11/09/2021

A Promising New Dawn Is Ours For The Taking – So Let’s Stop Counting The Coal Australia Must Leave In The Ground

The Conversation - |

Shutterstock
Authors
  • is Professor, Crawford School of Public Policy and Head of Energy, Institute for Climate Energy and Disaster Solutions, Australian National University
  • is Director, ANU Institute for Climate, Energy and Disaster Solutions, Australian National University
A study out today says the vast majority of Earth’s coal, including 95% of Australia’s, cannot be burned if global warming is to be limited to 1.5℃ this century.

The findings are undoubtedly true. But examining how much fossil fuel the world can still use is not the question we should be asking.

Instead, the most useful questions are: how do we advance Australia’s economic future outside high-emissions industries? And how can we seize the opportunities presented by the declines of coal, and then gas, rather than watching the economy go underwater as we try to stem an unstoppable tide?

The world is moving away fossil fuels, and there’s nothing Australia can do about it. Racing to dig up and sell whatever fossil fuels we can before the timer stops is not a future-proof strategy. We need to prepare for the change and diversify the economy.

How much coal must remain in the ground is beside the point. Instead, we should grasp this moment – turning it into a positive step for the world community and future generations.

The key question is, how do we turn this moment into an opportunity? Neil Hall/EPA
The numbers game

The new study by researchers at University College London examines how much fossil fuel can still be burned if we hope to keep the global average temperature rises to within 1.5℃ – the ambitious end of the Paris Agreement goals. It compares this “budget” with the known stores of coal, oil and gas in various parts of the world.

The study finds the vast majority of remaining fossil fuels must remain in the ground – specifically 89% of coal, 59% of gas and 58% of oil. For Australia, that equates to 95% of our coal reserves and 35% of our gas.

The research is a follow-up to a well-known 2015 study based on the 2℃ warming scenario. Similar findings have also been made in other research.

While it’s long been clear that much of Earth’s fossil fuel deposits must stay in the ground, there are uncertainties around the numbers. These come from varying assumptions about:
  • the exact size of the remaining global carbon budget for any particular temperature increase
  • how the carbon budget might be distributed between coal, oil and gas (which depends on technology choices and costs)
  • the extent of carbon capture and storage (or carbon use) and removal of carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the atmosphere
  • how much fossil fuel would be available for extraction.
The study released overnight offers results only from a single model and data set. The results remind us how little time remains to keep using fossil fuels, but we should not focus unduly on the headline numbers the study produced.

It’s long been clear much of Earth’s coal deposits should stay in the ground. Rob Griffith/AP
3 lenses on the end of the fossil fuel age

Just as the Stone Age didn’t end for a lack of stones, the fossil fuel age won’t end for a lack of coal, gas or oil.

So while humanity is not running out of fossil fuels, we are running out of options for the waste product, carbon dioxide – and running out of time to deal with it.

Countries that produce and export large amounts of fossil fuels must address this undeniable reality. We characterise three different ways they can do this.

The first is the “hell-for-leather” approach: extract, use and sell whatever fossil fuels you can while there’s still a market, and promote the global use of fossil fuels to extend the ride. This is the natural stance for companies focused solely on fossil fuel production.

Some countries that export fossil fuels are pursuing such strategies. In Australia, a statement by federal Resources Minister Keith Pitt this week can be interpreted along such lines.

In this mindset, remaining fossil fuel deposits should be exploited to the maximum, at whatever cost. It emphasises specific business interests, while defining national interests in narrow and short-sighted terms.

It also disregards the global climate change objective and international relations with countries that emphasise climate concerns. In short, it risks train wrecks down the track.

Resources Minister Keith Pitt says the future of Australia’s coal sector is strong. Aaron Bunch/AAP
A second approach is to concede fossil fuels are on a long-term downward trajectory, due to climate change concerns and rapid improvements in clean technologies. It accepts this change is driven by consumers and there is nothing fossil fuel exporters can do about it.

The logical consequence is to prepare for the inevitable decline and cushion the transition. That could include using some revenue from fossil fuels to invest in a socially and environmentally sensitive transition.

