Why Climate Change Is Worsening Public Health Problems

The Conversation - Chelsey Kivland | Anne Sosin

People collect water piped in from a mountain creek in Utuado, Puerto Rico on Oct. 14, 2017, in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. Hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans were still without running water. AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa

Around the world, the health care debate often revolves around access.
Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the World Health Organization, recently announced: “All roads lead to universal health coverage.” Discussions for how to translate this vision into a road map for action is central to the agenda of the WHO’s executive board meeting this week in Geneva.
Yet focusing on access is not enough. The imperative for access must be paired with a frank acknowledgment that climate change is making communities around the world more vulnerable to ill health. A 2017 commission of The Lancet, a leading health research journal, tracked the effects of climate change on health and found evidence of harms “far worse that previously understood.”
Even as we move to close the access gap, a string of natural disasters in late 2017, including successive hurricanes and widespread forest fires, threaten to widen the vulnerability gap.
As a global health professional (Sosin) and a cultural anthropologist (Kivland), we have witnessed how the global exchange of health technology, expertise and aid has contributed to dramatic gains in the delivery of health care in Haiti and other settings, especially around infectious diseases. Yet climate change threatens to undermine the health gains in vulnerable communities across the globe.
As firsthand witnesses to sharp health disparities globally, we argue that world leaders need to insist that any health care strategy must address the social and environmental vulnerabilities driving poor health in the first place.

The health burden of climate change
Climate scientists argue that global warming is exacerbating extreme weather events. And natural disasters are often the source of health crises, particularly in fragile settings. Consider the case of Puerto Rico. The official death toll of the storm was estimated at 64; however, later reports have estimated that the disruption of health care services contributed to upwards of 1,052 deaths on the island.
Lagging recovery efforts have exposed how natural disasters deepen the relationship between socio-economic inequality and health disparity. In Puerto Rico, where poverty rates are double those of the poorest continental state, people already struggling with illnesses such as diabetes and kidney disease have seen their conditions worsen as the long-crumbling health care system is overwhelmed with patients and neglected by the mainland government.
The health impacts of the storms may persist even beyond the restoration of health services.
Hurricane Harvey exposed the toxic afterlife of disastrous storms. Storm damage to 40 industrial sites released chemical toxins linked to cellular damage, cancer and other long-term health problems. As The Lancet’s Commission on Pollution and Health found, air, water and soil pollution is now the leading environmental cause of death and disability, accounting for more than 9 million deaths annually. These numbers will only grow in the face of climate-induced disasters.
Restoring health care systems is vital for these communities, but it will merely treat the symptoms and not the causes of post-disaster illness. We believe that policymakers must address the link between environmental and health crises.

Haiti as case study

Men in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, collect water on Nov. 11, 2017. Years after Hurricane Matthew nearly devastated Haiti, its vulnerability only increases. Reuters/Martinez Casares

We have learned this lesson from our work in Haiti. Once a death sentence in rural Haiti, today HIV is largely controlled thanks to widespread access to antiretroviral therapy. The prevalence of the disease in pregnant women fell from 6 percent to just over 2 percent in the 10-year period from 1993 to 2003. Likewise, vaccines against cholera, introduced in 2015,have proven to be up to 90 percent effective against the disease.
However, even as vaccine coverage continues to grow, the population remains at risk for cholera and other emergent threats. Only 58 percent of the population has access to safe water and only 28 percent has access to basic sanitation. These conditions worsen in the wake of natural disasters. Hurricane Mathew in 2016 triggered spikes in cholera and other waterborne diseases, especially diarrhea, the second leading cause of death among children.
Hitting the one region of Haiti that had not yet been denuded of trees and vegetation, Hurricane Matthew seemed to complete the destruction of the country’s food systems.
Since the late 1980s, the erosion of waterways, loss of habitats and destruction of agricultural land have fueled the importation of cheap, processed foods. Rice and pasta have replaced a diet once rich in fruits, vegetables and whole grains. The high-sugar, low-nutrition foods contribute to the dual health burdens of obesity and under-nutrition.
These trends are ongoing, but they are exacerbated by the disastrous shocks of extreme weather events, which are made more likely by climate change. As Hurricane Matthew came ashore, it decimated fishing villages and tore through farming communities, killing livestock, uprooting crops and denuding backyard fruit trees. The United Nations estimated that 800,000 people suffered food shortages.

