Government Accused Of Forcing Up Power Prices Through Climate Backdown

Fairfax - Adam Morton | Heath Aston

The government faces accusations that it is forcing up electricity prices and reducing energy reliability after abandoning a plan to even consider a climate scheme that experts say could have tackled both.
In a torturous press conference, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull confirmed that the government had been forced into a U-turn on climate-change policy less than 48 hours after releasing details for a policy review next year.

No carbon tax or emissions trading 
Speculation the government might adopt a carbon intensity trading scheme leads to a clarification from Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. Courtesy ABC News 24.

After two days of vocal criticism from several Coalition backbenchers, the government dropped plans for the review to consider an emissions intensity scheme for the electricity sector - a form of carbon pricing - to help it meet its climate targets.
Mr Turnbull denied such a scheme had ever been part of the review. "We will not be imposing a carbon tax and we will not be imposing an emissions trading scheme, however it is called," he said.

Prime minister Malcolm Turnbull at the Sydney Fish Markets on Wednesday. Photo: Mick Tsikas

It  came as EnergyAustralia – the country's second biggest greenhouse gas emitter – announced on Wednesday plans to spend $1.5 billion on solar and wind projects.
Asked whether Environment and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg had the imprimatur of the Prime Minister's Office when he told journalists it would be considered, Mr Turnbull said: "If you want to ask questions about what another minister said, you should address them to him."
Mr Frydenberg subsequently also denied an emissions intensity scheme had ever been on the table, despite having told Fairfax Media and the ABC that the review would look at it.
Mr Turnbull said the government would never increase the cost of energy for Australian families and businesses.
But Frontier Economics chief Danny Price, who advised Mr Turnbull on an emissions intensity scheme as far back as 2009 and who the government last year appointed to the Climate Change Authority board, said the government had turned its back on an option that would have reduced prices.
He said an emissions intensity scheme would improve reliability by helping the electricity industry plan for the closure of existing ageing coal plants by investing in cleaner stations.
"This shows a lack of spine. The policy vacuum that it leaves will be filled by policies that will do exactly what they are trying to avoid," Mr Price said.
"By doing this, it means they are the party of increasing electricity prices and reduced energy security."
Grattan Institute energy program director Tony Wood said an emissions intensity scheme should not be called a carbon tax because it did not raise revenue. He said any policy to cut emissions would have a cost, but those opposing such a scheme were creating more uncertainty and higher prices.
An emissions intensity scheme would set a baseline figure for how much carbon dioxide a power station could emit for every unit of power generated, penalising those who breached their limit and rewarding cleaner models that emitted less with free credits.
Bodies to have recommended an emissions intensity scheme on cost grounds include Energy Networks Australia and the CSIRO.
Energy and business leaders who have called for a bipartisan plan for the future of the electricity system as it shifts to cleaner forms of generation.
Australia Energy Council chief Matthew Warren, representing most electricity generators, declined to comment directly on the about-face, but reiterated substantial policy change was needed.
"The electricity system is visibly deteriorating. It is a system that requires multi-billion-dollar investments and is paralysed because of uncertainty, and until that is resolved, it will continue to deteriorate," Mr Warren said.
Outspoken Liberal backbencher Cory Bernardi welcomed the government backdown. "It was a clear attempt to reintroduce a price on hot air to satisfy the extreme greens and others seduced by the socialist alarmism of anthropogenic climate change," he said.
Opposition leader Bill Shorten said Mr Turnbull was a "weak fellow" who had cave into internal from the Coalition right-wing. "He doesn't believe in anything except saving his job," he said.

