11/07/2021

(AU The Guardian) Australian Government To Appeal Ruling That It Must Protect Children From Climate Harm

The Guardian - 

Environment minister to challenge federal court judgment in a case against a NSW coalmine expansion brought by schoolchildren and nun
The environment minister Sussan Ley is to appeal a court ruling that she had a duty of care to protect Australia’s children from climate change harm caused by a coalmine expansion. Photograph: David Gray/Reuters
The environment minister, Sussan Ley, will appeal yesterday’s federal court declaration she has a duty of care to protect Australian children from climate harm that would be caused by the expansion of a coalmining project.

Some of the eight schoolchildren that brought the case to the federal court have reacted with dismay to the appeal, with one saying the government was now fighting for the right to cause them harm.

The historic judgment by Justice Mordecai Bromberg placed into law the minister’s responsibility after a case against the Vickery coalmine expansion was brought by the eight schoolchildren and a nun.

The children had tried to force an injunction, stopping Ley from approving the expansion plans for Whitehaven Coal’s project near Boggabri, New South Wales. The minister has still to make a decision on the plans.

In the declaration, Bromberg said when the minister makes her decision over the coalmine, she has a duty “to take reasonable care” to “avoid causing personal injury or death” to Australian residents under 18 “arising from emissions of carbon dioxide into the Earth’s atmosphere”.

In a statement on Friday, the minister’s office said: “After carefully considering the judgment, the minister has formed the view there are grounds on which to appeal.

“Following the handing down of orders by the court yesterday, the minister has now instructed the department to lodge a notice of appeal.”

The case came in two parts.

A request to block the mine expansion was denied by the court in May, but the claim the minister had a duty of care to protect Australians under 18 from harm caused by greenhouse gas emissions from the mine was formalised yesterday.

"We are passionate climate warriors. Our legal battle is not over but my heart is a bit lighter." Read more
Melbourne student Anjali Sharma, 17, who was one of the schoolchildren in the case, said she “found it funny and honestly pretty embarrassing” that the government was appealing.

She said: “Her job should be to act for, not against, the young people of Australia.

“But instead of doing her job of safeguarding our future, she is prepared to spend public money fighting for her right to make climate change worse, harm the environment and risk the injury and death of Australian children.

“A challenge favours the profits of coal companies above safeguarding the health of our environment and children and young people like me.”

Another of the eight children in the case, Perth student Bella Burgemeister, 15, said: “The Morrison government believes they have more of a duty to the coal and gas companies than they do towards their young citizens. It is sad they are appealing the judge’s decision, they are fighting to cause harm. We are not done fighting this.” Lawyer David Barnden, who is leading the case for the children, said: “We question the Morrison government’s intent to appeal the duty.

“This is a duty about life and death for Australian children. It seems inconceivable that an environment minister, a member of parliament representing the people of Australia, would seek to rid herself of this sensible responsibility.

“We will vigorously defend the rights of children not to suffer injury or death from climate change at the hands of a government intent on approving new fossil fuel projects.”

Prof David Schlosberg, director of the Sydney Environment Institute, said: “The Australian government is not only ignoring the unjust impacts of climate change on future generations, but is also actively and explicitly arguing against climate and intergenerational justice – to allow the expansion of a coalmine.”

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(AU Pearls and Irritations) A Choice Between National Happiness – And National Misery

Pearls and Irritations - Julian Cribb

Australia treats its environment with indifference. Yet the evidence is mounting that the environment is at the heart of national wellbeing. One country is showing the way.

A Bhutan rice terrace. Eli Shany
Author
Julian Cribb is a science author with a focus on the human existential crisis: food security, climate, extinction, planetary pollution, nukes, resources, population.
His books include Surviving the 21st Century, The Coming Famine, Food or War, Earth Detox, and Poisoned Planet.
The declaration by UNESCO that Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is ‘in danger’ due to climate change is a chilling admonition that Australians cannot expect to survive long-term in a continent that they have trashed.

