All Models Used By Bureau Now Point To El Nino By The End Of Spring

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

All of the Bureau of Meteorology's eight international models it uses now predict an El Nino event by the end of spring, dimming hopes of quenching rains that would aid farmers and ease the bushfire risks.
The Bureau of Meteorology's latest El Nino-Southern Oscillation update shifts the odds slightly from a fortnight ago when only a majority of the models had forecast an El Nino by spring's end.

There's no early sign of a break in the drought - in fact it could get worse. Photo: AAP

Robyn Duell, a senior bureau climatologist, cautioned that model forecasts had picked an El Nino at this time in 2014, only for the drivers - namely a relative warming in the eastern tropical Pacific compared with the west - to back off.
"We need to see the [easterly] trade winds weakening - that's the key we're looking for," Ms Duell said. "Models are not enough."
Still, the Southern Oscillation index - which gauges pressure differences between Darwin and Tahiti - had recently become more "El Nino-like" the bureau said.
During El Ninos, spring rainfall in eastern and northern Australia is typically below average, while temperatures in the southern two-thirds of the country is above average.
Compounding the tendency towards drier-than-average rainfall across south-eastern Australia are cooler than usual waters off north-western Australia. These typically reduce the moisture streaming over the continent, and the models forecast this rainfall-suppressing trend to increase in the near term according to three of six models the bureau uses.
Much of Australia has had "exceptionally warm" daytime temperatures this winter, even if clear skies have made for frosty overnight conditions in many areas, Ms Duell said.



Recent rains had helped parts of northern NSW and southern Queensland but most other drought-affected areas received only a few showers.
Sydney, for instance, has collected less than 8 millimetres of rain in August while evaporation levels are running at about 132 millimetres, bureau data shows.
The outlook for the coming week offers some prospect of more falls early next week with as much as 15 millimetres tipped for Tuesday.

Links

• 'We dread the onslaught of summer'
• Record evaporation rates across eastern Australia exacerbate drought
• 'Death certificate': Ex-water chief slams Barnaby Joyce's drought plan
• Can't vote Liberal 'in good conscience': Alex Turnbull blasts climate stance
• 'Barbaric': Adani's giant coal mine granted unlimited water licence for 60 years

'No Real Appetite': Former Farmers Chief Lashes Ministers Over Climate Link To Drought

The Guardian - Gabrielle Chan

Brent Finlay, former president of the National Farmers’ Federation, says Scott Morrison and Barnaby Joyce are the latest who are failing the bush

Scott Morrison with agriculture minister David Littleproud and deputy Nationals leader Bridget McKenzie in Quilpie in south-west Queensland on Monday. Photograph: Alex Ellinghausen / Fairfax Media

The former president of the National Farmers’ Federation, Brent Finlay, has accused politicians of “jumping in front of the cameras” while shirking effective policy work on drought and climate change.
As Scott Morrison and his special drought envoy, Barnaby Joyce, toured south-west Queensland on Tuesday, Finlay described the former deputy prime minister and agriculture minister as the last in a long line of ministers who had “no real appetite” for national drought policy in a changing climate.
“Climate change and connectivity are the two biggest issues facing the bush. Climate change is real and we have to have a national drought policy framed on what we know about climate change – the two are interlinked,” Finlay told Guardian Australia.
“Instead of jumping in front of the cameras when a drought is on, we need them to do the grunt work on effective financial measures that allow our farmers to build up cash reserves in the good times to draw upon when the dry comes again.”

Scott Morrison meets former rugby league player turned farmer Shane Webcke in Quilpie during his visit to south-west Queensland. Photograph: Alex Ellinghausen / Fairfax Medi/Alex Ellinghausen / Fairfax Media

He also called on governments to start rewarding good farmers who prepare for drought rather than the “less efficient” farmers.
Finlay said politics had caused a failure of a national drought policy which should apply some structure to how farmers cope in drought and the nature of government assistance.
“I went to Labor and the Coalition in 2013 when nowhere in Australia was in drought,” Finlay said. “The Labor government had dropped the exceptional circumstances funding program and I made the comment, this is gone now, what is the national drought policy?
“Labor said they would do a policy before the 2013 election. [Former Coalition agriculture shadow spokesman] John Cobb said there would be something on drought. When Barnaby was appointed, he said it will be in the agriculture white paper. It was not there.

