10/10/2021

(AU The Guardian) Angus Taylor Advised By Department That IPCC Climate Report Was ‘Balanced’, Documents Show

The Guardian - 

Emissions reduction minister told to expect more vigorous calls for ambitious targets before Barnaby Joyce declined to endorse findings
Australia’s emissions reduction minister, Angus Taylor, received a four-page briefing from his department just before the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its new report. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP

Australian government officials privately advised Angus Taylor that the latest international report on climate science was “balanced and transparent” before Barnaby Joyce later refused to endorse some of the key findings.

Amid government divisions on climate policy in the lead-up to the Glasgow Cop26 conference, Guardian Australia can reveal Taylor’s department also told him to expect intensified calls “for more ambitious climate targets, such as net zero emissions by 2050 or earlier”.

Taylor, the emissions reduction minister, received a four-page briefing from his department just before the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its new report in August.

The industry department also provided Taylor with “updated talking points” and a “media handling strategy” – although those attachments were not included in the document released to Guardian Australia under freedom of information laws (FoI).

“It is the department’s view that the report provides a detailed, balanced and transparent assessment that addresses Australia’s comments submitted during the final government review,” stated the ministerial submission sent on 9 August.

Taylor and the Liberals largely accepted the IPCC report, with Taylor saying on its release that “Australia is committed to achieving net zero emissions as soon as possible, and preferably by 2050”.

However, three weeks after its release, Joyce, who as the leader of the Nationals will be crucial to the outcome of the government’s climate policy negotiations, declined to endorse specific IPCC findings.

At a National Press Club event on 3 September, the deputy prime minister likened questions from the Guardian about whether he agreed with several key findings from the report to a baptism where parents were required to “denounce Satan and all his works and deeds”.

Joyce said he was “not going to stand here and sort of be berated into complying” with such statements.

When presented with several statements from the 40-page summary for policymakers, Joyce said he would not “participate in some sort of kangaroo court of now you will agree to every statement I say because the IPCC said it”.

He said only that he believed “humans have an influence on climate”, without specifying how much of an influence.

But the department’s briefing to Taylor on the IPCC report noted that the summary for policymakers “was approved line by line in an IPCC member government approval session from 26 July to 6 August 2021” and represented a balanced outcome.

“The report is expected to attract significant media attention and intensify calls for more ambitious climate targets, such as net zero emissions by 2050 or earlier,” the department told Taylor.

Download original document

The department said the key messages from the report included that it was “unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land”.

The briefing said this was the IPCC’s strongest statement on human influence to date “and builds on a similar finding in its Fifth Assessment Report in 2013 which found that human influence was ‘clear’”.

The briefing also noted that “limiting human-induced global warming to a specific level requires reaching at least net zero CO2 emissions, along with strong reductions in other greenhouse gas emissions”.

“Stakeholders might use the report’s release as an opportunity to amplify calls for near term action to reduce methane emissions, noting its greater warming impact compared to carbon dioxide on a tonne for tonne basis, over a 100-year time horizon,” it stated.

Three paragraphs in the briefing were blacked out in the version released to Guardian Australia apparently because of a potential impact on foreign relations.

The briefing was prepared for Taylor and there is no indication Joyce received it.

Pressure builds on Australia

Australia is facing sustained diplomatic pressure, including from the US and the UK, to strengthen its climate policies, including its 2030 target, which remains at the Abbott-era level of a 26% to 28% cut compared with 2005.

The FoI decision-maker said of the redactions: “I am satisfied this material contains opinions and confidential information about issues of sensitivity between Australia and various foreign countries and the release of this material would inhibit or prejudice future negotiations between the Australian government and the government of these countries.”

The prime minister, Scott Morrison, pushed back at diplomatic pressure on Thursday, saying he would not “make any suggestions as to what other countries should be doing”.

Addressing reporters outside the Lodge in Canberra, Morrison said the government would be “working through” the details of its climate plan “over the next few weeks”, arguing it had been “a very good faith process” to date.

Morrison did not rule out accepting a controversial proposal to create a $250bn loan facility for the resources sector in return for National party backing for a net zero emissions target.

