18/02/2019

These Residents Stopped A Coal Mine, Made History And Sent Ripples Through Boardrooms Around The World

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

The Rocky Hill coal mine case is being hailed as a landmark in "climate litigation" – and not just in Australia. So what is climate litigation? And what impact is it having on companies and governments around the world?
Gloucester residents after their win in a NSW court against the proposed Rocky Hill open-cut coal mine in Gloucester. Credit: Janie Barrett
A NSW court sent shock waves through the nation's mining industry earlier this month when it rejected a coal mine planned in Gloucester, a dairy and beef farming area on the state's mid-north coast. The reason, in part, was the mine's impact on climate change.
That a court had taken into account climate change was lauded as a landmark. But this case is just part of a much bigger picture. All around the world, there is a growing push to use the law to nudge companies and investors to take action to curb global warming – particularly as our politicians are failing to do so.
It's called climate litigation and you can expect to start hearing about it more often.
The view towards the area planned for the Rocky Hill coal mine. Credit: Liam Driver
Wrong place, wrong time: what the case was about
Ostensibly, the case was about whether a Rocky Hill open-cut coal mine should be allowed to go ahead.
On February 8, in the NSW Land and Environment Court, Chief Justice Brian Preston handed down his decision in an appeal by Gloucester Resources, a company privately held by Hans Juergen Mende, a German billionaire dubbed the "godfather of coal". Gloucester Resources was fighting an earlier rejection, by a planning commission, of its bid to build a 2.5-million-tonne-a-year coking coal mine.
The judge concluded that an open-cut coal mine "would be in the wrong place at the wrong time".
"Wrong place because an open-cut coal mine in this scenic and cultural landscape, proximate to many people's homes and farms, will cause significant planning, amenity, visual and social impacts," he said.
"Wrong time because the greenhouse gas emissions of the coal mine and its coal product will increase global total concentrations of [those gases] at a time when what is now urgently needed, in order to meet generally agreed climate targets, is a rapid and deep decrease in [those] emissions.
"These dire consequences should be avoided."
Companies need to factor in the burning of their mine’s coal in other countries, the court found. Credit: Jonathan Carroll
Decorative coal? Why the verdict was significant
Law firms quickly recognised the decision as a landmark – not just for its direct effect on the Rocky Hill project, but also for its palling effect on economic sentiment towards fossil-fuel industries.
As lawyers at Corrs Chambers Westgarth put it: "The decision will have wide-reaching consequences and will likely affect the viability of coal and other fossil fuel-dependent industries in Australia.
"The growth in international jurisprudence directly linking fossil fuel developments with climate change may also lead banks and others who would traditionally invest in these industries to consider alternatives."
The judgment reminds companies and investors that fossil fuels carry regulatory risks, not all of which can be anticipated.
Chief Justice Preston included in his reasoning the fact that there must be a carbon budget – a total amount of emissions that can be released – if targets under the Paris Climate Agreement are to be met. And even if the proposed mine was relatively small, it wasn't enough for a company to calculate the direct emissions that come from scraping out 100-million-year-old coal – the fugitive methane, the pollution generated by the digging and transport, and so on; the actual burning of that fuel, wherever it occurred in the world, also had to be taken into account.
"The difference between this case and other coal mine planning appeals [such as those against the Adani project in Queensland] is that the court has accepted that scope 3 emissions from the burning of the mine's coal in other countries should be taken into account in determining environmental impacts," says Sarah Barker, a special counsel dealing with environmental, social and governance risks, adding the emphasis.
As one lawyer put it, Gloucester Resources mounted "a curious argument" that total emissions would be hard to determine: "Is it 'decorative coal' they are digging up, with no anticipation it will be burned?"
Baker & McKenzie partner Martijn Wilder told clients: "The decision does not necessarily mean the end of any new coal mine approvals in NSW, because it was highly specific to the particular facts of this application."
Still, "a proponent of any new mine in NSW would be well advised to arrange offsets for anticipated greenhouse gas emissions prior to seeking approval for the project. As a commercial matter, there may be questions as to how obtaining these offsets could affect the profitability of the endeavour," Wilder says.
A drilling rig in the Barents Sea. Groups in Norway are taking their government to court for opening up new mining. Credit: Alamy
What they're saying around the world
The Rocky Hill case "is certainly getting attention outside of Australia", says Harro van Asselt, an associate of Stockholm Environment Institute's Oxford Centre and professor of climate law and policy at the University of Eastern Finland.
"Climate litigation is emerging everywhere around the world, meaning that people have an interest in seeing what courts in other countries decide," he says.
The Urgenda case is perhaps the most famous lawsuit to date: 886 Dutch citizens sued their government and ultimately forced it to roughly double its proposed emissions cuts.
But court cases "in countries that are perceived as climate laggards – like Australia – offer hope for environmentalists worldwide", Professor van Asselt says.
This acknowledgment by the judge in Rocky Hill is of great importance.
The Rocky Hill case is also one of very few in which fossil-fuel infrastructure decisions are linked explicitly to their climate impacts. Professor van Asselt likens it to a similar case last year where a judge in the US state of Montana acted to halt the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline.
"Linking individual fossil fuel projects (or infrastructure such as pipelines) to global emissions and their impacts can be very challenging, as it requires overcoming legal arguments such as 'if we don't produce it, someone else will', or 'once the coal leaves our country, we're not responsible for the fact it gets burned'," he says.
"Given that meeting the Paris Agreement's temperature goals requires leaving a significant portion of fossil fuels in the ground, this acknowledgment by the judge in Rocky Hill is of great importance, not only for Australia but also for other fossil fuel-producing countries where litigation is taking place."
Brian Preston, Chief Justice of the Land and Environment Court. Credit: James Brickwood
What the mining industry says
The response from the mining industry and the Morrison government has so far been muted.
Gloucester Resources is yet to declare whether it will appeal the decision.
NSW Minerals Council chief Stephen Galilee was quick to dismiss the court outcome as not in "any way a landmark case", and NSW Nationals MP Michael Johnsen prompted accusations of contempt of court for declaring the result "smacked of judicial activism".
Sections of the media have also sought to impugn the independence of Chief Justice Preston, citing his past involvement in helping to establish the Environmental Defenders Office of NSW, which joined the case against the mine, and his recent speeches on climate change.
Such attacks prompted the NSW Bar Association to issue a statement to say it had "the highest regard for the integrity of the judiciary".
IMAGE
Its president, Tim Game SC, said suggestions the chief judge may be biased because of extra-judicial papers on the issue of climate change were "an attack on [his] character and it is troubling".
NSW Attorney-General Mark Speakman declined to weigh in: "As this matter may be subject to an appeal, any comment from me at the moment on the particular case would be inappropriate."
Strong evidence that climate change has caused extreme weather events, such as the floods that recently engulfed Townsville, will aid climate litigation. Credit: AAP
'Multi-headed beast': the rise of climate litigation
Even if there were to be a successful appeal, climate litigation is only going to get bigger.
"It's a multi-headed beast that's evolving in a number of directions," says Emma Herd, chief executive of the Investor Group on Climate Change.
"It's happening a lot faster than many people expected."
In Norway, for example, NGOs are challenging the constitutionality of a government decision to license new blocks of the Barents Sea for deep-sea oil and gas extraction.
One reason for the rise in climate litigation is that the science is becoming ever better understood. That provides a deeper and richer evidence base that – unlike much of our parliamentary debate or the shadowy conspiracist corners of the internet – can withstand cross-examination.
Companies know they must account for tighter carbon constraints sooner or later.
Professor van Asselt singles out the advance of "attribution science" – identifying the likelihood of specific extreme weather events (and the damage they cause) being linked to human-driven climate change.
"This development can increase the chances of success for any of the litigation strategies," he says.
In other words, in time there will be a rapid assessment of whether the severe heatwaves that smashed Australia's January heat records, or this month's floods in Queensland, have a climate link. Then it will be up to the courts and insurers to argue it out.
But whether it is the Rocky Hill case, another against Adani's Carmichael mine or even a new coal-fired power plant, companies know they must account for tighter carbon constraints sooner or later.
"Even if the [Gloucester mine] decision is overturned, companies have to assume it's a potential risk," Ms Herd said.