Under this approach, the amount of fossil fuel available underground is simply irrelevant. The deposits are redundant – just like all those stones were at the end of the Stone Age. The question of what proportion must remain unexploited is of no particular interest.

A third option is to understand the challenge as a positive one: take the global shift away from fossil fuels as an opportunity to modernise and massively diversify the economy.

Taking this perspective, leaving coal in the ground is a positive step that helps nations and regions evolve in desirable ways and helps the world community, and future generations, deal with climate change. Not mining coal, then, takes on an ethical dimension – perhaps it can be seen as “ethi-coal”.

The move away from fossil fuels can be seen as an opportunity to help future generations deal with climate change. Shutterstock
Preparing for a post-fossil future

Whichever lens one chooses to look through, clean technologies will displace the burning of coal, oil and gas.

In Australia, large corporations (and to a lesser extent, some employees and public finances) have done well out of coal and gas. But that’s far from the only way we can derive large export revenues.

Australia is exceptionally well placed to build up an energy and processing industry based on its practically limitless renewable energy potential, coupled with experience with and predisposition towards large resource industries. This could include clean hydrogen and even green steel.

But to once again become dependent on just a few large industries, such as minerals or energy, should not be the goal here. Rather, we should use the global low-carbon transition as a platform for a large range of new industries. There are many opportunities in new technologies and practices.

So let’s keep our eye on the big picture: diversifying the economy into a broad range of activities with low environmental footprints, underpinned by modern infrastructure, top quality education and a strong social and health system.

Therein lies a desirable and economically sound future for Australia – one where we won’t be worrying one bit about all the coal left in the ground.

Links
at No comments:

(AU The Age) News Corp’s Climate Change Shame

The Age  - Editorial

From next month, News Corp Australia will end its long-standing editorial hostility towards carbon reduction policies and advocate that the world’s leading economies hit net zero emissions by 2050.

The Age’s Zoe Samios has written that columnists will not be muzzled but some will be expected to reframe their political arguments, though Sky News Australia boss Paul Whittaker said he was not aware of any plan to limit the views of dissenting conservative commentators.

News Corp’s shift, if it sticks, could pave the way for both main political parties to support a more aggressive approach to reducing carbon emissions. Credit: Jonathan Carroll

It’s a remarkable about-turn for a company that has for many years been a safe harbour for those peddling distortions of the truth about the warming of the planet.

Somehow justified by a commitment to a “diversity of opinions”, News Corp has supported, encouraged and amplified views that have repeatedly stymied any attempts by governments in Canberra to implement tough measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

It has brought fringe opinion in and pumped it into the political mainstream and has ridiculed and taunted those, including in politics, who want stronger action.

The rationale for the change is a well-kept secret, but News Corp insiders have indicated that pressure from advertisers may have played a part. That theory played out this week, with the shift being welcomed by one of Australia’s largest advertisers, Coles, which has moved to position itself as the nation’s most sustainable supermarket.


AUDIO
Please Explain
What's behind News Corp's new stance on climate science?
13m32s

Coles is not alone. The Business Council of Australia, the Australian Industry Group and company boardrooms around the country, including those in the mining industry, have taken up the cause of climate change mitigation.

They support the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees and transitioning to net zero emissions by 2050. They have also supported the need for a market-based carbon price to drive investment in low and no-emissions technology.

And yet the outsized influence of News Corp in Australia on public discourse – and perhaps more importantly on the right-wing rump of the Coalition – still puts the handbrake on reform.

Despite growing pressure from other like-minded Western nations, led by Britain and America, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has for months been slow-walking towards a net zero emissions target by 2050 and has failed to embrace the tougher action by 2030 the world is demanding.

No doubt Mr Morrison’s approach factors in the backlash from within his own government, a faction led these days by Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce and undergirded by News Corp’s commentators.

News Corp’s shift could very well be interpreted as a cynical exercise in protecting the bottom line, but if it sticks, it could pave the way for both main political parties to support a more aggressive approach to reducing carbon emissions.