Closing the vulnerability gap
Haiti is often cast as behind the global curve. But as a reflection of the dangerous intersection of climate change, poverty and ill health, it is in fact predictive of what is to come in the rest of the world. Haiti teaches us that our own health is not bound up simply in the present decisions we make about health care systems but rather more broadly situated in the changing natural environment.
Closing the access gap has been a long battle and the gains cannot be underestimated. Yet the challenge ahead is even more daunting. Whereas increasing access has centered on extending health care technologies to underserved populations, closing the vulnerability gap will require approaches that extend beyond the health sector and national borders.
In the past year, the health care debate in the U.S. has centered on attempts to limit or expand access to care. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has left the Paris climate accord and unraveled environmental protections for national and transnational corporations – with little resistance from health advocates. We believe that leaders must recognize that environmental policy is health policy. Rollbacks of environmental regulations will cause far greater consequences on health, in the U.S. and globally, than any health care bill.
Fixing health care systems while we undermine the environmental conditions for health are a textbook example of what Haitians describe as “lave men, swiyè atè"—washing your hands but drying them in the dirt.

Links

• The Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: from 25 years of inaction to a global transformation for public health
•  Flooding from Hurricane Harvey causes a host of public health concerns
• The Impacts of Climate Change on Human Health in the United States: A Scientific Assessment
• Why cuts in funding for UN, climate change research imperil fight against malaria
• Climate change and weather extremes: Both heat and cold can kill

The Billionaire's Guide To Surviving Global Warming – With Ian The Climate Denialist Potato

The Guardian - First Dog on the Moon




Links

• 'Last Year I Gave The Kids Briquettes And Everyone Yelled At Me!' Christmas With Ian
• Ian the Climate Denialist Potato makes a statement on Triple J's Hottest 100
• A glossy new senator has been sworn in! It's Ian the Climate Denialist Potato!
• Won't people notice if the energy policy is an echidna?
• Ian the Climate Denialist Potato asks: Is there coal in space?
• Sick of rewriting history? So is Ian the Climate Denialist Potato!
• How I survived living with a cat stuffed with uranium

Fighting Climate Change? We’re Not Even Landing A Punch

New York Times - Eduardo Porter

The dry bed of Lake Poopó in Bolivia, where steady warming over the last 30 years evaporated what little water was left. Credit Josh Haner/The New York Times

In 1988, when world leaders convened their first global conference on climate change, in Toronto, the Earth’s average temperature was a bit more than half a degree Celsius above the average of the last two decades of the 19th century, according to measurements by NASA.
Global emissions of greenhouse gases amounted to the equivalent of some 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide a year — excluding those from deforestation and land use. Worried about its accumulation, the gathered scientists and policymakers called on the world to cut CO₂ emissions by a fifth.
That didn’t happen, of course. By 1997, when climate diplomats from the world’s leading nations gathered to negotiate a round of emissions cuts in Kyoto, Japan, emissions had risen to some 35 billion tons and the global surface temperature was roughly 0.7 of a degree Celsius above the average of the late 19th century.
It took almost two decades for the next breakthrough. When diplomats from virtually every country gathered in Paris just over two years ago to hash out another agreement to combat climate change, the world’s surface temperature was already about 1.1 degrees Celsius above its average at the end of the 1800s. And greenhouse gas emissions totaled just under 50 billion tons.
This is not to belittle diplomacy. Maybe this is the best we can do. How can countries be persuaded to adopt expensive strategies to drop fossil fuels when the prospective impact of climate change remains uncertain and fixing the problem requires collective action? As mitigation by an individual country will benefit all, nations will be tempted to take a free ride on the efforts of others. And no country will be able to solve the problem on its own.
Still, the world’s diplomatic meanderings — from the ineffectual call in Toronto for a reduction in emissions to the summit meeting in Paris, where each country was allowed simply to pledge whatever it could to the global effort — suggest that the diplomats, policymakers and environmentalists trying to slow climate change still cannot cope with its unforgiving math. They are, instead, trying to ignore it. And that will definitely not work.
The world is still warming. Both NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported last week that global temperatures last year receded slightly from the record-setting 2016, because there was no El Niño heating up the Pacific.