 How directors are handling climate change
Few big economic gatherings now take place without climate risk at the forefront. In the World Economic Forum's Global Risks Report for 2019, extreme weather events topped the worry list for a third consecutive year. Of the top five risks, three were environmental and the other two were data fraud and cyber attacks.
"Climate change is a material financial risk for any resource company – full stop," Minter Ellison's Sarah Barker says. "You have to disclose the impact of that risk on your financial position, your financial performance and your financial prospect in your annual report."
There’s no magic to it. It comes down to 'what is your role as a director?'
But it doesn't end there. Every company has a responsibility to examine the threats posed – a market shift away from fossil fuels, or potential impact from more extreme weather or rising sea levels – and do something about it.
"There's no magic to it. It's first principles for me – it comes down to 'what is your role as a director?' It's to strategise around material risks," Barker said.
John Price, commissioner with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, highlights a legal opinion in 2016 by Noel Hutley SC that it was "conceivable that directors who fail to consider climate change risks now could be found liable for breaching their duty of care and diligence in the future".
A tanking share price in the wake of a delayed or impartial exposure is a magnet for litigants, as oil giant Exxon is finding to its cost in the US courts. Recognition of climate risks from burning its product by Exxon's own scientists half a century ago is another magnet.
Nor is it merely a private sector concern, as noted last month by the Centre for Policy Development in a discussion paper on directors' duties and climate change.
It found that "despite impediments to enforcement, public sector directors are now increasingly likely to be closely scrutinised and held to account for climate risk management – especially given rising standards demanded of private corporations".
On March 12, the deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, Guy Debelle, will also weigh in with a speech on climate change and the economy at a public forum hosted by the Centre for Policy Development in Sydney.

How governments are responding
The NSW government has so far had little to say, other than Planning Minister Anthony Roberts, who was "gratified that the Land and Environment Court agreed with his original decision to refuse a mining licence on the grounds that the proposal did not meet environmental and social requirements".
Then again, it could hardly appeal against its own judgement, even if the case was expanded beyond the government's original intent.
Federal Resources Minister Matt Canavan recommended people "should proceed with caution" about over-interpreting a decision "in a lower court and in NSW".
If the histories of tobacco and asbestos litigation are any guide, any attempts to shield companies from climate litigation won't be easy.
Legal scholars such as Ben Boer, an emeritus professor at the University of Sydney, said Senator Canavan was wrong to discount the court, saying it was "a superior court of record on the same level as the Supreme Court of NSW".
"Preston's judgment is very clear indeed," Professor Boer said. "In NSW, Australia and globally, it is certainly a landmark case.
"It does not merely confirm the [Planning] Minister's original refusal of the development consent. It sets out a whole new line of legal reasoning in this area, which will be studied closely by climate change litigators around the world."
Governments can always change the law, of course, but if the histories of tobacco and asbestos litigation are any guide, any attempts to shield companies from climate litigation won't be easy.
Such a move would "transfer liability and cost for climate-related risk from companies to the government and the citizens in the community", Barker says. "That's a really big call."
Outside an Oregon courthouse, supporters of the Juliana case protest against the US government. Credit: Alamy
'Green lawfare': the push back against climate litigation
Of course, owners of fossil fuels – and the governments they lobby – "are not sitting still", Professor van Asselt says.
We can expect more accusations of "green lawfare" and what have been dubbed Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs) in the US.
Professor van Asselt also foresees "drawn-out proceedings with governments and other defendants using every delaying tactic in the book, as is currently happening in the Juliana case in the US" which involves 21 youths (and James Hansen, a former NASA climatologist) suing the US government on behalf of future generations over their right to a stable climate system.
These cases matter in the court of public opinion.
But the appeal by environmental groups to the courts is not just about the odds of winning. Climate litigation is also "one of the most symbolically powerful ways of delegitimising fossil fuels", Professor van Asselt says.
"While individual decisions can be overturned or may not make a big difference in global emissions, these cases matter in the court of public opinion."
As Chief Justice Brian Preston himself noted in a special issue of The Australian Law Journal devoted to Climate Change and the Law, the "territory of climate change litigation is being rapidly mapped".
"[T]he areas of terra incognita are becoming smaller and fewer. This trend is likely to continue."