For The Age, which has long advocated a faster climate-policy shift, it would be a welcome, though belated, change.

Media & marketing

‘Brand responsibility’: Major advertiser backs News Corp climate shift

But there is reason to be doubtful. Only a month ago, in response to the latest report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, News Corp commentator Andrew Bolt repeatedly chose to mock it with arguments that would not stand up in a high school science class, including the bizarre claim that “if a warming world is better for plants, why not for humans?” It’s hard to imagine him changing.

As the COVID pandemic has shown, listening to the science can save many millions of lives. While there has been no shortage of fringe voices spreading coronavirus misinformation, they have largely been ignored and sidelined by the mainstream media.

It’s to the enduring shame of News Corp that, on climate change, those voices were instead welcomed in.

Links
at No comments:

(National Geographic) Why Climate Change Is Still The Greatest Threat To Human Health

National Geographic - Amy McKeever

Polluted air and steadily rising temperatures are linked to health effects ranging from increased heart attacks and strokes to the spread of infectious diseases and psychological trauma.

Workers fumigate for mosquitoes on a city street in New Delhi, India, as a preventive measure against the spread of dengue, malaria, and chikungunya. The impact of vector-borne diseases will increase as global temperatures rise. An editorial co-published in hundreds of medical journals called for urgent action to reduce emissions. Photograph by Raj K Raj, Hindustan Times via Getty Images

People around the world are witnessing firsthand how climate change can wreak havoc on the planet. Steadily rising average temperatures fuel increasingly intense wildfires, hurricanes, and other disasters that are now impossible to ignore.

And while the world has been plunged into a deadly pandemic, scientists are sounding the alarm once more that climate change is still the greatest threat to human health in recorded history.

As recently as August—when wildfires raged in the United States, Europe, and Siberia—World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement that “the risks posed by climate change could dwarf those of any single disease.”

On September 5, more than 200 medical journals released an unprecedented joint editorial that urged world leaders to act. “The science is unequivocal,” they write. “A global increase of 1.5°C above the pre-industrial average and the continued loss of biodiversity risk catastrophic harm to health that will be impossible to reverse.”

Despite the acute dangers posed by COVID-19, the authors of the joint op-ed write that world governments “cannot wait for the pandemic to pass to rapidly reduce emissions.” Instead, they argue, everyone must treat climate change with the same urgency as they have COVID-19.

Here’s a look at the ways that climate change can affect your health—including some less obvious but still insidious effects—and why scientists say it’s not too late to avert catastrophe.

Air pollution

Climate change is caused by an increase of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere, mostly from fossil fuel emissions. But burning fossil fuels can also have direct consequences for human health.

That’s because the polluted air contains small particles that can induce stroke and heart attacks by penetrating the lungs and heart and even traveling into the bloodstream. Those particles might harm the organs directly or provoke an inflammatory response from the immune system as it tries to fight them off.

 Estimates suggest that air pollution causes anywhere between 3.6 million and nine million premature deaths a year.

 “The numbers do vary,” says Andy Haines, professor of environmental change and public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and author of the recently published book Planetary Health. “But they all agree that it’s a big public health burden.”

A family has dinner in their flooded home in Central Java, Indonesia. For over 40 years, they witnessed their productive agricultural land slowly disappear under the sea. They have physically raised everything in their home to cope. Photograph by Aji Styawan, National Geographic

People over the age of 65 are most susceptible to the harmful effects of air pollution, but many others are at risk too, says Kari Nadeau, director of the Sean N. Parker Center for Allergy and Asthma Research at Stanford University.

People who smoke or vape are at increased risk, as are children with asthma.

Air pollution also has consequences for those with allergies. Carbon dioxide increases the acidity of the air, which then pulls more pollen out from plants. For some people, this might just mean that they face annoyingly long bouts of seasonal allergies. But for others, it could be life-threatening.

“For people who already have respiratory disease, boy is that a problem,” Nadeau says. When pollen gets into the respiratory pathway, the body creates mucus to get rid of it, which can then fill up and suffocate the lungs.

