'This Is An Eye-Opener’: Changes In Global Water Supply Hint At Future Conflicts And Crises

Globe and Mail - Ivan Semeniuk

Dry, cracked Earth that used to be under Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the United States, illustrates how water resources are shifting due to climate change and human activity. A new analysis using satellite data has identified more than 30 regions on Earth where the amount of stored water on the landscape has increased or decreased by an amount greater than the 32 billion ton storage capacity of Lake Mead. Justin Sullivan/GETTY IMAGES

By combining 14 years’ worth of satellite data, scientists have captured a startling portrait of the world’s water supply undergoing rapid transformation. The new analysis points to areas where there is increasing potential for conflict as a growing demand for water collides with the impacts of climate change. In Canada, the maps shows shifting water supplies that include wetter, more flood-prone regions in many areas of the country but a general drying out in the western sub-Arctic.

“This is an eye-opener,” said Roy Brouwer, an economist and executive director of the University of Waterloo’s Water Institute who was not involved in the analysis. “It raises awareness that things are changing and that in some areas something has to happen to counter and anticipate some of the catastrophes that may be waiting for us in the not-so-far future.”

The analysis is based on data from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, or GRACE, a NASA-led mission launched in 2002 that involved two satellites circling the globe in tandem about 220 kilometres apart. A microwave link between the two satellites allowed scientists to precisely monitor minuscule changes in their separation down to a distance of 10 microns, or about one-tenth the width of a human hair.

The setup created a sort of flying weight scale that mean the satellites could be used to measure slight regional variations in Earth’s gravitational pull. Many of those variations are due to geological features, such as mountain ranges, that do not vary over time. But by taking measurements over many years, the satellite also picked up changes that are largely due to the movement of massive amounts of water at or near Earth’s surface.

Researchers have published many results based on GRACE data but the new analysis, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, marks the first time all available observations from the mission, from April, 2002, to March, 2016, have been analyzed and assembled to provide a comprehensive map of water trends around the world. Those trends encompass changes in where water is stored across Earth’s surface, including groundwater, soil moisture, glaciers, snow cover and surface water. The result suggests a water landscape that is changing fast on a global scale, in large part due to human activity and climate change.

“The human fingerprint is all over what we see in the map,” said Jay Famiglietti, a water-resource expert affiliated with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and the incoming director of the University of Saskatchewan’s Global Institute for Water Security.

Dr. Famiglietti, a co-author on the Nature study, has played a central role in interpreting data from the GRACE mission over its lifetime. He added that the new analysis pointed to profound changes in the Earth’s water resources that should serve as a wake-up call for policy makers.

“There are implications in that map for food security, for water security and for human security in terms of things like conflict and climate refugees,” he said.

In total, Dr. Famiglietti and his colleagues identified 34 regional trends in water storage observed by GRACE. Some are likely due to natural variations over the time that the observations were taken. For example, the Amazon basin looks like it’s getting wetter because the area has been recovering from a drought. The same is likely the case for a region centred on the Canadian Prairies and parts of the United States. Over the long term, those trends may fade away.

The most obvious changes are clearly due to climate change and relate to ice loss in the polar regions and in some mountainous areas such as Alaska and the southern portions of the Andes in South America. Others show places where humans have directly affected water storage.

One example is a large swatch of diminishing water supply across parts of the Middle East, including Syria and Iraq. The shortage is related to dam building in Turkey and overuse of groundwater, both of which have exacerbated an already complex and volatile political situation in the region.

Similar shortfalls in India reflect the impact of subsidized electricity, which has created a “perverse incentive” that makes it inexpensive to pump out more groundwater than can be replenished, said Dr. Brouwer.

Overall, the map shows how the world’s water is increasingly moving from natural storehouses such as glaciers to human-built reservoirs, a change that comes with plenty of political fallout when that water crosses international boundaries, said Aaron Wolf, an expert in water-related conflict at Oregon State University.

“This kind of data really helps us identify hot spots in advance of real crises,” he said.

Support for the GRACE mission officially ended last fall and the last of the satellites burned up as its orbit decayed in mid-March. A follow-up mission with two new satellites that will continue the gravity measurements is currently set for launch this Tuesday from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

Watching The Water Flow

Satellite data accumulated over a 14-year period reveals dramatic changes in the world’s water supply, partly due to natural variation but also because of human activity and climate change

Global Water Storage Trends

Ivan Semeniuk, John Sopinski And Murat Yükselir/The Globe And Mail

Source: Emerging Trends In Global Freshwater Availability, doi.org

Links

• ‘We have to go to carbon-free electricity’: James Hansen on how world leaders can effectively take on climate change
• Unique salt lakes discovered under Nunavut glacier a ‘jewel’ for researchers
• Studies show Paris targets crucial to maintaining Arctic ice

Extinction vs. Collapse: Does It Matter?