Morrison with ministers and farmers at the Tully farm in Quilpie. Photograph: Alex Ellinghausen / Fairfax Medi/Alex Ellinghausen / Fairfax Media

Building a national drought policy “always seemed too hard”, he said.
The white paper did not include climate change in its terms of reference and the NFF was not consulted on those terms.
Finlay would like to see drought treated as a new category in natural disaster arrangements to embed a structural mechanism beyond the politics of the day. Dry spells could then be monitored using data from the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology and when the outlook turned towards drought, conditional government assistance that rewarded good managers would kick in.
“Farmers acknowledge drought is a regular part of agriculture and with climate change we will potentially see more and more and that’s what we need,” he said.
“The climate is changing, you can see it in the eyes of farmers who dismissed it as rubbish eight years ago. By recognising climate change, it is empowering resources to support agriculture.”
He would like to see a permanent drought commissioner placed in the prime minister’s office to be proactive on policy development and climate monitoring. This would be a significant move, as it would place the commissioner out of the hands of the agriculture minister, who is a National party minister in any Coalition government.

Scott Morrison, with sheep and cattle graziers Stephen and Annabel Tully, and drought coordinator Major-General Stephen Day in Quilpie. Photograph: Alex Ellinghausen/AAP

“The permanent drought commissioner needs to be in PMO, we need to keep it at arms length from those politicians that feel they are directly effected. If it’s in PMO and hopefully its bipartisan, it elevates the management of the position.”
Finlay was president of the National Farmers Federation for three years from 2013, coinciding with the last months of the Gillard-Rudd Labor government and Barnaby Joyce’s first three years as agriculture minister. He was also chair of the NFF’s national drought committee.
Finlay said the government should put all ideas on the table to change the thinking on drought policy towards a model that rewarded good farm managers.
“It’s not going to make me popular to say it but unfortunately current drought assistance measures reward our less efficient farming operators at the expense of those families who’ve been better prepared for drought.
“You’ve only got to look at our current weather patterns to know that climate change is real and we should expect more extreme weather including more droughts in the future.”
Guardian Australia has contacted Barnaby Joyce’s office for comment.

Australia's climate wars: a decade of dithering

Links

• Australia Is Devastated By Drought, Yet It Won't Budge On Climate Change
• Australia Struggles With A Devastating Drought While The Government Ignores Climate Change
• Great Southern Drought: Australian Farmers Crippled, Climate Action Stalled
• Farming Impact Of Australia's Worst Drought In Living Memory
• Farmers Need To Call Out Climate Risks
• National Farmers Federation Says Electricity Best Place To Make Emissions Cuts
• If we want strong climate action, we need to get the moderate Liberals on board
• 'Big call': minister refuses to link drought to climate change on Q&A
• Farmers challenge Nationals' claim drought unrelated to climate change
• 'Too early to say' if Coalition will back clean energy target, Frydenberg says
• Barnaby Joyce juggles coal as Labor and Coalition clash over blackouts – as it happened

Climate change is World War III, and we are leaderless

ABC News -  David Shearman

Like the US, Australia is failing to save the lives of its citizens by prolonging the life of polluting coal-fired power. (ABC News)

"World War III is well and truly underway. And we are losing," writes environmental activist Bill McKibben, so when Malcolm Turnbull implied that the insurgency that demolished his government was based on climate ideology, what lessons are there for Scott Morrison?
As a child in Britain during WWII, I lived in a street of mothers and children. Every father was away fighting. Each house and garden was surrounded by a metal palisade fence.

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Where is the urgency in
Australia's climate policy?

Australia needs to stop pretending we're tackling climate change.

