23/11/2021

(AU Canberra Times) Australia's R&D Spend Too Low To Fund Future Climate Change Technology Breakthroughs: Experts

Canberra Times - Doug Dingwall

Entrepreneur and head of the Australian National University's Battery Storage and Grid Integration program, Lachlan Blackhall. Picture: Karleen Minney

Australia's scientific triumphs have a hard time entering the nation's folklore. It may be why the passivated emitter and rear cell, or PERC, isn't as widely celebrated as it should be. Unlike the Hills Hoist and WiFi, it isn't a household name among Australian-led inventions.

That seems a shame, because the solar energy technology has become one of the world's most successful. It has rapidly gained market share in the photovoltaic industry, and is mitigating 1 per cent of the world's carbon emissions by pushing out coal power. About 90 per cent of solar panels made around the world contain the PERC technology.

Cumulative worldwide sales of PERC modules have reached more than $100 billion. Andrew Blakers, who was on the University of NSW team that developed the technology, says the figure is doubling every three years, which would push its carbon reduction beyond 10 per cent of emissions.

The technology breakthrough didn't happen in a vacuum. It emerged in the 1980s when UNSW researchers looked for, and found, a more efficient way of converting energy from the sun into electricity. The PERC was later commercialised overseas.

Thirty years on, the federal government has told Australians and the world that technology will underpin the nation's efforts to reduce carbon emissions to zero by 2050.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison, speaking at the Glasgow summit earlier this month, said it would be "the Australian way" of reaching the target.

"It will be our scientists, our technologists, our engineers, our entrepreneurs, our industrialists and our financiers that will actually chart the path to net zero," he said.

"And it is up to us as leaders of governments to back them in.

"The Australian way is to bet on them - and we think that's a good bet."
Everyone's talking big about future zero carbon technologies. And no one's spending big, certainly not in Australia.
Professor Frank Jotzo
Climate change experts aren't so sure the federal government is living up to those words.

Australia spends less on research and development as a proportion of GDP (1.79 per cent) than the OECD average (2.48 per cent). Spending on R&D has fallen as a percentage of the Australian economy since 2008.

Universities, major incubators of pioneering research used to develop new technology, will sustain more government funding cuts over the next three years and are reeling from the COVID-induced loss of revenues from international student enrolments.

Regardless, the federal government's net zero plan bets the nation will find 15 per cent of its emission reductions through unknown, future technology breakthroughs.

Experts say Australia will need to spend vastly more on R&D if it's to make some of the necessary innovations, rather than be a spectator - and eventually purchaser - of new technology made overseas.

They also say it is governments - not the private sector - that will have to take the lead in funding the early-stage research leading to breakthroughs like the PERC.

Australian National University climate change economics professor Frank Jotzo says the nation's public spend on R&D is totally inadequate for the challenge ahead.

"Everyone's talking big about future zero carbon technologies. And no one's spending big, certainly not in Australia," he says.

"If we as a nation were to be serious about actually making a global difference on these things, and about actually positioning Australia for success on any of these things, then we'd have to go in there at a much larger scale.

"With the present amounts of money that are slated for government subsidies, you're just not going to achieve very much."

Prime Minister Scott Morrison says technology will underpin the nation's carbon reduction efforts. Picture: Sitthixay Ditthavong

The PERC, one of Australia's major contributions to emissions-reducing technology, arose from research funded by Commonwealth and state organisations supporting renewable energy. The Australian Research Council also provided funding.

Professor Blakers, now an ANU engineering professor, draws two lessons from the experience for future research. First, diversity of funding sources is crucial. Second, long-term funding support lets researchers take the long view.

"There was a range of places to go and get money, and that meant that if you fell over in one area, you weren't out of business, you had another chance from some other organisation," he says.

"We had available to us long-term support that extended over years. And that was crucial to give us the leisure to go after things that were not obvious."

Researchers need access to short-term grant funding, longer-term program funding, and commercial sources of funding, he says.

Yes, it is a race

 There is a pathway to reaching net zero emissions, and upscaling clean energy sources plays a major part.

Climate change economists and technologists say that to a large extent, the necessary technology is already available. Professor Jotzo says almost all the actual emissions reductions that will be achieved in Australia will come from deploying existing technologies.

"There's not really any kind of miracle to wait for there," he says. Still, there are problems that R&D can solve and Australia can contribute to the effort.

"So the chance for Australia is to go hard, and to go fast, and to go big on those areas where Australian R&D can really make a difference," Professor Jotzo says.

Professor Blakers says the nation has the tools it needs to reach net zero at today's energy costs.

"But there is the opportunity to halve energy costs. And that's what we need more R&D to go after."

Solar technology researchers are looking for ways to make photovoltaic cells cheaper and more efficient.

Hydrogen made using electrolysis from wind and solar energy needs more R&D to achieve substantial cost reductions.

