How To Talk About Climate Change Without Talking About Climate Change

Sydney University

Adapting to climate change is a politically fraught process. Policymakers' inability to openly discuss climate change is leaving many local councils across Australia unprepared for its impacts, analysis by a PhD candidate at the University of Sydney has found.
Lisette Collins from the Department of Government and International Relations has compiled the first ever database of climate change adaptation plans (CCAPS) developed by local councils nationwide.
Her research reveals vast gaps in the level of detail between plans, with some councils only accounting for physical risks like extreme weather events while omitting other socio-economic impacts, such as how climate change will affect the homeless and elderly.
"Our inability to be able to talk openly about climate change in a rational and constructive way has negative implications for the development of successful adaptation policy in the future," said Collins.
"'Climate change' is a highly politicised term in Australia and one of the most ubiquitous terms of the 21st century. It has been questioned, co-opted, pleaded, adopted, misunderstood, misrepresented, and denigrated at varying times by politicians, the media, academics, scientists, and the public."
While many local councils currently have climate adaptation plans in place, political narratives around climate change have affected public perceptions and awareness of these plans, according to Collins.

It is no coincidence that most Australians don't know what a climate change adaptation plan is or whether their local council has one      Lisette Collins

"Councils are on the frontline of adapting to the impacts of climate change. We need to take a closer look at how adaptation is occurring at this local level if we are to be prepared for the future."
Collins examined 107 CCAPS from across Australia covering over 180 local councils, as well as 20 high-level interviews with local government representatives. The smallest population covered in the plans was 181 people (Belyuen, Northern Territory).
She then categorised these CCAPS into groups based on whether they contained biophysical vulnerabilities – planning for droughts, bushfires and rising sea levels – or socio-political inclusive plans, which refer to vulnerable groups and the mental health impacts of climate change.
It is hoped the database will be used as a tool to assist local governments as they create or update their future adaptation plans.

Links

• Sydney Environment Institute
• Sydney Ideas

Is This The End Of The Great Barrier Reef?

Fairfax - Tom Arup
The Great Barrier Reef is often described as the largest living thing on the planet, but swimming over the coral reefs around Heron Island it is the little things that you notice.
Like the way the parrot fish gnaw at the bright coloured reefs for algae. Or how the fire coral shimmers in sunlight.
Heron Island has been lucky. It has been spared from the devastating mass coral bleaching unfolding elsewhere on the reef.
There have been only a handful of major bleaching events in the Great Barrier Reef's 8000-year existence. They first emerged in the early 1980s, with the 1998 and 2002 events regarded by scientists as the worst.

The tourist brochure version: scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef  Photo: Supplied

At least until this latest one.
This time more than 1000 kilometres of reef has been subjected to some extent of bleaching. The pristine northern stretches between Cooktown and the Torres Strait have been hit the hardest, with images emerging of ghostly white reefs from places such as Lizard Island.
The event's spread and intensity has again raised uncomfortable questions about the damage climate change is doing to Australia's most important natural tourism site.
Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, a prominent marine scientist who has studied coral reefs for decades, says he has little doubt about what is behind the bleaching.

A diver checking out the bleaching at Heron Island in February 2016.  Photo: XL Catlin Seaview Survey

"This event, I would say with 99 per cent certainty, is being driven by anthropogenic climate change," he says.
Heron Island sits towards the southern end of the Great Barrier Reef's 2300-kilometre reach. It takes a stomach-turning two-hour boat ride from Gladstone to get there.

Bleached coral at Heron Island. Photo: Eddie Jim

When you arrive though the plentiful corals surrounding the island look like the Reef" we all imagine – bathed in turquoise water, colourful and littered with endless fish, rays, sharks and turtles.
Dr Selina Ward, a coral reef ecologist at the University of Queensland, says Heron's biodiversity is a stark reminder there is still much to lose if the Great Barrier Reef is not looked after.

Bleaching does not necessarily lead to death. If water temperatures drop in time corals can start rebuilding their algae and recover within months.

"We've lost 50 per cent of coral cover on the reef in 27 years, mostly due to cyclones, crown of thorns and bleaching," she says.
There is still enough coral left to turn the reef around, she says, but only if we do right by it.

