19/09/2019

Greta Thunberg To Congress: ‘You’re Not Trying Hard Enough. Sorry’

The Guardian - 

Greta Thunberg attends a Senate climate change taskforce meeting in Washington DC. Photograph: Mark Wilson/Getty Images
At a meeting of the Senate climate crisis task force on Tuesday, lawmakers praised a group of young activists for their leadership, their gumption and their display of wisdom far beyond their years. They then asked the teens for advice on how Congress might combat one of the most urgent and politically contentious threats confronting world leaders: climate change.
Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish activist who has galvanized young people across the world to strike for more action to combat the impact of global warming, politely reminded them that she was a student, not a scientist – or a senator.
“Please save your praise. We don’t want it,” she said. “Don’t invite us here to just tell us how inspiring we are without actually doing anything about it because it doesn’t lead to anything.
“If you want advice for what you should do, invite scientists, ask scientists for their expertise. We don’t want to be heard. We want the science to be heard.”
In remarks meant for Congress as a whole, she said: “I know you are trying but just not hard enough. Sorry.”
The audience laughed. Supporters broke into applause. Senator Ed Markey, the Massachusetts Democrat who co-sponsored the Green New Deal and leads the Senate task force, was perhaps surprised by her bluntness. But he smiled.
Seated at the table with the teens were some of the most sympathetic and vocal supporters of bold action on climate change in Congress. But facing a Republican-controlled Senate and a hostile White House, the prospect of enacting reforms at the scale and scope called for by activists – and many scientists – is bleak.
“We need your leadership,” Markey told Thunberg. “Young people are the army politically, which has arrived in the United States. You put a spotlight on this issue in a way that it has never been before. And that is creating a new X factor.”
Still, he vowed to try: “We hear you. We hear what you’re saying and we will redouble our efforts.”
Thunberg was one of several youth activists invited to address the task force during two days of action and speeches aimed at urging lawmakers to support “transformative climate action”. She was joined by activists from across the US and South America, part of a “multiracial, intergenerational” effort to combat climate change.

Nadia Nazar, co founder of Zero Hour, speaks to the media on 17 September in Washington DC. Photograph: Eric Baradat/AFP/Getty Images
“The generation of the Green New Deal will not only survive but we will thrive,” said Nadia Nazar, co-founder of the advocacy group Zero Hour, at a news conference earlier on Tuesday.
“We will no longer be known as the kids fighting the apocalypse. We will be known as the solution to the climate crisis.”
In the US, support for sweeping action on climate change is polarized. Many Republicans – among them Donald Trump – are still openly skeptical of the science behind global warming. Republican leaders have mocked Democrats for introducing a Green New Deal and have used the proposal as a cudgel against lawmakers and presidential candidates.
The Green New Deal is an ambitious 14-page resolution that calls for a “10-year national mobilization” that would eliminate the nation’s emissions in one decade. Scientists say limiting warming to 1.5C would require cutting manmade carbon levels by 45% by 2030 and reaching net zero around 2050.
Markey said their movement is shifting the political landscape. The senator pointed to the 2020 presidential debates as evidence of what has changed. Candidates are being asked about climate change and pushed to introduce plans to combat global warming. This is in stark contrast to 2016.
“What has happened? You have happened,” he told the activists. “You are giving this extra level of energy to the political process that is absolutely changing the dynamics of politics in the United States.”
The 2020 election, Markey said, will in many ways be a “referendum on climate change”.
Thunberg arrived in the US after crossing the Atlantic on a solar-powered yacht. She rose to international prominence after launching “Fridays for Future”: student-led strikes that have spread to 135 countries. She has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.
On Monday, she met Barack Obama. The former president shared a photo from their meeting, in which he praised Thunberg as “one of our planet’s greatest advocates” and someone who is “unafraid to push for real action”.

'We're a team': Greta Thunberg visits Barack Obama

Later on Tuesday, the group was scheduled to meet Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is a co-sponsor of the Green New Deal in the House.
On Wednesday, Thunberg will deliver what has been billed as a “major address” to members of Congress.

PROFILE: Who is Greta Thunberg?
'Never too small to make a difference'
In August 2018 Thunberg began a solo climate protest by striking from school in Sweden when aged 15. She has since been joined by tens of thousands of school and university students in Australia, Belgium, Germany, the United States, Japan and more than a dozen other countries.

'Irresponsible children'
Speaking at the United Nations climate conference in December 2018, she berated world leaders for behaving like irresponsible children. And in January 2019 she rounded on the global business elite in Davos: “Some people, some companies, some decision-makers in particular, have known exactly what priceless values they have been sacrificing to continue making unimaginable amounts of money. And I think many of you here today belong to that group of people.”

Inspiration
Veteran climate campaigners are astonished by what has been achieved in such a short time. Thunberg has described the rapid spread of school strikes for climate around the world as amazing. “It proves you are never too small to make a difference,” she said. Her protests were inspired by US students who staged walk-outs to demand better gun controls in the wake of multiple school shootings.

Family
Her mother, Malena Ernman, has given up her international career as an opera singer because of the climate effects of aviation. Her father is actor Svante Thunber. Greta has Asperger’s syndrome, which in the past has affected her health, he says. She sees her condition not as a disability but as a gift which has helped open her eyes to the climate crisis.

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Are You Ready For The Global Climate Strike?