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11 Things Climate Change 'Dismissive' People Say On Social Media

Forbes - Marshall Shepherd

 Marshall Shepherd
Dr. J. Marshall Shepherd, a leading international expert in weather and climate, was the 2013 President of American Meteorological Society (AMS) and is Director of the University of Georgia’s (UGA) Atmospheric Sciences Program. Dr. Shepherd spent 12 years as a Research Meteorologist at NASA-Goddard Space Flight Center and was Deputy Project Scientist for the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission.
It is clear that climate is changing, and there is a human component on top of the naturally varying system. Most climate scientists understand this, and most logical people do too. The 4th National Climate Assessment report is a good place to find affirmation for these statements. Each year, the Yale Climate Communication group and George Mason University scholars query the American public about their views on climate change. Within this study, there is always a certain percentage that fall into a category called "Dismissive." According to the study authors,
the Dismissive are very sure it (climate change) is not happening and are actively involved as opponents of a national effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Currently, the percentage is roughly nine percent. While their numbers are small, they are often very loud, persistent, aggressive and vitriolic in social media. Over time, I have noticed 11 "Dismissive" tactics on social media.

2018 Six Americas results Yale Climate Communication

Ice Ages. Ice ages always seem to come up and some statement about natural cycles. It is honestly stunning this happens since most climate scientist are very aware of the various ways that climate changes naturally. The discussion about climate change is not an "either/"or" discussion. It is an "and" discussion. Grass grows naturally, "and" it grows differently with fertilized soil. Trees fall naturally in the forest, "and" they can be cut down by a chain saw.

That magazine article from the 1970s. Apparently there was an article in Newsweek in 1975 that ran a story about a "cooling world." It is amusing to see how often this is cited in social media. As I wrote previously in Forbes,
No, a magazine article, a few people, and some literature said this not the majority of scientists or scientific studies. The writer of that magazine article has even debunked this himself.
Citing one random study. I call this 1-study mania. Over the years, I have seen people criticize the peer review literature. They talk about how it is unreliable or biased. While there are certainly issues with the literature, it is still an important gatekeeper against bad science in the same way the FDA is for bad food or drugs. Here's the kicker though. As soon as a study appears that supports a "confirmation bias viewpoint", they are quick to cite the study to support their point.

"Grand Poobah" effect. I observe this often in social media. A person doesn't necessarily have a strong background in climate science but relies on some  scientist or personality for talking points or to validate their positions. They will often even mention or tag that person in their social media post. I call it the "Grand Poobah" effect and have written about it previously.

Doubt and its merchants. There is typically some sample of comments about scientists and grant money. That statement illustrates a lack of understanding of the science grants process. Here is a good "101" at this link. There are rigorous processes for attaining grants based on science inquiry and review. There are also "other" funding models and grey literature publications designed to advocate certain positions or misinformation. Merchants of Doubts by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway is a good book to dig deeper into the latter.

Credentialing. This is the era in which a "Tweet" is presumed to carry as much weight as a degree or years of scientific inquiry. The "Dunning - Kruger Effect" is in full-effect on social media. An oft-used strategy is "I have a degree in (fill in favorite discipline that is not climate science or climatology)" or "I study this in my spare time while in my basement eating cookies."

Deflection. Another tactic that I notice is lobbing questions of deflection. This is usually some random, "seemingly" intellectual, provocative or irrelevant question that has the intent of "public gotcha" to the climate scientist.

It's cold. This winter I am certain that you have seen this one: "It's cold or snowing so global warming must not exist." Nope, it means the day or week is a manifestation of weather. It is not "where you live" warming. It is not "my little part of the planet on this particular day" change.

They changed the name. Speaking of global warming, there are always a handful of folks that finds devious intent in the use of climate change or global warming. I discussed the reasons why that is another "smoke and mirrors" tactic in a previous Forbes piece.

No profile and few followers. Many of the dismissive comments come from accounts with few followers (less than 10) or no profile picture. I am guessing these are "bots."  I suppose this is technically not "saying" anything as the article title indicates, but you get the point.

Storms always happened. This is a very common one. Aforementioned comments about trees falling in the forest or the grass-fertilizer relationship address such statements.
I am sure you can name others that I missed, and I certainly hope I caught all of the "typos" because they hyper-focus on those like a laser too.

Enough of this, it is time to watch some college hoops.


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How A 7th-Grader’s Strike Against Climate Change Exploded Into A Movement