Millennium Alliance for Humanity and Biosphere - Samuel Miller McDonald*

Venus - May 18 2016  Kevin Gill | Flickr | CC BY 2.0

Climate twitter – the most fun twitter – has recently been relitigating the debate between human extinction and mere civilizational collapse, between doom and gloom, despair and (kind of) hope.
It was sparked by an interview in The Guardian with acclaimed scientist Mayer Hillman. He argues that we’re probably doomed, and confronting the likelihood that we’re rushing toward collective death may be necessary to save us.
The headline alone provoked a lot of reactions, many angered by the ostensible defeatism embedded in Hillman’s comments. His stated view represents one defined camp that is mostly convinced of looming human extinction.
It stands in contrast to another group that believes human extinction is highly unlikely, maybe impossible, and certainly will not occur due to climate change in our lifetimes. Collapse maybe, but not extinction.
Who’s more right? Let’s take a closer look.
First, the question of human extinction is totally bounded by uncertainty. There’s uncertainty in climate data, uncertainty in models and projections, and even more uncertainty in the behavior of human systems. We don’t know how we’ll respond to the myriad impacts climate change is beginning to spark, and we don’t know how sensitive industrial civilization will be to those impacts.
We don’t really know if humans are like other apex predators highly sensitive to ecological collapse, or are among the most adaptable mammals to ever walk the earth.
One may be inclined to lean toward the latter given that humans have colonized every ecological niche on the planet except Antarctica. That bands of people can survive in and around deserts as well as the Arctic as well as equatorial rainforests speaks to the resilience of small social groups. It’s why The Road is so disturbingly plausible; there could be a scenario in which basically everything is dead but people, lingering in the last grey waste of the world. On the other hand, we’ve never lived outside of the very favorable conditions of the Holocene, and past civilizational and population collapses suggest humans are in fact quite sensitive to climatic shifts.
Famed climate scientist James Hansen has discussed the possibility of “Venus syndrome,” for instance, which sits at the far end of worst case scenarios. While a frightening thought experiment, it is easily dismissed as it’s based on so many uncertainties and doesn’t carry the weight of anything near consensus.
What’s more frightening than potentially implausible uncertainties are the currently existing certainties.
For example:

Ecology

• The atmosphere has proven more sensitive to GHG emissions than predicted by mainstream science, and we have a high chance of hitting 2°C of warming this century. Could hit 1.5°C in the 2020s. Worst-case warming scenarios are probably the most likely.
• Massive marine death is happening far faster than anyone predicted and we could be on the edge of an anoxic event.
• Ice melt is happening far faster than mainstream predictions. Greenland’s ice sheet is threatening to collapse and already slowing ocean currents, which too could collapse.
• Which also means predictions of sea level rise have doubled for this century.
• Industrial agriculture is driving massive habitat loss and extinction. The insect collapse – population declines of 75% to 80% have been seen in some areas – is something no one predicted would happen so fast, and portends an ecological sensitivity beyond our fears. This is causing an unexpected and unprecedented bird collapse (1/8 of bird species are threatened) in Europe.
•  Forests, vital carbon sinks, are proving sensitive to climate impacts.
• We’re living in the 6th mass extinction event, losing potentially dozens of species per day. We don’t know how this will impact us and our ability to feed ourselves.

Energy

• Energy transition is essential to mitigating 1.5+°C warming. Energy is the single greatest contributor to anthro-GHG. And, by some estimates, transition is happening 400 years too slowly to avoid catastrophic warming.
• Incumbent energy industries (that is, oil & gas) dominate governments all over the world. We live in an oil oligarchy – a petrostate, but for the globe. Every facet of the global economy is dependent on fossil fuels, and every sector – from construction to supply chains to transport to electricity to extraction to agriculture and on and on – is built around FF consumption. There’s good reason to believe FF will remain subsidized by governments beholden to their interests even if they become less economically viable than renewables, and so will maintain their dominance.
• We are living in history’s largest oil and gas boom.
• Kilocalorie to kilocalorie, FF is extremely dense and extremely cheap. Despite reports about solar getting cheaper than FF in some places, non-hydro/-carbon renewables are still a tiny minority (~2%) of global energy consumption and will simply always, by their nature, be less dense kcal to kcal than FF, and so will always be calorically more expensive.
• Energy demand probably has to decrease globally to avoid 1.5°C, and it’s projected to dramatically increase. Getting people to consume less is practically impossible, and efficiency measures have almost always resulted in increased consumption.
• We’re still setting FF emissions records.

