It’s not the best approach, but it’s better than none.
We’ve reached the “blame” stage in the climate grief cycle. Photographer: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
A growing number of cities and states want to turn climate change
lawsuits against oil companies into the next tobacco or opioid
litigation. In principle, that seems like a truly terrible idea. Such
lawsuits will likely do even less to remedy the effects of climate
change than similar suits did for lung cancer or opioid addiction. Yet
on closer analysis, the climate change lawsuits may be the worst
solution to mitigating climate change — except for all the others.
The analogy to Winston Churchill’s notorious defense of democracy
isn’t an accident. In the American form of democracy, oil companies
enjoy an almost unparalleled capacity to influence Congress and federal
government regulators.
Local governments aren’t quite so captured. Recently,
New York state’s lawsuit against Exxon began its trial; Massachusetts
filed its own suit; and the Supreme Court declined an admittedly unusual
request to stay suits being brought in state courts in Maryland, Rhode
Island and Colorado.
Paradoxically, it’s precisely the splintered, self-interested
nature of state and local lawsuits for damages that makes such
litigation a potentially useful tool against big oil.
The
proliferation of suits increases the likelihood that the oil companies
will lose some suits, somewhere. That should be enough for analysts who
cover oil companies to adjust their assessments of the probability of a
lawsuit cascade like the one that culminated in the tobacco litigation
settlement, and the one over opioids that is currently making its way
towards a similar resolution.
And once enough states and localities start getting money out
of the oil companies, the rest will jump on the bandwagon. Even if
their political leaders would prefer to stay on the good side of big
oil, the temptation of easy money will come to outweigh any instinct of
restraint. Oil companies might respond by trying to get Congress to pass
legislation protecting them from lawsuits. But by then, the states and
municipalities will be lobbying in the other direction.
As I’ve noted before in the context of the opioid litigation, this is no way to run a railroad.
Addressing major social crises by post-hoc lawsuits is not an efficient
or logical — or indeed, particularly just — way to right wrongs on a
large scale. The Anglo-American tort system was designed to resolve
small-scale conflicts, not large ones, yet we’ve tried to
reverse-engineer the system to deal with more fundamental social crises.
The results have been mixed at best.
Nevertheless, the truth is
that it’s particularly difficult to hold the energy companies
responsible for the consequences of their conduct. Going back to John D.
Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, which at its peak controlled more than 90%
of all oil refining in the U.S., perhaps no other industry in American
history has been as resistant to regulation designed to dilute its power
and lawmaking aimed at meaningful taxation. The enduring lobbying power
of the big oil companies has long affected U.S. policy, foreign and
domestic. And, of course, oil remains necessary to lubricate the U.S.
economy.
But
all that might is of limited utility against radically decentralized
adversaries. For a glimpse into how this could play out, look at what’s
currently underway in opioid litigation: not only states but also local
governments — frustrated by state-level distribution of the tobacco
settlement money and eager to get in on the action — have brought scores
of suits of their own. The local suits have also brought in the
for-profit, contingency-fee driven plaintiff’s bar.
This decentralization is a vice when it comes to rational,
organized policymaking. But it’s a virtue when it comes to subverting
the lobbying power of the energy industry in Washington.
Sprawling
litigation like this usually turns into a cascade of self-interested
municipalities trying to get a piece of the pie. At some point, failing
to bring a lawsuit starts to seem like governmental malpractice. There’s
money on the table, and local government that doesn’t try to get some
of it is doing harm to its own citizens.
The upshot is that, while
decentralized litigation isn’t an ideal way to address fundamental
social problems, it could at least drive the oil industry to internalize
some of the costs of the tremendous externalities that the burning of
fossil fuels has imposed on the public. That isn’t cause for
celebration. But it’s probably better than nothing.
In the quarter-century that the threat of global warming has
been hanging over general insurance in Australia, the debate has become
fragmented and absurdly complex.
