America Has Been Duped On Climate Change

Washington Post - Robert Brulle

Robert Brulle is a professor of sociology and environmental science at Drexel University in Philadelphia. He is co-editor of "Climate Change and Society: Sociological Perspectives."

Stacks and burn-off from the ExxonMobil refinery are seen at dusk last year in St. Bernard Parish, La. (Gerald Herbert/Associated Press)

Future generations will look back on our tepid response to global climate disruption and wonder why we did not act sooner and more aggressively. Climate change will adversely impact present and future generations, as well as all species on Earth. Our moral obligation to protect life requires us to act.
Yet even after the recently completed United Nations climate conference, we are still on track for dangerous levels of climate change. Why haven’t we acted sooner or more aggressively? One answer can be found in the split over the veracity of climate science.
Recent scholarship documents the coordinated efforts of conservative foundations and fossil fuel corporations to promote this uncertainty. Amplified by conservative media, this campaign of disinformation and omission has significantly altered the nature of the public debate and led to political polarization around the issue, making meaningful legislative action nearly impossible.
These findings are supported by recent investigative news reports, which show that since the 1970s, top executives and scientists in the fossil fuel industry have been well aware of the evidence that their products amplified climate-warming emissions. They conducted their own extensive research on the topic and participated in ongoing scientific discussions. The American Petroleum Institute, an industry trade group, even circulated the results to its members. By 1978, a senior executive at ExxonMobil proposed creating a worldwide “CO2 in the Atmosphere” research and development program to determine an appropriate response.
Unfortunately, that path wasn’t taken. Instead, in 1989, a group of fossil fuel corporations, utilities and automobile manufacturers banded together to form the Global Climate Coalition. This group worked to ensure that the Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement to limit greenhouse gas emissions, was not adopted by the United States. In public statements, the Global Climate Coalition continued to deny that global warming was occurring and emphasized the uncertainty of climate science.
The spreading of misinformation continued. In 1998, API, Exxon, Chevron, Southern Co. and various conservative think tanks initiated a public relations campaign, the goal of which was to ensure that the “recognition of uncertainties (of climate science) becomes part of the ‘conventional wisdom.'”
While that coalition disbanded in 2001, ExxonMobil reportedly continued to quietly funnel climate misinformation through “skeptic” think tanks, such as the Heartland Institute, until 2006, when its funding was exposed. The company — the nation’s largest and wealthiest — continues to work with the American Legislative Exchange Council, a so-called public-private partnership of corporations and conservative legislators, to block climate change policies.
For years, ExxonMobil had been a participant in public efforts to sow doubt about climate change. Yet at at the same time, the corporation was at the leading edge of climate science and its executives were well informed regarding the scientific consensus on climate change. This allegedly deceitful conduct has generated public outrage and recently led New York’s attorney general to initiate an investigation into whether ExxonMobil has misled the public and investors about the risks of climate change.
While important, these legal proceedings cannot fully address the larger moral issues of corporate social and political responsibility. Just as Congress investigated the efforts of the tobacco industry to dupe the public into believing its products were harmless, we need a full and open inquiry into the conduct of ExxonMobil and the other institutions whose misinformation campaigns about science have delayed our efforts to address climate change.
The central concern here is the moral integrity of the public sphere. The Declaration of Independence says the legitimacy of government is based on the consent of the governed. But when vested interests with outsize economic and cultural power distort the public debate by introducing falsehoods, the integrity of our deliberations is compromised.
Such seems the case today when we consider the fossil fuel industry’s role in distorting discourse on the urgent topic of climate change. If vested economic interests and public relations firms can systematically alter the national debate in favor of their own interests and against those of society as a whole, then the notion of democracy and civic morality is undermined. Congress can and should act to investigate this issue fully. Only then can we restore trust and legitimacy to American governance and fulfill our moral duty to aggressively address climate change.


Links

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• If we’re going to fix climate change, we’ll have to get creative

Inaction On Global Warming Is As Reckless As Drunken Driving

Washington Post - Daniel Farber

Daniel Farber teaches environmental law and tort law at the University of California at Berkeley.