Looking dead flat at Heron Island. Photo: Eddie Jim

Across the planet ocean temperatures have risen as a result of global warming. In Australia, average sea surface temperatures are a degree higher than in 1910.
These elevated temperatures have driven corals closer to thresholds where bleaching conditions occur. When a weather event like El Nino emerges that threshold is often exceeded.

Bleached Coral at Heron Island. Photo: Eddie Jim

"The mass bleaching is a result of climate change and a strong El Nino exacerbating high sea surface temperatures that usually occur at this time of year," says Dr Russell Reichelt, chairman of Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority.
"This temperature trifecta has created heat stress and pushed corals beyond their ability to cope."

Coral off Heron Island. Photo: Eddie Jim

Coral animals, called polyps, have a crucial symbiotic relationship with algae that live in their cells and provide them with energy.
When hard corals are stressed they expel this algae, which turns their tissue translucent, and exposes their white skeletons. This leaves them vulnerable to starvation, disease, and potentially death.

Bleached coral off Heron Island. Photo: Eddie Jim

Dr Paul Marshall, the former head of the climate change program at the marine park authority and now an adjunct professor at The University of Queensland, says the link between coral stress, bleaching and warming oceans is not in dispute.
"It is simple equation, you heat up the atmosphere, you heat up the oceans. You heat up the oceans, the corals get stressed. All of the causal links are absolutely robust," he says.

Dr Selina Ward, senior lecturer, School of Biological Sciences, University of Queensland, checking out the acropora aspera coral at Heron Island. Photo: Eddie Jim

 Beyond warming seas, climate change poses other problems for the reef, including increased ocean acidity, turbocharged storms and sea-level rise.
Ward says rising ocean acidification is particularly troubling for corals because it undercuts their ability to lay skeleton, which forms the basis of reefs, and makes them more brittle and vulnerable to erosion.
These climate pressures interact with each other, multiplying the risks. And they present problems not just for coral, but also for fish, other marine life and the overall ability of the ecosystem to function.
They also come against a backdrop of other environmental problems hampering the reef's overall resilience. Water pollution from farming runoff is chief among them.
Marshall says of the climate threats, bleaching can do the most immediate damage. When it is severe enough, corals hundreds of years old can die.
"That's something that has been really depressing for me," Marshall says.
"There are corals that were here when Captain Cook sailed by, and they're dying under our watch and they're not coming back in anyone's lifetime."
Bleaching does not necessarily lead to death. If water temperatures drop in time corals can start rebuilding their algae and recover within months.
Some coral species – there are over 600 on the reef – are also naturally hardier than others, so rather than total die-off bleaching can lead to species switching instead.
According to the Australian Institute of Marine Science about 55 per cent of the reef was bleached during the 2002 event. About 5 per cent died.
Given the right conditions new corals can also rebuild on dead reefs in about a decade. One study of 21 reefs in the Seychelles, on which 90 per cent of corals died during a 1998 global bleaching event, found that 12 were eventually restored.
Ultimately it will take weeks for the full extent of the current bleaching event to emerge. The levels of coral mortality may not be known for longer still.
Reichelt says: "experience tells us that corals can recover from major disturbances, but they need to be given time and the right conditions to do so."
The concern is that if coral bleaching occurs more frequently, as it is projected to do, reefs won't have sufficient time to recover.
Back in 1999 Hoegh-Guldberg forecast that rising greenhouse gas emissions would see most oceans become too hot for corals on a yearly basis by the 2040s and 2050s.
In the most recent major assessment of the reef's health by the marine park authority reported that under moderate future emissions, bleaching conditions could be expected about once every five years for most parts of the reef by 2018.
By 2052 to 2067 it could occur every year.
It means some changes to the reef because of climate change appear inevitable (though there is some scientific inquiry into whether corals may be able to adapt somewhat to warmer and more acidic oceans).
Marshall says by 2050 the reef will ultimately be a different place and he paints four possible scenarios:

Good water quality, lower emissions
Under this future some areas escape the worst damage and big and old corals survive on some sites. Corals are able to grow and maintain themselves, but will be in a recovery phase more regularly. The reef can support diverse fish communities and habitat for other marine life.
Overall there is less coral cover, more algae, more open space. But it is still beautiful.

