Come Senators, MPs, There's A Climate Emergency Raging

Fairfax - John Hewson*

Bob Dylan brilliantly crafted an anthem for the substantial economic and social upheaval of the '60s in his The Times They Are A-Changin’. The third verse defined the reality of the inevitable changes for the political process:

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside
And it is ragin’
It’ll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’

A demonstrator with a giant head in the likeness of former prime minister Tony Abbott holds a sign referencing his 2017 remark belittling the science of climate change during a student-organised protest in Sydney this month. Credit: AP

Such is the reality of climate change, and such is the challenge for our political leaders. The transition to a low-carbon society is inevitable. Only this week, Britain's National Grid declared it had gone almost a record six days without using coal and predicted it would transition to a carbon-free electricity system by 2025.
In Australia, the longer our leaders “stall”, the greater damage they will do to themselves, to all of us. Our nation, our living standards, and the planet are worth savin’. If we don’t start swimming, we’ll “sink like a stone”.
Our leaders have three tiers of responsibility, national, international and intergenerational. Leadership needs to be dignified and respectful to build national solidarity to respond to the urgency of the challenge.
The “climate wars” of the past three decades have seen our leaders squander too many opportunities. The UN's former climate change czar and current climate leader at the World Bank, Christiana Figueres, intervened in the Australian federal election this week, backing four female independent candidates and condemning the climate wars and "extreme elements from both sides of the political spectrum" who had "frustrated sensible, forward-looking policies founded in what must be our most important guide — the science".
Not only have electricity and gas prices rocketed up to the significant detriment of households, and destroying the viability of many businesses, but we still don’t have a national energy policy, nor a responsible, whole-of-economy, emissions-reduction target for 2050. Our Paris commitment is about half what it should be.
Even Labor's commitment of reducing carbon emissions by 45 per cent by 2030 falls short. It just sneaks in to the range of 45 to 63 per cent recommended by the Climate Change Authority. Labor's aspiration to lift electric-vehicles to at least 50 per cent of new car sales by 2030 is commendable, but it offers little detail on how this might be achieved, and is not so different to the Coalition's expectation of 30 to 50 per cent.
As perhaps the highest per capita polluter on the planet, and the second largest exporter of coal and LNG, our international responsibilities are clear. Yet, Australia is “missing in action”, falling from Kyoto leader to now global laggard.
Neither major party offers a genuine transition strategy to achieve emission reductions, nor a national waste strategy, nor a national fuel security strategy, nor a regional development strategy.
All up, our politicians have seriously compromised and constrained the future of our children. Valuable time has been lost. Many hundreds of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars of investment have been forgone as we have failed to capitalise on our enormous national assets of sun, wind, graphite, lithium, and a significant range of feed stocks, with world-class technology to convert them to power. Our political leadership has just left us to sink.
Even though climate has emerged as the major election issue, we have been reduced to the facile debate about relative targets and “how much each will cost the economy”. Scott Morrison confines his estimate to the cost to the budget, while attempting to pin Bill Shorten on the cost to the economy, which the Labor leader, in turn, basically says can’t be estimated. Neither will rule out new coalmines, especially Adani.
The debate about targets is a sideshow when global targets are woefully inadequate to save the planet. An effective transition does not need to “cost” – an assumption since climate sceptics such as John Howard and Tony Abbott. Sure, those in coal and coal-fired power and petrol vehicles will be adversely effected, initially, but the transition to renewables, bio-energy and fuels and storage will bring with it new industries, business opportunities, and lifestyle possibilities –  as did the transition from horse-drawn to petrol vehicles.
Consider the monumental and rapidly mounting cost of inaction: extreme weather, financial collapses, the unprecedented loss of bio-diversity, species extinction and, ultimately, of the planet itself. This is a climate emergency. Refer then to this week's UN report on a million species – including our own – in peril.
To be serious about a response to climate, the focus should be, positively, on the detail of the transition and its management – how many jobs will be lost in coal mining and power generation and in the transition to autonomous trucking, to cite just a few of the more obvious. How will people in those industries be compensated, retrained, relocated? How will communities be supported and the development of new industries facilitated?
Many more jobs are available in tourism, aged, health, disability care and education than could be supported by, say, Adani. But in this election campaign, genuine leadership on climate is a scarce commodity.  Both sides are still “standing in the doorway” and “blocking up the halls”. It will be our nation that “gets hurt”.
I was particularly struck in the recent student climate protests that children from Byron Bay Public  recorded themselves as “absentees” to stand in a public space and trace out the words Our Future. They get it. They clearly understand the failure in political leadership. They deserve, and will increasingly demand, better.

