02/10/2018

Australia's Emissions Data Would Shame The Coalition, If Such A Thing Were Possible

The Guardian - 

The government consistently buries the quarterly figures, and no wonder

‘Australia is able to take into account the high amount of forest clearing that was occurring at the time, and bank improvements merely due to us being less bad now than we were, not because we have actually improved our emissions.’ Photograph: Auscape/UIG via Getty Images 
Late on Friday, under the cover of the release of the first interim report from the Hayne royal commission into the financial sector and the day before a weekend of AFL and NRL grand finals, the government released the latest quarterly data showing greenhouse gas emissions had once again risen.
You can call this government many things – a bunch of dolts deluded into believing climate change is a global conspiracy, a bunch of feckless cowards lacking the intellectual ability or political acumen to stand up to those climate change-denying fools occupying positions on the backbench and in cabinet – but you can’t call them subtle.
Ever since they have taken office from the ALP, this government has sought to release the quarterly greenhouse gas emissions data at times when it will most likely be lost in the news cycle. The usual favourite is the week before Christmas. The previous batch of data was released late on Friday of budget week. That it is now more than four months since that last “quarterly” release serves to highlight how planned this past Friday’s release was.
The reason they choose to release the data at times when it is unlikely to get much attention is because the emissions data is continually awful and would be utterly shameful, were this government possessed of the ability to feel that emotion in relation to climate change.
In the past 12 months the annual level of emissions reached a record level of 559m tonnes CO2-e if we exclude the controversial component of “land use, land use change and forestry” (LULUCF), which includes a measure for the amount of forest and grasslands and the amounts of those cut down or converted to other uses.
Chart: Greg Jericho Source: Depot of Environment, Table 1A, derived Get the data Created with Datawrapper

Rather disgracefully Australia is allowed to count that use towards its Paris agreement to reduce emissions by 26% below 2005 levels. The reason this is disgraceful is because it means we are able to take into account the high amount of forest clearing that was occurring at the time, and to bank improvements merely due to us being less bad now than we were, not because we have actually improved our emissions.
We did the same thing for our Kyoto commitment, which had 1990 as the base year – a year in which we had a massive amount of land clearing:
Net greenhouse gas emissions from land use, land use change & forestry sector
                                 Source: Dep of Environment Fig 20 Created with Datawrapper
But even if we include the LULUCF measure, our annual emissions rose in the past 12 months by 0.9% – and they are now at their highest level since 2011. It is a terrible result, but one that is not surprising given our emissions have been increasing every quarter since the end of the carbon price period in June 2014:
Chart: Greg Jericho Source: Dept of Environment, Table 1C, derived Get the data Created with Datawrapper
The good news is electricity emissions have been falling recently, the bad news is so too has our level of renewable energy production. The only reason emissions in the national energy market have fallen is because of the drop in brown coal production:
Breakdown of electricity generation 
Chart: Greg Jericho Source: Dep of Environment, Fig 10, derived Get the data Created with Datawrapper
And the problem is while emissions from electricity have fallen since June 2016, in that time emissions from all other areas have increased by more than that amount:
Annual emissions by sector compared to year to Jun 2016
Chart: Greg Jericho Source: Dept of Environment, Table 1C, derived Get the data Created with Datawrapper
It’s the problem with focusing only on electricity emissions – they either need to come down by overly large amounts in order to meet our overall target, or we are not going to be able achieve it.
The prime minster, when asked about the figures on ABC’s Insiders program parroted the inane media release that accompanied the data. Rather than focus on the overall increase in emission, the prime minister boasted that: “We’ve got emissions per capita at the lowest level in 28 years.”
Whoop dee fricken doo.
Is anyone shocked to discover that cars and equipment made now are more fuel-efficient than those made in 1990? Out of the past 28 years, only seven times have emissions per capita not declined.
Not only is it a worthless boast, it says nothing about the impact on the environment. The atmosphere doesn’t react on a per capita basis, it reacts to the total level of CO2 emissions.
Boasting about emissions per capita falling while total emissions are rising is like a general arguing that it doesn’t matter that the number of innocent civilians killed in bombing raids has increased in the past year because the average number killed per raid has fallen.
At a political level it also doesn’t matter because our Paris commitment to reduce emissions to 26% below 2005 levels is total emissions, not per capita. But here again we find the prime minister in the land of obfuscation and outright fertiliser production.
When Barrie Cassidy asked Morrison on Insiders if he still believed we would meet our 26% reduction target “in a canter” he replied that “people choose and pick their figures to make their political arguments. We’re going to meet those in a canter our 26% target … All of the issues are pointing to that outcome so I’m comfortable with our 26%.”
So let us pause now as I choose to show the government’s own figures, which reveal not only that we are not going to make the 26% target in a canter, but instead by 2030 our emissions will be about 29% above the level they need to be:
Australia's greenhouse gas emissions projections
Source: Dept of Environement Fig 4 Get the data Created with Datawrapper
If the prime minister has some data in his back pocket that leads him to believe that “based on our assessments” Australia will meet its targets, maybe he could give those assessments to the Department of Environment and Energy so they can then publish them for all of us to see.Though, of course, given how the government hides its emissions data, they’ll probably publish it at a time for maximum exposure – say Christmas Eve at 4.50pm.