Australian National University professor Andrew Blakers, who was on the University of NSW team that developed world-leading solar technology. Picture: Dion Georgopoulos
There are other prospects: Lithium batteries with 20 times more energy per kilo; hyper-efficient electric motors; and negative emissions technologies sucking carbon out of the atmosphere.

Climate change technologists and economists say the R&D needed to bring about the next innovations for low emissions technology will need well-funded public institutions including universities and CSIRO.

Comment was sought from the office of Emissions Reduction Minister Angus Taylor.

Entrepreneur and ANU professor Lachlan Blackhall is working to solve big picture questions for the future of Australia's electricity system.

He leads the university's Battery Storage and Grid Integration program, which is looking at new types of battery technologies that could be suited for storing energy in the electricity grid.

It is also looking at how to integrate different energy assets - including solar panels, batteries and electric vehicles - so they work together in the grid to bring reliable and secure electricity supply.

Professor Blackhall says while the private sector is an important source of funding, it will be governments that provide funding for the research into early-stage technologies with a more uncertain return.

"When you're talking about big infrastructure, like energy, we're potentially talking about a decade or more to bring new technologies to market," Professor Blackhall says.

"And so the scale of the funding that's needed is often quite significant."

There are a few different models for the federal government to consider.

The Australian Renewable Energy Agency provides money for relatively mature new technologies.

Director of the ANU's Institute for Climate, Energy and Disaster Solutions Mark Howden proposes a new federal agency focused on funding earlier-stage research into less mature emissions-reduction technologies.

Science and Technology Australia has proposed a $2.4 billion research translation fund channeling funding to promising technologies that need further work to reach a point where the private sector will begin investing.

The peak body's chief executive Misha Schubert says the nation will need to back the work of its scientists, engineers and technologists.

"What we know from the history of research and development, particularly technological development, is when there are those bursts of direct investment and a pipeline to bring those technologies faster along the developmental pathway, that's where you see really exciting and high paced breakthroughs in world leading technology," she says.

"What we need to do is back in the work of our scientists, engineers and technologists so that they can help us chart a pathway that is clever and swift, and makes the transitions that the climate science so clearly says need to be made."

Professor Blackhall says funding is needed for carbon emission-reducing technologies right across their pipeline from early research to the point they're commercialised and then integrated with the energy system.

In the face of the existential threat posed by climate change, and warnings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change about looming thresholds, there is no time to waste, he says.

"More funding is going to be needed across that entire pipeline, to ensure that we can actually bring these new technologies and capabilities to scale in the timeframe that we need," Professor Blackhall says.

"Because we also need to recognise now that it's a race to ensure that we can transition in sufficient time to make sure that the impacts of global warming are mitigated."

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(BBC News Delhi) Why Schools Are Failing Children On Climate Change

BBC News - Zoya Mateen

Experts say timely education on climate change can prepare children for the future. NurPhoto

Every year, Shamayel Zaidi, a school teacher in India, gives his new senior school students the same assignment: a presentation on one of three topics - consumer awareness, social issues or environmental sustainability.

Hardly anyone picks environment, he said. Not even in recent years since the perils of climate change have become more real everywhere - temperatures are higher than ever, glaciers are melting faster, violent cyclones and wildfires have become common, and children are at higher risk because of all of this.

But in this residential school in the northern city of Varanasi, Mr Zaidi said, students are not interested because there has been no "real effort" to inform them of the severity of the climate crisis.

"Unless it's your town that's being hit by a flood or some other catastrophe, people are not aware of how bad things are," he said.

Inequality also plays a role, he added. "Some of my students want to talk about climate change. But a lot of them come from families where such subjects are never discussed at home."

When 15-year-old Greta Thunberg started a school strike in Sweden in 2018 to draw attention to the climate crisis, she kicked off a youth-led movement that quickly gathered steam. For the the first time, children and teens - pouring out on to the streets in every continent - demanded climate action.

Ever since, children have been taking centre stage in the fight against a rapidly warming world. And as they do, many are pushing for schools to add climate change to their curriculum.

Students around the world have called for action against climate change. Getty Images
"Including climate topics in school curriculum is critical for training the next generation of innovative thinkers that can become champions of climate action at local and international stages," said Dr Ayoob Sharifi, an associate professor at the Hiroshima University and one of the lead authors of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report.

New Zealand and Italy have already introduced climate change studies into the secondary school curriculum and Britain said at November's COP26 summit that a climate change teaching strategy was on the anvil. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently said there is a need to include "climate change adaptation policies" in the school syllabus.

India currently has no curriculum on climate change, but some aspects such as sustainability are taught under environmental studies, which is compulsory in schools and colleges.

Dr Sharifi says teaching about climate change is of "utmost importance" for India as it is "expected to experience rapid population growth and urbanisation in the coming decades".