*John Hewson is a professor at the Crawford School of Public Policy, ANU, and a former Liberal opposition leader.

Links

• Climate change threat now tops Australians' concerns, Lowy poll finds
• Biodiversity Crisis Is About To Put Humanity At Risk, UN Scientists To Warn
• Our Carbon Budget Is All But Spent, But Who In Canberra Is Counting?
• This Could Be The Biggest Scandal Of The Climate Change Era
• Business Leaders Care Even Less About Climate Change Than They Did Last Year
• The Climate Apocalypse Is Now, And It’s Happening To You
• Fighting Climate Change: How Emergency Services Are Battling Changing Conditions
• When We Look At The Crisis Rationally, The Only Logical Response Is To Declare A Climate Emergency
• Leading the Public Into Emergency Mode: A New Strategy For the Climate Movement
• Key climate ruling against coal mine stands after miner declines to appeal
• A million species on the brink? Yes, voters care
• 'Unparalleled': A million species at risk as humanity's impact rises
• 'Jaw dropping': New Zealand offers lessons in tackling climate change
• 'You can make a difference': Jane Goodall passes baton onto next generation

Climate Change Threat Now Tops Australians' Concerns, Lowy Poll Finds

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

Australians rate climate change as the top threat to the country's "vital interests", the first time it has topped the list of concerns, according to Lowy Institute polls going back to 2006.
The polling, of 2130 adult respondents between March 12 and 25 by the Social Research Centre, found 64 per cent agreeing climate change was "a critical threat", up six percentage points from a year earlier.

Local residents wade through flood water in Townsville, Queensland, in February this year. Credit: AAP

That rating was matched by cyber attacks from other countries, and eclipsed international terrorism at 61 per cent and North Korea's nuclear program at 60 per cent, Lowy said in a statement on Wednesday.
"Climate change has become much more mainstream [as a concern]," said Natasha Kassam, head of polling at the Lowy Institute. "Power cuts, droughts, those things are touching people's lives."


The Lowy poll, part of a wider survey to be released next month, is the latest to indicate voters have become more concerned about climate threats, possibly prompted by extreme weather events such summer floods in the north and widespread drought in the country's south.
Australia posted its hottest summer on record in 2018-19 - by almost a whole degree - and the first four months have continued to be the warmest in data going back to 1910, the Bureau of Meteorology said.
Lowy found six of ten respondents agree "global warming is a serious and pressing problem [and] we should begin taking steps now even if this involves significant costs". That view has marked a huge turn around - jumping 25 percentage points since 2012's nadir - and is closing in on the peak reading of 68 per cent in 2006.
By comparison, only a tenth said "until we are sure that global warming is really a problem, we should not take any steps that would have economic costs". Just over a quarter agreed with the view "the problem of global warming should be addressed, but its effects will be gradual, so we can deal with the problem gradually by taking steps that are low in cost".
During the election, the Morrison government has demanded Labor present costings for its climate policies, including its target for cutting greenhouse gas emissions 45 per cent from 2005 levels by 2030.
By contrast, the Coalition is proposing about $3 billion to meet Australia's Paris climate target of a 26 per cent reduction in emissions - a figure that will be roughly half met by applying expected surplus credits earned during the Kyoto Protocol period. Most nations with such "carryover" credits have vowed to voluntarily extinguish them.
According to Lowy, support for climate action is strongest among Australians aged 18-44, with slightly more than three-quarters in favour - up from 70 per cent a year ago. Just under half of those over 45 "share this concern", Lowy said.
On a two-party perspective, 59 per cent of respondents said Labor "would do a better job of managing Australia's response to climate change than the Coalition", the institute said. Only 32 per cent backed the Coalition's position.
Of the nine foreign policy issues, the Coalition was preferred on five of them, including national security and economic management, and was tied on the other three, Ms Kassam said.
Worries about climate change eased to just 36 per cent in 2012 in part because of better weather, but also because the government at the time - under Labor's Julia Gillard made "some real policy developments' to tackle the issues, she said.
Since then, there's been "a very significant trend" of increased concern, she said.
Across the states, the highest readings of climate concern were in NSW and the ACT, with 67 per cent saying it was a serious and pressing concern. WA lagged at 51 per cent and Queensland reported 57 per cent sharing that view. Victorians came in at 62 per cent.
On the sceptical side, though, only 6 per cent of WA respondents said they were unsure global warming was "really a problem", compared with 15 per cent from South Australia and the Northern Territory - the highest such reading, Lowy data showed.