Schoolchildren touch an electronic globe to learn about the rise in sea levels by global warming during the 2015 Eco Products exhibition in Tokyo. (TORU YAMANAKA/Agence France-Presse via Getty Images)

Our moral duty to address climate change is based on a simple concept, straightforward enough to qualify as kindergarten fare. We tell our children that they need to be careful not to hurt their playmates. As we get older, we learn that we need to be careful when we engage in other activities too — we shouldn’t drive after drinking, or leave loaded guns around children. The same simple concept can take us a long way in thinking about our policies to address climate change.
Those who emit carbon don’t mean to cause harm, any more than a kid playing backyard baseball means to knock out a neighbor’s window. But it’s not enough to have good intentions. We’re not required to avoid ever doing anything that could possibly harm others — there’s no way to avoid every possibility — but we do have a duty to take reasonable precautions to prevent avoidable damages.
Defining what is reasonable in a particular context can be difficult, but it generally involves consideration of the foreseeable risks and the burden of installing preventative measures. As to climate change, the question is whether we have taken reasonable precautions in light of the available evidence.
There’s room for debate about when the dangers of climate change became clear enough to elicit a response, but the evidence definitely arrived well before the end of the 20th century. By then, scientists agreed that greenhouse gases were causing global warming and that continued warming was likely to become dangerous. In fact, in 1992, the world’s nations — including the United States under President George H.W. Bush — signed a treaty acknowledging the risks and the need for action.
Given that the risk from climate change is high and foreseeable, it seems clear that reasonable precautions are called for (and have been for some time now). Economists who have studied climate change carefully disagree with each other about just how fast we should reduce carbon emissions. Some say we should start out with modest emissions reductions; others call for immediate, stringent limitations. Still, taking into account the costs of reducing emissions and the risk to the planet, they all agree that reductions are necessary.
At the risk of oversimplification, one might boil this down to a simple mandate to phase out emissions from coal as soon as reasonably possible. Coal is the worst fossil fuel in terms of emissions. It’s often touted as a cheap energy source, especially for developing countries, but its price is an illusion once we taken into account the hidden costs. Coal mining remains a dangerous occupation, and mining can cause severe environmental harm.
But more important, emissions from coal cause more than climate change: They are the source of severe health problems. Even in the United States, which has been requiring improved pollution control for coal plants for decades, emissions continue to result in thousands of deaths a year. Our pollution issues are nothing compared with those of Beijing or many other cities in China and India.
Continued reliance on coal for energy is as foolish as drunken driving. We should develop alternatives as soon as possible, even in developing countries. As always, the standard should be what is reasonable — somewhere between shutting down coal plants today and waiting for new technology that could save us.
You might question comparing carbon emissions to ordinary careless behavior. It’s certainly true that identifying who is the injured party in a car accident is easier than defining who is suffering from the additional boost our own actions are giving climate change. But how can we justify carelessly harming others simply because it is difficult to identify who will be hurt?

Links

• Pope Francis was right on climate change
• America has been duped on climate change
• If we’re going to fix climate change, we’ll have to get creative

Humanity's Impact On Earth Opens Anthropocene Epoch, Scientists Say

Fairfax - Sydney Pead

Humans have produced enough concrete to thinly pave the entire surface of the Earth, while carbon dioxide emissions are rising 100 times quicker than at any time during the past 800,000 years.
Such dramatic transformations of the planet are showing up in the world's sediments and warrant the declaration of a new geological epoch - aptly known as Anthropocene to reflect humanity's role - according to a new paper published in the journal Science.
The research, compiled by two dozen scientists and academics, identified planet-wide impacts ranging from nuclear fallout from weapons testing to mining that displaces 57 billion tonnes of material a year - or almost three times the amount of sediment carried by the world's rivers.

Rio Tinto's Warkworth open-cut coal mine near Bulga in the NSW Hunter Valley. Photo: Supplied

Will Steffen, an adjunct professor at the Australian National University and a co-author of the research, said the Anthropocene epoch was quite unlike previous eras - such as the Holocene that began 11,700 years ago - that are defined by natural processes.
"We have very good evidence that the Holocene should last for another 50,000 years without human interference," Professor Steffen said.

