10/10/2021

(AU SMH) How Australia Got Blindsided In The Great Pacific Climate Coup

Sydney Morning Herald - Nick O'Malley

As the Glasgow climate talks loomed closer this week Fiji’s Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama addressed an international forum hosted by the former US vice president Al Gore, with slightly more than customary bluntness.

A little greyer and a touch softer than when he led a coup to take power for his first term in 2006, there was still a whiff of the hard man about him.

Strong words: Fiji Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama at COP23 climate change conference in Bonn, Germany in 2017. Credit: AP

Pacific leaders, he said, were tired of commending the resilience of their people in confronting a warming world and the rising seas.

They would no longer accept the role of “canary in the world’s coal mines”, they would not be the world’s “helpless songbirds”.

And then as current chair of the Pacific Islands Forum he listed priorities.

“Fiji and the Pacific’s demands are clear,” he said. “The developed world must deliver on the $100 billion dollars promised in climate finance.” He mentioned Australia and New Zealand specifically.


This language might have surprised international onlookers used to the climate debate focussing on emission reductions. And who is Fiji and its 13 Pacific partners to be issuing demands to the world?

Those with an eye on the history of high-stakes climate negotiations knew better.

The 1.5 degree drive-by

You need to know a little climate politics to understand the flex.

The Paris Agreement today commits each nation to do their utmost to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in keeping with holding global warming beneath 2 degrees and as close to 1.5 degrees as possible.

Today that lower target, 1.5 degrees, has become the focus of the world’s discussion.

But leading up to the Paris climate talks in 2015, 1.5 degrees was barely even a consideration, even though climate scientists agreed it was the point at which we stood a better chance of avoiding potentially cataclysmic climate tipping points.

The target only exists in the Paris Agreement because of a diplomatic ambush set by one of the world’s smallest nations - the Marshall Islands, population about 60,000.

That was then: Foreign Minister Julie Bishop hugs then Marshall Islands minister Tony de Brum at the Paris climate summit. Credit: Andrew McLeish
Then Marshallese foreign minister Tony deBrum recognised that while 2 degrees warming might be tolerable to other parts of the world, it would obliterate many Pacific communities and nations.

Under the slogan “1.5 to stay alive” deBrum began gathering support for an international coalition that would later become known as the High Ambition Coalition (HAC).

When the Paris talks began no one outside the group knew of its existence, but deBrum had already managed to secure the support firstly of Pacific island nations and then other small island countries in the Caribbean and Indian Ocean.

Some African nations came on board later. The EU also backed the grouping, and when the negotiations started to bite, the group managed to pull the United States on board.

Finally, more than a week into Paris negotiations, the HAC “broke cover” as Dr Wesley Morgan, researcher at the Climate Council and research fellow at Griffith Asia Institute, put it in a recent essay in the Australian journal Foreign Affairs.

The moment was dramatic. DeBrum walked towards the final session of the Paris talks flanked by the Spanish politician serving as European energy commissioner, Miguel Arias Cañete, and the US chief climate negotiator Todd Stern.

The three had palm fronds woven into their lapels to symbolise their common purpose. The Marshallese statesman also had the votes of 90 nations in his pocket.


World leaders, diplomats and staffers suddenly realised they’d been wrong-footed.

Australia, the Pacific big brother that used to boast of punching above its diplomatic weight did not even know the bloc existed before this moment.

“We could not have gotten a Paris Agreement without the incredible efforts and hard work of the island nations,” said then US President Barack Obama the following year of the efforts of deBrum and the group he corralled.

Australia’s then foreign minister Julie Bishop announced that we too would join the HAC. The problem was Australia was short on entry requirements.

“We are delighted to learn of Australia’s interest and look forward to hearing what more they may be able to do to join our coalition,” said deBrum.

The $100 billion compromise

So when laying out the demands of the Pacific Island Forum this week Bainimarama was not speaking, entirely, as a minnow in an ocean of whales. And the $100 billion in climate finance he demanded was not a figure plucked from the sky.

He was referring to a commitment made by wealthy nations in previous climate talks that began to take shape in 2009, and that has never been met.

The agreement is based on a fairly obvious inequity.

Industrialised nations have been dumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution, and have made themselves rich doing so. Poorer nations are only now going through that process.