Links

• Australians more worried about climate change than most other nations: poll
• 'Unparalleled': A million species at risk as humanity's impact rises
• Britain goes a week without coal power saying this is 'the new normal'
• New Zealand announces plan to become carbon neutral by 2050
• Key climate ruling against coal mine stands after miner declines to appeal
• Australians more worried about climate change than most other nations: poll

Carry-Over Credits And Carbon Offsets Are Hot Topics This Election – But What Do They Actually Mean?

The Conversation - Alan Pears | Tim Baxter

Organisations can use offsets as part of their emission reduction strategy. Shutterstock

In this election, often dubbed the “climate election”, voters are refusing to settle for weak policies on climate change.
But between the “will they/won’t they” question of whether the coalition will meet their climate targets and the costing of the ALP’s targets, there is a lot of misunderstanding, even among experts.
Unsurprisingly, even the best-informed voter is liable to struggle, particularly when generic terms like “carbon credits” are used to describe completely different things.
Broadly, carbon credits work as a certificate permitting someone to emit greenhouse gases. To assess Australia’s performance, it’s important to understand the differences between the types of certificate.
Just because we can count something as climate performance does not mean we should. Both approaches from the two major parties have their own issues, but that does not mean they are equal.

What are Kyoto carry-over credits and carbon offsets?

• Kyoto carry-over credits
  Carry-over credits are “certificates” that translate our international commitments as a number of tonnes. These credits represent emissions we could have released into the atmosphere under our international commitments, but didn’t.
  As we come to the end of the second international commitment period, we have a lot of leftover credits. The government wants to use credits from the first and second periods (2008-2012 and 2013-2020) to satisfy our obligations under the third (2021-2030).
• Carbon offset credits
  In the case of offsets, these certificates come from actions that reduce emissions. These actions should be measurable and new. Sadly, they do not always meet that simple standard.
  Offset credits are a trading “currency” that, in principle, reduces the overall cost of emission reduction.
  Emission reduction can be costly or difficult for some, and offsets allow individuals or businesses to buy certificates from others who can cut or capture emissions at lower cost.
  Rules to create, trade and monitor offsets can be set at an international, regional or national level. Some offsetting is voluntary, but most is to comply with legal requirements.

The carry-over credit debate
The Coalition plans to use credit from our “over-achievement” in meeting Kyoto targets, as a shortcut to meet the Paris Agreement targets.
Under the Paris Agreement, Australia has voluntarily agreed to reduce its cumulative emissions to 26-28% below 2005 levels by 2030. If we use the Kyoto-era credit for the Paris Agreement, it will take only a 15% reduction on 2005 levels to successfully meet our commitment.

Australia’s current and projected emissions and targets with Kyoto carry-over credit transfer. Tim Baxter, 'In a Canter'? Demystifying Australia's Emissions Budget for Paris. Author provided

But the Kyoto Protocol only applied to developed countries, while the Paris agreement applies to many developing countries.
This means many signatories to Paris have no “carry-over” credits they can use. Among those developed nations that do have this credit, almost all have said they will not use Kyoto carry-over credits to meet their Paris commitments.
So the coalition’s position is widely seen as morally dubious. And there are real questions around whether our supposed credit from the Kyoto era can be used at all.
Given the nature of the Paris Agreement, the international community will unlikely enforce an express ban on using carry-over credit.
But that doesn’t mean we should use it. Australia’s international reputation depends on rejecting the use of Kyoto carry-over. More importantly, so does our climate.

Carbon offsets
Under the Kyoto Protocol, several offsetting schemes were created between countries, so-called “flexible mechanisms”. Among these emission reduction opportunities is the Clean Development Mechanism.
The Clean Development Mechanism is an offset scheme where developed countries fund emission reduction action in developing countries.
If projects meet the requirements of the mechanism, the developing country claims certificates equal to the amount of emissions reduction they can prove. They then sell the certificates they have earned to developed countries.
This scheme has seen a number of renewable energy projects constructed, such as hydroelectric dams and projects that consume waste to create electricity.

