'Emphatic': Odds Point To Big Dry Expanding Across Eastern Australia

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

Fire authorities, farmers and even water storage managers may be in for even more trying times as odds increase for the drier and hotter conditions across eastern Australia to continue deep into spring.
Places such as Sydney are already on track for record-breaking July temperatures amid the lowest rainfall in decades.
The Bureau of Meteorology's latest three-month outlook, updated on Thursday, points to more of the same for months to come.

There's no sign of a let-up for most of eastern Australia's drier and hotter than average weather. Photo: Johnathan Carroll

While the August-October forecast suggests odds favour a drier and hotter than normal stint for mainland south-eastern Australian, the chances are particularly strong for next month alone, Jonathan Pollock, a bureau climatologist, said.
"It's unusual to have such widespread emphatic odds," Mr Pollock said.

Chance of exceeding the median Rainfall for August

Source: Australian Bureau of Meteorology

"Everywhere south of Armidale [in north NSW] has a greater than 80 per cent chance of below-average rainfall," he said.
So far in July, rainfall totals in NSW have been less than half the norm for much of the state. For the first six months of the year, they were also half the average, marking the driest start to a year since 1986, the bureau has said.
For Sydney alone, this month is on track to being the driest July since 1995 on current forecasts, with just 9.8 millimetres so far collected at Observatory Hill. A typical July would have almost 10 times that, at 96.6 millimetres.

Record warmth
The standout for Sydney, though, may be its daytime temperatures. On Thursday, the mercury climbed above 20 degrees for the eighth day this month, with five more forecast by July 31.

Much of eastern Australia has experienced a very dry first half of the year, and the likelihood of an El Nino developing is around 50-50. Vision: Bureau of Meteorology.

The record number of such days is 12, in 2013. Even if the record is not broken, there's a fair chance the bar will be lifted for maximum temperatures, also set 2013 at 19.5 degrees. A typical July averages 16.4 degrees.
As Fairfax Media reported on Monday, authorities have already brought forward the start of the official fire season for parts of north-eastern NSW.  Some other regions, where the season would typically start in October, are likely to be brought forward to September.

Chance of exceeding the median Max Temp for August

Source: Australian Bureau of Meteorology

Farmers wilt
Mr Pollock said parts of the state had soil moisture levels down to 1 per cent of normal conditions, hammering farmers.

Sheep hunt for grass on a farm near Manilla, not far from Tamworth, in northern NSW. Photo: Peter Hardin

Among other things, it also means rainfall when it comes would likely be first soaked up in the soils rather than ending up in dams and rivers.
"That's bad news for water storage," Mr Pollock said.
The reason for the lifting of odds for poor rainfall and warmer-than-usual conditions is partly a cooling of waters off Western Australia of late. This shift tends to reduce moisture over the continent.
There have also been weaker and fewer rain-bearing cold fronts extending into south-eastern Australia amid generally relatively weak westerly winds, Mr Pollock said.

El Nino lurks
While the bureau's outlook only covers the coming three months, there are few signs the pattern will be breaking up soon. In fact, it could extend beyond spring, if an El Nino forms in the Pacific later this year.
The current odds for an El Nino - which typically means less rainfall than usual and higher temperatures across much of Australia - are about 50-50, Mr Pollock said.
Five of the bureau's eight main international models it analyses point to El Nino thresholds being crossed by the spring, and a sixth has it reached by December.

Links

• Overview - Summary for August to October - Climate Outlooks
• Temperature - Summary for August to October
• Rainfall - The chance of above median for August to October
• Rainfall - Totals that have a 75% chance of occurring for August to October
• Dry and warm weather set to continue

Federal Labor, Experts Call For Full Release Of Energy Plan Modelling

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

The Turnbull government and regulators must release the modelling underpinning the National Energy Guarantee to reassure the public that projected savings are real, Federal Labor and leading analysts said.
The call comes as discrepancies appear both with the policy's own figures - handed to state and territory governments this week by the Energy Security Board - and with those of one of the board's key members.

What are the underlying assumptions that have gone into the National Energy Guarantee's forecasts?

