here to stay as G7 countries commit to decarbonised power by the 2030s
• Scott Morrison inks G7 deals with Japan and Germany to develop lower-emissions technology

(AU The Conversation) Even Without New Fossil Fuel Projects, Global Warming Will Still Exceed 1.5℃. But Renewables Might Make It Possible

The Conversation - Sven Teske | Sarah Niklas

Shutterstock

Authors Sven Teske is Research Director, Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney Sarah Niklas is Research Consultant, Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney

The International Energy Agency (IEA) last month made global headlines when it declared there is no room for new fossil fuel investment if we’re to avoid catastrophic climate change.

However, our new research suggests the horse may have already bolted. We found even if no new fossil fuel projects were approved anywhere in the world, carbon emissions set to be released from existing projects will still push global warming over the dangerous 1.5℃ threshold.

Specifically, even with no new fossil fuel expansion, global emissions would be 22% too high to stay within 1.5℃ by 2025, and 66% too high by 2030.

However, keeping global warming under 1.5℃ is still achievable with rapid deployment of renewables. Our research found solar and wind can supply the world’s energy demand more than 50 times over.

The stunning potential of wind and solar

While our findings were alarming, they also give us a new reason to be hopeful.

We analysed publicly available oil, gas and coal extraction data, and calculated the future production volume. We worked under the assumption no new fossil fuel extraction projects would be developed, and all existing projects would see production declining at standard industry rates.

We found fossil fuel projects already in the pipeline will, by 2030, produce 35% more oil and 69% more coal than what’s consistent with a pathway towards a 1.5℃ temperature rise.

Fossil fuels account for over 75% of carbon dioxide emissions. Shutterstock

Fossil fuels are the main driver of climate change, accounting for more than 75% of carbon dioxide emissions.

Continuing to expand this sector will not only be catastrophic for the climate, but also for the world’s economy as it locks in infrastructure that will become stranded assets.

Ultimately, it’s not enough to simply keep fossil fuels in the ground. To meet our climate goals under the Paris Agreement, we must phase down existing production.

Solar and wind power technologies are already market ready and cost competitive. And as our analysis confirms, they’re ready to be scaled up to meet the energy demands of every person on the planet.

We mapped all the potential areas where wind and solar infrastructure can be built, and the energy potential across six continents.

Even after applying a set of robust, conservative estimates that take environmental safeguards, land constraints and technical feasibility into account, we found that solar and wind energy could meet the world’s energy demand from 2019 — 50 times over.

It’s clear we don’t need new fossil fuel development to ensure 100% energy access in the future.

Australia’s laggard status

In Australia, the Morrison government refuses to set new emissions reduction targets, and continues to fund new fossil fuel projects, such as a A$600 million gas plant in the New South Wales Hunter Valley.

Despite Australia’s laggard status on climate change, there are positive moves elsewhere around the world.

The Morrison government recently announced $600 million for a major new gas plant. AAP Image/Stefan Gosatti

The progress was evident ahead of the G7 summit this past weekend, where climate change was firmly on the agenda.

Ahead of the summit, environment ministers worldwide agreed to phase out overseas fossil fuel finance and end support for coal power.

And in recent weeks, three global fossil fuel giants – Shell, Chevron and ExxonMobil – faced legal and shareholder rebukes over their inadequate action on climate change.

Coming on top of all that, the IEA last month set out a comprehensive roadmap to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. It included a stark warning: no new fossil fuel projects should be approved.

Natural carbon storage is key

However, the IEA’s findings contradict our own on several fronts. We believe the IEA underestimated the very real potential of renewable energy and relied on problematic solutions to fill what it sees as a gap in meeting the carbon budget.

For example, the IEA suggests a sharp increase in bioenergy is required over the next 30 years.

This would require biofuels from energy plantations — planting crops (such as rapeseed) specifically for energy use.

But conservationists estimate the sustainable potential for biofuels is lower. They also say high volumes of bioenergy might interfere with land use for food production and protected nature conservation areas.

Our research found the exact opposite is needed: rapid phase out of deforestation and significant reforestation alongside the decarbonisation of the energy sector.

Bioenergy should be produced predominantly from agricultural and organic waste to remain carbon neutral.

Likewise, the IEA calls for an extreme expansion of carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects — where carbon dioxide emissions are captured at the source, and then pumped and stored deep in the ground.

In its roadmap, the IEA expects CCS projects to grow from capturing 40 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (as is currently the case), to 1,665 million tonnes by 2030.

This is quite unrealistic, because it means betting on expensive, unproven technology that’s being deployed very slowly and is often plagued by technical issues.

Establishing natural carbon sinks should be prioritised instead, such as keeping forest, mangrove and seagrass ecosystems better intact to draw carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Phasing out early

As a wealthy country, Australia is better placed than most to weather any economic disruption from the energy transition.

Our research shows Australia should phase out fossil fuels early and urgently. The Australian government should also ensure communities and people reliant on fossil fuel industries are helped through the transition.

We must also support poorer countries highly dependent on fossil fuels, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region.

There is new international momentum for climate action, and the future of the fossil fuel industry looks increasingly dire. The technologies to make the transition are ready and waiting – now all that’s needed is political will.

Links

• 4 reasons why a gas-led economic recovery is a terrible, naïve idea
• Four seismic climate wins show Big Oil, Gas and Coal are running out of places to hide
• International Energy Agency warns against new fossil fuel projects. Guess what Australia did next?
• Tracking the transition: the ‘forgotten’ emissions undoing the work of Australia's renewable energy boom
• IEA Net Zero by 2050 - A Roadmap for the Global Energy Sector
• Fossil Fuel Exit Strategy
• Solar And Wind Costs Continue To Fall As Power Becomes Cleaner
• Renewable Energy Resource Assessment