Offsetting carbon voluntarily
Voluntary use of carbon offsets has also grown. For example, Australia’s voluntary National Carbon Offsets Standard allows organisations to use offsets as part of their emission reduction strategy.
Australia’s Carbon Farming Initiative is one such example. This offsetting scheme was originally designed by the ALP, but now underpins the coalition’s Emissions Reduction Fund.
Projects registered under this scheme can create Australian Carbon Credit Units through methods such as revegetation, capture and combustion of methane or surrender of land clearing rights.

Sydney’s School Strike 4 Climate, March 2019. Climate change is one of the top issues voters care about in the upcoming election. Shutterstock

The government buys these credits through reverse auctions – one buyer with many potential sellers. They’re also frequently purchased by Australian facilities caught by the safeguard mechanism (a framework for the largest emitters to measure, report and manage their emissions) and individuals looking to voluntarily offset their own emissions.
The ALP plans to tighten the baselines under the safeguard mechanism, compelling Australia’s major emitters, such as our largest resource companies, to either reduce on-site emissions or purchase Australian Carbon Credit Units.
In a 2014 report, the Climate Change Authority recommended Australia adopt an emission reduction target between 45% and 65% below 2005 levels by 2030. It noted international carbon offsets would help ensure Australia could meet this more ambitious target.
The ALP’s approach is superficially compatible with the Climate Change Authority, though it plans to negotiate the detail if elected. A lot will hang on where these negotiations fall.
Using offset credits is undoubtedly better than taking no action at all. But offsetting must have integrity, not accounting sleight-of-hand. If genuine, they can help cut global emissions at the lowest cost while also delivering local social, economic and environmental benefits.
It is important offsetting methods continue to be refined and debated, while keeping a critical eye on whether they provide environmental benefit.

Links

• Australia is counting on cooking the books to meet its climate targets
• The government is miscounting greenhouse emissions reductions
• Flying home for Christmas? Carbon offsets are important, but they won't fix plane pollution
• The Nationals should support carbon farming, not coal
• Fixing the gap between Labor's greenhouse gas goals and their policies

Fixing Australia’s Extinction Crisis Means Thinking Bigger Than Individual Species

The Conversation - Stuart Collard | Patrick O'Connor | Thomas Prowse

The endangered Cumberland Plain Woodland is an ecological community that have shrunk to 6% of their original area. Pete the Poet/Flickr, CC BY-SA

The world’s largest assessment of biodiversity recently shared the alarming news that 1 million species are under threat of extinction.
Australia’s extinction record is poor compared to the rest of the world, and our investment into conservation doesn’t do enough to restrain the growing crisis.
Currently, 511 animal species, 1,356 plant species and 82 distinct “ecological communities” – naturally occurring groups of native plants, animals and other organisms – are listed as nationally threatened in Australia. And these numbers are increasing.
While much conservation effort focuses on protecting individual species, we are failing to protect and restore their habitats.
Our ongoing research into environmental investment programs shows that current levels of investment do not even come close to matching what’s actually needed to downgrade threatened ecosystems.
One of the programs we evaluated was the 20 Million Trees Program, a part of the Australian government’s National Landcare Program. For example, we analysed investment targeted at the critically endangered Peppermint Box Grassy Woodlands of South Australia.
Fewer than three square kilometres of woodland were planted. That’s less than 1% of what was needed to move the conservation status of these woodlands by one category, from critically endangered to endangered.

Many Australian species live in endangered woodlands. Shutterstock

Restoring communities
Conservation efforts are often focused on species – easily understood parts of our complex and interrelated ecosystems.
In recent years, some effective measures have been put in place to conserve species that are teetering on the edge of extinction. We have, for instance, seen the appointment of a Threatened Species Commissioner and the release of a Threatened Species Strategy and Prospectus.
But we don’t often hear about the 82 threatened ecological communities in which many of these species live.
Temperate eucalypt woodlands once covered vast areas of southern Australia before being cleared to make way for agriculture. The Peppermint Box Grassy Woodlands of South Australia, for instance, have been reduced to 2% of their former glory through land clearing and other forms of degradation.
These woodlands provide critical habitat for many plant and animal species, among them declining woodland birds such as the Diamond Firetail and Jacky Winter.

The habitat of Diamond Firetails is under threat. Andreas Ruhz/Shutterstock

Focusing on the conservation and restoration of our threatened communities (rather than individual species) would create a better understanding of how much effort and investment is required to curb the extinction crisis and improve the outcomes of biodiversity restoration.

