US And Russia Ally With Saudi Arabia To Water Down Climate Pledge

The Guardian - Jonathan Watts | Ben Doherty

Move shocks delegates at UN conference as ministers fly in for final week of climate talks

Protesters on Sunday in Katowice, which is hosting the UN climate conference.

Photograph: Sadak Souici/Le Pictorium/Barcroft Images

The US and Russia have thrown climate talks into disarray by allying with Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to water down approval of a landmark report on the need to keep global warming below 1.5C.
After a heated two-and-a-half-hour debate on Saturday night, the backwards step by the four major oil producers shocked delegates at the UN climate conference in Katowice as ministers flew in for the final week of high-level discussions.
It has also raised fears among scientists that the US president, Donald Trump, is going from passively withdrawing from climate talks to actively undermining them alongside a coalition of climate deniers.
Two months ago, representatives from the world’s governments hugged after agreeing on the 1.5C report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), commissioned to spell out the dire consequences should that level of warming be exceeded and how it can be avoided.
Reaching a global consensus was a painstaking process involving thousands of scientists sifting through years of research and diplomats working through the night to ensure the wording was acceptable to all nations.

But when it was submitted to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change on Saturday, the four oil allies – with Saudi Arabia as the most obdurate – rejected a motion to “welcome” the study. Instead, they said it should merely be “noted”, which would make it much easier for governments to ignore. The motion has not yet been able to pass as a result of the lack of consensus.
It opened up a rift at the talks that will be hard to close in the coming five days. During the plenary, the EU, a bloc of the 47 least developed countries, as well as African and Latin and South American nations, all spoke in favour of the report. Several denounced the four countries trying to dilute its importance.
Rueanna Haynes, a delegate for St Kitts and Nevis, told the plenary it was “ludicrous” not to welcome a report that UN member nations had commissioned two years earlier and to hold up crucial talks over two words.
“It’s very frustrating that we are not able to take into account the report’s findings: we are talking about the future of the world – it sounds like hyperbole when I say it, but that’s how serious it is,” she told the Guardian. “I would say that this issue has to be resolved. This is going to drag out and the success of the COP is going to hang on this as well as other issues.”
Scientists were also outraged. “It is troubling. Saudi Arabia has always had bad behaviour in climate talks, but it could be overruled when it was alone or just with Kuwait. That it has now been joined by the US and Russia is much more dangerous,” said Alden Meyer, the director of strategy and policy in the Union of Concerned Scientists.
He said the shift in the US position would be embarrassing for the country if it persisted. “Donald Trump is the denier-in-chief. He takes a personal interest in dissing scientists,” said Meyer. “But the science won’t go away. The law of thermodynamics can’t be ignored.”
Climate campaigners said the four blocking governments had been overrun by fossil-fuel interests and were trying to sideline the study.
May Boeve, the executive director of the activist group 350.org, said: “Deliberately ignoring the IPCC report would be wholly irresponsible and 350.org stands with the rest of world in condemning these climate deniers … and the vested fossil fuel interests behind them.”
Ministers have only five days to establish a rulebook for the Paris agreement. A wild card is the role of the host nation, Poland – the most coal-dependant nation in Europe – which will chair the final week of the meeting.
“The big challenge now is for the Polish presidency to set aside its obsession with coal, get out of the way and allow full acknowledgement of the IPCC 1.5C report, and its implications for increasing the ambition of all countries, in the conclusion of COP24 later this week,” said Bill Hare, the managing director of Climate Analytics.
As well as acceptance of the report, there are several other potential fights brewing regarding transparency rules for reporting emissions and proposals for wealthy high emitters to provide financial support to poorer nations struggling to adapt.

Links

• Trump on own administration's climate report: 'I don't believe it'
• G20 nations still led by fossil fuel industry, climate report finds
• The 'climate diaspora' trying to save the Paris agreement from Trump
• The Guardian view on climate change: too much, too soon
• Climate change made UK heatwave 30 times more likely – Met Office
• 'Brutal news': global carbon emissions jump to all-time high in 2018
• Beef-eating 'must fall drastically' as world population grows
• 'Our leaders are like children,' school strike founder tells climate summit
• David Attenborough: collapse of civilisation is on the horizon
• World Bank to invest $200bn to combat climate change
• 'We are last generation that can stop climate change' – UN summit 