Washington Post - Sarah Kaplan

Alexandria Villasenor, 13, skips school to strike in front of the United Nations, with signs reading: “School Strike 4 Climate” and “Cop24 Failed Us.” (Sarah Blesener/For The Washington Post)
NEW YORK — On the ninth Friday of her strike, 13-year-old Alexandria Villasenor wakes to a dozen emails, scores of Twitter notifications, and good news from the other side of the planet: Students in China want to join her movement.
Every week since December, the seventh-grader has made a pilgrimage to the United Nations Headquarters demanding action on climate change. She is one of a cadre of young, fierce and mostly female activists behind the “school strikes for climate” movement. On March 15, with the support of some of the world’s biggest environmental groups, tens of thousands of kids in at least two dozen countries and nearly 30 U.S. states plan to skip school to protest.
Their demands are uncompromising: Nations must commit to cutting fossil-fuel emissions in half in the next 10 years to avoid catastrophic global warming.
And their message is firm: Kids are done waiting for adults to save their world.
“Mom, this is so cool,” Alexandria says, as she reads the latest list of countries where kids have pledged to participate in a global strike: Australia, Thailand, Ghana, France. “Where is Gir--, Girona?”
“That’s in Spain,” replies her mother, Kristin Hogue.
They sit on the couch, still in their pajamas, and Alexandria pulls out the planner she purchased to keep track of all her commitments. Each task is color-coded by geographic scale: Pink for global organizing. Orange for national. Yellow for New York.
First on the agenda is an interview with a reporter from the U.K., who seems caught off guard by the young woman’s fervor.
“My generation is really upset.” The deal struck at COP24, the U.N. climate meeting in December, was insufficient, she says. “We’re not going to let them . . . hand us down a broken planet.”
“Huh. Right,” the reporter says. “Big ambitions.”
Alexandria raises her eyebrows.
“Yeah,” she replies, confident.
Afterward, she changes into her striking uniform: waterproof ski pants and a down jacket, all in white, just like the congresswomen at the State of the Union and the suffragists of old. She packs her bag — planner, thermos, gloves — and grabs her plastic-encased cardboard signs, which read “SCHOOL STRIKE 4 CLIMATE” and “COP 24 FAILED US.”
She holds the signs facing inward so other commuters on the subway can’t see them. She doesn’t like it when people stare.
“They’ll probably think it’s just a science project,” Alexandria tells her mother. Then she laughs. “Well, technically it is. It’s project conservation. Project save the Earth.”
Alexandria commutes on the subway from her apartment on the Upper West Side to the United Nations, holding her protest signs. (Sarah Blesener/For The Washington Post) 
'My future on the line'
It’s been four months since Alexandria decided the Earth needed saving. Last year, during a visit with family in northern California, she was caught in the cloud of smoke from the Camp Fire, which killed nearly 100 people and filled the air with unbreathable smoke. The girl suffers from asthma, and for days afterward she felt physically ill and emotionally distraught.
This isn’t normal, she thought. This isn’t right.
She began to look up articles about the West’s historic drought, read reports about recent global temperature rise, asked her mother, a graduate student in the Climate and Society program at Columbia University, to explain the drivers behind global warming. She joined the New York chapter of Zero Hour, a network of young American climate activists.
In December she watched as international negotiators met in Poland to carve out a plan for curbing carbon emissions. A recent U.N. report found that humanity has until 2030 — the year Alexandria turns 24 — to achieve “rapid and far-reaching” transformation of society if we wish to avoid the dire environmental consequences of warming 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. Yet the agreement that was ultimately reached fell far short of what scientists say is urgently needed.
In the midst of all this, Greta Thunberg, a 15-year-old from Sweden, took the podium.
“You say you love your children above all else, and yet you are stealing their future in front of their very eyes,” the girl proclaimed to a room full of stunned adults. “We have come here to let you know that change is coming, whether you like it or not.”
Recalling that speech, Alexandria’s eyes light up. “She just put them in their place,” Alexandria says. “That was extremely satisfying.”
Alexandria searched Greta’s name online and found stories about the Swedish girl’s climate strike in front of her country’s parliament building, then in its fourth month. Greta said she had been inspired by student activists from Parkland, Fla., who said they would not go back to school until gun-control legislation was passed. “I am too young to vote and to lobby,” she told The Washington Post this week. “But I can sit down with a sign and make my voice heard.”
Alexandria knew what she needed to do.
LEFT: Alexandria, shown in her bedroom, is organizing a global school strike on March 15 along with fellow young activists around the world. (Sarah Blesener/For The Washington Post) RIGHT: Alexandria has been striking in front of the U.N. building for nine weeks. (Sarah Blesener/For The Washington Post) 
She made her first pilgrimage to the United Nations Headquarters on Dec. 14. The next week she was back — with an umbrella. She has endured relentless rain and brutal wind off the East River (weeks three and four). She has braved the polar vortex that sent temperatures plummeting to 10 degrees (week eight).
Few of the New Yorkers bustling by ever stop to talk to her. And in her first eight weeks of striking, no one offered to join.
“But I stay motivated,” she says. “Of course. It’s my future on the line.”
Many of Alexandria’s friends are uninterested in her activism; their Instagram posts are more likely to show off a new outfit than a scene from a protest. Alexandria doesn’t blame them — until a few months ago her life had also revolved around sleepovers and school plays. “I guess we’re still teenagers,” she says, shrugging.
But now she is switching to a private school that could accommodate her activism schedule and staying up all night talking to Thunberg and other kids from Australia, Uganda, the U.K. They are kindred spirits, Internet-savvy teenage girls who can recite the results of the latest U.N. climate report and take pride in seeing through what Alexandria calls “the veil of money and B.S.” that seems to stall so many adults.
Together, they debate strategy and discuss going vegan. On their strike days, they trade tweets littered with heart emoji and cheer as the walkouts expand.
Adults who underestimate the movement do so at their own peril. Since late last year, strikes in European cities have regularly drawn tens of thousands of participants. More than 15,000 people showed up for a strike in Australia — even after their prime minister urged them to be “less activist.”
When a Belgian environment minister suggested that the growing protests were a “setup” this month, she was forced to resign. The following day, 20,000 kids were back in the streets of Brussels.
That day, Alexandria shared an image of a Dutch protest on Twitter, alongside the declaration, “It’s coming to America. You haven’t seen anything yet.”
Alexandria has joined forces with Haven Coleman, a 12-year-old striker from Colorado, and Isra Hirsi, the 15-year-old daughter of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), to organize the U.S. movement.
Offers of support began streaming in almost faster than the girls could respond. The executive director of Greenpeace agreed to hand the group’s social media accounts over to students for the day of the strike. The New York chapter of the Sunrise Movement, the grass-roots group advocating for the Green New Deal, offered to handle outreach for March 15. Prominent climate researchers including Michael Mann, Kathrine Hayhoe and Peter Kalmus followed the girls on Twitter and began to organize an open letter of support from scientists. Alexandria and her mother have been invited to attend a special briefing next week on the U.N. Climate Summit being held later this year.
“These kids go straight to the top, and the adults listen,” Hogue says.
“That’s because they see the opportunity of the strikes and what it will do as good as the next person,” Alexandria replies. “They see it.”
Still, even the 13-year-old is stunned by the momentum of the movement, which seems to have taken on a life of its own. Sometimes all she can do is watch the emails roll in and think, “Whoa. I did that.”
Alexandria gives a presentation to Earth Strike NYC at Allegro Coffee in the Bowery. (Sarah Blesener/For The Washington Post)

