Coalition To Change Native Title Laws To Protect Mining And Agriculture Deals

The Guardian - Joshua Robertson

George Brandis announces bill to reverse court ruling that threw land use agreements thrown into doubt, including deal between Adani and Indigenous owners

Attorney general George Brandis wants to reverse the effect of a federal court decision which found that Indigenous land use agreements were invalid unless endorsed by all representatives in a native title claim. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP

The Turnbull government will change native title laws to protect land use agreements thrown into doubt by a recent court ruling, including a controversial deal between Adani and traditional owners of its proposed Queensland mine site.
The attorney general, George Brandis, told parliament on Monday the government would introduce an “urgent” bill to reverse the effect of a federal court decision regarding the Noongar people of Western Australia on 2 February.
That decision by the full court of the federal court found that Indigenous land use agreements (ILUAs) – which underpin mining, agriculture or infrastructure projects – were invalid unless endorsed by all representatives in a native title claim.
It set a precedent that Wangan and Jagalingou (W&J) opponents of the Carmichael mine in Queensland have used to further challenge a crucial deal that Adani signed with seven of 12 of the group’s native title claimants.
Brandis said the decision regarding the Noongar had been “a very significant development in the law”.
“It had not been anticipated,” he said.
The Queensland premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, had “called upon” her counterparts in the Labor federal opposition to back the amendments, Brandis said.
Brandis had arranged the shadow attorney general, Mark Dreyfuss, to be briefed on the matter last week.
The proposed laws come after the mining industry, some lawyers and Australia’s largest native title representative body expressed concerns that hundreds of projects providing income to traditional owners were in jeopardy.
Brandis said the draft legislation would be ready by as early as Monday afternoon.
The announcement came on the same day W&J opponents lodged a fresh federal court action to strike down the Adani deal.
The prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, had last week authorised the introduction of “urgent legislation to legislatively reverse the effect” of the WA decision, Brandis said.
It would restore the previous legal “status quo” established by the Bygraves decision of 2010, that majority decisions by a claimant group guaranteed a deal, he said.
Brandis said the laws would uphold not only 123 ILUAs currently registered with the National Native Title Tribunal, but also agreements that were not yet registered.
Adani has applied to the tribunal to register its ILUA, which represents the traditional owner consent it needs to gain funding from most international financiers.
The National Native Title Tribunal announced it was reviewing the impact of the ruling on existing ILUAs.

Links

• Adani coalmine activists gear up to fight: ‘This will dwarf the Franklin blockade’
• Government may change native title laws to uphold 'at-risk' mining deals
• Indigenous owners threaten legal action unless Adani abandons land access deal
• Indigenous owners launch fresh legal challenge to Adani's Carmichael mine
• Green 'abuse' warrants Australian law review, says resources minister
• Green and Indigenous groups furious over Queensland's Carmichael coalmine lease approval
• Ministers hint at possible rethink of environmental 'lawfare' crackdown
• Farm groups furious at Coalition move to restrict environmental challenges
• Coalition to restrict green groups' right to challenge after Carmichael setback

Brandishing Coal In A Heatwave? Scott Morrison Might As Well Fiddle Through The Energy Crisis

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

Whether emperor Nero really fiddled as Rome burned as legend has it, the parallels in Australia with our emerging full-blown energy crisis amid political paralysis are becoming disturbingly real.
After a heatwave that smashed records in many parts of eastern Australia, electricity supplies in coal-rich NSW and Queensland were strained to the maximum with only Friday's forced load-shedding by the nation's biggest aluminum smelter preventing rolling blackouts similar to those in South Australia last Wednesday.

Any takers? Treasurer Scott Morrison brandishing a lump of coal during question time last week. Photo: Andrew Meares

Queensland, the state least dependent on renewable energy, faces a renewed power pinch on Monday, with record daily demand predicted and early requests from the market operator for more supply.
Monday's menace follows near-record demand in Queensland on Sunday, when most residents were off work and seeking to enjoy the weekend, albeit a swelteringly hot one.
And all these events come as the National Electricity Market prepares to lose one of its biggest power stations, when Victoria' s Hazelwood shuts down at the end of next month.
And what do we hear from Canberra? An acceptance that we have long-standing energy issues coming to a simultaneous boil, and the rousing declaration we need to dial down the political heat to ensure a calm but rapid response from governments to ensure lives aren't lost or factories closed because we couldn't keep the lights or air-conditioners on?
Instead, we get but yet more railing by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Josh Frydenberg, his Environment and Energy Minister, against the "complacent, negligent energy policy" by state Labor governments because they want targets for renewables beyond 2020.