Politics

• Conditions today resemble those prior to the 20th century’s world wars: extreme wealth inequality, rampant economic insecurity, growing fascist parties/sentiment, and precarious geopolitical relations, and the Thucydides trap suggests war between Western hegemons and a rising China could be likely. These two factors could disrupt any kind of global cooperation on decarbonization and, to the contrary, will probably mean increased emissions (the US military is one of the world’s single largest consumers/emitters of FF).
• Neoliberal ideology is so thoroughly embedded in our academic, political, and cultural institutions, and so endemic to discourse today, that the idea of degrowth – probably necessary to avoid collapse – and solidarity economics isn’t even close to discussion, much less realization, and, for self-evident reasons, probably never will be.
• Living in a neoliberal culture also means we’ve all been trained not to sacrifice for the common good. But solving climate change, like paying more to achieve energy transition or voluntarily consuming less, will all entail sacrificing for the greater good. Humans sometimes are great at that; but the market fundamentalist ideology that pervades all social, commercial, and even self relations today stands against acting for the common good or in collective action.
• There’s basically no government in the world today taking climate change seriously. There are many governments posturing and pretending to take it seriously, but none have substantially committed to a full decarbonization of their economies. (Iceland may be an exception, but Iceland is about 24 times smaller than NYC, so…)
• Twenty-five years of governments knowing about climate change has resulted in essentially nothing being done about it, no emissions reductions, no substantive moves to decarbonize the economy. Politics have proven too strong for common sense, and there’s no good reason to suspect this will change anytime soon.
• Wealth inequality is embedded in our economy so thoroughly – and so indigenously to FF economies – that it will probably continue either causing perpetual strife, as it has so far, or eventually cement a permanent underclass ruled by a small elite, similar to agrarian serfdom. There is a prominent view in left politics that greater wealth equality, some kind of ecosocialism, is a necessary ingredient in averting the kind of ecological collapse the economy is currently driving, given that global FF capitalism by its nature consumes beyond carrying capacities. At least according to one study [1], the combination of inequality and ecological collapse is a likely cause for civilizational collapse.

Even with this perfect storm of issues, it’s impossible to know how likely extinction is, and it’s impossible to judge how likely or extensive civilizational collapse may be. We just can’t predict how human beings and human systems will respond to the shocks that are already underway.
We can make some good guesses based on history, but they’re no more than guesses. Maybe there’s a miracle energy source lurking in a hangar somewhere waiting to accelerate non-carbon transition. Maybe there’s a swelling political movement brewing under the surface that will soon build a more just, ecologically sane order into the world.
Community energy programs are one reason to retain a shred of optimism; but also they’re still a tiny fraction of energy production and they are not growing fast, but they could accelerate any moment. We just don’t know how fast energy transition can happen, and we just don’t know how fast the world could descend into climate-driven chaos – either by human strife or physical storms.
What we do know is that, given everything above, we are living through a confluence of events that will shake the foundations of civilization, and jeopardize our capacity to sustain large populations of humans. There is enough certainty around these issues to justify being existentially alarmed.
At this point, whether we go extinct or all but a thousand of us go extinct (again), maybe that shouldn’t make much difference. Maybe the destruction of a few billion or 5 billion people is morally equivalent to the destruction of all 7 billion of us, and so should provoke equal degrees of urgency. Maybe this debate about whether we’ll go completely extinct rather than just mostly extinct is absurd. Or maybe not. I don’t know. What I do know is that, regardless of the answer, there’s no excuse to stop fighting for a world that sustains life.

*Samuel Miller McDonald: Born and raised in Northern Michigan, Sam is currently pursuing a PhD at University of Oxford in political geography and energy.

Links

• Economic Growth is not Compatible With Environmental Sustainability
• The Connection Between Environment, Conflict and Security
• Interview with Paul Ehrlich: “Collapse of civilisation is a near certainty within decades”
• Believing in climate change, but not behaving sustainably: Evidence from a one-year longitudinal study
• ‘We’re doomed’: Mayer Hillman on the climate reality no one else will dare mention

More Than 100 Organizations Call On Oil And Gas Industries, Banks To Opt Out Of Arctic Drilling

ThinkProgress -  E.A. Crunden

Indigenous groups and institutional investors representing more than $2 trillion call for industries to keep the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge a "natural wonder."

A young polar bear stands on its hind legs on the barrier island of Bernard Spit, along the eastern arctic coast of Alaska. CREDIT: Steven Kazlowski / Barcroft Medi via Getty Images