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The Trial Of The Century

Project Syndicate - *

Will 21 young plaintiffs ultimately be able to persuade a conservative-dominated US Supreme Court that the federal government is violating their constitutional right to a livable planet? It depends on whether the Court is willing to heed the scientific evidence.
Alex Wong/Getty Images
PRINCETON – This month, a judge in Oregon will begin hearing a case brought against the United States government on behalf of 21 young people, supported by the non-profit organization Our Children’s Trust, who allege that the authorities’ active contributions to the climate crisis violate their constitutional rights.
The government defendants have repeatedly tried – so far without success – to have the case thrown out or delayed, and the trial is currently scheduled to start on October 29.
In principle, governments, not courts, are best placed to decide which policies will best solve environmental and social problems.
In 1992, countries, including the US, China, India, and all European states (and a total of 189 by 2006) accepted responsibility for addressing climate change. Meeting at the “Earth Summit” in Rio de Janeiro, they agreed to stabilize greenhouse gases “at a low enough level to prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.”
The agreement did not specify what level is low enough to prevent such dangerous interference with our climate, but the scientific consensus is that to allow the global temperature to rise to an average of more than 2°C above pre-industrial levels is to risk catastrophe. The basis of this conclusion is that warming of this magnitude may make much more warming inevitable.
When the Arctic Ocean warms, it contains less sunlight-reflecting ice and more dark water that absorbs the sun’s heat. Similarly, as the frozen Siberian earth thaws, it releases methane, a powerful greenhouse gas that accelerates global warming.
Even a rise of 1.5°C will clearly be dangerous. Scientists predict that exceeding that lower limit will cause low-lying Pacific island states to disappear beneath the rising seas, and will lead to unprecedented drought, wildfire, and flooding. To preserve safe climate conditions, we need to hold the global temperature increase to no more than 1°C.
Yet, with very few exceptions, governments have failed to take sufficient action to halt climate change, and most exacerbate the danger by continuing to support the use of fossil fuels.
Hence activists in Belgium, Colombia, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Switzerland, and the Netherlands are seeking to use the courts to gain what they cannot obtain through political action.
The first climate litigation to win a positive decision was Urgenda Foundation v. The State of Netherlands, in which a Dutch court ruled, in 2015, that the government must ensure that the country’s emissions are cut by one quarter within five years.
 In response, the Dutch government did step up its actions to reduce emissions, but it also appealed the judgment. In October, The Hague Court of Appeals will deliver its verdict on that appeal.
Important as Urgenda has been, Juliana v. United States is by far the most significant climate case to date. If ever a case has deserved to be called “the trial of the century,” this is it. Its outcome has ramifications for everyone who will live on Earth during the remainder of the twenty-first century and perhaps for several centuries beyond.
The US is the world’s second-largest greenhouse-gas emitter, and its per capita emissions are about twice those of the largest emitter, China. If we take the view that every person on this planet is entitled to an equal share of the atmosphere’s capacity to absorb our greenhouse-gas emissions, then the US is emitting 3.5 times its fair share.
The US emits more greenhouse gases than India, for example, although it has only one-quarter of the population. Moreover, the principle of equal per capita emissions is generous to the old industrialized countries, because it ignores their historical responsibility for the past emissions that have led to the situation we face today.
In not sharply reducing its greenhouse-gas emissions, the US arguably is acting contrary to international law, for it is violating the most basic human rights guaranteed under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international covenants.
Plausible as this argument may be, it is not the basis of the plaintiffs’ case in Juliana. The lawyers working pro bono on the case understand that to win, they will ultimately have to persuade the conservative-dominated US Supreme Court that the government’s failure to act is a clear violation of its constitutional responsibilities.
The plaintiffs claim that their government’s active contribution to climate change has violated their constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property. When the government sought to prevent the case from being heard, the federal district court of Oregon issued a historic ruling that “the right to a climate system capable of sustaining human life is fundamental to a free and ordered society.”
When Juliana v. United States is appealed to the US Supreme Court, as seems inevitable, the question may no longer be whether the preservation of the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights requires “a climate system capable of sustaining human life”; it undeniably does.
Instead, the Court will have to decide whether it is willing to heed the scientific evidence that the actions of the US government are indeed jeopardizing the survival of human life on our planet.
If it is, even the most conservative justices will find it difficult to escape the conclusion that the government is in violation of the US Constitution.

