(USA) Intelligence Forecast Sees A Post-Coronavirus World Upended By Climate Change And Splintering Societies

Washington Post - Shane Harris

Student activists carry posters and shout slogans as they march against climate change in New Delhi on March 19. (Altaf Qadri/AP)

U.S. intelligence officials have little comfort to offer a pandemic-weary planet about where the world is heading in the next 20 years.

Short answer: It looks pretty bleak.

On Thursday, the National Intelligence Council, a center in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that creates strategic forecasts and estimates, often based on material gathered by U.S. spy agencies, released its quadrennial “Global Trends” report.

Looking over the time horizon, it finds a world unsettled by the coronavirus pandemic, the ravages of climate change — which will propel mass migration — and a widening gap between what people demand from their leaders and what they can actually deliver.

The intelligence community has long warned policymakers and the public that pandemic disease could profoundly reshape global politics and U.S. national security.

The authors of the report, which does not represent official U.S. policy, describe the pandemic as a preview of crises to come.

It has been a globally destabilizing event — the council called it “the most significant, singular global disruption since World War II — that “has reminded the world of its fragility” and “shaken long-held assumptions” about how well governments and institutions could respond to a catastrophe.

At the same time, the pandemic accelerated and exacerbated social and economic fissures that had already emerged. And it underscored the risks from “more and cascading global challenges, ranging from disease to climate change to the disruptions from new technologies and financial crises,” the authors write.

In language that will resonate with just about anyone who has tread water in the past year, the authors write of a “looming disequilibrium between existing and future challenges and the ability of institutions and systems to respond.”

Within societies, fragmentation is increasing — political, cultural, economic — and “large segments of the global population are becoming wary of institutions and governments that they see as unwilling or unable to address their needs,” the report says.

The effects of the pandemic will linger, and could shape future generations’ expectations of their governments, particularly as a warming world leads to new human conflicts, including, in the most dire scenario, global food shortages that spawn mass violence.

Global power was contested long before the pandemic, and those trends haven’t abated.

The report sees the international stage as largely being shaped by a rivalry between China and the United States, along with its allies. No single state is poised to become the dominant global force, the authors write. And competing powers will jockey for position, leading to “a more conflict-prone and volatile geopolitical environment.”

Technology, with all its potential to boost economies and enhance communication, also may aggravate political tension — as it already has.

People “are likely to gravitate to information silos of people who share similar views, reinforcing beliefs and understanding of the truth,” the report concludes.

Prediction is an inherently risky business, and intelligence practitioners are quick to emphasize that they can’t see the future. But the National Intelligence Council imagines five scenarios on a kind of sliding scale that may help tell us where the world is turning as we approach 2040.

On the rosiest end, a “Renaissance of democracies” ushers in a new era of U.S. global leadership, in which economic growth and technological achievements offer solutions to the world’s biggest problems and Russia and China are largely left in the dust, authoritarian vestiges whose brightest scientists and entrepreneurs have fled to the United States and Europe.

At the dark end of the future is “tragedy and mobilization,” when the United States is no longer the dominant player, and a global environmental catastrophe prompts food shortages and a “bottom-up” revolution, with younger people, scarred by their leaders’ failures during the coronavirus pandemic, embracing policies to repair the climate and tackle long-standing social inequality.

In this scenario, a European Union dominated by green parties works with the United Nations to expand international aid and focus on sustainability, and China joins the effort in part to quell domestic unrest in its cities affected by famine.

In between those extremes, the report imagines three other possibilities: China becomes a leading state but not globally dominant; the United States and China prosper and compete as the two major powers; and globalization fails to create a single source of influence, and the world more or less devolves into competing blocs, preoccupied with threats to their prosperity and security.

The present has a lot of say over the future. And there, the authors find reason for alarm.

“The international system — including the organizations, alliances, rules, and norms — is poorly set up to address the compounding global challenges facing populations,” the authors write.

