Australia Can Address Climate Change By Changing Its Farming Practices And Dietary Habits

NEWS.com.au - Charis Chang

A new report has highlighted the changes taking place in Australia and what we’re facing if we don’t act.

Climate change: 'Once Australia hits this point, there is no going back'

People’s eating habits are making them unhealthy as well as contributing to global warming that will eventually drive up the price of food.

The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) shows how much people’s diets are contributing to climate change and how changing these could make them healthier as well as address global warming.
The special report on climate change and the land released on Thursday, noted the mean land surface air temperature increased by 1.53C between 1850/1900 and 2006/15, which is double the global mean surface temperature of 0.87C.
The Paris Climate Agreement aims to cap global warming at “well below” 2C above pre-industrial levels. The year 2018 was about 1C above it.
“This is a perfect storm. Limited land, an expanding human population, and all wrapped in a suffocating blanket of climate emergency,” said Dave Reay, Professor of Carbon Management at the University of Edinburgh.
The report also held a warning for Australia.
It found rising land surface air temperature, less rainfall and the evaporation of water into the atmosphere was contributing to desertification, where fertile land transforms into unproductive desert lands.
This is already happening in Australia as well as parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, and parts of East and Central Asia.
The IPCC is the world’s leading authority on climate change. Last year it warned that limiting global warming to 1.5C — the optimal level aimed for in the Paris climate deal — would be impossible without a drastic drawdown in greenhouse gas emissions.
IPCC vice chair Professor Mark Howden of the Australian National University said Australia was already feeling the impacts of climate change, especially in summer, with repeated heatwaves recently.
“Climate change is already impacting our land systems, our agriculture, forests and biodiversity,” he told news.com.au. “Those impacts will increase significantly in the future.”

About 29 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions globally come from the food system but changing this could make people healthier and better off.
“The good news from this report is that we don’t have to make a choice between feeding ourselves and living in harmony with nature — solutions that ensure food security are also good for nature, the climate and communities,” Australian Conservation Foundation president Mara Bún said.
But food security is at risk if the world doesn’t act quickly to tackle climate change.
“This report shows climate change is creating additional stresses on our land, increasing the risks to affected communities and industries of extreme weather events, erosion and fire damage,” ACF board member Garry Gale said.
Mr Gale said Australian search was pointing to promising solutions but these would only be commercially viable if governments invested in them, and banks and insurers also backed the projects.
Australia's action on climate change so far has been blocked by partisan political challenges and Prof Howden said the country was missing out on opportunities.
“Other countries who are more proactive on climate change are actually making good money out of it,” he said. “Whether that is Denmark with its wind turbines or China with its solar panels. There are significant opportunities to being ahead of the curve … at the moment we haven’t got an eye on the ball at all and I think that’s a huge opportunity that’s being missed.”
However, if Australia can change the way it manages land, along with changing how people eat and reduce food waste, this could help reduce climate change as well as benefit Australians financially and physically.

Changing Our Diets
The way that we eat has changed a lot since 1961 and it’s not agreeing with us.
Since 1961 the supply of vegetable oils and meat per person has more than doubled and the supply of food calories has increased by about 30 per cent.
On top of this, about 25-30 per cent of the food produced is lost or wasted.
Not only have these factors contributed to extra greenhouse gas emissions, two billion adults are also now overweight or obese, while an estimated 821 million people are undernourished.
As climate change gets worse it could make people unhealthier because higher carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere lower the nutritional quality of crops.
Economic models are also predicting food prices could rise due to climate change, with cereal prices projected to increase by about 7.6 per cent in 2050.
The IPCC report suggested encouraging people to eat a more balanced diet could reduce pressure on the land and improve people’s nutrition, providing significant health benefits.
Dietary changes would involve eating more plant-based foods, including coarse grains, legumes, fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds, as well as animal products produced in sustainable and low emissions systems.
“Some dietary choices require more land and water, and cause more emissions of heat-trapping gases than others,” IPCC Working Group II co-chair Debra Roberts said.
By 2050, changing dietary habits could free up several million square kilometres of land and potentially reduce emissions by up to eight billion tonnes of equivalent carbon dioxide a year.

Eating less meat and more vegetables will make you healthier and help the environment. Photo supplied

 

Swap the steak for some plant-based tacos instead. Picture: Gracias Madre

Food Waste
Another shocking fact is the sheer amount of food we are wasting.
Currently about 25-30 per cent of the food produced is being lost or wasted.
The waste is so high that it contributed to 8-10 per cent of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions between 2010 and 2016.
The reasons for food waste vary between developed and developing countries as well as between regions.
But there are options to improve harvesting techniques, on-farm storage, infrastructure, transport, packaging and retail industries. Better education can also reduce food loss.
By 2050, reduced food loss and waste could free up several million square kilometres of land.

Bioenergy
The use of bioenergy, such as fuels like ethanol made from plants and other organic sources, will likely play a part in keeping global warming to 1.5C.
The report suggested most pathways to keeping warming to 1.5C include substantial use of bioenergy technologies.
The scale of this industry is staggering.
Up to seven million square kilometres of land could be for bioenergy by 2050, which is equivalent to the size of Australia.
While there are other options that don’t involve using as much bioenergy or other carbon dioxide removal options, these pathways rely on faster changes to energy, land, urban systems and infrastructure, as well as behavioural and lifestyle changes to limit warming to 1.5C.
However, the report also noted the production and use of biomass for bioenergy can have adverse side effects, and risks for land degradation, food insecurity, greenhouse gas emissions. This will depend on factors like the initial land use and the climate of the region.