Warmer and Warmer

The balance after 30 years of climate diplomacy: a hotter world with more greenhouse gases.

By The New York Times | Sources: NASA (temperatures); Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (emissions)

While the world frets over President Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris agreement, I would argue that the greatest impediment to slowing this relentless warming is an illusion of progress that is allowing every country to sidestep many of the hard choices that still must be made.
“We keep doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome,” said Scott Barrett, an expert on international cooperation and coordination at Columbia University who was once a lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Climate diplomats in Paris didn’t merely reassert prior commitments to keep the world’s temperature less than 2 degrees above that of the “preindustrial” era — a somewhat fuzzy term that could be taken to mean the second half of the 19th century. Hoping to appease island nations like the Maldives, which are likely to be swallowed by a rising ocean in a few decades, they set a new “aspirational” ceiling of 1.5 degrees.
To stick to a 2-degree limit, we would have to start reducing global emissions for real within about a decade at most — and then do more. Half a century from now, we would have to figure out how to suck vast amounts of carbon out of the air. Keeping the lid at 1.5 degrees would be much harder still.
Yet when experts tallied the offers made in Paris by all the countries in the collective effort, they concluded that greenhouse gas emissions in 2030 would exceed the level needed to remain under 2 degrees by 12 billion to 14 billion tons of CO₂.
Are there better approaches? The “climate club” proposed by the Yale University economist William Nordhaus has the advantage of including an enforcement device, which current arrangements lack: Countries in the club, committed to reducing carbon emissions, would impose a tariff on imports from nonmembers to encourage them to join.
Martin Weitzman of Harvard University supports the idea of a uniform worldwide tax on carbon emissions, which might be easier to agree on than a panoply of national emissions cuts. One clear advantage is that countries could use their tax revenues as they saw fit.

A coal-fired power plant in Kentucky. Attempts to embrace carbon capture as a climate strategy have collided with concerns about condoning the use of fossil fuels. Credit Luke Sharrett for The New York Times 

Mr. Barrett argues that the Paris agreement could be supplemented with narrower, simpler deals to curb emissions of particular gases — such as the 2016 agreement at a 170-nation meeting in Kigali, Rwanda, to reduce hydrofluorocarbon emissions — or in particular industries, like aviation or steel.
Maybe none of this would work. The climate club could blow up if nonmembers retaliated against import tariffs by imposing trade barriers of their own. Coordinating taxes around the world looks at least as difficult as addressing climate change. And Mr. Barrett’s proposal might not deliver a breakthrough on the scale necessary to move the dial.
But what definitely won’t suffice is a climate strategy built out of wishful thinking: the proposition that countries can be cajoled and prodded into increasing their ambition to cut emissions further, and that laggards can be named and shamed into falling into line.
Inveigled by three decades of supposed diplomatic progress — coupled with falling prices of wind turbines, solar panels and batteries — the activists, technologists and policymakers driving the strategy against climate change seem to have concluded that the job can be done without unpalatable choices. And the group is closing doors that it would do best to keep open.
There is no momentum for investing in carbon capture and storage, since it could be seen as condoning the continued use of fossil fuels. Nuclear energy, the only source of low-carbon power ever deployed at the needed scale, is also anathema. Geoengineering, like pumping aerosols into the atmosphere to reflect the sun’s heat back into space, is another taboo.
But eventually, these options will most likely be on the table, as the consequences of climate change come more sharply into focus. The rosy belief that the world can reduce its carbon dependency over a few decades by relying exclusively on the power of shame, the wind and the sun will give way to a more realistic understanding of possibilities.
Some set of countries will decide to forget Paris and deploy a few jets to pump sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere to cool the world temporarily. There will be a race to develop techniques to harvest and store carbon from the atmosphere, and another to build nuclear generators at breakneck speed.
It will probably be too late to prevent the Maldives from ending up underwater. But better late than never.

