09/05/2019

Cloudy Outlook On Climate Change Ahead Of Election

Canberra Times - Michelle Grattan*

After the initial surge by Scott Morrison, Bill Shorten planted his feet more firmly in the campaign's third week.
Favourable assessments of his performance in Monday night's debate gave the Opposition Leader a confidence boost.
The previous day's multi-billion handouts for child care and dental treatment for pensioners injected a sugar hit into his campaign, keeping Labor's pitch squarely on voters' cost-of-living pressures.
Shorten's plan, also announced that day, for a Labor government to subsidise the wages of childcare workers, while it might go over well in the community, was highly contentious policy, potentially taking him into trip-up territory. Initially he left the way open to extend this largesse to other workers but then quickly closed that down.
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten at Agfest in Tasmania this week. Picture: AAP
Climate change
The serious policy headwinds buffeting Shorten have been coming on the issue that also plays well for Labor - climate change. The question kept being asked: what would the opposition's 45 per cent emissions reduction target cost the economy?
There were always two ways for Shorten to confront this fundamental question. Produce Labor modelling to provide a detailed answer. Or declare it unanswerable, while asking the cost of doing nothing.
The first course would have been the instinctive way to go. But it would take Labor into a maze of contestable numbers.
Refusing to own any particular set of figures, which is what Labor has done - apart from passing nods to assessments that suit its case - is risky. But it keeps the issue in the sunny uplands of the debate, tapping into people's general desire for action on climate.
For the government, the imperative has been to accept the widespread concern about climate change (anything else would be politically unthinkable) but exploit many people's reluctance to pay too much personally to address it.
Morrison's line is that something should be, and is being, done but it's a choice between targets. "Do you have a reckless target, or a responsible target?" he asks.
So the government is heavily focused on any modelling. It is trying to pin big cost numbers to Labor's target, most recently with this week's release of a report from economist Brian Fisher, who runs the consultancy BAEconomics.
The Fisher report is critical of the cost of Labor's policy. But the opposition dismisses it as lacking independence, and Shorten, in line with his broader tactic of refusing to get into the weeds, simply went into attack mode. "We will file this report under P for propaganda," he said.
Polling done in April and released this week by the progressive think tank The Australia Institute showed while Labor had the edge on the climate-energy issue, there is still a high level of uncertainty about which side has the best policies.
Protesters hold placards during a rally on climate inaction outside the office of Prime Minister Scott Morrison in Cronulla on Friday. Picture: AAP
On which party was better for reducing emissions, 40 per cent said Labor; 22 per cent the Coalition; 38 per cent didn't know or were unsure. A third (34 per cent) said Labor policies were better for lowering electricity prices; 29 per cent preferred the Coalition; 37 per cent didn't know. A third (33 per cent) chose Labor as better for energy reliability; 30 per cent said the Coalition; 37 per cent didn't know.
As the campaign passed the half-way point, the polls showed a tightening. Both Newspoll and Essential this week had the Coalition trailing 49-51 per cent, compared with 48-52 per cent previously.
The two sides continue to report the geographical lumpiness in this campaign. Labor is taking rather a beating in regional Queensland over the coal issue, where Shorten's carefully-crafted formula on Adani (designed to say everything and nothing) apparently isn't cutting it.
But to be able to win nationally the Coalition needs a primary vote well over 40 per cent: in Newspoll, it is on 38 per cent and in Essential, on 39 per cent.
And while Shorten has had more glitches than anticipated in this campaign, Morrison this week took some pain over his association, via the preference deal, with controversial businessman Clive Palmer.
Both leaders had a heap of trouble with candidates. Two Victorian Liberals had to be relegated to the scrap heap, for Islamophobic and homophobic comments respectively.
On Thursday, campaigning in Tasmania, Morrison found himself too close for comfort to Jessica Whelan, candidate for Lyons, who was accused of anti-Muslim online comments she claimed were doctored. Morrison initially stood by her, but then more posts emerged, and by early Friday Whelen was gone.
On the Labor side Luke Creasey, running in the Greens seat of Melbourne, finally stood down on Friday after more of his offensive online activity from some years ago appeared. On Monday an ALP Northern Territory Senate candidate had had to resign for his social media behaviour.
In the first four days of pre-polling, which started Monday, about 510,000 voted, compared to 315,000 in 2016. Shorten's Sunday announcements were timed for the start of pre-polling; Labor's formal "launch" this Sunday will put out more voter bait. The Liberals' launch is a week later.
One highly important day for Labor next week will be when it issues its comprehensive costings, which will show a better surplus over the forward estimates than the budget. The opposition hopes this will help counter Morrison's bid to own the economic management ground.
A difficulty for Morrison is that while negativity might have served him effectively in the campaign's early days, even Liberal-leaning commentators are saying there's not enough of the so-called vision thing for the next term. But attempting to produce this now would carry its danger for Morrison: it would attract more scrutiny onto him, blunt some of the negative hits, and could be received cynically as an expedient gesture. What an underdog should do in the final stages of a campaign is always vexed.
As for Labor, as it contemplates the tightening it is banking on 2019 being like 2007, when sufficient voters had decided on a change well before the campaign's last days.