If children are aware of the consequences of unsustainable growth, they are likely to adopt a more climate-friendly lifestyle, he said.

Some schools in India have started doing this informally. At Shri Ram school in Gurgaon city, children learn to plant trees and make projects out of recycled products as they discuss changing weather patters and the social and economic aspects of their relationship with the environment.

Some schools in India encourage students to use recycled products to teach them sustainability. Getty Images

"It may not be a separate subject per se, but there is a curriculum in place to teach children about climate change and it's graded," said Sharda Sagar, who has taught environmental studies and social studies the school.

But experts say existing teaching methods do not address the scale of the problem.

"The environmental curriculum focuses more on nature and outdoor education but doesn't touch upon how human actions contribute to climate change or how children can actually combat it," Keya Lamba said.

Ms Lamba co-founded Earth Warriors - a climate change programme for children - with Shweta Bahri, an education policy expert.

Earth Warriors offers a series of learning modules for children between three and seven years, introducing complex topics on climate change through animated characters, songs and simple activities. Lessons rely on reused and natural materials such as cardboard boxes, sticks and leaves.

Ms Bahri says the idea is to teach children important concepts but to also make them "feel like superheroes" and make them realise that individual actions can help protect the planet.

The course also trains teachers on how to approach the topic in "a non-scary positive way".

The curriculum has been piloted in about four countries, including the UK, US and Botswana, and will be launched in a few private primary schools in India in February. "This is a start but our end goal is to make this a national curriculum in India and elsewhere," Ms Lamba said.

Earth warriors uses animated characters to explain climate change to children. Earth Warriors

But not everyone agrees that Indian schools need a separate curriculum on climate change.

Anita Rampal, former dean of the Faculty of Education at Delhi University, says that instead of relegating the topic to a separate textbook, there is a need to integrate it with existing subjects "so that it runs through the entire curriculum".

"Climate change and related topics such as the biodiversity crisis and ecological justice are very important to understand, but they are also abstract and challenging," she said. "It's not enough to preach moral messages or give definitions. These concepts and issues need to be woven into whatever you teach."

There are other challenges too. Huge disparities exist between underfunded government-run schools and plush private ones, making it that much harder to integrate climate education across the board.

"It's easy to say schools should create outdoor time and practical activities, but the truth is that it cannot happen in many poor schools in India. So, more than a curriculum, schools need to be supported to be able to bridge this gap," Ms Sagar said.

But teachers also worry about the despair and hopelessness students can feel upon learning about the troubling reality of climate change.

Ms Rampal says that's a part of growing up. "Children have to address issues as they face them. A curriculum is never just transmitting information, it is about a child constructing her own knowledge."

Other experts say solutions too must be an integral part of learning about climate change.

"Only showing a dark image of the future will certainly have a negative mental impact," Mr Sharifi said. "Schools need to emphasise that there are solutions to the problem and that our individual and collective actions can make a big difference."

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22/11/2021

(ScienceAlert) Warming Events Could Destabilize The Antarctic Ice Sheet Soon. Very Soon

ScienceAlert - David Nield

(Suresh Krishna/Moment/Getty Images)

Here's another reminder of the precarious position that the world's climate and ecosystems are in: a new study estimates that global warming could push the Antarctic ice sheet past a tipping point in as little as 10 years.

In other words, the point of no return in terms of ice sheet loss is arriving earlier than previously thought, and we may well already be in the midst of it. That could have serious consequences when it comes to sea level rise globally, and the local habitats that animals in Antarctica rely on.

To get a better idea of what's happening right now, the researchers went back into the past, looking at the continent's history over the last 20,000 years – back to the last ice age – through ice cores extracted from the sea floor.

"Our study reveals that during times in the past when the ice sheet retreated, the periods of rapid mass loss 'switched on' very abruptly, within only a decade or two," says paleoclimatologist Zoë Thomas, from the University of New South Wales in Australia.

"Interestingly, after the ice sheet continued to retreat for several hundred years, it 'switched off' again, also only taking a couple of decades."

As icebergs break off Antarctica, they float down a major channel known as Iceberg Alley. Debris released from these icebergs accumulates on the seafloor, giving researchers a record of history some 3.5 kilometers (2.2 miles) under the water.

By combining this natural logbook of iceberg drift with computer models of ice sheet behavior, the team was able to identify eight phases of ice sheet retreat across recent millennia. In each case, the ice sheet destabilization and subsequent restabilization happened within a decade or so.

The results published by the researchers augment modern satellite imagery, which only goes back around 40 years: they show increasing losses of ice from the interior of the Antarctic ice sheet, not just changes in ice shelves already freely floating on the water. 

"We found that iceberg calving events on multi-year time scales were synchronous with discharge of grounded ice from the Antarctic ice sheet," says glaciologist Nick Golledge, from the Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand.