Climatologists say Australia will be one of the earliest countries to
suffer from the long-term impacts of man-made climate change, but
action to deal with the issue has been stymied since 2013 by internecine
warfare between climate sceptics and realists in the ruling federal
Coalition.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison seems to have decided the best way to
maintain peace in the ranks is to pretend that by 2030 greenhouse gas
emissions will have been reduced by 26-28% below 2005 levels – despite a
government report last year predicting the reduction will be just 7%.
It’s hard not to feel sorry for the Insurance Council of Australia
(ICA), which must deal with the consequences of climate change and
transmit its views to a generally unreceptive government and a public
starved of information that brings the issue to their doorsteps.
So it’s worth looking at an unfortunate tangle ICA found itself in
last week over one of the many sub-issues that lie under the heading of
“climate change”.
It started two weeks ago when ICA President Richard Enthoven
delivered a strong “state of the industry” address to the National
Insurance Brokers Association (NIBA) convention, in the course of which
he noted that climate change is “sensitive politically”, despite robust
industry data that aligns with climate science.
Then he said: “Changing weather systems may well make certain regions
more exposed to storm, flood or bushfire, thereby potentially making
parts of Australia uninsurable.”
Just as “climate change” has become Canberra’s version of Harry
Potter’s Voldemort – it “Must Not Be Named” – so “uninsurable” seems to
enjoy the same status in ICA’s Pitt Street headquarters.
Despite the cautious use of the adverb “potentially”, Mr Enthoven crossed some kind of Rubicon in his speech.
ICA wants to move past the whole debate about the existence of
climate change to focus on the benefits of mitigation, and prefers to
always point to the Productivity Commission’s recommendation that the
Commonwealth invest at least $200 million a year (matched by state and
territory governments) on infrastructure.
It enjoyed a small victory earlier this month when the Government
announced that about $50 million from the Emergency Response Fund will
be earmarked annually for mitigation works. The Labor Party made that
$50 million a condition of its support for the fund.
Days later ICA’s happy glow turned to irritation when the ABC
published research from the Climate Risk consultancy which states that
extreme weather events caused by climate change will make hundreds of
thousands of Australian properties uninsurable.
It says nearly 720,000 addresses – or one in every 20 Australian
properties – will be uninsurable by 2100 if global warming continues at
its current rate.
This was 130,000 fewer properties than the original assessment made
by Climate Risk in March. At the time that earlier report set the
consultancy and ICA into a minor skirmish over the difference between
“uninsurable” and “unaffordable”.
ICA’s argument is that homeowners in high-risk areas may have to pay
more, but it doesn’t believe any part of Australia will become
uninsurable.
Climate Risk Director of Science Karl Mallon told insuranceNEWS.com.au
his organisation is “taking a responsible position to inform
communities about the risk in their suburbs that they may have no idea
about”.
“The insurance industry isn’t doing that, so we see it as a
responsible thing to do – to try and engage communities and also
encourage them to implement resilience measures ahead of an event.”
But ICA spokesman Campbell Fuller criticised Climate Risk’s report,
saying extreme weather projections based on climate change models should
be “agreed upon and understood by all relevant stakeholders before they
are used in a way that may unnecessarily scare householders and
businesses, disrupt communities and lead to poor decisions and
outcomes”.
Climate Risk charges a fee for the use of its data, but ICA says
information about future risks must be based on transparent methods and
data, and the insurance industry “is investing in the development of
transparent risk tools for climate change, based on centuries of
underwriting expertise and extreme weather knowledge”.
In other words, ICA sees its data as being far better than Climate
Risk’s data. Fair enough, it should be. But is all this hair-splitting
really necessary?
The ABC wasn’t slow to point out that ICA’s vehement attack on what
it called “irresponsible” reporting puts the council at odds with its
President’s statement that climate change “may make certain regions more
exposed to storm, flood or bushfire, thereby potentially making parts
of Australia uninsurable”.
It may be that ICA is concerned the focus on insurance and climate
change could switch political and community focus away from the need for
investment in mitigation to the relative affordability of property
insurance.
