20/12/2018

'Greater Warming': Different Species Under Threat

Fairfax - Ben Weir

Entire ecosystems are under threat due to warming oceans with parts of the Australian coast stretching from Sydney to Adelaide experiencing the most stress, experts warn.
Eight of the 10 warmest years of sea surface temperatures have been recorded since 2010 contributing to coral bleaching, oceans acidifying and altering the habitats of different species, a joint study by the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO has found.
"The warming has been most noticeable, particularly around the south-east of the continent, and it's not just coral reefs that are impacted but kelp forests and commercial fisheries," the bureau's head of climate monitoring, Dr Karl Braganza, said.
Trends in sea surface temperatures in Australia from 1950 to 2017. Credit: Bureau of Meteorology
Rising CO2 levels change the pH make-up of oceans and as waters become more acidic this impacts everything from plankton to coral, the study found.
“There has been a southwards migration of subtropical and tropical fish species, down the east coast of Australia associated with this warming,” Dr Braganza said.
Further north, rising temperatures have contributed to coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef in 2016 and 2017, with parts experiencing "thermal stress" and potentially the loss of many types of coral in future heatwaves.
Bleaching along the Great Barrier Reef is a common sight for divers. Credit: XL Catlin Seaview Survey
“In February to May 2016, the bleaching was associated with some of the warmest sea surface temperatures ever recorded,” Dr Braganza said.
Sea levels globally have also increased around 3 centimetres per decade in recent years, with rises in northern and south-east Australia higher than the average around the world. (See chart below)
“Rising sea levels have implications for impacts on infrastructure in our coastal regions and coastal erosions so it is important to think about what that looks like around Australia,” CSIRO director of climate change, Dr Helen Cleugh said.
The rate of sea level rises around Australia by satellite observations from 1993 to 2017. Credit: CSIRO
Rising ocean temperatures and levels impact climate change more broadly with around 90 per cent of the extra energy created by greenhouse gases stored in the ocean.
“Oceans play a really important role in modulating the rate and pace of our changing climate,” Dr Cleugh said.
The State of the Climate 2018 report, to be released on Thursday, also predicts a longer fire danger season in south-eastern areas due to rising temperatures. While other regions of the country will experience more time in drought.
Fire weather conditions are worsening, particularly in the south and east of the country.
Credit: Bureau of Meteorology
"The amount of climate change expected in the next decade or so is similar under all plausible global emission pathways, however by the mid-21st century higher ongoing emissions will lead to greater warming," the report's summary said.
The fifth annual report comes after recent UN climate talks in Poland ended with an agreement to increase transparency of national emissions-reduction pledges, but failed to deal with how to raise aid for developing nations and standard accounting rules for carbon credits.

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Federal Government Must End Its ‘Climate Wars’, NSW Energy Minister Says

The Guardian - Australian Associated Press

Don Harwin urges Coalition to ‘put science, economics and engineering ahead of ideology’
NSW energy minister Don Harwin says the Morrison government is out of touch on climate and energy policy. Photograph: Dan Himbrechts/AAP 
The New South Wales energy minister, Don Harwin, wants the federal government to end its “climate wars” and start reducing emissions, ahead of a meeting with his colleagues from across Australia.
But the Victorian energy minister, Lily D’Ambrosio, says the federal coalition is “beyond hope” on the issue and that NSW is calling them out too late.
In an opinion piece published in the Australian Financial Review, Harwin suggested the federal Liberal-National coalition is out of touch on energy and climate policy.
“We recognise that climate change is a scientific fact,” Hawin wrote in the piece published on Wednesday.
“It is the responsibility of all governments to address greenhouse gas emissions into the future.
“We need to end the “climate wars” and put science, economics and engineering ahead of ideology.”


Australia's climate wars: a decade of dithering

He will come face-to-face with the federal energy minister, Angus Taylor, and his counterparts from most other states and territories at a Council of Australian Governments meeting on Wednesday.
Taylor is hoping to secure agreement at the Adelaide gathering on a policy aimed at improving the reliability of the energy grid by encouraging investment in new generation.
“I look forward to working with my Coag energy council colleagues to bring power prices down while ensuring the reliability of the grid,” Taylor said.
But Harwin stressed that such energy policies should be matched with efforts to grapple with climate change.
“The NSW government has consistently made it clear that we believe that there should be an integration of climate and energy policy,” he said.
The Liberal-National NSW government announced a target in 2016 to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.
Harwin said he will push on Wednesday for the Energy Security Board to provide policy options to ministers to achieve that vision.
D’Ambrosio will not be at the meeting but says she expects the federal government will uphold its poor performance on the issue.
“We could possibly say they’re beyond hope. They have still no plan, still no policy, on energy and climate change,” she told reporters in Melbourne.
The discussion comes after the federal government dumped its flagship energy policy – the National Energy Guarantee – in August.
It was aimed at dealing with energy prices, reliability and emissions, but conservatives in the coalition took issue with its emissions targets, with their distaste contributing to Malcolm Turnbull’s downfall.
Harwin said the government may have abandoned the policy but it must still “confront the facts”.
“The market and industry is looking for certainty on emissions, and policy uncertainty will lead to higher wholesale prices and delayed investment decisions,” he said.

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NSW Excoriates Federal Coalition Over Blocking Of Emissions Reduction Vote

The Guardian - 

NSW energy minister Don Harwin said he was ‘very disappointed’ with federal minister Angus Taylor heading off a COAG vote
Don Harwin said emissions reduction needed to be debated in the context of its ability to help bring power prices down. Photograph: Lucy Hughes Jones/AAP
The New South Wales energy minister has blasted his Coalition colleagues in the federal government for blocking his attempt to debate emissions reduction at an energy ministers meeting.
Don Harwin said he was “very disappointed” with the outcome of the Council of Australian Governments energy council on Wednesday because an obligation to reduce emissions is “absolutely critical” to encourage investment in new power generation and lower prices.
Before the meeting in Adelaide Harwin challenged the federal energy minister, Angus Taylor, to allow a debate about tasking the Energy Security Board to draw up a new emissions trajectory with an obligation to reduce emissions.
The commonwealth was supported by Liberal states Tasmania and South Australia, but was set to lose a vote five to three before Taylor used procedural grounds to prevent a vote on what he said was “new business”.
The Australian Capital Territory energy minister, Shane Rattenbury, told Guardian Australia the meeting became “extremely tense” and noted NSW had changed position from earlier meetings when only the Labor states and the Australian Capital Territory had called for greater emissions reduction ambition.'
The Victorian energy minister, Lily D’Ambrosio, said that Labor’s re-election in her state showed “voters expect governments to take action to reduce emissions” and suggested the NSW government’s renewed vigour on climate shows they have “finally woken up” but it may be “too little too late”.
IMAGE
Harwin said that “all the states and territories want climate and energy policy brought together”. “They want re-election and they want the silliness of Canberra to stop and for us to focus on getting a sensible national approach,” he told reporters in Adelaide.
“This is an issue that concerns a lot of Australians. This is an issue that people expect their governments to be dealing with. We’ve heard that message and we’re going to keep doing that.”
The meeting adopted South Australia’s proposal to consider emissions in an out-of-session process between meetings, starting in early February.
The federal government has not had a climate change policy since August, when Malcolm Turnbull ditched the emissions reduction component of the national energy guarantee in a bid to save his leadership.
Under Scott Morrison, the Coalition has moved to decrease power prices through competition law measures and a scheme to underwrite new power generation, including from coal power plants, but has failed to release any new emissions reduction measures.
Harwin said the need for an emissions reduction obligation became “crystal clear” in a meeting last week with investors who wanted to increase generation capacity and “by having more supply help bring prices down for the average consumer”.
Harwin said there was “no time for delay” and said it could have been dealt with at Wednesday’s meeting, denying the issue was “new business”.
“We supported the national energy guarantee. Our position hasn’t changed. It’s the federal government’s position that’s changed.
“And it’s not good enough. We want them to reconsider their position. We want Australia to move forward on climate change, not stand still.”
The energy council meeting agreed to laws to impose a reliability obligation on energy retailers, designed to “incentivise investment in dispatchable generation”. South Australia – which is on track to source 75% of its power from renewable sources – was allowed to “enact state specific settings”.
Energy ministers also agreed to prepare for a regulated standing offer price, following a recommendation of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.
Victoria has its own legislation for such a price and states noted the federal government should not impose such a price without prior agreement. Taylor told the meeting the commonwealth could impose the price unilaterally.
Taylor said the federal government had “achieved everything we wanted”, citing the reliability obligation, which will apply from 1 July.
“What it means is retailers now are accountable to ensure there’s enough supply in the market years ahead of time to keep prices down and to keep the lights on and to keep Australians in work in those energy-intense industries that are so crucial to our economy,” he said.
Asked about the tussle with NSW, Taylor said: “We didn’t get distracted and had a good outcome.”
He repeated the Morrison government’s mantra that Australia will meet its emissions reduction target of 26% by 2030 “in a canter”, despite the latest emissions data and the climate scientists and economists contradicting the claim.
Taylor said the reliability obligation will “sit alongside” the Coalition’s “underwriting mechanism to attract new dispatchable 24/7 reliable supply”.
Rattenbury said there was “no pathway” for the states to dispute or derail the commonwealth’s underwriting plan.
“It wasn’t up for discussion – the commonwealth have got their pathway, and said they’re doing it.”
The energy council meeting agreed to develop a national hydrogen strategy for consideration by the end of 2019. But a push to change building codes to require seven-star energy ratings in new buildings was deferred at Tasmania’s request.

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19/12/2018

Intensifying Climate Change Protests 'Could Rival Vietnam War Activism'

ABC - Malcolm Sutton


Students walk out of school to rally for action on climate change (ABC News)

Key points:
  • Climate inaction protests and participants rising
  • Major parties fail to implement lasting policy
  • Protesters targeting financers of fossil fuel
Mass protests of the scale held during the Vietnam War are just around the corner for people concerned about climate change, environmentalists have warned, as a growing number of activists turn their attention to those who fund fossil fuel industries.
Activists on Sunday disrupted Labor's national conference in Adelaide to oppose oil drilling in the Great Australian Bight and the Adani coal mine in Queensland — two proposals considered "lightning rods" for unilateral climate protests.
It happened weeks after thousands of school students defied Prime Minister Scott Morrison and marched on capital cities to demand significant action to reduce carbon emissions — surprising authorities with the number of participants involved.
"The divide between the Government and the young people of Australia is probably the greatest it's been since those huge protests of the Vietnam War era, and I think it's for a similar reason," Greenpeace chief executive David Ritter said.
"Back then, 18 to 20-year-olds [facing conscription in the 1960s] felt their future was being callously taken away by a war they could see no justification or point for.
"The young people of Australia today can see the future being callously taken away to prop up the old fossil fuel industries that have to go if we are to have a flourishing future.
"A 14-year-old is perfectly capable of looking at the news and seeing terrible wildfires in California, bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef, the Arctic burning.
"People can see the climate consequences [of inaction] and they are not going to stand around and watch their future disappear."
The Vietnam War divided opinion across Australia in the 1960s. (ABC Archives)
Australia's School Strike 4 Climate campaign started earlier this year in Victoria, after children were inspired by the actions of 15-year-old Swedish student Greta Thunberg.
Greta has pledged to protest outside Parliament House in Stockholm until her country catches up on its Paris Agreement commitments.
Some students have also taken inspiration from a landmark climate lawsuit filed by 21 teenagers in Oregon against the US Government for failing to take meaningful action against climate change.

Protesters with multiple targets
Professor Quentin Beresford is joining Mr Ritter to speak at Womadelaide's Planet Talks program in March at an event called Adani, Coal Wars and the National Interest.
The author of Adani And The War On Coal said a strong protest movement was well underway, and pointed out the Australian Youth Climate Coalition (AYCC), which is comprised of several different youth organisations, already had more than 150,000 members.
Climate policy keeps sinking PMs
Federal Parliament has proven itself unable to reach consensus on climate change policy, even when the parties are close enough to touch.
Professor Beresford said protests today were a blend of non-violent direct-action protests witnessed during the Vietnam War and social media activism.
"What we're seeing now is a maturing of the broad environment movement and they're developing multiple strategies," he said.
"One of the effective strategies is to go for the institutional funders, the big corporations, the big banks and investment houses.
"The rely on their reputation, because if there is no social licence for a project, no public approval, [vocal criticism] can have a powerful effect."
It has resulted in banks refusing to support projects like the Adani coal mine, even if it has the backing of some politicians.
"Targeting political parties is necessary, but it doesn't necessarily bring you success and effectiveness because of the power of the fossil fuel industry and how it's captured the political system," Professor Beresford said.
"When both major parties more or less support the project, where are you going to get the break-off?"

Protesters interrupt Bill Shorten's keynote speech at the ALP conference. (ABC News)

Professor Beresford said Adani had been "a lightning rod for the climate movement and for activist politics in general".
"It just doesn't make sense for Australia to allow this mine to release catastrophic levels of CO2 into the atmosphere in an era of climate change," he said.

Australia rudderless on carbon reduction
Although it ratified the Kyoto Protocol in 2007 and signed the Paris Agreement in 2015, Australia remains without a significant federal policy to reduce emissions.
Both major parties have proposed varying strategies to appease public sentiment since 2007, only to be abandoned, repealed or put on the backburner.
In the meantime, emissions are on the rise after a marginal fall between 2007 and 2013.
Scott Morrison once used a lump of coal to get his point across in Parliament. (ABC News: Nick Haggarty)
Mr Morrison, when he was treasurer, infamously brought in a lump of coal to Question Time in 2017 while making a point about renewable energy versus base-load coal-fired power.
When asked about last month's school strike, he said the Government wanted "more learning in schools and less activism in schools", to which the young protesters said that if "he was doing his job properly, we wouldn't be here".
AYCC campaigns director Kelly Albion said there were 160 different "stop Adani groups" across Australia in an "organic movement" that was growing on its own.
"We saw a couple of weeks ago high school students and primary students alike willing to make their voices heard about an issue that affects their generation," she said.
"Climate change is an issue that affects us all and we need to make sure our political leaders are doing everything they can to make sure we avoid the worse impacts."
The Womadelaide world music, arts and dance festival runs from March 8 to 12 at Botanic Park in Adelaide.
South Australian students protested at Parliament House in Adelaide in November. (ABC Radio Adelaide: Malcolm Sutton)
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Summit Passes The Buck In Race To Stop Climate Change

AFR (Reuters) - Agnieszka Barteczko | Nina Chestney

Katowice: Fractious climate change talks in Poland showed the limits of international action to limit global warming in a polarised world, putting the onus on individual governments, cities and communities to stop temperatures rising.
Nearly 200 countries at the United Nations talks in Katowice - in the coal mining region of Silesia - saved the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement from disintegration on Saturday by agreeing a package of guidelines for its implementation.
But it deferred rules on carbon credits - a spur to business - and lacked any firm commitment to strengthen countries' emissions cut targets by 2020, when the agreement comes into force.
A scientific report requested by the Paris signatories said the share of coal-fuelled power would have to be cut to under 2 per cent by 2050. MARTIN MEISSNER

As such it left the parties a long way from the Paris deal's goal of keeping global warming below 2 degrees Celsius, let alone the cap of 1.5C needed to avert more extreme weather, rising sea levels and the loss of plant and animal species.
The world is heading for a 3-5C rise in temperatures this century, the UN World Meteorological Organisation has said.
The Paris Agreement is based on individual commitments and expectations for the Polish talks to produce much more than rules for how those would be measured had always been low: the unity built in Paris had been shattered by a wave of governments placing national agendas before collective action.
Only a handful of country leaders were present in Katowice and the UN Secretary-General had to fly back to the meeting to urge progress.
"Political will is missing," Alden Meyer, director at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a non-profit science advocacy group said as the conference staggered towards a finish delayed for more than 24 hours by last-minute wrangling over parts of the text.
"But it provides the hooks for governments, cities, businesses, civil society etc to do the work to get [to the Paris Agreement goals]," he said.
A heating and power plant in Bedzin, near Katowice, which is among the most polluted cities in Europe. CZAREK SOKOLOWSKI
For conference president Michal Kurtyka it was a job well done. "Mission accomplished," he wrote on Twitter. "Our children look back at our legacy and recognise that we took the right decisions at important junctures like the one we face today."

Scratching the surface
For nations already suffering from climate change, the agreement, which did not make clear how pledged funding would be provided, was only just better than nothing. Simon Stiell, Environment Minister of Grenada in the Caribbean, told Reuters it "is barely scratching the surface of what we really require".
Investors said it would take more action at government level to persuade them to pump in the amount of money needed.
"Those countries . . . who push ahead with ambitious, long-term climate policies will be the ones to reap the investment and economic advantages of doing so," said Stephanie Pfeifer, chief executive of Institutional Investors' Group on Climate Change, noting the low-carbon transition was already underway.
Michal Kurtyka: "Our children look back at our legacy and recognise that we took the right decisions at important junctures like the one we face today." PETER KLAUNZER
The United States, set to withdraw from the UN process at the behest of President Donald Trump, staged an event touting the benefits of burning fossil fuels, including coal, more efficiently, while back at home, Trump has termed the Paris deal "ridiculous".
A scientific report requested by the Paris signatories said the share of coal-fuelled power would have to be cut to under 2 per cent by 2050, along with big cuts to other fossil fuels, to stop temperatures rising more than 1.5C and causing devastating floods, storms, heat waves and drought.
The United States, as well as fellow oil producers Saudi Arabia, Russia and Kuwait, refused to "welcome" the report, a term sought by countries seeking to focus minds on its findings.
The final statement merely welcomed its timely completion and invited parties to make use of the information it contained.
Yet the row over the report was far from the only one: China, India, Russia, Australia, Japan, Brazil and the European Union were all drawn into various rifts, although China won some praise for helping to overcome concern, especially from the United States, that it would sidestep any rules.
"I think they have come a long way in recognising they need to provide confidence," Jennifer Morgan, executive director of Greenpeace International, said of the Chinese negotiators.
Describing Washington as "out of touch", Morgan noted the rules agreed in Poland nevertheless bound all countries, including the United States until its planned withdrawal in 2020, an achievement in itself.
"But that doesn´t substitute for the need to build ambition," she said.

Choking coal
Poland, hosting its third UN climate conference, came in for criticism for its commitment to coal, the most polluting of fossil fuels.
The meeting's final statement merely "noted" Warsaw's call for a "just transition" allowing communities dependent on coal more time to adjust.
The appointment of Kurtyka, Poland's deputy environment minister, to preside over the talks appeased some campaigners angered by the government's previous choice, former environment minister, Jan Szyszko.
Szyszko had expressed doubts that global warming is man-made in the past and increased logging in the ancient forest of Bialowieza, declared illegal by the European Union's top court.
However, Kurtyka's job was complicated by Poland's environment minister saying he did not want discussion about raising ambition at the talks and Poland's president vowing not to let anyone "murder coal mining".
A focus on technicalities in the first week was interpreted by campaigners as a pretext to avoid discussions on pledging deeper emissions cuts. Kurtyka got countries to focus on the guidelines near the end of the second week, but there was no collective action to harmonise or improve disparate pledges.
"Each delegation has its own domestic interests," Adam Guibourge-Czetwertynski, Poland's chief negotiator, said in the second week of talks. Our role, as the presidency, is to find balance, which ensures reaching a compromise."
Poland's ruling party, the nationalist-minded Law and Justice (PiS), wants to scale back the share of coal in electricity production from 80 per cent to 60 per cent by 2030.
But the production of hard coal is expected to be stable for decades, although 72 per cent of Poles think it should be gradually phased out to reduce emissions, according to a survey by state-controlled pollster CBOS in November.
Katowice, the heart of Poland's coal region, is among the most polluted cities in Europe, because many people heat their homes by burning low-quality coal, which is the cheapest. Residents say they have no choice.
"No climate decisions, even the best ones, will change the content of our wallets," said Maria Ligeza, an 83-year-old Katowice citizen. "Without help, people will be still burning what they have."

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18/12/2018

UN Climate Talks Set Stage For Humanity’s Two Most Crucial Years

The Guardian - 

COP24 in Poland highlighted the growing threat of fossil fuel interests and the nationalist politicians they fund. Photograph: Koji Sasahara/AP 
The mood was more one of relief than triumph on Sunday when the world’s governments eventually found common ground at the UN climate talks in Katowice, Poland.
This was not just because exhausted delegates were glad to go home after negotiations that dragged on 30 hours beyond the deadline. It also reflected the harder miles and tougher battles to come over the next two years if the planet is to remain habitable.
Scientist after scientist told the conference that the decisions made by 2020 will determine whether global heating can be kept to less than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, after which the already apparent dangers of climate instability become far worse.
The toughest decisions, however, were pushed into the future, to a special climate summit next September called by the UN secretary general, António Guterres, and the next two COP conferences – in Chile in December 2019, and then to the country chosen to host in 2020.
COP24 delegates applaud the agreement reached in Katowice. Photograph: Marek Zimny/EPA
Katowice showed that the multilateral system of global decision-making is still alive, but under growing threat from fossil fuel interests and the nationalist politicians they fund.
Decision-making at the UN is painstakingly difficult at the best of times, because it requires a consensus among 195 nations. In Poland, 14,000 delegates took two weeks to debate the latest science and proposed policy instruments as they whittled down more than 2,800 areas of disagreement.
The result was a new global rulebook on emissions that requires nations to report every two years on their progress toward Paris agreement commitments to keep temperature rises to between 1.5C and 2C.
Several past obstacles were overcome. China accepted standards on transparency, and richer nations – particularly Germany and Norway – put their hands deeper into their pockets to provide more than $100bn (£80bn) to help poorer nations adapt. A renewed division between the developed and developing world did not materialise as feared.
But more fundamental obstructions also came more sharply into focus. The malign role of fossil fuel interests has often been hidden in bureaucratic language or lost in the distractions of diplomatic spats, but in Katowice there were several moments of blinding clarity. Chief among them was the alignment of the world’s top three oil-producing nations – the US, Russia and Saudi Arabia – to downplay scientific warnings about temperature rises beyond 1.5C. Soon after, an ambassador from Australia – a major coal exporter – joined Trump administration officials in a panel that promoted carbon fuels. Brazil was also accused of holding up talks with a highly contested carbon-accounting proposal that could have reshaped how emissions from the Amazon are calculated. The country’s diplomats denied this but the issue has been kicked forward and it is unlikely the incoming nationalist president Jair Bolsonaro will make life easier for the negotiations.
There was also more clarity as a result of the recent protests in France, which prompted policymakers to think twice about the social implications of higher fuel prices. The leading energy economists Nicholas Stern and Ottmar Edenhofer said carbon taxes were still an important instrument to nudge economies away from fossil fuels, but that the transition has to be fair as well as fast, which means using the extra tax revenue for green infrastructure or redistributing it among poorer members of society who are often hardest hit by fuel tax rises.
Tensions will grow along with the stakes, as will frustration at the widening gap between the science and politics. More protests and lawsuits can be expected from climate litigation groups, financial divestment activists and a growing number of direct action campaigners, including 350.org, Extinction Rebellion and striking students such as Greta Thunberg. They, along with many scientists, say it is not enough to agree on rulebooks. After delaying action for so long, they argue the world now needs leaps rather than steps.
All of which suggests the next two years will be among the most fraught and crucial in the history of humanity. Investment decisions on power stations and infrastructure taken during this period will determine whether carbon emissions can be cut by the 45% needed by 2030 to give the 1.5C target a chance.
It would be fitting if the UK won the right to host the crucial climate summit in 2020. Done well, it would showcase how the world’s first industrialised nation is shifting away from carbon faster than almost any other. Done badly, the UK – by then probably outside the EU – will highlight the folly of shifting away away from multilateralism just when when the world needs to pull together.

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We Finally Have The Rulebook For The Paris Agreement, But Global Climate Action Is Still Inadequate

The Conversation - 

Delegates at the closing ceremony of the Katowice climate talks. Marek Zimny/AAP Image
Three years after the Paris Agreement was struck, we now finally know the rules – or most of them, at least – for its implementation.
The Paris Rulebook, agreed at the UN climate summit in Katowice, Poland, gives countries a common framework for reporting and reviewing progress towards their climate targets.
Yet the new rules fall short in one crucial area. While the world will now be able to see how much we are lagging behind on the necessary climate action, the rulebook offers little to compel countries to up their game to the level required.
The national pledges adopted in Paris are still woefully inadequate to meet the 1.5℃ or 2℃ global warming goals of the Paris Agreement. In the run-up to the Katowice talks, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a special report detailing the urgent need to accelerate climate policy. Yet the summit ran into trouble in its efforts to formally welcome the report, with delegates eventually agreeing to welcome its “timely completion”.
Rather than directly asking for national climate targets to be increased, the Katowice text simply reiterates the existing request in the Paris Agreement for countries to communicate and update their contributions by 2020.
Much now hinges on the UN General Assembly summit in September 2019, to bring the much-needed political momentum towards a new raft of pledges in 2020 that are actually in line with the scientific reality.

Ratcheting up ambition
A key element of the Paris Agreement is the Global Stocktake - a five-yearly assessment of whether countries are collectively on track to meet the Paris Agreement’s goals to limit global warming.
The new rulebook affirms that this process will consider “equity and best available science”. But it does not elaborate specifically on how these inputs will be used, and how the outcomes of the stocktake will increase ambition.
This raises concerns that the rulebook will ensure we know if we are falling behind on climate action, but will offer no prescription for fixing things. This risks failing to address one of the biggest issues with the Paris Agreement so far: that countries are under no obligation to ensure their climate pledges are in line with the overall goals. A successful, ambitious and prescriptive five-yearly review process will be essential to get the world on track.

Transparency and accounting
One of the aims of the Katowice talks was to develop a common set of formats and schedules for countries to report their climate policy progress.
The new rules allow a degree of flexibility for the most vulnerable countries, who are not compelled to submit quantified climate pledges or regular transparency reports. All other countries will be bound to report on their climate action every two years, starting in 2024.
However, given the “bottom-up” nature of the Paris Agreement, countries are largely able to determine their own accounting rules, with guidelines agreed on what information they should provide. But a future international carbon trading market will obviously require a standardised set of rules. The newly agreed rulebook carries a substantial risk of double-counting where countries could potentially count overseas emissions reductions towards their own target, even if another country has also claimed this reduction for itself.
This issue became a major stumbling block in the negotiations, with Brazil and others refusing to agree to rules that would close this loophole, and so discussions will continue next year. In the meantime, the UN has no official agreement on how to implement international carbon trading.
Accounting rules for action in the land sector have also been difficult to agree. Countries such as Brazil and some African nations sought to avoid an agreement on this issue, while others, such as Australia, New Zealand and the European Union, prefer to continue existing rules that have delivered windfall credits to these countries.

Finance
The new rulebook defines what will constitute “climate finance”, and how it will be reported and reviewed.
Developed countries are now obliged to report every two years on what climate finance they plan to provide, while other countries in a position to provide climate finance are encouraged to follow the same schedule.
But with a plethora of eligible financial instruments – concessional and non-concessional loans, guarantees, equity, and investments from public and private sources – the situation is very complex. In some cases, vulnerable countries could be left worse off, such as if loans have to be repaid with interest, or if financial risk instruments fail.
Countries can voluntarily choose to report the grant equivalent value of these financial instruments. Such reporting will be crucial for understanding the scale of climate finance mobilised.
The Paris Agreement delivered the blueprint for a global response to climate change. Now, the Paris Rulebook lays out a structure for reporting and understanding the climate action of all countries.
But the world is far from on track to achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement. The latest report from the UN Environment Programme suggests existing climate targets would need to be increased “around fivefold” for a chance of limiting warming to 1.5℃. The newly agreed rules don’t offer a way to put us on this trajectory.
Multilateral climate policy has perhaps taken us as far as it can – it is now time for action at the national level. Australia, as a country with very high per-capita emissions, needs to step up to a leadership position and take on our fair share of the global response. This means making a 60% emissions cut by 2030, as outlined by the Climate Change Authority in 2015.
Such an ambitious pledge from Australia and other leading nations would galvanise the international climate talks in 2020. What the world urgently needs is a race to the top, rather than the current jockeying for position.

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