The urgency of the climate crisis dictates that all nations must rapidly reduce their emissions, including - especially - emerging economies now reliant on heavy, dirty industry.

Recognising that greening the planet meant that poorer countries could not burn carbon as the richer world had, a payoff was agreed to during UN talks in Copenhagen in 2009.

Rich nations would “mobilise” $100 billion in finance each year by 2020 to help developing nations go greener faster.

A so-called Green Climate Fund would manage the effort.

The problem was, says one of Australia’s former chief climate diplomats, Professor Howard Bamsey, the language built into the agreement to ensure it won support, was loose enough to be almost meaningless.

Mobilise, he says, “is one of those UN verbs, so you have to parse it very carefully”.

It was never made clear, he explains, if “mobilising finance” meant giving grants or facilitating cheap loans or creating policies to help funnel private money.

Whatever it means, no matter how hard you “parse it”, you never get anywhere near $100 billion a year on a ledger.

It is hard today to work out how much money was ever secured. By some counts the most funding achieved in a year was $20 billion. By a recent OECD analysis it is closer to $80 billion, if you count finance channelled directly between nations rather than through the Green Climate Fund.

But Bamsey says the purpose of the fund was more than a practical climate response. It served to bind nations in common effort, and its failure to date is a blow to the global climate accord.

Australia once placed itself at the heart of the project, recognising it as an effective way to channel global support for the Pacific. Bamsey himself was appointed executive director of the GFC in 2016.

In an early round of funding Australia committed $200 million to the effort but in 2018 Prime Minister Scott Morrison said during a radio interview with Alan Jones that kicked off with a discussion of their mutual support for a horse racing advertisement to be projected onto the sails of the Opera House that Australia would no longer be contributing to “that big climate fund”.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Fiji’s Frank Bainimarama during his official visit to Parliament House in Canberra in 2019. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
Later in Senate estimates hearings foreign affairs staff confirmed that this comment constituted the announcement that Australia would no longer be part of the Green Climate Fund, though the nation’s foreign aid to the Pacific continued.

So what next?

DeBrum died in 2017. He’d perhaps be surprised to see how much the world has changed since then.

Carbon emissions are still trending up rather than down, but there is now a consensus that clean energy is cheaper than dirty alternatives. Around 70 per cent of the global economy exists in jurisdictions that are committed to reducing emissions to net-zero by 2050.

Both the United States, the world’s largest historical emitter of greenhouse gases, and China, the current one, back rapid decarbonisation.

We don’t know if another bloc like the High Ambition Coalition is being quietly built as Glasgow approaches, or what the HAC itself has planned.

We know that Italy has become a crossroads for international officials this month as it prepares to hold G20 talks and act as co-host to the COP26 conference in Glasgow in November.

And, due to a Twitter post by Grenada’s environment minister Simon Stiell, we know that in Milan this week US President Joe Biden’s infamously indefatigable climate envoy John Kerry made time to meet with another negotiator, the Marshall Islands climate envoy Tina Stege.

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09/10/2021

(AU SMH) Pacific Nations Refuse To Be The Canary In The Climate Coal Mine

Sydney Morning Herald - Nick O'Malley

Pacific Island nations are tired of reiterating their people’s suffering and applauding their resilience in the face of climate change and will demand real action from developed nations at upcoming climate talks, Fiji’s Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama has warned.

Fijian Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama addressing the United Nations in 2018. Credit: AP

“We refuse to be the proverbial canaries in the world’s coal mine, as we are so often called,” said Mr Bainimarama in an angry but poised speech at the forum hosted by Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project to discuss the November COP26 climate talks in Glasgow.

“We want more of ourselves than to be helpless songbirds whose demand serves as a warning to others.”
“We refuse to be the proverbial canaries in the world’s coal mine.”
Fijian Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama
He called on Pacific nations not to allow world leaders to “sneak in and out of Glasgow without making a single serious commitment.”

Paris Agreement
Strong climate targets make strong friendships, Fiji tells Australia
Mr Bainimarama said Pacific Island nations will demand that, at Glasgow, wealthier countries make good on the commitment they made during the Paris talks to extend to developing nations $US100 billion in finance annually for climate adaptation and mitigation; and to commit to emission cuts that keep the 1.5-degree warming target within reach.