Alexandria sits in a Zero Hour meeting at Columbia University with a group of high school activists from New York and New Jersey. (Sarah Blesener/For The Washington Post)
'This is about my generation'
“That one down there is mine,” Alexandria says. She points to a bench about 100 feet from the U.N. visitor entrance, as close as she’s allowed to get to the protected building.
It’s raining — a persistent chilly drizzle — and the wind keeps blowing her posters down. But Alexandria is feeling good about the day. For the first time since she started her protest, she will have company later that day.
Hogue takes a photo to post to Twitter. Alexandria poses with her arms crossed and her hip tilted to the side, unsmiling. She is not here to look cute.
Then Hogue hugs her daughter and walks away. Since she began the strike nine weeks ago, Alexandria has been adamant about protesting on her own.
“This is about my generation,” the girl says.
After a few hours, the rain subsides and Alexandria’s first fellow protester appears. Stefanie Giglio, 31, is a freelance writer and activist who was trained as one of Al Gore’s “Climate Reality” advocates.
Alexandria reaches out to shake the woman’s hand. “Thanks for coming,” she says.
They compare signs and commiserate about how much more radical Europeans are than Americans.
“I really believe in direct action,” Alexandria says.
“Yeah,” says Giglio. “It’s great that your parents are okay with this.”
The 13-year-old nods. She has friends elsewhere in the city whose parents won’t let them skip school to protest.
“They’re so dependent on school,” Alexandria says. “Like, I need to go to school to get the education for the job that’s definitely going to be there in 10 years.”
She raises her eyebrows again.
“If I don’t have a future, why go to school? Why go to school if we’re going to be too focused on running from disasters? Striking has to be the way.”
LEFT: Alexandria has been protesting in front of the U.N. even in rainy and cold weather. (Sarah Blesener/For The Washington Post) RIGHT: Alexandria's mother, Kristin Hogue, dries Alexandria's hair early on Friday morning. (Sarah Blesener/For The Washington Post)
Two blocks away, in the coffee shop where she usually waits out the protest, Hogue monitors Alexandria’s Twitter feed and tries not to feel guilty for leaving her daughter out there alone.
The comments online don’t help. For all the strangers on the Internet who call Alexandria an inspiration, there are still people who tweet “YOU’RE A MORON” and “Go back to school!” and threaten to “come down there and teach you a real lesson about climate change.”
Hogue blocks the worst offenders before the seventh-grader can see their messages. But there’s not much else she can do. When she went to the New York Police Department’s 17th precinct to file a report, officials told her they could only respond to concrete threats.
And every week, Alexandria insists on returning to her post.
“I have to let her make her own choices,” Hogue says. “This is what she wants.”
She recalls their first honest conversation about climate change, when Alexandria was 9 or 10, and Hogue was reading Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” for a college literature class.
The girl asked what the book was about. So Hogue told her of Carson’s crusade against pesticides that killed birds and poisoned streams, how one woman speaking out led to the rise of environmentalism and the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency. That led to conversations about pollution and sea-level rise, about Alexandria’s asthma and California drought — all the ways humans are still suffering today from the changes we’ve made to our planet.
“She seemed mad,” Hogue said. “‘Don’t they know?’ she kept asking. And I said yes. And she was like, ‘Well, then why do they do it?’ ”
Hogue realized this was a truth from which she could no longer protect her daughter, just as she couldn’t protect her from the pollutants that irritated her lungs.
It doesn’t matter to them, she explained. Too many people will do what benefits them in the moment, even if it hurts others in the long run.
“She just couldn’t understand how people could knowingly do that to the planet,” Hogue said. “I think, sitting out there right now, she still doesn’t understand.”
But maybe, Hogue thinks, that’s exactly what makes Alexandria and her friends so formidable.
Alexandria rests on her mother’s shoulder on the subway after leading a Zero Hour meeting. (Sarah Blesener/For The Washington Post)
Feeling 'like I have power'
The next day, a Saturday, Alexandria’s chapter of Zero Hour huddles in a meeting room on the Columbia University campus to discuss plans for the global strike. The other kids are all in high school, but Alexandria is the clear leader of this gathering.
“Here’s today’s schedule,” she says. “First Peter de Menocal is going to be giving a presentation on the latest climate science. Peter —” she looks toward the lone adult in the room, “are you ready?”
De Menocal, the dean of science for Columbia, stands and calls up the slide show he usually gives to graduate students. “Alexandria asked me to give you my worst,” he says.
He displays a graph of future emissions scenarios. A blue curve depicts the path recommended by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which would limit warming to below 1.5 degrees Celsius. “Business as usual” is shown in red — a line that just keeps going up.
“This is all that stuff you guys are fighting for,” de Menocal says. “If you don’t fight for it, we own those red pathways.”
Alexandria knows this story. It’s the one that climate researchers have been telling for nearly 40 years, to little effect. Humans keep emitting greenhouse gases, temperatures keep rising, and the outlook for the future keeps growing more and more bleak. When Alexandria tries to envision her own adulthood, she sees only “what ifs”— What if a wildfire destroys her family’s home in California? What if there are food shortages, or illnesses, or floods?
But all those hours of organizing, all those days sitting in front of the U.N., “It helps,” she says. “It makes me feel like I have power. Like I can make some kind of change.”
His presentation done, de Menocal hands the clicker over and Alexandria straightens in her chair. “Okay,” she says. “Here’s the update.”
The professor leans forward as the 13-year-old launches into a description of the global strike — all the support it has, all the attention it has received. In 30 years of studying climate, in all his uncountable hours of attempting to convey the scope of the crisis, he has rarely felt so humbled, he says — or so filled with hope.
“Do you have a statement I can read somewhere?” he asks.
“Sure,” Alexandria says. “We have a mission statement and a media advisory on our website.”
De Menocal mouths “wow” and turns around to give the girl’s mother an amazed grin. Afterward, he pulls Alexandria aside.
“Thank you for what you’re doing,” he says, shaking her hand. “Thank you so much. What can I do to help?”
She tells him about the scientists who are writing a letter of support and suggests that he get involved.
“He can organize the adults,” she says later. “We’re ready for them now.”
Alexandria’s striking uniform: waterproof ski pants and a down jacket, all in white. (Sarah Blesener/For The Washington Post)