A problem of scale
Large-scale restoration investment programs are often touted in politics, particularly when these have a national focus. And many recent restoration programs, such as the Environment Restoration Fund, National Landcare Program, Green Army and 20 Million Trees, are important and worthwhile.
But in the majority of cases the effort is inadequate to achieve the stated conservation objectives.
Underlying threats to the environment often remain – such as vegetation clearing, genetic isolation and competition from introduced pests and weeds – and biodiversity continues to decline.
The 20 Million Trees program, for example, is the most recent national initiative aimed at restoring native vegetation systems, attracting A$70 million in investment between 2014 and 2020.
To place the scale of this investment into context, we analysed the impact of the 20 Million Trees program on the critically endangered Peppermint Box Grassy Woodlands of South Australia.
The restoration priority for this community should be to enhance the condition of existing remnant areas. But improving its conservation status would also require more effort to increase the area of land the woodland covers.


Even if the full six-year budget for 20 Million Trees (A$70 million) was used to replant only this type of woodland, it would still fall short of upgrading its conservation status to endangered. We estimate that moving the community up a category would require a minimum investment of A$150 million, excluding land value.
And Peppermint Box Grassy Woodland is just one of the threatened ecological communities listed for conservation. There are 81 others.
Although any effort to improve the status of threatened ecosystems (and species) is important, this example shows how current levels of effort and investment are grossly inadequate to have any substantial impact on threatened communities and the species that live there.
Our estimates relate to how restoration activities affect land cover. But ensuring they are also of adequate quality would need more long-term investment.

Boosting investment
Investment in biodiversity conservation in Australia is falling while the extinction crisis is worsening.
Protecting and restoring ecological communities will preserve our unique native biodiversity and develop an environment that sustains food production and remains resilient to climate change. But failure to invest now will lead to extinctions and the collapse of ecosystems.
To make genuine inroads and have an enduring impact on Australian threatened species and ecosystems, restoration programs must be clear on the amount they expect to contribute to conservation and restoration objectives, along with co-benefits like carbon sequestration.
The programs must be at least an order of magnitude larger and be structured to produce measurable outcomes.

Links

• Revolutionary change' needed to stop unprecedented global extinction crisis
• How many species on Earth? Why that's a simple question but hard to answer
• Another Australian animal slips away to extinction
• An end to endings: how to stop more Australian species going extinct
• Coral reefs provide flood protection worth $1.8 billion every year – it’s time to protect them
• Climate Change Sparks Fears For Flying Foxes After 23,000 Deaths
• 'Our Little Brown Rat': First Climate Change-Caused Mammal Extinction
• The Biggest Issues For Wildlife And Endangered Species In 2019
• Worst Mass Extinction Event In Earth’s History Was Caused By Global Warming Analogous To Current Climate Crisis
• Climate Change Also Wiped Out Life On Earth 252 Million Years Ago
• Extinction Toll May Be Far Worse Than Thought
• The 'Great Dying': Rapid Warming Caused Largest Extinction Event Ever, Report Says
• How Plants And Animals Are Teaching Scientists To Fight Climate Change

The Guardian View On Extinction: Time To Rebel

The Guardian - Editorial

A million plant and animal species are under threat. Humans are largely to blame – but we will pay the cost too