*Michelle Grattan is a press gallery journalist and former editor of The Canberra Times. She is a professorial fellow at the University of Canberra.

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News Corp's Climate Campaign

ABC Media Watch

Economists, journalists and an ex-prime minister critical of News Corp coverage of Labor’s climate change policy.



TRANSCRIPT
But now to climate change, where after weeks of mass protest in Britain by hundreds of thousands of people in what’s been dubbed the Extinction Rebellion, the UK Parliament has declared a climate change emergency. It’s unlikely to come into effect unless Labour wins power.
But even the Bank of England is now threatening dire consequences if Britain fails to act:
Climate change could wipe out $20 trillion of assets, Bank of England warns
- The Telegraph (UK), 15 April, 2019
So, with an election in Australia just two weeks away, how is the media here — and the Murdoch media in particular — covering the issue?
Spin through a few News Corp front pages and its determination to ridicule climate action and keep it to a minimum could not be clearer:
APRIL FUELS DAY
- The Courier-Mail, 1 April, 2019
CARBON BILL’S GREEN WHACK
- The Daily Telegraph, 1 April, 2019
Our carbon cut apocalypse
- The Australian, 21 February, 2019
And last week this campaign continued, with alarming new predictions on the front page of The Australian about the cost of Labor’s climate plans:
Price carbon cuts? Yes you can
GDP loss $264bn
Jobs lost 166,500
The wholesale electricity price in 2030 could be as much as 50 per cent higher …
- The Australian, 2 May, 2019
And on News Corp’s Sky After Dark the usual suspects naturally took up the refrain:
ANDREW BOLT: … it’s $264 billion, to be precise. A quarter of a trillion dollars by 2030.
RITA PANAHI: … where is the rest of the media in pursuing this? $264 billion was the best-case scenario, Andrew. It could be upwards of $542 billion, the cost to the economy.  
- The Bolt Report, Sky News, 2 May, 2019
As with several previous attacks, this latest News Corp barrage relied entirely on modelling by one economist, Dr Brian Fisher, who has worked extensively for the Minerals Council of Australia, which would lose heavily if Labor’s policy were implemented.
A fact noted by Labor leader Bill Shorten:
BILL SHORTEN: This fellow and his report remind me of the doctors that big tobacco companies used to roll out in the ‘70s and ‘80s to say that smoking was healthy for you. We do not – we will file this report under P for propaganda.
- ABC News Channel, 2 May, 2019
Fisher’s apocalyptic forecasts were also attacked by left-wing think tank The Australia Institute:
“The last time Australians saw Labor’s climate policies in action, emissions went down 2%, the economy grew by 5% and employment increased by 200,000 jobs."
- The Australia Institute, 2 May, 2019
And they were dismissed by a cavalcade of carbon experts, including the ANU’s Professor Warwick McKibbin, who costed our Paris commitments for the Coalition government in 2015, so should know what he’s talking about:
The impact of @AustralianLabor’s #climate proposal would be a “small fraction" of the economy by 2030, says #ANUexpert @WarwickMcKibbin ...
- Twitter, @ANUmedia, 2 May, 2019
And McKibbin was backed by a host of others, including Professor Frank Jotzo, director of the ANU’s Centre for Climate Economics and Policy:
… Brian Fisher's 'modelling' of emissions targets uses absurd cost assumptions. An abatement cost curve like this would have looked very high 20 years ago, now it's simply ridiculous.
- Twitter, @frankjotzo, 2 May, 2019
Meanwhile, Melbourne University’s climate law expert, Tim Baxter, rejected the modelling, and tweeted:
Literally *no one* I know (and I know a lot of people moving in this space) has any respect for Brian Fisher's work.
Can the media *please* stop reporting it as if it is reliable?
- Twitter, @TiminMitcham, 2 May, 2019
Now if you’d run a front-page story based entirely on Fisher’s work — as The Australian had done — you should surely pass such criticisms on to readers.
But The Oz did not think them worth a mention.
Although it did run another front-page story about an egg attack on Fisher’s house, which included the criticisms from Shorten, and quoted Fisher saying:
“... I’m not claiming to have all the facts, I just wanted to get some sort of economic discussion going.”
- The Australian, 3 May, 2019
Fair enough.
Just a shame The Australian didn’t make that clear the day before.
Of course, the media should ask what Labor’s climate policy will cost. And if Labor can’t give a figure, by all means publish other people’s forecasts. However extreme.
But have a discussion, hear both sides, don’t claim it as gospel.
The media’s duty is to report fairly and responsibly, especially when the Bank of England is talking climate catastrophe and the UK parliament has declared a climate emergency.
But time and again News Corp has failed to do that.
Last week, after reading The Australian’s front-page scare, Kevin Rudd — a casualty of the climate wars — tweeted:
There will be a special place in hell reserved for Murdoch Sr, Murdoch Jr (Lachlan) and the Murdoch media for their decade long campaign of climate change denial ...
- Twitter, @MrKRudd, 2 May, 2019
We’ll see in about two weeks time how much effect News Corp’s campaign has. But whether it succeeds or not, the Murdoch media’s intentions have never been clearer.

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Australia’s Politics May Be Changing With Its Climate