The next Global Climate Strike is coming up on Friday, 20th September, with events planned in over 100 Australian towns and cities. Here is everything you need to know about the strike and how you can get involved.
  • What: Global #ClimateStrike
  • When: Friday, 20th September, 2019
  • Where: 100 town and city centres around Australia (click here to find a strike near you)
  • Who: Anyone and everyone who wants to see climate action now

Major cities:

Pink button: Canberra
Pink button: Darwin
Pink button: Hobart
Pink button: Perth
Pink button: Adelaide
Pink button: Brisbane
Pink button: Sydney
Pink button: Melbourne

Social media assets
To promote the event and get your friends on board, a suite of social media assets have been created for you to download and share on your own social media pages. When you share content on social media, use the hashtag #ClimateStrike to get involved in the conversation!

Workers’ Guide
The ability to strike is an internationally recognised right, but in Australia, there are a number of regulations around it.
There are, however, a number of ways you can attend the strike within the bounds of your workplace agreement, including:
  • Taking a longer lunch break
  • Organising a workplace action
  • Taking formal leave or using your time off in lieu (TOIL)
  • Getting your workplace to pass a resolution (permission for you and your colleagues to participate in the strike without penalty)
For more information about these ideas, click here.

Many Australian workplaces are getting behind the strikes, and encouraging their employees to take part in the march.
In fact, over 1000 businesses have pledged to support their workers through the group Not Business As Usual. Why not get your workplace to sign up too?

Still have questions? Visit the Global #ClimateStrike FAQs here.

Australian school strikers are part of a global movement which is collaborating on the Global #ClimateStrike on September 20. Around the world, strikes and actions will be taking place across the week of September 20-27.
Visit schoolstrike4climate.com for more information about the climate strikes in Australia.

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'Going To The Streets Again': What You Need To Know About Friday's Climate Strike

The Guardian - 

Organisers expect a stronger presence from unions, workers and companies as student activists reach out to adults
Australian school students are set to walk out of classrooms again to call for climate action as part of a global strike three days before a UN summit. Photograph: Dan Peled/AAP
Thousands of Australian school students are again preparing to walk out of classrooms across the country to demand action on the climate crisis.
The global mass day of action will take place on Friday 20 September, three days before the United Nations climate summit in New York.
It follows strikes in March this year in which 150,000 people marched in Australia and 1.5 million took part worldwide.
Organisers expect next week’s global strikes will be bigger and, this time there will be a much stronger presence from unions, workers and companies that have signed up to strike in solidarity with the young activists.
Here’s a guide to what’s happening.

Where will the strikes take place?
Strikes are planned in 120 countries across the world including almost 100 locations across Australia, from the major centres of Sydney and Melbourne to the small rural town of Wollar in New South Wales. There will be strikes in all capital cities and in regional centres such as Albury, Orange and Bendigo.
Organisers are anticipating the largest crowds this time will be in Melbourne, where the strikes coincide with the last day of the Victorian public school term.
“This massive day of action is going to be fundamental towards advocating for more efficient action on climate change,” Evan Meneses, a 17-year-old organiser for the Adelaide strike, said.
He said this was especially the case for Australia “given there is very little concrete evidence to suggest we’re achieving what was laid out in the Paris agreement”.
“There’s something that really connects with people when people as young as eight or 13 are advocating for action on the climate crisis because people that young are not the ones who should be having to [do so].”
The details for capital cities are as follows (all times are local).
  • Sydney 12 noon – The Domain
  • Melbourne 2pm – Treasury Gardens
  • Brisbane 1pm – Queens Gardens
  • Canberra 12 noon –Glebe Park
  • Adelaide 12 noon – Victoria Square
  • Darwin 1pm – Parliament
  • Perth 11am – Forrest Place
  • Hobart 12 pm – Parliament
  • The full list of strike locations is here.
Who is going?
Organisers expect hundreds of thousands of people, including students and their parents, to take part.
The strikes will also have a strong presence from workers and unions. So far, 30 unions have signed up including the Australian Education Union, the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation and the CPSU.
Faith groups, including the Anglican and Uniting churches, have pledged their support for students. And hundreds of companies are giving staff time off to strike or finding other ways to express solidarity.
School students at the #ClimateStrike rally at Town Hall in Sydney in March. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP
Last week companies including Atlassian, Future Super and KeepCup formed an alliance called Not Business as Usual that is urging businesses to support employees who want to strike. What began as an alliance of about 20 businesses has grown to almost 1,000 as of Friday afternoon
Intrepid Travel is one of the companies giving employees a chance to participate in the strike.
Its chief executive, James Thornton, said: “We stand in solidarity to support the next generation as they demand climate action. It is real, it is happening and it’s time for global business leaders to do their part.”

What started this movement?
The students have been inspired by the Swedish school student Greta Thunberg, whose strikes outside the Swedish parliament sparked a global movement.
In November 2018, thousands of Australian school students went on strike and that was followed by the mass global day of action in March.
Thunberg is in New York for the UN climate summit after making a transatlantic trip on a zero emissions sailboat.
A youth summit, featuring some of the school strikers, including young Australian organisers, will take place in the lead-up to the UN conference.

