14/08/2021

(AU EDO) Landmark Bushfire Survivors’ Climate Case Is Heard

Environmental Defenders Office

Bushfires ravage the NSW Mid-North Coast in 2019. By Ash Hogan via CC Licence.

Survivors of devastating bushfires have taken the NSW Environment Protection Authority to court, in a landmark climate case this week.

For the first time, an Australian court has allowed evidence on climate change to be heard in a case involving an alleged failure by a government agency to perform a statutory duty.

On Monday, former chief scientist Professor Penny Sackett gave evidence in Bushfire Survivors for Climate Action case against the New South Wales EPA, telling the court that:

“We know we’re in a dangerous situation now.  I personally don’t want it to be any more dangerous.

“1.5 (degrees warming) is not a magical temperature … however, the thing that does distinguish it is that … this is still a target that we can meet. When I say we, I mean globally, the world.”

On Tuesday, the court heard that EDO’s clients would like to tender further evidence from Professor Sackett in light of the IPCC’s dire 6th report on climate change, released on Monday evening.

Richard Beasley SC told the court, “We already know that the NSW environment is suffering under the impacts of climate change right now. We know that the impacts are likely to get much greater without extraordinary measures being taken.

“There could hardly be more significant pollutants now for the environment than greenhouse gas emissions. And so we say that the duty imposed on the EPA is one that must respond to the level of threat that the NSW environment faces.

“The threat is of significant damage to the environment, not just to NSW, but the globe, if there is temperature rise of 1.5 degrees or more. The science is just clear on that, and frankly, it’s been clear for a while.”

The three-day hearing before Chief Judge Preston in the NSW Land and Environment Court has now concluded.

The Landmark Case Begins
Bushfire Survivors for Climate Change Action at Parliament House in Canberra.

Environmental Defenders Office (EDO) is representing Bushfire Survivors for Climate Action (BSCA) in the case against the independent authority over its alleged lack of greenhouse gas emissions policy.

The group’s members are people who lost their homes, communities, loved ones and peace of mind in bushfires; people who’ve fought fires as RFS or other volunteers, community leaders concerned about the impact and growing risks of bushfires and primary producers who’ve watched stock and wildlife impacted by bushfires and their after-effects.

The group’s president Jo Dodds has lived through three bushfires, including Black Saturday in 2009, the Tathra bushfires in 2018 and the megafires of 2019/20.

BSCA filed the case in April 2020, following the Black Summer bushfires that ripped through large swathes of New South Wales.

The group is seeking to encourage and, if necessary, compel the NSW EPA to develop policies to measure and regulate greenhouse gases in the state.

BSCA argues that the EPA is not only explicitly empowered by its legislation to take strong action on climate by controlling the emission of greenhouse gases, it is also required to do this under its own laws.

Win over climate evidence

Bushfire Survivors for Climate Action President Jo Dodds.

In November 2020, the Land and Environment Court ruled that BSCA would be allowed to prepare expert scientific evidence on climate change for the hearing.

It was the first time an Australian court has ruled on whether evidence on climate change can be put forward in a case involving an alleged failure by an authority to perform a statutory duty.

The November ruling also permitted evidence to be prepared on whether the emissions trajectories for New South Wales, Australia, and the world, are in line with the Paris Agreement goals to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, and to examine the link between climate change and bushfire risk.

NOTE: Elaine Johnson is the Solicitor on Record for BSCA and Matt Floro is the Senior Solicitor with carriage of this matter. EDO would like to thank Richard Beasley SC and David Hume of Counsel for their generous assistance.

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(AU The Conversation) Communicating Climate Change Has Never Been So Important, And This IPCC Report Pulls No Punches

The Conversation -  |  | 

AAP Image/James Ross

Authors
  •  is Honorary Fellow, School of Earth Sciences, The University of Melbourne
  •  is Senior Knowledge Broker, Monash University
  •  is Lecturer in climate science and science communication, The University of Melbourne
On Monday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released the first instalment of their sixth assessment report. As expected, the report makes for bleak reading.