New York Times - Somini Sengupta

Peter Holding on his farm near Harden, New South Wales, in March. Asanka Brendon Ratnayake for The New York Times
HARDEN, Australia — It’s been a year of extremes for this country. The hottest summer ever. Torrential rains in the north. A crippling drought in its southeastern farm belt.
Now, with national elections scheduled for May 18, a vital question looms: To what degree will climate change sway the way Australians vote? The answer could provide important lessons for other democracies in the age of climate change.
Australia is acutely vulnerable to climate change, just as it is also a culprit. The continent has warmed faster than the global average; its cherished Great Barrier Reef has been devastated by marine heat waves; and heat and drought this year took a bite out of the country’s economy, according to a top official of the country’s central bank. At the same time, central to its prosperity is the extraction of the dirtiest fossil fuel: Australia is the world’s biggest exporter of coal for power generation.
Against that backdrop, the governing conservative coalition, led by the Liberal Party, is under pressure in key districts as independents assail longstanding members of Parliament like Tony Abbott, a former Liberal leader and prime minister, over their climate positions.
To understand what it all means, I recently drove through southeastern Australia, the country’s most populated area, to speak to voters, both urban and rural, about climate change.
In rural districts, voters who traditionally send conservative lawmakers to Parliament are talking openly about the effects of climate change — in some instances, even coming out to protest. And, in poll after poll, climate change has climbed the ladder of concerns among the electorate.
More than 60 percent of voters identified climate change as the top “critical threat” facing Australia over the next 10 years, while nearly the same share said the government should take steps to address global warming even if that involves “significant costs,” according to a poll by the Lowy Institute, an independent research group.
Another poll by Ipsos, a market research firm, found that half of all Australians gave the government “poor” marks on managing climate change.
Shelly Beach in Manly, a suburb of Sydney. It is part of the Warringah electoral district, represented by former Prime Minister Tony Abbott. Asanka Brendon Ratnayake for The New York Times
The beachfront promenade in Manly. Mr. Abbott has held the Warringah seat for more than 24 years. Asanka Brendon Ratnayake for The New York Times
My road trip began in Melbourne, continued on to Sydney and then took me west to the land of Angus cattle and Merino sheep in the vast, parched countryside of New South Wales. On these undulating hills and bare fields, generations of farmers have raised livestock, sown wheat and canola, and elected conservative lawmakers to Parliament. Climate change, for the most part, they used to dismiss as city talk, or just “rubbish,” recalled Peter Holding, 64, a third-generation farmer who lives near a hamlet called Harden.
That’s changing.
These days, the soil is so dry that a sparse occasional rain shower barely dampens the dirt. Feed prices have skyrocketed. Dams have dried up. Farmers have thinned their stocks.
And in a country town called Wagga Wagga, where talk of climate change would have been shocking not long ago, more than 200 people showed up to a climate change protest rally in March that Mr. Holding, who is active in a group called Farmers for Climate Action, helped to organize. “Don’t Vote for Fossil Fools,” read one handmade sign. “Denial is not a policy,” read another.
An aerial view of a depleted dam on the farm run by Edward and Stephanie Gephardt in Trungley Hall, New South Wales, in March. Asanka Brendon Ratnayake for The New York Times
A dry creek surrounded by dead tree trunks near Yass, New South Wales. Asanka Brendon Ratnayake for The New York Times
Sheep around a lone tree on a dry field near Yass. Asanka Brendon Ratnayake for The New York Times
“You would never run a rally like that 10 years ago, but it’s become blatantly obvious things are changing,” Mr. Holding said. “I don’t think we’re going to get back to normal.”
It all worries Guy Milson. A 68-year-old rancher, he has, he said, “come around” on climate change. The evidence has become impossible to ignore. The drought has scorched his land. He has had to sharply reduce his herds of cattle and sheep. This blistering summer, even the old, hardy eucalyptus trees roasted in the heat.
“We’ve never put so much carbon into the atmosphere,” Mr. Milson said. “It can’t be normal.”