Good water quality, high emissions
Here not much of the old corals remain, with smaller, faster growing ones surviving instead. There is more open space and a lot of seaweed in it. The big "architecture" of the reef no longer exists, reducing its ability to support other marine life, especially the larger fish.
This is akin to moving from an old growth forest to scrubby regrowth next to a farm field.

Poor water quality, lower emissions
A "dynamic tension" is established between seaweed and corals. Smaller corals grow among the seaweed, both competing for the same space. The seaweed increasingly gans the advantage as coral bleaching becomes more frequent.
This environment still supports some marine life, such as smaller fish. But it is not beautiful.

Poor water quality, high emissions
An effective wipeout. Only a fairly flat reef structure remains with very few corals growing and a lot of seaweed. Constant stress from coral bleaching and high levels of fertiliser and sediments entering from the land means corals are largely replaced by seaweeds, and the reef is unable to provide habitat for much fish life at all.
None of these futures are ideal.
Marshall says the sad reality is that future generations will inherit a coral reef that doesn't match the travel brochures of the 20th century. But he adds smart decisions today "can still secure a beautiful, productive reef for future generations."
Here is where it gets tricky.
The federal and Queensland governments are already attempting, with mixed success, to address water pollution problems through multibillion-dollar commitments to tackle pesticide runoff from farms and damaging crown of thorns infestations.
But what will largely decide the reef's fate is how fast the world cuts emissions and how high global temperatures are allowed to rise.
Reichelt points to a consensus statement by the International Society for Reef Studies released last year which argues the average global temperature increase must be kept below two degrees in the short term, and below 1.5 degrees in the long term, to allow coral reefs to survive in perpetuity.
It is in that light green groups are trying to link the fate of the Great Barrier Reef with new coal mine development. In their sights is the $21 billion Carmichael project in Queensland's Galilee Basin, which is backed by Indian company Adani and if built, would be Australia's largest coal mine.
Last Sunday the Queensland government signed off on mining licences for Adani, which still needs to attract finance for the Carmichael project. Green groups argued this was a moment of enormous cognitive dissonance given the mass bleaching on the reef.
The Australia Conservation Foundation, which flew media to Heron Island this week to press its arguments, is also trying to make the link legally.
It has launched court action to try overturn environmental approvals for Carmichael, arguing the federal government should have taken into account the damage that would be inflicted on the reef from the emissions from burning the mined coal once it was shipped to India
The Queensland Resources Council rejects this connection. A spokeswoman says the emissions associated with the coal would be lower than other energy sources like "burning dung for cooking, which is one of the many high-emitting fuels that 300 million Indians without power are using."
To say Carmichael coal would not have any impact on the reef requires some rejection of the well-established link between burning fossil fuels and global warming. But nor is it in isolation enough to push the planet beyond two degrees of warming.
A 2014 expert study into the pollution associated with Carmichael coal found it would use up 0.53-0.56 per cent of the remaining global emissions that can occur and still see the world still avoid exceeding two degrees.
The study also notes the Carmichael coal emissions is among the highest from any single project in the world.
Marshall says if the Great Barrier Reef is stave off climate change then Carmichael is not the only equation. The entire planet will have to cut emissions from all sources.
"That's a great thing to anchor it in," Marshall says of the Carmichael-reef debate, "but really it is much bigger than that."
"The future of the Great Barrier Reef, and reefs everywhere, depend on society's ability to totally shift away from fossil fuels."

Climate-Related Death of Coral Around World Alarms Scientists

New York Times - Michelle Innis

A turtle swimming over bleached coral near Heron Island, in the southern Great Barrier Reef. Credit XL Catlin Seaview Survey

