(AU SMH) Australian Government Pushes Oil And Gas Regulator To Do Less About Emissions

Sydney Morning Herald - Peter Milne

A federal government directive that the offshore environment regulator ignore the oil and gas sector’s massive indirect emissions but consider its economic benefits could open decisions to legal challenge.

Resources minister Keith Pitt told the National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority he expected it to only consider the direct emissions from projects it assessed as later indirect, or scope 3, emissions were managed by countries that bought Australian oil and gas.

Gas is good: Resources Minister Keith Pitt. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

In February, Mr Pitt wrote to NOPSEMA chief executive Stuart Smith listing his expectations of the independent regulator, which also included exercising its powers “consistent with government policy” and considering the “economic and commercial environment”.

Environmental Defenders Office managing climate lawyer Brendan Dobbie said Mr Pitt’s expectation on emissions conflicted with NOPSEMA’s legal obligations.

“The regulations specify that NOPSEMA must consider both direct and indirect impacts of offshore gas projects,” Mr Dobbie said, including scope 3 emissions.

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“The importance of local decision-makers recognising the global impacts of fossil fuel projects has been acknowledged by the courts.

“At a time when the scientific consensus tells us that the development of any new fossil fuel project will cause us to miss our Paris targets, it is imperative that NOPSEMA consider the full scope of greenhouse gas impacts caused by Australian offshore gas projects.”

Like Mr Pitt, the Australian gas industry has argued scope 3 emissions are not its responsibility, but its customers’.

However, most direct emissions from many Australian gas projects are classified as scope 3 emissions by NOPSEMA as the heavily polluting plants that cool the gas to a liquid for export are located onshore, outside its jurisdiction.

Woodside’s Scarborough, the LNG project most recently assessed by NOPSEMA, will emit about 0.5 million tonnes of carbon pollution a year offshore, processing onshore at Woodside’s Pluto plant will produce 2.8 million tonnes and use by its mostly overseas customers another 25 million tonnes.

If NOPSEMA ignored what it considered to be scope 3 emissions then 85 per cent of the emissions within Australia under the control of the gas producer would escape its attention.

The exclusion of scope 3 emissions would ease the regulatory path for offshore gas producers.

Woodside’s $16.6 billion Scarborough project and Santos’ $5 billion Barossa project have both had high-level project proposals accepted by NOPSEMA but must still get numerous environment plans approved by the regulator for each stage of construction and operation.

Existing projects, such as Chevron’s Gorgon and Wheatstone, would also benefit as NOPSEMA reviews their environment plans every five years.

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Mr Pitt’s letter to NOPSEMA, posted on the regulator’s website, also said the regulator played an important part in encouraging investment in the “globally competitive” oil and gas industry that is expected to produce exports of $76 billion this financial year.

“I expect NOPSEMA to consider the broader social, economic and commercial environment,” Mr Pitt said in the letter.

Mr Dobbie said regulations required NOPSEMA to only consider environmental issues when assessing environmental approvals.

“If NOPSEMA were to take into account economic and commercial matters when determining environmental approvals, it may fall into legal error and those approvals may be subject to challenge in the courts,” he said.

Mr Pitt’s expectation that NOPSEMA has a role in encouraging investment contrasts with the previous ministerial statement of expectations in 2019 by then-resources minister Senator Matt Canavan who said the regulator was kept separate from agencies that promoted the petroleum industry “to ensure its regulatory independence”.

Mr Pitt said the purpose of a ministerial statement of expectations was to provide greater clarity about government policies and objectives that were relevant to the regulator.

“It is regulatory best practice for an independent regulator to fully consider the broader social, economic and commercial environment,” Mr Pitt said.

Mr Pitt was asked if he sought legal advice on whether NOPSEMA could meet his expectations to ignore scope 3 emissions and consider non-environmental issues and still meet its legal obligations but did not respond.

NOPSEMA chief executive Stuart Smith has two months to respond to Mr Pitt outlining how the regulator will meet the minister’s expectations.