Some weeks during her protest Alexandria endured relentless rain and brutal wind off the East River. (Sarah Blesener/For The Washington Post)

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17/02/2019

Here Are Two Big Things That Were Wrong With Climate Change Coverage In 2018

Media Matters - Evlondo Cooper

Major outlets reported too little on climate change driving extreme weather and too much on Trump, two analyses find
Melissa Joskow / Media Matters
Mainstream media are continuing two troubling trends in their coverage of climate change, a pair of new reports finds. In 2018, media outlets too often failed to connect extreme weather to climate change, according to an analysis from Public Citizen, a progressive consumer advocacy organization. And researchers at the University of Colorado, Boulder found that when major outlets did cover climate change, their reporting was too focused on President Donald Trump.
Public Citizen reviewed coverage of extreme weather events in 50 top U.S. newspapers, 32 online news sources, and major broadcast and cable television networks, analyzing how often that coverage made mention of climate change. Climate scientists have found that global warming is tied to more intense heat waves, wildfires, hurricanes, and floods, as well as aberrant weather events like polar vortexes. But Public Citizen found that many news stories neglected to explain this connection:
On the whole, the proportion of [extreme weather] pieces that mentioned climate change was disappointingly low. There was no climate-related form of extreme weather that the media connected to climate change in more than 35 percent of pieces. That high-water mark comes from articles discussing record drought. Extreme heat fared similarly, with 34 percent of pieces mentioning climate change. For hurricanes, the rate was just 7 percent.
Public Citizen’s report notes that coverage of climate change's role in extreme weather was better in 2018 than in 2017, but many outlets continued to miss the mark.
When it came to reporting on heat waves, newspapers and TV networks both showed improvement -- they mentioned climate change more often in their heat-wave stories in 2018 than in 2017 -- but not nearly enough. Thirty-three percent of newspaper articles about record or extreme heat connected it to climate change, up from 28 percent in 2017. Television news programs made the connection in 22 percent of their segments, compared to 10 percent in 2017. (A Media Matters analysis of broadcast coverage of a record-breaking heat wave in North America last summer found even worse performance.)
Coverage of wildfires also improved slightly in 2018, according to Public Citizen’s report. Top newspapers mentioned climate change in 29 percent of wildfire stories last year, compared to 19 percent in 2017. The online news outlets mentioned climate change in 28 percent of wildfire stories in 2018, up from 22 in 2017. And television networks connected wildfires to climate change in 21 percent of their segments last year, compared to 8 percent in 2017. Again, Media Matters documented even worse performance from broadcast TV news in connecting climate change to wildfires that happened last summer and in early November.
Similar patterns emerged in reporting on other extreme weather events such as heavy rainfall, flooding, and hurricanes: There was slight improvement, but as Public Citizen sums it up, "major news outlets fell short."
Researchers at CU-Boulder's International Collective on Environment, Culture & Politics documented a different problem with climate coverage in the U.S.: an obsessive focus on Trump. The collective's Media and Climate Change Observatory (MeCCO), which tracks media coverage in dozens of countries, produced a report summarizing its findings from 2018. In the U.S., MeCCO monitored five major newspapers and six major TV networks.
According to the research group, “Throughout the year (as in 2017) there has been continued prominence of news from US outlets on climate change or global warming associated with Donald J. Trump.” It found that the word “Trump” was used an average of nearly 4.5 times in each story about climate change, just slightly less than 2017’s average of 4.7 times. In fact, Trump was mentioned more than twice as often as the words "science," "scientific," or "scientist(s)." The result of this Trump-centric reporting was that “media attention that would have focused on other climate-related events and issues instead was placed on Trump-related actions, leaving many other stories untold,” according to MeCCO’s analysis. (Media Matters reached similar conclusions about climate journalism’s overemphasis on Trump in 2017 and 2018.)
There were some bright spots in climate coverage in 2018. Public Citizen highlighted an editorial collaboration in Florida called The Invading Sea -- involving the Miami Herald, The Palm Beach Post, the Sun-Sentinel, and public radio station WLRN -- that aims to increase awareness of sea-level rise and galvanize action to address it. The Public Citizen report also recognized great reporting by The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Associated Press.
Despite these positive developments, the two reports show that news outlets need to improve their climate journalism in 2019. They should stop chasing Trump's every tweet and instead provide sustained, substantive reporting that explains the nature of the climate challenge, connects extreme weather events to climate research, and amplifies solutions to climate-related problems.

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Australia's Coal Future Under Threat As More Changes Hit Fossil Fuels Globally

ABC - Daniel Ziffer

Angela Merkel told students in Tokyo that Germany would be "out of coal in 2038". (AP: Michael Sohn)
Two disparate decisions from opposite corners of the world have sounded warnings for the future of Australia's coal industry.
In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel confirmed the country would exit coal power by 2038.
In New South Wales, a court knocked back an application for a new coal mine on the grounds it would increase greenhouse gas emissions at a time when they need to be cut.
Neither will immediately derail the freight train that made Australia $66 billion in export earnings last year, overtaking iron ore as our most valuable traded commodity, but both decisions are a snapshot of large and incremental changes in policy and legislation that are hitting the coal sector.
Key points:
  • Germany wants to exit coal power by 2038, which could have implications for Australian coal producers
  • Renewables last year overtook coal as the key source of energy in the European nation
  • Environmental groups are pushing candidates to outline their position on climate change ahead of the upcoming federal election
"We want to be out of coal in 2038," Chancellor Merkel told students in Tokyo last week, after a government-appointed commission released its 20-year plan to completely shut the coal-fired power plants that currently provide almost half the country's electricity.
"Then we need more gas."