Labor-led state and territory governments are planning to caucus a range of demands on the energy plan for the federal government in coming days.
Seeking some form of external peer-review of the board's modelling for its full final design paper has been raised with at least one state government, Fairfax Media understands.
One complaint is governments are under excessive pressure to reach a decision by the next COAG energy ministers meeting set for August 10 in Sydney without all the information before them.
A key sales pitch by the board is the estimate, revealed this week, that the scheme will cut households' power bills by an average $150 a year - as part of $550 in overall savings - during the first decade of its operation, starting from 2020.
"Where is the modelling that proves this?" Mark Butler, federal Labor's climate spokesman said. "All modelling of the NEG should be made available so stakeholders and the public can properly assess its merits."
Josh Frydenberg, federal Environment and Energy Minister, declined to comment on any modelling release, but said: “The National Energy Guarantee will deliver a more affordable and reliable energy system. Modelling undertaken by the independent experts from the Energy Security Board shows households will be $550 a year better off under the Guarantee compared to today.”
A board spokeswoman said the body "is yet to publish the final detailed design [of the plan]," but had "real confidence that the design can deliver on the objectives of affordable, reliable and clean power for Australian households and businesses".
Liberal-led NSW is not among those pressing for additional data.
"The modelling is an internal matter of the Energy Security Board," a spokesman for Don Harwin, NSW's Energy Minister, said.
Bruce Mountain, director of the Victoria Energy Policy Centre - set up recently by that state's Labor government - said the guarantee's projected cost savings were difficult to understand.
Since the emissions target of the plan - cutting 2005-level carbon pollution in the electricity sector by 2030 - will be achieved almost as soon as the scheme begins, the driver of falling prices was unclear, he said.
"How can a policy that is designed to do something that will happen anyway cause prices to be any lower than they would be anyway?" Mr Mountain said, adding that since state governments would sign off on the plan, they should be asked to demonstrate the savings were real.
Dylan McConnell, an energy expert at Melbourne University, noted assumptions contained in the version of the plan leaked to the public this week were at odds with those formally released a week earlier by the Australian Energy Market Operator in its Integrated System Plan.
For instance, the market operator included in its base case the state-run renewable energy plans for Victoria and Queensland. They would help lift clean energy's share of the electricity sector to 46 per cent by 2030 - not far shy of federal Labor's pledge of 50 per cent.
That additional generation, however, is absent in the board's modelling even though the market operator is one of its members and the Victorian target is legislated.
Similarly at odds is the board's modelling that assumes the multibillion-dollar Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro scheme - a key Turnbull government proposal - will go ahead while the market operator does not have project in its base scenario, Mr McConnell said.
The board's modelling "is certainly not consistent" with the market operator's, he said.

Links

• Government's Energy Plan Would Guarantee A 'Nightmare' Of Complexity
• Electricity Plan Would All But Hit Emissions Goal Before It Starts
• Tender Will Allow Coalition To Dig Its Way Out Of Coal Hole
• Renewables Will Replace Ageing Coal Plants At Lowest Cost, AEMO Says
• Prolong The Life Of Coal-Fired Power Stations In The National Electricity Market, Says Australian Energy Market Operator
• Greenpeace And Getup Launch Campaign To Kill National Energy Guarantee
• National Energy Guarantee 'Clumsy, Inefficient', Says VEPC's Mountain
• Phony Peace? Challenges To Energy Plan Sent Back To Modelling Board
• 'Not A Big Drama' For Electricity Industry To Slash Emissions, Says Scheme Architect
• Victoria Demands New Detailed Analysis On NEG After COAG Meeting
• NEG: A Bipartisan Agreement To Disagree?

Heatwave Made More Than Twice As Likely By Climate Change, Scientists Find

The Guardian - Damian Carrington

Fingerprints of global warming clear, they say, after comparing northern Europe’s scorching summer with records and computer models

The dried-out riverbank of Elbe in Magdeburg, eastern Germany … climate change link to heatwave proven, scientists say. Photograph: Tobias Schwarz/AFP/Getty Images

The heatwave searing northern Europe was made more than twice as likely by climate change, according to a rapid assessment by scientists.
The result is preliminary but they say the signal of climate change is “unambiguous”. Scientists have long predicted that global warming is ramping up the number and intensity of heatwaves, with events even worse than current one set to strike every other year by the 2040s.
“The logic that climate change will do this is inescapable – the world is becoming warmer, and so heatwaves like this are becoming more common,” said Friederike Otto, at the University of Oxford and part of the World Weather Attribution (WWA) consortium that did the work.
“What was once regarded as unusually warm weather will become commonplace, and in some cases, it already has,” she said. “So this is something that society can and should prepare for. But equally there is no doubt that we can and should constrain the increasing likelihood of all kinds of extreme weather events by restricting greenhouse gas emissions as sharply as possible.”
The new analysis is a climate-change attribution study. By comparing extreme weather with historical measurements and with computer models of a climate unaltered by carbon emissions, researchers can find how much global warming is increasing the risk of dangerous weather.