Links

• Backbench forces Josh Frydenberg into humiliating climate policy backdown
• Yes, PM, it's business as usual: disunity, ill-discipline and undermining
• Seven energy charts that will cheer and frighten you
• Power prices, energy security, emissions cuts - and carbon pricing - on the table in climate review

Putting American Climate Denial To Good Use

Fairfax - Julian Cribb*

In an interview with Fox News, Donald Trump's newly appointed chief of staff, the Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus, confirmed that the official stance of the Trump White House will be that climate science is a "bunch of bunk".
An analysis published in The Washington Post found that America's failure to pull its weight on climate mitigation could boost world temperatures by +2.3 to +2.5 degrees by 2050, depending on whether the rest of the world holds the line agreed to at Paris COP 21, or whether other countries (like Australia, for example) take it as a pretext to backslide on their commitment to present and future generations.

President-elect Donald Trump with his new chief of staff Reince Priebus. Photo: AP

Stripped of political persiflage, the Trump position – as articulated by Priebus and the growing gang of climate deniers appointed to hold office under Trump – is that tens of millions of humans must die to protect the shareholder value of a handful of crumbling US resources corporates who refuse to enter the 21st century and prefer to stick with the 19th and 20th.
According to a World Health Organisation 2016 report "An estimated 12.6 million people died as a result of living or working in an unhealthy environment in 2012 – nearly one in four of total global deaths". Those unhealthy environments mostly consist of air, water, food and furnishings polluted by toxins sourced from the petrochemical and coal industries. In China and India, on average, 4000 people die daily from air pollution alone. Around a third of the world's rising cancer rates are now attributed to chemical exposures, as are the rising waves of autism, reproductive dysfunction and mental disease.
And this doesn't begin to include the numbers who will perish in the famines, wars and weather disasters that will accompany accelerating climate change.
So, including their impact on the global climate, fossil fuels are now claiming lives at a substantially higher rate than did World War II (about 7 million a year). It follows that a decision by the new American leadership to promote fossil fuel use, instead of replacing it with cleaner, safer and more sustainable forms of energy amounts to a declaration of war on humanity as a whole – and one that will, unavoidably, come at the cost of tens of millions of lives.
The same argument applies to the hollow, insincere, foot-dragging policies of Australian political leaders on climate and renewables: many are perfectly willing to sacrifice human lives for the sake of a few cosy coal company sinecures after political retirement. Like asbestos, they are hoping the long industrial chains between the primary sources of pollution and its victims will, for a time, obscure the trail of ultimate responsibility. But, eventually, there will be a Nuremberg.
In the meantime, the world has the interesting issue of how to deal with an America many of us thought of as a friend, ally and benefactor – and which now displays all the potential for becoming a rogue state worse by far than North Korea, in terms of the damage it can inflict on humanity.
The simplest and most elegant solution is the one powerfully articulated by Donald Trump during the election campaign when he declared that Mexico should pay for building his border wall, to keep the tide of emigrants out of the US.
If America wants to damage the world's climate, destabilise the planet and cause havoc to the health of its citizens by promoting toxic energy solutions, then it is only fair that America should pay to clean up the mess it creates and compensate the victims.
The logical answer is for signatories to COP 21 to agree to impose a multilateral carbon tax on the trade (goods and services) of any country that abandons its agreement.
A tax that would pay for all the climate mitigation, reafforestation, water and food security measures, new energy research and especially, for the building of vast new renewable energy plants around the world.
That way, America's coal, oil, gas and shale sector can be made to fund the rise of its competitors – and bankroll the transition to a clean, sustainable world. Since they have devoted recent decades to amassing fortunes at the expense of farmers, native peoples, blue-collar workers and the middle classes of the world, it would be Shakespearean justice to spend those fortunes on improving global wellbeing in this way. If the carbon levy was big enough, it could even be used to end world poverty ...
The aim of a carbon levy on US trade is not to hurt the tens of millions of sensible, caring Americans who don't swallow the Trump nonsense, nor the tens of thousands of ethical American businesses who are already committed to climate action. It is to add steel to their arm and might to their lobby in their effort to compel their country's leaders to abandon this self-defeating course.
Yes, a carbon levy would be a form of sanction. Just like the sanctions America itself supported against apartheid South Africa, Iran, Libya, Cuba and many others. Do such measures work? Well, they certainly appear to – or people wouldn't keep imposing them. They certainly strengthen opposition movements within the sanctioned country. And in America, land of the dollar, money speaks louder than ideals.
The carbon levy should not only be on American-sourced goods and services, but also on products of multinational companies founded or substantially based in the US. That includes Apple, Microsoft, Coca-cola, Continental Grain etc. Oh, and don't forget the US arms industry either – they seem to have the ear of the Trumpists. It could be imposed multilaterally, but in the meantime bilaterally will do. If enough countries impose a carbon levy it will be a sign to Washington that we're serious.
At the same time the carbon levy could be suspended for the "goodies" of the US economy – Elon Musk's electric cars and batteries, for example or solar firms Verengo, SolarCity and SunPower. This would send a clear market signal about what products the world prefers, which ever-agile US commerce would be quick to exploit.
So let's all play the Mexican Wall game back to Mr Trump and his cronies. For the sake of all our grandkids.
Thanks, Donald, for another great business idea!