But the pandemic may offer lessons on how not to repeat recent history. The authors note that although European countries restricted travel and exports of medical supplies early in the crisis, the European Union has now rallied around an economic rescue package. That “could bolster the European integration projecting going forward.”

“Covid-19 could also lead to redirection of national budgets toward pandemic response and economic recovery,” they add, “diverting funds from defense expenditures, foreign aid, and infrastructure programs in some countries, at least in the near term.”

But overall, the pandemic leaves the authors with more questions than answers — and humbled.

“As researchers and analysts, we must be ever vigilant, asking better questions, frequently challenging our assumptions, checking our biases, and looking for weak signals of change,” they write.

Their work is not all doomsaying. The forces shaping the world “are not fixed in perpetuity,” the authors say. Countries that exploit technology and planning, particularly those that plan ahead for the seemingly inevitable consequences of climate change, will be poised to best manage the crisis.

And countries that harness artificial intelligence could boost productivity and expand their economies in ways that let government deliver more services, reduce debt and help cover the costs of caring for aging populations.

Ultimately, the societies that succeed will be those that can adapt to change, but also forge social consensus around what should be done, the authors write. In a splintering world, that may be the hardest scenario to imagine.

Links

• Major new climate study rules out less severe global warming scenarios
• A More Contested World: A Publication Of The National Intelligence Council (pdf)
• To prepare for the next pandemic, the U.S. needs to change its national security priorities, experts say
• Climate change is a major threat to stability, spy agencies say
• (AU) Climate and  Policy Centre Security
• (AU) The rapidly emerging crisis on our doorstep 
• Study calls for urgent climate change action to secure global food supply

Third Of Antarctic Ice Shelves ‘Will Collapse Amid 4C Global Heating’

The Guardian - PA Media

‘Unimaginable amounts’ of water will flow into oceans if that temperature rise occurs and ice buffers vanish, warn UK scientists

A rift in the Larsen C ice shelf, Antarctica, revealed by British Antarctic Survey observations from February 2017. Photograph: British Antarctic Survey/AFP/Getty

More than a third of the vast floating platforms of ice surrounding Antarctica could be at risk of collapsing and releasing “unimaginable amounts” of water into the sea if global temperatures reach 4C above pre-industrial levels, UK scientists say.

Researchers from the University of Reading said that limiting the temperature rise to 2C could halve the area at risk and avoid a drastic rise in sea levels.

The findings, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, suggest that 4C warming could leave 34% of the area of all the Antarctic ice shelves – amounting to about half a million square kilometres – at the risk of collapse.

Ice shelves are permanent floating sheets of ice that connect to a landmass; most surround the coasts of Antarctica.

Ella Gilbert, a research scientist in the University of Reading’s meteorology department, said: “Ice shelves are important buffers, preventing glaciers on land from flowing freely into the ocean and contributing to sea level rise.

"When they collapse it’s like a giant cork being removed from a bottle, allowing unimaginable amounts of water from glaciers to pour into the sea.

“We know that, when melted ice accumulates on the surface of ice shelves, it can make them fracture and collapse spectacularly.

“Previous research has given us the bigger picture in terms of predicting Antarctic ice shelf decline. But our new study uses the latest modelling techniques to fill in the finer detail and provide more precise projections.”

Gilbert said the team’s work highlighted the importance of limiting the global temperature increases as set out in the Paris climate agreement, which promotes a global framework to avoid dangerous climate change by limiting global warming to less than 2C above pre-industrial levels.

As part of their modelling study, the researchers also identified Larsen C, the largest remaining ice shelf on the peninsula, as being particularly at risk in a warmer climate.

They said other ice shelves facing this threat included Shackleton, Pine Island, and Wilkins.

Gilbert said: “If temperatures continue to rise at current rates we may lose more Antarctic ice shelves in the coming decades. Limiting warming will not just be good for Antarctica – preserving ice shelves means less global sea level rise, and that’s good for us all.”