The resources minister, Keith Pitt, has proposed that taxpayers underwrite fossil fuel financing and insurance, but the idea has been met with scorn by metropolitan Liberals.

 The Australia Institute, a progressive thinktank, plans to launch a new television advertising campaign that accuses the government of “trying to cheat on climate action again”.

“Their plan for net zero emissions by 2050 is a fraud if gas and coal are allowed to expand,” the narrator says in a 30-second ad expected to air from Monday.

Richie Merzian, the climate and energy program director at the Australia Institute, said actions spoke louder than words.

“While the prime minister is poised to announce a net zero by 2050 target, we can see from this government’s actions that it has little intention of meeting such a target, let alone beating it,” Merzian said.

With the Asian Development Bank preparing to decide on a new energy policy that is likely to include an end to financing coal projects, a Treasury spokesperson said on Thursday the Australian government was “currently considering its position”.

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(AU AFR) Australia’s Business Leaders Tell PM How To Hit Net Zero By 2050

AFR - Phillip Coorey | Jacob Greber

More than 130 of Australia’s biggest companies have told the federal government a strategy to reach net zero by 2050 not only makes environmental sense but could grow jobs and the economy in the process.

As the Prime Minister enters a critical 10 days trying to negotiate a deal with the Nationals ahead of the COP26 climate talks in Glasgow, the Business Council of Australia has provided ammunition for his case with its own technology road map detailing how to hit the target and achieve far deeper cuts by 2030 than are currently targeted.

Business Council of Australia president Tim Reed says climate change needs solutions, not more endless debate. Alex Ellinghausen
The plan, underpinned by modelling by Deloitte Access Economics, estimates that if every sector of the economy plays a role, the economy could grow $890 billion bigger than otherwise in today’s dollars in the 50 years to 2070.

Rather than jobs being destroyed, the modelling says a modest 195,000 net jobs would also be created over the next 50 years

BCA president Tim Reed said the bulk of the economic dividend would be realised in the regions.

Before the last election, the BCA described Labor’s 2030 target of a 45 per cent emissions cut over 2005 levels as “economy wrecking”.

But its modelling shows that, based on current available technology, it is both “pragmatic and ambitious” to reduce emissions by between 46 per cent and 50 per cent over 2005 levels by 2030.

While the 2030 targets are optimal, the BCA setting an early ambitious target will speed up investment in new technology and make the task easier over the longer term.


BCA chief executive Jennifer Westacott said the exercise was to show net zero could be done, even if the requisite technologies had not all been developed.

“The fundamental question is how do we get to net zero by 2050, that’s what we tried to do,” she said.

The BCA modelling, which the organisation says is supported by its membership, is led by business investment which would be driven by an expanded and enhanced safeguard mechanism requiring more of Australia’s biggest polluters to pay for their emissions by removing a technical exemption.

This would be done by reducing the eligibility threshold for emitters from 100,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year to 25,000 tonnes. There would be support for internationally exposed, emissions-intensive sectors, just as was originally proposed more than a decade ago when Labor tried to tackle climate change.

Technology-based reductions

 Fledgling technologies including hydrogen and carbon capture and storage would be needed for the plan to work.

Scott Morrison is currently negotiating with Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce a technology-based deal to achieve net zero by 2050, to be announced before next month’s Glasgow climate change summit.

It is also likely the government, based on current projections, will unveil a 2030 emissions reduction target higher than the current 26 per cent to 28 per cent. The new target is expected to be in the mid-30s.

The BCA strategy says the electricity sector would have to make the biggest contribution to its 2030 target with 61 per cent of emissions reductions. This would require a four-fold increase in the uptake of renewable energy this decade, enough to generate an extra 30 gigawatts at an investment cost of $50 billion.

This would result in clean energy constituting 85 per cent of the mix by 2030, and 99 per cent by 2040 and 2050.

Industry, transport and agriculture

 The next biggest contribution would be made by the industry sector, which would account for 24 per cent of the overall emissions reductions. These reductions would be achieved through such measures as moving from diesel to gas and renewables, and adopting carbon capture and storage.

Transport would contribute a 10 per cent reduction in nationwide emissions through heavy investment in electric vehicles.

The BCA plan calls for 22 per cent of cars to be electric by 2030, up from the government’s current target of 7 per cent. As well, 10 per cent of trucks would be hydrogen-fuelled by 2030.