But all his life, he has been loyal to the right-of-center Liberal Party. He sees the incumbent energy minister, Angus Taylor, a friend, as a possible future prime minister. And he worries that fear over climate change will punish his party at the polls, especially in swing seats around the country. He is also wary of ditching coal, just now. It is too important to Australia’s economy. He says bigger polluters like China should act first.
The average Australian’s carbon footprint is slightly lower than that of an American. The country’s total emissions have risen to their highest level and it is not on track to meet its Paris climate agreement pledge, according to independent monitors. And a scathing report published recently by a research and advocacy group called the Climate Council said the “lack of climate change action is the defining leadership failure of the past decade.”
Guy Milson on a hill overlooking his farm in Goulburn, New South Wales. Asanka Brendon Ratnayake for The New York Times
Sheep on Mr. Milson’s farm. Asanka Brendon Ratnayake for The New York Times
Farther west, I found Edward and Stephanie Gebhardt sitting on their front porch, scanning the skies for rain. The Gebhardts bought a farm just before the latest drought began to set in. Now nearly all their reservoirs were dry. In the muddy slope of one, a thirsty lamb got stuck and died. The fields on which they would normally sow wheat this time of year remained ashen. “It’s almost as if the seasons have shifted,” said Ms. Gebhardt, 31.
Neither of them doubted climate change. Neither had much faith anymore in either of the two conservative parties, the Liberals and their coalition partners, the National Party, that their families had long voted for.
“Honestly I struggle to vote now,” said Mr. Gebhardt, also 31. “No one has come out with anything to help us.”
Voting is compulsory in Australia, so Ms. Gebhardt signaled her dissatisfaction in the latest state polls by voting for a gun rights party called Shooters, Fishers and Farmers. It was a “donkey vote,” she said, the term used here for a ballot protest.
The energy minister, Mr. Taylor, defended what he called the governing coalition’s “balanced approach” to gradually reduce emissions in the coming years, while promoting hydropower and investments in solar and wind energy. “A majority of people want to see action,” he said. “They want it to happen at a sensible pace and without substantial costs to them.”
The Labor Party, the official opposition in Parliament, proposes a faster reduction in emissions and a target of 50 percent renewable energy by 2030. But it has steered clear of the idea of a carbon tax, which another Labor government implemented 10 years ago; that Labor government was then ousted by a Liberal Party leader who campaigned on a promise to “ax the tax.”
That Liberal Party politician — Mr. Abbott, who once suggested that Australia pull out of the Paris climate accord but has since changed his position — is now facing one of the biggest political challenges of his career.
On the way back from ranch country, I stopped by his district, in the suburbs north of Sydney. Neither Mr. Abbott nor his aides responded to requests for an interview.
Zali Steggall, an independent who is challenging former Prime Minister Tony Abbott, at the North Curl Curl Surf Life Saving Club north of Sydney. Asanka Brendon Ratnayake for The New York Times
But one of his main challengers, a lawyer named Zali Steggall who is Australia’s only Olympic medalist in Alpine skiing, eagerly explained why she had decided to run for office in an effort to unseat him. “Tony Abbott has been a massive hand brake on our policies on climate,” she said.
Ms. Steggall, an independent who is running for the first time, was speaking on a warm Wednesday evening at the North Curl Curl Surf Club. She sat before a roomful of voters, with a picture-perfect view of the South Pacific behind her. Surfers went in and out of the waves. The audience, mostly middle-aged white voters, asked about the minimum wage (she said she was not sure raising it would be realistic), immigration (she agreed with the governing coalition that fewer immigrants should be allowed in) and how to bring down the price of electricity (“We need an orderly retirement of coal,” she said).
Ms. Steggall said she favored lifting a luxury tax on electric vehicles and promised to promote renewable energy, but only gradually. She touched on an anxiety that I heard repeatedly from Australian voters: “It’s not about taking dramatic action that will change your livelihood or lifestyle,” she assured her audience.
Ms. Steggall is not alone in taking on Liberal Party stalwarts, either. She is among several independent candidates. Nearly all are campaigning on climate change.
“The fact that all these people are running is a huge message from the electorate,” said Ebony Bennett, deputy director of The Australia Institute, a research group. “We’ve never seen anything like it before.”