The Super Pit at Kalgoorlie, Western Australia.

The impact is global, with more than half the land surface transformed for humans' use, while plastics and other pollutants are also affecting the oceans. The scientists estimate the changes support the new epoch as having begun about 1950.
"There is a whole lot of evidence that says there were human imprints [on Earth] at various points, some of it quite significant," Professor Steffen said.
"But you really don't see the Earth's system as a whole being affected until the second half of the 20th century and beyond."

Brown coal stockpiles and a power station in the Czech Republic. Photo: Martin Divisek

Naomi Oreskes, a Harvard professor of science history, said the rising levels of carbon dioxide and the climate change they were driving, could dwarf other impacts over time.
"Already, the CO₂ influence is the most important and damaging [piece of human activity] if left unmitigated," Professor Oreskes said.
The related impacts of ocean acidification not mentioned in the report are still to come, Professor Oreskes added.

Devastation after two dams at a mine operated by BHP and Vale collapsed in Brazil in November 2015. Photo: AP

"If left unchecked, it will ultimately affect the abundance and distribution of marine life, and that will show up in the geological record in terms of the fossil assemblages."
Along with the rapid human population growth, technological advances and economic growth were altering the environment, the paper said.
Enough plastic is produced each year to wrap the planet, and enough aluminium to cover Australia, Professor Steffen said.

Plastic pollution washes up on a beach in Bali. Photo: Jason Childs

Half of the concrete produced has been poured in the past 20 years alone, as impacts accelerate, the paper said. Historically, production is in the order of 50 billion tonnes, or enough to cover every square metre with a kilogram of concrete.

Up for debate
The research, by the Anthropocene Working Group, is part of a larger body of work that will be presented later this year to the International Commission on Stratigraphy, a part of the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS). Stratigraphy is the branch of geology that studies rock layers.

Half of the world's land surface has been transformed for humanity's use, the report finds.

The Anthropocene would be the third epoch after the Holocene and the Pleistocene, which make up the Quaternary period starting 2.58 million years ago.
The commission will decide if there is enough evidence to warrant formal scientific recognition of a new age of humans and set new global standards.
Andrew Glikson, an ANU paleoclimate scientist who was not one of the authors of the report, said "there are several stages" to mark the arrival of the Anthropocene epoch "starting tens of thousands of years ago".
"This formalisation [of the new epoch] belongs more in legalistics, not in science," he said.

Illustration: Matt Golding

The formal recognition of a new epoch induced by humans would be far-reaching, said Duanne White, an Earth systems professor at the University of Canberra, currently conducting field research in Antarctica.
"Practically, the markers of disruption in the environment provide a way for us to correlate landscape scale around regions and the planet, enabling us to better understand the way Earth systems work," he said via email.
Still, the declaration of a new epoch should make mankind more aware of its influence on the globe, Professor White said.
"We actually have the power to change the course of the Anthropocene because it's caused by us," Professor Steffen said.
"We're leaving the Holocene but this isn't something we have to accept," he said. "We're causing us to leave ... so we can likewise pull us back."

Scientists Say Humans Have Now Brought On An Entirely New Geologic Epoch

Washington Post - Chris Mooney

In this Dec. 16, 2009, photo, steam and smoke rise from a coal burning power plant in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. (Martin Meissner/AP)

A group of 24 geoscientists on Thursday released a bracing assessment, suggesting that humans have altered the Earth so extensively that the consequences will be detectable in current and future geological records. They therefore suggest that we should consider the Earth to have moved into a new geologic epoch, the “Anthropocene,” sometime circa 1945-1964.

The current era (at least under present definitions), known as the Holocene, began about 11,700 years ago, and was marked by warming and large sea level rise coming out of a major cool period, the Younger Dryas. However, the researchers suggest, changes ranging from growing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to infusions of plastics into marine sediments suggest that we’ve now left the Holocene decisively behind — and that the proof is already being laid down in polar ice cores, deep ocean sediments, and future rocks themselves.