Links

• Climate Change Is Altering Lakes and Streams, Study Suggests
• China Unveils an Ambitious Plan to Curb Climate Change Emissions
• U.S. Report Says Humans Cause Climate Change, Contradicting Top Trump Officials
• What the Climate Report Says About the Impact of Global Warming

Climate Change As Seen From Space

The Conversation - René Garello

Artist’s view of Aqua, a NASA satellite in orbit around the Earth since 2002 that studies the water cycle. AIRS/Flickr, CC BY

The French National Centre for Space Research recently presented two projects for monitoring greenhouse gas emissions (CO₂ and methane) using satellite sensors. The satellites, which are to be launched after 2020, will supplement measures carried out in situ.
On a global scale, this is not the first such program to measure climate change from space: the European satellites from the Sentinel series have already been measuring a number of parameters since Sentinel-1A was launched on April 3, 2014, under the aegis of the European Space Agency. These satellites are part of the Copernicus Program (Global Earth Observation System of Systems), carried out on a global scale.
Since Sentinel-1A, the satellite’s successors 1B, 2A, 2B and 3A have been launched successfully. They are each equipped with sensors with various functions. For the first two satellites, these include a radar imaging system, for so-called “all weather” data acquisition, the radar wavelength being indifferent to cloudy conditions, whether at night or during the day. Infrared optical observation systems allow the second two satellites to to monitor the temperature of ocean surfaces. Sentinel-3A also has four sensors installed for measuring radiometry, temperature, altimetry and the topography of surfaces (both ocean and land).
The launch of these satellites builds on the numerous space missions that are already in place on a European and global scale. The data they record and transmit grant researchers access to many parameters, showing us the planet’s “pulse”. These data partially concern the ocean – waves, wind, currents, temperatures and more – showing the evolution of large water masses. The ocean acts as an engine to the climate and even small variations are directly linked to changes in the atmosphere, the consequences of which can sometimes be dramatic, including hurricanes. Data collected by sensors for continental surfaces concern variations in humidity and soil cover, whose consequences can also be significant (drought, deforestation, biodiversity, etc.).

IMAGE

Masses of data to process
Processing of data collected by satellites is carried out on several levels, ranging from research labs to more operational uses, not forgetting formatting activity done by the European Space Agency.
The scientific community is focusing increasingly on “essential variables” (physical, biological, chemical, etc.) as defined by groups working on climate change (in particular GCOS in the 1990s). They are attempting to define a measure or group of measures (the variable) that will contribute to the characterization of the climate in a critical way.
There are, of course, a considerable number of variables that are sufficiently precise to be made into indicators allowing us to confirm whether or not the UN’s objectives of sustainable development have been achieved.

Boreal AJS 3 drone is used to take measurements at a very low altitude above the sea. boreal-uas.com 

The identification of these “essential variables” may be achieved after data processing, by combining this with data obtained by a multitude of other sensors, whether these are located on the Earth, under the sea or in the air. Technical progress (such as images with high spatial or temporal resolution) allows us to use increasingly precise measures.
The Sentinel program operates in multiple fields of application, including: environmental protection, urban management, spatial planning on a regional and local level, agriculture, forestry, fishing, healthcare, transport, sustainable development, civil protection and even tourism. Amongst all these concerns, climate change features at the centre of the program’s attention.
The effort made by Europe has been considerable, representing an investment of over 4 billion eurosbetween 2014 and 2020. However, the project also has very significant economic potential, particularly in terms of innovation and job creation: economic gains in the region of €30 million are expected between now and 2030.

How can we navigate these oceans of data?
Researchers, as well as key players in the socio-economic world, are constantly seeking more precise and comprehensive observations. However, with spatial observation coverage growing over the years, the mass of data obtained is becoming quite overwhelming.
Considering that a smartphone contains a memory of several gigabytes, spatial observation generates petabytes of data to be stored; and soon we may even be talking in exabytes, that is, in trillions of bytes. We therefore need to develop methods for navigating these oceans of data, whilst still keeping in mind that the information in question only represents a fraction of what is out there. Even with masses of data available, the number of essential variables is actually relatively small.