Links

• 'We'll keep mining': Australia resists climate policy pressure
• Keith Pitt: Ministerial Statement of Expectations (pdf)
• We can't say anything concrete about how Keith Pitt voted on treating government action on climate change as a matter of urgency
• Australia's Resources Minister Keith Pitt dismisses UN chief's climate change statement
• Australian resources minister attacks ‘green activists’ for trying to ‘cripple’ fossil fuel companies
• The men in power who have stalled Australia’s climate action
• Pitt 'ignored climate risks' of NT project

(The Conversation) Five Key Points In The IPCC Report On Climate Change Impacts And Adaptation

The Conversation - Lisa Schipper | Vanesa Castán Broto | Winston Chow

Climate change has increased the risk of huge bushfires in Australia. josh.tagi / shutterstock

Authors Lisa Schipper is Environmental Social Science Reserch Fellow, University of Oxford Vanesa Castán Broto is Professor of Climate Urbanism, University of Sheffield Winston Chow is Associate Professor of Science, Technology and Society, Singapore Management University

The latest report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) looks at the impacts, adaptation and vulnerabilities associated with the climate crisis, and we are three of the 270 scientists and researchers who wrote it.

The document reports stark new findings on the way current global warming of 1.1℃ is impacting natural and human systems, and on how our ability to respond will be increasingly limited with every additional increment of warming. Here are five key points in the new report:

1. Risks will be magnified if warming is unchecked

Since the previous IPCC report on impacts and adaptation back in 2014, heatwaves, droughts, wildfires and other extremes have increased in frequency and intensity far beyond natural variability.

These hazards have substantially damaged ecosystems across the globe, and in some cases led to irreversible losses such as species extinction.

Humans are also hit too, through heightened food and water insecurities, greater incidences of food-, water- and vector-borne diseases, and worse physical and mental health.

If global warming is left unchecked, these climate hazards will unavoidably increase. Every increment of global temperature rise magnifies the resulting loss and damage.

2. Adaptation is hitting limits

The report says that much of the world’s current climate adaptation measures are not necessarily effective. In fact, there are both “hard” and “soft” limits.

In natural systems, the hard limits mean that no amount of human intervention (beside reducing greenhouse gas emissions) can make a difference.

For example, warm water coral reefs may completely disappear if ocean temperatures continue increasing – you can’t simply “adapt” to that.

Corals in Indonesia begin to bleach as the sea gets too warm. Ethan Daniels / shutterstock

In human systems, soft limits include obstacles like insufficient finance and poor planning, which could be addressed through more inclusive governance.

However there are also hard limits such as limited water in small islands, as rising seas and extreme weather can mean sea water contaminates fresh water. And once we lose an island to sea-level rise, no amount of adaptation will bring that island back.

The IPCC also finds that adaptation cannot prevent all losses and damages, which are unequally distributed around the world.

3. ‘Maladaptation’ can make things worse

The IPCC cites evidence of adaptation actions that further deepen existing social inequities and lead to adverse outcomes – what’s known as “maladaptation”.

One example would be when a sea wall is built to protect a settlement from sea-level rise and instead prevents rainwater from draining, leading to the emergence of flooding as a new hazard.

Unfortunately, there is ample evidence of maladaptation and it especially affects marginalised and vulnerable people.

‘Free from oil, gas and deforestation’: an indigenous Amazonian protester. Sebastian Moreira / EPA

For this latest report, the IPCC also made a conscious effort to bring in philosophers, anthropologists and other authors from many different disciplines which may not be seen as traditional areas of climate change research.

This meant drawing on more qualitative social sciences and providing a richer picture of topics like vulnerability and climate justice.

Unlike any other IPCC report before it, this one attempted to involve indigenous knowledge.

However there are strict rules in the IPCC about what sort of knowledge can be included, with anything not peer-reviewed seen as secondary or questionable by member countries.

While this new report is an inclusive step, there is still significant work needed to ensure that knowledge such as indigenous oral history has a place in IPCC assessments.

4. Cities are a challenge – and an opportunity

Among the figures reported, more than one billion people in low-lying settlements face hazards such as sea-level rise, subsiding coasts, or flooding at high tides, while 350 million urban residents live with the threat of water scarcity.

Climate change impacts such as extreme temperatures also worsen ongoing problems in cities, such as air pollution.

Flooding in Lucerne, Switzerland. cinan / shutterstock

Yet cities are also sites of opportunity, and the IPCC report maps a wide range of options for urban adaptation.

These include physical barriers to stop floods and rising seas, or more nature-based solutions such as planting trees upstream to slow excess river flows and shade homes in heatwaves, or restoring mangroves that protect communities from coastal flooding.

The report also cites social policy measures such as cash transfers to provide safety nets, insurance and other types of livelihood support.