The agriculture and land sectors, which the Nationals have demanded be exempt from the net zero plan, would contribute 5 per cent of reductions, but largely through offset measures. Some measures, such a methane supplements and fertiliser management, would be highly dependent on the commercial viability of technologies still in their infancy.

As for the BCA’s membership, “overwhelmingly they see this as an opportunity”.

Global rules for risk disclosures

 Separately, as pressure builds on government over climate change, a group representing more than two-thirds of Australia’s investment industry and over $100 trillion in assets under management globally is pressing Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and Reserve Bank of Australia governor Philip Lowe to work with their most powerful counterparts on creating consistent global rules for climate risk disclosures.

To avoid a mishmash of national rules and standards, the investors group wants Mr Frydenberg and Dr Lowe to use next week’s Group of 20 central bankers and finance ministers meeting, hosted by Italy, to join global efforts for common transparency rules.

Australia should phase in by 2024 economy-wide rules set out by the global Task Force for Climate-Related Financial Disclosure.

“Without an international approach and commitments from nations to integrate and build on international baseline standards in domestic legal frameworks, we risk market fragmentation that could impede the flow of global capital,” said Erwin Jackson, director of policy at the Investor Group on Climate Change.

A letter penned by the group was sent to the government and central bank two weeks after Mr Frydenberg backed the push to net zero by 2050 with a warning that “markets are moving” towards a lower-emissions future.

“It’s a long-term shift, not a short-term shock” he said at the time. “Trillions of dollars are being mobilised globally in support of the transition.”

Australia’s official debt agency, the Australian Office of Financial Management, says around a third of its recent meetings with domestic and offshore investors have included discussions about Australia’s environmental and climate-related promises.

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(AU SMH) How Australia Got Blindsided In The Great Pacific Climate Coup

Sydney Morning Herald - Nick O'Malley

As the Glasgow climate talks loomed closer this week Fiji’s Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama addressed an international forum hosted by the former US vice president Al Gore, with slightly more than customary bluntness.

A little greyer and a touch softer than when he led a coup to take power for his first term in 2006, there was still a whiff of the hard man about him.

Strong words: Fiji Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama at COP23 climate change conference in Bonn, Germany in 2017. Credit: AP

Pacific leaders, he said, were tired of commending the resilience of their people in confronting a warming world and the rising seas.

They would no longer accept the role of “canary in the world’s coal mines”, they would not be the world’s “helpless songbirds”.

And then as current chair of the Pacific Islands Forum he listed priorities.

“Fiji and the Pacific’s demands are clear,” he said. “The developed world must deliver on the $100 billion dollars promised in climate finance.” He mentioned Australia and New Zealand specifically.


This language might have surprised international onlookers used to the climate debate focussing on emission reductions. And who is Fiji and its 13 Pacific partners to be issuing demands to the world?

Those with an eye on the history of high-stakes climate negotiations knew better.

The 1.5 degree drive-by

You need to know a little climate politics to understand the flex.

The Paris Agreement today commits each nation to do their utmost to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in keeping with holding global warming beneath 2 degrees and as close to 1.5 degrees as possible.

Today that lower target, 1.5 degrees, has become the focus of the world’s discussion.

But leading up to the Paris climate talks in 2015, 1.5 degrees was barely even a consideration, even though climate scientists agreed it was the point at which we stood a better chance of avoiding potentially cataclysmic climate tipping points.

The target only exists in the Paris Agreement because of a diplomatic ambush set by one of the world’s smallest nations - the Marshall Islands, population about 60,000.

That was then: Foreign Minister Julie Bishop hugs then Marshall Islands minister Tony de Brum at the Paris climate summit. Credit: Andrew McLeish
Then Marshallese foreign minister Tony deBrum recognised that while 2 degrees warming might be tolerable to other parts of the world, it would obliterate many Pacific communities and nations.

Under the slogan “1.5 to stay alive” deBrum began gathering support for an international coalition that would later become known as the High Ambition Coalition (HAC).

When the Paris talks began no one outside the group knew of its existence, but deBrum had already managed to secure the support firstly of Pacific island nations and then other small island countries in the Caribbean and Indian Ocean.