“In a way it’s a thought experiment,” said Naomi Oreskes, a geologically trained Harvard historian of science and one of the study’s authors. “We’re imagining what a future geologist will see when he or she looks at the rock record. But it’s not that difficult a thought experiment to do, because so many of these signals are already present.”

The paper was published Thursday in the journal Science and was led by Colin Waters, a geologist with the British Geological Survey.

“Quite unlike other subdivisions of geological time, the implication of formalizing the Anthropocene reach well beyond the geological community,” the authors conclude. “Not only would this represent the first instance of a new epoch having been witnessed firsthand by advanced human societies, it would be one stemming from the consequences of their own doing.”

It’s important to emphasize that the new study does not itself amount to a formal or official declaration of a new geologic epoch. Rather, the 24 authors are part of what is called the “Anthropocene Working Group,” convened by the University of Leicester’s Jan Zalasiewicz (the current paper’s second author) and organized under the Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy, a scientific body that oversees geological definitions for the period spanning roughly the last 2.6 million years (the “Quaternary” period). That subcommission, in turn, is part of the broader International Commission on Stratigraphy, the body that would ultimately have to approve the authors’ suggestion if a new era is to be formalized.

So the new paper certainly doesn’t mean geology textbooks will be rewritten — that would require numerous further scientific steps, and assent extending far beyond the current 24 authors. But it makes a strong case that they ought to be.

“The scale is incredible,” said Waters of the geological changes that the “Anthropocene” has brought on. But he also admits that defining a new epoch, even as we’re observing its beginning, is a rather tricky affair — and one that will inevitably be shaded not only by how we think in the present, but also by how generations in the far future think of us.

“I suppose it’s a bit like, if you were writing this article just at the start of the Holocene, and you’re finding that Washington, D.C., or New York no longer has an ice sheet across it, would you know what the repercussions of that would be in several thousand years’ time?” Waters asked.

This NASA image from a composite assembled from data acquired by the Suomi NPP satellite in April and October 2012 shows the United States at night. (NASA/AP)

The concept of the “Anthropocene” was originally suggested by Paul Crutzen, a Nobel Prize winning atmospheric chemist who is also part of the “Anthropocene Working Group,” in the year 2000. The term has always denoted a new era or epoch uniquely defined by humans’ large scale impact on the environment — but the precise time of its beginning has been variously defined.

After all, humans started deforesting vast landscapes, and causing species extinctions, thousands of years ago. The industrial revolution, meanwhile, began around 200 years ago and represented a major step in how we influence the environment and consume Earth’s materials — as well as the kickstart to global warming.

However, the new study homes in on the middle of the last century as the likely marker for when the geologic “Anthropocene” truly began. The authors suggest that around this time, a confluence of major trends — population explosion, new technological advances, and booming rates of consumption — triggered changes that will be unmistakable in geologic records.

We began the 1900s with 1.65 billion people on Earth and ended them with 6 billion, according to the United Nations. But the majority of the growth was in the second half of the century — the world population did not reach 2 billion until 1927 and 3 billion until 1960.

Over the same broad period we managed to design nuclear weapons and warm the climate. And along with technological leaps and the population boom has come dramatically more uses of resources and transformations of natural environments — which, in turn, has affected the sediment layers that have been formed recently, or are being formed right now. These are likely to feature unprecedented levels of aluminum, concrete, plastics, and black carbon, the study asserts.

Humans have also dramatically changed the sedimentary processes of river systems — look what we’ve done to the Mississippi River and its wetlands, for instance. Soil levels of nitrogen and phosphorous have also exploded, the study asserts, from use of fertilizers. Perhaps the most distinctive change of all, however, may be the unmistakable signature of thermonuclear weapons testing, which began in 1952, and leaves a clear geological record of plutonium 239 that, the paper said, “will be identifiable in sediments and ice for the next 100,000 years.”