Bioenergy involves growing crops to make fuels like ethanol. Source: News Limited

Changing How We Farm
In many ways farmers have the most to lose from climate change.
As global warming gets worse, it can exacerbate land degradation through increases in rainfall intensity, flooding, drought frequency and severity, heat stress, dry spells, wind, sea-level rise and wave action and permafrost thaw.
Urban expansion is also projected to see more forests converted to cropland but this could actually worsen climate change and losses in food production.
Changing farming practices can make land more productive as well as reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
The report suggests many technologies and practices are profitable within three to 10 years.
The cost of introducing new practices can range from about $US20 ($29.50) per hectare to $US5000 ($7383) per hectare. The median cost is estimated about $US500 ($738) a hectare.
Despite the cost, introducing these changes can improve crop yields and the economic value of pasture.
Practices for cropland can include increasing soil organic matter, erosion control, improved fertiliser management, improved crop management, for example, paddy rice management, and use of varieties and genetic improvements for heat and drought tolerance.
For livestock, options include better grazing land management, improved manure management, higher-quality feed, and use of breeds and genetic improvement.

Changing how we farm can reduce global warming. Picture: Zoe Phillips

Growing Our Sinks
Restoring forests do not store carbon indefinitely as they are susceptible to fire or logging but maintaining peatlands can continue to sequester carbon for centuries provided they are not disturbed by things like flood, drought, fire, pest outbreaks or poor management.
Climate change exacerbates land degradation, particularly in low-lying coastal areas, river deltas, drylands and in permafrost areas.
From 1961 to 2013, the annual area of drylands in drought has increased, on average by slightly more than 1 per cent a year.
In 2015, about 500 million people lived in areas that experienced desertification between the 1980s and 2000s.
The highest numbers of people impacted were in South and East Asia, the Sahara region including North Africa, and the Middle East including the Arabian peninsula.

We Must Act Now
Acting now may avert or reduce risks and losses, and generate benefits to society.
It could reduce the risk to millions of people from climate extremes, desertification, land degradation and food and livelihood insecurity.
But if action is delayed, some options such as increasing organic carbon (like compost) in the soil may not be as effective because soils have less capacity to act as sinks for carbon storage when temperatures are higher.
It may also lead to irreversible loss in ecosystem functions and services required for food and other production, leading to increasingly significant economic impacts.
“Delaying action as is assumed in high emissions scenarios could result in some irreversible impacts on some ecosystems, which in the longer-term has the potential to lead to substantial additional greenhouse gas emissions from ecosystems that would accelerate global warming,” the report said.

Links

• Eat less meat to save the Earth, urges UN
• Eat less meat: UN climate change report calls for change to human diet
• Report: Adapt plant-based diets and 'look after the land' to tackle climate change
• Climate Change and Land — IPCC
• Land is a Critical Resource, IPCC report says
• The Future Of Farming In The Era Of Climate Change
• Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Report: Climate Change and Land
• Climate crisis reducing land’s ability to sustain humanity, says IPCC
• How climate’s impact on land threatens civilisation – and how to fix it
• Commonwealth Bank Warns Climate Change Could Slash Farm Productivity
• Action Now’: The Farmers Standing Up Against ‘Wilful Ignorance’ On Climate
• This Is A $15 Trillion Opportunity For Farmers To Fight Climate Change
• Act Now On Emissions Says Farmers For Climate Action
• Greta Thunberg: World leaders must prove they've listened to climate activists

How Will Hospitals Cope With Climate Change's Impact On Our Health?

Brisbane Times - Marianne Cannon

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Dr Marianne Cannon

Dr Marianne Cannon is an emergency physician based in Brisbane. She argues that more needs to be done to combat the health effects of climate change.

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Blue skies, rolling surf, red earth, blazing sun. These are the images people bring to mind when they think of Australia.
But it is the latter, the endless days of hot sunshine that are harming us, both young and old, in increasing numbers.
During heatwaves many older people become dehydrated and end up in the hospital. Some of them die.
 It’s a fate all too familiar to emergency physicians in Queensland, and across Australia and something I have witnessed all too often.
In the US, emergency physicians call the syndrome “BRASH”, describing low blood pressure, kidney failure, altered sodium, and high potassium in the blood.
Any one of these things can be lethal. The deadly combination could show up as an inability for an older person to get out of bed, dizziness, possible collapse or an altered mental state.
Similarly, young people exercising can end up with heatstroke. We have seen examples of this over the last year in Queensland and even the coroner has warned there will be deaths for outdoor workers if climate change impacts and solutions continue to be ignored.
Last year was the hottest summer on record and the hospital where I work alongside others across south-east Queensland overflowed with patients impacted by the heat.
The knock-on effect is that many operate beyond capacity with patients being treated in corridors, and queues of ambulances building up outside A&E units.

Longreach, in the Queensland outback. Credit: Tourism & Events Queensland

Despite Australia having one of the best health systems in the world by World Health Organisation standards – and Queensland is no exception – it’s clear we are not prepared.
As more frequent and severe heatwaves increase the pressure on accident and emergency units, many emergency physicians are seriously worried about how hospitals are going to cope.
But there are solutions open to us, and they are achievable. Firstly, the health sector must focus more on education and prevention. Infrastructure design and landscaping must incorporate cooling measures such as tree planting and reflective surfaces.
But there is no getting away from the fact that reducing our carbon emissions is key.
Besides the industrial impact of local coal mining on our communities’ health through accidents, black lung and air pollution, the health risks from rising summer temperatures mean we need to end the burning of fossil fuels as a matter of urgency.
The co-benefits of alternative energy sources, and of changing to a healthier lifestyle are huge.
This doesn’t mean sacrificing the livelihoods of coal workers. They are owed a better deal, and we need to have a transition plan that involves them in decision making.
For the people in far north Queensland who need jobs, it is significant that wind and solar now employ more people (per unit of energy generated) than the coal industry. Coal is now a highly automated industry, and once extracted, coal has limited job creation.
The alternative is that we sleepwalk into a bleak future and our children will turn and ask us why we didn't do more to prevent it.

Links

• The Health Impacts Of Climate Change And Why Calls For Action Are Growing Louder
• Letter: Doctors Against Climate Catastrophe
• Climate Crisis Seriously Damaging Human Health, Report Finds
• Strengthen Health Systems To Cope With Climate Change Challenges
• Doctors Warn Australian Health System Not Prepared For Climate Change
• Australian Doctors Declare A Climate Emergency
• Why Fear And Anger Are Rational Responses To Climate Change
• Climate Change Will Expose Half Of World’s Population To Disease-Spreading Mosquitoes By 2050
• Climate Change And The Risk To Civilisation: The Doctors' Prescription

Pacific Islands Forum: Tuvalu Children Welcome Leaders With A Climate Plea

The Guardian - Kate Lyons

Climate crisis is more than a meeting agenda item in a host country that could be left uninhabitable by rising sea levels

Children from Tuvalu sit in a moat of water around a model island to illustrate the climate crisis as leaders arrive for the Pacific Islands Forum. Photograph: Kate Lyons/The Guardian

As the leaders of Pacific countries step off their planes at Funafuti airport this week for the Pacific Islands Forum, they are being met by the children of Tuvalu, who sit submerged in water, in a moat built around the model of an island, singing: “Save Tuvalu, save the world.”

The welcome sets the tone for a Pacific Islands Forum meeting that will not only have climate change at the top of the agenda – as it has been for many years – but is being hosted by a country that the UN says is one of the most vulnerable to rising sea levels, which could render it uninhabitable in the coming century.
Apart from the important symbolism, Tuvalu’s hosting of the event presents considerable logistical challenges for the nation, as more than a dozen world leaders and an estimated 600 people will descend upon the country with a population of just 11,000.
Tuvalu, which is roughly three hours north of Fiji, is also grappling with an ongoing outbreak of dengue fever, the fact it has no supply of safe fresh water, and the fact that it is designated by the UN as a least-developed country.

There are only three commercial flights a week to Tuvalu, so most attendees have had to fly in on chartered military planes and roughly 75% of all the accommodation that is being used for the forum has been constructed for the event.
Pacific leaders, including the Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, and the New Zealand prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, who both arrive on Wednesday, will be staying in bungalows. Other delegates and officials are being housed in grey two-storey demountable buildings along the length of the island’s airport runway, which runs almost the entire length of the island and as the largest plot of land also gets used for football games, drying clothes and for people to sleep on.
“Tuvalu taking on this task, it’s mammoth – everything won’t be perfect, but it will be [done] with the warmth and generosity of island people,” Dame Meg Taylor, the general secretary of the PIF, said on Sunday in Funafuti. “I think Tuvalu has been courageous to host this meeting,” she said.
The Tuvaluan prime minister, Enele Sopoaga, told Guardian Australia that hosting the conference, which officially begins on Tuesday, was an opportunity the country could not pass up.
“The people of Tuvalu are very, very strong, they are very firm that they want to protect and save their island and their people and their way of life and their resources,” said Sopoaga. “So they are looking at the forum as an opportunity to showcase their resilience.”
Morrison is likely to come under pressure from leaders of Pacific island nations, who have repeatedly criticised Australia for what they see as insufficient action to address the climate crisis.

Tuvaluan children sing a welcome for Pacific leaders at Funafuti airport. Photograph: Pacific Islands Forum

Sopoaga said the Australian prime minister was a welcome guest in his country and he anticipated “positive and progressive discussions”, but said he had concerns about Australia’s coalmining policy and its use of carryover credits as a means of reducing emissions and said the positive relationship could change if the future of his people was not taken seriously.
“I hope we can be more understanding that the people of Tuvalu and small island countries are already submerged, are already going underwater,” Sopoaga said.
“If our friend Australia does not show them any regard, any respect, it is a different thing, we cannot be partner with that thinking. I certainly hope we do not come to that juncture to say we cannot go on talking about partnerships regardless of whether it is [the Australian government’s Pacific] Step-Up or [New Zealand’s Pacific] Reset, while you keep pouring your coal emissions into the atmosphere that is killing my people and drowning my people into the water.”
Another key issue that may see Australia on opposing sides to its Pacific neighbours is that of human rights abuses in West Papua. A delegation from West Papua, including the Papuan independence leader Benny Wenda, was due to attend the forum as part of the Vanuatu government’s delegation, but as of Sunday afternoon the West Papuan group had not been able to arrive in Tuvalu, with both Sopoaga and Taylor saying they knew nothing about the delegation’s difficulties in reaching the country.
Australia is strongly supportive of Indonesian sovereignty over Papua, while the independence movement has widespread support among several key Pacific island nations – particularly Melanesian neighbours Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands.

Fijian prime minister Frank Bainimarama is met by Tuvaluan children as he arrives for the Pacific Islands Forum. Photograph: Kate Lyons/The Guardian

The forum may also mark a shift in the power balance of the forum. This year will be the first time a Fijian prime minister has attended the summit since the country was suspended in 2009 for refusing to call elections.
Though Fiji was reinstated into the forum in 2014, its prime minister, Frank Bainimarama, has never attended, saying in 2010 that he would not attend while Australia and New Zealand were part of the group because they wielded too much influence, telling the ABC: “I don’t think they should be in the forum, they’re not Pacific islanders.”
Bainimarama presided over the UN’s leading climate change body in 2017, COP23, and is a high-profile global figure in the fight against global heating and will lend strength to other Pacific leaders such as Sopoaga and the Marshall Islands president, Hilda Heine, who are also key Pacific figures in this debate.
China’s battle for influence in the Pacific region is also likely to emerge as a key theme during discussions. Tuvalu is one of a handful of countries in the world – several of which are located in the Pacific – that have diplomatic relations with Taiwan, rather than mainland China, which is not a member of PIF but will send a delegation as a dialogue partner.
The PIF secretariat will likely be looking to make sure there is not a repeat of last year’s events, when the Chinese delegation walked out of one of the talks during the PIF meeting in Nauru, which also has diplomatic relations with Taiwan.
China’s presence in the region also might mean Australia finds itself with far less leverage than it once did, says the Australia-based Pacific analyst Tess Newton Cain.
“This is the first time that I can remember that Australia hasn’t been able to play the money card, and say: ‘what if we took our aid money away? What if we didn’t pay for that?’” she says. “Fiji and Vanuatu would say ‘well do what you like, I’m off to Beijing next week’.”
Because of Australia’s potentially reduced leverage in the region and the increasing gulf between Australia and its Pacific neighbours on climate change, the meeting is likely to throw into relief questions about the identity of the Pacific Islands Forum, the region and Australia’s place in it.
“From what I can see, I don’t see that Morrison has a mandate to give Pacific leaders what they say they want,” said Newton Cain.
“It wasn’t long ago that Australia was saying they wanted to be a leader in this region,” she said. “They don’t say that anymore, the question is, do they even want to be on the team, is there even a place for them on the team, not to mention the captain of the team?”