Links

• Antarctic Glacier Will Reach Tipping Point
• A Huge Iceberg That's Bigger Than New York City Broke Off Near A UK Base In Antarctica
• Why Scientists Are So Worried About Antarctica's Doomsday Glacier
• Melting Antarctic Ice Will Raise Sea Level By 2.5 Metres – Even If Paris Climate Goals Are Met, Study Finds
• The Tipping Points At The Heart Of The Climate Crisis
• Antarctica’s ‘Doomsday Glacier’ Is Starting To Crack
• Polar ice caps melting six times faster than in 1990s
• Tackling degraded oceans could mitigate climate crisis - report
• Last time CO2 levels were this high, there were trees at the South Pole
• East Antarctica glacial stronghold melting as seas warm
• Global warming is melting Antarctic ice from below
• Global warming doubles growth rates of Antarctic seabed's marine fauna – study
• Iceberg twice size of Luxembourg breaks off Antarctic ice shelf
• Antarctic peninsula temperatures have fallen, study shows

(AU) Climate Change ‘A National Security Threat’: Report

The Australian - Ben Packham

Robert Glasser has called for the federal government to urgently recognise the security risks of climate-induced famines, rising seas and mass migrations affecting hundreds of millions of people. Picture: AAP

Preparing for the Era of Disasters Dr Robert Glasser Key Points Federal, State and Local governments should begin preparing now for the unprecedented scale of climate change emerging challenges by: Scaling-up Australia’s efforts through greater investment in disaster risk reduction to prevent the effects from natural hazards, such as extreme weather. Increasing planning to financially assist communities and the economic recovery of States following disasters. Strengthening disaster response capacity and planning at all levels, including in the military which will play an increasingly important role in transporting firefighters and equipment, fodder drops from helicopters, the provision of shelters, etc. Establishing joint task forces to coordinate the Defence contribution, like the one established during the Black Saturday Victorian bushfires. Ensuring that flood and bushfire risk maps, building codes, planning schemes, infrastructure delivery and supporting legislation embrace climate change.

Rapidly escalating climate change impacts in Australia’s immediate region pose an unprecedented ­national security threat that has been “largely ignored” by strategic planners, a new report warns.

The former head of the UN ­Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, Robert Glasser, has called for the federal government to urgently recognise the security risks of climate-induced famines, rising seas and mass migrations affecting hundreds of millions of people.

He said sea levels in Southeast Asia were rising four times faster than the global average, while in Indonesia alone 165 million ­people lived in at-risk coastal areas.

Water shortages, heat waves, collapsing fisheries and devastating storms were imminent risks, Dr Glasser said in a report for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

“Any one of the increasing risks would be serious cause for concern for Australian policymakers, but the combination of them, emerging nearly simultaneously, suggests we’re on the cusp of an unprecedented and rapidly advancing regional crisis.

“Australia urgently needs to begin thinking about political, economic and security tipping points generated by climate change.”

The head of ASPI’s new Preparing for the Era of Disasters called for the government to prioritise investments in defence, foreign affairs, home affairs and intelligence agencies to assess climate risks and feed those assessments into strategic decision-making.

Defence’s posture, training and capabilities would also have to change to respond to more frequent, higher-impact regional natural disasters, while the aid program “will need to scale up its efforts to strengthen regional ­resilience”, Dr Glasser said.

He warned that the regional impacts could “overstretch our operational capacities to act” by requiring the ADF to simultaneously provide disaster relief and respond to a national security crisis.

Scott Morrison acknowledged climate change as a security risk for the first time following the 2019-20 Black Summer bushfires, saying responding to natural disasters would have implications for the ADF’s structure, capability, command and training.

Yet the word “climate” appeared just once in the 2020 Defence Strategic Update, which said the region would face more pandemics and growing food and water scarcity.

“These threats will be compounded by population growth, urbanisation and extreme weather events in which climate change plays a part,” the key Defence planning document said.