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One morning the fences were gone, mother was delighted. Then a horse and cart came and took away every metal cooking pot and pan, some treasured, but mother smiled at her sacrifice. It was difficult for me to understand.
She had responded to the call from Lord Beaverbrook, Minister of Aircraft Production, for the women of Britain to: "Give us your aluminium. … We will turn your pots and pans into Spitfires and Hurricanes."
Grey sky blanketed my childhood, each day clouded by the expectation of a knock on the door by the telegram man. There was poverty and hunger but paradoxically it was a happy time, food was shared and houses were open to all.
Families rushed to harvest hay, to clear the snowy roads in winter, to house the bombed families and to "make do and mend" with clothes and shoes.
Britain was a united and cohesive community. Young and old worked daily in small ways for the common cause. But most importantly, in the free world, two countries — Britain and the US — had leaders in Winston Churchill and Franklin D Roosevelt who could explain the need for duty and sacrifice.
Their like is yet to emerge today, and indeed the Western world is bereft, perhaps apart from French President Emmanuel Macron, who explained to Congress and the American people that secure borders are irrelevant to this threat, and all of us are world citizens needing to act in concert. "There is no Planet B," he said.
He challenged Malcolm Turnbull to show leadership on climate change.

Prime Minister, please call for a personal briefing by Australia's leading climate scientists. (ABC News: Nick Haggarty)

US and Australia trading ideology for human lives
Two of the world's highest per capita carbon emitters, the United States and Australia, have deserted the trenches of WWIII by trading ideology for human lives and health.

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Climate change litigation
rising with the seas

A shift towards climate-change litigation is gathering steam as low-lying island countries, and even US cities, take aim at governments and big oil companies for failing to act proportionately on emission reductions.

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The US response to the climate threat has been withdrawal from the Paris agreement and a full-frontal attack on the US Environmental Protection Authority, a national defence against climate change, pollution and ill-health — as irrational as if the Germans had demolished their "Siegfried Line" of WWII.
As a doctor, I know that they will compromise the health of children and families from relaxation of pollution standards on coal-fired power stations and from weaker fuel standards. Their actions are an attack on all humanity and thereby the US has abandoned world leadership.
Australia's response to climate change is devious; under the guise of action, the transition to renewable energy has been carefully modulated to maintain coal. Policy was corrupted by deference to a party clique of climate deniers who proudly named their group after Australia's most illustrious WW1 general John Monash, and were deaf to his descendants pleading for his name to be removed.
Like the US, Australia is failing to save the lives of its citizens by prolonging the life of polluting coal-fired power.
As a wealthy, technological nation failing to assist others in a transition from fossil fuels, and soon to become the leading exporter of coal and gas in the world, Australia has failed to temper its quest for prosperity and serve the needs of humanity.

Humanity lives in one atmosphere
Both the United States and Australia must understand that humanity lives in one atmosphere and all must act decisively and collectively to preserve the common and finite resources of land, sea, air, biodiversity and fresh water necessary for health and wellbeing.
Leadership is the ability to explain this to voters and to caution that any hope of future prosperity depends upon collective action.
But leadership by an emerging Churchill or Roosevelt is much more difficult than in WWII. Leadership will need to explain the pots and pans needing to be sacrificed today.
Mr Churchill's stirring "We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds", an easily understood message of WWII, has to become equally inspirational on changes in lifestyle, personal commitment to curbing rampant consumerism, energy transition, efficient recycling, modifying diet and conserving biodiversity and, ultimately, a sharing of finite resources and economic sacrifice.
These endeavours will also need to be accepted by the corporate empires that pollute and frequently enrich themselves from environmental capture and exploitation.
They must recognise that their survival also depends on climate action.

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Analysis: A brief history of seven killings

The Australian Parliament has proven itself unable to reach consensus on climate change policy, even when the parties are close enough to touch. It's a familiar tale.

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Mr Morrison, think of your lovely young children
But most importantly leaders must understand complex problems.
Prime Minister, doctors wish you well in your endeavours; your visit to drought-riven states is an excellent start. Our suggestions relate to the two most important people at your investiture, your lovely young children.
Please study the collective action plan so badly needed (a report co-authored by leading medical scientist Fiona Stanley) to avoid burning their futures in a hot, hungry, stormy and resource-conflicted world.
And please call for a personal briefing by Australia's leading climate scientists on these and related issues.