The researchers analysed records of the hottest three-day period at seven weather stations in northern Europe, from Ireland to the Netherlands to Scandinavia, where data was easily accessible.


Why is it so hot? – video explainer 

“We found that for the weather station in the far north, in the Arctic Circle, the current heatwave is just extraordinary – unprecedented in the historical record,” said Geert Jan van Oldenborgh, at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute and also part of WWA.
Across northern Europe, the group found global warming more than doubled the risk of scorching temperatures. “We can can see the fingerprints of climate change on local extremes,” he said. “It is amazing now that it is something you can really see at a local level.”
“Most heatwave studies have been done on large scale averages, so European-wide temperatures,” said Otto. “In this study, we have looked at individual locations, where people live, to represent the heatwave people are actually experiencing.” The analysis is a preliminary study as a full study requires many climate models to be run on high-powered computers, which takes months.
Previous attribution analyses have shown very strong connections between climate change and extreme weather events. The scorching summer in New South Wales, Australia, in 2016-17 was made at least 50 times more likely by global warming, meaning it can be “linked directly to climate change”, said the scientists.
The “Lucifer” heatwave across Europe’s Mediterranean nations in 2017 summer was made at least 10 times more likely by climate change, while the unprecedented deluge delivered in the US by Hurricane Harvey also in 2017 was made three times more likely by climate change, new research has found. However, other events, such as storms Eleanor and Friederike, which hit western Europe in January, were not made more likely by climate change, according to the scientists.
In Europe, the heatwave has been caused by the stalling of the jet stream wind, which usually funnels cool Atlantic weather over the continent. This has left hot, dry air in place for two months – far longer than than usual. The stalling of the northern hemisphere jet stream is being increasingly firmly linked to global warming, in particular to the rapid heating of the Arctic and resulting loss of sea ice.
The role of climate change in driving extreme weather events may actually be underestimated by these attribution studies, according to Prof Michael E Mann at Penn State University in the US. The work is good, he said, but computer models cannot yet reliably account for the complex jet stream changes caused by global warming, making the attribution studies “inherently conservative”.
Serious climate change is “unfolding before our eyes”, said Prof Rowan Sutton, director of climate research at the University of Reading. “No one should be in the slightest surprised that we are seeing very serious heatwaves and associated impacts in many parts of the world.”
The wide geographical spread of the heatwave, right across four continents, points to global warming as the culprit, said Prof Peter Stott, a science fellow at the UK’s Met Office: “That pattern is something we wouldn’t be seeing without climate change.”
The heatwave across northern Europe has seen wildfires in the Arctic Circle and prolonged heat across the UK and the European continent. In the south, fierce blazes have devastated parts of Greece, with scores of people killed.
But extreme weather has struck across the globe. Severe floods killed at least 220 people in Japan in early July, with the nation then hit by an “unprecedented” heatwave that peaked at 41.1C and left 35,000 people in hospital. In the US, extreme heat in the west is feeding wildfires, with Yosemite national park being evacuated, while flooding is affecting the east.
Temperature records have also fallen in Taiwan, with a temperature of 40.3C in Tianxiang, and in Ouargla in Algeria’s Sahara desert, which reported a maximum temperature of 51.3C, the highest temperature ever reliably recorded in Africa. The first six months of the 2018 are the hottest recorded for any year without an El Niño event, a natural climate cycle that raises temperatures.