Coral bleached white by ocean warming in New Caledonia. Photograph: AP 

We humans pride ourselves on our ability to look beyond immediate concerns and think on a grander scale. While other creatures preen for mates, hunt prey or build homes, only humans ponder the nature of time, explore our place in the universe or are troubled by the question of what wiped out the dinosaurs.
Yet we are often poor at focusing on and understanding the things which really matter.
A new mass extinction is under way, and this time we are mostly responsible.The new UN Global Assessment Report warns that a million plant and animal species are at risk of being wiped out.
Most of us find it impossible to visualise such a large number. Focusing on individual cases is only partially helpful. Plenty of tears are shed for charismatic megafauna such as rhinos when they are driven to the brink.
Fewer know or care that two in five amphibian species are under threat. Phytoplankton drifting in the ocean are barely noticed at all, but absorb carbon dioxide as well as being eaten by zooplankton, which in turn are eaten by larger creatures, in turn eaten by ourselves.
It took only a century for humans to discover the dodo and drive it to extinction. But annihilation is now too speedy and commonplace for us to even recognise each species: we are sending creatures to their deaths before we know what they are. In many more cases species will survive, but in far tinier numbers. The biomass of wild animals has fallen by 82%; hedgehog populations in the British countryside halved in the last half-century.
In contrast, our own population soars, and so does its consumption. Climate change is one of the major causes of this catastrophe, bleaching corals and damaging habitats. Any sensible strategy must consider them together, as an environmental emergency. But there are also specific challenges to wildlife, including the replacement of forests by fields of cows; overfishing; the impact of pesticides and fertilisers; the pollution of air and water and soil; and the spread of plastics through our oceans and food chains.
Government leaders must press this issue by raising it personally instead of leaving it to ministers; Emmanuel Macron has pledged to do so when he hosts the G7 summit this year. They should start now: next autumn, countries will meet in China for a UN conference on biodiversity, setting new targets.
There has been shamefully slow progress towards the existing ones, drawn up in Japan in 2010, though there have been some successes. The US never even ratified the convention on biological diversity, hindering its chances of gaining traction. The best hope of progress there is perhaps through a version of a Green New Deal incorporating biodiversity.
There are already signs of a shift in thinking. A new OECD report makes a bold call for taxes on wildlife-degrading companies, and the diversion of finance to biodiversity-boosting projects rather than damaging ones; fossil fuel companies and agribusiness continue to receive vast subsidies. Many believe a more radical rethinking of our economic model is needed.
Real change will require a depth of imagination, ambition and sheer determination which humans have historically struggled to muster. Yet if we cannot summon the required concern for a million species, we could at least focus on one: our own.
We may not be charmed by Earth’s 5.5 million insect species, but we need them to pollinate crops, disperse seeds and break down waste to enrich the soil. Through ignorance, greed, laziness and simple lack of attention we are wiping out the very creatures upon whom we ourselves depend.

Links

• Can we humans save ourselves from self-destruction?
• Biodiversity Crisis Is About To Put Humanity At Risk, UN Scientists To Warn
• 'Imminent risk': Climate crisis facing Australian rainforests likened to coral bleaching
• 'Our Little Brown Rat': First Climate Change-Caused Mammal Extinction
• The Biggest Issues For Wildlife And Endangered Species In 2019
• Worst Mass Extinction Event In Earth’s History Was Caused By Global Warming Analogous To Current Climate Crisis
• Climate Change Also Wiped Out Life On Earth 252 Million Years Ago
• Extinction Toll May Be Far Worse Than Thought
• The 'Great Dying': Rapid Warming Caused Largest Extinction Event Ever, Report Says
• Thousands Of Ways To Kill The World: Global Warming Is The Worst-Case Scenario
• Extinction Rebellion: I’m An Academic Embracing Direct Action To Stop Climate Change
• ‘Do it now’: UK must set zero-carbon target for 2050, say official advisers
• Two-thirds of Britons agree planet is in a climate emergency
• Let’s seize the moment and create a Green New Deal for the UK
• Melting permafrost in Arctic will have $70tn climate impact – study
• Greta Thunberg backs climate general strike to force leaders to act
• ‘This report will change your life’: what zero emissions means for UK
• MPs endorse Corbyn’s call to declare climate emergency

'Not Adequate': Experts Rate Australian Political Response To Extinction Crisis

The Guardian - Adam Morton

Following the publication of the UN’s shocking report, we ask three experts to review and rank commitments from the Coalition, Labor and the Greens

Fires burn through ancient old-growth forests – home to many threatened animal species – in Tasmania in January. Experts say more needs to be done to protect old-growth forests from logging and climate change. Photograph: Par Avion Tasmania

The United Nations’ global assessment of environmental health is grim: biodiversity declining at an unprecedented rate, one million species at risk of extinction, human populations in jeopardy if the trajectory is not reversed.
With the election less than two weeks away, Guardian Australia asked the Coalition, Labor and the Greens to explain how they planned to respond to the crisis. Three of the country’s leading scientists assessed what the parties had to say.