Dr David Shearman is the honorary secretary of Doctors for the Environment Australia and Emeritus Professor of Medicine at Adelaide University.

Links

• Opinion: Rising seas will displace millions of people — and Australia must be ready
• Opinion: The NEG is about more than power prices and coal plants
• Science can't solve climate change — better politics can, former IPCC scientist says
• Powering Past Coal Alliance: 20 countries sign up to phase out coal power by 2030
• National Clean Air Agreement slammed for failing to comply with WHO air pollution guidelines
• World pollution kills more people annually than wars, disasters, hunger

A “Middle Finger” To Climate And Renewables: Morrison Draws Fire – And Dismay

RenewEconomy - Sophie Vorrath



Scott Morrison has wasted no time in signalling what direction his “new generation” Coalition government will be taking on renewable energy and climate change. And other political parties and observers have reacted with anger and dismay.
As Giles Parkinson writes here today, the new prime minister has not only ended the experiment of combining the energy and environment portfolios, but has appointed one of the country’s most prominent anti-wind campaigners as energy minister, and a former mining industry lawyer as environment minister.
His chief of staff is a former deputy CEO of the Australian Minerals Council.
With Angus Taylor the new “minister for getting energy prices down,” and Melissa Price looking out for the environment (but not climate change), Morrison appears to have abandoned any efforts to seek emissions reductions in the electricity sector, or anywhere else for that matter.
So how is the news being taken elsewhere?
“It seems climate change is the portfolio that dare not speak its name,” said Labor’s energy and climate spokesperson, Mark Butler, in comments emailed to RE.
“Who has responsibility for climate change in the Morrison government, or have they finally given up any pretence and under PM Morrison there simply isn’t any climate change policy?”
Greens climate and energy spokesperson Adam Bandt said Morrison’s ministry sent a crystal clear message on renewable energy and on climate change.
“By breaking the Environment portfolio away from Energy and handing the latter to a coal-hugger, Scott Morrison has given the middle finger to climate change and renewable energy,” Bandt said.

IMAGE

“Scott Morrison, the man who literally hugged a piece of coal on the floor of the House of Representatives, has appointed another coal-hugger to set the country’s energy policy.
“Angus Taylor has made a name for himself amongst the hard-right by undermining renewable energy. Since he entered Parliament, he has been on a crusade to destroy the Renewable Energy Target.
“Having the coal crew running Australia’s climate and energy policy is a recipe for more drought and more bushfires.
“When Parliament resumes, I will be confronting the new Energy Minister about his record on climate change and renewables. We must stand up to these coal-hugging zealots before they destroy our country and our planet,” Bandt said.

IMAGE

And on the other side of the equation, Liberal MP George Christensen – the Coalition’s member for Dawson, in Queensland’s north – has welcomed the new appointments, saying on Twitter he is looking forward to Morrison and Taylor getting to work on establishing a “major equity fund for new coal-fired power” and abandoning renewable energy subsidies.