Coupled with the Reef are similar  over the state of the land – the National Heritage Trust has advised there is a ‘clear and present danger’ to the world heritage Blue Mountains, and the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) has warned the iconic koala is at risk of extinction as Australia pursues one of the world’s worst rates of land clearing.

The missing element in Australia’s furious war on Nature is ecoliteracy – the understanding that human survival and wellbeing depends on the health of the living environment which sustains us.

There is, at present, only one eco-literate nation on Earth – the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan where the famed policy of Gross National Happiness (GNH) embraces the idea of looking after the land that gives life to people and nature alike. In all others the nature that supports all life is being butchered and sacrificed to yield an imaginary commodity called money. The future is being pawned to appease the cravings of the present.

Bhutan is an exemplar that humans generally, and Australians in particular, would be well advised to study and emulate.

Gross National Happiness is not quite the touchy-feely philosophy which some of its critics would have you think. It embodies 33 supremely pragmatic indicators covering four realms:  good governance, sustainable socio-economic development, cultural preservation, and environmental conservation.

It measures such things as mental and physical wellbeing, education, democracy, pollution, political rights, environmental health as well as economic staples like employment, income, savings and so on. It is infinitely more attuned to human and national needs than the crude index of GDP (Gross Domestic Product), which only measures the money supply, regardless of who owns it.

Other countries favour happiness as a goal: indeed, the US Declaration of Independence put it front and centre. What makes Bhutan nearly unique in the world is the insight that human wellbeing (and hence, happiness) depends to a very large degree on the health of the living environment which sustains the people.

A powerful new study of the role of environmental sustainability as a cornerstone of Bhutanese national policy has just been produced by Dr Ugyen Tshewang, Dr Michael Charles Tobias and Jane Gray Morrison. Bhutan: Conservation and Environmental Protection in the Himalayas is far more than an account of how eco-literacy is working for the remote kingdom – it is implicitly a guide to human survival on a Planetary scale, and a roadmap other countries can follow.

The Prime Minister of Bhutan, Dr Lotay Tshering, (a qualified medical doctor) explains:
“As Bhutan cautiously follows the principles of Gross National Happiness (GNH) and treads toward sustainable development goals, conservation of environment is one of the main building blocks.”
Tshering asserts that it is every citizen’s responsibility to protect the environment, at all levels of society.

The study assesses not only the need to protect Bhutan’s unique biodiversity – it is one of the world’s 36 ‘hotspots’ – but also its food security, its forest cover, its water, air and soil quality, its ecology as a source of food and medicines and many other social benefits.

“Time is running out for the world’s 233 nations to act wisely and quickly in accordance with the unprecedented demands of a true global crisis,” warns Tobias, a global ecologist and president of the international environmental NGO the Dancing Star Foundation.

Bhutan is already one of the very few countries on Earth that is carbon-negative – yet the team found it still suffers the impacts of global warming inflicted by countries such as Australia.

“Disasters like glacial lake outbursts, flash floods, landslides, wind storms, forest fires etc., have been impacting this country mainly because of the pollution caused by the industrialized nations,” they say.

Indeed, they warn, most Himalayan glaciers are likely to melt entirely by 2050 – a nightmarish scenario affecting 25% of the world’s population.

Bhutan is also a country where the total fertility rate is 1.95, under replacement level, and population is stable – though demand for material goods is rising.

The country’s strong conservation ethic is driven by the Buddhist belief in compassion and nonviolence towards all living creatures. Consequently, a national happiness index for animals is also in contemplation and efforts are being made to overcome the conflicts between humans and wildlife which naturally arise. While crueller countries and people may belittle such measures, scientific understanding that all life is interdependent is growing – and may prove critical to our own survival as a species.

Unlike many other studies that focus on conserving large, rare animals or plants, the team’s focus also embraces bacteria, algae and phytoplankton as “these are the real engines of life, of evolution, of our survival and the survival of the entire biosphere. We ignore them at our peril.” It proposes that Bhutan establish a gene bank under one of its glaciers for its microfauna, as well as for native plant seeds that support the food supply.

