COP21 In Paris Doesn't Define Climate Change Action

The Huffington Post Australia - Lisette Collins

Pete Turner via Getty Images

As we get closer to the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP) in Paris in November and December, the thought pieces, blogs, and public lectures have been piling up. What will success at COP21 look like? What will it mean for global climate efforts? What if it is a failure?
But is all this time, energy, and media scrutiny misplaced? As someone who has been working in the Australian climate change adaptation space for the past four years, I believe so.
While the outcomes of COP21 will undoubtedly impact the world's ability to significantly lower global emissions, many are unaware that a lot of the groundwork on climate action has already begun at a local level across the country.
For the past three decades, the international community has debated the veracity of climate science, employed market mechanisms for reducing carbon emissions (to varying success), and debated reduction targets, while Smaller Island Developing States (and later other developing countries) have pleaded for action to halt the climate impacts they have been experiencing over the past few years.
Australia is a laggard when it comes to emissions reduction, with a poor target to take to Paris and the political baggage of climate sceptics in key political positions.
What most Australians don't know is that local councils have been developing Climate Change Adaptation Plans (CCAPs) since 2007, with well over 100 plans across the country. The Federal government may be dragging its feet, but local councils have been all over this for years.
The most recent council to release its CCAP was the City of Sydney. The adaptation strategy was developed with the input of internal and external stakeholders as well as the input of our Sydney University Research team (Professor David Schlosberg, Dr Simon Niemeyer and myself) who designed a Citizens' Panel to contribute to the development of the CCAP.
The strategy now includes the concerns raised by citizens through that Panel, with citizen-endorsed actions and prioritised risks highlighted throughout. This policy development is independent of COP21, and has real implications for overcoming the challenges presented by climate impacts.
For the most part, CCAP development has evaded attention in Australia. The general public are largely unaware of the amount of work their local councils have done in this space, and a lot of that conscious 'under-the-radar' approach can be traced back to negative politics over climate change in the country.
Regardless of the outcome in Paris, local councils will continue to plan for the extreme weather events brought about by climate change, especially the ones they are already beginning to face such as prolonged heatwaves, severe bushfires and wild storm weather.
Furthermore, as pointed out at the recent Sydney Ideas event A Global Climate Deal in 2015, civil society has and will continue to play a huge role in building momentum for climate action.
Canadian author and activist Naomi Klein rightfully devotes chapters to the progress of social movements and grassroots activists across the world in achieving climate wins in her climate change bestseller This Changes Everything.
Increasingly, it is the efforts of local communities who Lock the Gate, participate in blockadia, divest, and campaign for climate action which creates the momentum needed to face the climate challenge.
And the momentum in Australia is not just underway in the adaptation space. The recent release of the movie Frackman and successful launch of 'Powershop' (which recently partnered with Oxfam) over the past year indicate that Australians are increasingly aware of the need to mitigate emissions, to reconnect with the Earth, and to work towards a non-polluting economy.
Recent research conducted for my thesis also indicates that Australians do not always distinguish between mitigation and adaptation specifically, but rather approach the issue with a focus on holistic, interconnected strategies to deal with the climate change problem.
Paris is not the be-all and end-all for global climate change action. Incremental changes over the past 10 years have delivered pockets of success all over the globe, and those will continue post-Paris regardless of what happens.
Why wait for the outcomes of Paris? There is plenty of engagement already taking place.

Australia Faces Rising Perils From Climate Change, Earthquakes: Munich Re Report

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

Sydney can expect 30 per cent more thunderstorm days as the climate warms up, Munich Re says.
Photo: Nick Moir

Sydney faces almost one-third more hailstorm days, Brisbane is at a rising risk of a direct hit from a category-three cyclone, and south-eastern Australia will have to endure three times as many high-risk bushfire days over the century because of climate change, one of the world's biggest re-insurers says.
The costs to Australia from natural catastrophes has almost quadrupled from 1980 to reach $6.3 billion year, a figure which soar to $23 billion by 2050, according to Munich Re's latest Expect the Unexpected report.
Most of the threats, ranging from droughts to heatwaves and sea-level rise, will be worsened by a warming planet caused by rising greenhouse gas levels, Eberhard Faust, head of climate risk research for Munich Re, told Fairfax Media.