As Mr Fuller put it last week: “No area of Australia should be
uninsurable, provided governments invest appropriately in permanent
mitigation and resilience measures to protect communities from known and
projected risks, including the impact of climate change.”
That’s also a point Mr Enthoven emphasised in his NIBA speech, and it’s one that Climate Risk says it’s keen to support.
“Where we furiously agree [with ICA] is that we can do something about this,” Mr Mallon told insuranceNEWS.com.au last week.
Doesn’t the fact that without mitigation some properties may become
uninsurable – or unaffordable, if you prefer – make a compelling case
for government action?
Call it information the public should know or call it scaremongering,
Climate Risk’s fulsomely illustrated information, circulated widely
around Australia via the ABC, contributed significantly to raising
public awareness of the issue.
It doesn’t really matter how you define “uninsurable”, or how many
properties you put in that category. The fact is some homeowners in
Australia are already faced with unaffordable premiums and the issue is
going to get worse unless serious work on mitigation is done.
If Climate Risk’s data isn’t as good as ICA’s, its cut-through on the
issue was nevertheless impressive and has helped raise awareness in a
very personal way. A substantial change in official policy towards
mitigation will come sooner if there’s pressure from the community – and
to achieve that a bit of data-backed scaremongering shouldn’t be seen
as all that bad.
Organisations such as Australian Industry Group and National Farmers’ Federation letter says greater private-sector action needed
Groups including the Australian Industry Group and National Farmers’
Federation say the emissions reduction fund has worked in ‘the land
sector’ but is poorly suited to driving cuts in industry.
Photograph: Bloomberg via Getty Images
Industry, farming and investor groups say the federal government signed up to a goal of global net zero emissions under the Paris agreement
and have warned unless new policies are introduced taxpayer spending on
climate programs will need to be dramatically increased.
A joint letter by 10 business organisations, including the Australian
Industry Group and the National Farmers’ Federation, says the
government will either need to back new climate policies that drive
private-sector action or boost taxpayer funding now and into the future.
The letter was sent to a panel of business leaders and policy experts appointed by Angus Taylor,
the emissions reduction minister, to find new ways to “enhance” the
emissions reduction fund, the government’s main climate policy. The
panel’s appointment, which was not made public, is seen as an admission
the fund is not reducing national pollution.
Only select groups were asked to give feedback to a discussion paper
circulated by the panel. The Clean Energy Council confirmed it wasn’t
approached “directly” to participate in the rapid-fire review, which
began in mid-October and is expected to offer initial feedback early
next month, but said it welcomed the government’s putative shift on one
of its signature policies.
The business group letter says the 10 organisations have different
views on policy but agreed on broad principles that should underpin what
the government does.
It says Australia’s medium-term climate
target set for 2030 is just a staging post on the way to meeting the
Paris deal goals of keeping global heating well below 2C and pursuing
efforts to limit it to 1.5C.
This would ultimately mean global net zero emissions. In Australia,
it would require policy mechanisms that could efficiently deliver
“immediate, cost-effective abatement opportunities” in every part of the
economy and also encourage innovation.
The letter says the emissions reduction fund has worked in “the land
sector” – mostly projects supporting native vegetation – but was poorly
suited to driving cuts in industry and buildings and unlikely to bring
change in energy and transport.
The groups would support
well-designed policies that put less of the cost of cutting emissions on
taxpayers, as the emissions reduction fund does, and instead encouraged
the private sector to act.
“In the absence of such policies, the government will need to commit
more resources – both now and over time – to finance abatement,” the
letter says.
The panel, which is headed by Grant King, the outgoing president of
the Business Council of Australia and a former chief executive of Origin
Energy,
was appointed after the government has been privately sounding out some
groups about an overhaul of the fund for months. But stakeholders were
taken aback when the panel approached them to provide detailed comments
on options in less than two weeks.