First-Ever Everest Drill: World’s Highest Glacier More Sensitive To Climate Change Than Expected

OnlineKhabar - Abhaya Raj Joshi 

Scientists who recently completed the first-ever expedition to drill the world’s highest glacier have bad news ahead of the UN climate change Conference of Parties meeting in Poland. Glaciers on the Himalayas, the main source of rivers that sustain billions of people in Asia, may be more sensitve to tempereture rise than expected.
Though a lot of studies have been carried out on the surface of the Khumbu, whose ice is sourced in the Western Cwm of Mount Everest, and other glaciers in the region, nothing was known about what was going on inside ‘the highest glacier in the world’, said Katie Miles, the lead author of a recent paper that described the work carried out by members of the EverDrill Project between 2017 and 2018.

The group spent two seasons (six to eight weeks each) drilling 27 boreholes using a jet of hot, pressurised water to cut into the ice–the longest hole was 192m deep. Photo: Katie Miles

 The group spent two seasons (six to eight weeks each) drilling 27 boreholes using a jet of hot, pressurised water to cut into the ice–the longest hole was 192m deep.
“These boreholes are the deepest, and most spatially extensive achieved to date in the Himalaya using hot-water drilling,” says Miles.
Its internal structure was then documented using a 360-degree camera.

The Khumbu Glacier (Wikicommons)

 Once the boreholes were drilled, the team measured ice temperatures by installing strings of pre-built thermistor sensors linked to data-loggers located at the surface.
The set of equipment was left onsite for six months and collected in November 2017.

Warm ice raises concern

Illustrative long profile of Khumbu Glacier showing the ice temperature values recorded by each thermistor within the three boreholes. From: Nature

 The researchers found that the ice inside the Khumbu glacier recorded a minimum temperature of only −3.3 °C, with even the coldest ice being a full 2 °C warmer than the mean annual air temperature. The temperature recorded suggests that ice inside the glacier may be ‘warm.’
According to Miles, ‘cold’ ice, found in the poles, records below-the-melting-point temperature (around -15 15°C), and it does not melt when the temperature increases slightly–they just become less cold (say around –14°C). But in the case of ‘warm ice'(say around -3°C) found inside the Khumbu glacier, when the temperature increases by 1°C, the ice reaches a temperature of -2°C–perilously close to its melting point.
“It has been shown that air temperature increases are amplified at high elevations, and this study also suggests the same,” says Miles. She says that there is evidence that a global temperature rise of 1.5°C has been predicted to result in a 2.1°C warming across High Mountain Asia. “In the context of the study, such a rise would mean a significant loss of ice mass across the region,” she says.

Miles suggests that if other glaciers in the Himalayas are also experiencing a similar phenomenon, they could be losing mass at a rapid rate. Photo: Katie Miles

Miles suggests that if other glaciers in the Himalayas are also experiencing a similar phenomenon, they could be losing mass at a rapid rate. “If that is happening, then the volume of meltwater will increase until the glaciers lose its mass,” she says. This might result in an increased flow of water downstream. But later on, it may dry up once the ‘peak water’ mark is reached. This will have huge effects on Nepal, a country that is so relient on hydropower.
Miles, however, cautions that the what is happening in Khumbu may not be representative of all glaciers in the Himalayas. Khumbu and many other Himalayan glaciers are covered with debris, which act as a blanket over the glacier. This debris insulates the glacier from warmer air temperatures, reducing melt rates. But the debris gets thinner on glaciers located on higher altitudes.
“These ice temperatures will now be fed into an ice flow model to better predict how the Khumbu glacier will respond to projected climate warming in the future,” she says.
Meanwhile, the Nepali delegation heading to Poland says it will raise the issue of melting glaciers with utmost priority at COP 24. National Climate Change focal person and Joint Secretary Maheshwor Dhakal says, “Melting glaciers will have devastating effects on people living downstream. We will raise the issue with utmost priority at COP.”

This story is part of Onlinekhabar’s coverage on climate change under the 2018 Climate Change Media Partnership, a collaboration between Internews’ Earth Journalism Network and the Stanley Foundation.