What do the students want and how will these strikes differ to those in March?
The Australia students have three demands for governments.
  1. No new coal, oil and gas projects, including the Adani mine.
  2. 100% renewable energy generation and exports by 2030.
  3. Fund a just transition and job creation for all fossil-fuel workers and communities.
The third point is a new feature for the Australian movement and particularly important for these strikes.
The strong presence of workers at these strikes is about trying to end the pitting of climate action and the needs of the economy against each other. Instead, the young activists want constructive action to support workers in carbon-intensive industries as economies transition to net zero emissions.
Alexa Stuart, a 15-year-old organiser of the Newcastle strike, said: “While it’s really important that we recognise that students are feeling scared about the impact of the climate crisis on our future, it’s also very important to recognise that, in Newcastle especially, there are a lot of jobs in the coalmining industry.
“Those jobs are the livelihoods of many people.
“It’s why it’s especially important that we’re starting to have conversations in the Hunter region about a just transition so no one is left behind and we can still have a positive impact on climate change.”
The #ClimateStrike rally at Town Hall in Sydney in March. Australian students are preparing to strike again at 100 locations across Australia. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP
Varsha Yajman, 17, is a student at Gosford high school and an organiser of the Sydney strike. She said the federal election, at which the Coalition government was returned despite its lack of effective climate policy, had made the movement realise “we had to reach out to people beyond the student community”.
“With the election result, it became quite evident that a lot of people think our movement has just created instability for workers in the coal industry,” she said.
“A just transition for all workers is really, really important to us.
“We think a lot of teenagers are already aware of the impact of the climate crisis. We realised we need to reach out to adults and workers and demand their attention.”

Why are these strikes happening?
Young people are anxious about what their future looks like in a world that is failing to stall the climate crisis.
In the last week alone in Australia, bushfires have torn through Queensland and New South Wales in the first week of spring. They have been described as unprecedented.
Last summer brought a wave of natural disasters and record-breaking heat. For the first eight months of the year, the country’s mean temperature was the second warmest on record. Mean maximums were the warmest on record over the same period and mean minimums the equal-sixth warmest.
Authorities are warning of a grim outlook into the coming summer if current dry conditions and above average temperatures persist across much of the country.
Aoibhinn Crimmins, a 17-year-old student at Dickson College and an organiser of the Canberra strike, said the March strikes were designed as a “wake-up call” on climate ahead of the federal election.
“This strike is going to be much more about standing up in the face of adversity because the election result was not what we were expecting,” she said.
“We are going to the streets again showing we are not going to back down and we are going to keep fighting for climate justice.”

 Climate change and bushfires
  • Does climate change cause bushfires?
    The link between rising greenhouse gas emissions and increased bushfire risk is complex but, according to major science agencies, clear. Climate change does not create bushfires, but it can and does make them worse. A number of factors contribute to bushfire risk, including temperature, fuel load, dryness, wind speed and humidity.
  • What is the evidence on rising temperatures?
    The Bureau of Meteorology and the CSIRO say Australia has warmed by 1C since 1910 and temperatures will increase in the future. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says it is extremely likely increased atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases since the mid-20th century is the main reason it is getting hotter. The Bushfire and Natural Hazards research centre says the variability of normal events sits on top of that. Warmer weather increases the number of days each year on which there is high or extreme bushfire risk.
  • What other effects do carbon emissions have?
    Dry fuel load - the amount of forest and scrub available to burn - has been linked to rising emissions. Under the right conditions, carbon dioxide acts as a kind of fertiliser that increases plant growth.
  • So is climate change making everything dryer?
    Dryness is more complicated. Complex computer models have not found a consistent climate change signal linked to rising CO2 in the decline in rain that has produced the current eastern Australian drought. But higher temperatures accelerate evaporation. They also extend the growing season for vegetation in many regions, leading to greater transpiration (the process by which water is drawn from the soil and evaporated from plant leaves and flowers). The result is that soils, vegetation and the air may be drier than they would have been with the same amount of rainfall in the past.
  • What do recent weather patterns show?
    The year coming into the 2019-20 summer has been unusually warm and dry for large parts of Australia. Above average temperatures now occur most years and 2019 has been the fifth driest start to the year on record, and the driest since 1970.
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18/09/2019

An Ill Wind Fans The Flames

Sydney Morning Herald - Peter Hannam

Mark Graham has had a harrowing week with friends and neighbours battling a bushfire that destroyed his cabin and scorched deep into the nearby rainforests of north-eastern NSW.
"This is a Gondwana refugia - these areas have been permanently wet for tens of millions of years and have never burnt," the ecologist said, pausing to take a phone call while working on a seven kilometre-long firebreak near the World Heritage-listed Mt Hyland reserve. "Big swathes are burning right now."
A fire burning in normally damp rainforest near the World-Heritage listed Mt Hyland nature reserve. Credit: Mark Graham
While fire agencies from Queensland and NSW prepare to boost efforts to protect life and property as fire dangers mount again this weekend, Graham and his team of volunteers have no choice but to take up the task of stopping flames where they can.
"These type of trees have no tolerance," Graham said, reeling off tropical species around him such as ancient yellow carabeens, rosewoods and couchtrees. "If the fire comes in, they die."
A soaring yellow Carabeen tree, perhaps a 1000 years old, reaching into a cloud of bushfire smoke near Mt Hyland. Credit: Mark Graham
About an hour away near Dorrigo , Becky Gibson was preparing to host visitors to the camping ground she and her 89 year-old husband continue to run. A week of howling winds and "a lot of smoke", though, have them anxious about the summer to come.
"Normally it's quite damp but it's very tinder dry right now," Gibson says, noting rain gauges had collected just a quarter of typical yearly rain of about 2000 millimetres. "I've never seen anything like this," she says of her four decades in the area.