Even healthy people can have similar outcomes if pollen levels are especially intense.

In 2016, in the Australian state of Victoria, a severe thunderstorm combined with high levels of pollen to induce what The Lancet has described as “the world’s largest and most catastrophic epidemic of thunderstorm asthma.” So many residents suffered asthma attacks that emergency rooms were overwhelmed—and at least 10 people died as a result.

Climate change is also causing wildfires to get worse, and wildfire smoke is especially toxic. As one recent study showed, fires can account for 25 percent of dangerous air pollution in the U.S.

 Nadeau explains that the smoke contains particles of everything that the fire has consumed along its path—from rubber tires to harmful chemicals. These particles are tiny and can penetrate even deeper into a person’s lungs and organs. (Here’s how breathing wildfire smoke affects the body.)

Extreme heat

Heat waves are deadly, but researchers at first didn’t see direct links between climate change and the harmful impacts of heat waves and other extreme weather events.

Haines says the evidence base has been growing. “We have now got a number of studies which has shown that we can with high confidence attribute health outcomes to climate change,” he says.

Workers pick tomatoes in a field in Los Baños, California, under a scorching sun. Not only are rising temperatures impacting people's health and ability to work, agriculture in California is threatened by drought. Photograph by Karla Gachet, National Geographic

Most recently, Haines points to a study published earlier this year in Nature Climate Change that attributes more than a third of heat-related deaths to climate change.

As National Geographic reported at the time, the study found that the human toll was even higher in some countries with less access to air conditioning or other factors that render people more vulnerable to heat. (How climate change is making heat waves even deadlier.)

That’s because the human body was not designed to cope with temperatures above 98.6°F, Nadeau says.

Heat can break down muscles. The body does have some ways to deal with the heat—such as sweating. “But when it’s hot outside all the time, you cannot cope with that, and your heart muscles and cells start to literally die and degrade,” she says.

If you’re exposed to extreme heat for too long and are unable to adequately release that heat, the stress can cause a cascade of problems throughout the body.

The heart has to work harder to pump blood to the rest of the organs, while sweat leeches the body of necessary minerals such as sodium and potassium. The combination can result in heart attacks and strokes.

Dehydration from heat exposure can also cause serious damage to the kidneys, which rely on water to function properly. For people whose kidneys are already beginning to fail—particularly older adults—Nadeau says that extreme heat can be a death sentence. “This is happening more and more,” she says.

Studies have also drawn links between higher temperatures and preterm birth and other pregnancy complications. It’s unclear why, but Haines says that one hypothesis is that extreme heat reduces blood flow to the fetus.

Food insecurity

One of the less direct—but no less harmful—ways that climate change can affect health is by disrupting the world’s supply of food.

Climate change both reduces the amount of food that’s available and makes it less nutritious.

According to an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) special report, crop yields have already begun to decline as a result of rising temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, and extreme weather events.

Meanwhile, studies have shown that increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere can leech plants of zinc, iron, and protein—nutrients that humans need to survive.

A woman faces heavy winds during a seasonal sandstorm in Beijing, China. Scientists believe that desertification and climate change are playing a role in their frequency and intensity. Air pollution is detrimental to human health. Photograph by Kevin Frayer, Getty Images
Malnutrition is linked to a variety of illnesses, including heart disease, cancer, and diabetes. It can also increase the risk of stunting, or impaired growth, in children, which can harm cognitive function.

Climate change also imperils what we eat from the sea. Rising ocean temperatures have led many fish species to migrate toward Earth’s poles in search of cooler waters. Haines says that the resulting decline of fish stocks in subtropic regions “has big implications for nutrition,” because many of those coastal communities depend on fish for a substantial amount of the protein in their diets.

This effect is likely to be particularly harmful for Indigenous communities, says Tiff-Annie Kenny, a professor in the faculty of medicine at Laval University in Quebec who studies climate change and food security in the Canadian Arctic.