Identifying phenomena on the Earth’s surface
The most recent developments aim to pinpoint the best possible methods for identifying phenomena, using signals and images representing a particular area of the Earth. These phenomena include waves and currents on ocean surfaces, characterizing forests, humid, coastal or flooding areas, urban expansion in land areas, etc. All this information can help us to predict extreme phenomena (hurricanes), and manage post-disaster situations (earthquakes, tsunamis) or monitor biodiversity.

IMAGE

The next stage consists in making processing more automatic by developing algorithms that would allow computers to find the relevant variables in as many databases as possible. Intrinsic parameters and information of the highest level should then be added into this, such as physical models, human behaviour and social networks.
This multidisciplinary approach constitutes an original trend that should allow us to qualify the notion of “climate change” more concretely, going beyond just measurements to be able to respond to the main people concerned – that is, all of us!

Links

• We’re climate researchers and our work was turned into fake news
• Why climate change is worsening public health problems
• $60 million to save the Great Barrier Reef is a drop in the ocean, but we have to try
• Climate change and weather extremes: Both heat and cold can kill

Stuck In First Gear: How Australia's Electric Car Revolution Stalled

The Guardian - Naaman Zhou

As sceptics fretted over price, range and lack of charging stations, Australia was overtaken by the rest of the world. Now policymakers are being urged to jumpstart the industry
In Elizabeth in South Australia, they stood in a huge line, only three months ago, and spelled out HOLDEN for the helicopters. Thirteen weeks later, after the plant closed and the last car rolled away, the talk began of rejuvenation, a new owner and the promise of the electric.
The proposal, from the British billionaire Sanjeev Gupta, to refit the old Holden plant to make electric cars is still just a suggestion, but it has captured the imagination of a country suddenly keen to talk. On Monday, the idea was backed to the hilt by the premier, Jay Weatherill, and the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union. On Tuesday, the federal energy minister, Josh Frydenberg, said the electric car would do to Australia “what the iPhone did to the communications sector”.
Last November, the urban infrastructure minister, Paul Fletcher, announced a review into how electric cars could affect road revenue – a tacit acknowledgment that, depending on how the dice fall, they could change everything in the next decade or two.
This year, the electric car seems to be having its political moment.
Most experts agree the era of the electric car is coming – at some point. The issue is when. Behyad Jafari, the chief executive of the Electric Vehicle Council, says the future of the industry hinges on government intervention.
By global standards, Australia is lagging behind. Only 0.1% of all new car sales in 2016 in Australia were electric, and that was actually down 23% on the year before. Other nations are powering ahead – Norway on 29%, the Netherlands on 6% and China, France and the UK on 1.5% of new cars in the same year.

Market share of electric vehicles, selected countries

Guardian graphic | Source: IEA, ClimateWorks Australia

Jafari has been calling on the government to introduce a temporary tax, stamp duty or rego fee exemption for electric cars – to “kickstart” the industry – and a national plan of action.
“The government has thought the issue is a lack of model availability and charging infrastructure, but in fact they are symptoms of our problem,” he says. “There is a lack of certainty that the market will do well. In every other country there is policy support, but that doesn’t exist here ”

A Holden Volt electric car. British billionaire Sanjeev Gupta is eyeing a plan to build electric cars at the former Holden site in South Australia. Photograph: Gm Holden

 If the government pulls the right policy levers, he believes, the industry will follow. Last year, the UK and France announced they would ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars by 2040. Volvo announced it would make only electric or hybrid cars from 2019.
In Australia, the government provides a discount on the luxury car tax threshold for low-emission vehicles and companies can earn carbon credits by buying electric – but the industry wants more.
The Department of Environment and Energy’s current prediction is that electric cars will be 15% of new vehicle sales by 2030. The CSIRO predicts 20% by 2035, and the Australian Energy Market Operator predicts between 16% and 45% by 2036.
“I’m not in the business of setting projections because they’re always wrong,” Jafari says. “Every year the battery technology becomes more effective and cheaper at a faster rate than anyone predicts. The predictions of uptake and driving range are reforecast higher every year.
“The question is, do you want to take into account projections based on how things have been so far and assuming nothing changes? Or projections for what happens if Australia gets its act together and provides support?”
Jafari believes the upward, exponential trend could begin between 2018 and 2020, which means all eyes are on Frydenberg.
“A signal has been sent that a change is coming,” Jafari says.
On January 12 Frydenberg penned an opinion piece in the Sydney Morning Herald declaring the electric “revolution” imminent.
“The lack of takeup is not because of a lack of consumer interest,” he wrote in his piece. “What holds them back are issues relating to price, range and infrastructure. But on each count, there are good things happening, with more to come.”
Later in the year, he is chairing a forum with Fletcher to discuss measures to “encourage the uptake” of electric vehicles.
According to the Australian, his support sparked a backlash from his own cabinet colleagues, but on Tuesday, the minister doubled down, telling critics they would be buying one in a decade.