*Peter Singer is Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University, Laureate Professor in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne, and founder of the non-profit organization The Life You Can Save. In 2013, he was named the world's third "most influential contemporary thinker" by the Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute.

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Human Survival Cannot Be Left To Politicians. We're Losing Our Life Support Systems

ABC - David Shearman*

Jonas Salk warned: "If all insects on Earth disappeared, within 50 years all life on Earth would end. If all human beings disappeared from the Earth, within 50 years all forms of life would flourish." (ABC Open contributor _joaodecarvalho_)
When medical researcher Jonas Salk discovered the Salk Vaccine for polio, it prevented hundreds of thousands of deaths throughout the world.
His work on viruses gave him a deep understanding of the natural world.
He warned "if all insects on Earth disappeared, within 50 years all life on Earth would end. If all human beings disappeared from the Earth, within 50 years all forms of life would flourish".

The Western world is bereft of leaders and now the US and Australia have deserted the trenches by trading ideology for human lives and health, writes David Shearman.
Eighty years later, scientists understand these words, but governments do not.
Insects play a vital role to recycle nutrients by decomposing plant litter and dung, by providing a food source for birds, mammals and amphibians. Many flying insects are important pollinators.
The current pollinator crisis and its impact on food production first came to notice in many countries because of a fall in bee numbers.
Insecticides have played a part, but the numbers of insects in West German nature reserves distanced from farm spraying fell by more than 76 per cent in 27 years, a finding repeated in other regions.

The increasing extinction of species
Scientists and environmentalists recognise that many species are disappearing from the Earth and 26,000 are threatened.
Extinctions in Australia are subject of a current Senate inquiry.
These extinctions are the tip of the iceberg which will affect food production and therefore the economy, and the pillars of human health and survival, water, air, biological resources and soil.
Biodiversity loss and climate change augment each other and are set to transform us to an alien world.
The grassland earless dragon is one of the species under threat. (Supplied: ACT Government)
An increase in the number and intensity of heatwaves is the main cause of biodiversity loss on land and sea, for example the Great Barrier Reef.
The loss of forest biodiversity from land clearing, logging and forest fires enhances climate change and increases atmospheric instability.