Links

• Melting glaciers around Mount Everest may be forming killer lakes
• Climate Change Is Melting Everest
• Warm ice in Mount Everest’s glaciers makes them more sensitive to climate change – new research
• Scientists Have Discovered 'Warm' Ice in The World's Highest Glacier
• Climate change, crowding imperil iconic route to top of Mount Everest
• Going, Going ... Glacier National Park's Iconic Glaciers Are Melting Away

Warm Ice In Mount Everest’s Glaciers Makes Them More Sensitive To Climate Change – New Research

The Conversation - Katie Miles

Katie Miles, Author provided

Often when the topic of glaciers and climate change is discussed, focus shifts to those in Greenland and Antarctica. But there are glaciers elsewhere too, such as in the Himalayas, which play a vital part in supplying water to people who live downstream. Now, our research has found that these glaciers may react more sensitively to predicted future climate change than previously thought, which could lead to them melting at a faster rate.
In 2017 and 2018, our EverDrill research team travelled to Nepal, to measure ice temperatures (using a converted pressure washer) on the Khumbu Glacier. Khumbu, whose ice is sourced in the Western Cwm of Mount Everest, flows down the flanks of the mountain from around 7,000 to 4,900 metres above sea level. Along with many other glaciers in the Everest region and across High Mountain Asia, the meltwater from Khumbu contributes to the water resources of huge populations in the mountain foothills.
We spent two field seasons (six to eight weeks each) drilling boreholes using a jet of hot, pressurised water to incise into the ice. In total we drilled 27 boreholes, ranging between 1-192m deep, across five sites. These boreholes are the first, deepest, and most spatially extensive achieved to date in the Himalaya using hot-water drilling.
Once the boreholes were drilled, we measured ice temperatures by installing strings of pre-built thermistor sensors linked to data-loggers located at the surface. We left them for six months and collected the data on a return trip in November 2017.

Katie Miles starts to drill a borehole into Khumbu Glacier in May 2018. Katie Miles, Author provided

The main finding from this research was that the ice was warmer than we expected, with the coldest ice measuring –3.3°C. As the ice is formed on the flanks of Mount Everest, where the mean annual air temperature is –13°C at 7,000 metres elevation, we might have expected the ice to be at this temperature. Our borehole data reveal that this was not the case. Not only was the ice not this cold in our boreholes, but ice temperatures also increased towards the glacier terminus.

Cold and warm ice
Why does it matter that we found warmer ice temperatures than we expected? Glaciologists acknowledge two thermal types of ice: “Cold” ice and “warm” ice. Cold ice is below the melting-point temperature, so when additional heat is applied (from the sun or warmer air temperatures), the ice simply becomes less cold (going from –15°C to –14°C, for example). Warm ice, alternatively, is at the melting-point temperature, so any heat input melts the ice to become water.
In short, this means that Khumbu will respond more sensitively to any future additional heat inputs, such as warming air temperatures. It has been shown that air temperature increases are amplified at high elevations. For example, a global temperature rise of +1.5°C has been predicted to result in a +2.1°C warming across High Mountain Asia and a significant loss of ice mass across the region. As these glaciers melt and recede, their contribution to water resources will initially increase. However, as the volume of ice mass remaining decreases, this contribution will steadily decline. While the timescale over which this might occur is unknown, predictions suggest that “peak water” may be reached as soon as the middle of this century. Our finding of warm ice within Khumbu supports the predicted sensitivity of such glaciers to warming air temperatures.

The Everdrill research team. Katie Miles, Author provided

But it’s not all bad news for the region’s glaciers. First, we don’t know if the temperatures we measured on Khumbu are representative of all glaciers in the area. More measurements are needed on other glaciers to determine this. Second, Khumbu and many other Himalayan glaciers are debris-covered glaciers, which contain a surface layer of rocks and boulders that typically increases in thickness towards the terminus, up to several metres depth. This debris layer complicates the amount of ice surface melt that is produced: where the layer is thick, it acts like a blanket and insulates the glacier from warmer air temperatures, reducing melt rates.
However, this insulation of the lower glacier also results in the location of maximum melt shifting further up the glacier, to where the debris cover is thinner. In this area, the glacier melts by surface lowering, which in an extreme future scenario could lead to the detachment of the lower glacier, forming a new terminus at this higher elevation. While the lower, detached ice would become stagnant, it would still be protected from instant melting by its debris blanket. The new terminus above this would not, and melt rates could increase. Yet, our deepest borehole in this area of surface lowering was 192 metres, and did not reach the bed so the ice thicknesses remains unknown – but it could be that there is plenty of ice left in Khumbu to stop this happening.
These ice temperatures will now be fed into an ice flow model to better predict how the Khumbu Glacier will respond to climate warming and contribute to river discharges in the future. Meanwhile, we are still collecting temperature data to analyse and better understand how the highest glaciers in the world will be affected by climate change.

Links

• Melting glaciers around Mount Everest may be forming killer lakes
• Climate Change Is Melting Everest
• Warm ice in Mount Everest’s glaciers makes them more sensitive to climate change – new research
• Scientists Have Discovered 'Warm' Ice in The World's Highest Glacier
• Climate change, crowding imperil iconic route to top of Mount Everest
• Going, Going ... Glacier National Park's Iconic Glaciers Are Melting Away
• What a century of climate change has done to France’s biggest glacier
• Huge crater discovered in Greenland – here’s how the impact may have wiped out the mammoths
• Why we’re drilling into the world’s highest glacier on Everest with a converted car wash
• A bird’s eye view of New Zealand’s changing glaciers

In Mount Everest Region, World's Highest Glaciers Are Melting, Receding

InsideCimate News - Kunda Dixit, Nepali Times*

In this photo essay, the editor of the Nepali Times describes the dramatic changes underway in the ice and snow of the Himalayan Mountains.


For many tourists trekking to Mount Everest Base Camp, the trip is an adventure of a lifetime. The thin clear air, stark landscape and ice-tipped peaks pierce the inky sky providing Instagram backdrops.
However, what is stunning scenery to tourists is for climate scientists an apocalyptic sight. They see dramatic evidence all around of a rapidly warming atmosphere.
Visitors returning to the Everest region after many years will notice changes in the landscape: large lakes where there were none; glacial ice replaced by ponds, boulders and sand; the snowline moving up the mountains; and glaciers that have receded and shrunk.



All these features are visible from ground level right from the start of the trek in Lukla. The banks of the Bhote Kosi, part of the river system that drains the slopes of the Himalayas in Nepal and Tibet, still bear the scars of a deadly flash flood in 1985 that washed off a long section of the Everest Trail and the hydropower plant in the village of Thame. The flood was caused by an avalanche into the Dig Tso, a glacial lake.
Further up, near the village of Tengboche, the Imja Khola bears signs of another huge glacial lake outburst flood that thundered down the western flank of Ama Dablam in 1977. And below the formidable south face of Lhotse is Imja Tso, a lake 2 kilometers long that has formed and grown in the last 30 years. It does not exist on trekking maps from the 1980s. All these lakes were formed and enlarged as a result of global warming melting the ice.

Imja Tso, a glacial lake, did not exist on trekking maps 30 years ago. Today it is 2 kilometers long and 1 kilometer wide. Credit: Kunda Dixit/Nepali Times

"When I look at the Nepal Himalaya, we can see this is global climate change impact on fast-forward," said Dipak Gyawali of the Nepali Water Conservation Foundation and the Nepal Academy of Science and Technology

Green and blue meltpools on the North Ama Dablam Glacier, where the vanishing icefall has exposed the eroded bedrock below. Credit: Kunda Dixit/Nepali Times

The Lobuje Icefall is now a hanging glacier, having retreated above the cliff. Credit: Kunda Dixit/Nepali Times

The terminal moraine of the Khumbu Glacier looms 400 meters above Dughla, a rest stop for climbers. This is the debris bulldozed down from Mount Everest and surrounding peaks over millions of years and represents the extent of the glacier's advance in the last Ice Age. Today, the surface ice on the world's highest glacier is all but gone due to natural and anthropogenic warming.

Khumbu Glacier, the world's highest glacier, has retreated as the planet has warmed. Its lower portion is largely covered by debris. Credit: NASA Landsat 8 image by Jesse Allen and Robert Simmon

For a dramatic glimpse of how global warming is changing the Himalayan landscape, there is nothing like the aerial perspective. The barren beauty foretells of a time when this terrain will be stripped of much of what remains of its ice cover.

The Khumbu Icefall carries debris and ice from the Western Cwm to the Khumbu Glacier, 1,000 meters below. Credit: Kunda Dixit/Nepali Times

The Khumbu Icefall funnels ice from the Western Cwm below Everest, Lhotse and Nuptse to the glacier below. The ice here has receded at an average of 30 meters per year in the past 20 years, but it has also shrunk vertically, losing up to 50 meters in thickness. Everest Base Camp was at 5,330 meters when Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay climbed Mount Everest in 1953; today it is at 5,270 meters.