Links

• Climate change to be the focus as Scott Morrison attends Pacific Islands Forum
• A climate plea to Scott Morrison from a churchman of the Pacific's sinking nations
• Australian Climate Change Policies Face Growing Criticism From Pacific Leaders
• Students Want International Court Of Justice To Rule On Climate Change
• Australia Must Help Protect Pacific From Climate Change, PNG Prime Minister Says
• Foreign Minister Marise Payne Defends Australia's Climate Change Policies
• DFAT's Climate Change Strategy Stuck On Hold
• Former President Of Kiribati Tells SF To Step Up Fight As Climate Change Threatens To Swallow His Island Country
• Pacific Leadership On Climate Change Is Necessary And Inevitable
• Australia's Standing In Pacific Has Plummeted Because Of Our Climate Change Failure
• Torres Strait Islanders Ask UN To Hold Australia To Account On Climate ‘Human Rights Abuses’
• Torres Strait Islanders Accuse Government Of Human Rights Breach Over Climate Inaction

We’Ve Been Arguing About Climate Policy For Five Elections: How Many More Before We Get It Right?

Sydney Morning Herald - Matt Wade

A decade ago I visited a dusty shanty town in India’s capital New Delhi to interview a remarkable Australian family.
Mark and Cathy Delaney had left Brisbane suburbia to settle among the urban poor and explore a different way of living.
Their sons Tom, now 22, and Oscar, now 17, were born in India and have spent much of their lives there.

Mark and Cathy Delaney on the roof of their house in a Delhi slum in 2009. Credit: Brendon Esposito

I wrote about the Delaney family for The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald in 2009 while working in India as a foreign correspondent.
They lived in a small brick room in a densely populated slum on Delhi’s sprawling outskirts. They had no running water, no TV, no fridge and no washing machine. Meals were eaten sitting on the floor and they shared a tiny squat toilet with their landlords. The family’s possessions were kept in a few steel trunks.
But the Delaneys spoke passionately about the personal fulfilment and deep friendships they had found in the slum.
“The longer we’ve stayed here, the more we can see the positive effect it has had on us as people,” Cathy Delaney told me at the time.
This week the Delaney family were in the news again.
Mark, Cathy and Oscar, who returned to Australia in April, were arrested with eight others at a climate change protest at the Brisbane offices of GHD, an engineering contractor linked to the construction of infrastructure for the Adani coal mine.
The protesters were calling on the firm to do no further work to facilitate the controversial Adani project.
Mark and Cathy were charged with “contravening a police direction” and will face court later this month. Oscar was not charged.

Mark and Cathy Delaney lived in an Indian slum in Delhi. Credit: Brendan Esposito

A legacy of the years the Delaneys spent living in slums is a deep concern about climate change, especially the way it disproportionately affects poor communities.

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Low Carbon & Loving It:
Adventures In Sustainable Living From The Streets Of India 
To Middle Class Australia

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Mark Delaney and his son Tom, who still works in India as a volunteer educator, spent a long period researching climate change. Last year, the pair published a book which draws together their reflections on slum life and the need for climate action.
The book, called Low Carbon and Loving It: Adventures in sustainable living from the streets of India to middle-class Australia, describes the family’s many experiments in low-carbon living including using trains rather than flying. On a trip from Delhi to Brisbane they substituted air travel as much possible - it took seven times longer and was three times more expensive than a direct flight, but had a carbon footprint of around one third.
When the Delaney’s returned to Australia they were surprised by the lack of action to combat climate change.
Mark Delaney, who is a lawyer by training, met with local MPs and urged them to do more to reduce Australia's emissions.
He has reached out to schools, churches and other community groups in different parts of Australia offering to speak about how the family’s experiences in the slums and their concerns about climate change. The reception has been lukewarm.
Mark has decided the non-violent resistance which led to his arrest last week is now his only alternative.
“We have tried talking calmly to politicians, participating in the political process, doing education work in schools and churches, even writing a book,” he said.
“Now there seems to be no other option but to engage in civil disobedience … the time has come for ordinary Australians to say enough is enough.”

Mark Delaney (pictured) and his son Tom wrote a book about climate change which draws on their experiences living in Indian slums. Credit: Louise Kennerley

Some will disagree with Mark’s conclusion. But his frustration is understandable.
As public anxiety about climate change grows it seems effective policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions become more elusive.
The Lowy Institute's annual poll, released in June, found climate change topped the list of threats to Australia’s vital interests in 2019, ranking above cyber attacks from other countries, international terrorism and North Korea’s nuclear program. Six in 10 Australians (61 per cent) agreed global warming is a “serious and pressing problem” about which “we should begin taking steps now even if this involves significant costs". That share has surged by 25 percentage points since 2012.
A separate survey published in March by social research firm Ipsos found 46 per cent of Australians now agree climate change is “entirely or mainly” caused by human activity. That's the highest share since 2010 when Ipsos began asking the question in its annual study of attitudes to climate change. Only 13 per cent of respondents said the Morrison government was doing a good job tackling climate change.
To make matters worse, the toxic nature of climate politics has contributed to an erosion of voter trust. That will make it all the more difficult to craft effective policies to reduce carbon emissions, which are inevitably complex.
Australia’s fruitless struggle over climate policy has also left less political legroom for other important economic reforms to boost productivity.
Climate policy has featured in the past five elections but I fear it might take another five before Australia settles on a high-quality, economically efficient mechanism to reduce carbon emissions.
No wonder the Delaney family is resorting to civil disobedience.

Links

• SMH: Commonwealth Bank warns climate change could slash farm productivity
• SMH - 'Warning flag': IPCC finds rapid land warming threatens food security
• Lowy Institute Poll 2019
• Queensland Police Arrest 56 Climate Change Protesters In Brisbane
• I’m An Ordinary Person Who Joined An Extinction Rebellion Blockade. Here's Why You Should Too
• Young Climate Activists ‘Most At Risk’ Of Being Spied On By AFP
• US Philanthropists Vow To Raise Millions For Climate Activists
• This Is The Only Way To Tackle The Climate Emergency
• Good News For Climate Activists: Marching Might Work
• Environment Leaders Reflect On Their Role In The 'Climate Election'
• Kids Suing The US Over Climate Change Are Getting Global Support
• Students From 1,600 Cities Just Walked Out Of School To Protest Climate Change. It Could Be Greta Thunberg's Biggest Strike Yet

Green Growth Is Trusted To Fix Climate Change – Here’s The Problem With That

The Conversation - Christine Corlet Walker

Greening’ our current economic system can only take us so far. GTS/Shutterstock

You may have missed it, but a recent report declared that the main strategy of world leaders for tackling climate change won’t work.
It’s called green growth, and it’s favoured by some of the largest and most influential organisations in the world, including the United Nations and the World Bank.

Green growth is a vague term with many definitions, but broadly speaking, it’s the idea that society can reduce its environmental impacts and slash its emissions, even while the economy continues to grow and the quantity of stuff that’s produced and consumed increases.
This would be achieved by improving the efficiency of production and manufacturing processes, transitioning to cleaner energy sources and developing new technologies to deal with the pollution that economic activity creates. Better yet, it’s argued, all of this could be done fast enough to meet the Paris Agreement target of keeping global warming to below 1.5ᵒC.
Fixing the climate crisis without having to compromise on economic growth sounds appealing. But the Decoupling Debunked report echoes work by prominent academics in finding that there is no evidence that societies have ever managed to decouple economic growth from emissions at this scale in the past, and little evidence they have the capacity to achieve it in the future.

World leaders and august institutions like the UN have put their faith in green growth, but it’s likely misplaced. EPA/KELD NAVNTOFT

It’s no surprise that, historically, global carbon emissions have gone up as economies have grown. The processes that produce the goods and services we all consume use raw materials as inputs and generate pollution, carbon emissions and waste.
Making these processes more efficient and swapping fossil fuels for renewables can, and has, reduced the average emissions that come with each additional dollar of economic growth. This is known as “relative decoupling”, because each dollar of new economic growth has fewer emissions attached to it, relative to each dollar of past growth. But, emissions still rise in absolute terms because the economy is still growing.
Since it is the total amount of carbon in the atmosphere that matters in the race against climate change, we need to contrast this idea of “relative decoupling” with the stronger concept of “absolute decoupling”. Absolute decoupling means that even as the economy grows, total carbon emissions fall year-on-year.
With this distinction in mind, the question becomes: is absolute decoupling of economic growth from carbon emissions possible? And can it be done fast enough to prevent catastrophic climate change?

The scale of the challenge
According to the IPCC, there is a 66% likelihood that the world can remain under the Paris Agreement target of 1.5°C of warming if we emit no more than 420 billion additional tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere, from early 2018.
Humans currently emit about 37 billion tonnes of carbon every year, and that number is still growing. Even the most generous projections suggest that if emissions continue at this rate, the carbon budget will be used up in less than 20 years.
The rate of decarbonisation that’s needed is huge, and far in excess of anything that’s been seen previously. Economic growth makes that challenge even harder, as gains in decarbonisation may be outweighed by increases in production and consumption. But green growth advocates insist it’s possible.
The IPCC’s Special Report, released in October 2018, gives 90 scenarios that would be consistent with limiting warming to 1.5°C, while also continuing with economic growth. So far, so good. But almost every single one of these scenarios relies on a negative emissions technology called Bioenergy Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) that’s completely untested at large scales.
BECSS involves growing large plantations of trees, which draw down carbon from the atmosphere, then harvesting and burning them to generate energy. The CO₂ emissions from this process are then stored underground. To limit warming to 1.5°C, this technology would need to absorb 3-7 billion tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere every year. That’s at least 2,000 times more than it’s currently capable of doing.
In order to absorb that much carbon, an area two to three times the size of India would need to be covered with tree plantations. Think about the difficulty of acquiring that much land, the pressure it would put on other land uses, like food production, and how much natural habitat it could erase.
No one can say that these feats are categorically impossible. But the evidence suggests that the chances of meeting the 1.5ᵒC warming target alongside continued economic growth are, at best, highly unlikely. Can we really take this risk — relying on unproven technologies to rescue us from the threat of climate change? Given the consequences of getting the gamble wrong, surely the answer is no.

Negative emission technologies don’t exist at the scale they’re needed – and could do more ecological harm than good. Mariusz Szczygiel/Shutterstock

Where does this leave us?

Proposals for green growth that rely solely on technology to solve the climate crisis are based on a flawed idea. This is, that the limits to the world’s physical systems are flexible, but the structure of its economies are not. This seems entirely backwards and more a reflection of the importance of politics and power in determining what solutions are deemed viable, than any reflection of reality.
So society should ask, are these global institutions promoting green growth because they believe it’s the most promising way of avoiding climate breakdown? Or is it because they believe it’s simply not politically feasible to talk about the alternatives?
If we can be optimistic about humanity’s ability to develop fantastical new technologies to bend and overcome the limits of nature, can’t we lend that same optimism to developing new economic structures? Our goal in the 21st century should be creating economies that allow people to flourish, even when they don’t grow.