Links

• UK ‘woefully unprepared’ for deadly heatwaves, warn MPs
• London's long hot summer – in pictures
• Whinge on, Brits – even Australians can't take this heat
• Why is Europe going through a heatwave?
• Extreme global weather is 'the face of climate change' says leading scientist
• Global warming to blame for hundreds of heatwave deaths, scientists say
• Shattered records show climate change is an emergency today, scientists warn
• Brexit voters almost twice as likely to disbelieve in manmade climate change
• Paris floods made almost twice as likely by climate change, say scientists
• Europe's record hot year made at least 35 times more likely by climate change, say scientists

The Guardian View On The Heatwave: Our Climate Is Endangered

The Guardian - Editorial

Adapting to hotter temperatures is sensible – but ignoring their causes is dangerous

A woman crosses a bridge at the Llwyn-on reservoir, near Merthyr Tydfil, Wales, which has vastly reduced water levels as a result of the heatwave. Photograph: Matthew Horwood/Getty 

The NHS is experiencing a “summer crisis”, with increased emergency admissions and uncomfortable conditions in buildings not equipped for the heat, while the Met Office has warned that the UK temperature record of 38.5C could be broken on Friday. Authorities in Greece are dealing with the aftermath of devastating wildfires that killed at least 85 people, while efforts to control blazes in Sweden and in California continue. In Japan, 23,000 people have been taken to hospital in the past week and the weather described by officials as a “disaster”. In Algeria, a new African record has been set of 51.3C.
Weather systems are highly complex and scientists are cautious about assigning specific causes to one-off events. But experts are already pointing to global warming as a driver for the current heatwave, with a study based on computer models and temperature data due to be published by scientists at Oxford University on Friday. Meanwhile, a new report from the environmental audit committee points to the likelihood of more frequent heatwaves in future, and the UK government’s failure to prepare adequately for them.
There’s nothing wrong with enjoying the heatwave, as many people are. Such a long spell of warm weather is extraordinary and, for sun lovers, a treat. No doubt many are hoping it doesn’t break before they take their holidays. But whether or not any more records are broken, or wildfires ignited in the coming weeks, the claim that rising temperatures have nothing to do with the global state of extreme weather must not go unchallenged.
When the former US environment secretary Scott Pruitt was asked about climate change following Hurricane Harvey last year, he said that it was not the right time to talk about it. The opposite case is that the aftermath of an extreme event, when the atmospheric conditions have become the news, rather than the backdrop to the news, can be a “teachable moment”, when different kinds of conversations become possible.
One of those conversations is the one about adaptation. Since some effects of climate change are now inevitable, we must deal with them. As this week’s committee report says, building regulations must be altered to ensure heat resilience, and new measures must be brought in to improve drainage and water efficiency.

The public information campaign that the committee calls for is even more urgent. The 2008 Climate Change Act commits the UK government to reducing emissions by 80% of their 1990 levels by 2050. The latest British Social Attitudes survey showed that more than 90% of British people accept that climate change is happening. But only around a quarter describe themselves as very worried about this. Politicians, along with journalists, scientists and others, have a responsibility to make sure that people know what to expect and can make informed decisions – for example, about how to heat and insulate their own homes.
Treating the symptoms of climate change makes no sense if the causes are not tackled at the same time. British laws – as well as the Paris agreement – commit the UK government to doing this, meaning decarbonisation of the electricity supply, heating and transport. These measures have cross-party support, but commitment by politicians is inconsistent. Just a few weeks ago, parliament approved a new runway at Heathrow, a decision that now faces a legal challenge. This week, the government gave approval for fracking in Lancashire, enraging all those who fear that this is proof – combined with slashed solar subsidies, the de facto ban on new onshore wind farms, and the rejection of the Swansea bay tidal scheme – that the government is unenthusiastic about renewables.
Enjoy the sun if you can. We only live once and in countries with temperate climates such as the UK not all of the effects of climate change are necessarily harmful. Domestic tourism could even benefit. But don’t lose sight of the suffering caused by higher temperatures. In all our hands rests the future of life on earth.

Links

• Global Climate Report - June 2018
• Wildfire Risk Increase
• What’s the hottest Earth has been “lately”?
• Extreme Heat Is Defining Climate Change
• Hospitals in England face heatwave crisis on hottest day of the year
• In Japan, Deadly Heat Wave Tests Endurance of Even the Most Stoic
• The big heatwave: from Algeria to the Arctic. But what’s the cause?