Boats hammered after Cyclone Yasi in 2001. Photo: Glen Hunt GTH

While north-east Australia can expect the number of tropical cyclones of moderate to medium intensity to drop by as much as 35 per cent over the century, the most powerful storms will likely increase in frequency, climate models indicate.
The region of cyclones' maximum intensity is also shifting poleward in both the northern and southern hemispheres. That means a category 3-strength cyclone hitting Brisbane - which has had near misses in the past - "is on the cards", Dr Faust said.

Tropical cyclones Lam and Marcia over Australia in February 2015 - expect more such storms further south, Munich Re says. Photo: NOAA

"Insurers should really get it on the radar ... and think about the huge exposure and what the consequences would be," he said. Regions from the Gold Coast to Brisbane are exposed to risks from storm surges, wind damage and floods.
Shifting wind patterns that may hamper the formation of cyclones have other consequences, such as triggering more thunderstorms. These events already count among Australia's biggest natural disasters, such as the April 1999 Sydney hailstorm that left a $3.8 billion damage bill in today's dollars.
For Sydney, the number of days a year with atmospheric conditions conducive for thunderstorms will rise by 30 per cent by the end of the century, based on a high global emissions trajectory. For Melbourne, the increase will be about 20 per cent, Dr Faust said.
Bushfire risks, too, will be elevated by a combination of worse droughts and also rising hotter temperatures.
"In terms of the atmospheric conditions which are prone to forest fires, models project up to a three-fold increase in frequency by the end of the century for southern and eastern Australia," Dr Faust said.

Quake risks
While nations can limit the damage by curbing carbon emissions, constructing more resilient homes, bridges and other buildings would cut Australia's future repair bills. Such spending can also help protect against a threat few Australians have considered - earthquakes.
Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and especially Adelaide are located in areas with an "enhanced level of seismicity", with the South Australian capital already rocked by a magnitude-5.4 quake in 1954, Munich Re said.
A repeat of Adelaide's1954 temblor would likely leave a multi-billion dollar bill in insured losses alone, while a magnitude-6 event - which happens somewhere in Australia roughly once every five years - would potentially cost tens of billions of dollars, the reinsurer said.
"There's a realistic scenario that one of [Australia's] big cities might be hit by a magnitude 6 or greater earthquake," Dr Faust said.

How Runaway Sea Level Rise Could One Day Swamp The World's Biggest Cities

Fairfax - Tom Arup

Greenland's ice is melting. Scientists set up camp on the ice of Greenland, in the hope to capture the first comprehensive measurements of the rate of melting ice. Their research could yield valuable information to help figure out how rapidly sea levels will rise in the 21st century.

Hundreds of millions of people around the world are living in places that could eventually be submerged by rising sea levels triggered by unchecked climate change, new global maps suggest.
An estimated 627 million people live in these places, including about 1.9 million in Australia and many more in the world's great metropolises such as Tokyo, New York and Shanghai.
The rising seas won't happen overnight, nor in anybody's current lifetime. The global mapping project, carried out by the US group Climate Central, is based on huge sea-level rises that would not emerge for another 200 to 2000 years.