Dr Glasser said accelerating climate change impacts meant “we can’t wait for the severity of the situation on our northern doorstep to become obvious before we act”.

He cited more frequent and intense fluctuations between El Nino and La Nina events as a key threat that would lead to more extreme droughts and floods, and food insecurity.

“Crop yields will be reduced by rising temperatures, changes in rainfall, the expansion of the reach of crop pests and shifts in predators that keep crop pests in check.

“The number and duration of heatwaves are increasing, disproportionately affecting maritime Southeast Asia, where hundreds of millions of people are already exposed to extreme heat, including in the agriculture sector.”

Dr Glasser said there was some cause for optimism, with Quadrilateral Security Dialogue countries — Australia, the US, India and Japan — establishing a climate working group to co-ordinate actions and policies.

US President Joe Biden’s new whole-of-government approach to dealing with climate change had also put the issue at the centre of nat­ional security planning, he said.

Links

• Dr Robert Glasser: Preparing for the Era of Disasters
• Climate Change-Related Disasters A Major Threat To Food Security – FAO
• Disasters Caused US$210 Billion In Damage In 2020, Showing Growing Cost Of Climate Change
• The World’s 10 Most Destructive Climate Disasters Of 2020
• (AU) Australia's Bushfires Among The World's Worst Weather Disasters 'Boosted' By Climate Change, Report Finds
• The Undeniable Link Between Weather Disasters And Climate Change
• Seven Things To Know About Climate Change
• Climate Change Could Stretch Our Capabilities, Defence Force Chief Speech Warns
• Climate Change-Related Disasters A Major Threat To Food Security – FAO
• (USA) ‘Mutual Suicide’: US Issues Stark Warning On Climate Change
• Climate Change 'The Biggest Security Threat Ever Faced By Modern Humans', David Attenborough Warns
• Sea-Level Rise From Climate Change Could Exceed The High-End Projections, Scientists Warn
• Preparing For When Climate Change Drives People From Their Homes
• China's Communist Party Knows How To Quell A Restive Population — But What About Its Environment?

(UK) Carbon Dioxide Levels In Atmosphere Reach Record High

The Guardian - PA Media

Concentrations are 50% above pre-industrial levels despite dip in emissions during Covid pandemic

Smoke rises from a factory as a truck loaded with cars crosses a bridge in Paris. Photograph: Michel Euler/AP

Concentrations of climate-warming carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have hit record highs, despite a dip in emissions during the Covid pandemic, scientists have said.

The latest measurements from the long-running recording station at Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawaii, show global levels of carbon dioxide are 50% above what they were when the Industrial Revolution began in Britain.

The data released by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California San Diego, shows atmospheric concentrations of the greenhouse gas in March averaged 417.14 parts per million (ppm), a new record high.

The UK’s Met Office predicts monthly concentrations of carbon dioxide, the main driver of rising temperatures and the climate crisis, will peak in 2021 at about 419.5 ppm.

The previous record for monthly carbon dioxide concentrations at Mauna Loa in the Scripps dataset was 417.10ppm in May 2020.

Last year’s annual average figure was 413.94ppm – with 2021’s level forecast to be about 416.3ppm.

Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere fluctuate slightly during the year, dropping as some is absorbed during the spring and summer by plants growing in the northern hemisphere, before it rises again in autumn and winter.

But the long-term trend in rising concentrations of carbon dioxide is caused by human activity, mainly through the burning of fossil fuels and also from deforestation, the Met Office said.

Global emissions reduced temporarily in 2020 as a result of a drop in transport use and economic activity as the coronavirus pandemic struck.

But the emissions reduction in 2020 was not enough to substantially affect the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which continues to rise.

Much larger, longer-term reductions in emissions will be required to slow or stop the rise, the Met Office warned.

Projections from the UN’s climate science body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns that to halt global warming at 1.5C – beyond which the worst impacts of rising temperatures are expected – global emissions will need to reach net zero by around 2050, or sooner.