A map shows base camp and how a key climbing route up Mount Everest changed after a deadly avalanche in 2014. Credit: Gregory Leonard, with data by Digital Globe and Mark Fahey/USGS, via NASA

The glacier is also getting flatter: the darker debris makes the ice beneath melt faster near Base Camp, but the thicker layers of boulders and sand further down insulate the ice. Glaciologists say this flatter profile means the ice moves slower, leading to more ponding and more rapid melting of the ice underneath.
The velocity of the glacier is about 70 meters per year at Base Camp, and it slows to about 10 meters per year further below. It's zero at the terminus at 4,900 meters. This means the ice is decelerating as it is squeezed, and the pressure is being released by the melting of the ice mass.

Khumbu Glacier is receding at about 30 meters per year and shrinking: Base Camp is now 50 meters lower than when Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay climbed Mount Everest in 1953. Credit: Kunda Dixit/Nepali Times

Researchers monitoring the supraglacial ponds say their area has grown by 70 percent in the past 10 years alone. The ponds are fringed by ice cliffs and caves that accelerate the melting. The melted ice has carved an outflow channel through the left lateral moraine, so there is no large glacial lake on the Khumbu like elsewhere in Nepal.
Scientists conclude that the Khumbu Glacier is not about to vanish, and the Icefall is not going to turn into a waterfall any time soon. However, the permanent ice catchment of the glacier above 6,000 meters could start to deplete under a worst-case scenario of 5 degrees Celsius warming.

*This photo essay was shot and written by Kunda Dixit, editor and publisher of the Nepali Times, and first appeared in that publication. 

Links

• Melting glaciers around Mount Everest may be forming killer lakes
• Climate Change Is Melting Everest
• Warm ice in Mount Everest’s glaciers makes them more sensitive to climate change – new research
• Scientists Have Discovered 'Warm' Ice in The World's Highest Glacier
• Climate change, crowding imperil iconic route to top of Mount Everest
• Going, Going ... Glacier National Park's Iconic Glaciers Are Melting Away

We Are Not All Doomed. Not Yet

The Guardian - Ammar Kalia

This week’s Upside digest looks at the ways to tackle climate change and rediscover our natural spaces

Lost country ... Ramblers mapping old pathways in England. Photograph: Martin Godwin for the Guardian 

As the world’s leaders converged on Katowice, Poland, for this year’s UN climate change conference, the mood was sombre. How could it be anything other, when in the opening keynote one of the world’s foremost naturalists said we were all pretty much doomed?
While the numbers do not make for happy reading, there are plenty of people trying to do something about them. Our reporter Leyland Cecco writes this week from the Canadian west, where the province of British Columbia has come up with an innovative response to the global carbon splurge.

The Trans Canada Highway in British Columbia. Photograph: Bert Klassen/Alamy 

Luxembourg, meanwhile, has come up with a different idea for tackling greenhouse gas emissions (and city tailbacks), following an example set two years ago by Tallinn, as our Europe correspondent Daniel Boffey found out.
Pioneering startups are playing their part in using technology to combat environmental degradation. In France, Morphosis aims to reduce e-waste – discarded old electronics – by making sure their rare metals are recycled and reused. In Cameroon, Save Our Agriculture improves food security through aquaponics, a farming method where fish nourish the plants that in turn filter their water.
And in the UK, a small army of ramblers is determined to push back against human incursions into the countryside by rediscovering long-lost footpaths buried under decades of manmade eyesores.
Just what we need: new ways to get lost.

What we liked
In Greece, marine divers are volunteering to clear the surrounding oceans from plastic litter. With the longest coastline in the EU, they are slowly but surely reclaiming their natural habitat, NPR reports.
The charity Beam is trying to get the UK’s homeless population back into employment through crowdfunding. Candidates are referred by homelessness charities, and Beam then mentors each one to develop a career plan, which the public can fund via their website, receiving updates on their training and progress.
Finally, a US-based startup, Ecovative, is harnessing the power of the humble mushroom to create natural, biodegradable packaging and materials for potential use in industry.