Minister: Power surplus, but please don't use it.
NSW Energy and Utilities Minister Don Harwin has requested the public to make restrictions to their power usage between peak times, in order to prevent potential rolling blackouts, despite claiming we have a power surplus.

That's right. Because some states want over-the-horizon targets to fill a void beyond the decades' end, we have found our culprits.
Yes, Victoria wants 40 per cent renewables by 2025 and Queensland 50 per cent by 2030 – the latter goal shared by federal and NSW Labor.

Energy and Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg gets his turn with the lump of coal. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

But abandoning those distance goals won't do anything to curb today's soaring energy bills, nor bolster the grid's faltering reliability, let alone help Australia reach its 2030 national emissions goals that Turnbull professes to be serious about meeting.
Not that Monday's blame deflection effort was particularly novel. Last week, we had the spectacle of Treasurer Scott Morrison brandishing a lump of coal in question time, accusing his opponents of "coalaphobia".
That fossil fetish came even though the generators' own lobby, the Australian Energy Council, has concluded new coal-fired power plants are "uninvestable".
While it may suit the PM in his internal battle to halt more MPs in his party's climate change-denying right from following the defection of South Australian senator Cory Bernardi, the posturing does nothing to help bring the many and varied stakeholders to the table to resolve the energy morass.
Turnbull could do worse than take a lead from Don Harwin. The new Liberal NSW Energy Minister emerged from a tense few hours on Friday monitoring the market to thank residents

Kelly O'Dwyer, Minister for Revenue and Financial Services, was apparently less keen to hold the lump of coal proffered by Minister for Social Services Christian Porter. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

for curbing energy demand – especially those with solar panels on their roofs – and promptly announce an Energy Security Taskforce to ensure the near-miss of widespread outages doesn't get an early reprise.
Turnbull could also ease off his criticism of South Australia's reliance on wind farms when it is the federal Renewable Energy Target that's driven investment into that state thanks in no small part to the low population and excellent resource.
And he should be wary of stoking the coals of the anti-renewables section of his Coalition and parts of the media.
As reported this weekend, investment in new solar and wind energy is not only bringing $5.2 billion into mostly regional Australia this year alone, the funds are providing the only large-scale capacity being added to the network.
Talk now of cutting the RET – itself a steep goal to reach after years of investor dismay during Tony Abbott's time as prime minister – only serves to undermine already fragile investor sentiment and diminish future appeal.
Certainly, many of the issues are arcane yet important.
How much should the NEM market rules be revised to reflect the climate objects of cutting emissions and absorbing renewables? How much should market manipulation by major gas and electricity suppliers be investigated to ensure they aren't making constraints worse and profiteering in the process? And how much extra work is needed to ensure the grid can absorb ever more renewable energy and storage that the global economics of the industry would seem to dictate?
Consumers expect that electricity and gas supplies will be available when they flick the switch or twist the knob, and they won't forget or forgive those in charge when either source fails.
Yes, they might entertain political and gas industry calls for NSW and Victoria to loosen or reverse curbs on unconventional gas production in their states. But they'd be right to doubt such moves would make any difference to prices or supplies in the near future.
Instead, they would rather see their leaders recognise we have a problem. Our energy policies aren't working and they are certainly not aligned to any coherent plan to tackle climate change – an urgency felt by many people experiencing extreme conditions that scientists say will only become more frequent.
So, without any real effort to drop the talking points, our politicians – led by Turnbull – should just spare us the tease and don the togas, laurel headgear and sandals, and be done with it.