Energy minister Josh Frydenberg drives an electric car during an event outside Parliament House. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP

 For the doubters, the barriers remain the same: a lack of charging stations, “range anxiety” over how far a car can travel, and natural reticence to adopt something new.
Investment is coming slowly for charging stations. In Western Australia, the Royal Automobile Club built 10 stations from Perth to Augusta, in New South Wales the NRMA is building 40, and in Queensland the state government has announced a 2,000km superhighway of chargers, from Cairns to Coolangatta.

Queensland’s superhighway of charging stations

But there are still only 476 charging stations nationwide. In NSW and Victoria that means 1.7 and 2.5 stations per 100,000 residents respectively.
This makes Prof Stephen Greaves, an expert in transport management at the University of Sydney, sceptical about mass uptake.
“I’d like to see [the exponential growth argument] proven right but I think we are a long way from that,” he says. “The Australian consumer is naturally cautious about making a change such as this. I don’t think it’s a priority of Australians, or the government.
“I was looking at all the things they do in Norway – it’s a laundry list. You can drive in the bus lanes. You get free parking. You don’t pay any money on toll roads. If you put all these things in place, and you put more recharging stations in, you will see a significant but small increase.”

There are just 476 electric car charging stations in Australia. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP

Also complicating matters are the rise of automated vehicles and ride-sharing services like Uber. Last year a Stanford University economist, Tony Seba, predicted that ride-sharing would end car ownership. With these fleets using only automated, electric cars, he maintains, no new petrol cars will be sold after 2025.
As the futurists debate, government is turning its attention to the knock-on effects. Depending on how the pendulum swings, and when, electric car uptake could slash the revenue collected from roads.
Currently, driving a petrol-consuming car costs you money via the fuel excise – a government tax on petrol, roughly 40c per litre – which is collected for the purpose of funding road infrastructure and maintenance, but that technically can be spent anywhere.
This means the more you drive a petrol car, the more you pay – but electric cars are exempt.
According to the 2017 Productivity Review, the average vehicle is charged $1,334 a year: $607 from the fuel excise, the rest from registration, licence fees and stamp duty.
With the rise in electric cars, the CSIRO is projecting that the revenue from the excise, in real terms, will drop by 50% by 2050, blowing a hole in the revenue stream.

Road-related revenue v expenditure

Total government revenue v total private and public spending on roads by financial year, adjusted to 2014-15 dollars