Interviewed on the ABC, King said it was sensible for the government
to look at how the fund was working and take on feedback. “What the
government has done is say ‘let’s run a quick process … that’s going to
listen to that feedback and see whether we can enhance the way the fund
works’,” he said.
King stressed the government’s target, a 26-28%
cut below 2005 levels, was not a cap. “What we want to do is exceed
those targets and we can do that that, we believe, through listening to
people’s experience … and improving the way it is working,” he said.
Taylor agreed the government would “like to beat our targets” and said the review was about “using the best expertise we can”.
“We are doing everything we can to use that money [committed to the fund] to maximise the abatement we get from it,” he said.
The Labor leader, Anthony Albanese, gave the Coalition a blast for
failing to have a coherent policy. “The government doesn’t have an
energy policy,” he said. “It doesn’t have a plan. What they need to do
is to have a comprehensive plan for energy.”
Kane Thornton, the
chief executive of the Clean Energy Council, said he welcomed “any steps
towards stronger national climate and energy policy to provide the
necessary certainty for investors”. He noted the emissions reduction
fund had to date focused on areas other than energy, such as agriculture
and industrial processes.
Thornton said his organisation, which represents major renewable
energy players, had “not been directly approached to participate in the
review of the (fund) to date”. But he would welcome any opportunity to
put forward ideas that would ensure the fund played a more substantial
role in providing investor confidence across all sectors of the economy.
As well as contributing to the joint letter, the Australian Industry
Group (Ai Group) has contributed its own submission to the process,
urging the Morrison government to pursue least cost abatement in the
reboot.
Its submission says market mechanisms, including “price signals and
tradable instruments”, can be efficient and effective if well designed,
but there are also roles for careful regulation and public funding. “The
existing landscape of policy and proposals is far from consistent with
these principles,” it says.
The discussion paper floats changing the scheme known as the safeguard mechanism, which was supposed to limit emissions from big industry but in practice has allowed pollution to increase, so companies that emit less than their limit are awarded carbon credits they could sell to the government or business.
The Ai Group says adjusting the safeguards regime is an important
option for the government, but will “require especially careful and
consultative development”. It says in theory it should be simple to
reward facilities for emissions cuts when they emit less than tight
limits, or baselines, but in reality “there are many difficult issues
involved”.
Other signatories to the business group letter backed by the Ai Group
are the Investor Group on Climate Change, the Property Council, the
Energy Users Association, the Energy Efficiency Council, the Green
Building Council, the Australian Alliance for Energy Productivity, the
Carbon Market Institute and the Australian Sustainable Built Environment
Council.
The emissions reduction fund works as a reverse auction, rewarding
landowners and businesses that make cheap, viable bids for taxpayers’
support to cut pollution. The most recent auction bought emissions cuts equivalent to only 0.01% of Australia’s annual greenhouse gas pollution after officials found just three projects worth backing.
The emissions policy review came to light as the government announced it would give the government green bank,
the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, an extra $1bn to invest in
projects aimed at ensuring a reliable electricity supply. The new fund
is earmarked for power generation, storage and transmission projects
such as pumped hydro, batteries and gas.
National emissions have risen each year since 2015 and analyses
have found the government would not reach its 2030 target, a 26%-28%
cut below 2005 levels, unless policies changed. Scientists say Australia
should be aiming for deeper cuts if it is play its part under the Paris
agreement.
Australia's national hydrogen strategy is due for completion by the end of the year
Hydrogen can be made using fossil fuels or renewables but it will be cheaper to use coal and gas for at least a decade
Japan's demand has been inflated in official government materials, overstating the short-term export potential
Japan might be endowed with many beautiful things but reliable and cheap sources of energy are not among them.
Home
to 125 million people and one of the world's worst nuclear-power
meltdowns, the allure of hydrogen energy has driven Japan's ambition to
become a leading adopter of the energy source.
Next year's Tokyo
Olympics will serve as a demonstration of the country's progress towards
a so-called hydrogen society, based on carbon-free, next-generation
technology.