It’s much more difficult for these communities to find alternative sources of protein, she says, either because it’s not there or because it’s too expensive. “So what are people going to eat instead?” she asks.

Infectious diseases

As the planet gets hotter, the geographic region where ticks and mosquitoes like to live is getting wider. These animals are well-known vectors of diseases such as the Zika virus, dengue fever, and malaria. As they cross the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, Nadeau says, mosquitoes and ticks bring more opportunities for these diseases to infect greater swaths of the world.

“It used to be that they stayed in those little sectors near the Equator, but now unfortunately because of the warming of northern Europe and Canada, you can find Zika in places you wouldn’t have expected,” Nadeau says.

In addition, climate conditions such as temperature and humidity can impact the life cycle of mosquitoes. Haines says there’s particularly good evidence showing that, in some regions, climate change has altered these conditions in ways that increase the risk of mosquitos transmitting dengue.

There are also several ways in which climate change is increasing the risk of diseases that can be transmitted through water, such as cholera, typhoid fever, and parasites. Sometimes that’s fairly direct, such as when people interact with dirty floodwaters.

But Haines says that drought can have indirect impacts when people, say, can’t wash their hands or are forced to drink from dodgier sources of freshwater.

Mental health A common result of any climate-linked disaster is the toll on mental health. The distress caused by drastic environmental change is so significant that it has been given its own name—solastalgia.

Solar and wind farms west of Mojave, California, provide a glimpse of the future. The Biden administration announced a plan to scale up production and installation of solar panels from 3 percent of the nation’s electricity to 45 percent over the next three decades to reduce the carbon emissions contributing to global warming. Photograph by David Guttenfelder, National Geographic

Nadeau says that the effects on mental health have been apparent in her studies of emergency room visits arising from wildfires in the western U.S. People lose their homes, their jobs, and sometimes their loved ones, and that takes an immediate toll.

“What’s the fastest acute issue that develops? It’s psychological,” she says. Extreme weather events such as wildfires and hurricanes cause so much stress and anxiety that they can lead to post-traumatic stress disorder and even suicide in the long run.

Another common factor is that climate change causes disproportionate harm to the world’s most vulnerable people. On September 2, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released an analysis showing that racial and ethnic minority communities are particularly at risk.

According to the report, if temperatures rise by 2°C (3.6°F), Black people are 40 percent more likely to live in areas with the highest projected increases in related deaths. Another 34 percent are more likely to live in areas with a rise in childhood asthma.

Further, the effects of climate change don’t occur in isolation. At any given time, a community might face air pollution, food insecurity, disease, and extreme heat all at once.

Kenny says that’s particularly devastating in communities where the prevalence of food insecurity and poverty are already high. This situation hasn’t been adequately studied, she says, because “it’s difficult to capture these shocks that climate can bring.”

Why there’s reason for hope

In recent years, scientists and environmental activists have begun to push for more research into the myriad health effects of climate change. “One of the striking things is there’s been a real dearth of funding for climate change and health,” Haines says. “For that reason, some of the evidence we have is still fragmentary.”

Still, hope is not lost. In the Paris Agreement, countries around the world have pledged to limit global warming to below 2°C (3.6°F)—and preferably to 1.5°C (2.7°F)—by cutting their emissions. “When you reduce those emissions, you benefit health as well as the planet,” Haines says.

Meanwhile, scientists and environmental activists have put forward solutions that can help people adapt to the health effects of climate change. These include early heat warnings and dedicated cooling centers, more resilient supply chains, and freeing healthcare facilities from dependence on the electric grid.

Nadeau argues that the COVID-19 pandemic also presents an opportunity for world leaders to think bigger and more strategically. For example, the pandemic has laid bare problems with efficiency and equity that have many countries restructuring their healthcare facilities.

In the process, she says, they can look for new ways to reduce waste and emissions, such as getting more hospitals using renewable energy.

“This is in our hands to do,” Nadeau says. “If we don’t do anything, that would be cataclysmic.”

Video: U.N. report warns some effects of climate change are ‘irreversible’ (NBC News)

Links
at No comments: