Teenage Activist Takes School Strikes 4 Climate Action To Davos

The Guardian - Graeme Wearden | Damian Carrington

Protest by 16-year-old Greta Thunberg snowballs to last day of World Economic Forum

Swedish youth climate activist Greta Thunberg at the World Economic Forum in Davos, eastern Switzerland.
Photograph: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images

The 16-year-old activist behind the fast-growing School Strikes 4 Climate Action has taken her campaign to the streets of Davos, to confront world leaders and business chiefs about the global emissions crisis.
Greta Thunberg, whose solo protest outside Sweden’s parliament has snowballed across the globe, will join a strike by Swiss schoolchildren in the ski resort on Friday – the final day of the World Economic Forum.
Thunberg travelled by train for 32 hours to reach Davos, and spent Wednesday night camped with climate scientists on the mountain slopes – where temperatures plunged to -18C.
Having already addressed the UN Climate Change COP 24 conference, Thunberg is rapidly becoming the voice for a generation who are demanding urgent action to slow the rise in global temperatures.
As she travelled down Davos’s funicular railway from the Arctic Base Camp – while more than 30,000 students were striking in Belgium - Thunberg said the rapid growth of her movement was “incredible”.
“There have been climate strikes, involving students and also adults, on every continent except Antarctica. It has involved tens of thousands of children.”

In Brussels 35,000 students march to demand action on climate change.

Thunberg started her protest by striking for three weeks outside the Swedish parliament, lobbying MPs to comply with the Paris Agreement. After the Swedish election, she continued to strike every Friday, where she is now joined by hundreds of people.
“This Friday I can’t be there,” she told the Guardian. “So I will have to do it here in Davos, and send a message that this is the only thing that matters.”
Students around the world have been inspired by Thunberg, with thousands skipping school in Australia in November. Last Friday there were strikes in Germany, Belgium and Switzerland, where more than 20,000 students skipped school.
Missing gym class, geography and religion each Friday is something of a sacrifice for Thunberg, who says she loves school and can’t pick a favourite subject.
“I like all subjects. I love learning, which people maybe don’t think about me.”
She’s also been forced to give up her hobbies, as climate change activism has taken more of her time. “I used to play theatre, sing, dance, play an instrument, ride horses, lots of things.”
She’s sanguine, though, pointing out that climate activism is much more important: “You have to see the bigger perspective.”
Thunberg said she would like more students to join her strike. “That would have a huge impact, but I’m not going to force anyone to do this.”
In the UK, only a small number of students have so far begun strikes, including 13-year-old Holly Gillibrand in Fort William. But plans are now being made for a big strike on 15 February. Thunberg predicts there will be protests in many locations.
She believes parents should be supportive if their children tell them they’re striking on Friday. “Everyone keeps saying that the young people should be more active, and they’re so lazy, but once we do something we get criticised.”
The world’s scientists warned in October that, without a dramatic ramping up of action to cut emissions, global temperatures would rise by more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, with severe consequences for humanity.
Thunberg believes the older generations need to acknowledge that they have failed to protect the environment.
“We need to hold the older generations accountable for the mess they have created, and expect us to live with. It is not fair that we have to pay for what they have caused,” she says.
Thunberg has also called on business leaders and politicians to commit to “real and bold climate action”, and focus on the “future living conditions of mankind” rather than economic goals and profits.
In a video address for leaders attending Davos she says: “I ask you to stand on the right side of history. I ask you to pledge to do everything in your power to push your own business or government in line with a 1.5C world.”
Thunberg has been diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, which she believes helps her see the problem of climate change clearly.
“My brain works a bit different and so I see things in black and white. Either we start a chain reaction with events beyond our control, or we don’t. Either we stop the emissions or we don’t. There are no grey areas when it comes to survival.”
The school strikes last Friday were by far the biggest to date. In Germany, an estimated 30,000 students left their schools in more than 50 cities to protest, carrying banners including: “Why learn without a future?” and “Grandpa, what is a snowman?” One 17-year-old student in Kiel, Moritz, told Deutsche Welle: “We want to help shape and secure our future so that there will be another world for us to live in in 60 years.”

Greta Thunberg speaks to the media at the Arctic Basecamp in Davos.
Photograph: Ennio Leanza/EPA

In Belgium, 12,500 students went on strike last Thursday and plan to strike weekly until the EU elections in May. Some teachers were tolerant of the truancy. Patrick Lancksweerdt, in Brussels, said: “Education has to turn youngsters into mature citizens. By their actions, they proved that they are.”
School strikes also took place in 15 cities and towns in Switzerland. In Geneva, 12-year-old Selma Joly said: “Frankly, I would rather demand climate action than go to school. Otherwise, years from now, we may no longer be here.”
Janine O’Keeffe, who helps coordinate and keep track of the school strikes from her home in Stockholm, Sweden, was surprised at the scale of last week’s actions: “I am still in shock, actually – a nice kind of shock.”
Jennifer Morgan, executive director of Greenpeace, says youth activism on climate change gives her hope. “The 15-year-olds just speak truth to power.”

Links

• ‘Grown-Ups Have Failed Us’
• Parenting The Climate Change Generation
• 15-Year-Old Greta Thunberg Speaks Truth To Power In Katowice
• Children Demand Climate Change Action Through Protests And Lawsuits
• Australian Students Stage School Strikes Over Climate Change Inaction
• Schools Climate Strike: The Best Protest Banners And Posters
• Yes, Prime Minister, I'm Striking From School: Consider It A Climate Lesson
• Intensifying Climate Change Protests 'Could Rival Vietnam War Activism'
• Climate Change Threatens Our Children's Health As Well As Their Future

This Could Be The Biggest Scandal Of The Climate Change Era

Huffington Post - Sandrine Dixson-Declève* | Anders Wijkman*

The world is headed for up to 5 degrees Celsius (9 F) of global warming above pre-industrial levels by 2100, which would lead to devastating consequences for billions of people. Anton Petrus via Getty Images

Governments and businesses habitually set out emergency response plans to protect their economies, jobs, cities and other crucial assets from potential disaster. Yet when it comes to climate change ― the biggest, most urgent threat the world faces ― there is no emergency plan.
On the issue of our lifetime, countries can agree very little. The World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2019 published last Tuesday found that increasing divisions between the world’s major powers is the most urgent global risk we face because it stymies vital collective action on climate change.
Instead of action, we see delays, rejections and avoidance, as December’s United Nations climate summit in Katowice, Poland, so acutely reminded us. The event, which brought together world leaders, scientists, campaigners and the private sector, settled most of the rules needed to ensure countries follow the climate pledges they have made to date. What it failed to do is push countries to step up their targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions ― currently the only viable way to prevent climate breakdown. The Middle East, the U.S. and Russia refused to even welcome landmark scientific predictions on climate change, signaling their intention to continue blocking progress.
Amid all this wrangling, climate change marches on. It now appears virtually impossible to limit the global temperature rise to below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 F) ― the threshold beyond which scientists say risks irreversible climate change. The world is now headed for 3-5 C (5.4-9 F) of warming above pre-industrial levels by 2100, according to the U.N. World Meteorological Organization, which would lead to devastating consequences for billions of people.
A huge barrier to solving this problem is the failure of conventional economics to acknowledge the severity of climate change. Take William Nordhaus, one of 2018’s Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences winners. While Nordhaus agrees that climate change is a serious problem, he weighs up the costs of mitigation against the predicted damages that will be inflicted by a warming planet and concludes that our objective should be to limit temperature rises to 3.5 C (6.3 F) because to be more ambitious would be too expensive.
But a decision based on this kind of cost calculation is highly questionable. How do you put a cost on the destruction of coral reefs? Or on millions of people being pushed out of their homes, or killed by rising sea levels? And how do you account for the consequences of possible “tipping points” ― such as the melting of the permafrost?

Coral inside the Egadi Islands Marine Reserve in Italy. How do you put a cost on the destruction of coral reefs? Alessandro Rota via Getty Images

Our economy is based on a concept of continual growth. And for advocates of this principle, any questioning of it is simply a leftist plot to stop growth at all costs.
That was the criticism leveled at The Limits to Growth, a report commissioned back in 1972 by the Club of Rome, in which we both are actively engaged. The essence of this report was that the quest for unlimited growth in population, material goods and resources on a finite planet would eventually lead to economic, social and environmental collapse. It’s already starting to happen. Since 1970, the world has lost an average of 60 percent of its populations of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians.
ur message is not to stop development but to shrink the human footprint. For that to happen, growth policies and indicators of economic success must be re-evaluated. We need an overhaul of our economy and society. It’s startling that business and policy leaders seem firmly convinced that a future technological fix will eliminate climate threats, while overlooking the simple pragmatism of planning for the worst in the short term.
The first step is to assess the risks and identify potential emergencies. Here, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has already done the work for us. In its report last year on the impacts of a temperature rise of 1.5 C and 2 C (2.7 F and 3.6 F, respectively), the scientists made clear that global emissions must be halved by 2030 and slashed to zero by 2050 in order to avoid the worst effects. That is an unprecedented task ― reducing emissions by at least 7 percent a year, when annual reductions in most countries so far have been many times lower.
We then need a thorough climate emergency plan to address the biggest challenges to limiting global warming to 1.5 C (2.7 F). To start with, new investments in coal, oil and gas exploration and development must end by 2020, with the existing fossil fuel industry phased out by midcentury. Meanwhile, annual investment in renewable energy and efficiency must be at least tripled. Specific priority should be given to low-income countries to support a transition to renewables and avoid a situation where these countries are left with outdated fossil fuel infrastructure that is ever more expensive to run.
It’s vital to recognize that this must be a socially equitable transformation. A carbon tax, for example, would help shake out the true cost of fossil fuel use and could be used to generate tax revenues for research, development and innovation of low-carbon solutions. Or it could be put into the pockets of the general population.
Beyond the transformation of energy systems that still rely heavily on fossil fuels, we need to stop excessive waste by promoting reuse, recycling and reconditioning of products and materials, and scale up ways to use land to absorb rather than emit carbon dioxide. Annual investment in large-scale reforestation in developing countries should be tripled and farmers around the world should be given incentives to build up carbon in their soils.
An emergency plan will need to lay out quick priority actions and broad-based collaborations between industrial sectors, local and national government departments, and investors. We also need an international task force to explore how to promote disruptive technologies for sectors where emissions are most difficult to eliminate, such as agriculture, aviation, shipping, aluminum, steel and cement.
All of this must come with broader social and economic changes. Progress should be indicated using new measures of welfare and well-being, rather than production growth, while education and health services should promote reproductive health and rights for girls and women. Workers and communities affected by the shift to clean energy and lower emissions ― such as coal mining regions ― should be retrained and supported so they are not left behind by the transition.
The worst disasters can still be avoided but only if leaders move swiftly on new emergency action plans. Only a few brave leaders have begun down this path. In December, London Mayor Sadiq Khan unveiled a plan to protect people from ”floods, fires and the political upheaval” caused by climate change. He agreed to bring forward his carbon neutrality goal from 2050 to 2030 by focusing on a comprehensive investment program that will help retrofit hundreds of thousands of homes and offices to make them more energy efficient, decarbonize the national grid, install low-carbon heating systems, and electrify private and public transport.
Planning for a climate emergency in this way is not a doomsday scenario. It’s simply a pragmatic response to a known risk and humanity’s insurance plan for survival and a positive future.

*Sandrine Dixson-Declève is president of the Club of Rome and Anders Wijkman is honorary president.

Links

• Global Risks Report 2019
• What You Need To Know About Climate Change Ahead Of Next Week’s UN Summit
• US and Russia ally with Saudi Arabia to water down climate pledge
• Global temperatures on track for 3-5 degree rise by 2100: U.N.
• New Report Examines Risks of 4 Degree Hotter World by End of Century
• The Limits To Growth
• Earth's Wildlife Populations Have Dropped By 60 Percent Since 1970
• The Club Of Rome Climate Emergency Plan (pdf)
• The U.S. Is Getting Richer But Americans Are Unhappier
• London mayor unveils plan to tackle 'climate emergency'

Adelaide Breaks Its All-Time Heat Record, Hitting 46.6c, In Extreme Australia Heatwave

The Guardian - Naaman Zhou

Seventeen records broken in South Australia amid animal culls and mass fish deaths in other parts of the country

People in Adelaide head to the beach to escape Thursday’s record-breaking Australia heatwave.
Photograph: Kelly Barnes/AAP

Temperature records have tumbled across South Australia, with the city of Adelaide experiencing its hottest day on record, as the second heatwave in as many weeks hit southern parts of Australia.
Adelaide hit 46.6C on Thursday afternoon, the hottest temperature recording in any Australian state capital city since records began 80 years ago.
The Red Lion, a pub in the city’s Elizabeth North suburb, promised to hand out free beers if the mercury rose above 45C. By 1pm, there was a line out the door and round the block.
In Port Augusta, 300km north-west, an all-time record was also set, as the city hit 49.5C.
Last week, temperatures in Adelaide, home to 1.3 million people, hit 45C, sending homelessness shelters into a “code red”, and sparking fears of another mass fish death in the Menindee Lakes in the neighbouring state of New South Wales.
In central and western Australia, local authorities were forced to carry out an emergency animal cull, shooting 2,500 camels – and potentially a further hundred feral horses – who were dying of thirst.

IMAGE

World ranking maximum temperature 24/1/2019

Australia 91 of 100 places

On Thursday, 17 records were broken across South Australia, either of all-time temperatures or January records. Sternhouse Bay (45.6C), Port Lincoln (47C), Minnipa (47.3), and Snowtown (47.3C) were among the hottest, with Snowtown beating its previous record by 1.3C.
Thursday’s heat is set to spread across the states of Victoria and New South Wales, just days after an earlier record-breaking heatwave passed across the country.
Last week, a dozen heat records fell, with nine alone in NSW. The small NSW outpost of Noona, around 800km west of Sydney, recorded the country’s highest ever overnight minimum temperature of 35.9C.
The back-to-back heatwaves are part of a summer that the Bureau of Meteorology predicted as being hotter and drier than average, partially as a result of climate change.
On Friday, Victoria will become the “hottest place in Australia”, according to Jonathan How from the bureau.
The cities of Mildura, Swan Hill and Echuca are set for 46C, which could break records.
In Melbourne, as Novak Djokovic and Lucas Pouille settle in for the semi-finals of the Australian Open, the maximum temperature will be 43C, with 44C in some suburbs.

Links

• South Australia breaks temperature records as Port Augusta hits 49.5C – as it happened
• Australia Heatwave: Mass Animal Deaths And Roads Melting As Temperatures Reach Record High
• ‘It’s Like Hell Here’: Australia Bakes As Record Temperatures Nudge 50c
• Australian Temperature Record Broken Twice In One Night
• Scientists Issue Dire Warning In New Study Finding Last Year Was Likely The Hottest On Record
• The Stunning Chart Revealing Australia's Record-Breaking Run Of Rising Temperatures
• National Records Melt In 'Prolonged Spell Of Heat' With More To Come
• Australia Swelters In Extreme Weather As One Town Breaks Heat Record
• Why 2019 Could Be The Warmest Yet

Business Leaders Care Even Less About Climate Change Than They Did Last Year

Huffington Post - Jo Confino

Only 19 percent of chief executives say it is a serious risk to their business, a new poll finds.

Britain's Prince William and natural historian Sir David Attenborough, watch the screening of Attenborough's new documentary "Our Planet" at Davos. Climate change may be a theme at the gathering, but a new poll finds it's less a priority for business. ASSOCIATED PRESS

DAVOS, Switzerland ― With all the evidence of a coming climate catastrophe, which threatens the very future of civilization, one would expect humanity to put every effort into solving the crisis. But time and again, we see how difficult it is for the majority of people to rise to the challenge.
This is particularly true of the business community, which in the West is built largely on ensuring that the next quarter’s profits roll in to keep shareholders happy and result in executive bonuses.
A telling piece of evidence presented at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting this week in Davos is hidden away in a flagship survey of 1,378 chief executives from more than 90 countries. It shows that concerns about climate change and environmental damage have sharply fallen over the past year.
In 2018, the annual poll by professional services provider PwC showed a rather paltry 31 percent of chief executives were “extremely concerned” by climate change. The problem then barely squeezed into the top 10 perceived threats, below issues such as increasing tax burdens and the availability of key skills.
But this year, with rising alarm over trade threats and populism, only 19 percent of business leaders highlighted the risks of climate change, which fell to 13th place on their list of priorities.
“I am rather shocked by this,” said Jennifer Morgan, the executive director of Greenpeace International, visibly shaken when I showed her the PwC results. “By focusing on short term profits, they are missing this moment in history. For me, we are at a moment where we need to step back and look deeply into ourselves and how we stand as a species and internalize the state of emergency and then decide if we want to be on the right side of history or not.
“The fact that CEOs’ biggest concern in the PwC report is overregulation tells me they do not understand and have not read the IPPC report on climate change.” The report, published in October by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, found that the world is rapidly running out of time for avoiding catastrophic climate change.
Many CEOs believe in their minds that if they are talking about climate change and creating some initiatives around it, then they are taking care of it, Morgan said. But because they have not faced up to the issue for so long, she added, “we need a whole different approach with all hands on deck. There is a point of no return where we cannot turn back the impacts and the world can be overrun by runaway climate change.”
Morgan called for young people to rise up and engage in nonviolent direct action “to bring this message to corporate leaders in a different way.”
Christiana Figueres, the architect of the Paris climate agreement and now the convener of Mission 2020, a global initiative to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, said she was hugely disappointed CEOs failed to see the gravity of the situation. Especially, she added, when there are enormous opportunities from tackling climate change.
“Businesses are in the position they are as a result of a focus on quarterly profit statements. If you plan corporate strategy around this, then this is the result you get,” Figueres said.
Business leaders are not alone in failing to focus on longer-term dangers at the expense of what is currently in their face, Figueres added. “We all do this. We tend to focus on the exceedingly urgent short term rather than the much larger consequences over the longer term.”
Figueres used the metaphor of a doctor telling someone they may suffer a heart attack in the future unless they start now to exercise more and eat healthier food. Despite this, the patient often ignores the advice and focuses on more immediate obligations.
This interpretation is supported by the research of Daniel Gilbert, a psychology professor at Harvard University, who found that humans are not wired to deal effectively with long-term problems.
In an interview with NPR, Gilbert said we are much more likely to take alarm at terrorism. Global warming, he said, is “not something that threatens us this afternoon, but rather something that threatens us in the ensuing decades.”



Links

• 22nd Annual Global CEO Survey: CEOs’ curbed confidence spells caution (pdf)
• 'Tipping points' could exacerbate climate crisis, scientists fear
• New UN Climate Report Dims Hope For Averting Catastrophic Global Warming
• Mission 2020
• Global Risks Report 2019
• What You Need To Know About Climate Change Ahead Of Next Week’s UN Summit
• US and Russia ally with Saudi Arabia to water down climate pledge
• Global temperatures on track for 3-5 degree rise by 2100: U.N.
• New Report Examines Risks of 4 Degree Hotter World by End of Century
• The Limits To Growth
• Earth's Wildlife Populations Have Dropped By 60 Percent Since 1970
• The Club Of Rome Climate Emergency Plan (pdf)
• The U.S. Is Getting Richer But Americans Are Unhappier
• London mayor unveils plan to tackle 'climate emergency'

Ardern's Plea For Climate Change Action: Be 'On The Right Side Of History'

Radio New Zealand - Isra'a Emhail

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, in a panel alongside Sir David Attenborough, has discussed the challenges of tackling climate change and encouraged world leaders to take on kaitiakitanga (guardianship or management).

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern speaks during the Safeguarding the planet session at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Photo: AP Photo/Markus Schreiber

The Safeguarding Our Planet panel in Davos also included former US vice-President Al Gore as an interviewer and panel members Mahindra Group chair Anand Mahindra and Japan's Zero Waste Academy chair Akira Sakano.
Ms Ardern's panel visit is part of her trip around Europe with Finance Minister Grant Robertson.

World Economic Forum: Safeguarding Our Planet

Environmental threats have dominated the World Economic Forum's Global Risks Report, which surveyed leaders, for the third year in a row.
After last year's heatwaves, storms and floods across the globe, extreme weather events top the list of most likely risks and come third for impact in the global risks report.
"Failure of climate-change mitigation and adaptation" is in second place on both lists, reflecting respondents' increasing concerns about environmental policy failure," the report stated.
"The results of climate inaction are becoming increasingly clear. The accelerating pace of biodiversity loss is a particular concern."

New Zealand PM  says that what the world needs now is empathy.

Ms Ardern also acknowledged the risk by saying: "What greater threat to our wellbeing is there than the current threat of climate change."
While the hottest five years ever had been the past five years, Mr Gore said there was a solution for climate change but posed the question if people were willing to commit to change.
Ms Ardern responded by saying politicians had a short time in power, and the challenge was to embed in that time the infrastructure for long-term change.
She said kaitiakitanga (guardianship of the environment) played an important role in this.
"One of the biggest threats I think that we have ... [are] political cycles.
"This needs to be something that we embed in our national cycles, in our political cycles, and in our actions and it needs to endure beyond us as individuals.
"So if we can do anything, we will be creating legislation which embeds those targets, that ambition we need, and then right through to the basic pragmatic things. Like planting a billion trees over 10 years, creating investment funds, doing each of the things that will set us on a long-term path for guardianship [kaitiakitanga], because that's what we all have to take the responsibility for."
Sir David said he could not imagine a situation more serious. He said things were getting worse faster, and the maddening thing was that we knew how to deal with it, we just needed to do it.

Sir David Attenborough, broadcaster and natural historian, and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern participate in the Safeguarding the planet session at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Photo: AP 

However, Ms Ardern said there was cause to remain optimistic about change for the better.
"Ten years ago, when I first came to parliament I remember standing at a town hall meeting and speaking passionately about the issue of climate change and being roundly booed, including I think by members of my own family," she said.
"But even in that 10-year period, how dramatic the shift has been. No longer do you have the significant questioning of the science that we had perhaps even in that period of time."
She said in the face of resistance towards change, there needed to momentum for it.
"We build a movement with us and I want to acknowledge the work of Sir David - a voice of authority, trust and respect and to all those leaders that use the platform they have - it creates the space for us as politicians to do the right thing."
Mr Gore asked what the prime minister had to say to other world leaders who did not believe in climate risks or were not taking them seriously.
Ms Ardern responded by saying that the best method was to show rather than tell.
"It only takes a trip to the Pacific to see that climate change isn't a hypothetical, and you don't have to know anything about the science or even have an argument about the science to have someone from one of the Pacific Island nations take you to one of the places they used to play as a child on the coast and show you where they used to stand and now where the water rises."
She also said it was about being on the "right side of history".
"Do you want to be a leader that you look back in time and say that you were on the wrong side of the argument when the world was crying out for a solution?"
Sir David encouraged those leaders to think of future generations and the consequences they would have to deal with if leaders failed to act.
"Think of the children. Think of your children and your children's children, and what we are doing to the planet at the moment. Can you look them in the eye and say 'I knew what could be done to stop the degradation of the environment and climate, but it was too difficult and rather boring and you are now going to take the consequences'?"
Ms Ardern said that young people had done a good job.
"Young people have been the leaders that we need. Now everyone is looking to us. We've got the rulebook, we know what's required, it's about a matter of getting on and doing it and turning what has been seen as a threat with a great deal of pessimism and fear into an opportunity."

Photo: AFP / Gail Orenstein/NurPhoto

She said it was a chance to transition and future-proof economies as well.
"That might be jarring if we do it quickly [future-proof economies] or if we take a longer track it can be something that we prepare our people for. So I think it's our only option.
"What we're inclined to believe is that any economy needs to start thinking about our measures of success beyond just our economic success, and our traditional forms of measuring that of course tended to be GDP and growth and for us that doesn't tell an entire story."
She used the ban on new deep-sea oil and gas exploration permits as an example of transitioning economies.
"That was a significant move but that was for us about anticipating where we need to move ... and saying unless we anticipate that change, make that decision now, there will be a very jarring experience for the people currently employed in those industries and that's what transition is all about."
She also discussed how the wellbeing budget would play a role in embedding needed changes too.
"This year for the first time... we will be undertaking a wellbeing budget where we're embedding that notion of making decisions ... how are people, how's their overall wellbeing and their mental health for instance, how's our environment, the clean and fresh waterways faring in our state of growth.
"These are the measures that I think can give us a sense of success and within that of course we need to then factor in, as we transition our economy, how are our people faring in terms of their economic wellbeing and capacity."

Cities in northeast China were blanketed in thick smog, with the weather bureau issuing orange smog alerts – its second-highest warning – for seven areas in the region. Photo: AFP / Bian peng - Imaginechina

An editorial by the prime minister featured in the Financial Times yesterday where she also mentioned the wellbeing budget and climate change.
"In May, my government will present the world's first "wellbeing budget". This is not a concept we came up with ourselves. The OECD and the IMF have, for a while now, have urged countries to look beyond a strong balance sheet and a strong economy to redefine success.
"This isn't woolly but a well-rounded economic approach - the same kind we will use to confront the challenges posed by climate change, digital transformation, social exclusion, poor health, housing and domestic violence.
"We must accept that the race to grow our economies makes us all poorer if it comes at the cost of our environment, or leaves our people behind."
Sir David had earlier also warned of the dangers of losing touch with the natural world in an interview with Prince William at the forum.
"It's not just a question of beauty or interest or wonder, it's the essential ingredient, essential part of human life is a healthy palate," he warned.
"We are in the danger of wrecking that".

Links

• David Attenborough And Prince William Take World Leaders To Task On Environment
• David Attenborough Tells Davos: ‘The Garden Of Eden Is No More’
• We could wreck natural world, David Attenborough tells Prince William
• Satellites tracked four-fold increase in Greenland ice loss
• Farmers can overcome financial uncertainty from global warming - research
• Penguins suffer under rising temperatures in NZ

David Attenborough And Prince William Take World Leaders To Task On Environment

The Guardian - Kalyeena Makortoff

Davos 2019: broadcaster tells prince that humans have power to exterminate whole ecosystems ‘without even noticing’


David Attenborough warns of damage humans can do ‘without even noticing’

Sir David Attenborough has warned that humankind has the power to exterminate whole ecosystems “without even noticing”, and urged world leaders to treat the natural world with respect, during an interview with Prince William in Davos.
Prince William also took world leaders to task at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, asking Attenborough why those in key positions have “taken so long” to address climate change.
Attenborough said the connection between the natural world and urban societies had been “remote and widening” since the industrial revolution, meaning humans do not realise the effect their actions have on the global ecosystem. The 92-year-old broadcaster added that it was “difficult to overstate” the urgency of the environmental crisis.
“We’re now so numerous, so powerful, so all-pervasive, the mechanisms we have for destruction are so wholesale and so frightening, that we can actually exterminate whole ecosystems without even noticing it. We have to now be really aware of the dangers of what we’re doing, and we already know that of course the plastic problem in the seas is wreaking appalling damage upon marine life, the extent of which we don’t yet fully know.”
He stressed that the natural world “is not just a matter of beauty, interest and wonder” but a coherent ecosystem on which we depend for “every breath we take, every mouthful of food we take.” A healthy planet, Attenborough added, is an essential part of human life.
“If we don’t recognise the kind of connections I’ve been describing, then the whole planet comes in hazard, and we are destroying the natural world and with it ourselves.”


‘The Garden of Eden is no more’, David Attenborough warns Davos summit

William pressed Attenborough for a key message for the politicians and business leaders gathered in Davos this week.
“Care for the natural world. Not only care for the natural world but treat it with a degree of respect and reverence,” Attenborough said, adding that there was a worrying tendency to waste resources.
“The thing that I really care for in our ordinary daily lives is not to waste the riches of the natural world on which we depend. And it’s not just energy ,which of course is very important, but it’s also dealing with the natural world with a degree of respect. Not to throw away food, not to throw away power – just care for the natural world of which you’re an essential part.”
The Duke of Cambridge started and ended the session by congratulating Attenborough for winning the Crystal award, which recognises individuals who have helped make the world a better place, at the World Economic Forum on Monday night. William added it was a “personal treat” to be asking Attenborough questions, and quipped that it was a good change of pace from being the subject of interviews himself.
Asking why global leaders have taken so long to react to climate change, William said: ““Why do you think world leaders and those in key positions of leadership; why do think they’ve taken so long … there have been quite a few faltering steps to act on environmental challenges?”

Prince William greets Sir David Attenborough on stage at Davos. Photograph: Markus Schreiber/AP

Comparisons were also drawn between the broadcaster’s burgeoning BBC career in the 1950s, compared with his latest project that sees him team up with Netflix and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) for an upcoming series called “Our Planet” to be released on the online TV streaming site.
Attenborough said his early work in the mid-1950s involved himself, one camera and one cameraman, and it was relatively “easy” to impress Britons simply by televising an armadillo. Now the systems are “unbelievable”, taking viewers to the sky and depths of the ocean in ways that 50 years ago, “people couldn’t imagine”.
Prince William noted Attenborough’s late shift to environmental activism, noting that for many years the presenter “held back from speaking publicly about environmental issues”.
Attenborough said that at the start of his career, it was nearly inconceivable that the environment would be in such a state of crisis and even pockets of animal extinction seemed like the exception rather than the norm.
“To be truthful I don’t think there was anyone in the mid-50s who thought there was a danger that we would annihilate parts of the natural world. There were animals that were in danger, that’s true and there were animals that we could see if we didn’t do something they were going to become extinct.
“And the notion that human beings might exterminate a whole species … you just hadn’t thought about it,” he said.
“Now of course we’re only too well aware that the whole of the natural world is at our disposal, as it were. We can do things accidentally that exterminate a whole area of the natural world and species that live within it.”

Links

• David Attenborough tells Davos: ‘The Garden of Eden is no more’
• Naturalist Attenborough urges climate meet to tackle 'greatest threat in thousands of years'
• David Attenborough: Collapse Of Civilisation Is On The Horizon
• Sir David Attenborough: Climate change 'our greatest threat'
• Global tensions holding back climate change fight, says WEF
• World Economics Forum: World ‘Sleepwalking Into Catastrophe’ Over Climate Risk
• Business, Insurers At Odds With Coalition's 'Problematic' Climate Policy
• Pre-Davos survey shows sixfold rise in global CEOs' gloom 
• UN climate talks set stage for humanity’s two most crucial years

'Not Too Late': Australians Develop Carbon Model With DiCaprio's Help

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

Renewable energy can supplant fossil fuels across the global economy, with Australia among the three regions best placed to benefit because of its rich solar and wind resources, according to a new study funded by the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation's One Earth project.
The work – based on a two-year project between the University of Technology Sydney, the University of Melbourne and German Aerospace Centre – found a combination of renewables and energy efficiency can achieve the net-zero emissions outcome needed by 2050.

Solar farm in Kerang, Victoria: Study finds the shift to renewables for all energy sources is within our reach. Credit: Leigh Henningham

"The main barrier is neither technical nor economic – it's political," Sven Teske, research director at the UTS's Sydney’s Institute for Sustainable Futures, said, adding "it's not too late" to restrict global warming to 1.5 degrees, the lower end of the Paris climate target.
The research, released on Monday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, modelled 72 regional energy grids at hourly increments through 2050, including the Australian states on the National Electricity Market and other regions.
Costs would be moderated in Australia because the average age of coal-fired power plants was about 40 years, and would soon have to be replaced anyway. Solar and wind-generated electricity was also already cheaper than new coal, he said.
Fossil-fuel use in other sectors, such as transport and agriculture, could also be phased out and replaced by synthetic fuels, particularly hydrogen. Australia's abundant sun and wind resources gave the nation an advantage only matched by north Africa and the Middle East as a renewable powerhouse, Dr Teske said.
Australia would benefit from the transition from the export of hydrogen-based or other synthetic fuels, and from shipments of cobalt and silver used for storage and solar panels, respectively.
While biofuels offered potential to supplement renewables, the sector would be constrained by the need to maintain farm land to feed growing populations. Reforestation would also be needed to provide a carbon sink to help reduce carbon-dioxide levels, he added.
“Citing a growing body of research, we show that using land restoration efforts to meet negative emissions requirements, along with a transition to 100 per cent renewable energy by 2050, gives the world a good chance of staying below the 1.5-degree target," Malte Meinshausen, founding director of the Climate and Energy College at the University of Melbourne, said.
The research, understood to cost in the range of $1 million, was the first in Australia by the foundation set up by prominent actor and environmentalist Leonardo DiCaprio.
Given the scant carbon budget left to keep warming from reaching dangerous levels, "every year of delay is a huge problem", Dr Teske said.

Links

• One Earth Climate Model
• Institute for Sustainable Futures
• Climate and Energy College
• World Economic Forum Davos 2019
• A low-carbon energy world is dawning – but we must move even faster