SYDNEY, Australia — Kim Cobb, a marine scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology, expected the coral to be damaged when she plunged into the deep blue waters off Kiritimati Island, a remote atoll near the center of the Pacific Ocean. Still, she was stunned by what she saw as she descended some 30 feet to the rim of a coral outcropping.
"The entire reef is covered with a red-brown fuzz," Dr. Cobb said when she returned to the surface after her recent dive. "It is otherworldly. It is algae that has grown over dead coral. It was devastating."
The damage off Kiritimati is part of a mass bleaching of coral reefs around the world, only the third on record and possibly the worst ever. Scientists believe that heat stress from multiple weather events including the latest, severe El Niño, compounded by climate change, has threatened more than a third of Earth's coral reefs. Many may not recover.
Coral reefs are the crucial incubators of the ocean's ecosystem, providing food and shelter to a quarter of all marine species, and they support fish stocks that feed more than one billion people. They are made up of millions of tiny animals, called polyps, that form symbiotic relationships with algae, which in turn capture sunlight and carbon dioxide to make sugars that feed the polyps.
An estimated 30 million small-scale fishermen and women depend on reefs for their livelihoods, more than one million in the Philippines alone. In Indonesia, fish supported by the reefs provide the primary source of protein.
"This is a huge, looming planetary crisis, and we are sticking our heads in the sand about it," said Justin Marshall, the director of CoralWatch at Australia's University of Queensland.
Bleaching occurs when high heat and bright sunshine cause the metabolism of the algae — which give coral reefs their brilliant colors and energy — to speed out of control, and they start creating toxins. The polyps recoil. If temperatures drop, the corals can recover, but denuded ones remain vulnerable to disease. When heat stress continues, they starve to death.
Damaged or dying reefs have been found from Réunion, off the coast of Madagascar, to East Flores, Indonesia, and from Guam and Hawaii in the Pacific to the Florida Keys in the Atlantic.
The largest bleaching, at Australia's Great Barrier Reef, was confirmed last month. In a survey of 520 individual reefs that make up the Great Barrier Reef's northern section, scientists from Australia's National Coral Bleaching Task Force found only four with no signs of bleaching. Some 620 miles of reef, much of it previously in pristine condition, had suffered significant bleaching.
In follow-up surveys, scientists diving on the reef said half the coral they had seen had died. Terry Hughes, the director of the Center of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University in Queensland, who took part in the survey, warned that even more would succumb if the water did not cool soon.

Bleached coral off New Caledonia in the Pacific last month. Credit XL Catlin Seaview Survey      

"There is a good chance a large portion of the damaged coral will die," he added.
Scientists say the global bleaching is the result of an unusual confluence of events, each of which raised water temperatures already elevated by climate change.
In the North Atlantic, a strong high-pressure cell blocked the normal southward flow of polar air in 2013, kicking off the first of three warmer-than-normal winters in a row as far south as the Caribbean.
A large underwater heat wave formed in the northeastern Pacific in early 2014, and has since stretched into a wide band along the west coast of North America, from Baja California to the Bering Sea. Nicknamed the Blob, it is up to four degrees Fahrenheit warmer than surrounding waters, and has been blamed for a host of odd phenomena, including the beaching of hungry sea lions in California and the sighting of tropical skipjack tuna off Alaska.
Then came 2015, with the most powerful El Niño climate cycle in a century. It blasted heat across the tropical and southern Pacific, bleaching reefs from Kiritimati to Indonesia, and across the Indian Ocean to Réunion and Tanzania on Africa's east coast.
"We are currently experiencing the longest global coral bleaching event ever observed," said C. Mark Eakin, the Coral Reef Watch coordinator at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Maryland. "We are going to lose a lot of the world's reefs during this event."
Reefs that take centuries to form can be destroyed in weeks. Individual corals may survive a bleaching, but repeated bleachings can kill them.
Lurid reports of damaged reefs started coming in from worried scientists in the summer of 2014.
Lyza Johnston, a marine biologist in the Northern Mariana Islands, dived to the reefs off Maug, a group of small islands: "In every direction, nearly all of the corals were bright white."
Misaki Takabayashi, a marine scientist at the University of Hawaii at Hilo, surfed the waves above the blue rice coral there: "I could see what looked like bleached white ghosts popping up off the ocean floor at me."
Cory Walter, a senior biologist at the Mote Marine Laboratory in Florida, peered down from a boat over Wonderland Reef off the Lower Florida Keys: "It almost looks like it snowed on the reef."
Predicting the duration of the bleaching or forecasting the next one is difficult. The Blob has cooled somewhat, and El Niño, while weakening, is expected to stretch into 2017.
Dr. Eakin, the coral-reef specialist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said he expected the bleaching to continue for nine more months. Scientists will not be able to measure the full extent of the damage until it is over.