Renewables overtake coal in Germany
Last year, renewables overtook coal as the key source of energy in Europe's largest economy.
The deadline from the industrial superpower demonstrated the accelerating shift to renewable power, according to RMIT energy law expert Anne Kallies.
"This kind of speeds up to transition by about 10 years," she said.
"Ten years longer and the market would have gotten there anyway.
"Just look back at the last summer in Australia — climate change is accelerating, we will probably miss overall international targets of keeping the temperature rise to two degrees [Celsius] and below, so I think this is a signal that we need to speed it up".
Australian company directors
have started caring about climate change
Australian company directors nominate climate change as the number one issue they want the government to address in the long-term, in a survey of more than 1,200 business leaders.
Dr Kallies, who is German, said the government commission that made the 2038 decision — and a potential 45 billion euros in support for regions affected to start new industries — was part of a national trait to "hope to plan".
"The Germans have taken a very planned approach to the energy transition which may not be viable for Australia," she said.
"But the overarching signal here is we need to do a lot more a lot faster. A big transition needs hard decisions and possibly a lot of money."

German exit 'significant', but Asia still in play
Minerals Council of Australia chief executive Tania Constable agreed the German decision was "significant", and evidence of a move to forms of power generation that produced lower emissions.
Banks increase exposure to fossil fuels 
Australia's major banks have been getting back into fossil fuels over the past year, casting doubt on their seriousness in tackling climate change through their investments.
But while Germany's coal-fired generation currently supplies about 40 per cent of the country's electricity, she said in a statement that in Australia's National Electricity Market, coal power supplies well over 70 per cent of generation, making it the "workhorse of our electricity system".
"Australia needs to focus on what is best for its people and its economy, taking into account our abundance of energy sources including sun, wind, coal, gas and uranium," she said.
Coal Council of Australia chief executive Greg Evans argued that underlying demand remained strong.
"We're on the doorstep of Asia, there's strong demand for our thermal or energy coal and also our metallurgical coal for steel-making," he said.
"Asia is expanding rapidly, they need reliable base-load power, very cheap power, and coal provides that.
"There will always be a place for renewables but, in terms of economic advancement and building industries, it simply going to be about coal — it's the cheapest."

Politics may dictate a shift
Australia is months away from a federal election where senior Liberal Party figures — including Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and former prime minister Tony Abbott — are being threatened by independents who support a rapid shift away from greenhouse-gas-producing fossil fuels like coal.
Even people who cannot vote, but feel passionately about the impact of climate change, are entering the debate.
School student Maiysha Moin helped found "Climate Voices" to amplify the concerns that prompted a strike by thousands of students last year.
"We want the voices of young people to be heard," she said.
"Right now we see a lot of politicians don't represent our vision for the future, especially on climate change, and what we want to do is endorse leaders and candidates who will represent what we believe in and our values."
The new group is vetting the climate change credentials of potential candidates, giving them stamps of approval and offering campaign support in key marginal seats.
"What we need right now is visionary leadership," she said.
"We need our politicians to be brave, step up, take action and listen to what the people have to say instead of standing around and hoping that climate change is going to go away — that's not going to happen."

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‘The Most Villainous Act In The History Of Human Civilisation.’ Michael E Mann Speaks Out

Cosmos - Samantha Page

The renowned US climate scientist and Tyler Prize winner talks exclusively to Samantha Page for Cosmos. 
Michael E Mann in his office at Penn State University. Sydney Herdle
Michael E Mann is one of two climate scientists who have been awarded the 2019 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement.
Mann, a professor of atmospheric science at Penn State University in the US and one of the most famous climate scientists in the world, is the man behind the infamous “hockey stick” graph, which came out in 1998 and for many became the first piece of understandable data that showed the effect humans were having on the climate.
The graph and Mann himself became lightning rods for climate sceptics and fossil fuel backers, thrusting him into a role of public persuader. For the past 20 years, he has tangled with politicians, Twitter users, and the occasional Russian hacker to help explain what, exactly, is happening to our climate.
He spoke with Cosmos from State College, Pennsylvania, in the US. The interview has been edited for clarity and concision.

Cosmos: In some ways, it seems like we have hit a tipping point for talking about climate change. The New York Times recently called it 2018’s “topic of the year”. From your vantage point, do you think that’s true? If so, why?
Yes, I do. It’s a confluence of a few different things, one of which is the unprecedented summer of weather extremes that we saw. There were unprecedented heat waves, droughts, wildfires, floods and superstorms that played out at a global scale, and I think drove home the reality that climate change impacts are no longer subtle. We are seeing them play out in real time on our television screens and on our newspaper headlines, and our social media feeds, and so I think people are getting it.
I have certainly been focused, as many of my fellow climate science communicators have been, in trying to help the public and policymakers connect the dots and understand that this is the face of climate change. These unprecedented damaging weather extremes have been exacerbated by climate change and so climate change is not a distant and far-off threat. It is something that is impacting us now, adversely, where we live today.

But we have been seeing these things – every year, hotter and hotter – for a while now. You think it’s really just about people experiencing it on the ground?
I think there are a few things going on. First of all, the unprecedented weather. It is no longer this distant, almost theoretical construct. It is something very real that people are feeling.
And I think the public is getting it. They are expecting more from their policymakers. They are demanding, increasingly, that politicians focus on this issue. Look at the rise of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has made climate change a featured part of her political identity. Her message is really connecting with younger folks. Politicians are actually seeing that you can win by campaigning on climate change.
And the reality is that there are developments in the science as well. We are increasingly able to connect the dots scientifically, to talk about how climate change is exacerbating weather extremes. We can identify the role that climate change is playing with events like hurricanes Harvey and Florence and the California wildfires.