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08/05/2019

Climate Cuts, Cover-Ups And Censorship

Climate Council

The Climate Council rates the Federal Government’s climate performance over the past five-years as the defining leadership failure of the past decade.


DOWNLOAD THE REPORT
  • The Government’s tenure has been characterised by slashing climate science funding, cutting effective climate change programs, rejecting advice from expert domestic and international bodies, misleading claims from Federal Ministers, a lack of any effective climate programs, and consistently covering up poor performance.
  • Deep funding cuts and job losses at the CSIRO have weakened Australia’s climate science capability. As a result, Australia is unprepared to cope with the impacts of climate change.
  • Effective programs have been abolished or scaled back, for instance, half a billion dollars was cut from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, while the Renewable Energy Target was slashed.
The Federal Government has covered up poor performance with misleading claims, dubious accounting and censorship.
  • Greenhouse gas emissions have risen for four years running. Australia is unlikely to meet its 2030 emissions reduction target according to the government’s own department. Regardless, senior ministers continue to falsely claim that emissions are going down and targets will be met.
  • In 2016, the Federal Government censored a UN report about climate change and World Heritage sites, asking the authors to remove any reference to Australian sites.
  • The Federal Government has consistently delayed releasing information on Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions, often publishing data just before Christmas when it faces less scrutiny.
  • The government has used discredited accounting methods, for instance including land-use emissions or Kyoto “carryover credits”, which makes its record look better than reality.