It is keen for cars that produce exhaust — water —
that technically could be drunk. The Olympics itself will be home to
buses like this:
And key to its strategy for this clean-energy future is something that may surprise — Australia's brown coal.
Japan's
strategic hydrogen roadmap, released earlier this year, states plainly
that 2020 targets are set "assuming the success of Japan-Australia brown
coal-to-hydrogen project".
That project, a trial
using coal from Latrobe Valley in Victoria, will demonstrate how
Australia's hydrogen export industry — and Japan's imports — might work.
But its prominence also hints at a tension threatening to tear the Australian hydrogen movement apart.
The recipe for hydrogen
Hydrogen
is attractive as a fuel source because it carries more energy than
natural gas and is carbon-free, so the burning of it does not contribute
to climate change.
It can be produced by the process of
electrolysis of water using large amounts of energy — think solar and
wind-sourced — or chemical processes associated with combusting fossil
fuels like coal and gas.
That sets up an ideological split between fossil fuels and renewables.
While the hydrogen itself emits no carbon when used, the cheapest way to produce it right now does.
Those
preparing Australia's hydrogen strategy recognise the need to reduce
emissions to combat climate change, and are only considering options
using fossil fuels if they come with carbon capture and storage (CCS).
The
most prominent examples of CCS involve pumping carbon emissions into
underground cavities, but critics argue the technology is unproven and
ineffective.
Mark McCallum at Coal21, a group representing black
coal producers pursuing CCS, wrote in a submission to this year's
hydrogen strategy consultation that the technology was proven, citing
the example of the Norway's Sleipner 20-year-old project.
"Importantly,
CO2 [carbon dioxide] is a stable substance and, provided the
well-established industrial safety protocols are followed, the injection
process can be conducted without any threats to the health and safety
of workers or the public."
Suitable locations for
hydrogen production, factoring in proximity to geology suitable for
storing emissions, have already been identified by Geoscience Australia:
There may be issues with leakage from the emissions, or cost blowouts with rolling out the technology at a large scale.
But assuming there's not, it will be much cheaper to produce hydrogen using fossil fuels over the next few years.
However,
the renewables-driven alternative is already better for the climate,
and at some point after 2030 its price is also likely to be cheaper.
The 'inflated' prize of Japan
The
briefing paper for COAG energy ministers notes "access to the Japanese
energy market is the prize for the nations now bidding to be global
hydrogen suppliers".
But it is not clear exactly how big that prize is.
Much of the hype around hydrogen in Australia focuses on the export opportunities.
The
thinking goes that Australia could use its natural endowment in coal,
gas, sun and wind and supply the world with hydrogen, starting with
Japan.
This future, according to some, is just around the corner.
The
first issues paper for the National Hydrogen Strategy trumpets:
"High-level economic modelling by ACIL Allen estimates that hydrogen
exports could provide around $4 billion direct and indirect economic
benefits to Australia by 2040 under medium demand growth settings."
Under
those "growth settings", consultants ACIL Allen estimate that Japan
will need 1.76 million tonnes of hydrogen per year in 2030. It suggests
Australia could provide 368,000 of those tonnes.
If ACIL's estimates are correct, more than
2,000 Australian workers will benefit from the burgeoning industry in
the next decade.
However, Japan's own strategy projects its own
demand in 2030 at just 300,000 tonnes. That's less than one fifth ACIL's
estimate of Japan's consumption.
Anthony Kosturjak, a senior research economist at Adelaide University, said the ACIL estimate "does seem optimistic".
"The
low-export scenario of 182,000 tonnes is more reasonable as this would
represent about 60 per cent of the national target," he said.
Mr
Kosturjak, who researched 19 national hydrogen plans this year for a
research paper funded by the Department of Industry, warned that Japan's
targets were aspirational but also competition was intense, noting
Japan had set up projects in other countries, including Brunei and
Norway.