Environmental advocates and organizations are calling on major industries to move against drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).
The groups behind the push to keep oil and gas extraction out of the wildlife refuge include indigenous representatives, national environmental activists, and institutional investors representing more than $2.5 trillion.
In a sweeping effort unveiled Monday, representatives from the Gwich’in Nation joined nearly 120 signatories opposing oil and gas drilling in the nation’s largest national wildlife refuge. Through two separate letters, advocates lobbied oil and gas companies along with major banks with potential interest in ANWR drilling.
Writing from its headquarters in Fairbanks, Alaska, the Gwich’in Steering Committee emphasized that the community opposes “any efforts to develop oil and gas” in the area.
The Gwich’in Nation considers ANWR’s coastal plain sacred and has fought against efforts to open the area up for drilling.
“As the world rapidly shifts towards clean energy sources, we are also gravely concerned about the climate, financial and reputational risks associated with pursuing a speculative fossil fuel source that will likely become uneconomical,” the steering committee wrote.
“It is both deeply unethical and unwise to permanently destroy lands vital to the culture and existence of the Gwich’in to pursue this high-risk gamble.”
In a separate letter, investors representing some $2.52 trillion similarly asserted opposition to any ANWR oil and gas development.
Citing “financial” and “reputational” risks along with “ecological” and “human rights” impacts, the signatories urged banks and industries to “honor their fiduciary duty to investors” and pledge to opt out of drilling.
“We, as investors, encourage expanding support for the wide range of clean energy solutions and sustainable industries in Alaska, instead of helping to destroy this natural wonder,” the letter concludes.
Signatories include BNP Paribas Asset Management and the David Rockefeller Fund.
Drilling in the Arctic has been a source of controversy for years.
Advocates for oil and gas drilling have pushed to allow industries to drill in the area, often referred to as “the last great wilderness” in the United States.
ANWR spans nearly 20 million acres and the refuge is home to many threatened and endangered species, including migratory birds, polar bears, and Porcupine caribou.
As head of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R) has increasingly fought to allow drilling in ANWR’s coastal plain, known as the “1002 area”, which encompasses some 1.5 million acres of land.
That site is home to a caribou calving area with deep cultural significance for the Gwich’in people, who also rely on the region for nutritional purposes and food access.
Lawmakers like Murkowski, who has received significant contributions from the oil and gas industry, have used instructions from the Republican-led Senate to the Energy Committee to find $1 billion in order to reconcile the 2018 budget as an excuse to move forward with drilling.
Their efforts have found an ally in the White House: President Trump took an aggressive first step towards opening ANWR up for drilling in April when the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) issued a notice of intent exploring the potential environmental impact of oil exploration in the area.
That announcement sparked a 60-day comment period, set to end mid-June, during which the public can weigh in on the decision.
At the time, Bernadette Dementieff, executive director of the Gwich’in Steering Committee, slammed the move and said the Trump administration’s efforts came “at the expense of human rights”.
Studies have found that pregnant and nursing members of the caribou herds on which the Gwich’in rely for food are prone to avoiding infrastructure like the kind drilling would introduce.
That will mean fewer caribou for the community to hunt, forcing them to look elsewhere for sustenance in a break with cultural norms.
“The administration has made my people a target,” said Dementieff in a statement. “We will not stand down. We will fight to protect the porcupine caribou herd … every step of the way.”
Trump’s support seems to have been motivated more by industry ties than anything else.
In February, the president said that he “didn’t really care” about drilling in ANWR until a friend “who’s in that world and in that [oil and gas] business” asked him to ensure a provision in the upcoming tax bill touched on the issue.
But drilling in the area has been met with some surprising opposition.
In December, a dozen House Republicans penned a letter to Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) arguing against opening ANWR up to drilling and calling the area “a symbol of our nation’s strong and enduring national legacy.” The representatives said such efforts would endanger multiple species and were not necessary to national interests.
“The fate of the Arctic Refuge and its sensitive Coastal Plain lies in the hands of Congress and we must ensure robust debate on this highly-controversial issue,” read the letter.
The separate letters sent Monday indicate the issue is likely to remain heated, with repercussions for industries and funders eyeing drilling.
“Any oil company or bank that supports drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge faces enormous reputational risk and public backlash,” wrote the Gwich’in Steering Committee.
“Their brands would be associated with trampling on human rights, destroying one of the world’s last remaining intact wild places, and contributing to the climate crisis.”

Links

• Trump’s industry friend ‘had a very big impact’ on his decision to open Arctic refuge to drilling
• Melting Arctic sends a message: Climate change is here in a big way
• Arctic warming: scientists alarmed by 'crazy' temperature rises
• Climate change in the Arctic - Wikipedia
• Climate change played a major role in extreme 2016 Arctic heat wave

Worst-Case Climate Change Scenario Could Be More Extreme Than Thought, Scientists Warn

The Independent - Harry Cockburn

Economic growth could prompt greater greenhouse gas emissions than previously forecast, study says

Even our best efforts at limiting emissions may not be enough to avert disaster Shutterstock