Hurricane Katrina left much of New Orleans under water in 2005. A similar scenario could play out for many of the world's big cities if predicted sea level rises occur. Photo: Reuters

But a report that accompanies the maps, released on Monday, says this future would be locked in if global warming reached four degrees by 2100 - considered likely if the current level of emissions continued unabated.
The project is based on a scientific paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA in October. That analysis - carried out by researchers at Climate Central - found that four degrees of warming could lock-in 8.9 metres of long-term sea level rise in the centuries to follow.
If warming was held to two degrees by strong emissions cuts - the goal of a new global climate agreement countries are negotiating through the United Nations - then the rise would be more like 4.7 metres. About 280 million people live in areas below that watermark.
Across Australia, the analysis finds there are about 1.9 million people living in areas that would be submerged if there was an 8.9 metre rise in sea level. At 4.7 metres, it is 668,000 people.
In central Melbourne, the maps based on what is locked in with four degrees of warming suggests significant inundation of prized bayside suburbs and throughout Docklands.

In Sydney, the water pushes up into the suburbs around the harbour and Botany Bay.

The report says Shanghai is the city most affected. About  22.4 million people would be displaced by an 8.9 metre sea level rise, and 11.6 million by 4.7 metres.
Also among the most affected places could be major Indian cities. In Kolkata, there are 12 million people living in the areas affected by sea level rise of nine metres.
In Jakarta, water would reach land that 9.5 million people currently call home under the four-degree scenario.
The actual number of people who would be affected is fairly speculative given the very long timeframes at play. These numbers do not factor in preventative measures cities might take in the meantime to counteract rising seas. Nor does it consider how populations will move and grow.
Sea level rise as a result of global warming comes from the thermal expansion of the oceans and the melting of glaciers. But the biggest potential rises depend on the long-term response of massive ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland, for which there is significant scientific uncertainty.
For that reason scientists have been largely conservative in their projections. In 2013, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported in its last major assessment a projected sea-level rise of at worst 0.82 metres out to 2100 with unchecked emissions.
But more recently a number of studies have begun to explore what might happen after the end of this century. One recent example is an Australian-led study that found if ice shelves protecting the Antarctic sheets from the ocean were lost, then it would unlock thousands of years of unstoppable contributions to sea level rise.

World Bank Warns Climate Change Could Add 100 Million Poor By 2030

Fairfax

Cyclone Pam's impact on Vanuatu: World Bank warns ranks of the poor will swell with climate change. Photo: Lawrence Smith

Without the right policies to keep the poor safe from extreme weather and rising seas, climate change could drive over 100 million more people into poverty by 2030, the World Bank said on Sunday.

In a report, the bank said ending poverty - one of 17 new U.N. goals adopted in September - would be impossible if global warming and its effects on the poor were not accounted for in development efforts.

But more ambitious plans to reduce climate-changing emissions - aimed at keeping global temperature rise within an internationally agreed limit of 2 degrees Celsius - must also cushion poor people from any negative repercussions, it added.

"Climate change hits the poorest the hardest, and our challenge now is to protect tens of millions of people from falling into extreme poverty because of a changing climate," World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim said in a statement.

The bank's estimate of 100 million more poor by 2030 is on top of 900 million expected to be living in extreme poverty if development progresses slowly. In 2015, the bank puts the number of poor at 702 million people.

Climate change is already hurting them through decreased crop yields, floods washing away assets and livelihoods, and a bigger threat of diseases like malaria, said John Roome, World Bank senior director for climate change.

He described ending poverty and tackling climate change as "the defining issues of our generation".

"The best way forward is to tackle poverty alleviation and climate change in an integrated strategy," he told reporters.

Poor families are more vulnerable to climate stresses than the rich because their main assets are often badly built homes and degrading land, and their losses are largely uninsured, the report said.

Low-income households in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia are particularly at risk of having their hard-won gains wiped out by climate-linked disasters, forcing them back into extreme poverty, it added.

The report warns that, between now and 2030, climate policies can do little to alter the amount of global warming that will happen, making it vital to invest in adaptation measures and broader ways to make people more resilient.

When Cyclone Pam devastated Vanuatu this March, a payout from a regional catastrophe risk scheme helped speed the response. When drought in Ethiopia led to a hunger crisis in 2011, a national programme providing food and cash in return for work on community projects was quickly expanded.