*Julian Cribb is a science writer and author of 'Surviving the 21st Century'

Links

• Donald Trump Still Thinks Climate Change Is 'A Bunch Of Bunk'
• UN estimates 12.6 million deaths each year attributable to unhealthy environments
• The Paris Agreement
• PM's stunning backflip on carbon tax
• 2016 ‘very likely’ to be the hottest year on record, U.N. agency declares

What An Extraordinary, Gutless Capitulation By Josh Frydenberg

The Guardian - Katharine Murphy

Forget climate policy intricacies – through this pathetic retreat the government has again revealed its true nature

‘Josh Frydenberg has gone in the space of 24 hours from saying quite clearly the government would consider an emissions intensity trading scheme for the electricity sector to trying to pretend he said no such thing.’ Photograph: Bloomberg via Getty Images

What an extraordinary capitulation.
Just 24 hours of controversy from entirely predictable quarters and a carefully calibrated process to try to engineer a truce in Australia’s utterly wretched climate politics has been all but abandoned by its architects.
Josh Frydenberg has gone in the space of 24 hours from saying quite clearly the government would consider an emissions intensity trading scheme for the electricity sector to trying to pretend he said no such thing.
The retreat is, frankly, unseemly.
Actually, the retreat is more than unseemly, it’s pathetic – and the consequences of it stretch far beyond yet another apparent failure to do what needs to be done to ensure our economy makes an orderly transition to the carbon-constrained world that the Turnbull government willingly accepted when it signed Australia up to the Paris international climate agreement this time 12 months ago.
Forget the intricacies of the climate policy debate – the government through this botched process has again revealed its true nature to the public.
Yet again the Turnbull government has shown the voting public that it is a divided, roiling, rudderless, chaotic and gutless political outfit, locked into a cycle of chasing its own tail, jumping nervously at shadows.
It doesn’t matter whether or not you are intrinsically a fan of governments embarking on rational policy solutions to vexed public policy problems, whether you accept the science of climate change or whether you don’t, this particular episode chalks up yet another episode in government as chaos theory.
The government now presents to the public as an outfit completely devoid of organising principle, careening to try to stay ahead of the next imbroglio, not because of any external pressure, or ferocious rent seeking by powerful special interests, or slick politics by the opposition – but because everything is about the metastasizing internals.
At the end of the political year, the government looks like a bunch of people clinging to their jobs, and doing whatever it takes to keep clinging to them – or if they are not doing that, they are trying to engineer the downfall of others, week after week, issue after issue.
Sensible people in the government would of course tell you this process of reviewing the manifestly inadequate Direct Action policy was doomed from the start – that it would be impossible to engineer a rational climate policy, one which reduced emissions at the least cost to taxpayers, and steer it successfully through this particular Coalition party room.
Sensible people would say this process was always going to degenerate into a battle of straw men and a proxy war about leadership.
They are doubtless correct in that assessment.
This is, after all, the group of people who elevated something as inoffensive as a market-based mechanism to the status of mass moral panic and a national thought crime.
That’s a collective trance of pure stupid that is very hard to break out of.
Sensible government people would also tell you that the review of Direct Action is still afoot, and it will hear a bunch of arguments in favour of evidence-based policy from business, from the energy sector, from environment groups – arguments that might be able to carry some weight over the next 12 months.
Right now, that’s a very big might.
Right now, the conclusion looks inescapable.
On climate policy the Coalition has backed itself into a tight corner of its own making – and it shows no sign of finding the courage, the steadiness or the integrity to try to manage its way out.