Population growth and the economic system
Like climate change, the key facilitators of biodiversity loss are population growth and the economic system, which ignore the finite nature of planetary resources.
August 1 this year was the date by which humanity used its 2018 world resources (defined as carbon, food, water, fibre, land and timber).
Each year the world eats its future earlier than the previous year.
This year Australia had used its share by March 31, as the eighth-most profligate nation on Earth.
This year Australia's population reached 25 million and was celebrated. Is this sustainable? We don't know.
There is no policy based on facts and projections, but Australia's food production is likely to contract with climate change and decrease in water resources, degrading of soil due to the loss of its life forms, demise of pollinators and the increase in pests.
Each year the world eats its future earlier than the previous year. (ABC News: Gian De Poloni)
Current environmental laws
The Commonwealth Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act is totally inadequate to prevent loss of biodiversity.
The individual states and territories' Planning Laws and Environmental Impact Assessments often approve land clearing, prodigious water usage, and pollution under the guise of essential development of resources and economic growth and are a significant cause of loss of biodiversity.
A case in point is the almost tripling of clearing of forest and woodland in NSW in the year to 2017.
This devastation of habitat for some 247 native species may see the iconic koala extinct in NSW by 2050.
Koalas could be extinct in NSW by 2050. (Supplied: WWF Australia/Doug Gimesy)
"The World Commons", as explained by the scientist Garrett Hardin in 1968, is the stability of resources of land, sea, air and fresh water, all necessary for the health and wellbeing of humanity.
Hardin predicted a confluence, this century, of population growth, depletion of resources and the ravages of climate change bringing ruin to humanity this century.
Some actions of state governments can be seen as a transgression of collective human rights for the Commons facilitated by the current economic system.

The new environmental laws
These must give primacy to sustainability as a security issue.
They must be national, statutory and based on expert scientific advice.
Can we afford to lose the Murray Darling under incompetent collective management? (ABC News: Sarah Clarke)
Should the states be able to meddle in the defence of the nation?
Can we afford to lose the Murray Darling under incompetent collective management where each jurisdiction fights for its share regardless of consequence? We need national leadership.
New laws have been proposed by a national alliance of over 50 environmental groups, laws based on sustainability and protection.
In a world of increasingly complex issues, survival cannot be left to political opinion — it has to be guided by our best scientific and technological minds encompassed in a Commonwealth Sustainability Commission and delivered by a National Environmental Protection Agency.
Doctors support the new laws because human health and a healthy environment are indivisible.
Together hundreds of thousands of species provide humanity with free ecological service to filter, purify and conserve our water, provide temperature, climate, and rainfall control, stabilisation of soils, carbon storage and air purification.
Not only that, they continue to provide humanity with the biological secrets of many medical cures and treatments.

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

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01/10/2018

'Policy Muddle', But Ross Garnaut Holds High Hopes 10 Years After His Climate Change Review

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

When Professor Ross Garnaut released his Climate Change Review at the end of September 2008, the landmark report understandably struggled to keep the attention of then prime minister Kevin Rudd.
On that morning, 10 years ago to the day on Sunday, Wall Street was just setting its largest daily points plunge as the global financial crisis gathered pace.


Up for grabs: Professor Ross Garnaut says that Australia faces great opportunities in a de-carbonised economy but only if it moves quickly. Photo: Arsineh Houspian
Markets and economies would recover over the next decade - as the review predicted - but the same cannot be said for Australia's climate policies. “Policy has been more of a muddle than could reasonably have been anticipated," Professor Garnaut told Fairfax Media this week.
The review, including its call for an emissions trading scheme, had broad support in 2008, with the backing of all states and territories, the federal government and the opposition, the latter led by Malcolm Turnbull.
Fast forward to last month and it was Mr Turnbull's failure to secure Coalition backing for his National Energy Guarantee - intended to combine energy and climate policy - that arguably ended his prime ministership. Scott Morrison, his successor, now has few policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.