"It is important to remember that the Japanese strategy
identifies an aspirational target and there is significant uncertainty
regarding how the technical and economic feasibility of hydrogen and
competing technologies will evolve," he said.
"As such, the country could significantly overshoot or undershoot its target."
According to ACIL's estimates, Japan will provide the majority of world demand in 2030.
How a boom changes the strategy
John
Soderbaum, director of science and technology at ACIL Allen, said the
scenarios in the report "are not forecasts of hydrogen demand by any
particular country, rather they are projections of the potential
overseas demand for hydrogen under three different scenarios".
"We
then explored what it would mean for Australia in terms of export
revenues and employment if that projected overseas demand for hydrogen
imports was met in part by Australian exports."
However Richie
Merzian, the director of the climate and energy program at left-wing
think tank The Australia Institute, described the numbers as "inflated"
and argued they were being used to justify fast-tracking the hydrogen
export market.
"Public money is being channelled into developing coal and natural gas-based hydrogen plants," he said.
"With
time and public funding, green hydrogen, derived from water through
electrolysis and powered by renewable energy, could provide a far more
sustainable industry."
While such an industry may be
more sustainable, its success means a lost opportunity for Australia's
coal sector — and its workers — to pivot towards hydrogen.
In August, Australia's chief scientist Alan Finkel argued a combination was desirable.
"Producing
hydrogen from these [fossil fuel] sources, if done in conjunction with
carbon capture and sequestration, is an attractive option because it
increases the diversity of supply (so all our 'eggs' are not in any one
energy 'basket')," he said.
Crunch discussions loom
Much
has been made of Australia being perfectly placed to take advantage of
hydrogen, with wind, sun, vast reserves of coal and gas, and access to
Asian markets.
And there appears to be support from all sides of politics.
In January, then Opposition leader Bill Shorten unveiled a hydrogen strategy for Labor that was backed by the Minerals Council.
But success is not automatic.
Research
by the International Energy Agency shatters the mythology that
Australia is the standout leader for hydrogen production.
The US, China, north Africa and the Middle East appear to offer substantially cheaper production.
Dr Soderbaum said ultimately the market would decide whether Australia's hydrogen sector got off the ground.
"At
the end of the day, the actual demand for Australian hydrogen will be
determined by factors such as the economic competitiveness of our
supplies versus those of competing suppliers of hydrogen around the
world and the extent to which it can be classified as low or
zero-emissions hydrogen," he said.
The national hydrogen strategy is currently being drafted by a taskforce led by Dr Finkel.
State and federal energy ministers are expected to discuss the strategy in November.
Inscription in Akkadian on a brick-stamp of baked clay of King Sarkali-Sarri of the Akkadian dynasty, Nippur. From the Archaeological Museum's collection, Istanbul. Photo by CM Dixon/Print Collector/Getty Images
The Akkadian Empire was the first ancient empire of Mesopotamia,
centered around the lost city of Akkad.
The reign of Akkad is sometimes
regarded as the first empire in history, as it developed a central
government and elaborate bureaucracy to rule over a vast area comprising
modern Iraq, Syria, parts of Iran and central Turkey.
Established
around 4.600 years ago, it abruptly collapsed two centuries later as
settlements were suddenly abandoned.
New research published in the
journal Geology argues that shifting wind systems contributed to the demise of the empire.
The region of the Middle East is characterized by strong northwesterly winds known locally as shamals.
This weather effect occurs one or more times a year. The resulting wind
typically creates large sandstorms that impact the climate of the area.
To reconstruct the temperature and rainfall patterns of the area around
the ancient metropolis of Tell-Leilan, the researchers sampled 4,600-
to 3,000-year-old fossil Porites corals, deposited by an ancient tsunami on the northeastern coast of Oman.
The genus Porites
builds a stony skeleton using the mineral aragonite (CaCO3). Studying
the chemical and isotopic signatures of the carbon and oxygen used by
the living coral, it is possible to reconstruct the sea-surface
temperature conditions and so the precipitation and evaporation balance
of a region located near the sea.