Some African nations came on board later. The EU also backed the grouping, and when the negotiations started to bite, the group managed to pull the United States on board.

Finally, more than a week into Paris negotiations, the HAC “broke cover” as Dr Wesley Morgan, researcher at the Climate Council and research fellow at Griffith Asia Institute, put it in a recent essay in the Australian journal Foreign Affairs.

The moment was dramatic. DeBrum walked towards the final session of the Paris talks flanked by the Spanish politician serving as European energy commissioner, Miguel Arias Cañete, and the US chief climate negotiator Todd Stern.

The three had palm fronds woven into their lapels to symbolise their common purpose. The Marshallese statesman also had the votes of 90 nations in his pocket.


World leaders, diplomats and staffers suddenly realised they’d been wrong-footed.

Australia, the Pacific big brother that used to boast of punching above its diplomatic weight did not even know the bloc existed before this moment.

“We could not have gotten a Paris Agreement without the incredible efforts and hard work of the island nations,” said then US President Barack Obama the following year of the efforts of deBrum and the group he corralled.

Australia’s then foreign minister Julie Bishop announced that we too would join the HAC. The problem was Australia was short on entry requirements.

“We are delighted to learn of Australia’s interest and look forward to hearing what more they may be able to do to join our coalition,” said deBrum.

The $100 billion compromise

So when laying out the demands of the Pacific Island Forum this week Bainimarama was not speaking, entirely, as a minnow in an ocean of whales. And the $100 billion in climate finance he demanded was not a figure plucked from the sky.

He was referring to a commitment made by wealthy nations in previous climate talks that began to take shape in 2009, and that has never been met.

The agreement is based on a fairly obvious inequity.

Industrialised nations have been dumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution, and have made themselves rich doing so. Poorer nations are only now going through that process.

The urgency of the climate crisis dictates that all nations must rapidly reduce their emissions, including - especially - emerging economies now reliant on heavy, dirty industry.

Recognising that greening the planet meant that poorer countries could not burn carbon as the richer world had, a payoff was agreed to during UN talks in Copenhagen in 2009.

Rich nations would “mobilise” $100 billion in finance each year by 2020 to help developing nations go greener faster.

A so-called Green Climate Fund would manage the effort.

The problem was, says one of Australia’s former chief climate diplomats, Professor Howard Bamsey, the language built into the agreement to ensure it won support, was loose enough to be almost meaningless.

Mobilise, he says, “is one of those UN verbs, so you have to parse it very carefully”.

It was never made clear, he explains, if “mobilising finance” meant giving grants or facilitating cheap loans or creating policies to help funnel private money.

Whatever it means, no matter how hard you “parse it”, you never get anywhere near $100 billion a year on a ledger.

It is hard today to work out how much money was ever secured. By some counts the most funding achieved in a year was $20 billion. By a recent OECD analysis it is closer to $80 billion, if you count finance channelled directly between nations rather than through the Green Climate Fund.

But Bamsey says the purpose of the fund was more than a practical climate response. It served to bind nations in common effort, and its failure to date is a blow to the global climate accord.

Australia once placed itself at the heart of the project, recognising it as an effective way to channel global support for the Pacific. Bamsey himself was appointed executive director of the GFC in 2016.

In an early round of funding Australia committed $200 million to the effort but in 2018 Prime Minister Scott Morrison said during a radio interview with Alan Jones that kicked off with a discussion of their mutual support for a horse racing advertisement to be projected onto the sails of the Opera House that Australia would no longer be contributing to “that big climate fund”.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Fiji’s Frank Bainimarama during his official visit to Parliament House in Canberra in 2019. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
Later in Senate estimates hearings foreign affairs staff confirmed that this comment constituted the announcement that Australia would no longer be part of the Green Climate Fund, though the nation’s foreign aid to the Pacific continued.

So what next?

DeBrum died in 2017. He’d perhaps be surprised to see how much the world has changed since then.

Carbon emissions are still trending up rather than down, but there is now a consensus that clean energy is cheaper than dirty alternatives. Around 70 per cent of the global economy exists in jurisdictions that are committed to reducing emissions to net-zero by 2050.