The Coalition

• Policies include: review but keep existing environment laws; a $100m environment restoration fund to clean up coasts and waterways, protect threatened species and reduce waste; $189m over four years for the “direct action” climate solutions fund, in part for revegetation of degraded land.
• The environment minister, Melissa Price, says: “The Coalition is committed to meeting its international emissions targets and to investing in the protection of our native species and their habitats. We are investing billions of dollars to deliver a cleaner environment, underlining the critical role of a strong economy in supporting positive environmental outcomes.”
• Richard Kingsford, director of the UNSW Centre of Ecosystem Science: “It’s not adequate. We don’t know anything about what they’re doing about the burgeoning list of threatened species. We have very little commitment from them on long-term monitoring and state-of-the-environment reporting. There’s nothing in there about expanding our protected areas network. There is nothing there on how we can deal with the threats to biodiversity and they have plans that will exacerbate the threats to biodiversity. The other thing is there is no investment in monitoring. You can’t manage the environment when you don’t know what is there, or how it is faring. There is some progress towards emissions targets but we’re not stopping emissions under current policy and that’s bad for biodiversity.”
• Euan Ritchie, Deakin University wildlife ecology expert: “The overall impression is that the Liberal policies are less strategic, smaller in scope and less focused than the other parties, with no explicit, cohesive plan dealing with the root causes. The $100m for the environmental restoration fund next year is definitely not enough money and is about reducing the negative impact of problems as opposed to stopping the problems in the first place, which we know would be cheaper and more effective. The $10m for predator-free enclosures to allow reintroduction of threatened species would be a welcome step as part of a comprehensive species conservation strategy. However, on its own, it won’t be effective … It will help some species, but it will miss many others and it will not stop more species from becoming threatened or extinct.”
• Philip Gibbons, ANU Fenner School of Environment and Society: “The Liberals have got a pretty poor track record in this area. Environmental funding has declined by about 40% since they came into power in 2013, and there is no recognition that any of the pressures that have been identified by the UN are a real issue. They’ve got no proposal for legislative form. They haven’t mentioned in any of their campaign material that they consider land-clearing a problem. In fact, it’s the opposite – they talk in terms of red tape. And they say expenditure on the environment is only made possible because of economic growth, whereas the [UN assessment] says the problems with the environment are due to economic growth.”

Labor

• Policies include: a new federal environment act; a science-based national environment protection authority; reversing the Coalition’s reduction of marine protected areas; a $100m native species protection fund; $200m over five years to double indigenous rangers; $200m for urban rivers and corridors.
• Labor’s environment spokesman, Tony Burke, says: “It is now clear we are on the pathway to a million extinctions, we are potentially facing the sixth mass extinction in the history of the planet [and] Australia remains the extinction capital of the world. This reinforces the need for Labor’s comprehensive policy agenda to fight extinction.”
• Kingsford: “These are steps in the right direction, but I think we haven’t heard enough about the necessary changes in environmental legislation that Labor plans. We’re not sure how strong a piece of legislation it will be. Will it be able to pick up on cumulative developments? How much national oversight will there be on nationally and internationally important issues? These important issues should not be left to the states. Their policies talk about threatened species, but that is only a subset of biodiversity. There’s not much focus on the rest of biodiversity to prevent it becoming threatened. The science has moved on to ecosystems now – we need to move on to a larger scale because we’re losing that battle on species. [But] on climate change, they should be applauded for really grappling with this. A 45% emissions reduction target seems like real commitment, as is their commitment on renewables.”
• Ritchie: “Their intent is positive; however, they don’t cover all the issues that matter and the dollar values are just not enough to result in real change. It’s good to see mention of “increasing the pace” at which threatened species recovery plans are put in place and acted upon. We have an evidence base that shows that recovery plans, when implemented, help to prevent extinction. However, the scale of investment is still too small for what we need. Spending 2% of GDP on the environment would put us in the top half of OECD countries for environment investment, which is appropriate for a country with our wealth of biodiversity and ecosystems. On environmental law reform, this is all good intent, but the devil will be in the detail and it will require state and territory cooperation, which may be hard to negotiate. A new EPA is a good idea if it’s properly resourced and given autonomy, independence and real teeth to hold governments, organisations and individuals accountable.”
• Gibbons: “Labor demonstrate a stronger commitment to the environment than the Liberal party, but they still skirt around some of the key drivers of biodiversity loss identified by the UN. They have at least committed to look at our rate of land-clearing and it’s positive that they are looking at new environment laws and particularly a new EPA. But changing laws alone is not going to solve the problem, you have to look at the underlying drivers of biodiversity loss. Agriculture is the underlying driver of land-clearing in Australia and all parties have a policy of trying to expand our agricultural exports. We really need to decouple that growth from land-clearing and its impact on biodiversity.”