The Global Heatwave Is About To Hit Your Wallet

Bloomberg - Rachel Morison | Marvin G Perez | Nicholas Larkin

Scorching weather across the globe makes fields too dry for crops, rivers too warm to cool power plants, and leaves wind turbines idle – and it’s pushing commodities prices higher

A combine harvester cuts a field of rapeseed in the U.K. Major crops are expected to be smaller due to dry conditions. Photographer: Bloomberg Creative Photos/Bloomberg

Commodity producers are having a summer to remember, for all the wrong reasons.
A heatwave across swathes of North America, Europe and Asia, coupled with a worsening drought in some areas, is causing spikes in the prices of anything from wheat to electricity. Cotton plants are stunted in parched Texas fields, French rivers are too warm to effectively cool nuclear reactors and the Russian wheat crop is faltering.
The scorching heat is extracting a heavy human cost – contributing to floods in Japan and Laos and wildfires near Athens. Relief from soaring temperatures, which topped 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit) in the Arctic Circle,  may not arrive for at least two weeks.
It’s a timely reminder of the vulnerability of global commodity markets to the changing climate, as human activity disrupts the behavior of plants, animals and the march of the seasons.

Grain Pain
Wheat prices surge to a three-year high as the heatwave hurts Europe's crop

Source: Euronext

The heat and lack of rainfall is pummeling crops across Europe as far as the Black Sea. Output in Russia, the world’s top wheat exporter, is set to fall for the first time in six years, while concerns continue to mount about smaller crops in key growers such as France and Germany. Wheat futures for December have jumped almost 10 percent in the past month in Paris, with prices this week reaching the highest since the contract started trading in 2015.
After years of bumper harvests, global output could drop this year for the first time since the 2012 to 2013 growing season. This could have political and social ramifications. Egypt, which relies on subsidized bread to feed its almost 100 million people, is already paying the highest price for its imports in more than three years.

French Power
High temperatures are forecast to continue in France, disrupting power plants

Source: The Weather Co. using GFS model

French farmers aren’t the only ones finding the weather too hot to handle. The country’s fleet of nuclear power plants is also suffering. Rivers have become too warm to effectively cool the reactors, and Electricite de France SA may be forced to cut output later this week at two stations. The hot weather also has forced a German coal-fired plant to curb operations and reduced the availability of some plants in Britain fired by natural gas.
France gets more than 70 percent of its power from 58 atomic stations and is a net exporter of electricity to neighboring countries. Any reductions in output would potentially boost prices across the continent.
The sultry conditions are also leaving wind turbines virtually at a standstill. In Germany, wind output over the past 10 days has been a third lower than the average for the year so far. Windmills are also becalmed in Spain, Italy, the U.K., Denmark and Sweden. Solar operators are enjoying the weather, but they can’t fill the gap left by wind and demand for natural gas is rising.
French and German day-ahead wholesale power is at the highest for the time of year for a decade, while in Britain they’re the most since at least 2009.

Texas Power Surge
Electricity prices surge as Texas heat smashes records

Source: Data compiled by Bloomberg

Over in Texas, prices are also jumping due to the heat. The northern part of the state smashed a 93-year-old daily temperature record last week, sending demand surging as people heeded advice to stay indoors and crank up their air conditioning. Wholesale prices for electricity secured a day in advance reached three-year highs, although they’ve since fallen as temperatures moderated.
Temperatures got so high that the National Weather Service was advising north Texas residents to avoid walking their dogs, lest they burn Fido’s paws. But for farmers in the west of the state, the drought was hurting even more than the heat.



The West Texas cotton belt – the world’s most productive area for the crop – is brown, baked, cracked and dusty. The dryness is so bad that close to half of the state’s crop is in poor or very poor condition, U.S. government data show. About 4.5 million acres of the fiber are planted in the region, 60 percent of which depends on rain because it isn’t irrigated.
"I lost everything in the dry land,” said Lloyd Arthur, a fourth-generation farmer in Crosby County. He’s not expecting to harvest anything from about a quarter of the 2,000 acres of cotton he sowed this season.

Stunted Crop
Cotton futures are up more than 10% this year on drought fears

  

Ron Harkey, the president and chief executive officer of the world’s largest cotton warehouse in Lubbock, expects to get 1.5 million bales from members of a growers cooperative in the area this year. That’s down from 2.5 million last season. Tighter supplies have helped drive cotton traded in New York up more than 10 percent this year.

Links

• The world is hot, on fire, and flooding. Climate change is here.
• Global heatwave: Hundreds killed and injured across Europe and Asia
• Why is Europe going through a heatwave?
• Droughts, bushfires and heatwaves: Scientists' warning on global temperature rises
• A Global Heat Wave Has Set the Arctic Circle on Fire
• Greece wildfires: Dozens dead in Attica region
• Europe burns as climate change fuels 'forest fire danger extremes'
• Climate change brings catastrophe across the world
• The big heatwave: from Algeria to the Arctic. But what's the cause?