By connecting the health of the living environment so firmly to human wellbeing, the study exemplifies Bhutan as a world leader in the change in attitude by citizens, governments and businesses essential to our collective survival.

As things stand, the policies of Australia, the US, China, Russia, Brazil, Canada, India and the middle East, to name but a few, still foster environmental ruin on an epic scale – and have placed themselves on a sure path to gross national misery.

If we were wise, we would all heed the imaginative leadership shown by Bhutan and become eco-literate. Before it is too late.

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(The Guardian) Climate Crisis ‘May Put 8bn At Risk Of Malaria And Dengue’

The Guardian - 

Reducing global heating could save millions of people from mosquito-borne diseases, study finds

A mosquito infected with bacteria to prevent it spreading dengue, Zika and chikungunya. If emissions keep rising at the current rate, the dengue transmission season could be four months longer in 50 years. Photograph: Apu Gomes/AFP/Getty Images

More than 8 billion people could be at risk of malaria and dengue fever by 2080 if greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise unabated, a new study says.

Malaria and dengue fever will spread to reach billions of people, according to new projections.

Researchers predict that up to 4.7 billion more people could be threatened by the world’s two most prominent mosquito-borne diseases, compared with 1970-99 figures.

The figures are based on projections of a population growth of about 4.5 billion over the same period, and a temperature rise of about 3.7C by 2100.

The study, led by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and published in the Lancet Planetary Health journal, found that if emission levels continue to rise at current rates, the effect on global temperatures could lengthen transmission seasons by more than a month for malaria and four months for dengue over the next 50 years.

A child protects himself as sanitation workers fumigate San Salvador’s El Campito slum to kill mosquitoes. Photograph: José Cabezas/AFP/Getty
Felipe J Colón-González, assistant professor at LSHTM and one of the report’s authors, said: “This work strongly suggests that reducing greenhouse gas emissions could prevent millions of people from contracting malaria and dengue.

“The results show low-emission scenarios significantly reduce length of transmission, as well as the number of people at risk. Action to limit global temperature increases well below 2C [3.6F] must continue.

“But policymakers and public health officials should get ready for all scenarios, including those where emissions remain at high levels. This is particularly important in areas that are currently disease-free and where the health systems are likely to be unprepared for major outbreaks.”

Malaria kills more than 400,000 people every year, mostly children, according to the World Health Organization. In 2019, more than 90% of an estimated 230m cases occurred in Africa. Currently, artemisinin-based combination therapy is the best available treatment for the most dangerous form of malaria, P falciparum, which accounts for 90% of cases.

Dengue has no specific treatment. The disease is under-reported, with almost half the world’s population at risk. Dengue is estimated to infect 100 million to 400 million people every year, killing 20,000.

Some countries, such as Eritrea, Sudan and Colombia, have seen a significant resurgence of malaria in recent years, said Rachel Lowe, associate professor at LSHTM and another author of the study. The number of dengue cases reported to WHO increased more than eightfold over the last two decades, from 505,430 in 2000 to 5.2m in 2019, she added.

Scientists sound warning note over malaria drug resistance in Africa.  Read more
“Our findings stress the importance of increased surveillance in potential hotspot areas to monitor the emergence of diseases,” she said.

The LSHTM study factors in various levels of greenhouse gas emissions, population density and altitude.

But researchers have acknowledged that some other key factors have not been taken into account, including the evolution of the disease and vector, or the development of more effective drugs and vaccines.

Malaria vaccine trials are ongoing. A vaccine for dengue has been licensed in some countries.

Colón-González said: “Current malaria and dengue control efforts largely rely on controlling mosquito populations and reducing contact between mosquitoes and people. While mosquito reduction campaigns can be effective, they are difficult to sustain particularly in low-income countries where scarce resources must be allocated between control and treatment.”

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