Better social safety nets and health coverage for all, together with targeted improvements such as flood defences, early warning systems and hardier crops, could prevent or offset most of the negative effects of climate change on poverty in the next 15 years, the report said.

"We have a window of opportunity to achieve our poverty objectives in the face of climate change, provided we make wise policy choices now," said Stephane Hallegatte, a senior World Bank economist who led the team that prepared the report.

Roome highlighted the need to roll out good policies faster, and ensure development projects consider climate projections, so that new infrastructure is not damaged in the future.

Adaptation limits

Beyond 2030, the world's ability to adapt to unabated climate change will be limited, warned the report, released ahead of a U.N. climate summit from Nov. 30-Dec. 11 where a new deal to curb global warming is due to be agreed.

To rein in the longer-term impacts on poverty, immediate policies are needed that bring emissions to zero by the end of this century, the World Bank said.

Some of those will have benefits for the poor, such as cleaner air, more energy efficiency and better public transport.

Others could increase energy and food prices, which represent a large share of poor people's expenditures, the report noted.

But policy shifts need not threaten short-term progress against poverty provided they are well-designed and international support is made available, it added.

For example, savings from eliminating fossil fuel subsidies could be reinvested in assistance schemes to help poor families cope with higher fuel costs.

Or governments could introduce carbon or energy taxes and recycle the revenues through a universal cash transfer that would benefit the poor, the report said.

The international community can help by providing financial and technological support for things like insurance schemes, crop research, public transport and weather forecasting systems, the report said.

Canada Now Has a Minister of Climate Change

The Huffington Post Canada - Joshua Ostroff

Words matter, and nowhere is that clearer than with Wednesday's unveiling of the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change during the swearing-in of Canada's new cabinet.
Catherine McKenna, a lawyer with a background in international trade and social justice, is in charge of the renamed portfolio.
"Canadians expect their government to be responsible around climate change and addressing the impacts to the environment that we are facing," Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said following the ceremony. "Canada is going to be a strong and positive actor on the world stage, including in Paris at COP21. That's why we have a very strong minister, not just of the environment but of the environment and climate change who will be at the heart of this discussion."

Critics have spent the past 10 years decrying government indifference, if not outright antagonism, to the issue of climate change. The previous Conservative government pulled Canada out of the Kyoto Accord, muzzled government scientists, and refused to allow Opposition leaders to attend international conferences. (The latter prompted Trudeau's profane response in Parliament.)
While Harper did pass some environmental policies, a recent report card from a Simon Fraser University professor gave the Harper government an F. The report authored by Mark Jaccard said, "Since 2006, the government has implemented no regulations that would materially reduce Canadian GHG emissions from what they otherwise would be in 2020."
Trudeau, on the other hand, campaigned on climate change. During the Munk Debate, he tied the environment and the economy together, and promised $40 billion for public transit and green infrastructure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
After winning the federal election, he also immediately invited opposition leaders including the Green Party's Elizabeth May, and the provincial premiers to attend the upcoming Paris climate change summit.
Trudeau is not the first leader to change the name of the entire ministry to include climate change. Ontario has had a minister of environment and climate change following the Liberal win in 2014.
As well, climate change is referenced as the titular portfolio of environment ministers from Australia, Belgium, Denmark, Greece, New Zealand, India, Scotland, the UK and the European Union.