And then, well, there’s the record of human caused climate change. Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have grown at an extraordinarily rapid rate, roughly 2 parts per million per year of late, and this will be distinctly recorded in the air bubbles contained in polar ice cores, one key type of geologic record. “Modern rates of atmospheric C emission … are probably the highest of the Cenozoic era,” or the last 65 million years, the study says.

An ice core is seen at the Vostok camp in Antarctica in this April 5, 2010, photograph. (Alexey Ekaikin/Reuters)

Atmospheric methane levels have shown a similar rapid burst. And sea levels are surging rapidly upward, at least when viewed in geological context. They are probably higher now than they have been in the past 115,000 years, the paper said.

It’s all of these changes, at roughly the same time, that mark the onset of the Anthropocene, the authors suggested. “It’s not just carbon dioxide, and it’s not just in Europe and the United States,” said Harvard’s Oreskes. “It’s this whole set of things that reflect human economic activity basically since World War II.”

Previous reasons for geological demarcations, the researchers note, include changing solar cycles or major volcanic activity — but also sometimes stark and sudden events. For instance, the famous K-T event or K-T boundary, which marked the end of the Cretaceous period 65 million years ago, features a global layer of the element iridium in rock, the signature of a major asteroid impact.

It’s perhaps only fitting, then, that the current paper hints that something much bigger than a mere shift into a new geologic epoch may be afoot. Epochs, after all, are relatively short periods in the grand geological scheme of things, when compared with larger units of time like eons, eras, and periods.

More momentous geological demarcations have often been based upon major changes in the composition of life on Earth — the Cambrian explosion, say, or the extinction of the dinosaurs. However, the paper notes that there are also signs that we may be at the beginning of what some have termed the “Sixth Great Extinction” in all of Earth’s history.

“Current trends of habitat loss and overexploitation, if maintained, would push Earth into the sixth mass extinction event (with ~75% of species extinct) in the next few centuries, a process that is probably already underway,” the paper said.

So, yes — we don’t formally, officially live in the Anthropocene yet. On the other hand, when you look at what we’ve done to the planet, saying that we still live in the Holocene seems to really miss something pretty important.

Links

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Abbot Point Port Expansion Faces More Red Tape With ‘Material Change Of Use’ Consultation Period

Courier Mail - John McCarthy

Adani’s port project will now go through another public consultation period for a “material change of use’’ ruling. Picture: Charlie Peel

ADANI is facing a potential new court threat after the State Government’s Co-ordinator General threw more red tape at the company’s Abbot Point port expansion.
After six referral agency reviews and three environmental impact statements under three different governments, the port project will now go through another public consultation period for a “material change of use’’ ruling.
While the consultation and the CG’s eventual decision is a normal approval process and has never been appealed before, the Government admits it could be open to judicial review from activists which could add to delays.
The decision is understood to have stunned Adani who weren’t aware they would have to go through the process and found out when the media release was issued yesterday.
Mines and State Development Minister Anthony Lynham said he understood the company’s frustration but the process can’t be short circuited.
He has also flagged a review of the approval process which has caused extensive delays for Adani and other mining projects like GVK and New Hope’s Acland mine.
“I understand they are disappointed because they are keen but this is a normal part of the process,’’ Mr Lynham said.
“I’m working with the Attorney-General and my department to achieve the dual aims of an efficient process and taking the community with us.’’
Green groups have already challenged Adani’s mine in the Land Court and Supreme Court. It is also facing judicial review in the Federal Court.
The port’s recent federal approval is also likely to be challenged after activist group GetUp! started a fundraising campaign to oppose it.
The Queensland Resources Council said Queensland was no longer perceived as a place where development decision could be made quickly.
“The material change of use is a standard process but we do wonder about the benefit of another public consultation for a project that has been through multiple public consultations,’’ QRC chief executive Michael Roche said.
“I would not be surprised if there was a (judicial) review so the Government does have to make sure they tick all the boxes.’’