Links

• Josh Frydenberg backtracks on emissions trading comments
• Malcolm Turnbull rules out carbon tax or emissions trading
• Direct Action review a legacy of Abbott years, says Malcolm Turnbull
• Australia's energy transmission industry calls for carbon trading

Why The Climate Change Policy Is Stuck In A Revolving Door

New Daily - Rob Burgess

Round we go again with yet more discussion papers on climate policy. Photo: AAP

The government’s climate change policy review, announced on Monday, will give anyone interested in the issue a powerful sense of déjà vu.
The review will look at whether Australia’s carbon emission targets are being met, and whether the “lowest cost of abatement” is being achieved.
Significantly, the government is ruling out both a return to a nationwide carbon pricing scheme, and any increase on the current 2020 renewable energy target, which it cut last June from 41,000 GWh to 33,000 GWh.
Beyond that, the review’s terms of reference look better suited to 2007 – the year John Howard asked the head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Peter Shergold, to draw up plans for an emissions trading scheme.
It’s as if the Gillard government’s emissions trading scheme, erroneously dubbed a ‘carbon tax’, had never been designed, legislated, operated and then repealed.

Point of difference

Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg wants “to hear from experts”.

Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg is trying to differentiate his Direct Action suite of policies as a “sector-by-sector” approach, stressing he will pay particular attention to the “impact of policies on jobs, investment, trade competitiveness, households and regional Australia”.
But hang on, that’s exactly what the Gillard government’s ‘Clean Energy Futures’ package did too.
It has specific carve-outs and compensation packages for sectors such as steel, aluminium and food processing, and left petrol off the list of carbon sources altogether.
Mr Frydenberg told the ABC he would engage in “close engagement with business and the community, beginning with consultation on a discussion paper”.
Again, it’s like being back in 2007, when the Committee for the Economic Development of Australia – perhaps the nation’s least partisan think tank – hosted an international debate between US economists Dr Robert Mendelsohn and Dr Robert Shapiro and Australians Professor Warwick McKibbin and Brian Fisher.
Back then, the main difference in opinion was over whether a carbon tax, an emissions trading system, or a hybrid of the two would be the cheapest way to change the nation’s power consumption habits.
And none of those economists would have called for a ‘standing Green Army’ to plant trees and fix other environmental programs – an Abbott government policy that looks set to be torn up at the next budget, to the chagrin of Mr Abbott himself.

Polluted politics
In the aftermath of Tony Abbott’s devastating campaign against the ‘carbon tax’ between 2011 and 2013, the cheapest way to cut emissions has become a political impossibility.
That said, one form of emissions trading ­– in which the price of permits to pollute are set by an auction process – is back on the table.

The carbon tax was a hot topic for Australia. Photo: Getty

It will reportedly be considered only for big electricity generators – which sounds uncannily like the plan Labor took to this year’s federal election.
Overall, the politics of carbon reduction has become a farce, with Mr Frydenberg telling the ABC on Monday: “We want to hear from the experts, as to the lowest cost of abatement.”
But experts thrashed out those arguments a decade ago! They published pivotal reports such as the Stern Review in the UK, or the Garnaut Review in Australia.
Economist Ross Garnaut tackled what he called the “diabolical” policy problem, by creating Labor’s carbon price-setting mechanism, which included some of the carve-outs listed above.
Moreover, 80 per cent of the revenue raised by that policy was returned as tax cuts and pension/benefit increases – resulting, as noted last week, in a per capita impost on Australians of around $34 per year.