The study showed the same sea rise pattern happening in each of the eight phases too, with global sea levels affected for several centuries and up to a millennium in some cases. Further statistical analysis identified the tipping points for these changes.

If the current shift in ice in Antarctica can be interpreted in the same way as the past events identified by the researchers, we might already be in the midst of a new tipping point – something we've seen in other parts of the world and the Arctic in recent years.

"If it just takes one decade to tip a system like this, that's actually quite scary because if the Antarctic Ice Sheet behaves in future like it did in the past, we must be experiencing the tipping right now", Thomas says.

Further evidence for these tipping points can be found in cores previously analyzed from the region, the researchers report, and the latest study also matches up with earlier models of ice sheet loss from the region.

"Our findings are consistent with a growing body of evidence suggesting the acceleration of Antarctic ice mass loss in recent decades may mark the beginning of a self-sustaining and irreversible period of ice sheet retreat and substantial global sea level rise," says geophysicist Michael Weber, from the University of Bonn in Germany.

The research has been published in Nature Communications.

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(AU Saturday Paper) The Man Behind Scott Morrison’s Climate Panic

 The Saturday Paper - Mike Seccombe

Emails show the man hired to review Scott Morrison’s climate model helped Angus Taylor with last election’s climate scare.
Former head of the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics Brian Fisher. Credit: Supplied

In the lead-up to the last election, just as now, the Morrison government was in political trouble on climate change policy.

Labor had a comprehensive plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 45 per cent by 2030. The government had nothing new to propose. But it had a secret weapon and on February 20, 2019, it used it. That day, Rupert Murdoch’s national broadsheet, The Australian, ran a front-page headline that read: “Carbon cut apocalypse: cost of ALP energy plan”.

The story below that headline was replete with big, scary numbers. It said Labor’s policy would “push electricity prices 50 per cent higher, cost workers up to $9000 a year in lower wages and wipe $472 billion from the economy over the next decade”. This was “according to the first independent modelling of the energy policies of both the government and opposition”.

The story quoted the work’s author, Brian Fisher, a former head of the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARE) and go-to numbers guy for Australian fossil fuel miners.

He voiced his frustration at “how deficient and even outright dishonest the climate debate continues to be” when the “inescapable” reality was that whoever won the election, Australia would suffer an economic hit.

Fisher told The Australian he expected to be “kicked” by both sides of politics for this assessment.

But Fisher was never going to be “kicked” by the Morrison government. When The Australian ran its story, he had already been in communication with the government for many weeks, if not months.

Energy Minister Angus Taylor and his office were liaising with Fisher as he drafted his modelling.

An email trail obtained under freedom of information and given to The Saturday Paper makes that very clear.

Seven weeks before Fisher’s modelling came out – and instantly landed on the front page of The Australian – Taylor sent an email to his staff “team”, saying he had begun working on a piece for publication that compared electricity prices state by state, using draft numbers from Fisher, but “these will need to be updated when we get the final ones”.

In the meantime, he told his staff, they should start working on a comparison of electricity prices “Labor v Coalition” and exploring the “implications” of Labor’s emissions target.

“We need to think about the timing of this with respect to Fisher’s modelling work,” Taylor wrote.

A great deal of the FoI material obtained by The Australia Institute was redacted, so it is unclear how long the minister’s office and the modeller had been exchanging information.

But clearly the government had detailed knowledge of what was coming, and saw it as important that “one of Australia’s most respected advisers on climate change and the economic impact of current and future climate and energy policies” should provide support for its claim that Labor’s proposal would put a “wrecking ball through the economy”.

On the day Fisher’s work became public, a list of talking points and a draft media release were ready to go. And the government hammered the issue of the alleged high cost of Labor’s climate policies relentlessly until the election, aided by repeated interventions in the debate by Fisher.

In fact, the work that informed The Australian’s original story – entitled “Economic consequences of some alternative Australian climate policies” – was only a four-page taste of what was to come.

Months later, when questioned at a seminar at the Australian National University, Fisher said he only put up a summary because the full modelling was out for review, and claimed he did not know how the newspaper found his report within minutes of it being uploaded to his website.

The full version was released on March 11. On May 1, Fisher released a third effort. Abandoning all pretext of political impartiality, it was titled: “Economic consequences of Labor’s climate change action plan.”

Speaking to The Saturday Paper, Fisher defended his work largely by referencing the complexity of his model.

“The model that I use, which is basically my version of the government model, updated and changed many times since I left government in 2006, has got over a million equations in its most detailed form,” he said. “So, you know, these things are difficult to use. And difficult to understand.”

The report he released was roundly condemned by most other economists and energy experts. As The Australia Institute summarised: “Brian Fisher’s latest model of climate costs was off-the-chart.

"It shows cost to GDP [gross domestic product] impacts that were five to ten times larger than every other economy-wide model, including those from Warwick McKibbin, Climateworks, ANU, CSIRO, Victoria University and three major reports from Commonwealth Treasury.”