Reaching net zero involves cutting emissions to as near to zero as possible and taking steps such as planting trees to absorb any remaining pollution.

Commenting on the latest data, Prof Martin Siegert, of the Grantham Institute, Imperial College London, said the new record high was completely expected.

“Emissions may have been reduced but we are still emitting lots of carbon dioxide, and so its atmospheric concentration is bound to go up – and will continue to do so until we get to somewhere near net-zero emissions.

“Our path to net zero is obvious, challenging and necessary – and we must get on with the transition urgently,” he said.

Prof Simon Lewis, from University College London, said: “It is easy to forget just how much and just how fast fossil fuel emissions are affecting our planet.

“It took over 200 years to increase the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by 25%, and just 30 years to reach 50% above pre-industrial levels. This dramatic change is like a human meteorite hitting Earth.”

But he added: “If countries make plans now to put society on a path of sustained and dramatic cuts to emissions from today, we can avoid ever-rising emissions and the dangerously accelerating impacts of climate change.”

Links

• Rising levels of carbon dioxide increasing extreme weather events in Australia, report finds
• One of Earth’s giant carbon sinks may have been overestimated - study
• Blue carbon: how three Australian marine sites lock away 2bn tonnes of CO2
• Summer's bushfires released more carbon dioxide than Australia does in a year
• Western Australia LNG plant faces calls to shut down until faulty carbon capture system is fixed
• The Guardian view on Johnson's coalmine: political gain at planetary cost
• Methane released in gas production means Australia's emissions may be 10% higher than reported
• Rebound in carbon emissions expected in 2021 after fall caused by Covid
• Chevron could be forced to pay $100m for failure to capture carbon emissions

(NZ) Managing Retreat: Why New Zealand Is Drafting A New Law To Enable Communities To Move Away From Climate Risks

The Conversation - Catherine Iorns

Shutterstock/Pro Aerial Master

Author Catherine Iorns is Professor of Law, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

The government’s recently announced overhaul of major environmental legislation will result in a new law focused solely on climate change adaptation.

The 30-year-old Resource Management Act (RMA) was groundbreaking when it was passed in 1991 — the first in the world to be based on the concept of sustainable management. But it has been subject to many criticisms, and amendments, from all angles.

On one hand, it hasn’t protected the environment enough, allowing the degradation of waterways and loss of indigenous biodiversity. On the other hand, its procedures are slow and cumbersome, making development difficult. It has also been partly blamed for the current housing shortage in New Zealand.

The Power Of Water Episode 3 - Rights and Responsibilities from Newsroom on Vimeo.

In this documentary, directed by Magnolia Lowe, the author covers legal issues around water, from climate change to pollution. An extensive independent review of the legislation recommended replacing the RMA with three separate pieces of new legislation, with one focused on climate adaptation.

Perhaps most significantly, the review recommended a new government fund to pay for managed retreat, to better ensure change happens fairly and consistently across the whole of Aotearoa New Zealand.

Sued if you do and sued if you don’t

Current laws in both Australia and New Zealand are hindering adaptation to the effects of climate change.

The Australian Productivity Commission found as far back as 2012 that the law was a barrier to effective climate change adaptation. Significantly, local governments are responsible for adaptation measures, but their precise abilities and responsibilities are not clear enough.

Therefore, they face a “liability dilemma” where they are sued if they take action and sued if they don’t. The fear of being sued has stopped them from taking action and, for some local councils, concern about liability has been described as the single most important issue to resolve.

Research in New Zealand has found the same thing: New Zealand’s local authorities have been sued when they take action to adapt to climate change, and sued when they haven’t acted boldly enough. Fear of liability has also prevented New Zealand’s local government from taking measures they know are necessary.

Coastal hazard adaptation guidelines issued by the Ministry for the Environment have helped but are not enough.

The devolution of climate change measures to local government has inhibited national strategic land use planning. Shutterstock/Krug

Barriers and gaps to effective adaptation

It isn’t just fear of liability, there are many legal barriers that leave local authorities unsure of what they can or cannot do. In some cases, they are legally prevented from doing what they need to do.