Links

• Red hot: NSW smashes February statewide heat records two days in a row
• Renewable energy the only source of new capacity despite blowback
• NSW Energy Minister pleads for help to avoid heatwave power blackout
• PM and ministers told wind not to blame for SA blackout

Plea To Politicians On Energy: Stop The Brawling

The Conversation - Michelle Grattan

Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg with a lump of coal during Question Time. Mick Tsikas/AAP

Eighteen groups ranging from business energy users and suppliers through to the union movement and environmental advocates have issued a plea for political leaders to “stop partisan antics” and work together to achieve energy reform.
The appeal comes as three conservative state oppositions – in Victoria, Queensland and South Australia – promise that in government they would scrap independent state renewable energy targets in favour of a single national approach.
The groups’ statement follows the current hyper blame game in the debate about South Australian power failures, the role of renewables there and elsewhere, and the way forward to a more secure national system.
The Turnbull government has used SA blackouts to attack the Weatherill government and target Labor generally over the ALP’s strong commitment to renewables.
Energy policy is likely to feature heavily again in this parliamentary week, in the wake of the heat wave.
Malcolm Turnbull continued his partisan note in welcoming the state oppositions’ announcement. “The result of unrealistic state-based targets has been huge power bills for families and businesses and unreliable supply,” he said.
“Bill Shorten wants to adopt South Australia’s failed ideological experiment which will lead to even higher power bills and more blackouts.”
In their statement the groups say: “There is simply no room for partisan politics when the reliability, affordability and sustainability of Australia’s energy system is at stake.
"The status quo of policy uncertainty, lack of co-ordination and unreformed markets is increasing costs, undermining investment and worsening reliability risks. This impacts all Australians, including vulnerable low-income households, workers, regional communities and trade-exposed industries.”
Those signing the statement include the Business Council of Australia and the Australian Industry Group as well as the Australian Energy Council and the Energy Users Association of Australia.
The groups say “finger pointing” will not solve Australia’s energy challenges.
“More than a decade of this has made most energy investments impossibly risky. This has pushed prices higher while hindering transformational change of our energy system. The result is enduring dysfunction in the energy sector.”
Urging a “mature” debate, the groups say reform cannot happen without federal and state agreement “and policies can’t last and motivate investment without broad cross-party support”.
Politicians, federal and state and across the spectrum, need to come together to find solutions, backing and working with the Finkel review into the future security of the national electricity market, the groups say.
After the preliminary report of the Finkel review gave a favourable mention to an emissions intensity scheme Turnbull, under pressure from the conservatives in his ranks, quickly ruled one out.
The groups’ statement says: “As the preliminary report of the Finkel review correctly notes, many of the technological, economic and consumer trends transforming our energy systems are irreversible. Policy and market designs need to evolve if investors are to deliver the energy services Australians require at a price they can afford. A raft of reforms are needed to encourage and support flexibility throughout the system.
"The next stage of the Finkel review should be an opportunity to explore these possibilities and develop a comprehensive and integrated suite of reforms. Policy should be implemented promptly with broad based political support.”
The full list of groups is: Australian Aluminium Council, Australian Conservation Foundation, Australian Council of Social Services, Australian Council of Trade Unions, Australian Energy Council, The Australian Industry Group, Australian Steel Institute, Business Council of Australia, Cement Industry Federation, Chemistry Australia, Clean Energy Council, Energy Efficiency Council, Energy Networks Australia, Energy Users Association of Australia, Investor Group on Climate Change, St Vincent de Paul Society National Council, The Climate Institute, and WWF Australia.

Political donations reform
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten will introduce a private member’s bill on Monday for reform of political donations.
The legislation would:

• reduce the donation disclosure limit from the current level of $13,200 (indexed to inflation) to a fixed $1000;
• prohibit foreign donations;
• ban “donation splitting”, where donations are spread between different branches of political parties and associated entities to avoid disclosure;
• ban anonymous donations of more than $50;
• link public funding to campaign expenditure; and
• Introduce new offences and increased penalties for abuses of the political donation disclosure provisions.

The opposition says it is pursuing the issue of real-time disclosure through the parliamentary committee on electoral matters.

Links

• Energy policy: no room for partisan politics, 18 groups tell government
• Scott Morrison brings coal to question time: what fresh idiocy is this?
• 'Clean' coal power plants: Matt Canavan hints at government subsidy
• Coalition's renewable energy target won't last forever, says Turnbull
• Tony Abbott rebuffed after attacking Turnbull government on renewable energy target
• Australia’s conservative government fiddles on climate policy while the country burns
• Australian unions call for 'just transition' from coal-generated electricity
• Once the storm settles, the real picture emerges of government's energy goals
• Letter signed by 154 Australian experts demands climate policy match the science

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull And Ministers Were Told Wind Not To Blame For South Australia Blackout

Fairfax - Mark Kenny

Turnbull government statements blaming last year's South Australian blackout on its high renewable energy target ignored confidential public service advice stating that it was not the cause, according to emails obtained under freedom-of-information rules.
With a febrile debate over renewable energy versus coal-fired generation suddenly raging in Canberra, the revelation is set to undermine the Coalition's energy messaging and shatter confidence in its call for investment certainty through sober debate and bipartisan policy solutions.