A couple of fishermen on the enlarging banks of Lake Hume, near Albury, where water levels are low due to drought. Photo: Nick Moir
"The well of good policy has been poisoned by the political discourse of the last nine years," said Professor Garnaut, now a professorial fellow at Melbourne University. "This is an urgent problem. We don’t have 50 years to complete this decarbonisation if we’re to avoid very serious problems for our society."
The seriousness will be revealed on October 8 when the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change publishes its report on the impact of 1.5 degrees of warming. That's the lower end of the Paris climate accord in which nations agreed to keep warming to well-below 2 degrees compared with pre-industrial times.
The planet has warmed about 1 degree over the past century, and the lagging effects from the carbon emissions already produced mean another half degree could soon be locked in.
Many ecosystems will be hammered even at 1.5 degrees, with scientists expected to say as much as 90 per cent of the Great Barrier Reef will be lost.

Surprisingly good news
Despite the policy failures in Australia, Professor Garnaut retains much of the optimism from his 2008 report.


Lake Pejar, one of the main water sources for Goulburn, is drying up. Photo: Nick Moir
China, easily the largest greenhouse gas emitter, now looks to have peaked in its use of thermal coal for power stations - much earlier than expected. Its dive into renewable energy has also helped spur much deeper price cuts than virtually anybody imagined.
The review, for instance, modelled a 3 per cent annual fall in the cost of solar panels. Instead, the reduction has been about 85 per cent over the decade, Professor Garnaut said.
The United States, the second biggest emitter, has also done better than forecast.
In 2007, then president George Bush committed the nation to peak emissions by 2025. "We know now they peaked in 2005," Professor Garnaut said.
Australia did have "effective policy" for a few years, when the carbon tax reduced emissions in sectors it covered, he said. Its revenues helped to offset the impact for low- and middle-income families.
“Despite the incoherence of policy [since the Abbott government scrapped the tax in 2014], we’ve continued to make some progress in the electricity sector, mainly because of the Renewable Energy Target," he said.
Evidence of that trend included a 4.3 per cent fall in power sector emissions in the year to March, data made public late on Friday by the government shows. Overall emissions, though, were up 1.3 per cent.
"If we move more quickly, Australia can utilise our exceptional resources for lower carbon energy to emerge as the developed world's energy superpower," Professor Garnaut said. "That will be very good for Australia's prosperity. I hope that we don’t lose that chance."

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The Case Against Climate Despair

Project Syndicate - *

The growing severity and frequency of extreme-weather events suggests that climate scientists' nightmare scenarios must be taken seriously. Fortunately, rapid advances are being made in clean-energy technology and carbon-neutral forms of living.
Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