“That is our expectation for every nation, Australia and New Zealand included,” said Mr Bainimarama, adding that the difference between 1.5 degrees and 2 degrees was the difference between life and death for millions.

“Our actions will decide whether islands exist or are lost to the rising seas.”

Addressing the forum, the former United States vice-president Al Gore called on all nations, but specifically Australia, the US and New Zealand, to cut their emissions in half by 2030.

“The science tells us that the only way to keep the 1.5 degree target ... is if we cut global emissions in half by 2030,” he said.

Australia has committed to cuts of 26 to 28 per cent by 2030, the US to 50 per cent and New Zealand to 30 per cent.

Pacific Island nations have proved to be formidable negotiators at United Nations climate talks.

Their lobbying saw the world adopt the 1.5-degree target at the Paris talks after they formed a voting bloc with smaller nations of the Caribbean and Africa before winning the support of the European Union and eventually the United States.

Since the UN’s August report showing the accelerating pace of climate change, Mr Bainimarama’s language on the issue has become stronger.

“This crisis is ours to own and ours to solve,” he said after the report was published.

“By the time leaders come to Glasgow at COP26, it has to be with immediate and transformative action ... Come with commitments for serious cuts in emissions by 2030 – 50 per cent or more. Come with commitments to become net-zero before 2050. Do not come with excuses. That time is past.”

Fiji’s Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama calls on world leaders to adopt real action at November's Climate Change Conference in Glasgow. 2min 21sec

Samoan Prime Minister Fiamē Naomi Mataʻafa described the Glasgow talks as the world’s “point of no return” on climate, and also called for concrete commitments on reductions and finance in line with the Paris accord during a second forum hosted by the Australia Institute on Wednesday.

In Australia, the cost of natural disasters is expected to climb from $38 billion on average each year to $73 billion per year by 2060 due to climate change, even if the world manages to rein in emissions, according to a new report by Deloitte Access Economics.

Under a high emissions scenario, in which the world would warm by 3 degrees above pre-industrial levels, that figure would climb to $94 billion.

Warming has already reached 1.1 degrees, and even if existing pledges were met the world is on track for around 2.7 degrees warming.

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(Reuters) Climate Change Set To Worsen Resource Degradation, Conflict, Report Says

Clouds gather but produce no rain as cracks are seen in the dried up municipal dam in drought-stricken Graaff-Reinet, South Africa, November 14, 2019. REUTERS/Mike Hutchings
MADRID - A vicious cycle linking the depletion of natural resources with violent conflict may have gone past the point of no return in parts of the world and is likely to be exacerbated by climate change, a report said on Thursday.

Food insecurity, lack of water and the impact of natural disasters, combined with high population growth, are stoking conflict and displacing people in vulnerable areas, the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) think-tank said.

IEP uses data from the United Nations and other sources to predict the countries and regions most at risk in its "Ecological Threat Register".

Serge Stroobants, IEP director for Europe, the Middle East and North Africa said the report identified 30 "hotspot" countries - home to 1.26 billion people - as facing most risks.

This is based on three criteria relating to scarcity of resources, and five focusing on disasters including floods, droughts and rising temperatures.

"We don't even need climate change to see potential system collapse, just the impact of those eight ecological threats can lead to this - of course climate change is reinforcing it," Stroobants said.

Afghanistan gets the worst score on the report, which says its ongoing conflict has damaged its ability to cope with risks to water and food supplies, climate change, and alternating floods and droughts.

Conflict in turn leads to further resource degradation, according to the findings.

Six seminars including governments, military institutions and development groups last year returned the message that "it is unlikely that the international community will reverse the vicious cycles in some parts of the world", IEP said.

This is particularly the case in the Sahel and the Horn of Africa, which has seen more and worsening conflicts over the last decade, it said.

"With tensions already escalating, it can only be expected that climate change will have an amplifying effect on many of these issues," the report said.

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(AU ABC) Conservation Council Takes Legal Action Against NSW Government Over Water Sharing Plan

ABC Broken Hill | Bill Ormonde

The NSW government is accused of failing to account for climate change impacts on water resources. (ABC News)
Key Points
  • The NSW Nature Conservation Council launches "world first" legal action against the state government and two ministers
  • The council wants climate change factored into future water management
  • A grazier in the state's far west hopes the case boosts public awareness of the water situation
A leading conservation body is taking extraordinary legal action over a NSW government water sharing plan, alleging the government and two individual ministers have breached the Water Management Act. 