Abbottalypse now
Now, following the Abbott government’s repeal of that package, we have Direct Action – a package centred on the Emissions Reduction Fund, in which the government pays companies, via the cheapest tenders, to stop polluting.

An emission trading scheme for large electricity generators is reportedly back on the table.

So far it has boasted of a low cost per tonne for reducing emissions, overlooking the fact that such an ‘auction’ was always going to buy up the lowest-cost forms of abatement first.
By definition, the higher cost abatement plans will have to be purchased down the track – costing taxpayers more, and more and more, as Mr Abbott might have put it.
That’s why economists have stressed that emissions trading, or even a real carbon tax, is superior. The price doesn’t just keep going up.
But instead of trusting to either of those two approaches, we’ve ended up with a government that wants to “hear from experts” (again) to created a sector-by-sector plan (again), weigh up the impact on “jobs, investment, trade and households” (again) and consult with business and communities (again).
Déjà vu doesn’t begin to describe the revolving door this policy area has now been caught in for a decade.

Links

• Carbon price for power generators back on the table
• Here’s the reason why South Australia lost all of its power
• Tony Abbott slams Malcolm Turnbull over Green Army axing
• Garnaut Climate Change Review

'One Of The Dumbest Things I've Ever Heard': Coalition Conservatives Furious Over Climate Review

Fairfax -James Massola | Adam Morton

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull faces a fresh outbreak of party disunity over climate policy, with backbench MPs questioning the government's timing, scope and tactics after a formal review of the Direct Action plan was finally announced.
Environment and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg on Monday launched the long-awaited review - which controversially promises to look at whether to introduce an emissions intensity scheme for electricity generators, which is a type of carbon price - though he emphasised a focus on household electricity prices and energy security.

Carbon review divides government
Cory Bernardi gives voice to government divisions over a proposed carbon intensity trading scheme in the electricity sector. Courtesy ABC News 24

Energy and business leaders immediately issued a plea to the Coalition and Labor: end a decade of destructive politics and come up with a shared national plan to cut emissions over coming decades, including some sort of carbon price.
Most were open to that being an emissions intensity scheme, which would set a baseline for how much carbon dioxide a power station could emit for every unit of power generated, penalising those that breached their limit and rewarding cleaner models that emitted less.
And as debate about the climate review began, it emerged Tony Abbott's signature "green army" policy, which used young unemployed people on landcare projects, is to be axed, prompting a furious rebuke from the former prime minister.
Fairfax Media spoke to 10 Coalition MPs on Monday about the prospect of an emissions intensity scheme for the electricity sector and all of them were scathing at the prospect of what is, in effect, a carbon price being re-introduced in Australia, regardless of the relative cost.
An emissions intensity scheme puts a hard limit on how much a plant can emit for every unit of electricity it generates. Initially, there could be no cost to generators that stayed within their limit, but those that emitted more than allowed would need to buy carbon permits - representing emissions cuts elsewhere - to offset the breach.
Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi, freshly returned from three months at the United Nations in New York, said transitioning to an emissions intensity scheme was "one of the dumbest things I've ever heard. It is not in the Australian national interest for the government to chase policies that ingratiate it with the Greens.

Questioned the advantage of a carbon trading scheme: Liberal MP Craig Kelly. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

"To get back on the right economic track, we need the cheapest electricity in the world."
West Australian MP Andrew Hastie said his overriding concern was the cost of living for families and asked: "Why would we unilaterally, economically disarm [by adopting a price on carbon]?"

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Environment and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg.  Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

South Australian MP Tony Pasin said that given the current economic climate, "the government should be doing all it can to put downward  pressure on the cost of electricity generation to reduce the power bills of hard-working Australians".
NSW MP Craig Kelly said it was fair enough for Mr Frydenberg to leave "everything on the table" as the review was undertaken but then added: "I do not see how any form of carbon trading scheme would put us at a national competitive advantage".