STOCKHOLM – Heat waves and extreme-weather events across the Northern Hemisphere this summer have brought climate change back to the forefront of public debate. Early analyses strongly suggest that natural disasters such as Hurricane Florence – which barreled into the US East Coast this month – have been exacerbated by rising global temperatures. Though US President Donald Trump has reneged on the 2015 Paris climate agreement, the rest of the world is becoming increasingly convinced of the need to limit greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions.
Last month, a group of climate scientists published a report in the US Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences warning that the planet could be on a path to becoming a “hothouse” that may not be habitable for humans. The Earth has already registered the highest temperatures since the last Ice Age. But, as the report notes, what we are experiencing today will be nothing compared to what is in store if average global temperatures surpass 2° Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
At that point, the authors write, “[global] warming could activate important tipping elements, raising the temperature further to activate other tipping elements in a domino-like cascade that could take the Earth System to even higher temperatures.” The scientific debate about climactic tipping points and nightmare scenarios is ongoing. But no one can say for certain that the risks outlined in the “Hothouse Earth” report are not real.
But there is another risk: that warnings such as these will lead to despair. Numerous reports have already concluded that it will be exceedingly difficult to meet the targets outlined in the Paris agreement. But to conclude that the situation is hopeless is not just dangerous; it is also factually incorrect. After all, political and technological developments that are currently underway offer grounds for genuine hope.
At the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco, California, this month, there was plenty of talk about the numerous alarming reports that have come out in recent months and years. But the real focus was on the Exponential Climate Action Roadmap, a major new study showing that progress in the use of non-fossil-fuel technologies is advancing not just linearly, but exponentially.
You may not realize it, but solar- and wind-power usage is doubling every four years. If that continues, at least half of global electricity production could come just from these two forms of renewable energy by 2030. And there is no good reason to think that progress couldn’t accelerate further. Just in the past few years, there have been rapid advances in solar-energy technologies and energy storage.
The Global Commission on the Economy and Climate estimates that $90 trillion will be invested in new infrastructure around the world over the course of the next 15 years. Owing to the new technologies that are now emerging – not just in energy but in the digital domain as well – humanity could have an historic opportunity to leapfrog into far more sustainable, carbon-neutral patterns of habitation.
Moreover, in addition to the far-reaching advances in technology, there is also growing private- and public-sector awareness of the importance of factoring sustainability into all decisions. New approaches to energy, industry, architecture, city planning, transportation, agriculture, and forestry have the potential to halve GHG emissions by 2030. But that will happen only if a broad coalition of decision-makers decides to deploy them.
Fortunately, governments and major corporations have begun to show leadership on these issues. As a result, GHG emissions have already peaked in 49 countries that account for 40% of global emissions; and ten countries have even committed to being carbon-neutral by 2050. California and Sweden say that they will produce zero net emissions by 2045.
The Exponential Climate Action Roadmap shows that we do still have a say over our climate future. The dangers that await us cannot be denied. If GHG emissions and rising temperatures continue on their current trajectories, we could well reach the point at which future generations will have to endure “Hothouse Earth,” assuming that they can survive at all.
But just as recent scientific work has underscored the dangers of climate change, so, too, has it shown the way forward. There is hope in the rapid diffusion of new technologies, and in the growing awareness of the problem within industry, government, and civil society. If we can ensure exponential technological progress and marshal the necessary political will, we can tackle the climate crisis. A “Stable Earth” is still within our reach.

*Carl Bildt was Sweden’s foreign minister from 2006 to October 2014 and Prime Minister from 1991 to 1994, when he negotiated Sweden’s EU accession. He is Chair of the Global Commission on Internet Governance and a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Europe. 

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The Guardian View On Climate Policy Failures: Don’t Give Up

The Guardian - Editorial

News that governments are not meeting targets is alarming, but the actions of activists are a reason to hope
Anti-fracking protesters outside Preston crown court, where three environmental activists were sentenced to between 15 and 16 months in jail. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
The world is failing to combat the threat of climate change. Global carbon dioxide emissions from coal, oil and gas increased by 1.6% in 2017, after three years when they rose little or not at all. Demand for oil is increasing by around 1.5% a year. Last week one of the authors of a key United Nations climate report warned that governments are “nowhere near on track” to meeting their commitment, made in Paris three years ago, to avoid global warming of more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
When it is unveiled next week, the report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will give a clearer idea of the probable consequences of this failure. One recent study suggested the impact of a temperature rise of 2C could be more severe than previously thought, and include sea level rises of six metres by 2100. The relationship between climate change and specific weather events is complex, but modelling suggests global warming made this summer’s European heatwave twice as likely. The increased frequency and severity of tropical storms fit with longstanding predictions that warmer oceans will bring more chaotic weather.
Slowing the rise in temperature means taking steps towards decarbonisation that are more dramatic than anything achieved so far, such as the eradication of emissions from cars and air travel. Activists are hugely important in raising public awareness. So it was disappointing that three environmental activists were sentenced to between 15 and 16 months in jail for their part in a protest against fracking in Lancashire. This punishment, for causing a public nuisance, is unduly harsh and disproportionate. The 2008 Climate Change Act, committing the UK to an 80% reduction in emissions by 2050, was a world-leading piece of legislation. Now the advisory Committee on Climate Change says we are on track to miss legally binding targets, and that this looming failure is partly attributable to government. As well as transport emissions and the removal of incentives for insulation, it has raised concerns about the regulation of fracking. Fracking – or shale gas extraction – is unpopular in England (it is banned in France and Scotland). Campaigners are also opposing government proposals to smooth the planning process for frackers. We do not advocate breaking the law. But when the news on climate change is so alarming, the commitment of green activists around the world is one reason for hope.
The UN’s role in leading and coordinating multilateral action is also crucial. The crisis surrounding its environment chief, Erik Solheim, is all the more unfortunate given the timing. Questions over his $488,513 travel expenses, and his wife’s position at a company that has a contract with the UN, must be resolved as a matter of urgency. Governments must also start to take seriously suggestions such as the one made by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, that if the US eventually quits the Paris climate accord, other countries should refuse to trade with it. Donald Trump’s administration is a threat to global stability. Last week it emerged Trump officials argued that because global temperatures, on current trends, will be 7C higher by 2100, the US should not bother doing anything to inhibit global warming but instead ought to loosen restrictions on carbon emissions. This is absurd nihilism. Mr Trump needs to be convinced of his wrongheadedness, for the world’s sake. The UN’s report is expected to say it will be extremely difficult to meet the 1.5C goal – but not impossible. We should all hold on to that idea.