Damaged Reefs
Reports of damaged or dying coral reefs around the world have become a major concern

Sources: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, GEBCO. By The New York Times

What is clear is that these events are happening with increasing frequency — and ferocity. The previous bleachings, in 2010 and 1998, do not appear to have been as extensive or prolonged as the current one.
The 1998 bleaching, which Dr. Eakin said had been set off by a fierce El Niño, killed around 16 percent of the world's coral. By 2010, oceans had warmed enough that it took only a moderate El Niño to start another round.
Then in 2013, Dr. Eakin said, "a lot of bleaching happened due to climate change, before the El Niño had even kicked in."
Reefs that were bleached in 2014, like those in the Florida Keys and the Caribbean, had no time to regenerate before suffering further thermal stress from El Niño last year, leaving the coral vulnerable to disease and death.
The reefs in the Florida Keys "are about to go into a third year straight of bleaching, something that has never happened before," said Meaghan Johnson, a marine scientist at the Nature Conservancy. "We are worried about disease and mortality rates."
Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, the director of Australia's Global Change Institute, noted that 2015 was the hottest year ever recorded, both on land and in the oceans — breaking a record set just the year before.
"Rising temperatures due to climate change have pushed corals beyond their tolerance levels," he said, adding that back-to-back bleaching can be particularly deadly to the corals.
El Niño warms the equatorial waters around Kiritimati Island more than anywhere else in the world, making it a likely harbinger for the health of reefs worldwide. That is why Dr. Cobb, the Georgia Tech scientist who made the recent dive, has been making the trek at least once a year for the past 18 to the tiny atoll, part of the Line Islands archipelago.
Though the atoll sits just north of the Equator, trade winds suck water up from the depths of the ocean, usually keeping the water temperature surrounding the reefs a healthy, nearly constant 78 degrees.
But in 2015, the expected upwelling of deep, cold water did not happen, Dr. Cobb said, speaking by satellite phone after her dive. So water in the atoll was 10 degrees warmer than normal, and never cooled enough to allow coral to recover.
"The worst has happened," she said. "This shows how climate change and temperature stresses are affecting these reefs over the long haul. This reef may not ever be the same."

Links

• Scientists Protest Cuts and Commercialization at Australian Climate Center FEB. 27, 2016
• 2015 Was Hottest Year in Historical Record, Scientists Say JAN. 20, 2016
• Warming Oceans May Threaten Krill, a Cornerstone of the Antarctic Ecosystem OCT. 19, 2015
• The Pacific Ocean Becomes a Caldron NOV. 2, 2015

The Big Dry Threatens World's Small Islands

Fairfax - Peter Spinks

The sea cliffs on beautiful Christmas Island. But will islanders have enough freshwater within coming decades? Photo: Inger Vandyke

Islanders are in for a tough time. As if rising sea levels were not enough to contend with, about 16 million people living on three-quarters of the world's small islands face seriously dwindling supplies of freshwater as a consequence of climate change.
Australia's Cocos Island and Christmas Island, along with New Zealand's Cook Islands, are among the 73 per cent of 80 sampled islands which, by the year 2050, will put islanders at risk of reduced or no freshwater access, US researchers have reported.
Previous climate models have had trouble assessing the sort of very small islands found in places such as French Polynesia or the Marshall Islands. Researchers, led by Kristopher Karnauskas and colleagues of Boulder Colorado University, overcame this by estimating the water loss from evaporation through plant leaves or from surfaces.
"We found that about half of the island groups will experience increased rainfall, mostly those in the deep tropics," Dr Karnauskas said. "Increases in evaporation were more consistent across the islands, resulting in a shift of global island fresh water balance towards greater aridity." The research, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, reveals that, while half the islands, mostly in the deep tropics, will experience increased rainfall, the other half will experience increased evaporation, drying them out.
"There will be vegetation changes due to the reduction in freshwater availability," said Sydney University hydrologist Willem Vervoort. "There will also be changes in the opportunities to produce fresh food and vegetables on the islands using natural freshwater."
So the islands will become more arid, with reduced tree cover and increased heat stress, Associate Professor Vervoort said.
For most islanders, the cost of water will soar. "Either water needs to be imported or desalination needs to be increased," Associate Professor Vervoort explained. "Alternatively, there needs to be investment to capture and store more of the rainfall that will occur and increased water recycling, including from treated sewage."
Other effects include a loss of water quality and the raised risk of algal blooms.
"Due to high tropical rainfall, we have so far not faced freshwater shortages on Christmas Island," said long-time resident Sharon Tisdale. "Contamination of the water table due to waste disposed in landfill is of particular concern to us."
Ms Tisdale said that strict monitoring was required to ensure that toxic substances are not dumped.
"The council has just implemented disposal charges for tyres and batteries," she explained. "This will mean they will be dumped where there is no charge, in the jungle or on the side of the road, which is already happening."