"It is not in the Australian national interest": Senator Cory Bernardi. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

Another MP, who asked not be named, said he was "scratching his head" why the government had released the review - and opened up a new political fight - just three days after securing year-ending wins in Parliament.
"There is very real concern among colleagues that this goes down a track we were promised we would not go down."
As conservative MPs marked a line in the sand over carbon trading and Labor and the Greens criticised the government's review, Australian Energy Council chief Matthew Warren, representing the bulk of generators, said the most important thing for the industry was a policy that would withstand changes in government.
"We'd go for almost anything that has a substantial chance of succeeding and garners bipartisan support, because we can build on it," he said.
Mr Warren said a decade of uncertainty on climate and energy policy had driven away investment, leaving a system "now materially degrading before our eyes".
He said the energy industry wanted some form of carbon price linked to a clear emissions target that extended beyond 2030 - something the review will consider - to trigger investments in new power stations that would last decades.
Australian Industry Group chief Innes Willox said the country could only play its part in tackling climate change at lowest cost if investors believed policies would survive.
"Bipartisanship on climate and energy is the only way forward. The alternative is costly failure," he said.
The Climate Institute said the country had a clear choice: between a review that set Australia on a pathway to zero emissions, or continued the policy chaos of the past 10 years.
Deputy chief executive Erwin Jackson said the goal must be a policy framework that was capable of decarbonising the electricity system well before 2050. It must include some form of carbon price, but that alone would not be enough as experience had taught that any scheme would be a political compromise.
The Climate Institute supports a phased retirement of Australia's remaining 24 coal plants to set a clear timeframe of when new plants would be needed. Mr Jackson said it would reduce the need to subsidise renewable energy and help ensure energy security.
Frank Jotzo, from the ANU Crawford School of Public Policy, said an emissions intensity scheme would be a second-best option after an economy-wide carbon price, but support for it in public debate reflected that Australia was "cobbling things together" after year of political disagreement.
He cautioned that allowing the use of international carbon credits to help meet Australia's climate targets would not be enough to drive the change needed in the power sector, given the credit price was often low, and did not reflect other steps being taken in Europe and China to cut emissions.
He noted the terms of reference did not include a re-examination of the 2030 emissions target, of a 26-to-28 per cent cut below 2005 levels, but said there would be a global stocktake under the Paris deal under which Australia would be expected to strengthen its goal.
"That would indicate that will be considered later," he said.

Links

• Turnbull says he's never supported a carbon tax 
• Power prices, energy security, emissions cuts - and carbon pricing - on the table in climate review
• What the climate policy review means
• 'Dismayed' Tony Abbott slams Turnbull government for axing Green Army
• Coalition conservatives furious over climate review

Google's Satellite Timelapses Show The Inconvenient Truth About Our Planet

The Guardian - Jonathan Jones

Google's new Timelapse project allows you to see how anywhere in the world has changed in the last 32 years; from evaporating lakes to exploding cities, it's a document of recklessness

Lake Poopó, Bolivia … composite of images taken from Google's timelapse tool. Composite: Google

The image of the Earth from space is so seared into human consciousness that it is hard to conceive what it was like to live without the picture of our planet as a blue sphere that we all now carry in our minds.
The first photographs of the Earth's surface seen from 100 miles were taken in 1947. By 1968, the famous Earthrise image photographed by the crew of Apollo 8 framed our planet as a beautiful oasis in black space. Today, stunning and intensely informative pictures of the Earth's surface are being taken from space constantly: so comprehensively, for so long, that Google has now created timelapses that show three decades of change.
It induces anxiety to watch, in just a few seconds, a desert in Saudi Arabia turn into a vast agribusiness complex, a lake in Bolivia vanish or cities grow spectacularly in China.

Google timelapse of Chongqing, China.