Climate Summit Held by Business and Green Groups to End Six-Year Policy War

The Guardian - Lenore Taylor

Exclusive: mirroring the Turnbull government’s tax debate with all options ‘on the table’, six different climate policies are canvassed at closed-door summit

The experts believe the Coalition’s Direct Action policy needs substantial modification to reach Australia’s 2030 emissions reduction target. Photograph: David Crosling/AAP

Leaders from business, welfare, the conservation movement, the electricity sector and the union movement have moved to try to fill Australia’s climate policy vacuum by starting a new slogan-free debate to help political parties find workable greenhouse policies.
Mirroring the Turnbull government’s tax debate, in which all policy options are back “on the table”, the groups commissioned major consultancies to present on six climate policy options at a special closed-door summit this week. They intend to publish the results in a back-to-the-drawing-board policy “primer” to be released next year.
Indicating the extent to which six years of bitter climate policy war have forced wide-ranging discussion outside the political arena, advisers to environment minister Greg Hunt, resources minister Josh Frydenberg and Labor environment spokesman Mark Butler, as well as advisers to state governments, all attended the workshop as observers.
The experts believe the Coalition’s Direct Action policy needs substantial modification to reach the 2030 emissions reduction target that the government will pledge at the Paris climate change meeting next month.
Malcolm Turnbull has refused to be drawn on climate policy in the early months of his prime ministership, suggesting any reconsideration of Direct Action would happen in the review scheduled for 2017.
Beyond promising that it will propose some form of emissions trading scheme and an “aspirational” goal to reach 50% renewable energy, Labor has not yet released specific policies.
John Connor, chief executive of The Climate Institute, said the workshop had “started from the view that there has to be a new maturity in this policy discussion to meet Australia’s goals”.
“Everyone there acknowledged that we can’t make advances if we are stuck in our policy, ideological or technological trenches and also that we don’t currently have policies on the table to get to our longer-term climate change goals.”
The roundtable heard presentations on the pros and cons of baseline and credit trading schemes (from the Centre for International Economics), cap and trade emissions trading schemes (Ernst and Young), regulation to reduce emissions (Acil Allen), a straight carbon tax (Deloitte), other electricity sector schemes (PWC) and Direct Action-style schemes where governments buy abatement (Baker and McKenzie).
Many participants still saw a full emissions trading scheme as the most efficient policy option, but politically difficult, and a straight carbon tax – which the Australian debate has historically confused with an ETS – as even more politically dangerous.
Acil Allen is understood to have argued regulation was a relatively inefficient and high-cost way to force change, but that it might be useful where emissions were hard to measure, like agriculture, or where there were high transaction costs.
Some energy companies, such as AGL, have suggested the government follow a Canadian-style policy of imposing age limits on Australia’s oldest brown coal-fired generators, to force their earlier retirement and soak up some of the oversupply in the east coast electricity market.
It was seen as an advantage that the Coalition’s Direct Action policy had been designed so that it could be transformed into a baseline and credit trading scheme, but with the scheme best fitting the electricity sector rather than the whole economy. The government has refused to confirm that this is its intention.
Abatement auctions – such as those conducted under Direct Action’s $2.5bn emissions reduction fund – were widely seen as useful in limited circumstances, but not able to be scaled up to provide the large reductions in greenhouse emissions required for Australia’s 2030 target.
“We all know there has to be a change of direction from the Coalition after the next election, either ratcheting up Direct Action or changing it entirely,” one rountable participant said.
“We all know Labor is still working on the details of their policy. We want to try to reopen up the space for them to move, to look at things logically.
“We did not put one policy above another, we just discussed the pros and cons of all of them. We want to restart a sensible debate.”
Among the groups who formed the climate roundtable last year were the Australian Aluminium Council, Australian Industry Group, the Climate Institute, Australian Conservation Foundation, the Business Council of Australia, WWF Australia, the Australian Council of Social Service, the Energy Supply Association of Australia, the Australian Council of Trade Unions and the Investor Group on Climate Change.
The meeting also heard a presentation from climate scientist Graeme Pearman about the implications of the global target to limit warming to 2C.

Climate Change Missing From Full Trans-Pacific Partnership Text

Fairfax - Gareth Hutchens


TPP: five things you need to know: It's a 12-country trade pact that accounts for 40 per cent of world GDP, but what does it mean for Australia?