Links

• What's going on inside the CSIRO and is Larry Marshall to blame?
• Bridge to bipartisan climate policy exists – if major parties want it: Grattan Institute
• CSIRO cuts: Union claims jobs cut swells to 450 as formal complaints lodged

Great Barrier Reef: David Attenborough Ignores Politics And Appeals To The Heart

The Guardian - Gay Alcorn

Documentarian's message rings especially loud for Australians, who have the privilege and duty to look after this natural wonder

The reef surrounding Heron Island as seen in Great Barrier Reef with David Attenborough. Photograph: Mark Tipple/BBC/Atlantic Productions/Mark Tipple 

"Do we really care so little about the Earth on which we live that we don't wish to protect one of its greatest wonders from the consequences of our behaviour?"
At the very end of Sir David Attenborough's three-part documentary on Australia's Great Barrier Reef, the 89-year-old asks this simple question, in his polite way, not pointing fingers at anyone in particular, just wondering.
It is all that has gone before that gives his question such force. We have seen the remarkable, beautiful and wondrous reef in a way that makes political spinning over its health and future seem hollow.
We have seen the reef, but we have also felt it. The wonder of the once-a-year synchronised coral spawning, millions of sperm and eggs shooting into the ocean. The extraordinary sight of coral polyps battling each other in territorial wars.
We have felt the effort of 100kg green turtles hauling themselves onto the sands of Raine Island in north Queensland after 40 years at sea, there to lay eggs in the same place they hatched themselves. We can sense how every creature – every polyp, crab, fish, manta ray and shark – depends on every other.

Nobody imagined in those days that the reef could be degraded, even disappear, in one man's lifetime