Is a change in the way that we view climate change and the way that we talk about it going to keep us from those apocalyptic scenarios that we’re all kind of worried about?
All of these threads have come together in an almost perfect storm, if you’ll forgive the pun, that is creating a potential tipping point in the public consciousness.
There’s a race between two tipping points. The tipping point of the public consciousness, which we want to see, and the tipping point in the climate system that we don’t want to see and that we’re coming perilously close to. For example, the melting of major ice sheets and the global sea-level rise that would entail.
It’s a race between our ability to mobilise the public and policymakers to action and the increasingly devastating impacts of climate change we will see the further we go down this road of fossil fuel burning. That’s really the challenge, to turn this ship around as quickly as possible.
But we’re not going to avert all of the dangerous impacts of climate change. If you live in Puerto Rico or California, just about anywhere around the world – Australia is dealing with unprecedented summer heat right now, devastating heat and flooding events. Some bad stuff is already happening.
The challenge here is to avert as much of that damage as we can by bringing carbon emissions down as quickly as possible, by transitioning to renewable energy as quickly as possible.

You mentioned Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She garnered some attention from both sides recently for saying we have 12 years to act before the end of the world. Is that true?
There is a substantial truth to what AOC said. She was really paraphrasing the most recent conclusions of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Special Report, which basically says that if we are going to limit carbon emissions to below levels that commit us to two degrees Celsius, which would be devastating planetary warming, then we have to bring our carbon emissions down 5-to-10% a year for the next decade.

Scary stuff.
Yeah.

And a little bit overwhelming. You’ve been talking about this for a while. What is it like for you to give this dire warning all the time?
If I didn’t think there was hope, it would be very difficult. But I do think there is hope. I am cautiously optimistic that we are seeing some change now. Not enough to avert some pretty bad climate impacts, but we’re seeing enough to convince me that we’re getting onto the path we need to get on.
There are no physical obstacles to averting catastrophic warming of the planet. The only obstacles at this point are political ones. And those are surmountable.

How did you get into climate communications?
I sort of came into this, the centre of the fractious debate on climate change, in an unusual way. I am a physical scientist. I double-majored in applied math and physics at UC Berkeley. I went off to Yale to study theoretical physics and then decided to switch into the field of climate modelling to work on what I saw as a fascinating problem of understanding how Earth’s climate works.

And at that time, did you think it was the critical issue of our time?
No. To me it was a fascinating physics problem. The reason I went into science is I loved solving problems. I describe in my book The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars how I became entranced by science and how that journey ultimately led me to somewhere I never expected to be. Little did I know that my interests in math and physics and problem-solving would ultimately lead me to the centre of one of the most contentious societal debates we have ever had.
My PhD thesis was really focused on natural climate variability, not on climate change. Climate change really wasn’t even on my radar screen as I was starting my thesis. As that work progressed, it led us in the direction of using archives of the distant climate past, known as proxy records: the tree rings, corals, ice cores. We can only go back in time about a century and a half with the instrumental climate records. I got interested in what those proxy records could tell us about long-term natural cycles.
It was the process of using those data and using them to reconstruct the past climate that produced this curve known as the hockey stick curve, which shows the abrupt warming of the past century to be without precedent as far back as we were able to go, 1000 years, in our original publication two decades ago.
We published that graph in the late 1990s, when the debate over climate change was really coming to a crescendo. While the scientific evidence was mounting, fossil fuel interests were increasingly using their tremendous financial resources and power to attack the science.
I came of scientific age at that very time, and then we published this article, which became exhibit A in the case for human impact on our climate. You didn’t need to understand the physics of the climate system to understand what the graph was telling us: That there is something unprecedented taking place, and it probably has to do with us. The hockey stick became a symbol in the climate change debate.
I found myself, reluctantly, at the centre of the very fractious public debate.
Over the last two decades, I have come to embrace that role, even though it wasn’t what I set out to do. I can think of no greater privilege than to be in a position to inform this larger discussion about what is arguably the greatest challenge and may be the greatest threat that we face as a civilisation.

You’ve attracted quite a bit of negative attention for being in that position as well. The whole Climategate “scandal”.
Climategate, in hindsight, is very interesting, because it involved hacked emails, and Saudi Arabia and Russia were both involved. WikiLeaks and Julian Assange
…
You were really on the vanguard of that whole thing.
In my recent book, The Madhouse Effect, we talk about what played out in the last presidential election. The assault on climate scientists, Climategate, was almost a training ground. It was the same actors and the same mission. Climategate was about trying to distract the public and the policymakers with a fake scandal going into the Copenhagen Summit [also known as the United Nations Climate Change Conference] in 2009, which was the first opportunity for meaningful progress on international climate policy in years.
A compelling case can be made that Russia’s involvement and Saudi Arabia’s potential involvement in the last [US] election was about a half-trillion-dollar oil deal between Russia and ExxonMobil that had been blocked because of the sanctions against Russia.
What’s the first thing that happened under the now-infamous Paul Manafort? They changed the Republican platform to try to get rid of those sanctions. Then Trump appointed Rex Tillerson, the former head of ExxonMobil, as Secretary of State. Is that a coincidence?
It was the same players and the same motive and the same disingenuity. In the case of Climategate, there have now been the better part of a dozen investigations in the US and the UK, and they have all come to the conclusion there was no impropriety on the part of the scientists whose emails had been stolen. The only wrongdoing was the criminal theft of the emails in the first place.
The science that we are doing is a threat to the world’s most powerful and wealthiest special interests. The most powerful and wealthiest special interest that has ever existed: the fossil fuel industry.
They have used their immense resources to create fake scandals and to fund a global disinformation campaign aimed at vilifying the scientists, discrediting the science, and misleading the public and policymakers. Arguably, it is the most villainous act in the history of human civilisation, because it is about the short-term interests of a small number of plutocrats over the long-term welfare of this planet and the people who live on it.
So, once again, to be in a position to be fighting on the right side of a battle between good and evil – which frankly it is – is a privilege.

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