Kane Thornton, chief executive of the Clean Energy Council, said: “This report, its input assumptions and modelled outcomes, are total garbage. Any politician using this to compare/critique energy policies should be laughed at.”

Almost three years on, the Morrison government is again playing games with climate modelling – and again Fisher is involved.

A couple of weeks ago, on October 25, officials from Taylor’s department confirmed to a senate estimates committee that Fisher had been paid $100,000 for help in its climate modelling. He is listed in the modelling's acknowledgements as one of its peer reviewers.

Fisher tells The Saturday Paper there may be more to his involvement than has been revealed. “There is potentially other work that might be mentioned in the future in the context of the model when it’s released. I do have a contract. And I can’t discuss it with you.”

The day after the estimates revelation, the government’s much-hyped but insubstantial plan for getting Australia to net-zero emissions by 2050 was released.

Morrison said the modelling would show Australia’s gross national income would grow 1.6 per cent under the plan. Nearly 62,000 new regional mining and heavy industry jobs would be created and the average Australian would be nearly $2000 better off.

The modelling, finally released yesterday, is starkly at odds with the Fisher modelling it used at the last election, which said that even the government’s modest 26-28 per cent reductions target would lead to 78,000 fewer jobs, a $9000 cut to real wages and a $19 billion hit to GDP by 2030.

How can this be?

The explanation, says one economist with 20 plus years as a modeller, first at ABARE when it was headed by Fisher and then for several big consulting companies, is that underlying every one of the hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions, of equations that modellers run through their computers are assumptions.

“And the assumptions you put in define the space the model can move in when you run the simulations,” he says.

If you are, for example, modelling future electricity prices: “Before the model starts, you basically have to dial in what are the relative costs of all the technologies – coal, oil, gas, brown coal, nuclear, hydro, other renewables. If you dial in a very expensive renewables price, then … the cost of addressing climate change turns out very expensive.”

And the fact is, 20 years ago, renewables were relatively expensive. Their cost has come down dramatically and is likely to continue to come down dramatically. Thus the inherent problem for modellers: how do you make accurate projections of the future when technology costs are rapidly changing? Do you assume current costs or take a guess at future costs?

Historically, says the expert, even the best-intentioned modellers tended to make conservative assumptions. Still, he says, all around the world, modelling was a well-intentioned exercise, usually done by academics, with the results couched in terms only understandable to, and sometimes honestly contested by, other experts.

Australia, however, has led the world in the politicisation of modelling, he says. And Brian Fisher, as executive director of ABARE, played a big role in that. Under his leadership, says the former ABARE modeller, the organisation developed a model called Megabare.

“ABARE spent a lot of time and money converting theoretical, academic-type models into a tool that spoke the language of government, that convinced the public that these models were producing numbers that made sense in a political context.”

In February 1998, the federal ombudsman issued a scathing critique of the way ABARE operated under Fisher, following a complaint by the Australian Conservation Foundation that it had been denied membership of a group called the Gigabare steering committee, which provided input to its modelling activities.

Membership of the steering committee cost $50,000, which the ACF could not afford, unlike other members including Exxon and the Australian Coal Association.

The ombudsman’s report found that ABARE had “adopted a funding structure and administrative practices for its climate change research projects which failed to adequately protect ABARE as a public sector research agency from allegations of undue influence by vested interests”.

Fisher has a long record of producing work that supports fossil fuel projects and attaches enormous assumed cost to emissions abatement. Under the Howard government, he played an integral role in negotiating Australia’s minimal commitment to emissions reduction at the 1997 Kyoto climate change conference.

His critics are many and harsh, none more so than Guy Pearse, a staffer to former Environment minister Robert Hill, whose insider account of the Howard government’s climate failings in his book, High and Dry, included Fisher among a “Prime Minister’s Eleven” of people most responsible.

“Time and again results that Fisher presented in his [ABARE] reports to government and the scenarios and assumptions behind them lent themselves to misrepresentation by the Howard government,” Pearse wrote. “They routinely overstated the costs of cutting emissions, and they never factored in the financial benefits of action, or the costs of inaction.”

After leaving ABARE, Fisher went into consultancy, sometimes for government, often for the proponents of fossil fuel projects.

Rod Campbell, economist and research director at The Australia Institute, notes Fisher continues to get government work. In January he was appointed to the emissions reduction assurance committee (ERAC) to provide advice on expenditure to the government’s Emissions Reduction Fund.

In estimates, Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young called Fisher a climate denier. That’s not accurate; he accepts the science, he says, he just thinks dealing with it will be significantly more expensive than most people think, and probably won’t achieve the outcomes the science says the world must achieve.