The NSW Nature Conservation Council is alleging the government's plan failed to adequately take into account the future impact of climate change on the state's water systems and, in particular, on border rivers.

They are challenging the validity of the Water Sharing Plan for the NSW Border Rivers Regulated River Water Source Order 2021, also known as the Border Rivers Water Sharing Plan (WSP).

In NSW, the Murray-Darling Basin Plan is built around 58 individual WSPs.

The council is being represented by the Environmental Defenders Office, which filed the case in the Land and Environment Court of NSW.

Council chief executive Chris Gambian said the case was an international first.

"It's the world's first legal case challenging a catchment-wide water sharing plan," Mr Gambian said.

"We say that the NSW government, the Water Minister [Melinda Pavey] and the Environment Minister [Matt Kean] breached the Water Management Act when they made the water sharing plan for the border rivers."

In a statement, a spokesperson from NSW Water Minister Melinda Pavey's office said the state government was "currently considering the matters raised by the NCC in the proceedings but can't provide any specific comment as the matter is now before the court". 
Murray-Darling Basin irrigators
look set to win in NSW rule changes
Irrigators in the Murray-Darling Basin look set to win rule changes that will, in some cases, give them a 400 per cent greater share of water — a move scientists and lawyers say may be unlawful.

Mr Gambian of the NSW Nature Conservation Council said he did not think climate change was being properly factored into water-sharing calculations and the results could heavily impact the environment.
"If we haven't adequately recognised how much water there's likely to be available in the future we're going to keep having a problem," he said.
"The fish kills are one good example.

"The Menindee Lakes thankfully have water, but 12 months ago it didn't … is another good example."

The Darling River at Menindee has suffered several mass fish kills. (Supplied: Rob Greggory)

It is a sentiment shared by Kallara Station grazier Justin McClure who believes a lack of communication between the north and south of the state also contributed to environmental crises such as the Menindee fish kills.

"At the moment these water-sharing plans only talk to the downstream plans when they're forced to," Mr McClure said.
"Ecological disasters like we've seen at Menindee over the last couple of years are just highlighting the issue."
He believes better communication between all parties must be addressed, as must the issue of climate change.

"Connectivity is the key. If climate change isn't taken into consideration and downstream communities aren't taken into consideration then the process is broken," he said.

The Darling River is currently in much better condition, flowing at Wilcannia. (ABC Broken Hill: Bill Ormonde)

Mr Gambian agreed.
"There is not enough water, there is over extraction and there is not management that is meeting the needs of the current circumstances," he said.

Mr McClure says he hopes that, at the very least, the legal action will raise public awareness of the water issue, especially in the state's cities where people are not adequately informed about some matters affecting other parts of the state. 

"Raising public awareness is the key to getting us on the same playing field and same level as other communities," he said.

"We've all got a say in this argument, we've all got to live. All communities matter."

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08/10/2021

(AU The Guardian) ‘Eye-Watering’: Climate Change Disasters Will Cost Australia Billions Each Year, Study Finds

The Guardian - 

Catastrophes like fires and floods could set the economy back more than $1.2tn by 2060, even if action is taken

Flood damage in the Windsor area along the Hawkesbury River during severe floods in NSW in March 20201. Climate change-related disasters will cost the Australian economy billions each year, a report by Deloitte Access Economics says. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AFP/Getty Images

Climate change-related disasters will cost Australia $73bn a year by 2060, even if action to curb emissions is taken now, a report has found.

And if nothing is done to tackle climate change, that figure will grow to $94bn a year by that date, a study by Deloitte Access Economics says.

The report, commissioned by the Australian Business Roundtable for Disaster Resilience and Safer Communities (ABR), found the cost of inaction on climate change to date, and forecast the price tag in three scenarios: low, medium and high emissions.

Under “low emissions”, climate change is contained to a 1.7C increase above pre-industrial levels, with emissions falling to zero by 2100. The “medium” scenario means temperatures start to decline by 2045, while under “high emissions” there are no efforts to curb them, causing temperatures to rise more than 2C by 2040, and 3C after 2060.