It found all regions of the world are already experiencing the impacts of climate change, and its warming projections range from scary to unimaginable.

But the report also makes for dry reading. Even the Summary for Policymakers, at 42 pages, is not a document you can quickly skim.

Local governments, national and international policymakers, insurance companies, community groups, new home buyers, you and me: everyone needs to know some aspects of the IPCC’s findings to understand what the future might look like and what we can do about it.

With climate action more crucial than ever, the IPCC needs to communicate clearly and strongly to as many people as possible. So how is it going so far?

The most assertive report in 30 years

The gruelling IPCC process and an extensive author list of 234 scientists make IPCC reports the world’s most authoritative source of climate change information. Every sentence is powerful because each one has been read and approved by scientists and government officials from 195 countries.

So when the report states “it is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land”, there is absolutely no denying it. In fact, the IPCC has become progressively more assertive in the 30 years it has been assessing and summarising climate science.

In 1990, it noted global warming “could be largely due to natural variability”. Five years later, there was “a discernible human influence on global climate”. By 2001, “most of the observed warming […] is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations”.

This week’s reference to “unequivocal” human influence pulls no punches.

The IPCC needs to communicate clearly and strongly to as many people as possible. EPA/ALESSANDRO DELLA VALLE

Why has this language changed? Partly because the science has progressed: we know more about the complexities of the Earth’s climate than ever before.

But it’s also because the report’s authors understand the urgency of communicating the message effectively. As this week’s report makes clear, limiting warming to the most ambitious 1.5℃ goal of the Paris Agreement may be (at least temporarily) out of reach within decades, and the goal of keeping warming below 2℃ is also at risk.

As the IPCC’s scientific assessment reports are only published every seven years or so, this may be the authors’ last chance to warn people.

Climate change communication isn’t easy

Communicating any science is hard, but climate science has particular challenges. These include the complexities of the science and language of climate change, people’s misunderstanding of risk management, and the barrage of deliberate misinformation.

The IPCC has standardised the language they use to communicate confidence: “likely”, for example, always means at least a 2-in-3 chance. Unfortunately, research has shown this language conveys levels of imprecision that are too high and leads to readers’ judgements being different from the IPCC’s.

The gruelling report approval process also means IPCC statements can be conservative to the point of confusion. In fact, a 2016 study showed IPCC reports are getting harder to read. In particular, despite the IPCC’s efforts, the Summaries for Policymakers have had low readability over the years, with dense paragraphs and too much jargon for the average punter.

Condensing the IPCC report to its highlights, such as in this graphic, is an effective way to engage time-poor readers. Monash Climate Change Communication Research Hub/IPCC

There has also been a rise in communication barriers since the final part of the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report was released in 2014, including more fake news, and climate news fatigue.

The IPCC’s complex results can appear controversial and hotly debated, because of politicisation and a well-funded disinformation campaign from fossil fuel giants. And with news so often passed through social media, it’s easy for people to turn to someone they trust, even if that person’s information is wrong.

While there has been an increase in communication imperatives, including the urgency for action and the increase in science information, these are all taking place during a headline-stealing global pandemic.

Also, people are exhausted. Eighteen months of living with a pandemic has probably shrivelled everybody’s ability to take on more big problems.

On the other hand, hunger for COVID-19 information has raised familiarity with exponential curves, model projections, risk-benefit calculations, and urgent action based on scientific evidence to combat a global threat.

Remaining hopeful

To address the challenges of communicating the science, climate communicators should aim for consistent messages, draw on credible information, focus on what is known rather than the uncertainties, offer tangible action, use clear language that avoids despair, connect locally, and tell a story.

To a large extent, Australian contributors to the IPCC release this week have done just that, chiselling relevant facts from the IPCC’s brick of a report into blogs and bites. To its credit, the IPCC has also provided a plethora of communication resources in different formats. This includes videos, fact sheets, posters and, for the first time, an interactive atlas enabling you to explore past and possible future climate changes in any region.

However, there’s (so far) less focus on information for different audiences, such as students, young people, managers and planners rather than just politicians and scientists.