Scientists may have to recalibrate their projections of what a “worst case” climate change scenario is, as new studies take into account greater global economic growth than previously forecast.
Climate scientists forecasting how the earth’s climate will change over time examine trends in greenhouse gas emissions, which are largely dependent on how the global economy behaves.
As countries get richer, the amount they consume goes up, and so too do greenhouse gas emissions.
Scientists use four scenarios called representative concentration pathways (RCPs) that attempt to depict possible futures for our planet.
The standard worst case scenario, RCP 8.5, assumes rapid and unrestricted economic growth which will see rampant burning of fossil fuels. In addition, it also assumes no further action will be taken to limit warming than the policies countries are already pursuing.
However, scientists at the University of Illinois say there is a one-in-three chance that by the end of the century emissions will have exceeded those estimated in the RCP 8.5 scenario.
“Our estimates indicate that, due to higher than assumed economic growth rates, there is a greater than 35 per cent probability that year 2100 emissions concentrations will exceed those given by RCP8.5,” Peter Christensen told the New Scientist.
Glen Peters of the Centre for International Climate Research in Norway points to the rise in carbon emissions in Europe over the past four years as economic growth has sped up. In 2017, EU emissions rose by 1.8 per cent.
However, the worst case scenario remains unlikely as economic growth does not rule out environmentally-beneficial policy.
“We’ve already locked in a certain amount of climate policy,” Mr Peters said.
Nonetheless, the latest research also means higher levels of emissions may now have to be factored in to the other climate scenarios.

A group of emperor penguins face a crack in the sea ice, near McMurdo Station, Antarctica Kira Morris

Numerous climate models have previously predicted an apocalyptic future for existence on earth. From rapid icecap melt and catastrophic sea level rise, to rising temperatures making some areas uninhabitable, and mass extinctions of species in affected areas.
But even our best efforts may not be enough to avert disaster.
The Paris climate agreement commits the world’s countries to preventing global warming to no more than 2C above pre-industrial temperatures by the end of the century.
However, even if all countries meet their non-binding targets, some projections estimate global temperatures could still rise by more than 3C, and possibly by over 4C.
This would have a devastating effect on the planet, raising sea levels as much as 1.5 metres, putting cities like Amsterdam and New York under water and causing widespread famine.

Links

• Worst-case climate change scenario is even worse than we thought
• London's iconic red buses to run on coffee in bid to cut emissions
• Americans who believe in conspiracies likely to doubt climate change
• Our expectations 'making spring weather seem more extreme than it is'
• Climate change means chicks hatch too late to eat caterpillars
• Bloomberg ‘to write $4.5m cheque to keep US in Paris Climate agreement
• James Beard Banning hybrid cars is a good start, but we must do more
• How 'supermud' bricks could help tackle the world's housing crisis
• Carbon emissions from global shipping to be halved by 2050, says IMO
• Norway's sovereign wealth fund may extend emissions blacklist
• Sandwiches eaten in UK 'have same environmental impact as 8m cars'
• London's iconic red buses to run on coffee in bid to cut emissions
• Michael Bloomberg to bring his war on coal to Europe after US success
• Ex-chief scientist backs climate change lawsuit against Government
• Coal contributions to British power generation fall to 135 year low
• David Usborne Trump maintains illusion of forward motion by taking America backwards
• What is the Paris agreement and what would happen if Trump withdrew?
• India and China to make up for Trump's damaging stance on climate
• Deep sea mining could help develop mass solar energy
• World leaders 'should ignore Donald Trump on climate change'
• Trump takes major step to wiping out Obama’s climate-change record
• Environmental policies are 'driving down consumer energy bills'
• UK carbon emissions at same level as when first petrol car invented
• Environmental laws must be protected after Brexit, warn climate groups
• China scraps construction of 85 planned coal power plants
• Is carbon offset an effective addition to your green lifestyle?
• Finland plans to completely phase out coal by 2030
• Global carbon emissions stall after US and China reduce coal use
• Germany pushes to ban petrol-fuelled cars within next 20 years
• EU countries meet their carbon-cutting targets six years early
• How one power plant is chipping away at the UK's carbon footprint
• Beijing hit by second smog 'red alert' in two weeks
• Tristan Smith Shipping and aviation are climate change's main culprits
• Government slammed after scrapping £1bn project to cut carbon emission
• How ski resorts are gaining green credentials
• UK theatres doing their bit to reduce carbon emissions

Climate Change Is A Security Threat – So Where Is The UN Security Council?

The Conversation - Ashley Murphy

Piyaset / shutterstock

Climate change is one of the great security challenges of the 21st century.
As the world warms, conflicts over water, food or energy will become more common and many people will be forced from their homes.
 Scientists, think-tanks, NGOs, militaries and even the White House (albeit under President Obama) all agree that climate change threatens human safety and well-being. Yet the organisation charged with global security has remained relatively silent.
The UN Security Council, responsible for maintaining international peace and security, is comprised of 15 countries.
Five seats are reserved for permanent members with veto powers (China, France, Russia, the UK and the US) while the other ten members are elected to represent their region (“Africa”, “Asia-Pacific” etc) for two year terms.