Links

• The Conversation: Why protesters should be wary of '12 years to climate breakdown' rhetoric
• Decoupling debunked – Evidence and arguments against green growth as a sole strategy for sustainability
• UN Environment: Green Economy
• The World Bank: Inclusive Green Growth Policies Tailored to Real-World Challenges
• Grantham Research Institute - Green Growth: what does it mean?
• European Environmental Bureau - Decoupling debunked: Why green growth is not enough
• IPCC Special Report: Global warming of 1.5°C (pdf)
• Carbon Brief - Analysis: Fossil-fuel emissions in 2018 increasing at fastest rate for seven years

Extinction Rebellion: Hitting A Nerve At Australia's Climate Flashpoint

The Guardian - Ben Smee

The amorphous climate action group has fired up activists and opponents alike as it tries to shut down Brisbane

Extinction Rebellion protesters block the corner of Margaret and William streets during a climate change protest in Brisbane. Photograph: Dan Peled/EPA

The Extinction Rebellion protesters think you should be angry. They want politicians and opinion columnists to be angry. The more people they upset stopping traffic in the Brisbane city centre – the louder the car horns, the more vicious the insults – the more certain it is they’ll be back.
“It’s not an enjoyable experience, we don’t take pleasure in doing it,” says Emma Dorge, an activist arrested in Brisbane on Tuesday, during a day of mass civil disobedience that shut down Australia’s third-largest city.
“It is a polarising tactic. But this is an emergency, and we’re out of other options.”
Extinction Rebellion, the decentralised global movement calling for aggressive action on the climate crisis, has engaged in similar disruption tactics in major cities on every continent. Those protests have been most effective when they are most polarising, like in Queensland, where talking and writing and screaming and marching about the climate emergency has not shifted public sentiment; a state home to the threatened Great Barrier Reef, and also the world’s most controversial coal project.
Seventy-two people were arrested and charged by police during “rebellion day” protests in the heart of Brisbane on Tuesday. They have been stopping commuter traffic in the city for months. As outrage grows, so does the sense that climate change is finally subject of the anger it deserves.

Police arrest Extinction Rebellion protesters after they blocked the corner of Edward and Queen streets in Brisbane. Photograph: Darren England/AAP

Dorge, who works as a midwife and has previously been involved in anti-coal protests, says: “There’s nothing holding our governments accountable now.
“But shutting down central business districts of cities, if they can’t function anymore, if our cities are continually shut down and immobilised, that will force action. That’s what we’re building towards.
“These disruptions will only increase in frequency and duration. We’re not planning to stop until all of our demands are met.”
Clancey Maher was studying to be a nurse, working two jobs, when she headed north from Canberra about two years ago. Since then she has been involved in several anti-coal and climate protests.
“We are not kidding ourselves,” Maher says. “We’re not winning every person who gets stopped in a car. It’s necessary to force a reaction because the issue is so urgent.
“One of the key tactics is definitely disruption.
“You can ignore a petition, you can ignore a rally. This way it promotes public debate on the issue. If you weren’t already talking about climate change at the very least now you’re talking about the disruptions.”

A line in the sand
Extinction Rebellion’s global focus lends itself to actions in larger cities; pushing for the sorts of transformative changes that can be enacted by governments and corporations, the powerbrokers who might be caught in the commuter jams. About 1,000 people in have been involved in those various protests in Brisbane, with more than 100 arrested.
At the same time, the movement runs in parallel to the work of dozens of coordinated environmental groups – some of which run conventional public campaigns and others engaging in blockades – that target the operations of prominent coal companies and their contractors. Many of the Extinction Rebellion protesters have converged on Brisbane while maintaining links to the direct action movement.
A day after the chaotic Extinction Rebellion protests in Brisbane, the group Frontline Action on Coal (Flac) issued a long-awaited “red alert” – a call for activists to head to central Queensland and to join physical efforts to stop Adani’s Carmichael coalmine.

‘It is a polarising tactic’: About 1,000 people have been involved in protests in Brisbane. Photograph: Darren England/AAP 

Carmichael has become the totem for both climate activists and backers of the coal industry – a new thermal coalmine, potentially opening up a new thermal coal basin, built at a time when the calls for action on climate change have become more desperate. The Adani project is a line in the sand – or a hole in the central Queensland dirt – for many activists and backers of the coal industry.
For several years, Flac has maintained a camp at a rural property between Bowen and Collinsville; a potential base for launching protest activities at the Carmichael mine site, along the proposed rail route, or at the Abbot Point coal terminal. Flac expects potentially thousands to head north in response to its call.
“We need mass occupancy and mass amounts of people to stop this mine from going ahead,” says Amy, a Flac spokeswoman. “We’ve called the red alert because we now believe that it’s time for everyone to start mobilising and heading to central Queensland.

It’s about getting those people who say they’re against Adani to physically get involved. Amy, Frontline Action on Coal

“It’s about getting people to understand that they now need to shift to playing a more active part in stopping [the Carmichael mine]. It’s about getting those people who say they’re against Adani to physically get involved and take part in direct action.”
As the company began land-clearing works on Wednesday, two Flac activists temporarily stopped about 17 bulldozers by suspending themselves from poles. They say attempts to stop work at Carmichael will continue and escalate.
Sophie, a midwife working in central Queensland, is one of many preparing to take a break from her job to take part in the protests.
“I feel like the next few months, the next few years are going to be super critical,” Sophie says. “I really love what I do but I want to ensure the kids I see every day being born are coming into a safe climate future.”

Police action called into question
As the disruptions in Brisbane become more frequent, the backlash has amped-up in volume and vitriol.
In News Corp newspaper the Courier-Mail, protesters have been described variously as “ferals”, “ratbags”, “idiots”, “twerps”, “selfish, conceited, misguided … ideological zealots”, “unemployed thugs” and more.

Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk called for the Extinction Rebellion demonstrations to stop. Photograph: Dan Peled/AAP 

Some commentators have even pined for the days of authoritarian Queensland premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen, who cracked down on street marches and cut a secret deal with police not to penalise officers who acted to suppress protests.
The current Queensland premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, has been more measured but called for the demonstrations to stop.
“When you stop people going to and from their workplace, I don’t think people like that,” Palaszczuk said.
The tactics of police have, during the past few weeks, become noticeably more direct.
At first, police resisted making mass arrests when protesters performed a “swarm”, blocking an intersection for up to 10 minutes. On Tuesday a young man was chased from the road by a police officer and tackled by a bystander. He broke his arm.
Police have also been accused of abusing their power by using bail conditions to punish protesters and shield corporate interests.
Fuelling the anger is the way the state crackdown on environmental protesters compares to its treatment of corporations who break environmental laws.
Last month, the Guardian revealed that a thermal coalmine in the Darling Downs region, New Acland, committed a “major” breach of the state’s environmental protection act by drilling 27 illegal bores. The company was fined $3,152.