“Unfortunately, if people think the world is going to be net zero by 2050, and we’re going to reach a 1.5 degree increase target, then I don’t think that’s happening,” he tells The Saturday Paper. “I’d say we’re on a pathway greater than two, at least.”

How does he square those beliefs with his involvement in a government modelling exercise that suggests – on the limited evidence available so far – that Australia can reach net zero and prosper at the same time?

He doesn’t. He had nothing to do with the assumptions – just the simulations or sims. “I was engaged to try and give them some guidance on how best to run particular sims in the model,” he says. “I haven’t been involved in the modelling directly.”

Fisher still largely stands by the results of his 2019 modelling, notwithstanding a few minor “parameter” changes.

“Basically, I just cannot see how you can transform the Australian economy from one that’s been … heavily based on fossil fuels for living memory, to one that effectively doesn’t use any of them at all. Or if it is using them, has to sequester the emissions.”

So why is he not producing modelling to that effect? Like everyone else, he says, he’s waiting to see the details of the government’s plan.

“I might do the same thing again, before the next election,” Fisher says. “Just depends on how I’m feeling on the day.”

Possibly. But it remains highly unlikely, even with the Morrison government’s new commitments to change, that we will see a Murdoch front page to match the shifting reality: “Carbon cut apocalypse: cost of Morrison energy plan”.

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(AU Saturday Paper) Morrison Leads A Can’t-Do Government In A Won’t-Do Country

The Saturday Paper - John Hewson


Author
Dr John Hewson AM is an honorary professor at the Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University, and is a former leader of the Liberal party.
Is Scott Morrison’s latest slogan – “can-do capitalism” – simply an overarching abrogation of his responsibility to provide good government in our national interest?

Essentially he wants to leave it to market forces, to the private sector, to meet the challenges his government faces, thereby hoping to wedge Anthony Albanese and the opposition by somewhat hypocritically tagging them as “Big government”, “Socialists”, “Interventionists”, “Regulators”, “Mandators” and the like.

There should be little doubt that Morrison can pivot. Expect more slogans to come. He clearly demonstrated this flexibility in response to the pandemic. He and Treasurer Josh Frydenberg had barely uttered “Back in black” than they were out there spending and regulating, ostensibly to cushion the economic and social impacts of the medical response to Covid-19, built on social distancing and significant restrictions on various sectors and freedoms.

The Morrison government soon became one of the highest-spending and most intrusive governments in our history. Yet this hasn’t stopped them from attempting to so tag the opposition, still referring back to the Rudd government’s response to the global financial crisis.

It has always been an identifying element of so-called Liberal–National ideology to advocate for reliance on market forces and private initiatives when and wherever possible, claiming to believe in small government and low levels of regulation.

Yet this has always implied that government has a clear responsibility to set the legislative, regulatory and broader policy framework within which market forces were to be unleashed to work to their full potential in terms of enhancing efficiency.

Moreover, it was recognised that there were occasions on which it could be said that markets had failed to deliver socially and politically acceptable outcomes, necessitating the government to step in and adjust these outcomes to be more acceptable.

A particular focus here is on what economists call externalities, of which there are “good” and “bad” examples. The role of government in this model was to collect and accentuate the good and to minimise the bad.
Can you ever imagine world leaders wanting to be lectured along these lines? Can’t you just see Joe Biden, Boris Johnson, Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel holding their breath, leaning in, to hear the wisdom of ‘that fella Down Under’ as he struts and smirks his way through his description of the Australian character?
Can you ever imagine world leaders wanting to be lectured along these lines? Can’t you just see Joe Biden, Boris Johnson, Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel holding their breath, leaning in, to hear the wisdom of ‘that fella Down Under’ as he struts and smirks his way through his description of the Australian character?

Clearly Morrison doesn’t get the significance of the framework – or simply doesn’t want to get it. The market and the private sector want certainty to invest. They need to minimise the risks of a sudden change in policy and more than that, they need policy detail to make decisions.

Policy development and implementation have been the defining weaknesses of the Morrison government. In this respect it is worth recalling Morrison’s initial briefing to the public service, condescendingly instructing them that he saw their role as being confined to “service delivery” – that he and his ministers were responsible for policy development. This was a pointless and meaningless statement  then as it is now.

Morrison won’t be able to push his desired contrast between his market-based approach and the bigger government response that he likes to try to tag the ALP with, because to work well, markets need more than a little government involvement.
Globally, “can-do capitalism” can be blamed for undermining democracy and can be seen as a major cause of climate change.
Globally, “can-do capitalism” can be blamed for undermining democracy and can be seen as a major cause of climate change.

Unfortunately, businesses have often “gamed” the capitalist system, skewing benefits to themselves and shareholders at the expense of other stakeholders. Governments have often corrupted the capitalist system by governing in the interests of a few of their mates and donors – what is called “crony capitalism”.

Clearly it was unregulated, unconstrained capitalism that governments encouraged to drive the Industrial Revolution, powered by fossil fuels.