IMAGE

With a view to the energy market, ITK analyst and regular RE contributor David Leitch said the appointment of Taylor “a cause for some despair” for anyone hoping for bipartisanship on energy policy.
“There will likely be no meaningful federal government climate policy, no attempt to do anything towards our legally binding, but unenforceable COP 21 obligations,” Leitch said in his article today.
“Taylor brings far too much negative history to the portfolio to be ever seen as anything other than a roadblock, not even a speed-hump, but a straight out roadblock.”
Executive director of The Australia Institute, Ben Oquist, told the ABC on Monday that, while it was the Coalition’s prerogative to separate its energy portfolio from climate, “we can’t separate… energy prices and reliability from emissions reduction.
“And I think a lot of people will be looking for early signals from Angus Taylor that he understands that,” he said.
“We are going to decarbonise our electricity network… in the end we’ll have to if we are going to meet our Paris targets and address climate change. And anyway, renewables are cheaper.
“Given that, industry is going to be looking for a signal that Angus Taylor understands that, because if we don’t get that signal there won’t be investment certainty.
“And remember, these are investments that last 30 and 50 years, not the five months, potentially, until the federal election, not event the three years until the next government,” Oquist said.
But already, industry seems resigned to the fact that investment certainty for renewables is as far away as ever.
“It is now apparent that the NEG is headed for the well populated graveyard of attempts at Australian energy policy and a further period of policy uncertainty is likely,” ASX-listed wind farm developer Infigen Energy said in its 2018 Annual Report.
“In any event, equally significant to the success of any new policy settings will be government confidence in that policy’s capacity to deliver outcomes that are market based. This requires governments to
refrain from sponsoring initiatives that undermine investor confidence and heighten risk,” the report said.
“Unfortunately, energy policy remains in a fluid state,” Infigen CEO Ross Rolfe echoed, during the company’s results briefing for FY2018 on Monday morning.
“We are no closer to achieving a national policy framework that delivers on the goal of affordability, reliability and emissions reduction.
“With the RET largely satisfied, new generation will respond to electricity price dynamics only,” he said.
Energy Networks Australia said it welcomed the appointment of Taylor, at a time when Australia’s complex energy system was transforming rapidly.
“Enduring policies that can deliver affordable and reliable energy as we transition to a low emissions future continue to be the priority for energy networks,” said ENA chief Andrew Dillon, in a statement on Monday.
“I look forward to briefing Minister Taylor on how a more connected future can increase competition and how we are working with the Australian Energy Market Operator to create Open Energy Networks that can harness the growing level of distributed generation to put downward pressure on prices.”

Links

• Morrison names leading anti-wind campaigner as energy minister
• Former coal industry boss is Scott Morrison’s chief of staff
• Know your NEM: Coalition lurches to right, away from consensus, science and economics
• On first day as PM, Morrison learns difference between Big Battery and Big Banana

Can't Vote Liberal 'In Good Conscience': Alex Turnbull Blasts Climate Stance

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

Alex Turnbull blamed "rent-seekers" backing the coal industry for felling his father Malcolm Turnbull as prime minister, saying it's "impossible" to vote for the Liberal-National coalition "in good conscience" because of its climate stance.
In a wide-ranging interview just days after his father lost power in a partyroom putsch, the Singapore-based fund manager told Fairfax Media the Liberal Party faced being hijacked by financial interests that stood to make windfall profits if coal-related assets were bolstered by taxpayers.

Alex Turnbull (left) with wife Yvonne, daughter Isla and parents Malcolm and Lucy Turnbull. Photo: Twitter

Those interests “have their hooks into the Liberal Party ... which has no money”, Mr Turnbull said, adding that returns could be "100 to 1" if policies fall investors' way.
Mr Turnbull's experience includes a stint at investment banking giant Goldman Sachs. Some of his work has also involved trading debt for Australian-based coal-fired power plants, giving him insights into that industry's outlook.
“If you create such an environment – with such a high rate of return – you’ll see a lot more of that [influence peddling],” he said.

'Snookered'
Speaking freely now that his father was no longer in power, Mr Turnbull said he was "massively in favour of a federal ICAC”, referring to a Commonwealth equivalent of NSW's Independent Commission Against Corruption. “I hope they find corruption then I don’t have to believe it’s all stupidity.”


From a single-father household to journalist, barrister, businessman and politician, it seemed Malcolm Turnbull had his eyes on the PM's office for a long time. 

Mr Turnbull defended his father's efforts to craft an energy policy that sought to combine emissions reductions while boosting reliability of the grid and lowering prices. The new government under Scott Morrison has split the environment and energy portfolios, with most indicators suggesting the proposed National Energy Guarantee is dead.
“He was snookered," Mr Turnbull said of his father's fate. "You don’t know how hard he worked on this issue.”
“It’s impossible to vote for the LNP in good conscience,” Mr Turnbull said, adding he had no intention of entering politics himself. "My father fought the stupid and the stupid won."
Mr Turnbull was also critical of the government's overall climate action, saying that pulling of the Paris Agreement – as conservative MPs and pundits have been demanding – was irrelevant at this point.
”It’s like being in a university course, final exams are coming and you haven’t done three-quarters of the work," he said. "You’re going to fail anyway.”