Guardian graphic | Source: BITRE

A solution, suggested by the Productivity Review, and hinted at by Fletcher, is to scrap fuel charges and instead charge vehicles, both petrol and electric, for how many kilometres they drive – potentially using GPS tracking.
Known as road user pricing, it can potentially also be used to charge motorists higher rates for driving on busy roads, or at peak time, which could ease congestion.
Road user pricing makes sense, and is more equitable, even in a purely petrol world, Greaves says.
But while it may benefit those who choose to take public transport and drive less frequently, road user pricing can be seen to penalise those who have no option but to drive – people in regional areas and outer suburbs.
“Some sort of variable rate is potentially a way to go,” Greaves says. “The simplest way to do that is by time of day. If you’re driving in peak hours, you’re paying a little bit more. It will make people think about what they do a bit more.”
The worry is that if distance pricing becomes too complex, or politically difficult, we will simply default to taxing electricity like it was fuel, halting the clean incentive.
But, with road user pricing, there is a potential for governments to finally balance the three concerns of funding, congestion and electric car uptake.
“You can in theory achieve all of this,” Greaves says. “You can tailor it for how clean the vehicle is.”
This is exactly what New Zealand is doing.
New Zealand has had a form of road user pricing since 1978. Their current model charges an excise for petrol cars (60c per litre) and by distance for diesel and electric ($62 per 1,000 kilometres).
But as part of a concerted effort to boost uptake, the Ministry of Transport has exempted electric vehicles from the charge until 2021 – saving each user roughly $600 a year.
Since the move, in May 2016, the number of electric cars has shot up from 1,300 to 6,400 – more than 5,000 cars in a year-and-a-half. In contrast, Australians bought 1,300 cars in 2016.
For now any change in Australia, according to Fletcher, is going to be “a 10- or 15-year journey”, and the review will not be formally announced until later this year. In the meantime, the future of the electric car is tied up in shifting projections and promises. Weatherill, Australia’s most vocal pro-renewable premier, is certainly trying to seize the opportunity in Elizabeth.
“He has ambitions,” he said of Gupta. “We’re assisting him in that endeavour ... We’re prepared to get in behind it.”

Links

• British billionaire eyes electric car plan for former Holden factory
• Queensland to build one of the world's longest electric vehicle highways
• Electric and plug-in hybrid cars whiz past 3m mark worldwide
• Time to face up to the electric car revolution
• As the UK plans to phase out petrol cars, is Australia being left behind?
• Electric cars may stall without a battery revolution
• South Australia's bank levy plan attacked as an 'outrageous cash grab'
• Josh Frydenberg escapes with dignity (mostly) intact after Jay Weatherill's Adelaide ambush
• Gas companies risk 'social licence' by failing to supply domestic market, Turnbull says
• NSW could face power shortages as temperature rises on energy policy
• South Australia says states could go it alone after Turnbull rules out carbon tax

Wind Farms Power Big Surge In Renewable Energy Jobs

Fairfax - Cole Latimer

A boom in wind farms is fuelling a jobs surge in the renewable energy industry with 17 per cent employment growth in the sector in December.
Nationwide, there are now 15,691 renewable energy jobs, rising to 21,168 when including those in small-scale rooftop solar installation. This is a 17 per cent month on month increase from November job figures.

Keppel Prince Engineering in Portland specialises in industrial fabrication and the manufacture of wind turbine towers for the renewable energy sector.  Photo: Jessica Shapiro

The boom in wind farms accounts for 71 per cent of all renewable energy jobs. There are now 79 wind farms operating in the country and at least another six due to be built this year.
“While many Australians proudly think of the Snowy Hydro Electric Scheme as a great construction and power engineering achievement, its power generation is now dwarfed by wind power,” research firm Green Energy Markets said.
“The wind farms under construction at present will produce twice as much power per annum as the Snowy Hydro scheme. When combined with wind farms already in operation, wind will supply five times more electricity per annum than that of the Snowy scheme.”

The new wind and large-scale solar projects committed to in 2017 will generate more than 10 terawatts hours of energy, equivalent to the entire power consumption of Tasmania. The largest will be the Murra Warra wind farm near Horsham in Victoria. In December, Telstra, ANZ, Coca-Cola Amatil and The University of Melbourne signed up to pre-purchase the energy generated from what will be the largest wind farm in the southern hemisphere.
There were 4417 megawatts of renewable energy projects under construction in December, up 500 megawatts from November, lifting both construction and operational jobs.
The rapid growth is helping Australia hit its Renewable Energy Target, and increase the level of green energy in the nation's power mix.
Queensland is leading the way in renewable jobs and projects, following by Victoria, which recently displaced New South Wales for second place.
“We’ve got Victoria building our biggest wind farm, Queensland doubling its renewable jobs in just four months, and South Australia reaping the benefits of the world’s biggest battery,” GetUp environmental justice campaigner director Miriam Lyons said.
“Our electricity grid is in the midst of a transformation, and NSW needs to make sure it’s taking full advantage of the renewables boom that is creating meaningful work for thousands of people,” she said.
The growth in jobs has been supported by a record year in clean energy investment, as companies enter power purchase agreements totalling a record 5.4 gigawatts.
In 2017, financing and investment for renewable generation projects rose to almost $US7 billion ($8.75 billion).
The Clean Energy Finance Corporation has played a major role in supporting these renewable energy investments, funding more projects in 2017 than in its last three years combined.
According to Green Energy Markets data, “if Australia kept up the 2017 levels of commitments for a further 10 years, renewable energy would approach two-thirds of Australia’s electricity supply.”
Renewable energy now accounts for 16.3 per cent of Australia’s total annual generation, with 1150 gigawatt hours from wind; 953 gigawatt hours from small-scale rooftop solar; 779 gigawatt hours from hydro; 174 gigawatt hours from bio-generation, and 69 gigawatt hours from large-scale solar farms, creating enough renewable energy to power 6.9 million homes nationwide, and cutting emissions levels by approximately 2.1 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent.