At the end of this series, whether you're a fan of nature documentaries or not, you will have learnt things, sure, but you will have witnessed and felt magical things.
Attenborough's Great Barrier Reef has already been broadcast in the UK, but the first episode screened in Australia on Sunday on the ABC. There is a special poignancy watching it here, because Australia is the reef's home and we are its guardians.
The opening episode is about the reef itself, how the 2,300km chain of coral reefs and islands formed between 10,000 and 14,000 years ago towards the end of the ice age. Water flooded the continental shelf and what remained was shallow and warm enough to be perfect for coral, the heart of this underwater city.
The local Indigenous people living near Cairns have told through music and dance a similar story about how the reef was born for thousands of years.
Attenborough is an old man now, and one of his themes is time and change. Sixty years ago, dressed in little more than swimming shorts, flippers and a snorkel, he first explored the reef, and maintains that the "unforgettable beauty" of that experience remains the most magical moment in his career.
The black and white footage of that adventure is nostalgic, even innocent. Nobody imagined in those days that the reef could be degraded, even disappear, in one man's lifetime.
Time has brought technological advances that allow Attenborough and his crew to explore the reef, as he tells us often, like never before. Down he goes in an explorer submarine – a Triton submersible – to remote corners of the reef rarely, if ever, filmed. The footage is as beautiful as you will ever see, the narration very Attenborough with its mix of information and drama.
After laying "one of nature's great wonders" before us, Attenborough uses the third episode to outline the threats to the reef. Some of these, like cyclones, are natural events and the reef has proven extraordinarily resilient to many periods of exposure and regeneration over thousands of years.
That's the critical difference this time. Climate change is wreaking havoc because about 30% of the carbon dioxide we pour into the atmosphere is absorbed in the oceans. The rising temperatures and increased acidity it causes is happening too fast for the reef to cope. In the last 30 years, almost half the coral has disappeared.
"The greatest concern now is that we might lose the reef altogether," Attenborough says.
The scientists he meets are passionate and committed, doing all they can to protect and reef and its inhabitants. It has got to this: scientists at the Australian Institute of Marine Science in north-east Queensland are desperately trying to selectively breed a new kind of coral they hope might be able to withstand the worst effects of climate change. Perhaps we could place this laboratory coral created on the reef to regenerate areas that have died. There's something so sad about this well-intentioned scramble. As one scientist says: "This is really a last resort option."
Attenborough doesn't get into the politics of climate change, either global or local.
He doesn't analyse the Australian government's support for coalmines, especially the Indian company Adani's enormous Carmichael mine in Queensland, and its potential threat to the reef.
He doesn't get into the need for ambitious renewable energy targets or which is best method of reducing carbon emissions.
And his series came too late to capture the latest severe coral bleaching in the north of the barrier reef marine park, a result of warming temperatures.Attenborough's gift is to take us beyond politics, to what matters.
It is an especially loud message for Australians, who have the privilege and duty to look after this "eco-system like no other".
"The Great Barrier Reef is in grave danger," Attenborough says. If temperatures continue to rise at the present rate it will be gone with in decades. What was once unthinkable is now happening on our watch. At the end of this series – perhaps Attenborough's last big on-the-road documentary – he says without hyperbole, "That would be a global catastrophe."

Links

• Greg Hunt rebuked by Attenborough film-maker after upbeat verdict on Great Barrier Reef
• Mass coral bleaching now affecting half of Australia's Great Barrier Reef
• Great Barrier Reef: new chapter opens in the fight to save natural wonder from mining
• Great Barrier Reef: aerial survey reveals extent of coral bleaching
• Devastating global coral bleaching event could hit Great Barrier Reef next
• Great Barrier Reef: Unesco to release draft ruling on 'in danger' listing
• Government bans dumping from new dredging projects into Great Barrier Reef
• Great Barrier Reef: new report slams government's 'weak' recovery plan
• Great Barrier Reef polluters face tougher action under Queensland's new government
• David Attenborough returns to the Great Barrier Reef for a new BBC series

Road Map Points Way To Stable Climate Policy

Fairfax - Tony Wood*

The time is right for a bipartisan approach to climate including three steps to curb major emitters, writes Tony Wood.

After a lot of policy missteps a bipartisan approach on emissions is possible. Getty Images

Australian climate change politics helped destroy several political leaders and at least one government over the past decade. As a result, neither main political party has a compelling climate change policy and the issue is not shaping as a big one in the 2016 election.
It's a depressing scenario, but the moment may be ripe for a real, bipartisan approach. We got close in 2009, then Tony Abbott replaced Malcolm Turnbull as Liberal Party leader.
Both parties support the headline objectives: the 2020 emissions reduction target, deeper cuts beyond 2020 and the longer-term global goal of avoiding the worst impacts of dangerous climate change.
The immediate problem is that recent history so far precludes the best policy – a broad-based price on carbon. Neither side will go there after "axe the tax" was so successful in 2013. The central element of the Coalition government's Direct Action policy is a fund to purchase emissions reductions under contracts. From July, the policy will be supported by a safeguard mechanism that sets limits on emissions for Australia's 140 or so highest-emitting plants and facilities. The good news is that current projections indicate the 2020 target will be met under this policy. The harder task is meeting the 2030 target. The government proposes that continuing the emissions reduction fund along with other policies, some still in the formative stage, will reach it. But the lack of detail and a clear link to the overall target means this is not yet a credible and bankable policy.
Labor, by contrast, remains committed to emissions trading and to providing 50 per cent of electricity from renewables. It has yet to commit to a post-2020 target. In the short term, reverting to a cap and trade scheme, while it is the best policy, is another flip-flop, and probably politically toxic at present. Having been fatally wounded in 2013, Labor won't want to revisit the "great big tax" territory in a hurry.
Whoever wins the 2016 election can expect pressure to ramp up: from the changing climate, from businesses seeking predictability for investment and from the international community. New and tougher targets are likely to emerge.