'Significant overture'
A wide arc of eastern Australia is primed for a busier than usual fire season. Large areas of NSW and Queensland are in the midst of a record drought and the Bureau of Meteorology forecasts pointing to below-average rainfall and warmer-than-normal temperatures for the rest of 2019 for most of the nation.
Ross Bradstock, Director of the University of Wollongong's Centre for Environmental Risk Management of Bushfires, said fire danger ratings will likely mount ahead of the passage of each cold front. Those bursts of hot, dry and gusty winds can be expected to gradually shift southwards to Sydney and beyond.
"We've got the ultra-dry fuels now, and inexorably you’ll get ignitions," Bradstock says. "We’ve had an overture and a pretty significant one. I think people down here better start getting their act together right now."
A bushfire burns near Tenterfield in northern NSW. Credit: AAP
For Peter Petty, mayor of Tenterfield, the overture has been an extended one. His town in northern NSW has among the tightest water restrictions - at level 4.5 - in the country, and it has had fires burning near its fringes for the past week.
Residents from nearby areas have been evacuated to the showgrounds, which along with other public gardens in this town of 3500, is gradually turning into a dustbowl.
"There's still lots of smoke around," Petty says, adding fire authorities "continue to be outstanding". Tankers had to spray treated sewage water to spare other supplies.
The threat is here "every day", he says. "We're a long way out from being out of the woods."

'Like mid-summer'
Among the lead agencies gearing up for long fire season is the NSW Rural Fire Service, a body that boasts an annual budget of $385.8 million and counts 72,491 volunteers.
While records show fires this early in the spring have afflicted the Sunshine Coast and other parts of southern Queensland and northern NSW before, the scale has set early challenges. In NSW, for instance, fires scorched some 130,000 hectares, and the three biggest blazes had a fire perimeter of 580 kilometres at the peak.
"There's no record of fire dangers that high that early in those areas in NSW," Rob Rogers, the RFS's deputy commissioner, says. "The fires were burning like it was mid-summer."
Across the state, the "only bright spot" is around Tumut in the Snowy Mountains but mostly because conditions are not as aberrantly dry as elsewhere.
According to the Bureau of Meteorology, rainfall over much of the fire-hit regions has been the lowest on record for the 20 months starting January 2018, and the 32 months starting January 2017. Similarly, the northern Murray-Darling Basin is tracking record low rainfall totals for those two periods.
Rainfall deficiencies over the past 17 months
April 1, 2018 - August 31, 2019 
Source: Bureau of Meteorology
During a recent visit to the Pilliga state forest in northern NSW, her team saw highly stressed trees that had shed their entire canopy and had started to resprout as if they had been burnt. Even some of the regrowth was starting to die.Few people are watching how vegetation is drying out more closely than Rachael Nolan, a researcher for the Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment.
"When that happens, things are pretty bad," Nolan said. "Some were quite serious."
Scribbly gum trees in the Pilliga Forest in north-western NSW look like they are re-sprouting after a fire - but there hasn't been one in that area. Credit: Rachael Nolan
Her main work, though, has been to develop fuel moisture maps using satellites that provide up-to-date data for scientists and fire authorities.
Moisture levels in dead trees and other vegetation can change overnight following a shower but changes in living plants "provide a very good indication of what will happen next week and the week after that".
For the region around Sydney, the indicators point to a rapid drying off, particularly in the Blue Mountains and to the city's north-west.
Mean live fuel moisture content in Sydney region
August 21 - September 5
Source: R.H.Nolan, M.M. Boer and R.A. Bradstock
Nolan stresses having dry fuel "is no guarantee that we will get fires", noting conditions were similarly dry this time a year ago but handy spring rains eased the threat.That said, the rate the vegetation has been curing is greater this year than in 2013, the last year when large fires burnt near Sydney particularly in the Blue Mountains.
Median live fuel moisture content, Sydney Basin
Source: R.H.Nolan, M.M. Boer and R.A. Bradstock
Upward trend in fire risks
Along with the abnormally dry conditions, temperatures in the fire-hit regions were unusual. Maximum readings on September 5 and 6 were about 10 degrees warmer than average, the Bureau says.
What is becoming more typical, though, is the rate at which heat records continue to tumble. Nationwide, for instance, daytime temperatures are tracking the warmest record for the first eight months of 2019 and last summer was Australia's hottest.
Since temperatures are a key component of dangerous fire weather - along with fuel, wind and humidity - it is not surprising climate change is nudging Australia's fire risks higher.
The latest BoM-CSIRO State of the Climate report shows southern and eastern regions have had some of the biggest increases in the fire danger indices in recent decades.
How fire danger risks are rising in Australia
Source: Bureau of Meteorology, CSIRO
Hamish Clarke, a fire researcher at the University of Wollongong and Western Sydney University, said that inter-year variability shows annual fluctuations in fire risks can be "quite considerable" but the trend is clearly upwards.
“Across the country, at a number of high-quality long-term weather stations, there had either been an increase, or no change," Clarke says. "We didn’t find a significant decrease anywhere.”
Climate modelling by Clarke on NSW and ACT and other researchers show the trajectory for temperatures is also upward while the impacts on other fire weather variables such as vegetation or wind speeds are less clear.
“Generally speaking the increases [of fire threats] are much more than the decreases and the areas much more, but some models show some decrease.
“It’s not much comfort because there are more models that are projecting quite large changes in both average and extreme conditions, with spring particularly highlighted,” he said.
Fires erupted in dozens of locations at the end of last week, including near Lithgow in the Blue Mountains. Credit: Nine News
Andrew Dowdy, a senior bureau climate researcher at the bureau, concurs.
"The projections show a clear trend towards more dangerous near-surface fire weather conditions for Australia" based on the McArthur Forest Fire Danger Index, Dowdy states in a recently published report in a Nature journal.