Both the United States, the world’s largest historical emitter of greenhouse gases, and China, the current one, back rapid decarbonisation.

We don’t know if another bloc like the High Ambition Coalition is being quietly built as Glasgow approaches, or what the HAC itself has planned.

We know that Italy has become a crossroads for international officials this month as it prepares to hold G20 talks and act as co-host to the COP26 conference in Glasgow in November.

And, due to a Twitter post by Grenada’s environment minister Simon Stiell, we know that in Milan this week US President Joe Biden’s infamously indefatigable climate envoy John Kerry made time to meet with another negotiator, the Marshall Islands climate envoy Tina Stege.

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09/10/2021

(AU SMH) Pacific Nations Refuse To Be The Canary In The Climate Coal Mine

Sydney Morning Herald - Nick O'Malley

Pacific Island nations are tired of reiterating their people’s suffering and applauding their resilience in the face of climate change and will demand real action from developed nations at upcoming climate talks, Fiji’s Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama has warned.

Fijian Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama addressing the United Nations in 2018. Credit: AP

“We refuse to be the proverbial canaries in the world’s coal mine, as we are so often called,” said Mr Bainimarama in an angry but poised speech at the forum hosted by Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project to discuss the November COP26 climate talks in Glasgow.

“We want more of ourselves than to be helpless songbirds whose demand serves as a warning to others.”
“We refuse to be the proverbial canaries in the world’s coal mine.”
Fijian Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama
He called on Pacific nations not to allow world leaders to “sneak in and out of Glasgow without making a single serious commitment.”

Paris Agreement
Strong climate targets make strong friendships, Fiji tells Australia
Mr Bainimarama said Pacific Island nations will demand that, at Glasgow, wealthier countries make good on the commitment they made during the Paris talks to extend to developing nations $US100 billion in finance annually for climate adaptation and mitigation; and to commit to emission cuts that keep the 1.5-degree warming target within reach.

“That is our expectation for every nation, Australia and New Zealand included,” said Mr Bainimarama, adding that the difference between 1.5 degrees and 2 degrees was the difference between life and death for millions.

“Our actions will decide whether islands exist or are lost to the rising seas.”

Addressing the forum, the former United States vice-president Al Gore called on all nations, but specifically Australia, the US and New Zealand, to cut their emissions in half by 2030.

“The science tells us that the only way to keep the 1.5 degree target ... is if we cut global emissions in half by 2030,” he said.

Australia has committed to cuts of 26 to 28 per cent by 2030, the US to 50 per cent and New Zealand to 30 per cent.

Pacific Island nations have proved to be formidable negotiators at United Nations climate talks.

Their lobbying saw the world adopt the 1.5-degree target at the Paris talks after they formed a voting bloc with smaller nations of the Caribbean and Africa before winning the support of the European Union and eventually the United States.

Since the UN’s August report showing the accelerating pace of climate change, Mr Bainimarama’s language on the issue has become stronger.

“This crisis is ours to own and ours to solve,” he said after the report was published.

“By the time leaders come to Glasgow at COP26, it has to be with immediate and transformative action ... Come with commitments for serious cuts in emissions by 2030 – 50 per cent or more. Come with commitments to become net-zero before 2050. Do not come with excuses. That time is past.”

Fiji’s Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama calls on world leaders to adopt real action at November's Climate Change Conference in Glasgow. 2min 21sec

Samoan Prime Minister FiamÄ“ Naomi MataÊ»afa described the Glasgow talks as the world’s “point of no return” on climate, and also called for concrete commitments on reductions and finance in line with the Paris accord during a second forum hosted by the Australia Institute on Wednesday.

In Australia, the cost of natural disasters is expected to climb from $38 billion on average each year to $73 billion per year by 2060 due to climate change, even if the world manages to rein in emissions, according to a new report by Deloitte Access Economics.

Under a high emissions scenario, in which the world would warm by 3 degrees above pre-industrial levels, that figure would climb to $94 billion.

Warming has already reached 1.1 degrees, and even if existing pledges were met the world is on track for around 2.7 degrees warming.