Links

• Who needs Snowy 2.0? Australia to hit RET early after record investment
• CEFC triples investment in renewable projects to $2bn
• Energy operator's 'fast change' scenario to slash emissions
• Cheap green energy spurs record investment
• One area where the banks are getting it right: curbing coal
• 'There's nowhere to hide': companies warned on climate risks
• UN environment head warns against new coal projects
• Einstein of the solar world
• The five renewable energy predictions for 2018

Climate Change: The Heat Is On All Of Us

The Weekly Times - Steven Hobbs*

Looking for leader: Support is needed on climate, energy and agriculture policy.

LIKE many in the bush, my family keeps a close eye on rainfall.
There are detailed records for our part of the Mallee dating to the 1880s, and I have kept them since the 1980s.
We have watched as decade aver­ages have dropped and high temperature records topple.
Of course, some years were better for rainfall than others, but overall the trend only travels in one direction: down.
What I see on my farm tallies with what scientists around the world are saying: the climate is changing — and fast.
From federation to today Australia as a whole has warmed by more than 1C.
Does 1C matter? Well yes, a hell of a lot.
According to US weather agencies, 2017 was one of the hottest years on record for the globe. Our own Bureau of Meteorology tells us 2017 was Australia’s third warmest since 1900.
Here in Victoria, March was ­declared the hottest such month on record, and November the second-hottest. June, meanwhile, was ­declared the driest with rainfall well below average for much of eastern Australia.
We are getting 30 per cent less rain on our property since the 1990s. On average that is 125mm less rain a year, of which 100mm is from the crucial growing season.
While some politicians are still ­debating what to do about climate change, from the air-conditioned comfort of Parliament House, farmers like me are working out what else we can do to manage more extreme conditions.
Just before Christmas the bureau warned of “Port Douglas humidity” across Victoria as torrential rainstorms bore down on us.
Many farmers worked all hours to get their crops in, forgoing sleep and upping their risk of injury.
Climate change affects all aspects of our lives.
This is not a cycle. This is not just natural variability.
You can choose to ignore climate change, but it is not going anywhere.
Like a bank mortgage, there is a price to be paid. If you pay it early you pay less — if you put it off, the interest only accumulates.
Plenty of us are adapting to the new reality in our own way. Some farmers are investing in new practices and technologies. Others are sowing new crop varieties, or finding innovative, new ways of conserving water and soil.
But there is only so much we can do as individuals. We need leadership and bipartisan support on climate, ­energy and agriculture policy. Farmers and industry alike need confidence to invest in technology and infrastructure and we need leaders who are clued up on science and ­debating the best way to deal with the situation.
If we do not, then in the long run we will see more people move off the land. Since I started farming (in the 1980s) I’ve experienced more droughts than my father did in his time on the land. They are now once every three years, rather than one in 10. The past is no longer an indicator of what the future holds for farming — it is time we started looking ahead.

*Steven Hobbs is a fourth-generation sheep and prime lamb producer at Kaniva

Links

• Region's farmers: 'Climate change is real and happening now'
• Australian farmers are adapting to climate change
• Farmers For Climate Action
• Climate change - issues for farmers
• Climate change and agriculture
• Feeding a hungry nation: climate change, food and farming in Australia