What can be done?
Bradstock says the question of whether human-induced climate change is worsening the fire threat in Australia is "old hat".
“The research has all been done. We don’t need to keep doing it," he says. "The big research challenge is how we’re going to adapt, and build resilient communities, and how will our ecosystems cope with the double combination of fire and drought.”
The Boeing 737, dubbed 'Gaia', in action for the NSW Rural Fire Service. Credit: NSW RFS, via Facebook
Adaptation is taking many forms, including additional "toys" such as NSW's newly bought 737 Large Air Tanker, with its 15,142-litre payload to drop on blazes.
Retardant-carrying drones may also feature but only when costs fall much further, Rogers says.
Instead, residents are more likely to tap into information technology advances that will help them understand the evolving threats near them.
It is only a matter of time before people in bushfire-prone areas will be able to be alerted to changes in fire weather, fuel loads and potential fire behavior.
Already being rolled out in different states is the University of Tasmania-developed AirRater app for smart phones that can provide real-time air quality readings including smoke.
A fire in a dried-out peat swamp near Port Macquarie, for instance has been choking residents for weeks. The new app, complete with sensors, was rolled out within weeks.

Insurance prod
Concern about smoke from hazard-reduction fires is one reason fire authorities sometimes have to curb their burning near large population centres such as Sydney or Melbourne.
A bushfire near Springwood in the Blue Mountains in October 2013. Credit: Dallas Kilponen
Insurance companies, though, monitor closely the work being done, and receive at least annual snapshots of how close vegetation is to properties in fire-prone areas.
Damage claims from bushfires are not yet "loss leaders" for the industry compared with cyclones, floods and storms, Karl Sullivan, head of risk operations for the Insurance Council of Australia, says.
Still, the Council has already declared the early season fires catastrophes, with $13.5 million in loss claims from 120 properties, with the toll expected to mount.
Since the 2009 bushfires, authorities have imposed tighter building codes requiring more fire-resistant materials and design that can cut premiums by about 10 per cent.
“These properties are by no means fire-proof...but they’re definitely more fire resilient, and that’s typically reflected in fire premiums," Sullivan says.
Mark Leplastrier, executive manager for natural perils at IAG, says bushfires were increasingly occurring outside the traditional fire season and in some areas of Victoria, for instance, were a greater risk for insurers than floods.
Fire damage risks were likely to continue to rise - but so were other climate-change perils that were poorly integrated into risk assessments, he says. For instance, houses might be better designed for wind stress in cyclone regions but they may still be hammered by water ingress caused by the higher storm surges.

Avoiding 'ecosystem collapse'
Justin Leonard, research leader for CSIRO's bushfire adaptation unit, said national building codes revised after Victoria's 2009 Black Saturday bushfires still had "significant flaws".
The focus of the new AS3959 code paid too little attention to ensuring builders avoid combustible materials in the roof, walls and below the floor, he said. A better alternative was the NASH steel-frame standard.
For instance, the revised code allowed flammable wooden decks. Residents might also do the right thing and place distance between their house and other structures on their property but still be just 1.8 metres of a neighbour's home.
"There's no special building consideration for that impact," he says.
For Bradstock, the evidence from western US is that Australian cities may be setting themselves up for big fire losses in the future.
"We’re building these very large houses...with very little spaces between houses," he says.
"If you get a fast-moving grass fire, and if it gets into them, there’s the possibility of very extensive spread," he says. "The evidence suggests you’re setting yourselves up for a problem.”
Bradstock said there had been “really no concerted effort to understand the resilience of our human systems to the multiple challenges of drought and fire", and those knowledge gaps could prove costly to communities.
Queensland bushfires: the surprise was how close they came to populated parts of the state. Credit: Cameron Neville, via QFES
Likewise the burning of previously wet wilderness areas of Tasmania and now along the eastern coast in the past week were a reminder that the natural environment may also be reaching thresholds."We just assume that these things are resilient,"he says. "They may not be.”
Up at Billy's Creek near Mt Hyland, Mark Graham was preparing to take a break after a week of battling fires that have charred as much as 100,000 hectares.
"We're trying to save the most ancient of the ancients," he says, adding society still has time to confront the threat of a warming climate before it is too late.
"There's still a chance to avoid having these ecosystems collapse around us."