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(Reuters) Climate Change Set To Worsen Resource Degradation, Conflict, Report Says

Clouds gather but produce no rain as cracks are seen in the dried up municipal dam in drought-stricken Graaff-Reinet, South Africa, November 14, 2019. REUTERS/Mike Hutchings
MADRID - A vicious cycle linking the depletion of natural resources with violent conflict may have gone past the point of no return in parts of the world and is likely to be exacerbated by climate change, a report said on Thursday.

Food insecurity, lack of water and the impact of natural disasters, combined with high population growth, are stoking conflict and displacing people in vulnerable areas, the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) think-tank said.

IEP uses data from the United Nations and other sources to predict the countries and regions most at risk in its "Ecological Threat Register".

Serge Stroobants, IEP director for Europe, the Middle East and North Africa said the report identified 30 "hotspot" countries - home to 1.26 billion people - as facing most risks.

This is based on three criteria relating to scarcity of resources, and five focusing on disasters including floods, droughts and rising temperatures.

"We don't even need climate change to see potential system collapse, just the impact of those eight ecological threats can lead to this - of course climate change is reinforcing it," Stroobants said.

Afghanistan gets the worst score on the report, which says its ongoing conflict has damaged its ability to cope with risks to water and food supplies, climate change, and alternating floods and droughts.

Conflict in turn leads to further resource degradation, according to the findings.

Six seminars including governments, military institutions and development groups last year returned the message that "it is unlikely that the international community will reverse the vicious cycles in some parts of the world", IEP said.

This is particularly the case in the Sahel and the Horn of Africa, which has seen more and worsening conflicts over the last decade, it said.

"With tensions already escalating, it can only be expected that climate change will have an amplifying effect on many of these issues," the report said.

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(AU ABC) Conservation Council Takes Legal Action Against NSW Government Over Water Sharing Plan

ABC Broken Hill | Bill Ormonde

The NSW government is accused of failing to account for climate change impacts on water resources. (ABC News)
Key Points
  • The NSW Nature Conservation Council launches "world first" legal action against the state government and two ministers
  • The council wants climate change factored into future water management
  • A grazier in the state's far west hopes the case boosts public awareness of the water situation
A leading conservation body is taking extraordinary legal action over a NSW government water sharing plan, alleging the government and two individual ministers have breached the Water Management Act. 

The NSW Nature Conservation Council is alleging the government's plan failed to adequately take into account the future impact of climate change on the state's water systems and, in particular, on border rivers.

They are challenging the validity of the Water Sharing Plan for the NSW Border Rivers Regulated River Water Source Order 2021, also known as the Border Rivers Water Sharing Plan (WSP).

In NSW, the Murray-Darling Basin Plan is built around 58 individual WSPs.

The council is being represented by the Environmental Defenders Office, which filed the case in the Land and Environment Court of NSW.

Council chief executive Chris Gambian said the case was an international first.

"It's the world's first legal case challenging a catchment-wide water sharing plan," Mr Gambian said.

"We say that the NSW government, the Water Minister [Melinda Pavey] and the Environment Minister [Matt Kean] breached the Water Management Act when they made the water sharing plan for the border rivers."

In a statement, a spokesperson from NSW Water Minister Melinda Pavey's office said the state government was "currently considering the matters raised by the NCC in the proceedings but can't provide any specific comment as the matter is now before the court". 
Murray-Darling Basin irrigators
look set to win in NSW rule changes
Irrigators in the Murray-Darling Basin look set to win rule changes that will, in some cases, give them a 400 per cent greater share of water — a move scientists and lawyers say may be unlawful.

Mr Gambian of the NSW Nature Conservation Council said he did not think climate change was being properly factored into water-sharing calculations and the results could heavily impact the environment.
"If we haven't adequately recognised how much water there's likely to be available in the future we're going to keep having a problem," he said.
"The fish kills are one good example.

"The Menindee Lakes thankfully have water, but 12 months ago it didn't … is another good example."

The Darling River at Menindee has suffered several mass fish kills. (Supplied: Rob Greggory)

It is a sentiment shared by Kallara Station grazier Justin McClure who believes a lack of communication between the north and south of the state also contributed to environmental crises such as the Menindee fish kills.