This ignored the bad externality of carbon emissions and other social and environmental impacts, which have produced the climate crisis that now challenges governments globally with the threat of catastrophic consequences for the planet and our lives on it, in the event of failure.

With this background, it is instructive to take a look at what Morrison actually said about “can-do capitalism”.

In a question and answer session following his recent speech to the Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Morrison claimed, “We are primed and ready to go in this country. We’re set up, but we’ve got to make sure that governments in Australia remember that we are a can-do capitalist country, not a don’t-do government’s country.”

It seems his motivation in making this statement was more about a desire to test an election message about the comparison between the LNP and the ALP, hoping to wedge the latter, rather than to document the detail of his can-do capitalist approach.

Indeed, Morrison went on to claim that at “events” he attends overseas people will come up to him and say Australians are “hopelessly” optimistic.

“And I go, ‘Yes,’ ” he said. “Because we see the world differently and we look at things like climate change and go, ‘We can deal with that.’ We’re not going to be beaten by it. We’re not going to get depressed about it. We’re going to fix it, because that’s what you do in Australia. You don’t whinge and whine about it. You just get on with it and you get through the challenge.”

How realistic does this sound? Can you ever imagine world leaders wanting to be lectured along these lines? Can’t you just see Joe Biden, Boris Johnson, Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel holding their breath, leaning in, to hear the wisdom of  “that fella Down Under” as he struts and smirks his way through his description of the Australian character?

Morrison ended that meeting, obviously not paying much attention to his own words, when he said, “The pandemic has taught us not to take our economy and our freedoms for granted. And, so, the choices we make about that and the importance of the leadership that is needed to protect our country, to ensure that our economy is secured and our recovery is secured, I think is the big reminder for me.”

Surprisingly, he failed to then allude back to his earlier remarks, where he could have said, “I hereby abrogate all responsibility for that leadership and am leaving our response to the market, to can-do capitalism.”

It is difficult for me to accept that Morrison is still not taking the climate crisis seriously. Although his government signed the agreement reached at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow, which included a pledge to regularly update emissions reduction commitments, Morrison has already backed off on this promise.

His actions will only compound our poor global standing as the leading laggard on climate action, having had the hide to parade around COP26 with his shallow commitment to net zero by 2050, developed in high farce with the Nationals, and with no clear policies or pathway to get there, while deliberately misleading others as to our history of emissions reductions.

It should be recognised that the declared targets of the Glasgow participants are not nearly enough to keep the world to a maximum warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial times. As things now stand, even if existing commitments are met, the world will still warm by 2.7 degrees on some models. It is still all to be done to save the planet.
Climate change is now an existential risk
Climate change is now an existential risk. Australia simply cannot downplay its essential role in this as one of the world’s largest miners and exporters of fossil fuels. So many countries, particularly the island countries that are disappearing with sea level rise, are looking for a lead from Australia on this.

It’s hard to imagine that this could ever occur when you see the Nationals celebrating the final edits to the Glasgow communiqué, which soften the wording on coal.

Morrison simply should not be allowed to fob off this challenge with some vague reliance on so-called can-do capitalism without details of the essential regulatory and policy framework to provide the confidence that it is achievable.

Otherwise, Morrison leads a can’t-do government in a won’t-do country.

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21/11/2021

(The Conversation) COP26 Left The World With A Climate To-Do List: Here Are 5 Things To Watch For In 2022

The Conversation - 

John Kerry, the U.S. presidential special envoy for climate, surrounded by other negotiators during COP26. UNFCCC, CC BY-NC-SA

Author
is Dean of the Fletcher School, Tufts University.
How much the world achieved at the Glasgow climate talks – and what happens now – depends in large part on where you live.

In island nations that are losing their homes to sea level rise, and in other highly vulnerable countries, there were bitter pills to swallow after global commitments to cut emissions fell far short of the goal to keep global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7°F).

For large middle-income countries, like India and South Africa, there were signs of progress on investments needed for developing clean energy.

In the developed world, countries still have to internalize, politically, that bills are coming due – both at home and abroad – after decades of delaying action on climate change. The longer the delay, the more difficult the transition will be.

There were also signs of hope as coalitions of companies, governments and civil society and indigenous peoples groups forced progress on issues such as stopping deforestation, cutting methane, ending coal use and boosting zero-emissions vehicles. Now, those promises must be acted upon.

As a former senior U.N. official, I’ve been involved in the climate negotiations for several years. Here are five key elements to watch over the coming year as countries move forward on their promises.

Bending the curve to 1.5°C

Going into the Glasgow summit, countries’ commitments had put the world on a trajectory of warming about 2.9°C this century, well beyond the 1.5°C goal and into levels of warming that will bring dangerous climate impacts.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s announcement in the first days (much to the surprise of Indian observers) that India would reach net zero emissions by 2070 and generate 50% of its energy from renewables by 2030 helped lower that trajectory to 2.4°C.