Fuelling the anger is the way the state crackdown on environmental protesters compares to its treatment of corporations who break environmental law. Photograph: Dan Peled/EPA

Queensland courts have given activists fines almost 20 times that amount for staging protests. Al Wicks was fined $61,000 earlier this year for blocking coal trains. Others face aggressive civil damages claims launched by corporate interests.
“They want us to pay for our damages. The fossil fuel industry will never pay,” Wicks says. “It’s more about silencing activists, it’s deterring activists from doing these actions. At the end of the day the people in this movement know what’s at stake, and for that it’s worth losing our liberty and losing our money as well.”

‘We are society’
Protesters aged 18 to 73 were arrested in Brisbane on Tuesday. Hannah Doole is one of the younger ones. She finished school in 2017 and has since devoted her time to climate activism.
“When you’re stopping traffic, people have to stop and think about what’s happening,” Doole says. “You’re not creating tension out of nothing, but you’re forcing it to the surface.
“The backlash, the dehumanising nature of it, I think it shows we’re gaining popularity and we’re gaining momentum and that’s gotten under the skin of the right wing.
“I am inspired by the diversity of people who have become involved, people who might be doing very respectable jobs, whether they’re scientists or working for the government.
“We’re not some group on the fringes of society. We are society.”

Links

• Queensland Police Arrest 56 Climate Change Protesters In Brisbane
• I’m An Ordinary Person Who Joined An Extinction Rebellion Blockade. Here's Why You Should Too
• Young Climate Activists ‘Most At Risk’ Of Being Spied On By AFP
• US Philanthropists Vow To Raise Millions For Climate Activists
• This Is The Only Way To Tackle The Climate Emergency
• Good News For Climate Activists: Marching Might Work
• Environment Leaders Reflect On Their Role In The 'Climate Election'
• Kids Suing The US Over Climate Change Are Getting Global Support
• Students From 1,600 Cities Just Walked Out Of School To Protest Climate Change. It Could Be Greta Thunberg's Biggest Strike Yet

The Animals That Will Survive Climate Change

BBC Future - Christine Ro

With one in every four species facing extinction, which animals are the best equipped to survive the climate crisis? (Spoiler alert: it’s probably not humans).



“I don’t think it will be the humans. I think we’ll go quite early on,” says Julie Gray with a laugh. I’ve just asked Gray, a plant molecular biologist at the University of Sheffield, which species she thinks would be the last ones standing if we don’t take transformative action on climate change. Even with our extraordinary capacity for innovation and adaptability, humans, it turns out, probably won’t be among the survivors.
This is partly because humans reproduce agonisingly slowly and generally just one or two at a time – as do some other favourite animals, like pandas. Organisms that can produce many offspring quickly may have a better shot at avoiding extinction.
It may seem like just a thought experiment. But discussing which species are more, or less, able to survive climate change is disturbingly concrete. As a blockbuster biodiversity report stated recently, one in every four species currently faces extinction. Much of this vulnerability is linked to climate change, which is bringing about higher temperatures, sea level rise, more variable conditions and more extreme weather, among other impacts.
Some caveats are in order. While the seriousness of climate change is undeniable, it’s impossible to know exactly how those effects will play out for species vulnerability, especially far into the future. Methods of forecasting vulnerability are ever evolving, while limited and inconsistent data, plus the complex interactions of policies, land-use changes, and ecological effects, mean that projections aren’t set in stone. Climate change vulnerability assessments have had biases and blind spots (just as humans do more generally). (Read more about how our cognitive biases prevent climate action). Moreover, the indirect effects that are responsible for many climate change impacts on populations, such as in the food chain, are more complex to model than direct effects.

Some species of Australia’s quolls already have been made locally extinct by invasive species, a trend that will intensify with climate change (Credit: Getty Images)

Another source of uncertainty has to do with life forms’ capacity to adapt. Take ectotherms (cold-blooded animals like reptiles and amphibians), which have historically been slower to adapt to climatic change than endotherms. For one thing, they are less able to adjust their body temperatures. But there are exceptions, like the American bullfrog, which may actually find more habitable environments as a consequence of warming.

The American bullfrog could be one of few species to benefit from global warming (Credit: Getty Images)

And, of course, there is an alternative: we humans could get our acts together and stop the climate crisis from continuing to snowball by adopting policies and lifestyles that reduce greenhouse gases. But for the purposes of these projections, we’re assuming that’s not going to happen.

Tenacious trends
Even with the uncertainties, we can make some educated guesses about broad patterns.
Heat tolerant and drought resistant plants, like those found in deserts rather than rainforests, are more likely to survive. So are plants whose seeds can be dispersed over long distances, for instance by wind or ocean currents (like coconuts), rather than by ants (like some acacias). Plants that can adjust their flowering times may also be better able to deal with higher temperatures. Jen Lau, a biologist at Indiana University Bloomington, suggests that this may give non-native plants the advantage when it comes to responding to climate change.
We also can look to history as a guide. The fossil record contains signs of how species have coped with previous climatic shifts. There are genetic clues to long-term survival too, such as in the hardy green microalgae that adapted to saltier environments over millions of years – a finding only made in September 2018 by Fatima Foflonker of Rutgers and colleagues.
Importantly, though, the uniquely devastating nature of the current human-made climate crisis means that we can’t fully rely on benchmarks from the past.
“The climate change that we see in the future will differ in many ways from the climate change that we’ve seen in the past”, notes Jamie Carr, an outreach officer for the Climate Change Specialist Group of the IUCN Species Survival Commission.
The historical record does point to the tenacity of cockroaches. These largely unloved critters “have survived every mass extinction event in history so far”, says Asmeret Asefaw Berhe, a soil biogeochemist at the University of California, Merced. For instance, cockroaches adapted to an increasingly arid Australia, tens of millions of years ago, by starting to burrow into soil.

Cockroaches have survived every mass extinction event in history thus far (Credit: Getty Images)

This shows two characteristics, says Robert Nasi, the director general of the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR): an “ability to hide and protect in buffered conditions (e.g. underground)” and a long evolutionary history, as in general “ancient species appear more resilient than younger ones”. These are among the traits that, Nasi says, are linked to surviving large catastrophic events which triggered major changes in climate.