The ten current elected members (Italy and the Netherlands split one two year term between them). wiki, CC BY-SA

Together, this semi-rotating group of 15 takes binding decisions for all 193 UN members. This alone makes the Security Council a very powerful institution, but combined with its capacity to sanction, and intervene in the affairs of states it has an influence far exceeding that of any other international body. It is, in many respects, the executive of the international system.
For this reason the council has considered contemporary security challenges such as international terrorism, nuclear weapon proliferation, and transnational crime. Positive results include an international crackdown on the financing of terrorism, the sharing of information to tackle various criminal problems, stronger border controls for nuclear materials, and the global mobilisation of experts to address a health epidemic.
The fact the Security Council has helped combat these varied and largely unrelated challenges shows its potential to do good. Yet these interventions also pose the critical question of why it has yet to engage climate change in any meaningful way. Article 41 sanctions would be available to the council in the event of states not meeting their Paris Agreement obligations. Economic sanctions could also be placed upon corporations, that currently operate with relatively little international scrutiny. What the council brings is an ability to coerce – something that is currently lacking throughout international climate law.

Global challenge vs state sovereignty
The council hasn’t entirely ignored climate change, of course. In 2007 the first open debate on the matter took place, though this was based on the unofficial proviso that no binding output would follow. Similar discussions were held in 2011 and 2013 but again stark divides among the members prevented any meaningful outputs.

The Security Council, like the UN itself, was formed after World War II. Golden Brown / shutterstock

What this represents is a lack of unity over whether climate change really belongs on the agenda. While most states now agree climate change is a priority – as exhibited by the success of the Paris conference in 2015 – there is no consensus on what role, if any, the Security Council should play.
From one perspective, countries like New Zealand and Germany view climate change as a security issue of immense proportions and worthy of the council’s attention. On the other hand, states such as China and South Africa argue that if the council engages with climate change it will undermine the sovereignty of states, fracturing the international system.
These positions are entrenched, reflecting vastly opposing ideologies in relation to both climate change and international relations, thus precluding any meaningful intervention. Yet this does not necessarily mean that the Security Council is frozen indefinitely.

Climate change slowly moving onto the agenda
The council has a history of taking tentative steps when moving into new territory, and climate change will not be an exception. In 2011 a statement made by then-president of the Security Council (a position that rotates between member states each month) loosely linked climate change and traditional security challenges. In 2017, the council unanimously adopted Resolution 2349, which hinted that climate change had contributed to conflict and instability around Lake Chad and the wider Sahel region. And in January 2018 a second presidential statement twice referenced climate change in the context of instability in the Sahel region.

Drought and desertification worsened conflict around Lake Chad, Security Council resolution suggested. Deji Yako / EPA

These statements fall short of finding climate change an explicit security threat, but do they show the council is steadily becoming more comfortable with the subject. And without that degree of comfort we would likely not have seen the passing of Resolution 2408 on March 27, 2018.
This resolution, again adopted unanimously, extended the mandate of the UN mission in Somalia for another year and became the latest council resolution to include reference to climate change. The language remains speculative and the council is careful to only recall its 2011 statement instead of making a bolder standalone declaration on climate security.
However, inclusion of the expression “grave concern” in regard to the drought and famine engulfing Somalia is proof that the council is experiencing a change of perspective. It is beginning to make discursive links between environmental realities and security, using the language often reserved for terrorism or nuclear weapon proliferation.
The resolution fails to indict climate change as the cause of these problems yet it is nonetheless progress. After years of dispute council members are starting to agree on the inclusion of the words “climate change” in a resolution – a big step forward for the world’s most powerful but politically polarised body.
So where are we? The Security Council has access to the tools the world so desperately needs to enforce state and private action on climate change, and although it is taking its time there is some advancement. That does not mean climate change is about to be recognised as a security concern in its own right, but each step taken is valuable and the council is certainly on the right path to identifying climate change as the security threat it so clearly is.

Links

• Retired general: Climate change is a national security threat, including in the Carolinas
• Climate change and security: a wake-up call for Australia
• As Asia faces climate change upheaval, how will Australia respond?
• US military strategists warn that climate is a ‘catalyst for conflict’ 
• Climate change: A growing threat to Australian security - Climate CouncilClimate change: A growing threat to Australian security - Climate Council
• Climate Change and Global Security - American Security Project
• Exploring The Security Risks of Climate Change

It's No Surprise Emissions Keep Going Up. There's No Price On Carbon

The Guardian - Greg Jericho

The only thing close to climate change policy is the national energy guarantee. It’s not enough.