As Coal Demand Drops, So Do Funding Sources

PowerSource - Anya Litvak / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The Bruce Mansfield Power Plant, FirstEnergy's largest coal-fired plant, in Shippingport can be seen in this photo taken on November 23, 2015. Andrew Rush/Post-Gazette

Bill Rau deals in rubies and Rembrandts, and if you told him a year ago he’d be traveling to England to buy an old lump of coal, he would have called you crazy.
Then he saw it — a “monumental specimen” excavated from an Italian mine in the 1890s.
“I had to buy it,” he thought. “This is a museum piece that was not in a museum.”
Mr. Rau, CEO of M.S. Rau Antiques in New Orleans, said there’s been strong interest in the piece — listed on the company’s website for $34,500 — though none from the coal industry.
“This would have been a glorious thing to put in an office,” he said. “[But] coal people aren't feeling terribly wealthy at the moment.”
Demand for the commodity has been dropping as competing fuels become less expensive. And in the past few weeks, coal companies have seen major banks turning their backs on the industry in public.
News that Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Bank of America had all released coal lending policies that pledge to decrease credit availability to the sector met with much fanfare a few week ago around the time of the Paris Climate Conference, where world leaders met to hammer out an agreement on keeping global temperature at manageable levels.
“2015: The year banking’s behemoths went green,” announced a headline on Mineweb.com.
That sentiment, that coal’s best days are behind it, feeds into the allure of Mr. Rau’s slab of coal, he said.
It’s about the presentation. His specimen is enshrined in a custom-built wooden case, which Mr. Rau imagines could sell empty for $25,000. It is inscribed to commemorate the mine where it was unearthed, Ribolla, and the age of the rock, 300 million years.
Until the mining company was sold in the 1960s, the show piece greeted visitors to its lobby in Tuscany. Then it was sold to an English antiques dealer, where Mr. Rau found it.
The price tag is also about what the piece represents — a time when coal was king, “which was, I guess, probably until last week,” Mr. Rau joked, pouring a bit of salt on the wounds of the cash-strapped, environmentally unpopular fossil fuel.
Even as financial support for coal seems to have taken a beating — as governments and major commercial banks announce they will limit funding for coal extraction and combustion activities — the fine print likely isn’t as forbidding as the headlines.
At least eight global banks have policies guiding their support of coal mining and power projects, but analysts say that’s more a sign of coal’s economic pickle than an environmental statement.
“I doubt their board of directors cares that much about the environment,” said Spencer Cutter, an equity analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence.
“I wonder if the banks are saying one of the reasons we’re pulling back from coal is environmental — and that may be the case in certain cases — but at the same time banks are economically driven. I think they may just be trying to use that as a way to rationalize — ’Hey, the coal sector’s going down the tube and we want to get out,’” he said.
Wells Fargo said as much in its policy. The bank cited cheaper fuels, environmental compliance costs and increased energy efficiency pushing coal generation out of business. “Our understanding of the risk factors existing in this industry has influenced our credit and capital markets decisions.”
That doesn’t mean Wells Fargo is out of the coal game entirely. It was a leading underwriter of $700 million in bonds for Cecil-based Consol Energy Inc. and Cloud Peak Energy this year.
The unifying theme in all these coal policies is added scrutiny in risk assessment and senior level approval of loans to the industry, although some banks have made specific pledges.
Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, for example, said they won’t fund mountaintop removal mining and won’t give money to companies that do a lot of it. They also won’t finance new coal power plants in the U.S. and other developed nations, although those aren’t being built anyway because of tightening environmental regulations and competition from cheap natural gas.
Earlier this year, Goldman Sachs was an underwriter of a bond issue for Murray Energy Corp., the largest privately owned coal company in the U.S., headquartered in Ohio.
Citigroup said it would continue to decrease its coal financing activity, but didn’t rule anything out. Funding for projects would require senior approval, the bank said, and would be based on “due diligence” and the coal company’s environmental, safety, and corporate governance performance, as well as human rights.
“They should have been doing that for the last 20 years,” Mr. Cutter said. “That shouldn’t be anything new but a heightened focus.”
Citigroup is the leading bank providing financing for Alpha Natural Resources’ bankruptcy reorganization.