In 2019, an extensive New Zealand study identified numerous barriers and gaps in the law and recommended many changes to the relevant legislation, mostly the RMA.

The RMA includes several barriers to adaptation generally as well as managed retreat in particular. For example, it is not always clear who is responsible for taking particular climate adaptation measures — whether that involves building hard seawalls, imposing conditions on building permits to ensure future resilience, or simply revising where housing and other structures may be built in the face of increasing risks from sea level rise.

Even where the responsibility is clear, the extent of the powers may be unclear, or the most appropriate measure may not be defined or leave too much flexibility about what needs to be done.

There are also strong barriers to adaptation measures that involve interference with existing, permitted land uses. In some cases it does not appear possible to force landowners to move to retreat from the coast in the face of rising sea levels. If they do move, it’s unclear if they are entitled to compensation, and if so, who should pay.

Other research focused solely on managing existing uses (particularly retreat) has also found the law needs to change if we are to enable government to take the measures necessary for communities to adapt to climate change.

The law also needs to change if we are to do this fairly and with dignity, and without transferring the risks and burdens to the most vulnerable.

Law reform

The RMA is a huge statute of 836 pages. It governs most uses of land, natural resources and the coastal marine area in New Zealand. It provides for national policies and standards, as well as regional and local ones.

But the devolution to local government has inhibited national strategic planning for land uses. For example, cities have sacrificed the best food-producing land for housing on urban fringes. Importantly, the RMA has not provided for the growing risks of climate change.

The RMA reform panel made several recommendations to fix barriers to climate adaptation, including:

• Mandatory national direction on climate adaptation measures
• spatial plans including provision for adaptation
• funding to enable managed retreat
• flexible planning regimes
• and the power to modify existing land uses and permits.

There is not enough detail yet to assess how this will be achieved. The Ministry for the Environment is currently figuring out precisely how these new statutes should be drafted.

But this could be another world first: laws to provide for climate adaptation, including a fund to enable communities to manage their retreat from climate risks. New Zealand is small and it often experiments with new ideas and initiatives.

This may well be one Australia should be watching.

Links

• (NZ) Resource Management Act to be repealed and replaced
• (NZ) Independent review of the resource management system
• (NZ) Resource Management System reform: Supporting information
• (AU) Barriers to Effective Climate Change Adaptation
• Sue To Adapt? (pdf)
• (NZ) Sea-level rise and local government: Policy gaps and opportunities (pdf)
• If warming exceeds 2°C, Antarctica's melting ice sheets could raise seas 20 metres in coming centuries
• When climate change and other emergencies threaten where we live, how will we manage our retreat?

(AU) Australia Will Face Its Moment Of Carbon Truth In 2021

AFR - Robyn Eckersley

Even this country’s closest friends are going leave us exposed as a laggard ahead of the crunch COP meeting in Glasgow.

Australia, unlike its leading allies, has been reluctant to step up the pace of decarbonisation. Peter Rae

Author Robyn Eckersley is Redmond Barry distinguished professor of political science at the University of Melbourne

This is the year of reckoning for the Paris Agreement, the future of the world’s climate and especially for Australia.

The Paris Agreement is built around a ratcheting-up mechanism. Parties to the agreement submitted pledges – known as “nationally determined contributions” (NDCs) – in 2015. These pledges must be enhanced every five years.

In 2020, parties with 2025 targets were to submit new 2030 targets and policies, while those with 2030 targets – all parties other than the US – are required to update or enhance their 2030 targets.

However, many parties missed the 2020 deadline due to the pandemic. Instead, this year we will see which countries have stepped up their ambition, and which have shirked their responsibilities.

Australia is an internationally renowned climate laggard, routinely appearing close to the very bottom of the annual Climate Change Performance Index. This year, Australia will be under diplomatic pressure on multiple fronts to do more, but especially from its closest allies, the US, and Britain as the host of the 26th annual climate conference (COP26) in Glasgow in November.