‘Emissions from electricity have actually fallen but they haven’t fallen enough.’ Photograph: Bloomberg via Getty Images 

Late last Friday, the government quietly released the latest data on greenhouse gas emissions and, as has been the case since the ending of the carbon price, they show emissions are increasing.
But the figures also highlight that the government’s current plan to focus almost exclusively on electricity, through its national energy guarantee, means Australia will be unable to meet its commitment to reduce economy-wide emissions by 28% below 2005 levels by 2030.
The government is never all that excited about releasing the quarterly update on greenhouse gas emissions.
In December it released them the week before Christmas, and this time it released it late Friday afternoon – the end of budget week.
The minster for environment and energy, Josh Frydenberg, didn’t bother to even put out a media release which, given the importance of the figures to his portfolio, would be like the treasurer not bothering to note the release of the quarterly GDP figures.
The budget last week was not exactly replete with money and news about action on climate change.
There was $500m to go towards mitigating the impact of climate change on the Great Barrier Reef, which is often the government’s favoured way with climate change – do bugger all to prevent the harm, and then spend money to make it seem like they care after the damage has been done.
But as for actual efforts to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, for now the only thing close to a policy is related to electricity via the national energy guarantee.
​The latest emissions data, however, shows that will in no way be enough.
In 2017, Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions are estimated to have been 533.7 Mt CO2 -e.
The report notes that this is 2.4% below emissions in 2000 and 11.7% below emissions in 2005.
But that rosiness is really a bit of a figleaf as it refers to total emissions including the emissions from the land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF) sectors, which were very high in the early 2000s but which have been reduced due to less forest reduction and planting more trees.
Such activity was included in our Paris emissions targets because doing so made the cuts easier to achieve.
But the measurement of the LULUCF sector is subject to a fair degree of error, and if you really want to look at actual greenhouse gas emissions you exclude it – but doing so makes the job of reducing our emissions to 26% below 2005 levels by 2030 much harder:

Even including LULUCF, there was a 1.5% increase in emissions in 2017 compared with 2016.
The report notes that a big reason for this was “the expansion in LNG exports, which saw a 41.4% increase in LNG production in 2017 and a forecast increase in LNG production for 2018 of a further 18.1%.”
And certainly the report puts to bed any claims that we have some sort of a gas-supply crisis – production is at record levels – but most of the increase is going towards LNG exports rather than domestic gas:

Natural gas production

Chart: Greg Jericho Source: Dept of Environmnet

But let’s not be coy about the cause of these emissions.
There is one reason Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions have increased, and it is the same one that has been in place since July 2014 – we no longer have a carbon price:

In the three and half years since the carbon price was removed, total greenhouse gas emissions (excluding LULUCF) have grown on average by 1.3% each year – compared with an average annual fall of 1.1% during the carbon price period.
The somewhat good news is that since the end of the carbon price, emissions in the electricity sector, which accounts for just over a third of total emissions, have actually fallen:

The reason, however, is not due to any great work by the government in crafting an energy policy designed to encourage renewables or cleaner energy, but because the extremely dirty and inefficient Hazelwood power station has closed.
This has seen the use of brown coal to generate electricity in the national energy market fall from accounting for 25% in 2009 to now just 18%:

But while emissions from electricity have fallen, they have not fallen anywhere near enough to counter the rises in emissions in other sectors:

And with a focus on electricity set to remain, that means our ability to meet our emissions targets looks set to be impossible.
Consider that since June 2016, the increase in emissions from transport and stationary energy (emissions that come via manufacturing, mining and other commercial activities) have almost cancelled out the fall in electricity emissions in that period:

A one-sector-only approach to emissions reduction is not going to cut it (literally).
The government’s own projections last year for our path to 26% or 28% below 2005 levels highlight just how far we have to go, and how unlikely it is to be achieved with the current policy:

No one ever really believed Direct Action would work, and it clearly has not.
The data shows unequivocally that the government’s climate change policy has been a complete failure.And so long as this government remains beholden to climate change deniers within the partyroom and cabinet, who break out into spasms of lunacy at the mere suggestion of an emissions trading scheme or price on carbon, it will continue to be a failure and our emissions will continue to rise.

Links

• Gas boom fuels Australia's third straight year of rising emissions
• Australia's emissions are rising. It's time for this government to quit pretending
• Quarterly Update of Australia's National Greenhouse Gas Inventory: December 2017 (incorporating March 2018 quarter emissions from the National Electricity Market)
• Australia emissions rise for 3rd year in row, despite fall in electricity
• Land Clearing & Climate Change: Risks & Opportunities in the Sunshine State
• Clean & Reliable Power: Roadmap to a Renewable Future
• Fully Charged: Renewables and Storage Powering Australia

'Glaring inconsistency': National emissions jump may be underestimated

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

Environmental groups, however, say the true emissions figure may be under – estimated because large-scale land clearing – particularly in Queensland and lately in NSW – is not being accurately represented.
The National Greenhouse Gas inventory for last year, released without fanfare at the end of last week, showed emissions were up 1.5 per cent compared with 2016 to 533.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide-equivalent.