"At the moment these water-sharing plans only talk to the downstream plans when they're forced to," Mr McClure said.
"Ecological disasters like we've seen at Menindee over the last couple of years are just highlighting the issue."
He believes better communication between all parties must be addressed, as must the issue of climate change.

"Connectivity is the key. If climate change isn't taken into consideration and downstream communities aren't taken into consideration then the process is broken," he said.

The Darling River is currently in much better condition, flowing at Wilcannia. (ABC Broken Hill: Bill Ormonde)

Mr Gambian agreed.
"There is not enough water, there is over extraction and there is not management that is meeting the needs of the current circumstances," he said.

Mr McClure says he hopes that, at the very least, the legal action will raise public awareness of the water issue, especially in the state's cities where people are not adequately informed about some matters affecting other parts of the state. 

"Raising public awareness is the key to getting us on the same playing field and same level as other communities," he said.

"We've all got a say in this argument, we've all got to live. All communities matter."

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08/10/2021

(AU The Guardian) ‘Eye-Watering’: Climate Change Disasters Will Cost Australia Billions Each Year, Study Finds

The Guardian - 

Catastrophes like fires and floods could set the economy back more than $1.2tn by 2060, even if action is taken

Flood damage in the Windsor area along the Hawkesbury River during severe floods in NSW in March 20201. Climate change-related disasters will cost the Australian economy billions each year, a report by Deloitte Access Economics says. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AFP/Getty Images

Climate change-related disasters will cost Australia $73bn a year by 2060, even if action to curb emissions is taken now, a report has found.

And if nothing is done to tackle climate change, that figure will grow to $94bn a year by that date, a study by Deloitte Access Economics says.

The report, commissioned by the Australian Business Roundtable for Disaster Resilience and Safer Communities (ABR), found the cost of inaction on climate change to date, and forecast the price tag in three scenarios: low, medium and high emissions.

Under “low emissions”, climate change is contained to a 1.7C increase above pre-industrial levels, with emissions falling to zero by 2100. The “medium” scenario means temperatures start to decline by 2045, while under “high emissions” there are no efforts to curb them, causing temperatures to rise more than 2C by 2040, and 3C after 2060.

The report said the cumulative bill for Australia would run into the trillions over the next four decades.

“Over the next 40 years, the cost of natural disasters to the Australian economy is expected to be at least $1.2tn in present value terms,” the report said. “This cumulative cost would potentially increase by $125bn if a higher emission scenario eventuates.”

The report found two-thirds of the cost will be borne by Queensland and New South Wales, with Melbourne vulnerable to flooding events due to its proximity to major rivers.

Australia is already heavily exposed to natural disasters – fire, flood, hailstorms and hurricanes – that currently cost the country $39b a year. This figure is expected to rise dramatically as property values increase and more people move into areas vulnerable to extreme weather events that hit harder and more often.

The “nightmare” scenario would be a change in weather patterns causing a hurricane to land in south-east Queensland, which has been heavily built up by development.

It adds to a growing body of work in Australia and elsewhere that has sought to measure the risks of the climate crisis, including another by London-based thinktank Chatham House in September that considered the impact from climate change tipping points.

Dan Gocher, the director of climate and environment at the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility, said even under a low-emissions scenario the figures in the report were “eye-watering” and should serve as a call to action.

“This research quantifies the cost of doing nothing about climate change,” Gocher said. “It’s the perfect riposte to those who repeatedly question the cost of reducing emissions.”

Erwin Jackson, policy director at the Investor Group on Climate Change, said Australia was highly exposed to the physical impacts of climate change and the government alone could not foot the bill.

Josh Frydenberg admits climate change a major preoccupation in global markets. Read more
He said the private sector would invest in resilience and adaptation measures but needed clear policy direction.

That had begun with a positive response by government to the bushfire royal commission, and the creation of a National Recovery and Resilience Agency, but more was required, he said.

“We look forward to more discussions with the government about how we unlock private sector capital to build resilience to the impacts of climate change,” he said.

Ian Dunlop, from the thinktank Breakthrough – National Centre for Climate Restoration, said the report was “very useful in confronting decision-masters with the implications of climate change” but the insurance sector was being “coy” about the issue.

He said deep cuts in emissions were required now to limit the rise in temperatures. “If you don’t do that, it’s game over,” he said.

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