The fossil evidence shows that
there was a prolonged winter shamal season accompanied by frequent
shamal days lasting from 4.500 to 4.100 years ago, coinciding with the
collapse of the Akkadian empire 4.400 years ago .
The impact of the dust
storms and lack of rainfall would have caused major agricultural
problems possibly leading to famine and social instability.
Weakened
from the inside, the Akkadian Empire became an easy target to many
opportunistic tribes living nearby.
Hostile invasions, helped by the
shifting climate, finally brought an end to the first modern empire in
history.
The chemicals that cause smog can be directly linked to the brown air people see, and solutions can be crafted on a local basis. With climate change, there aren’t clear smoking guns that can be linked to specific events. Lawrence K. H / Los Angeles Times
Christopher Knittel
Christopher Knittel is a professor of applied economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management and director of MIT’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research.
Even now that most of the world has acknowledged that
climate change is real and caused by humans, combating it has proved
daunting. Why? There are five features that combine to make global
warming a more vexing environmental crisis than any we have faced
before.
One
First, the pollutants that contribute to it are global
pollutants, ones that do their damage no matter where on earth they are
released. Past pollutants — such as sulfur dioxide, which causes acid
rain, or nitrogen oxides, which are a precursor to smog — are local
pollutants, which do most of their damage near where they are released.
Elected officials are much more likely to enact measures to curtail
local pollutants, because the voters who elect them are directly
affected by the pollution. With global pollutants, much of the damage is
felt far away, and moreover, they may not be something an elected
official can control through local action.
Two
The second complicating
feature of climate change pollutants is that much of their damage is in
the future. The electorate and their public officials have less reason
to pass measures that would cost money and cause inconvenience now, when
the most severe damage will accrue to some distant and unknowable
future.
Three
The third issue is that the pollutants producing climate
change can’t be directly linked to a smoking gun. Whereas nitrogen oxide
emissions directly created smog, which was easily seen, climate change
pollutants lead to more frequent bad events, but these events also can
and do occur naturally. We can chart, over time, that hurricanes are
getting wetter and more damaging or that drought cycles last longer, but
those observations are easily dismissed by those who wish to downplay
the problem, since weather has always been variable. Rising average
temperatures too can be ignored, because there have always been
record-setting days and heat waves.
Four
The fourth feature that makes
climate change particularly daunting is that developing countries
contribute a large share of the pollution that drives it. This is
important for several reasons. It is difficult for developed nations to
make the case that the same technologies that made their own growth
possible should now be denied to the countries coming behind them. And
it is hard for policy makers in developing countries to justify
incurring the costs of reducing global pollutants when their citizens
still struggle with getting enough to eat or having access to clean
water.
Five
The final characteristic making climate change such a
thorny problem is that the pollutants causing it are tied directly to
crucial aspects of people’s lives, including transportation, home
electricity, and heating and air conditioning. Moreover, alternatives
still tend to be more costly.
Some past environmental problems
offered far easier solutions. The pollution that caused the hole in the
ozone layer, for example — chlorofluorocarbons — were also a global
pollutant and were tied to widely used products such as refrigeration,
air conditioning and hairspray. But there were cheap, readily available
alternatives. That’s not the case with the petroleum products we use to
power our cars and the natural gas and coal still widely used to
generate electricity. Yes, alternatives are being developed, but they
are often more costly and haven’t been widely adopted worldwide.
If
an evil genius had set out to design the perfect environmental crisis,
one that would slowly destroy the earth through humans’ own actions and
would be difficult to fight, those five factors would have made climate
change a brilliant choice. But we didn’t need an evil genius. We
stumbled into it on our own.
Detecting human fingerprints on complex events like droughts is not straightforward.
AAP Image/Dan Peled
The issue of whether Australia’s current drought is caused by climate
change has been seized on by some media commentators, with debate
raging over a remark from eminent scientist Andy Pitman that “there is
no link between climate change and drought”. Professor Pitman has since qualified, he meant to say “there is no direct link between climate change and drought”.