• TPP: What the trade pact means for Australia

The final text of a huge 12-country trade agreement has confirmed the "worst nightmares" of environmental groups, with no mention of climate change in its lone environment chapter and weak enforcement mechanisms, Australian academics say.
The text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement was finally released on Thursday, with Trade Minister Andrew Robb saying the deal will deliver "substantial benefits for Australia" in the rapidly growing Asia Pacific.

Under the deal 98 per cent of all tariffs will be eliminated across everything from beef, dairy, wine, sugar, rice, horticulture and seafood through to manufactured goods, resources and energy. Photo: Kitty Hill

The TPP is the biggest global trade deal in 20 years, involving 12 countries in the Pacific region which collectively represent over 40 per cent of world GDP.

Last month, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull called the deal "a gigantic foundation stone" for the economy which will deliver jobs and growth while avoiding aspects that would have seen increased costs to the taxpayer for medicines.
But this is the first time Australians have had a chance to see what the federal government has been negotiating on their behalf for over five years.

Matthew Rimmer, Professor of Intellectual Property and Innovation Law at the Queensland University of Technology, told Fairfax Media it looks like US trade officials have been "green-washing" the agreement.
"The environment chapter confirms some of the worst nightmares of environmental groups and climate activists," Dr Rimmer said.
"The agreement has poor coverage of environmental issues, and weak enforcement mechanisms. There is only limited coverage of biodiversity, conservation, marine capture fisheries, and trade in environmental services. The final text of the chapter does not even mention 'climate change' – the most pressing global environmental issue in the world."

Controversially, the deal includes a clause giving foreign companies the right to sue Australian governments if they introduce laws they say have harmed their investments.
Dr Patricia Ranald from the Australian Fair Trade and Investment Network said the "safeguards" Mr Robb claimed he had won to prevent foreign tobacco companies suing Australian governments for pursuing anti-smoking policies do not appear strong enough.
"The general 'safeguards' in the text are similar to those in other recent agreements which have not prevented cases against health and environmental laws," Dr Ranald said.
"Public health groups have influenced governments to include in the text the option of more clearly excluding future tobacco control laws from ISDS cases, which is important and has angered the tobacco lobby. But this also begs the question of how effective are the general 'safeguards' for other public health and environmental laws."
Dr Rimmer also criticised the investment chapter, saying it was one of the most "labyrinthine" in the agreement.
But he also said the general exceptions chapter provided the opportunity for countries to carve out tobacco from the ISDS regime for tobacco control measures.
"That will be significant given Australia's pioneering plain packaging of tobacco products," he said.
Mr Robb has issued a statement heralding the deal, saying Australians now have a chance to examine the text for themselves.
"Along with the landmark North Asian bilateral trade agreements we have concluded with China, Japan and South Korea, the TPP forms a transformational series of agreements that will contribute substantially to the diversification of our economy in this critical post-mining boom phase," Mr Robb said.
However, the text is still missing some important documents. Many of the side letters with details of last-minute bilateral deals between particular governments have not been released.
Dr Ranald said these side letters are likely to favour the largest economies with greater bargaining power, "and should have been released for public scrutiny with the main text."
Mr Robb said as these side letters are finalised they will be made available to the public.
Bryan Clark, the Director of Trade and International Affairs at the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said he was "very pleased" the text had finally been released because industry will have a chance to review it.
"Now we can scrutinise it, and engage in the public discussion over its content," he said.
The text shows 98 per cent of all tariffs will be eliminated across everything from beef, dairy, wine, sugar, rice, horticulture and seafood through to manufactured goods, resources and energy.
It has also removed barriers to Australian goods exports, services and investment abroad in the region.
Global trade officials hope the deal will establish a 'model' for future trade agreements, by setting commonly-agreed rules and promoting transparency of laws and regulations.
Its open architecture allows for other members - such as China - to join in the future.

Links

• Professor Matthew Rimmer: TPP - light on environment & labour, sweet on multinationals
• FTA outcomes and background documents