Government's Energy Plan Would Guarantee A 'Nightmare' Of Complexity

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

The Turnbull government's National Energy Guarantee is "terrifically complex", and its problems will become "more significant" if its emissions reduction goal is increased, according to the first report by the Victorian government's new energy policy hub.
The report by Bruce Mountain,  director of the Victoria Energy Policy Centre, argues thorough economic analysis of the impact of the two arms of the policy - to reduce emissions and to improve reliability - has yet to be done even though state and energy ministers are being asked to approve it by August 10.

The country's electricity market will be made a lot more complex if the National Energy Guarantee gets up, a leading analyst says. Photo: Nick Moir

The emissions component of the scheme, which obliges retailers to contract with generators according to the carbon pollution associated with the electricity production, is particularly complicated because transactions won't be public but stored instead in a registry.
Mr Mountain said market participants would have buy a combination of electricity volume and emissions intensity without knowing the alternatives, nor penalties if they buy too much or too little.
Unlike current National Electricity Market operations, they would have no access to the range of hedging instruments that help them minimise risk.
The effort to suppress price discovery is to avoid the emerge of a carbon price that is politically toxic to the Coalition, he said.“It’s that complexity which makes it a nightmare and it’s unavoidable as long as you are seeking to hide the underlying emissions price,” Mr Mountain said.
Fairfax Media sought a response from Environment and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg. His office referred to recent comments by Mr Frydenberg that the guarantee would "deliver a more affordable and reliable energy system and has the backing of business, industry and community groups”.
The paper said existing renewable energy generators, including Snowy Hydro, Hydro Tasmania and operating wind and solar farms would enjoy a windfall from the scheme.
"Some part of this windfall will be funded by the more emission-intensive retailers, but the greatest part will fall onto the shoulders of consumers who will be required to pay more without any matching reduction in emissions," the report said.
"While we do not expect that windfalls will be a major issue as long as the emission reduction target is no more demanding than [business as usual] emission reductions, windfalls funded by customers could become significant if meaningful emission reduction targets are set."
The fact the emissions target of the scheme will likely be met within the first year of its operation meant that even it were to work well "it would be pointless since it will deliver no more than what would happen anyway", the paper said.
That weak target also meant any hope that the plan would deliver investment certainty was "wishful thinking".
"Australia’s inability to hold a steady course on emission reduction policy reflects deep-seated disagreement on the objective - emission reduction - not on the methods by which this is to be achieved," the paper said. "Implementing the [guarantee] does nothing to resolve the fundamental disagreement."

Links

• The National Energy Guarantee: decide in haste, repent at leisure: A critical assessment of the proposed National Energy Guarantee
• Victoria Energy Policy Centre
• Government's electricity plan caps offsets, offers review by 2024
• Electricity plan would all but hit emissions goal before it starts
• Tender Will Allow Coalition To Dig Its Way Out Of Coal Hole
• Renewables Will Replace Ageing Coal Plants At Lowest Cost, AEMO Says
• Prolong The Life Of Coal-Fired Power Stations In The National Electricity Market, Says Australian Energy Market Operator
• Greenpeace And Getup Launch Campaign To Kill National Energy Guarantee
• National Energy Guarantee 'Clumsy, Inefficient', Says VEPC's Mountain
• Phony Peace? Challenges To Energy Plan Sent Back To Modelling Board
• 'Not A Big Drama' For Electricity Industry To Slash Emissions, Says Scheme Architect
• Victoria Demands New Detailed Analysis On NEG After COAG Meeting
• NEG: A Bipartisan Agreement To Disagree?
• Independent Review of the Electricity and Gas Retail Markets in Victoria

Kids Around The World Are Suing Governments Over Climate Change—And It’s Working

QUARTZ - Ephrat Livni

Earth Day 2018 sand sculpture on the banks of the river Yamuna in Allahabad, India. (Reuters/Jitendra Prakash)