5. The window of opportunity is closing, rapidly

The new report emphasises the need to couple adaptation measures with greenhouse gas emission reductions to enable “climate resilient development”.

This will require adequate financing, inclusive governance, transparency in decision making, and the participation of a wide range of people and groups.

Yet, the world is on a path to exceed 1.5℃ warming within the next decade. Current development policies which accelerate greenhouse gas emissions actually increase climate maladaptation risks and widen social inequalities.

To urgently shift our collective course from 1.5℃ of warming and beyond, the report charts paths for climate-resilient development that policymakers can apply, all of which reduce climate risks while improving lives, especially among those most vulnerable to global warming.

Time, however, is running short.

Links

• New IPCC report shows Australia is at real risk from climate change, with impacts worsening, future risks high, and wide-ranging adaptation needed
• IPCC Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability
• COP26 deal: how rich countries failed to meet their obligations to the rest of the world
• IPCC report: Coastal cities are sentinels for climate change. It’s where our focus should be as we prepare for inevitable impacts
• IPCC says Earth will reach temperature rise of about 1.5℃ in around a decade. But limiting any global warming is what matters most
• Articles on IPCC report 2022

(AU The Guardian) Tasmania Records Driest Summer In 40 Years As La Niña ‘Swings The Wind Around’

The Guardian - Adam Morton

Weather pattern slashes rainfall in Australia’s southernmost state while temperatures soar

The view over Hobart from Mount Wellington on a sunny day. As La Niña has sent more rain to the Australian mainland, Tasmania has endured a hot, dry summer. Photograph: Genevieve Vallee/Alamy

While Queensland and New South Wales have been hit with historic rainfall and floods, Tasmania has endured its driest summer in 40 years.

The island state’s west and south-west – both sparsely populated and typically wet – recorded their lowest levels of rainfall on record, the Bureau of Meteorology said.

This meant that across the state it was driest summer since 1980-81, and the fourth driest since records began more than a century ago.

Total rainfall was 43% below the long-term average. Parts of the south-west had between 200mm and 400mm less rain than they normally would in summer.

Climate scientists warn global heating means Australia facing more catastrophic storms and floods. Read more

This was consistent with projections of changed rainfall across the state due to rising temperatures caused by greenhouse gas emissions.

A major report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published this week found that global heating was expected to lead to more winter rain in Tasmania but a reduction in summer rain in the state’s west.

Anna Forrest, a meteorologist with the bureau, said the impact of the La Niña weather pattern that has helped drive the extraordinary rain further north was likely to have played a role in reducing the amount of rain in Tasmania.

During a La Niña event, strong trade winds blow west across the Pacific Ocean, pushing warm surface water towards Asia and the seas north of Australia.

The warmer waters lead to increased rainfall across northern and eastern Australia but play a different role further south.

“The predominant wind direction for Tasmania is westerly but this summer we’ve had a lot of easterly winds,” Forrest said. “It is highly unusual but that is the impact a La Niña has on Tasmania’s climate. It basically swings the wind around.”

The Tasmanian dry spell coincided with one of the state’s hottest summers on record. The mean temperature across days and nights was 1.3C higher than average, making it the fifth warmest summer since records began. The average maximum day time temperature was 1.7C above the long-term average.

Across the country, it was the 17th warmest summer on record. It was 0.73C above the long-term average measured across the years 1961 to 1990, but cooler than some recent summers, reflecting La Niña’s impact. Summer rainfall was close to average for Australia as a whole.

The IPCC last year reported that human activities were unequivocally heating the planet, affecting weather and climate extremes in every region across the globe and helping to cause increased heatwaves, heavier rainfall events and more intense droughts and tropical cyclones.

In Australia it found that average temperatures above land had already increased by about 1.4C since 1910. Annual changes in temperature were now above what could be expected from natural variation in all regions across the continent.

A scientific review has concluded that the frequency of El Niño, which is associated with higher temperatures in eastern Australia, and La Niña events were expected to increase under business-as-usual scenarios of greenhouse gas emissions.

Links

• Tasmania's Changing Climate
• What are the climate projections and impacts for Tasmania?
• Tasmania: Impacts of climate change
• Impact of sea-level rise on coastal natural values in Tasmania (pdf)
• Tasmanian Forests Help Solve the Climate Crisis
• In heatwave conditions, Tasmania’s tall eucalypt forests no longer absorb carbon