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Editorial: Surviving Climate Change Means An End To Burning Fossil Fuels. Prepare Yourself For Sacrifices

Los Angeles Times - The Times Editorial Board

Shonagh Rae
The evidence, the expert advice, common sense — they all point to a single unavoidable conclusion: Humankind has dragged its feet for so long on the looming crisis of climate change that it is no longer looming but is upon us, and will be impossible to undo.
It would be foolish, of course, to rule out nascent or not-as-yet conceived technological advances that could claw back some of the carbon and other greenhouse gases we’ve already emitted. But it would be equally foolhardy to count on them. What is required, at a minimum, is a radical change, as quickly as possible, in the way the world produces and consumes energy. The goal is to eliminate most future emissions, especially of carbon, and to “capture” the carbon that is emitted so that it does not enter the atmosphere.
Of course that alone won’t solve all our planet’s climate problems. We will have to deal with the trouble we have already set in motion and which can no longer be averted. That means, for example, crafting approaches to handle the flow of migrants as regions of the world become uninhabitable, protecting people in low-lying lands from rising oceans, and preparing for the excessive heat, longer droughts, more ferocious hurricanes and other extreme weather events that will, among other things, threaten the global food supply.
But to keep the bad outcomes to a minimum, we must do what we can to not make the situation worse. That means continuing the fight to reduce emissions. A 2018 estimate put the annual cost to mitigate climate change if the world does nothing to curtail emissions at $500 billion per year by 2090 — and that’s just for the United States. Globally, one estimate says, a temperature rise of 4 degrees Celsius would cost $23 trillion per year. So we must not let it get to that point.
The best way to keep human-generated carbon out of the atmosphere, where it and other greenhouse gases trap heat and drive up temperatures, is to not create it in the first place. The world has been making progress at this, but not nearly enough. In the United States, for instance, reliance on coal continues to decline, but in many cases, power plants that used to burn coal are now burning natural gas. That’s an improvement, yes, but it’s insufficient, since burning natural gas also releases carbon. Dishearteningly, total global emissions have actually increased substantially in the last two decades.
Here’s one heartening fact: In April, the amount of energy the U.S. is capable of producing from renewable sources for the first time surpassed what it can produce from coal, and the gap is expected to widen as more power comes from wind, solar and other renewable sources and more fossil-fuel plants are shut down.
But globally the view is more dour. China has worked to ratchet back on burning coal at home (though it recently revived some mothballed projects), but it has been building coal-fired power plants in other countries, hoping to extend its political and economic influence at the expense of the global environment. That needs to stop.
By one estimate, about half of Africa does not have access to electricity. There and elsewhere, new power generation should not involve coal, but should be achieved with renewable sources. The developed nations must help build power grids in developing nations that give them the power they need without exacerbating our mutual suffering through increased carbon emissions.
Governments must not remain idle as the problem gets worse. For instance, there have been international calls since the 1997 Kyoto Protocol for governments to end domestic subsidies for fossil fuels, particularly oil. But they haven’t. In the U.S., federal and state governments provide, in one conservative estimate, $20.5 billion a year in such subsidies — including industry-specific tax deductions and exemptions. About 80% of that money goes to the oil and gas industry and nearly all the rest to the coal industry. There are also more difficult to count (and more controversial to eliminate) consumption subsidies, including those that help low‑income families pay for the fossil fuels that heat their homes. If poorer people need assistance from government, government should find ways to do so that don’t incentivize the continued use of carbon.
What will our world look like in 15 years if we begin to do what we have to do? Charging stations for motor vehicles as plentiful as gas stations are now. A significant drop in gas-powered vehicles through phased-out production, and government-funded buyback programs to get older cars off the road. Millions of people working to create new power systems; the world needs cheaper and more efficient solar panels, bigger and more efficient energy storage systems, more utility-scale renewable production facilities and more efficient hydro and geothermal technologies. Oil companies will no longer have such disproportionate influence on government policy. Perhaps they will have become energy companies, transitioning away from fossil fuels — or perhaps they will have been superseded by new energy providers.
Sacrifice will be a part of this too. Doing the right thing will require shifts in employment, changes in consumer habits (cutting way back on meat consumption, for instance, reduces global carbon emissions). We will drive less, ride more public transit, use less air conditioning. Costs will undoubtedly rise for goods we’ve taken for granted.
Is this level of change unachievable? Perhaps. For the moment, at least, the politics are against us. President Trump and his climate-denying supporters have moved the United States backward rather than forward. The recalcitrant oil and gas industry remains a powerful force to be reckoned with, too.
For the moment, at least, the politics are against us.
Yet the world has transitioned before. We thrived on whale oil until we decimated the whale population and discovered how to make kerosene from oil, and how to commercialize natural gas. This time the transition will have to happen a lot faster and will require more than just market forces. We’ll need more government intervention through even stronger pacts than the 2015 Paris agreement under which the world’s nations agreed (though President Trump has directed the U.S. to withdraw) to try to limit global temperature rise to significantly less than 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.
It’s clear now that those promises will not be sufficient to avert the effects of climate change. But they provide a model upon which we must build to try to steer us away from, in essence, self-annihilation.

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A Crying Shame: Humanity Sleepwalking To Disaster

Sydney Morning Herald - Ian Bayly


Young climate activism superstar Greta Thunberg has made it to New York City after her 15-day voyage by yacht from Plymouth, England.