History has become a car crash in speeded-up motion. We can see, in these timelapse satellite videos, how the Earth is being torn apart by human acts. We can also see, in timelapse videos of Arctic ice, great glaciers melt before our eyes. Yet, are human beings capable of assimilating such global perspectives or is our consciousness tragically limited to a pre-space age, even pre-Copernican mentality? Are people only capable of acting on immediate, personal and local concerns, even though images from space can show us the bigger picture?
This is one of the real problems of our time. The new vistas on Earth opened up by Apollo 8 in 1968 may seem to have sunk into the very fabric of human consciousness, but it also seems that we can watch any number of videos of expanding cities and vanishing ice without becoming globally conscious.

Google timelapse of Lago Poopó, Bolivia.

Extreme scepticism about climate change has proved a vote winner for Donald Trump. Specifically, Barack Obama's environmental policies have been accused of creating a "war on coal". Pennsylvania miners were not happy to accept that their traditional jobs were doomed for the greater good. All the images of climate change, the timelapse videos of a crumbling Earth, the crash of glaciers, don't apparently mean anything compared with the direct experiences people have in their own neighbourhoods. If a truth is inconvenient, ignore it.
If you want to experience, directly, the gap between imagination and reality, science and common sense, that threatens our ability to act rationally to save the planet, just consider your smartphone. Walking down the street, I can see myself move on the screen of my phone, in a real-time, real-life link between myself and a network of satellites. Yet do we go around pondering this magic? No, and perhaps it even seems naive to do so. We just use the app to check how far we are from the meeting or pub we're trying to get to.

Google timelapse of north-east Greenland.

We are now a species in space, our lives as well as the health of our planet scanned by satellites. Globalisation is not abstract but a scientific reality that is made visible in these timelapse images of our changing world. Yet that knowledge somehow does not get into the depths of our psyches. The GPS in our smartphones and cars is an unfortunate metaphor for a crushing failure of human imagination. We literally refuse to engage with the dazzling global and extra-global nature of modern life. It's all too complex, apparently.We are mentally imprisoned, unable to soar in our minds to see the Earth as a satellite can see it. And it's killing us.

Links

• First Pictures of Earth From 100 Miles in Space, 1947
• Earthrise
• Google Earth Engine
• Extreme Ice Survey

Adani Coal Mine Project: Queensland Government Approves Rail Line, Camp

ABC News

The $22 billion Carmichael coal and rail project has secured approval for a permanent rail line and a temporary construction camp.

Queensland's coordinator-general has given "the latest, and final, secondary approval" for about 31.5 kilometres of permanent track, as well as the 300-bed camp.
The rail section approved will form part of the 389 kilometre heavy haul railway line from the mine in the Galilee Basin to the Abbot Point port.

The coordinator-general has given "the latest, and final" approval for Adani's Carmichael mine. (Supplied: adanimining.com)

The Carmichael mine, which will be Australia's largest coal mine, still needs a water licence approved and hopes to secure a Federal Government loan.
State Development Minister Dr Anthony Lynham said the approval was another milestone for the project.

"Adani has confirmed it will start construction next year," Dr Lynham said.

"North Queensland is about to see a new horizon, because these big projects will be a huge economic stimulus for the north."
Adani Group chairman Gautam Adani and Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk will on Tuesday visit Townsville, about two hours from the Abbot Point port.
A headquarters for Adani's operations is yet to be announced.
The mine will consist of six open-cut pits and up to five underground mines, and will supply Indian power plants with enough coal to generate electricity for up to 100 million people.
The controversial project involves dredging 1.1 million cubic metres of spoil near the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, which will then be disposed of on land.

Links

• Adani's new Carmichael coal mine in Galilee Basin 'not economically viable'
• Mining leases approved for $21b Carmichael coal mine
• Underground water management laws branded both 'too weak' and 'too tough'
• Indigenous people plan further legal action against Carmichael coal mineMatt Canavan says 'positive news' is set to be announced on Adani mega mine
• Turnbull government eyes $1 billion Adani loan backed by new infrastructure fund
• Adani Galilee Basin project gets final OK