Statements from Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's government blaming 2016's South Australian blackout on the state's high renewable energy target ignored confidential public service advice. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

Advice to the government dated September 29, 2016 – the day after the whole of SA went black following a devastating storm – suggested the problem had not been the state's high reliance on wind generation, but rather because key parts of its electricity distribution network were wrecked during a severe weather event.
An email trail shows among other things a senior official from Malcolm Turnbull's department seeking an explanation for the blackout at 8.31 on the evening of the storm.
Another from 7.20 the next morning outlines subsequent discussions including a 5am phone hook-up involving departmental and political staff.
That email, sent to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's own officials and others, conveyed the first-blush assessment of the blackout including advice gleaned from the Australian Energy Market Operator: "There has been unprecedented damage to the network (ie bigger than any other event in Australia), with 20+ steel transmission towers down in the north of the State due to wind damage (between Adelaide and Port Augusta). The electricity network was unable to cope with such a sudden and large loss of generation at once. AEMOs advice is that the generation mix (ie renewable or fossil fuel) was not to blame for yesterday's events – it was the loss of 1000 MW of power in such a short space of time as transmission lines fell over."
Yet within hours of the calamity the Turnbull government was capitalising on the blackout, suggesting it was a function of the state's unsustainably high quotient of wind generation which had failed to keep working in the conditions.
Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce led a chorus from Canberra about the state Labor government's "unrealistic" energy policies and was quickly joined by other senior ministers including Energy and Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg and Mr Turnbull.


How did SA end up in darkness?
Find out what led to the South Australian blackout as Energy Ministers meet to discuss the fallout and renewable energy targets.

"Even if there is a major storm, it should not be the case that you have a major blackout across a whole state," Mr Joyce told ABC News Radio that morning.
"There is a lot of effort that has gone on in South Australia about their renewable energy target. Maybe if the same competent effort went into actually making sure that an event such as this, a storm such as this – and another storm like this will, at some stage in the future, happen again – is there the capacity to handle it."

Advice to the government dated September 29, 2016, suggested the South Australian blackout had not been because of the state's high reliance on wind generation. Photo: Supplied

By that evening, Mr Turnbull was sending a similar message on the 7.30 program: "These intermittent renewables do pose real challenges," he said.
"Now, I regret to say that a number of the state Labor governments have over the years, set priorities and renewable targets that are extremely aggressive, extremely unrealistic, and have paid little or no attention to energy security."

Illustration by Matt Golding 

Last week, another blackout in South Australia knocked out about 90,000 premises during an extreme heat event. The energy blame game intensified, even though the evidence again suggests there was adequate supply in the form of gas turbine generation, sitting idle, as the wind contribution fell to just 2.5 per cent.
Labor's spokesman on climate change and energy Mark Butler said a "hysterical" Mr Turnbull had been caught "playing politics with a very deep crisis enveloping our energy system".
"Recent events have shown that price spikes and supply shortages are hitting all states, including those with low levels of renewable energy and very high reliance on coal power," he said.
Australia Institute executive director Ben Oquist, whose progressive think tank filed the FOI application, said it was regrettable that the government had acted politically despite being cautioned to wait.
"AEMO had told federal public servants and political advisers that renewable energy was not to blame for the blackout. But instead of informing the people of South Australia of this fact, both the Energy Minister and Prime Minister chose to push a false narrative about wind power," he said.
"Here we see frank and fearless departmental advice being ignored when it didn't suit a political agenda."
As recently as Sunday, Industry and Innovation Minister Arthur Sinodinos called for less politics in the energy debate, during an appearance on Insiders.
"What industry is saying to us is they want certainty over a lower emissions future ... but if industry wants certainty, there has to be a way of achieving bipartisan policy around this because we are talking about investments which take 20, 30, 40 or 50 years," he said.