Countries agreed to return for the next round of climate talks in November 2022 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, with stronger commitments to put the world on track for 1.5°C.

The Climate Action Tracker estimates the global average temperature increase based on national policies. New Climate Institute and Climate Analytics

That turns the spotlight back on national action. China reminded everyone, while throwing shade at the U.S., that goals must be backed with plans for implementation.

U.S. Cabinet members and Congressional leaders had much to say in Glasgow about being “back,” after the previous administration withdrew from the Paris climate agreement. Yet they had little to offer in terms of the U.S. share of the finance, and the world cast a worried eye over its continued partisan politics.

More South Africa deals, please

While all countries are important for reaching the world’s climate goals, some are more important than others.

Countries that are high emitters and heavily dependent on coal will be a focus of international attention in the coming months, not just to phase down coal but importantly to fund a just transition to green sources of energy and the necessary electricity infrastructure.

The poster child for this approach is South Africa, where a presidential commission has worked for three years to develop a just transition plan and has been able to attract US$8.5 billion from the U.K., the EU, the U.S. and others to help them execute on it. That, coupled with guarantees and other financial aid that could help draw further private investment, could become a replicable model.

The key was national ownership. In the year ahead, look for plans to come together in Indonesia and Vietnam and other countries needing to fast forward away from coal.

Getting climate finance flowing

Many developing countries already have national platforms to deliver on their commitments, but throughout Glasgow’s conference halls, officials complained that finance wasn’t flowing to help them succeed.

This isn’t just a climate finance problem. Many countries are also facing economic disruption from the COVID-19 pandemic and have chafed at the way international financial institutions fail to address issues of access to finance and trade.

Advanced economies didn’t come to Glasgow ready to provide even the $100 billion a year in finance promised a decade ago, which shrank the landing zone for agreement on all issues.

The Chinese calculate the value of growth lost through a few measures, such as floods and heat. Unsurprisingly it amounts to trillions of dollars. It may be a useful exercise whenever a government balks at the “cost” of climate action.

In the end, governments agreed to reach the $100 billion annual climate finance target within the next two years and agreed that adaptation funding should double. But with the U.N. Environment Programme estimating that adaptation funds will need to quadruple by 2030 from today’s $70 billion, there’s a long way to go.

Tuvalu Finance Minister Seve Paeniu gave an emotional speech as the conference ended.

The Glasgow Climate Pact also criticized the traditional channels of public funds that set the conditions for finance to flow, including the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

Look for G7 and G20 countries, the largest shareholders of these institutions, to examine how they can be managed differently to respond to the climate emergency. All eyes are on Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, current president of the G20 and an experienced central banker.

Actions could range from bolstering the Climate Investment Funds, managed by the World Bank, and loosening the terms and conditions of the IMF’s proposed management of the reallocation of special drawing rights, to incentives to leverage more private funds and take more risk.

Finance pledges and cries of ‘greenwashing’

In the first week of Glasgow, the titans of the financial industry heralded the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero – the commitment by financial institutions representing $130 trillion in assets to accelerate the transition to a net-zero emissions economy.

The shifts within financial markets away from exposure to carbon emissions was palpable. But without more detail, the announcement attracted cries of “greenwashing.”

Organizers of the alliance will need to work hard to hold members to account, and throw out those still underwriting the coal industry, for example.

The principle of getting everyone pledged and in the tent and then making them improve has been used before, for example, the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative.

But this only works with transparency, and buried among the press releases was their report that, of the advertised $57 trillion of the initiative’s assets under management, only an estimated 35% is actually in line with net zero.

The U.N. secretary-general announced an expert group to propose clear standards for companies and others making net zero commitments, partly in response to furor around greenwashing. That group is expected to report back in 2022.

At the heart of Glasgow was a new seriousness around transparency, credibility, integrity and accountability. Watch this unfold this coming year.

The third leg of a wobbly stool: Loss and damage

Climate action is a three-legged stool – mitigation, adaptation and loss and damage.

Loss and damage was mentioned an unprecedented 12 times in the final Glasgow texts, but without commitments to funding or mechanisms to secure funding. Loss and damage, or reparations, can be understood this way: you broke it (or endangered it), you pay for it.

But, afraid of lawsuits in international courts – which the U.S. does not belong to – or afraid of the costs, developed countries have opposed progress on the issue in recent years.

Developing countries left Glasgow disappointed, but there was no escaping the debate. Watch for a design of a mechanism to help pay for loss and damage and plans to start funding it. With the next year’s U.N. climate conference in Africa, this will move center stage.

There’s a Scottish proverb, “fools look to tomorrow, wise men [sic] use tonight.” There were wise people in Glasgow, and fools too. But there’s not a night to lose in the year ahead.

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