Nobody could have predicted the kids would get this far.
Back in 2015, a group of 21 young Americans decided to sue the US government over climate change. In Juliana v. US, the plaintiffs argue that the government has violated “the youngest generation’s constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property” by adopting policies that promote the use of fossil fuels—despite the knowledge that carbon dioxide emissions are a primary cause of global warming.
That might sound like an extreme claim. But in the years since, the lawsuit has kept succeeding against all odds. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on July 20 denied the Trump administration’s attempt to dismiss the suit (pdf), and the case remains set for trial 0n October 29. “With the Ninth Circuit again ruling in our favor, we are going strong,” 12-year-old plaintiff Avery M. said in a statement (pdf). “The federal government is trying to block our path but we are persevering. We are optimistic and have the courage to keep standing up for our constitutional rights.”
To the average observer, the case may still seem like a long shot. But the kids are part of a global movement of concerned citizens advancing similar claims. Collectively, the lawsuits are creating new precedents that bolster activism—and may, in the long term, help alter the way governments think about their responsibility to protect citizens against climate change.
The young plaintiffs in Juliana v. US, who are now between 11 and 22 years old, are represented by the legal nonprofit Our Children’s Trust. The organization is involved in similar suits around the country and the globe. In this case, attorneys for the trust argue that a fundamental right to a stable climate that sustains life is implied in the US Constitution.
There’s no explicit mention of climate change in the Constitution, of course, since human-induced global warming wasn’t a concern in the 18th century. But the attorneys argue that, last century, once government officials became aware of the harm their energy policies were causing and persisted in approving measures that endanger the planet, the government ran afoul of the Constitution. The notions of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are meaningless on a planet that can’t sustain life.
The children also claim that, as a result of the government’s past and current policy decisions, their generation has been disproportionately burdened by the environmental impact of climate change. As such, they say they’ve been discriminated against in violation of the Constitution’s Equal Protection Cause.
There’s reason for the plaintiffs to be hopeful about their chances at trial come October. This April, youth in Colombia succeeded in convincing the nation’s high court (pdf, in Spanish) to reverse a February decision denying their climate change lawsuit against the government. The Supreme Court of Justice of Colombia ruled in favor of the youth plaintiffs, who argued that deforestation in the Amazon and increasing temperature threatened their constitutionally-guaranteed rights to a healthy environment, life, health, food and water. Notably, the high court also found that the Colombian Amazon forest has legal personhood and that, as such, the government has a duty to protect the forest.
In Belgium, a climate change case against authorities is expected to proceed to trial this year after three years of procedural disputes. Similarly in India, a hearing is expected soon on the case of a ten-year-old plaintiff, Ridhima Pandey, who last year filed an affidavit with India’s National Green Tribunal arguing that the government has failed to implement its emissions reductions policies and adhere to its environmental laws. In 2016, a seven-year-old Pakistani girl sued the government for its environmental failures, and the case has been allowed to proceed.
Norwegian youth are appealing the Oslo District Court’s January denial (pdf) of their constitutional climate change case to the nation’s highest court. And lawyers in Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom are working with Our Children’s Trust on filing actions there in the near future.
Although the children involved in the lawsuits may not know one another, they’re involved in a collective international effort. Judges considering the US case have looked at similar cases, like the one in the Netherlands, for guidance. It’s only fitting that the push to hold authorities accountable is a collaborative one, as climate change is an issue that transcends national borders.
In fact, the Dutch government unsuccessfully used that argument to try to disavow responsibility for the effects of its policies. When Dutch citizens sued the government over climate change in 2015, the government argued that the issue of climate change was too big for it to handle alone. But Dutch judges didn’t buy it, ruling in favor of the plaintiffs. The Dutch government was ordered to reduce emissions by 25% within five years. If the US kids keep winning, the American government could face a similar directive.
“Climate change is already destructive,” 13-year-old plaintiff Sahara V. said in a statement after the appeals court decided not to block the US case. “It’s harming me and my family, and will only get worse unless the government starts taking action to stop it rather than cause it.”

Links

• ‘Climate Kids’ Suit Against Government Allowed To Proceed
• Children Sue Washington State Over Climate Change
• Four Climate Change Lawsuits To Watch In 2018
• Dear Leaders: You've Failed Your Children On Climate Change
• Florida Kids Sue Gov. Scott Over Climate Change: You Have 'Moral Obligation' To Protect Us
• Kids around the world are suing their governments for ruining the planet
• Ninth Circuit Rules in Favor of Youth Plaintiffs Again (pdf)
• Judges Can Save Us From Climate Change, And They've Already Started
• Seven-year-old girl sues Pakistan government over climate change
• Urgenda Foundation Court Case