'Human wontons'
Mr Turnbull also noted the pressure placed by his father's government on AGL to keep its ailing Liddell power station going beyond its scheduled 2022 closure date.
“This is the behaviour that exists in emerging markets, where the cost of capital is much higher," he said. "How can you expect people to make long-term investment decisions when clowns trying to game the news cycle are a key driver of investment returns?”
He said efforts to keep ageing coal-fired power stations going, noting that Western Australia's bid to stop the Muja plant going – at the cost of $300 million – "was a terrible failure".
“Such spending is like trying to keep crappy cars – like a 1994 Ford Laser – on the road.”
Worse, the operators of such plants as Liddell and Gladstone ran the risk of a "horrific industrial accident" that could literally cook unfortunate employees like a Chinese dumpling.
Such failures "could create ‘human wontons’ of any staff exposed to the 300-400-degree super-heated steam”, he said.
AGL has made little secret of the engineering challenges facing its staff have described as "old lady Liddell".

Disappointed Dad
Mr Turnbull declined to say much about this father's current disposition. However, in response to a question about whether he had been disappointed he couldn't have done more on climate action, he answered "yes".
The younger Turnbull had positive things to say about Tim Murray, the Labor candidate for Wentworth, his father's electorate. "He’s a great guy and I know him well," he said. "[It's] hard to back a Labor guy but not Tim."
He predicted Labor's left would keep that party "honest" on climate change.
Bill Shorten “doesn’t really care about climate change – he just wants the jobs”, Mr Turnbull said, adding that there were lots of them in Victoria and elsewhere as the renewable energy boom rolls on.
Two terms of federal Labor should mean Australia's electricity sector "would have crossed the magic line” – such as exceeding 40 per cent of supply from wind and solar. "They’re not going to be able to go back.”
Taking serious action on climate change “should be the response of any sane leader”, he said.

Links

• 'No Doubt Our Climate Is Getting Warmer,' Malcolm Turnbull Says
• Farming Needs To Adapt To Climate Change: PM
• Malcolm Turnbull Has Become A De-Facto Climate Denier
• 'It's A Tragedy,' Clive Hamilton Says Of Turnbull's Climate Transformation
• On Climate Change Policy, Neither Time Nor Trump Are On Turnbull's Side
• What Will Shake Malcolm Turnbull From His Climate Coma?
• No Matter What He Says In Paris, Turnbull Is Still Handcuffed To The Climate Change Dinosaurs
• China Climate Change Pledge To Barack Obama Also A Gift To Malcolm Turnbull
• The Inconvenient Truth About Direct Action Comes From Turnbull Himself
• Why AGL is likely to rebuff any and all suitors to 'old lady Liddell'
• Finally, right at the end, he came back. Hello and goodbye, Real Malcolm
• 'Barbaric': Adani's giant coal mine granted unlimited water licence for 60 years