The Biden administration has rejoined the Paris Agreement and embarked on a major climate diplomatic offensive in the lead-up to Glasgow. Joe Biden’s comprehensive executive order on tackling the climate crisis at home and abroad, issued on January 27, makes it clear that he intends to outdo Barack Obama as a climate leader.

Domestically, Biden has committed to a US$2 trillion ($2.6 trillion) investment plan to revitalise US infrastructure and industry, much of which is devoted to an energy transition and green manufacturing and jobs. This includes reaching a target of 100 per cent carbon-free electricity by 2035, promoting electric vehicles (including a zero-emissions bus fleet by 2030), and ending fossil fuel subsidies.

It’s going to take a lot more than money to repair Australia’s tattered international reputation on climate change.

Biden has also appointed John Kerry as his special climate envoy. Kerry played a key role in ensuring US-China co-operation in the run-up to the Paris Agreement in 2015, and has likened failure to address climate change to a “mutual suicide pact”.

Kerry is working closely with Alok Sharma, the British president of COP26, to find ways of closing the “emissions gap” between what is pledged under existing NDCs and what is needed to keep global warming below 2 degrees.

Scientists warn that global emissions need to halve by 2030 to ensure a reasonable chance of holding global warming to 1.5 degrees. This means that rich countries should be cutting their emissions by substantially more than 50 per cent, given their obligation to lead under the burden-sharing principles of the regime.

There is also a large “climate finance gap”. Developed countries have failed to mobilise the US$100 billion required annually by 2020. Talks will aim to set a new and higher goal by 2025. Adequate climate finance is a condition precedent for poorer countries to pursue both mitigation and adaptation.

The next milestone on the road to Glasgow is Biden’s climate summit for major economies, scheduled for Earth Day on April 22. This is also the crucial moment when the US is expected to announce its 2030 NDC.

The US’s 2015 NDC was to reduce emissions by 26 to 28 per cent by 2025 from 2005 levels. Australia’s NDC copied the US target and baseline, but with a deadline of 2030. Australia’s official Climate Change Authority (since defunded and largely ignored) had recommended a 2025 target of at least 30 per cent reduction, and a 2030 target in the range of 40 to 60 per cent.

Emissions reduction ambitions

Laurence Tubiana, who served as France’s climate ambassador at the Paris negotiations and is now head of the European Climate Foundation, has argued that the US must commit to a cut of at least 50 per cent by 2030. Boris Johnson has scaled up Britain’s commitment to 68 per cent by 2030 from 1990 levels. Norway, a major gas and oil exporter, has updated its 2030 target to at least 50 per cent, while Germany’s is 55 per cent.

A report by the Australian Climate Targets Panel, an independent group of senior climate scientists and policymakers, has recommended Australia’s 2030 target should be updated to minus 50 per cent.

Australia will be under huge pressure to do more than minus 26 to 28 per cent, especially if the US goes to minus 50 per cent or beyond. The problem for Biden is that Australia already formally reported its “updated” 2030 NDC on the last day of 2020, during the summer holiday season when no one was paying attention.

This “update” simply restated the existing target of 26to 28 per cent by emphasising that it is a minimum that Australia will “meet and beat”.

The only new policy on display is Angus Taylor’s technology road map, which has been widely condemned for including gas. The government has no new national renewable energy target or credible decarbonisation strategy and has merely expressed a desire to reach net zero emissions “preferably” by 2050.

Whether Biden and Kerry, or Johnson and Sharma, can persuade the Morrison government to lift its game is an open question.

One important area of leverage for the US is climate finance. Here Australia will be under the spotlight for cancelling its future contributions to the Green Climate Fund, the primary mechanism under the climate regime to assist developing countries with mitigation and adaptation.