The report said the cumulative bill for Australia would run into the trillions over the next four decades.

“Over the next 40 years, the cost of natural disasters to the Australian economy is expected to be at least $1.2tn in present value terms,” the report said. “This cumulative cost would potentially increase by $125bn if a higher emission scenario eventuates.”

The report found two-thirds of the cost will be borne by Queensland and New South Wales, with Melbourne vulnerable to flooding events due to its proximity to major rivers.

Australia is already heavily exposed to natural disasters – fire, flood, hailstorms and hurricanes – that currently cost the country $39b a year. This figure is expected to rise dramatically as property values increase and more people move into areas vulnerable to extreme weather events that hit harder and more often.

The “nightmare” scenario would be a change in weather patterns causing a hurricane to land in south-east Queensland, which has been heavily built up by development.

It adds to a growing body of work in Australia and elsewhere that has sought to measure the risks of the climate crisis, including another by London-based thinktank Chatham House in September that considered the impact from climate change tipping points.

Dan Gocher, the director of climate and environment at the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility, said even under a low-emissions scenario the figures in the report were “eye-watering” and should serve as a call to action.

“This research quantifies the cost of doing nothing about climate change,” Gocher said. “It’s the perfect riposte to those who repeatedly question the cost of reducing emissions.”

Erwin Jackson, policy director at the Investor Group on Climate Change, said Australia was highly exposed to the physical impacts of climate change and the government alone could not foot the bill.

Josh Frydenberg admits climate change a major preoccupation in global markets. Read more
He said the private sector would invest in resilience and adaptation measures but needed clear policy direction.

That had begun with a positive response by government to the bushfire royal commission, and the creation of a National Recovery and Resilience Agency, but more was required, he said.

“We look forward to more discussions with the government about how we unlock private sector capital to build resilience to the impacts of climate change,” he said.

Ian Dunlop, from the thinktank Breakthrough – National Centre for Climate Restoration, said the report was “very useful in confronting decision-masters with the implications of climate change” but the insurance sector was being “coy” about the issue.

He said deep cuts in emissions were required now to limit the rise in temperatures. “If you don’t do that, it’s game over,” he said.

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(AU ABC) Sustainable Development Won't Solve Environmental Crises, Say These Experts. It's Simpler Than That

 ABC Radio - National Antony Funnell, Future Tense

Some experts have labelled sustainability efforts as "greenwashing". (Getty Images: gollykim)

Sustainable development is a priority for anyone genuinely concerned about the environment.

Unless we as a society rethink our use of global resources, life, as we know it, will one day cease to exist.

The United Nations has made this an international imperative, setting out a series of 17 broad sustainability goals which it hopes can be met by 2030.

The corporate world has also come on board, with an ever-growing number of companies developing their own green reporting standards and committing to a sustainable future. Meeting those objectives is now a trillion-dollar industry.

The UN set out the Sustainable Development Goals "to achieve a better and more sustainable future". (Getty Images: SOPA)

The problem is, there's no consensus about what "sustainable development" actually means and how it should be measured.

Some researchers believe it's little more than corporate "greenwashing."

While others see it as a misplaced ideal that could exacerbate — rather than avert — social and environmental destruction.

Is sustainability even possible?

Academic Christopher Barnatt, from the website ExplainingTheFuture.com, describes sustainability as a "dangerous" concept.

"It gives the impression that we could all go on living exactly as we live today but sustainably — with this sort of magic thing wrapped around it," he tells ABC RN's Future Tense.
Sustainable development may be "politically convenient", he argues, but it has no real meaning in a world driven by exponential consumption and powered by unlimited extraction.

"As a physical concept, [sustainability] is impossible. Life itself is a physically consumptive process.

"The only way we can actually preserve things for the future and look after the environment is to change how we live, to use fewer resources, to value things in another way."

Climatologist Chirag Dhara agrees. While a focus on reducing fossil fuel use is laudable, he says, we have to be careful not to ignore the greater threat posed by the exponential consumption of resources.

"Our economy is highly extractive, whether it's agriculture [or] manufacturing. What's happening is our use of the raw materials, our material footprint, is growing in lockstep with the growth of GDP, our economic growth."