Dr Ian Bayly DSc
Ian A.E. Bayly held the position of Reader in Zoology at Monash University from 1971-1995.
He was a Vice-President of the Australian Conservation Foundation from 1973-1975, and played a prominent role in the conservation struggles to save Lake Pedder and Fraser Island.
In the course of a six-decade career authored or co-authored of over 100 peer-reviewed scientific papers and four books.
In October 2018 a major “popular” essay of his entitled “Our Climate-Change Apathy: gifting our grandchildren a living hell”.
Almost every day I read or hear commentators on diverse fields of human activity blithely talking about trends and conditions that are likely to play out in the future.
Some of them are happy to extend their prognostications decades into the future and adopt a business-as-usual approach.
Very few of them display any overt awareness that humanity is facing the prospect of a climate-induced societal collapse in the near term and that consequently much of their commentary is likely to be incapable of fulfilment.
I recently read Losing Earth: the Decade We Could Have Stopped Climate Change by Nathaniel Rich. Which decade was he referring to? The 1980s. To be a bit more conservative, and allow for some reasonable degree of time-lag, my view is that the 1990s is a fairer nomination for when effective climate change mitigation could have, and should have, commenced.
Here I have some personal experience: for six years before my retirement at the end of 1995, I taught climate change science to a second-year class at Monash University.
By 1980 a few scientists understood much of what we know today about global warming and how to stop it.
On June 23, 1988, James Hansen fronted a US Senate hearing and said that a human-induced warming trend could be detected with a high degree of confidence. When the hearing concluded, he told reporters: “It’s time to stop waffling so much and say that the evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here.”
James Hansen gives a briefing on Capitol Hill in 2008, 20 years after he first warned that global warming had begun. Credit: AP
The New York Times then ran the front-page headline “Global Warming Has Begun”. Yes, this was slightly more than 30 years ago.
Some researchers, including Cumbria University professor Jem Bendell, believe that climate-induced societal collapse is now inevitable in the near term and has written at length about its implications. His 2018 paper Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating the Climate Tragedy made me feel helplessness, great sadness (how could Homo sapiens dishonour its species name and be so stupid?) and profound grief - I was literally reduced to tears.
Here I am not alone. In an August 2019 article, distinguished climate scientist Joelle Gergis said: “Increasingly after speaking events, I catch myself unexpectedly weeping in my hotel room or on flights home.” Tongan Prime Minister Akilisi Pohiva, who died on Thursday, also shed tears at the recent Pacific Islands Forum.
He was determined to renew the call for action on global warming despite ill health, telling his audience: “I’m sure it is most likely that this will be my last attendance at a forum so it was very important to me to be here.’’
It should be noted that while Bendell considers societal collapse inevitable, he treats catastrophe as “probable” and human extinction as “possible”.
While I believe that Bendell has a high probability of being correct, I am unable to accept the chilling finality of the word “inevitable” and, at the age of 85, I intend to fight on in my quest to raise awareness that humanity faces a climate-induced calamity unless we take immediate, drastic action to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
This is my major mission in what is left of my life. The effort is obviously not for me but for my grandchildren and all the world’s youngsters.
In his recent book The Uninhabitable Earth: A Story of the Future, David Wallace-Wells raises the question of “whether it’s responsible [for today’s adults] to have children”, and confesses: “I know there are climate horrors to come, some of which will inevitably be visited on my children.”
But most powerfully, Wallace-Wells says: “We are staging [climate horrors to come] by inaction, and by action we can stop them.”
Dr Ian Bayly at work in his private, post-retirement zooplankton laboratory.
For NSW woman Felicity Lochhead, “whether to have a child is a decision increasingly overshadowed by her worry about the impact of climate change”. Lochhead said: “It’s not the only factor, of course, but it’s a big factor because I want to consider the future for that potential child and it’s looking like it will be very damaging, then it’s going to be something I [weigh up] before deciding to bring them into the world.”
Schoolchildren strike for action against climate change in March. Credit: Justin McManus
These comments emerged from a survey that showed 33 per cent of women under 30 were having second thoughts about starting or expanding a family because of fears those children would face an “unsafe future from climate change”. Victorian woman Jane Buckingham wrote a letter supporting Lochhead’s caution and sentiments.
It’s not only actual or potential babies that face a hostile future. What about the current crop of children and young adults in our schools?
A current year 12 student aged 17 or 18 has the potential to reach the age of almost 50 by 2050, but things could then be very nasty and survival by no means assured.
Most of our older school “kids” are mature and intelligent enough to know this, so it’s not surprising that they should become militant in drawing attention to the fact that we are facing a climate emergency as a result of reckless inaction by adult politicians.
Many will attend school strikes on September 20 with my blessing.
When challenged by youthful protesters, adults often resort to a rebuke based on reverse ageism rather than examining the substance of the protest. British schoolgirl Holly Gillibrand, inspired by Greta Thunberg and now running her own campaign, has little time for adult criticism: “I say to people who object to us missing lessons, what is the point of studying for a future that, if nothing is done, we might not have?”
Climate change apathy is accompanied by a dark cynicism and pitiless abandonment of future generations by adults who hold political power.
 Those who have calculated that they will die before things become catastrophic, and care nothing about the next generation, have effectively declared war on humanity.
Climate change inaction is intergenerational theft.
Go for it, young ones - if adult politicians won’t save you, you need to save yourselves.