Resuming contributions to the Green Climate Fund might provide one avenue for possible redemption for the Morrison government at Biden’s summit, but it’s going to take a lot more than money to repair Australia’s tattered international reputation on climate change.

Links

• (AU) The carbon-cutting technology road map explained
• (AU) Forget coal, the new roadmap is a gas guzzler
• (AU) PM inches closer to net zero by 2050
• (AU) Australia stops payments to Green Climate Fund
• The Paris Agreement
• (AU) Australian carbon prices tipped to double by 2030
• (AU) A five-step climate action plan for super funds

(AU) Climate Change Will Render Parts Of Australia “Uninsurable”

Energy Matters

Experts warn that increased flooding events in Australia caused by climate change could make insurance premiums too expensive for the average resident to afford.

We already see the impacts of climate change in our country, and data shows that Australia is flooding more than ever because of it. This is because our atmosphere now holds more water; our oceans’ heating means more evaporation and heavier rain systems, while the La Niña phenomenon has increased the likelihood of severe systems colliding.

Severe weather events like flood, bushfires and hail have already hit insurers hard, and they were forced to pay out $5.3 billion for damages caused during the first quarter of 2020.

Mark Leplastrier is an atmospheric scientist and also the head of Insurance Australia Group’s (IAG) Natural Perils unit. He said that climate change was making all of these weather events worse with every cycle.

   

“The main thing is, with climate change in the background of a natural variability cycle, if you have the same event coming back, and you have more warming, you have extra rainfall or intensity associated with that,” he said.

We have seen this recently with the record flooding in New South Wales that has seen 17,000 insurance claims filed – a number rising as fast as the floodwaters. There are also fears that significant weather systems like cyclones could strike areas like south-east Queensland and northern NSW, which have never seen powerful storms like that.

Insurance costs are almost outreach in some regions already

You only have to look at North Queensland to see how the severe weather events have impacted insurance costs. Cyclone Yasi’s devastation alone caused strata premiums to more than triple from $25,000 for 25 apartments to $81,000. By the time Cyclone Debbie rolled around in 2017, many North Queenslanders could not afford insurance anymore due to the skyrocketing premiums.

The situation is so severe that homeowners have asked for Federal Government intervention, and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has launched the Northern Australia Insurance Inquiry, which is due to be concluded soon.

A big fear now is that climate change could lead to another once-in-a-generation flooding event in a region like North Queensland, which could then see a cyclone collide with the existing chaos. That would cause widespread devastation and potentially see premiums soar to completely unaffordable levels.

Renewable energy and sustainability remain crucial to reversing climate change

The world is moving towards a net-zero carbon future to halt and reverse the human-made climate change causing these catastrophic weather events. A large part of that is moving away from fossil fuels and turning towards renewable energy solutions like solar.

Australia is already well on its way towards a green future, with the individual states leading the way through investment in renewable energy infrastructure and solutions.

To help play your part, consider joining the two million-plus homeowners who have already installed solar panels on their roof. You will not only be helping save the world, but you will also enjoy enormous savings on your electricity bills. 

Links

• (AU) Climate Change Could Put Insurance Out Of Reach For Many Australians
• (AU) Our 'Tree-Change' And 'Sea-Change' Dreams Are Under Threat As Scientists Warn About Building Homes In 'Risky Areas'
• Climate Change: Extreme Weather Causes Huge Losses In 2020
• (AU) Big Banks, Insurers Publish Road Map To Net Zero
• (AU) Climate Change To Inflate Insurance Costs In Flood And Bushfire-Prone Communities
• (AU) Last Season's Climate Catastrophes Cost Insurers $5.4b
• (AU) How Climate Change Is Contributing To Soaring Insurance Costs
• (AU) Climate Change-Driven Disasters Making Insurance Premiums Too Dear For Farmers
• (AU) Insuring Your Home May Get Harder And More Expensive As Climate Change Increases Risks
• Climate Change Costs To Hit These Australian Regions Hardest
• Insurers Urge Morrison To Take On Climate Action