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30/09/2018

Australia’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions Climb Again Amid Climate Policy Vacuum

The Guardian - 

Climate Analytics says that on current trends, emissions will race way past the Paris agreement target
Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions have risen 1.3% in the year to March. Photograph: Torsten Blackwood/AFP/Getty Images
Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, fuelled by the expansion in gas exports and production, according to new figures published by the Department of Environment and Energy.
The government quietly published its quarterly emissions figures on Friday afternoon, a public holiday in Victoria and the day of the release of the interim royal commission report into the banking sector.
The figures show that Australia’s policy vacuum on climate continues to drive emissions upward and further away from the country’s Paris targets.
The data show emissions climbed 1.3% in the year to March 2018.
The March quarter for which the data was published recorded a 0.3% increase.
Emissions were up across all sectors except electricity, which fell 4.3% in the year to March, and land use, which the government is continuing to record as a 5.2% carbon sink.
Fugitive emissions in the energy sector rose 13.7% in the year to March.
The Climate Analytics director, Bill Hare, said the numbers showed Australia was still not on track to meet its Paris commitment to reduce emissions by between 26% and 28% by 2030 from its 2005 levels.
“While emissions from the national electricity market continue to decrease due to increasing renewable electricity, Australian emissions as a whole continue to increase,” he said.
“On present trends, with virtually no policies apart from the renewable energy target, which will expire in 2020 and not be replaced, emissions are set to gallop way past the Paris agreement target.”
He said the figures also showed the decline in per capita emissions was beginning to flatten out “at a time when this should be accelerating”.
Matt Drum, the managing director of NDEVR environmental, which tracks emissions and publishes its own quarterly reports months ahead of the government, said the absence of climate policy meant emissions were going up.
“All the figures show emissions are increasing because they’ve got no policy,” he said.
“What I’m really interested in is what policy is Labor going to reveal in the coming weeks?
“The current government have made it very clear they’re not interested in doing anything about emissions.”
The chief executive of the Australian Conservation Foundation, Kelly O’Shanassy, said it was “embarrassing” that climate pollution was continuing to rise in a wealthy country like Australia.
“This latest pollution scorecard casts extreme doubt over the Morrison government’s claim that Australia will meet our 2030 emissions reduction targets ‘in a canter’ without strong new action.
“This latest result is also flattered by falling emissions from power generation, driven by the construction of solar and wind energy under our national renewable energy target.
“The Morrison government has declared it will not replace this target after 2020, meaning Australian climate pollution is at risk of growing even further.”
The environment minister, Melissa Price, did not respond to questions about the increase in emissions.
She said in a statement that emissions were currently 11.2% below 2005 levels.
The statement said the latest report on Australia’s national greenhouse gas inventory clearly showed the country was on track to beat its 2020 emissions target.

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