Links

• Strange bedfellows urge politicians to ditch 'partisan antics' on energy
• What's with the attacks on renewables Mr Turnbull?
• Warning of future blackouts as politics rules energy debate
• 'Clean coal' would push up power bills more than wind, solar or gas: analysts
• PM's coal sell fails to convince
• Government killed emissions scheme despite advice it could make power cheaper
• US Republican spreading the conservative case for climate action

Sweltering Heat, Simmering Debate

Australian Solar Council

The intense heat engulfing the eastern states and triggering power shortages in South Australia has, predictably, reignited political debate over the shortfall in grid energy supplies. In South Australia as many as 90,000 people were impacted by power cuts mid week and there was outrage over the inactive gas plant that could have been cranked up to feed energy into the grid at a time the wind turbines were unable to supplement supplies. NSW is now tipped to experience rolling blackouts from Friday afternoon as the mercury soars to 42 degrees before hitting 43 on Saturday.
But the solution in terms of reliability of supply is right in front of us, and while last week seems a long time ago in the world of politics it is worth relaying the Prime Minister’s comments at his address to the National Press Club where matters of energy and storage featured prominently both during the address and question time which followed.
“We have an abundance of coal, gas, sun and wind resources, not to mention uranium. Yet our energy is among the most expensive in the OECD. … [and] energy bills are making up an increasing proportion of household budgets,” the Prime Minister declared. (Perhaps we could we add high power bills are acting as a strong incentive for households to install solar and storage.)
“Australia should be able to achieve the policy trifecta of energy that is affordable, reliable and secure… security, affordability and emissions reduction, that’s what we need to achieve.”
The PM went on to state “Energy storage, long neglected in Australia, will be a priority this year” and announced a new ARENA/CEFC funding round for large-scale energy storage demonstration projects, including pumped hydro, adding he had written to Chief Scientist Alan Finkel asking him to advise on the role of storage and pumped hydro in stabilising the grid.
“Large-scale storage will support variable renewables like wind and solar. It will get more value out of existing baseload generation and it will enhance grid stability. We’re going to get on with it.”
The Australian Solar Council and Energy Storage Council welcomed the PM’s strong statement about energy storage but queried the silence on the election promise of a solar thermal project in Port Augusta part funded by the Clean Energy Innovation Fund, whose funding has in any event been slashed.
The ASC also stated “We all know coal can no longer compete with solar and wind on price even without a price on emissions.”
During his speech to the NPC the PM stated “We will need more synchronous baseload power and as the world’s largest coal exporter, we have a vested interest in showing that we can provide both lower emissions and reliable base load power with state-of-the-art clean coal-fired technology”.
He bemoaned the lack of new coal-fired power stations using so-called lower emissions technologies, despite the multi-million dollars that have been pumped into ‘clean’ coal technology research and demonstration since 2009.
“Here we are, $590 million spent on clean coal, trials and demonstration. Biggest coal exporter in the world. You’d think if anyone had a vested interest in showing that you could do really smart, clean things with coal, it would be us, wouldn’t you? Who has a bigger interest than us? We are the biggest exporter. Yet we don’t have one power station that meets those requirements.”
It was this comment that invoked a strong backlash from community and business groups. The Greens were up in arms; Richard Di Natale said the Coalition had been spruiking renewable energy investment in “clean coal” power stations as a means to reach their modest Renewable Energy Target.
“These alternative facts set the scene for this year’s renewable energy battleground,” he said. “Pushing clean coal is like promoting light cigarettes or scientific whaling: the product is deadly, but comes with a healthy sounding label. After Barnaby Joyce’s “we should be building new coal-fired power stations” comment, this is the final proof that Malcolm Turnbull has been captured by the Trumps in his party.”
The Green’s Adam Bandt describes Turnbull as a coal protectionist, using public money designed to be spent exclusively on renewable energy infrastructure to instead prop up a dying industry saying “He wants to take money out of renewables and give it to the coal industry … it’s like trying to deal with the rise of the internet by subsidising the fax machine industry.
“The Prime Minister laments spending over half a billion dollars of public money on clean coal only to find the technology still doesn’t exist. That should tell him something. Maybe it’s a sign that this technology is bogus and he should stop throwing good money after bad.
“New coal fired power stations are uneconomic because they can’t compete with wind and solar. They will never be built in Australia unless the government stumps up the money.”
It’s worth recording that the Business Council of Australia and the Australian Industry Group also affirmed that ‘clean’ coal is an unwise investment, and the duo representing a large swag of Australian commerce reinforced their support for the RET.
Big energy retailers AGL EnergyAustralia and Origin likewise have no goals for new coal plants in Australia and in many instances are steering efforts towards renewables.
And on a technical matter, Section 62 of The Clean Energy Finance Corporation Act prohibits investment of its funds in carbon capture and storage. Despite this Treasurer Scott Morrison told media “Coal is a big part of the future under a Coalition Government and restated his intent to set aside in the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) to fund a new generation of coal-fired power stations.
Repeating Bandt’s retort “it’s like trying to deal with the rise of the internet by subsidising the fax machine industry.”
Back to last week’s address to the Press Club where the PM also criticised some states for “setting huge renewable targets, far beyond that of the national RET, with no consideration given to the baseload power and storage needed for stability”.
We read – horrifyingly so – that Energy Minster Frydenberg now refers to Labor’s renewables target of 50 per cent by 2030 a “horror show” and note that the past PM continues to rage war on renewables, incorrectly saying the RET should be scrapped because it will push up power prices, despite all evidence to the contrary.
BNEF’s Kobad Bhavnagri helped demystify the cost of renewables during a recent ABC radio interview in which he backed up Shadow Environment Minister Mark Butler’s assertion that the RET puts downward pressure on prices. That too was the conclusion drawn by Warburton in his review of the RET two years ago.
Making the point that energy markets are highly complex and only made worse by politics which causes instability in the market (politicians “cherry pick” reports to support their view), Bhavnagri stressed that today it’s cheaper to build clean energy plants – solar and wind – than gas or coal fired power plants – and once they are built the energy source is free.
On this, BNEF calculates the cost of new wind and solar at $80 per MWh and the cost of a new coal generator at around $160 per MWh. BNEF notes too that the price of wind and solar continues to decline.
“Energy is part of the culture wars” Bhavnagri said. “It is hard to get sensible debate …. It should be left to the experts … and whatever the plan you have to factor in climate change.”