At Last, Maybe A Real Choice On Climate Change

Australian Business Review - Alan Kohler

Newly-appointed energy minister Angus Taylor. Picture: AAP

It’s a good thing the National Energy Guarantee wouldn’t do much and doesn’t really matter, because it’s unlikely to be a big priority of the Morrison government.
The new energy minister, Angus Taylor, is a prominent anti-renewables campaigner and climate change sceptic. Appointing him, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said he would be “the minister for getting prices down”.
So there seems little chance that anyone will be bothered doing the hard work needed to get the NEG across the line. In fact it would be surprising if the NEG wasn’t entirely ditched as policy pretty speedily, along with any kind of climate change policy at all.
Bring it on, I say. Then we might finally get a clear choice at the next election: action on climate change versus no action.
If so, it would be the first time in a decade that Australian voters would have been told the truth about climate change policies, instead of getting the lie of broad agreement about the need to reduce emissions, with the two sides only disagreeing about how much, and how to do it.
It would have been far better for the country if a clear choice had been on offer in 2010, 2013 and 2016. We might have got some kind of energy policy.
Instead, at each of those elections, the Coalition pretended to have a policy intended to reduce emissions and then, when elected, did nothing (except not abolish the Howard Government’s Renewable Energy Target).
As a result, Australians have never had the chance to tell the nation’s politicians clearly what they actually want.
In 2013, Tony Abbott campaigned ferociously on abolishing Labor’s “carbon tax”, but the two sides’ policies were essentially the same – to reduce Australia’s carbon emissions by 5 per cent from 2000 levels by 2020. The difference involved how to achieve it: Labor proposed emissions trading, the Coalition had “direct action”, since abandoned.
Australians thought they were voting for action on climate change when they put “1” next to a Coalition candidate, but the policy was a lie.
At the 2016 election, after the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris in December 2015, a difference opened up between the two sides’ emissions reduction targets for the first time: the Turnbull-led Coalition went with the Paris target of 26-28 per cent from 2005 levels by 2030 – Tony Abbott had actually signed that deal before being sacked – while Labor went with the Climate Change Authority’s recommended target of 45 per cent, after putting it through a six-month consultation process.
Once again, Australian voters were not offered a truthful choice.
It was pretty clear to close observers that most of the Coalition MP’s hearts weren’t in it, that they were only doing it because the polls told them had to in order to win the election, and it was obvious that “direct action” wouldn’t go anywhere near the target agreed in Paris. It was soon ditched.
But still, the formal policy position at the 2016 election was that both sides were climate change believers and only differed at the margin.
Since then Alan Finkel’s “Independent Review into the Future Security of the National Electricity Market” came and went and his compromise proposal called the Clean Energy Target flared briefly, sputtered and died, strangled by Coalition conservatives.
In desperation, the COAG Energy Council asked the Energy Security Board to come up with a more compromised compromise.
So the ESB invented the NEG as the mildest possible nod to a climate change policy in the hope that it might get past the now-fully unveiled sceptics in the Coalition - led by backbencher (and thus free to tell the truth) Tony Abbott and his true believers in the media - while allowing the ALP to agree to it before the election and still keep its emissions reduction target of 45 per cent.
That is, to agree to the NEG, Labor would have to think – and more importantly, say – that the NEG could be adapted to its own emissions reduction target, which is what the ESB designed it to do.
Future Treasurer, Josh Frydenberg diligently began the task of selling it, and for a while it looked promising.
But of course history will show that the NEG collapsed last Monday when the Abbott sceptics promised to cross the floor to vote against any attempt to reduce emissions.
That started an avalanche that ended on Friday with Malcolm Turnbull replaced as Prime Minister by a man who had brought a lump of coal into Parliament in February shouting: “This is coal. Don’t be afraid, don’t be scared,” before launching into a tirade about the “coalophobia” of those opposite.
He has now appointed a climate change sceptic and anti-renewables campaigner to replace Frydenberg as energy minister.
This is excellent news.
In my view, Morrison should now go all the way with President Trump and pull Australia out of the Paris agreement, giving up all pretence of wanting to reduce carbon emissions. Australians would then finally get a clear, truthful election, and could make a proper choice.
But of course, it won’t happen because the Libs’ pollsters will tell Scott Morrison that if he does that, he will definitely lose the election. The Coalition, the polls will say, needs to go back to lying.
This time, though, it won’t wash.

Links

• Australia's Recent Climate Change Policy: A Brief History Of Seven Killings
• Climate Change Policy Toppled Australia’s Leader. Here’s What It Means For Others.
• 'Absolutely Daft': How Did We End Up Getting Climate Policy So Wrong?
• US And Australia Are Dysfunctional: Hyper-Partisanship Is Killing Two Great Democracies
• Australia Wilts From Climate Change. Why Can’t Its Politicians Act?
• 'He Will Fail Farmers': Morrison Pressured To Tackle Climate Change As Part Of Drought Pledge

What Happens When Climate Change Meets The Courts?