Land-clearing is on the increase in Queensland and NSW but national emissions are showing a decline, puzzling analysts. Photo: NSW Nature Conservation Council

After sinking during each year of the Labor-Gillard governments, emissions began to pick up with the end of the carbon price by the Abbott government in 2014.
Most economic sectors reported a rise in pollution in 2017, with so-called fugitive emissions – mostly from the liquefied gas industry – alone increasing 10.5 per cent, and transport 3.8 per cent.
The electricity industry was one sector to report an emissions reduction, cutting almost 6 million tonnes or 3.1 per cent. Hazelwood, Australia's most emissions-intensive coal-fired power plant closed last March.
Australia's emissions are "clearly going in the opposite direction" from what is needed to meet the Abbott-Turnbull government's Paris climate pledge, said Bill Hare, director of Climate Analytics. "To get to 2030 ... you need to be reducing emissions about 1.5 per cent a year."

Removing trees along the Newell Highway in the state's far north. Photo: Nick Moir

Challenges
One challenge is government efforts are being curtailed. Outlays for climate action are due to shrink from $3 billion in 2017-18 to $1.25 billion by 2021-22, according the 2018 budget released last week.
Questions, too, remain about the treatment of emissions from land use changes and forestry, a sector that continues to be counted at the federal level as a carbon sink.
Last year, this category was reported as absorbing a net 22.7 million tonnes of CO2-equivalent, little changed from a year earlier.That outcome, though, came despite as much as a five – fold increase in land-clearing in Queensland after Liberal Nationals' premier Campbell Newman loosened restrictions on native vegetation removal in late 2013.
In the most recent Queensland figures for 2015-16, the biggest land-clearing state was bulldozing at the rate of some 10-square-kilometres a day.
The 395,000 hectares cleared that year contributed 45 million tonnes of emissions, the Palaszczuk Labor government said last October.

'Question mark'
The result is a "glaring inconsistency" between federal and state land-use emissions figures, said Martin Taylor, a conservation scientist with WWF-Australia. "It puts a question mark over [carbon accounting] that we shouldn't have."
One issue is how to count forest change. The federal government uses grid analysis that doesn't treat land as being cleared if the forest canopy remains above 20 per cent, according to Glenn Walker, a campaigner for The Wilderness Society.
By contrast, the Queensland's Statewide Landcover and Trees Study (SLATS) is more thoroughly ground-proofed with a team of eight staff, and likely more accurate, he said.
Fairfax Media sought comment from Josh Frydenberg, the environment and energy minister.
"Each year, we update land clearing estimates based on latest satellite data," a spokesperson for the federal environment department told Fairfax Media last October. "Where applicable, we also revise estimates to reflect improvements in remote sensing and estimation methods."
Mark Butler, Labor's climate spokesman said the government’s land use emissions data "have for some time included seemingly inexplicable reductions in land sector emissions, and this is repeated in this last data release".
"It is crucially important that people have faith in government emission accounts, but the more I talk to the experts, the more questions are raised about the accuracy of the government’s land clearing data."
Adam Bandt, the Greens climate change spokesman, said the party would use Senate estimates "to find out why these unexpected figures are now cropping up in land use and forestry".

"The government appears to now be counting pollution in the land clearing and forestry sector differently, in ways that make it appear as if they’re cutting emissions," he said.

Emissions rise
National emissions in the last quarter of 2017 accelerated 0.8 per cent to 133.7 million tonnes – or about 2.5 per cent more than the equivalent quarter in 2013, just as the Abbott government came to power, according to the Australian Conservation Foundation.
Since the Coalition repealed the carbon prices at the end of June 2014, emissions have increased 3.6 per cent, reversing a fall of more than 11 per cent during the Rudd-Gillard Labor governments, ACF said.
The trajectory of rising emissions makes the 2030 target – of 435-441 million tonnes by that year – more difficult to reach, Gavan McFadzean, ACF's climate change program manager, said.
"We need a comprehensive national climate change plan that will rapidly cut pollution across our society and ensures Australia plays its fair role in halting global warming and ensuring we maintain our safe climate," he said.

Links

• Budget 2018: Funding cuts put Paris climate goal further out of reach
• Land cover change in Queensland 2015–16: Statewide Landcover and Trees Study Executive Summary
• Inexplicable': Huge surge in landclearing not picked up in emissions data 
• Budget Strategy and Outlook 2018-19 (pdf)
• Gas boom fuels Australia's third straight year of rising emissions
• Australia's emissions are rising. It's time for this government to quit pretending
• Quarterly Update of Australia's National Greenhouse Gas Inventory: December 2017 (incorporating March 2018 quarter emissions from the National Electricity Market)
• Australia emissions rise for 3rd year in row, despite fall in electricity
• Land Clearing & Climate Change: Risks & Opportunities in the Sunshine State
• Clean & Reliable Power: Roadmap to a Renewable Future
• Fully Charged: Renewables and Storage Powering Australia