What we heard

"Carbon taxes are really the only way forward; it’s simple economics,” one reader commenting on our carbon tax story. 

"I love the public footpaths in Britain and I used to love the public rights of way in London, but those have almost all disappeared,” one reader says about our lost footpaths.

Links

• How to make a carbon tax popular? Give the proceeds to the people
• Luxembourg to become first country to make all public transport free
• The Tallinn experiment: what happens when a city makes public transport free?
• E-waste, a gold mine of opportunities
• Save Our Agriculture
• The Mycelium Biofabrication Platform

Why 2019 Could Be The Warmest Yet

NEWS.com.au - Stephanie Bedo

Extreme weather and warming temperatures are putting us on track to face the hottest year in human history.

Heatwaves - Natures Silent Killer

Heatwaves, tropical cyclones, a high fire risk and what scientists are warning to be the hottest year in human history.
This is what Australia is in for in the new year — and it looks like the severe weather system that will cause all of that is already taking hold now.
The Climate Prediction Centre in the US says there is an 80 per cent chance a full-fledged El Nino has already started.
But while the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) has us on “alert” for El Nino, it says the system that brings with it hot temperatures hasn’t formed just yet.
As a result of global warming, weather experts are predicting 2019 could be the hottest year ever as temperatures continue to climb.
The 20 warmest years have all been in the past 22 years, according to the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), with the top four in the past four years.
It’s recent “State of the Global Climate” report warns if El Nino develops, 2019 is likely to be warmer than 2018.
Across the world 1600 people died from heatwaves this year.
And no one under the age of 32 has ever experienced a cooler-than-average month.
“Every fraction of a degree of warming makes a difference to human health and access to food and fresh water, to the extinction of animals and plants, to the survival of coral reefs and marine life,’’ WMO deputy secretary-general Elena Manaenkova said.
BOM’s latest “El Nino — Southern Oscillation” report has said we don’t have an El Nino yet.

Australia is on El Nino alert.
Picture: BOM

2019 could be the hottest year yet.
Picture: John Grainger Source: News Corp Australia

“Trade winds weakened in the last fortnight, leading to further warming in the tropical Pacific Ocean, but collectively, the atmosphere has yet to show a consistent El Nino signal,” it said.
“This suggests that the tropical Pacific atmosphere and ocean have yet to couple (reinforce each other), a process that would sustain an El Nino, and result in widespread global impacts.
“El Nino effects in Australia over summer typically include higher fire risk, greater chance of heatwaves and fewer tropical cyclones.”
A recent report on El Nino’s impacts on temperature, rain and fire in a warming climate suggests these will get worse as the climate continues to get warmer.
There have been 27 El Nino events since 1900, with seven of Australia’s 10 driest years on record during one of those events.
Events can last for as little as six months or as long as two years, occurring every three to five years.
A recent report in the Medical Journal of Australia highlighted how the climate was threatening Australian lives, with heat stress alone costing $616 per employed person per year.
“The first 10 months of 2018 could be described as the world’s climate on steroids, wreaking havoc across the world, continuing the relentless march of setting new temperature extremes, rainfall records, increases in severe tropical cyclones, droughts, fires and sea level rise,” report co-author Dr Liz Hanna said.
“Climate change can be linked to the deepening consequences, the rising human toll, loss of human lives and livelihoods, and further erosion of our children’s future.
“Australia’s climate mayhem, which saw last summer’s extreme heat and drought conditions across NSW and QLD, or the current wild weather stretching form Cairns down to the NSW mid coast, are not isolated events. This pattern is occurring all over the globe. No one can continue to pretend this is ‘normal variability’.”

Links

• 2018 Among Hottest And Driest Years So Far In Parts Of Australia
• Great Barrier Reef Likely To Be Hit With Another Mass Bleaching This Summer, Forecast Shows
• Australia's Summer Outlook: Soaring Temperatures And Bushfire Risk
• 2018 Among Hottest And Driest Years So Far In Parts Of Australia
• Redrawing The Map: How The World’s Climate Zones Are Shifting
• How Deadly Is 50-Degree Heat? Australia's Cities Face The New Reality Of Climate
• How Extreme Weather Is Shrinking The Planet

Morrison's Big Stick On Energy Defies What A True Liberal Believes In

Fairfax - John Hewson*

A fundamental element of the collapse in the electoral standing of the Liberal Party, perhaps even more important than the disunity, disloyalty, and factionalism, certainly of greater longer-term significance, is how it has completely lost sight of what a Liberal stands for, what a Liberal believes in.
It is fashionable, of course, in Liberal circles, to attempt to draw some “authenticity” by reference to Menzies. Let me suggest that Menzies would be turning in his grave with the policy drift of the current lot of politicians presenting under the Liberal banner.