Links

• Storage to power ahead in 2017
• Victoria’s energy efficient agenda
• Global surge in battery storage
• Power in China
• Solar trams and solar tenders

Can A Children's Lawsuit Force Action On Climate Change?

Christian Science Monitor - Patrick Reilly

The young plaintiffs in a case proceeding to trial in federal court think so.

A plume of steam billows from the coal-fired Merrimack Station in Bow, N.H., Jan. 20, 2015. Jim Cole/AP/File

On Friday, President Trump was named the lead defendant in a lawsuit brought by 21 US students – one as young as nine – against the US government.
The case, Juliana v. United States, was first filed in 2015 with President Barack Obama listed as lead defendant, so the switch to Mr. Trump is largely procedural.
But the plaintiffs are seeking a court order that will compel the US government to drastically curb carbon emissions. With the change from Mr. Obama to Trump, they’re now taking on an administration that looks askance at climate science.

This marks the latest shift in a years-long legal campaign that aims to move beyond political inaction on climate change by establishing a Constitutional right to a stable climate.
"The US is most responsible for climate change, so it's really the most important case in the world right now on the issue," said Julia Olson, lead counsel for the plaintiffs.
The group sponsoring this lawsuit, Our Children’s Trust, has been attempting to litigate climate-change action since 2011, when young plaintiffs affiliated with the group filed lawsuits or regulatory petitions in all 50 states.
While these cases differed in their specifics, they all sought to apply the public trust doctrine – the concept that the government owns and must maintain natural resources for the public’s use – to the atmosphere, and, by extension, compel state governments to implement policies that would drastically reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
The group has had some success. In September 2016, after the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court sided with the group, Gov. Charles Baker issued an executive order directing the state government to establish emissions-reductions regulations by August 2017, and prepare a "comprehensive energy plan" within two years.
But elsewhere, judges saw greenhouse-gas reductions as a matter for the legislatures, not the courts.
In New Mexico, for instance, the state appeals court ruled that, "where the State has a duty to protect the atmosphere under ... the New Mexico Constitution, the courts cannot independently regulate greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere as Plaintiffs have proposed.”
Robert L. Wilkins, judge for the US District Court in the District of Columbia, echoed these thoughts on the federal level, ruling that "federal courts have occasionally been called upon to craft remedies that were seen by some as drastic.... But that reality does not mean that every dispute is one for the federal courts to resolve, nor does it mean that a sweeping court-imposed remedy is the appropriate medicine for every intractable problem.”
But last November, a federal judge in Oregon ruled that a case brought by Kelsey Juliana and 20 other young plaintiffs could proceed to trial. Judge Ann Aiken grounded her ruling in the Fifth Amendment's promise that "no person ... shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law."