Ars Technica - Cathleen O'Grady

A detailed review explores trends in climate change litigation.

The courts have become another frontline in the battle against climate change. Patrick Feller / Flickr

In 2015, a group of children filed a climate change lawsuit against the US government on the grounds that “through the government’s affirmative actions that cause climate change, it has violated the youngest generation’s constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property.” The case, often referred to as the Juliana case, is scheduled for trial in October this year.
Will this strategy work? Litigation involving climate change and environmental regulations has had mixed success over the years, but there are some common trends that could be informative. A paper published in Nature Climate Change this week combs through hundreds of lawsuits to tease out what kinds of strategies have been tried out, and what’s been successful. The paper found that pro-regulation lawsuits often have a hard time proving injury but still have a decent track record on cases involving renewable energy.

On the case(s)
Sabrina McCormick, a sociologist at George Washington University, is interested in the social dimensions that shape climate change. She and her colleagues created a database of all 838 climate change lawsuits in the US between 1990 and 2016, classifying each case by factors like the kind of plaintiff and the outcome of the case.
Climate change lawsuits aren’t all trying to instigate climate action—some are trying to prevent regulation. So McCormick and her colleagues classified the suits as pro-regulation if “their motivation was to demand more protection of the environment or implementation of more rigorous environmental regulation.” Anti-regulation suits involved plaintiffs who were challenging existing regulations or laws.
The researchers found that suits involving air quality, like those focused on coal-fired power plants, were the most common, and they featured both pro-regulatory plaintiffs like NGOs and anti-regulatory plaintiffs like businesses. Overall, there were more anti-regulatory wins, even though there were more pro-regulatory cases overall. But there was one category where pro-regulatory cases seemed to do better: the small number that involved energy efficiency and renewable energy.
“There’s little in this article that will genuinely surprise US climate-litigation watchers, but it’s useful to see empirical support for the intuitions that most of us in the field already hold,” says Erin Ryan, an environmental law professor who wasn’t involved in the study. Using litigation to combat climate change “accomplishes certain objectives more effectively than others,” she says, and the analysis “makes this point effectively and backs it up with data.”

Cause and harm
The analysis explores how establishing harm and proving causality influence different outcomes. While anti-regulatory cases tended to make the case that regulation harms profits, pro-regulatory cases had a harder time convincing courts of harm or that climate change was causal in that harm. This wasn’t surprising, says Ryan, who added that it was “compelling to see that it is specifically the harmed profits of anti-regulatory interests that help get them through the courtroom door, while ordinary air-breathers have a harder time asserting their interests in court.”
On top of the data analysis, the researchers interviewed people involved a small number of particularly interesting cases to get a better understanding of the strategies and outcomes involved. They found that sometimes, winning or losing a case isn't as important as raising awareness or mobilizing the public. “The Juliana case is an excellent example of this,” says Ryan. “The plaintiffs there might count their legal effort as a success if it galvanizes the movement or brings millennial voters to polling stations, even if the case is ultimately unsuccessful in court.”
Although the analysis is an interesting look at the landscape, it’s not the last word. Some of the categories had only a handful of cases in them, making it difficult to extrapolate to general trends. And the world is changing fast. “The Trump administration has announced plans to substantially weaken the regulations implementing the Endangered Species Act, so it’s quite possible that the findings of this study will be dated by the time new litigants make strategic decisions,” Ryan points out. “It’s a complicated moment in time.”

Links

• Strategies in and outcomes of climate change litigation in the United States
• Lethal Heating: Climate Change - Legal
• Kids Around The World Are Suing Governments Over Climate Change—And It’s Working
• Super Fund REST Being Sued For Not Having A Plan For Climate Change
• ‘Climate Kids’ Suit Against Government Allowed To Proceed
• Climate Campaigners Lose High Court Battle Over Carbon Target
• Judge Throws Out New York Climate Lawsuit
• Local, County And State Governments Are Suing Oil Companies Over Climate Change