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17/09/2019

Striking For A Better Future

Pro Bono - Wendy Williams

Around the world millions of students are preparing to put down their pens and walk out of class to demand action on climate change. Daisy Jeffrey is one of those students.
17-year-old Sydney student Daisy Jeffrey is one of the lead organisers of the School Strike For Climate (SS4C) here in Australia.
The School Strike For Climate is an international movement of school students, most of whom have never met in person, but who have been united over a concern for our planet.
Inspired by Swedish schoolgirl Greta Thunberg, who staged a protest in August 2018 outside the Swedish Riksdag, the movement has grown to become the biggest ever global climate action.
There are now more than 2,500 strikes planned across 120 countries this Friday – three days before world leaders meet in New York for the United Nations Emergency Climate Summit.
Students across Australia – in every capital city and in dozens of regional towns and centres  – will be joined by workers, First Nations people, parents, unions and more at strikes.
In Australia the grassroots movement is calling for three things:
  1. No new coal, oil and gas projects, including the Adani mine.
  2. 100 per cent renewable energy generation and exports by 2030.
  3. Fund a just transition and job creation for all fossil-fuel workers and communities.
Organisers say everyone is invited. Everyone is needed.
Ahead of this week’s climate strike, Jeffrey talks to Pro Bono News about her decision to strike, why students have been forced into taking action, and how people can get involved.

How did you get involved with the SS4C?
I found out about it maybe a week before it happened and I didn’t realise that you could get involved online. So I brought about half my school. My school has only got 160 kids, but I brought along quite a few kids to the strike. And then I got put in touch by someone who knew the main organiser for Sydney at that stage. So I became involved on the day. And then a week later, I ended up speaking at this massive Stop Adani rally at the town hall. So it’s just been a pretty insane rollercoaster.

What has it been like to go from being a Year 11 student focused on your studies to being thrust to the front of a movement?
Well, for me, and I think you’d get the same response from a lot of kids who are in the strike movement, it felt terrifying before, like I was suffocating, not being able to do anything or not feeling like I had any power over my own future or what the lives of future generations were going to look like.
To have the chance to get involved and actually fight for a better future has been time consuming and difficult, but it just feels like some of that stress has been slightly alleviated.

And how are you finding balancing studying and being involved in the strike?
It’s really difficult! And particularly when it’s such an important cause, you kind of feel like you want to be around all hours of the night to make sure that everything is being handled correctly. But I survive on coffee.

What does your role look like in organising SS4C?
So what we have at this point, at least here in Sydney, and I think Melbourne and Adelaide have similar systems, is a main communication system. We’re about to set up a real national structure. At the moment we have a national network. And basically everyone is on it, but only really lead representatives communicate on there. Then you have your core teams in your cities. And here in Sydney, we have a core team of about 10 people and then a broader Sydney team of about 50. That broader Sydney team was only put together a few weeks ago, and it was because we knew other kids were really interested in being involved and so we wanted to bring them into the movement and to give them that opportunity to actually learn about different forms of activism and leadership and how to handle interviews or generally doing posturing or social media and different ways of going about making a difference, and outreach. So that’s been a really interesting process in the lead up to the strike, putting that together.
And as far as actually putting together a strike, it just involves a whole lot of paperwork. Hours and hours of talking with the police, the council, and particularly with The Domain because it’s privately owned. So that’s probably the least fun part of it.
Largely, the campaign is done through social media, when it comes to actually advertising the strike. And this time round, we’ve had a lot of communication with the unions surrounding our third demand, which is the demand for a just transition policy. So there’s been a lot of that and we’re hoping to get a strong union turnout on the day.
It’s just been a really incredible process. And this time we’re also inviting adults to come out, not only in support of the youth, but in support of First Nations’ climate justice and worker’s rights as we transition to renewable energy.

What is it that you’d like to see?
I just want to see adequate climate action. That’s all we’re asking for.
At the moment, we have a deputy prime minister who has basically said that he doesn’t believe in climate change. We have a prime minister who’s going to be in New York but not going to the climate summit. And, it is so far below inadequate. It’s astounding.
So in Australia, we really have no choice other than to go out on strike, because we just need to see this action as soon as possible. We don’t have time to wait until the next election. And unfortunately, I don’t think Labor would have made much more of a difference, but I think they would have made a difference. And unfortunately, this government just does nothing.

Why do you think it is important for students to be leading this movement?
We’ve taken the charge because it’s our future. To be honest, we’ve enjoyed the rallies and whatnot and we’ve enjoyed getting to know each other, but none of us want to be doing this. It’s something we feel like we’ve been forced into. We’re in a position where we have no alternative because the generations before us, particularly the older generations, have such a refusal to do anything. And our future is in the hands of a small number of massive corporations and governments, and neither are really doing anything to combat climate change.

How can people get involved and support you?
Get involved by finding us on social media. We’re pretty easy to find. And just send us a message, we’ll put you in touch with the relevant people and you can get involved. And if you don’t have the capacity to be at a strike, share it on social media with your friends, maybe do a little bit of posturing or just send an email around.
Or even just lower your carbon footprint. Individual change is not going to solve the climate crisis, but it must come hand-in-hand with system change. And even making those small changes yourself and encouraging your friends and family to lower their carbon footprint is still making a difference.
I feel like this is an overused line, but we don’t need one or two people doing things perfectly. We need billions of people doing things imperfectly. And that’s the only way we’re going to be able to make a difference.

What do you like to do in your free time?
Tough question! I suppose I’m quite into hanging out with people and Netflix. I’m your ordinary teen. This just happens to be taking up 100 per cent of my life at the moment.

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Lethal Heating is a citizens' initiative