And that, says Professor Dhara, an assistant professor at Krea University in India, can't continue forever.

Even renewable energy technologies eventually need to be replaced, he points out. While they might be better for the environment, they're not cost neutral. They consume resources over the course of their lifespan and through the systems constructed to distribute the energy they generate.

Chirag Dhara warns that unbridled economic growth will have dire consequences for the planet. (Supplied: Chirag Dhara)

"All of this technology is made possible through principles of physics and chemistry and mathematics that allows them to happen, but the same principles inevitably limit them.

"That means that if we want to preserve the current paradise of limitless economic growth," he says, "it has to be completely decoupled from the use of material resources."

And under the current system of global consumer capitalism, he warns, that's never going to happen.

An instrument of division

For Melissa Checker, the term sustainable development conjures up very different thoughts – ones of displacement and social inequality.

"The way it's playing out, it's undermining its stated intention," she says. And there are contradictions in its application.

Melissa Checker is one of several experts urging a rethink around sustainable development. (Supplied: Melissa Checker)
Building a perfect Green Star-rated building loses all sustainable credentials, she says, if the land it's built on is a converted wetland.

An associate professor of urban studies at City University of New York, Dr Checker believes true sustainability and environmental justice are incompatible with dominant forms of urban development.

"Sustainability became a very useful concept in an effort to market New York city to more affluent residents and to promote the redevelopment needed to attract those upscale residents."

But, time and again, says Dr Checker, the end result has been a rise in property values which, in turn, has forced residents from lower socio-economic groups out of their homes and neighbourhoods.

It's also led to growing inequality in the provision of services and opportunities, she contends.

Another skyscraper is added to New York City's ever-growing skyline. (Getty Images: Robert Nickelsberg)

"As some neighbourhoods are being greened, other neighbourhoods are becoming more brown.

"Neighbourhoods that are not slated for gentrification or redevelopment are getting more toxic facilities, more industrial facilities and no green amenities. They are being sacrificed for the sake of redevelopment in these other places."

No consistent measurements

Dr Checker argues the concept of sustainable development has been hijacked by corporate interests. In the case of New York, she cites the powerful real estate and development sectors.

Her suspicions chime with recent research from Renard Siew, a climate change advisor with the Centre for Governance and Political Studies, headquartered in Malaysia.

Dr Siew, who also advises the World Economic Forum, says a lack of global consistency in the way sustainability standards are measured has allowed companies to game the system by picking and choosing the assessment tools that best suit their corporate interests.

"It's not surprising to see common indicators, common criteria such as carbon emissions reported differently. Which means it's very difficult to make an apples-to-apples comparison."

A lack of standardisation, Dr Siew says, is also an issue with the rating systems used to assess the eco-credentials of new and refurbished buildings. But at the heart of the problem, he says, is the voluntary nature of reporting.

"It should be made mandatory, with really detailed requirements of what is expected in terms of certain criteria, to avoid situations where a company can cherry-pick indicators that they want to report on to put them in a good light."

He notes that both the European Union and the UN are now making moves toward compulsory sustainability reporting measures. But progress is slow.

Back to the future

Design expert Stuart Walker from Lancaster University advocates a return to the original concept of sustainable development.

The UN's Brundtland Commission developed the term as a way of structuring international assistance to the developing world. It provided a framework to ensure future development in countries didn't inadvertently destroy people's livelihoods and the environment.

It was a multi-faceted approach, says Dr Checker.

"They called for prioritising of ecological, economic and social sustainability.

"European cities really took it on. Also environmental justice activists really embraced the term as a way to think about the kind of calls they were issuing for racial justice and social justice along with environmental justice."

But, according to Professor Walker, the embrace of the sustainability ethos was soon corrupted and is now predominantly viewed through the lens of business and finance.
"It's very easy to create a nice, green annual report about all the environmental things a company might be doing – but what is that in proportion to the whole of their operation?" he says.
"If you separate them out, you're not getting that holistic picture."

For Christopher Barnatt, the elephant in the room is modern capitalism and the theory of planned obsolescence, where objects are deliberately manufactured to be disposable in order to maximise the potential for future sales.

"Economics basically tells us to consume as much as we want and it doesn't cost-in the consequences: recognising there isn't an infinite supply of resources and that there are implications for the planet and the environment."