And the atlas, while a great tool, still requires users to have some climate science literacy. For example, average users looking for future climate information may not understand that CMIP6 and CMIP5 are the next, and previous, generations of climate models used by the IPCC. While mainly focusing on the report’s terrifying findings and commitment to global warming, media coverage this week also emphasised the importance of immediate action, and sources of hope.

This is a positive approach because feeling that humanity cannot, or will not, respond adequately can lead to a lack of engagement and action, and eco-anxiety.

As Al Gore pointed out 15 years ago in An Inconvenient Truth:
there are a lot of people who go straight from denial to despair without pausing on the intermediate step of actually doing something about the problem.
Early next year, the IPCC will release two volumes about ways to adapt to, and reduce, climate change. After the confronting results of this first volume, the next two must provide messages of hope if we’re to keep fighting for our planet.

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(AU EDO) $21 Million In Beetaloo Gas Grants To Face Federal Court Challenge

Environmental Defenders Office
The Environmental Defenders Office (EDO) has filed urgent proceedings on behalf of the Environment Centre Northern Territory (ECNT), challenging the lawfulness of a Federal Government decision to grant up to $21 million to gas company Imperial Oil and Gas.

The decision by the Commonwealth Minister for Resources and Water was announced earlier this month under the Beetaloo Cooperative Drilling Program, a program set up to provide funding for gas exploration activities in the Northern Territory’s Beetaloo sub-basin.

The legal action – a judicial review in the Federal Court – questions the lawfulness of the Beetaloo Cooperative Drilling Program and the decision of the Minister to grant these funds. The solicitor with carriage of this matter is Anna Gudkov, working with Ruby Hamilton, both under the supervision of Sean Ryan.

Grants under this program are subject to the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act 2013 (Cth) which requires that the Minister not approve the expenditure unless he “is satisfied, after making reasonable inquiries, that the expenditure would be a proper use of…money”.

A “proper” use of money is defined by section 8 of the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act as one that is “efficient, effective, economical and ethical”.

The Federal Court proceeding filed by ECNT alleges that before deciding to give Imperial Oil and Gas up to $21 million to support their gas exploration activities, the Minister failed to make reasonable inquiries in respect of the increased risks of climate change if the Beetaloo Basin is exploited for gas development.

In addition, the filing argues the Minister failed to make reasonable inquiries into the economic risks of expenditure on these projects in the context of a world which is moving rapidly away from fossil fuel use.

The proceeding argues that an assessment of these risks is necessary under the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act and the Minister made an error of law by not making reasonable inquiries into these risks prior to making a decision on this expenditure.

On behalf of ECNT, EDO has also sought an undertaking from the Minister that he will not execute a grant agreement with Imperial Oil and Gas, and/or transfer public funds to Imperial until the legality of his decision to make the grant is clarified by the Court.

“This case is about whether the proper process has been followed in respect of the Federal Government’s decision to grant $21 million to Imperial Oil and Gas for exploration activities in the Beetaloo sub-basin in the Northern Territory,” said EDO CEO David Morris.

“Our client will argue that before making a decision to grant these funds, the relevant Minister needed to make reasonable inquiries into a range of risks, including climate and economic risks, that may arise from the expenditure.”

“We will argue on behalf of our client that the Federal Government did not make these reasonable inquiries, and thus the Minister’s decision is invalid.”

Co-Director of ECNT, Dr Kirsty Howey stated, “We want to see taxpayers money used wisely and with all the consequences being fully considered. Granting $21 million to a private fossil fuel company should only be done after all care is taken to examine the impacts on climate change, the environment and the community.”

“The law requires the Minister to be satisfied that the expenditure is a proper use of money having made reasonable inquiries. We say that means inquiries into the risks of a heating climate if the heart of the Northern Territory was opened up to fracking.”

The Court documents argue that Minister Pitt didn’t make reasonable inquiries about climate change risks, transition risks to a zero carbon economy, and risks associated with failing to meet the targets of the Paris Agreement.

“It’s not apparent from the available public documents that the Minister made any inquiries about the climate change risks of gas developments in the Beetaloo”, added Dr Howey.

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