She wrote, "Where a complaint alleges governmental action is affirmatively and substantially damaging the climate system in a way that will cause human deaths, shorten human lifespans, result in widespread damage to property, threaten human food sources, and dramatically alter the planet's ecosystem, it states a claim for a due process violation."
The trial will begin in Judge Aiken’s courtroom later this year. The plaintiffs' attorney, Ms. Olson, is confident that the case will proceed to – and win in – the Supreme Court, as reported by Slate’s Eric Holthaus.
But legal experts caution that the trial and appeals process could take years, and that the Trump administration will likely want to drag it out for as long as possible.

And even the landmark legal victory sought by Our Children’s Trust might not mean the end of the story. The decades-long struggle to desegregate cities through busing and other programs revealed the difficulties of translating court orders into workable public policy – especially when doing so impacts citizens' day-to-day lives.
Even so, after years of legislative inaction on the issue, environmental activists are looking for outside-the-box solutions, and many see new hope in Our Children’s Trust.
As Michael Burger, executive director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, told Slate, "There is no question that [Judge Aiken’s] decision, in both its eloquence and its bold declaration of a new constitutional right, breaks new ground."

Links

• Kids Name President Trump as Defendant in Constitutional Climate Case
• Landmark U.S. Federal Climate Lawsuit
• The Kids Suing the Government Over Climate Change Are Our Best Hope Now
• Our Children's Trust Unleashes Wave of Climate Change Litigation

Introducing The Terrifying Mathematics Of The Anthropocene

The Conversation - Owen Gaffney | Will Steffen

Here are some surprising facts about humans’ effect on planet Earth. We have made enough concrete to create an exact replica of Earth 2mm thick. We have produced enough plastic to wrap Earth in clingfilm. We are creating “technofossils”, a new term for congealed human-made materials – plastics and concretes – that will be around for tens of millions of years.
But it is the scale that humans have altered Earth’s life support system that is the most concerning.
In 2000, Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer proposed that human impact on the atmosphere, the oceans, the land and ice sheets had reached such a scale that it had pushed Earth into a new epoch. They called it the Anthropocene and argued the current Holocene epoch was over.
The Holocene began 11,700 years ago as we emerged from a deep ice age. Over the past 10,000 years, the defining feature of the Holocene has been a remarkably stable Earth system. This stability has allowed us to develop agriculture and hence villages, towns and eventually cities – human civilisation.
We use pretty powerful rhetoric to describe the Anthropocene and current human impact. As The Economist stated in 2011, humanity has “become a force of nature reshaping the planet on a geological scale”. We are like an asteroid strike. We have the impact of an ice age.
But what does this really mean? Does it mean, for example, that we are having as big an impact as these natural forces are having right now, or is it, somehow, more profound?

Humans: the new asteroids. Steve Jurvetson, CC BY

The maths of the Anthropocene
In our recent study, we wanted to find the simplest way to mathematically describe the Anthropocene and articulate the difference between how the planet once functioned and how it now functions.
Life on Earth, the chemical and physical composition of the atmosphere and oceans, and the size of the ice sheets have changed over time because of slight alterations to Earth’s orbit around the sun, changes to the sun’s energy output or major asteroid impacts like the one that killed the dinosaurs.