An abuse of power ... and an anti-Liberal intervention in the market. Credit: James Davies

Liberals have traditionally believed in small government, low regulation, and reliance on markets and market processes. It is therefore most concerning that these defining beliefs have been so easily jettisoned, as a short-term political expedient, in what is just the last manifestation, but just one of many, of what they claim as an “energy policy”.

The “true” Liberal response to the climate challenge would and should be – and has been on a couple of previous, but opportunistic, occasions, under the likes of Howard and Turnbull – to put a price on carbon via a “pure” emissions-trading scheme. This would be the most cost-effective response by charging, in simple terms, polluters for their pollution.
It is a particular, and indefensible, inequity in our present system to see those who pollute our rivers, or dump asbestos on a vacant lot, and so on, charged, fined, even jailed, for such activities, yet a coal-fired power plant can pump alarming quantities of CO2 into our atmosphere and be “protected” in doing so.

The two key elements of the Morrison government’s so-called energy policy are very anti-Liberal, indeed, socialist – leaning on, bullying, intimidating, otherwise attempting to regulate power prices, and the “Big Stick” of threatening forced divestiture of some of the assets of the “gentailers” (principally AGL, Energy Australia and Origin) if they “fail to comply”.
In the minds of some in the government, a parallel is being drawn between the activities and abuses of the Big Three power companies and the Big Four banks, not just in terms of their electoral unpopularity, but also particularly in the sense of their exercise of oligopolistic market power, and abuses of their “social licences”.
However, this may work in crude, point-scoring, electoral terms, but it is probably unwise to exaggerate, as more detailed analysis of their actual relative price-fixing activities and profitability (against assets and equity) may suggest some caution.

Morrison’s short-term difficulty, having sold Energy Minister Angus Taylor as “minister for getting electricity prices down”, is that, even at their “toughest”, they are unlikely to have much discernible impact on power bills by the time of the next election. But they will have sold out on their traditional beliefs and standing to do so.
The concept of forced “divestiture” not only burns their credibility as traditional Liberals, but would represent a significant and, to most, an indefensible abuse of executive government power.This issue has been floated before and formally assessed by parliamentary committees considering the Misuse of Market Power Bill in 2014, by the Harper Review of Competition Policy, the Australian  Competition and Consumer Commission, the Law Council, and others – and generally rejected.

The parliamentary committee referred to “disadvantages outweighing potential advantages”, risking “significant disruption and economic damage, with unpredictable consequences for competition”.

The Harper Review, building on the earlier Hilmer and Dawson reviews, expressed concern about the likely impact on the efficiency of the businesses and potential harm to consumers. More recently, Harper has criticised the “hasty” introduction of the divestiture power in relation to the energy sector, "arguing that the aim of market intervention should be to block anti-competitive conduct, not to restructure the industry”.
The ACCC described it as “an extreme measure”, preferring other “means to restore competition to a level which serves consumers well”. The Law Council has described it a “truly draconian”, carrying a “serious risk that it will create several less efficient businesses”. Lawyers Ashurst have described it as “an extraordinary and invasive power”.

Overseas evidence suggests that such a power has only ever been used sparingly in the US, and not yet in the EU and Canada, even though the power exists.

All this would lead you to conclude that this latest manifestation of an “energy policy” by a Liberal-controlled government, dumping virtually all that it once believed in, and advocated for, and adopting all that it once abhorred, has been simply proffered out of political desperation, risking very serious potential consequences for the power sector, that is of such fundamental significance to our broader industrial base and to households.
All this also seems so inconsistent with Morrison’s recent speech dubbed his “Sermon on the Murray”, apparently built in the Menzies tradition. Has he really lost all sense of what it means to be a Liberal? Or will he say or do anything, including jettisoning all previous beliefs, just to win?

Voters will probably ensure that he forfeits his right to govern.

*John Hewson is a professor at the Crawford School of Public Policy, ANU, and a former federal Liberal leader.

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