A highly politicised debate
that tries to corner scientists will not do much to help rural
communities struggling with the ongoing dry. But it is still worthwhile
understanding the complexity of how climate change relates to drought.
So, why the contention?
It may seem like splitting hairs to focus on single words, but the
reality is drought is complex, and broad definitive statements are
difficult to make. Nevertheless, aspects of drought are linked with climate change. Let us try to give you a taste of the complexity.
First, it’s important to understand that drought is a manifestation
of interactions between the atmosphere, ocean, and land. In Australia,
the Bureau of Meteorology uses rainfall deficiencies to identify regions
that are under drought conditions. Anyone on the land doesn’t need to
be reminded, but the current drought is seriously bad. These
maps show the patterns of rainfall deficiency over the past 36 and 18
months, highlighting the severity and extent of what we call meteorological drought.
Widespread rainfall deficiencies over the last 36 months (left) and 18 months (right) Australian Bureau of Meteorology
But along with the main driver - low rainfall - droughts can also be
exacerbated by water loss through evaporation. This depends not only on
temperature but also humidity, wind speeds, and sunshine. Temperature
will clearly continue to rise steadily almost everywhere. For the other
factors, the future is not quite as clear.
Water loss also varies according to vegetation cover. Plants respond
to higher carbon dioxide levels and drought by closing the tiny holes in
their leaves (the stomata) and this can actually reduce water loss in wet environments. However, in water-stressed environments, projected long-term declines in rain may be compounded by plants using more water, further reducing streamflow. Actually, we can glean a lot from studying hydrological drought, which is measured by a period of low flow in rivers.
The point here is droughts are multidimensional, and can affect water
supply on a wide range of spatial and temporal scales. A seasonal-scale
drought that reduces soil moisture on a farm, and a decade-long drought
that depletes reservoirs and groundwater supplies, can each be
devastating, but in different ways.
Is climate change affecting Australian droughts?
Climate change may affect drought metrics and types of drought
differently, so it can be hard to make general statements about the
links between human-induced climate change and all types of drought, in
all locations, on all timescales.
Southern Australia, and in particular the southwest, has seen a rapid
decline in winter rainfall and runoff that has been linked to climate change. In the southeast there has also been a substantial decline in winter rainfall and total runoff in recent decades. Although the reductions are consistent with climate change projections, the trend so far is harder to distinguish from the year-to-year variability.
There is some evidence to suggest that widespread and prolonged droughts, like the Millennium Drought, are worse than other droughts in past centuries, and may have been exacerbated by climate change.
But the role of climate change in extended drought periods is
difficult to discern from normal variations in weather and climate. This
is particularly true in Australia, which has a much more variable
climate than many other parts of the world.
What does the future hold?
Climate models project increasing temperature across Australia and a
continuing decline in cool-season rainfall over southern Australia over
the next century. This will lead to more pressure on water supplies for agriculture, the environment, and cities such as Melbourne at the Paris Agreement’s target of 2℃, relative to the more ambitious target of 1.5℃ of global warming.
Rainfall is projected to become more extreme, with more intense rain
events and fewer light rain days. Declining overall rainfall is
predicted to reduce river flows
in southeastern Australia. While we can expect the largest floods to
increase with climate change, smaller floods are decreasing due to drier soils, and it is these smaller floods that top up our water supply systems.
Action needed
We might not know enough about droughts to be certain about exactly
how they will behave in the future, but this does not affect the message
from the science community on climate change, which remains crystal
clear.
Rainfall intensification, sea level rise, ocean acidification, hotter
days, and longer and more intense heatwaves all point to the fact that
climate change presents a major threat to Australia and the world.
In response to these threats, we need deep and sustained greenhouse
gas emissions cuts and proactive adaptation to the inevitable effects of
climate change. This includes a focus right now on the practical
measures to help our rural communities who continue to feel the pinch of
a dry landscape.