Cyanobacteria changed the world; now it’s our turn. Matthew J Parker, CC BY-SA

They can also change due to geophysical forces: continents collide, cutting off ocean currents so heat is distributed in a new way, upsetting climate and biodiversity.
They also shift due to sheer internal dynamics of the system – new life evolves to drive great planetary shifts, such as the Great Oxidation Event around 2.5 billion years ago when newly evolved cyanobacteria began emitting the deadly poison oxygen that killed all simple life forms it came in touch with. Life had to evolve to tolerate oxygen.
Taking as our starting point a 1999 article by Earth system scientist Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, we can say the rate of change of the Earth system (E) has been driven by three things: astronomical forcings such as those from the sun or asteroids; geophysical forcing, for example changing currents; and internal dynamics, such as the evolution of cyanobacteria. Let’s call them A, G and I.
Mathematically, we can put it like this:

It reads: the rate of change of the Earth system (dE/dt) is a function of astronomical and geophysical forcings and internal dynamics. It is a very simple statement about the main drivers of the system.
This equation has been true for four billion years, since the first life evolved. In his article, Schellnhuber argued that people must be added into this mix, but his theory came before the full impact of humanity had been assessed. In the past few decades, this equation has been radically altered.
We are losing biodiversity at rates tens to hundreds of times faster than natural rates. Indeed, we are approaching mass extinction rates. There have been five mass extinctions in the history of life on Earth. The last killed the non-avian dinosaurs 66 million years ago, now humans are causing the sixth.
The rate we are emitting carbon dioxide might be at an all time high since that time too. Global temperatures are rising at a rate 170 times faster than the Holocene baseline. The global nitrogen cycle is undergoing its largest and most rapid change in possibly 2.5 billion years.
In fact, the rate of change of the Earth system under human influence in the past four decades is so significant we can now show that the equation has become:

H stands for humanity. In the Anthropocene Equation, the rate of change of the Earth system is a function of humanity.
A, G and I are now approaching zero relative to the other big force – us – they have become essentially negligible. We are now the dominant influence on the stability and resilience of the planet we call home.
This is worth a little reflection. For four billion years, the Earth system changed under the influence of tremendous solar-system wide forces of nature. Now this no longer holds.

IPCC, 2014: Climate Change 2014: Synthesis Report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. IPCC, Geneva, Switzerland

A new reality
Heavenly bodies of course still exert some force; so does the ground beneath our feet. But the rates at which these forces operate are now negligible compared with the rate at which we are changing the Earth system. In the 1950s or 1960s, our own impact rivalled the great forces of nature. Now it usurps them entirely.
This should come as a shock not only to environmentalists but to everyone on Earth. But our conclusion is arguably a modest addition to the canon of academic literature. The scale and rate of change has already been well established by Earth system scientists over the past two decades.
Recently, Mark Williams and colleagues argued that the Anthropocene represents the third new era in Earth’s biosphere, and astrobiologist David Grinspoon argued that the Anthropocene marks one of the major events in a planet’s “life”, when self-aware cognitive processes become a key part of the way the planet functions.
Still, formalising the Anthropocene mathematically brings home an entirely new reality.

The equations that shape our planet. Owen Gaffney, Will Steffen, Author provided

The drama is heightened when we consider that for much of Earth’s history the planet has been either very hot – a greenhouse world – or very cold – an icehouse world. These appear to be the deeply stable states lasting millions of years and resistant to even quite major shoves from astronomical or geophysical forces.
But the past 2.5 million years have been uncharacteristically unstable, periodically flickering from cold to a gentle warmth.

The consumption vortex
So, who do we mean when we talk of H? Some will argue that we cannot treat humanity as one homogenous whole. We agree.
While all of humanity is now in the Anthropocene, we are not all in it in the same way. Industrialised societies are the reason we have arrived at this place, not Inuits in northern Canada or smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa.

Fossil fuels have turned us into a force of nature. Reuters

Scientific and technological innovations and economic policies promoting growth at all costs have created a consumption and production vortex on a collision course with the Earth system.
Others may say that natural forces are too important to ignore; for example, the El Niño weather system periodically changes patterns globally and causes Earth to warm for a year or so, and the tides generate more energy than all of humanity. But a warm El Niño is balanced by a cool La Niña. The tides and other great forces of nature are powerful but stable. Overall, they do not affect the rate of change of the Earth system.
Now, only a truly catastrophic volcanic eruption or direct asteroid hit could match us for impact.
So, can the Anthropocene equation be solved? The current rate of change must return to around zero as soon as possible. It cannot continue indefinitely. Either humanity puts on the brakes or it would seem unlikely a global civilisation will continue to function on a destabilised planet. The choice is ours.

Links

• The Anthropocene Belongs to Earth System Science
• An official welcome to the Anthropocene epoch – but who gets to decide it’s here?
• Scientists still don’t understand the Anthropocene – and they’re going about it the wrong way
• Human global domination began with fire, not factories or farms