Voters In Coalition Seats Back Global Ban On New Coalmines, Poll Shows

The Guardian - Daniel Hurst

Majority of voters in four Coalition electorates – including Tony Abbott’s – support global ban on new mines

Phone polls conducted in electorates of Tony Abbott, Barnaby Joyce, Peter Dutton and Kevin Hogan found majority of voters supported ban on new coal mines. Photograph: Patrick Pleul/dpa/Corbis

A global ban on new coalmines and a transition to renewable energy enjoys support from a majority of voters in four key Coalition electorates, new polling shows.
The findings coincide with further steep declines in Indian coal imports, prompting warnings about the viability of new mines in Australia including Adani’s Carmichael proposal in Queensland’s Galilee Basin.
The phone poll, conducted by ReachTEL in the federal electorates of Tony Abbott, Barnaby Joyce, Peter Dutton and Kevin Hogan, was commissioned by the Australia Institute, a vocal supporter of a worldwide halt on new coalmines.
Voters were told a global moratorium would mean all countries would stop building new coalmines and expanding existing ones, but current mines would continue to operate.
About 57.3% of respondents in Abbott’s Sydney seat of Warringah voiced support for the idea, while 23.4% said they were opposed.
The support-to-opposition level was 50.5% to 33% in Joyce’s regional New South Wales seat of New England, 52.2% to 28.9% in Dutton’s south-east Queensland seat of Dickson, and 53.3% to 28.5% in Hogan’s northern NSW seat of Page. The remaining respondents were undecided.
The Australia Institute argued the results showed a moratorium on new mines was now a mainstream idea.
“Unlike many of our politicians it now seems that voters instinctively know that building massive new coalmines does not make economic or environmental sense,” said Ben Oquist, the group’s executive director.
“Similarly with renewable energy, the electorate is ahead of its politicians in knowing that Australia can be powered by 100% renewable energy over the next 15 years.”
When ReachTEL asked people in the same four Coalition seats whether they supported or opposed Australia gradually transitioning to 100% renewable energy by 2030, about three-quarters of the sample were in favour.
Separate analysis shows Indian coal imports in December were 34% lower than they were in the same month a year earlier. The year-on-year decline for November was 49%, according to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA).
The IEEFA’s director of energy finance studies, Tim Buckley, said it appeared that Indian thermal coal imports “not only peaked in mid-2015 but are set to permanently and rapidly decline”.
He said the decline was not surprising in light of the target announced by the Indian energy minister, Piyush Goyal, to cease thermal coal imports by 2017 except for coastal plants. His research suggests the trends are influenced by increases in domestic Indian coal production, accelerating deployment of cost-effective renewable energy, and reform of electricity distribution companies.
“Across the board, India is transforming its electricity market,” Buckley said. “That has huge implications for Australia because we’re the second-largest exporter of thermal coal in the world, behind Indonesia. We keep investing in new coal assets on the premise of growth. This indicates that’s a flawed premise.”
Buckley said the US$51/tonne price of Australian thermal coal exports was 60% lower than the 2010/11 peak. He said the Newcastle coal future price indicated a further decline to US$44/tonne by 2021, “showing the market is increasingly pricing in a permanent structural decline”.
Australian governments should take the trends into account when considering supporting new coal-related infrastructure such as ports and railways, rather than relying on assurances from an industry that had “got the call wrong”, he said.
Buckley, a financial markets expert whose organisation backs a reduction in coal dependence, said it was in Australia’s interests to ensure an orderly move to renewable energy rather than having a “chaotic transition”.
Malcolm Turnbull has previously dismissed the idea of a coal moratorium, although he couched his criticism in terms of a unilateral Australian ban on exports. “If Australia stopped exporting coal, the countries to which we export it would simply buy it from somewhere else,” the prime minister said in October.
“Coal is a very important part, a very large part, the largest single part of the global energy mix and likely to remain that way for a very long time.”
The Australia Institute/ReachTEL survey was conducted on 17 December and polled 743 residents in Warringah, 747 residents in New England, 738 residents in Dickson and 762 in Page.

Links

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