A way forward

Grattan Institute's new report, Climate Phoenix: a sustainable Australian climate policy, offers a way forward. It provides a road map from current policies to where we need to be: meeting emissions targets with efficient, stable policies that have bipartisan support.
The road map sets out three steps the government of whichever political stripe should take. First, it should tighten the emissions limits (baselines) of the safeguard mechanism to force leading companies to reduce their emissions in line with Australia's agreed targets. This makes substantial reductions possible and – importantly – visibly links those reductions to the targets.
Second, it should provide incentives for low-cost emissions reduction by auctioning tradeable permits that would allow companies to emit above the baselines but within the target trajectory. This would maintain the overall direction of climate policy while targeting the cheapest possible emissions reductions.
Third, the government should expand the safeguard mechanism to cover more facilities and reduce the baselines to zero, when all emissions will have to be covered with permits sold at auction. This step creates an efficient structure capable of adapting to meet whatever future targets emerge. The road map has been designed to adapt developments in climate science, technology and political pressures, and the timing of each step will depend on these developments. Both sides of politics can adopt it while maintaining their policy principles. A Coalition government should stick to its existing policy framework, strengthening it over time.
A Labor government should adopt the Coalition's policy framework, building on it in a stable and predictable way as it moves to its preferred policy option of emissions trading. Bipartisanship and the long-term stability it offers is vital. Only a policy road map with broad bipartisan support can give the confidence essential for long-term investment in low-emission technologies.
The phoenix of myth represents hope reborn. It has been too easy to dwell on the short-term political game in recent years, rather than the hard work of building a sustainable, low-emissions economy. Our road map shows how our leaders can revive a practical, bipartisan climate change policy that can take us where we need to go.

*Tony Wood is director of the energy program at the Grattan Institute. 

Links

• New system needed to drive switch to cleaner power: Grattan
• Tassie energy crisis could cost island state more than $400m

Sorry, Feds: Kids Can Sue Over Climate Negligence, Judge Says

Climate Progress - Samantha Page

Young plaintiffs celebrate the judge's ruling. Credit: Our Children's Trust.

A group of youngsters just won a major decision in their efforts to sue the federal government over climate change. An Oregon judge ruled Friday that their lawsuit, which alleges the government violated the constitutional rights of the next generation by allowing the pollution that has caused climate change, can go forward.
Federal District Court Magistrate Judge Thomas Coffin ruled against the federal government and fossil fuel companies’ motions to dismiss the case, deciding in favor of 21 young plaintiffs and Dr. James Hansen.

This will be the trial of the century that will determine if we have a right to a livable future

The federal lawsuit is part of a broad effort led by Oregon-based nonprofit Our Children’s Trust. The group and its allies have filed lawsuits and petitions in every state in the country. Filed in August, the complaint alleges that the U.S. government has known for half a century that greenhouse gases from fossil fuels cause global warming and climate change.
“If the allegations in the complaint are to be believed, the failure to regulate the emissions has resulted in a danger of constitutional proportions to the public health,” Coffin wrote. He called the lawsuit “unprecedented.”
The suit is based on the idea of the public trust — the same doctrine that guides the Clean Water Act. Under the idea of public trust, governments must protect commonly held elements, such as waterways and the seashore, for public use. Under this lawsuit, the plaintiffs allege that the climate and atmosphere must be likewise protected.
“This will be the trial of the century that will determine if we have a right to a livable future, or if corporate power will continue to deny our rights for the sake of their own wealth,” 19-year-old lead plaintiff Kelsey Juliana said in a statement following the ruling.
Three fossil fuel industry trade associations, who called the case “extraordinary” and “a direct, substantial threat to [their] businesses” were granted defendant status in January.

Links

• Federal Judge Will Hear Teen Climate Case
• Judge greenlights Oregon climate change lawsuit against federal government
• Kids Clear Key Hurdle in Their Federal Climate Change Lawsuit
• Federal Climate Change Lawsuit
• Can This Group Of Kids Force The Government To Act On Climate Change?