Cockroaches also tend to not be picky eaters. Having broad diets means that climate change will be less of a threat to the food sources of species that are not too fussy about their food, such as rats, opportunistic birds, and urban raccoons.
As a comparison, take an animal like the koala. Koalas eat primarily eucalyptus leaves, which are becoming less nutritious due to increasing CO2 levels in the atmosphere. As a result, climate change is increasing their risk of starvation.

Climate change is increasing the risk of starvation for koalas (Credit: Getty Images)

As well as having a specialised diet, koalas have low genetic diversity – one reason that chlamydia has ravaged wild koala populations. These are worrying traits in terms of extinction risk. “In many cases, specialised species are those that we expect to see disappear first,” says Carr. This extends to species in microhabitats like high elevation montane forests, or those in narrow ranges, like some tropical birds or small-island plants. Also vulnerable are species that depend on pristine environments.
That’s compared to the “early successional” species that succeed in disturbed habitats, such as grasslands and young forest. These species “might do well under climate change because they thrive in states of change and transition”, says Jessica Hellmann, who leads the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota. “For example, deer (in the US) are common in suburban areas and thrive where forests have been removed or are regularly disturbed.”
Species that Carr calls “mobile generalists”, which can move and adapt to different environments, are likely to be more durable in the face of climate change. While this adaptability is generally positive, it might come at a cost to other parts of an ecosystem. Invasive species like cane toads, which are poisonous, have led to local extinctions of other species like quolls (carnivorous marsupials) and monitors (large lizards) in Australia. And Hellmann says that the versatility of invasive plant species “leads to the worry that, in addition to losing vulnerable species, a warmer world will be a weedier world”. The weeds typically found along roadsides may be especially long-lasting in comparison with other plants.

Deer, which thrive in states of change and transition, may be more resilient (Credit: Getty Images)

Of course, many organisms are intrinsically less mobile. Most plants will be unable to move quickly enough to keep pace with rapid heating, although they’ve done so in response to the slower climatic changes of the past.

Buffer zones
The good news is that some specialised species might have a buffer known as climate change refugia: areas that are relatively protected from climate change’s consequences, such as deep sea canyons. Although deep sea zones are heating up and declining in oxygen concentrations, Jonathon Stillman, a marine environmental physiologist at San Francisco State University, suggests that deep sea hydrothermal vent ecosystems, specifically, might be one bright spot in an otherwise mostly bleak situation.
“They are pretty much uncoupled from the surface of our planet and I doubt that climate change will impact them in the least,” he says. “Humanity didn’t even know they existed until 1977. Their energy comes from the core of our Earth rather than from the Sun, and their already extreme habitat is unlikely to be altered by changes happening at the ocean surface.”
Similarly, Douglas Sheil, a tropical forest ecologist at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, suggests that “at some point in the future the only vertebrate species surviving in Africa might be a blind cave fish deep underground”. As in the deep sea hydrothermal vents, “many species remain undiscovered and thus unknown – Europe’s first cave fish was only found in Germany in 2015.”

Heat-adapted organisms and microbes living in extreme environments are likely to be less affected by climate change (Credit: Getty Images)

Thermophiles (heat-adapted organisms) living in extreme environments like volcanic springs are also likely to be less affected by surface temperature changes. Indeed, the organisms best able to live in severe circumstances are microbes, as noted by many of the scientists I’ve surveyed. Computer modelling suggests that only microbes would be able to survive increasing solar intensity. Soil biogeochemist Berhe says of archaea, one of the major types of microbes, “these critters have figured out how to live in the most extreme of environments”.

Not quite as tiny but also nearly indestructible are tardigrades, commonly known as water bears. Environmental physiologist Stillman enthuses: “They can survive the vacuum of outer space, extreme dehydration, and very high temperatures. If you are a Star Trek fan, you have learned about them in a sci-fi setting, but they are real creatures that live across most habitats on Earth.”
The future will have not only more extreme environments, but also more urban, human-altered spaces. So “resistant species would likely be the ones that are well attuned to living in human-modified habitats such as urban parks and gardens, agricultural areas, farms, tree plantations, and so on”, says Arvin C Diesmos, a herpetology curator at the Philippine National Museum of Natural History.
CIFOR’s Nasi sums it up. “The winners will be very small, preferably endotherms if vertebrates, highly adaptable, omnivorous or able to live in extreme conditions.”
In the words of the IUCN’s Carr, “It doesn’t sound like a very pretty world.”

Endangered plants like the Brodiaea are likely to be increasingly vulnerable with climate change (Credit: Getty Images)

Of course, to some extent we already know what’s needed to limit the bleakness of the future natural world. This includes reducing greenhouse gases; protecting biodiversity; restoring connectivity between habitats (rather than building endless dams, roads and walls); and reducing interrelated threats like pollution and land harvesting. Even species that are close to extinction, like Saiga antelopes, can be brought back from the brink with enough conservation effort. To reflect the power of sustained conservation, scientists are developing a Green List of species on the road to recovery and full health, to complement the IUCN’s Red List of threatened species.

The political barriers are daunting. But scaling them, it seems, would beat surrendering the planet to the microbes.

Links

• Humans 'threaten 1m species with extinction'
• Nature's emergency in five graphics
• Why The Polar Bear Is An Indisputable Image Of Climate Change
• Fixing Australia’s Extinction Crisis Means Thinking Bigger Than Individual Species
• Climate Change Sparks Fears For Flying Foxes After 23,000 Deaths
• 'Our Little Brown Rat': First Climate Change-Caused Mammal Extinction
• The Biggest Issues For Wildlife And Endangered Species In 2019
• Worst Mass Extinction Event In Earth’s History Was Caused By Global Warming Analogous To Current Climate Crisis
• How weeds help fight climate change
• How catastrophes can change the course of humanity
• Ten simple ways to act on climate change
• Golden Bowerbirds' Building Prowess Helps Scientists Monitor Climate Change, And Alarm Bells Are Ringing
• Could wooden buildings be a climate change solution?