It's time to phase out the theory of planned obsolescence and return to valuing things, say some experts. (Getty Images: Bloomberg)
The answer, he says, is not only to consume less but to value more.

"We don't have to go back that far to find generations of people who saved up to purchase objects which they kept, in many cases, for a lifetime. They valued the things they had."

"Consuming less doesn't necessarily mean having a less material world," says Dr Barnatt. "It just has to be a material world in which we have the things we have for a longer period of time."

A world where disposability is once again considered a waste, not a virtue.

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(AU RenewEconomy) Gina Rinehart Peddles Climate Denial To Students In Bizarre Video Rant

RenewEconomy - 

Australia's richest person, Gina Rinehart, told students that climate science was "propaganda". (Source: YouTube)

Australia’s richest person, Gina Rinehart, has used a message to school students to peddle long-discredited claims that global warming is not real and said suggestions otherwise is merely “propaganda” pushed by those with vested interests.

In a bizarre recorded message to students at Perth’s St Hilda’s Anglican School for Girls – the school Rinehart herself attended – Rinehart warns students to be aware of the “propaganda” they may be taught at school – citing climate change as the key culprit.

The video was recorded last month as part of a 125th anniversary event for the school, and was addressed to the school’s students.

While Rinehart spends the first quarter of the video reflecting on her and her family’s connections with the school – the rest of the video turns into a disjointed rant about climate change, the media and her love of former UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher.

St Hilda's 125th Anniversary Event - Speech by Gina Rinehart

Rinehart spends much of the video complaining that students are not taught the widely debunked claims of climate change deniers, and goes on to praise the life of Margaret Thatcher and criticising social policy.

Rinehart, who has amassed wealth of more than $35 billion, mostly from mining, told the students to be aware of messages delivered by those motivated by money or egos.

“Rationale should ask, why does the media in general and those they influence now call for reducing carbon? More questions spring to mind. Please be very careful about information spread on an emotional basis, or tied to money, or egos or power seekers,” Rinehart said.

“It concerns me greatly, that the current generation of school leavers and attendees, too often miss such important basics. As too often propaganda erodes these critical foundations.”

Rinehart is the owner of Hancock Prospecting, which has interests in coal projects in Queensland’s Galilee Basin, and has plans to massively expand the company’s coal operations overseas.

Rinehart reveals that she organised for infamous climate change deniers, the UK’s Lord Monckton and Australia’s Ian Plimer, to speak to students in an effort to undermine the messages contained in former US vice-president Al Gore’s 2006 film An Inconvenient Truth.

“So I brought Lord Monckton and Professor Ian Plimer to address senior students and hopefully take away some of the emotional fear that was being spread around by such film and speeches,” Rinehart said.

“If I may ask a question for students to ask their teachers and do their own independent research. And that is, which comes first, global warming, or an increase in carbon?”

In the latest IPCC summary of climate change science, the world’s climate scientists say that “it is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land.”

Despite this, Rinehart trotted out many of the old, discredited, arguments perpetuated by climate change deniers – including that observed global warming has been caused by natural phenomena.

Throughout the video, Rinehart includes slides that appear to question both climate change and medical science, including one that just says “medicine, should it be scientifically and factually based or politically based?”

They are messages that hark back to the prior decades of misinformation around the causes of climate change.

“Not so easy to find facts at times these days, not helped when the government supports grants towards one side of the argument, making it less beneficial to consider the natural influences on our climate,” Rinehart said.

“Distance from the Sun as the Earth orbits, which we should know influences summers and winters, volcanoes, including the many that erupt under the ocean, and other scientific facts that I had the benefit of learning when I was at school.”

“Indeed, importantly, as we are overwhelmed by media and propaganda today, that the earth lived through many ice ages and global warming’s pre man even being on this planet. Hence that multi global warming and ice ages are not caused by man.”

The video provides insight into the extent of Rinehart’s views, and the views of someone known to be a significant funder of climate change denial in Australia and overseas.

Rinehart has poured millions into groups like the Institute of Public Affairs, as well as making significant financial contributions to the Liberal-National coalition.

Rinehart also has links with members of the Morrison government, including deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce, attorney general Michaelia Cash and former resources minister Matt Canavan.

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