The Greens

• Policies include: new environmental laws; a federal environmental protection authority independent of politicians; a $2bn nature fund; expanded science-based network of marine parks; ending native forest logging.
• The environment spokeswoman, Sarah Hanson-Young, says: “Our planet is in crisis, our environment is in collapse and politicians have sat on their hands for too long and done nothing … The Greens are offering voters a real investment in protecting nature, and stronger environmental laws to help avert this crisis.”
• Kingsford: “I think they’ve got the most comprehensive understanding of the level of threat and the state of play than the other parties, but it lacks the details to really see how it could be implemented. All the parties need to do better on linking the environment with the economy, which has been missing a lot. The other issue is we’re not addressing the threats enough. We’re essentially treating the symptoms such as threatened species and not the cause of how we are driving biodiversity loss.”
• Ritchie: “The Greens policies appear the most advanced and, if adopted, most likely to result in positive environmental outcomes. Their policies about new environmental laws are based on expert advice. They also propose a “nature fund” to tackle invasive species, habitat destruction and climate change. These are the three biggest threatening processes for Australia’s biodiversity, and tackling these threats is likely to have widespread positive impacts for the Australian environment. Two billion dollars won’t be enough, but it’s a great start.”
• Gibbons: “The Greens overall probably have a great commitment to the environment, which probably isn’t that surprising, but they can be a bit more ideological about it because they know they are not going to be in government. They have a similar policy to Labor in having an overhaul of environment laws and an EPA. They don’t really talk about the key drivers of biodiversity loss in their policy, such as agricultural production and urban growth, but it is good they are strongly committed to the Murray-Darling Basin Plan and they have the strongest climate change policy of any of the parties.”

Links

• Cloudy Outlook On Climate Change Ahead Of Election
• News Corp's Climate Campaign
• Australia’s Politics May Be Changing With Its Climate
• Climate Cuts, Cover-Ups And Censorship
• Climate Change Costings That Don't Count The Cost Of Inaction Are Worthless
• Climate Change Is A Federal Election Issue For Voters, So How Do The Policies Stack Up?
• Australia’s Election Is A Chance To Regain Our Leadership On Climate Change
• Both Parties Still In Climate Policy Black Hole
• Experts Find 'Integrity Issues' With Coalition's Direct Action Policy
• The Carbon Brief Profile: Australia

Climate Change Predicted To Wipe $571 Billion Off Property Values

AFR - Tim Boyd

The property market is predicted to have $571 billion wiped from it by 2030 as a result of climate change and extreme weather events if a business as usual approach is taken, according to a new report released by the Climate Council.
Damage related loss of value would rise to $611 billion by 2050 and $770 billion by 2100 if the modelling in a report titled Compound Costs: How Climate Change is Damaging Australia's Economy comes true.

After a big storm in 2016, houses sitting on the beachfront at NSW's Collaroy washed away.  Peter Rae

These figures are based on "the market correction that would be required to account for the fact that some buildings were much more expensive to insure," said a co-author of the report Dr Karl Mallon.
The report said climate change and extreme weather events would send damage costs and insurance premiums up for properties in risk-prone areas, which would cause banks to lend less to these properties as the annual costs of the borrower had risen.
In turn, high-risk property values would decrease relative to the general market.
The report modelled that by 2030 one in every 19 properties would have annual insurance premiums and self-insurance costs exceeding 1 per cent total property value per annum.


The most at-risk areas were in Queensland where flooding was common.
The extreme weather events built into the model were flooding, coastal inundation or seawater flooding, bushfires, windstorms and subsidence – the process of land moving beneath a property, mainly caused by drought in Australia.
Released on Thursday, the report analysed 15 million industrial, commercial and residential addresses around the nation.
Dr Mallon said the researchers had assumed a business as usual approach to climate change in their model. This assumed there would be no change to the trajectory of global emissions until the second half of this century, when technological advances began to curb emissions.
Dr Mallon said the report's findings should be looked at carefully by those in the financial services sector and business more broadly.
Besides insurers, who would obviously be impacted if the frequency of extreme weather events increased, Dr Mallon thought banks and mortgage lenders would have to start pricing climate change into their loans.
He said business productivity would be affected but by how much was beyond the scope of this study.
“This is not just residential dwellings, these are factories, these are offices, these are commercial premises. What we’ve looked at here is the damage but what we haven’t look at is the business disruption.”
It was time research moved beyond qualitative analysis and began putting a dollar value on the effect of climate change, Dr Mallon said.

Links

• Report: Compound Costs: How Climate Change Is Damaging Australia’s Economy (pdf)
• Climate Change Could Wipe Billions Off Property Market: New Report
• Climate change could wipe $571bn from property values by 2030
• Infographic: Impacts of Climate Change on the Food System
• Emergency Leaders: Australia unprepared for worsening extremes
• Electric vehicles powered by renewable electricity are reliable, practical and increasingly affordable