The government’s lack of climate change action is the defining leadership failure of the past decade. We have not tackled climate change, the consequences are with us, and we must work very quickly to prevent catastrophic consequences.
  • Delaying action has not made the problem go away. It has just shortened the time we have left to reduce emissions and made it more challenging to do so. The Federal Government has squandered its tenure and that will cost us dearly.
  • Australia has missed many opportunities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and transition our economy in the cheapest, most gradual and effective ways possible.
  • Australians are on the frontline of worsening extreme weather. Heatwaves have become hotter and last longer, droughts, intense rainfall and dangerous bushfire conditions have become more severe and now test the limits of our coping capacity. We must now address the accelerating consequences of climate change and we are unprepared.
  • As Australians experience escalating consequences into the future they will likely view this period of missed opportunities and failed leadership with deep dismay.



Australia’s next government must adopt credible climate policy and a transparent and accurate approach to reporting and tracking Australia’s climate performance to ensure the public can appropriately evaluate its performance.
  • The Federal Government needs to urgently adopt credible climate policy to help protect Australians from the rapidly escalating risks of climate change.
  • The Climate Council has established a ‘Charter of Integrity’ for the Federal Government to use as a benchmark to track and monitor climate performance, specifically around issues of accountability, transparency, timeliness and accuracy.
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Climate Change Costings That Don't Count The Cost Of Inaction Are Worthless

The Guardian - 

We must demand better of our political parties – and there is no excuse for the media either
A protester dressed as prime minister Scott Morrison in Cronulla on Friday. Photograph: Joel Carrett/EPA 
Just seven months ago the United Nations told the world that we have 12 years to limit the climate change catastrophe. It means that to keep global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels we need to cut carbon pollution by 45% by 2030 and down to zero by 2050. Twelve years. Actually scratch that – now it is 11 years.
Now ask yourself how often that has been raised during this election campaign?
At the time a co-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change working group on impacts of climate change said: “It’s a line in the sand and what it says to our species is that this is the moment and we must act now. This is the largest clarion bell from the science community and I hope it mobilises people and dents the mood of complacency.”
Oh bless.
At the start of the 2019 federal election campaign Scott Morrison put out a video where he was all dewy-eyed about the future, saying “the next 10 years are important to everybody at every stage of life”.
And yet not once – NOT ONCE – did he mention that the UN has given us 11 years to do something about a global catastrophe.
No, instead it’s all standard of living and nothingness statements that would get shot down by any decent advertising firm in the first meeting.
He did say one thing that is correct. He noted that “the decisions you make in one term of government last for a decade or more”. And in no area is this more true than with climate change. Every year we do less than enough, the ability to limit damage becomes less and the cost of doing so becomes larger.
I’ve written in the past how climate change has destroyed the minds of conservatives. But it has also destroyed the media model that seemed to work so well for holding politicians to account: the model of balance and impartiality, where journalists who strive to be seen to take no sides and have no bias.
Over the past 30 years the conservative side has become hostage to cranks and charlatans
It’s a model that only holds up so long as both sides are open to reality because it implicitly gives credibility to both sides.
But over the past 30 years the conservative side has become hostage to cranks and charlatans. And as the conservatives lurched ever more towards lunacy the media has for the most part followed.
It has led us to a position where the Liberal party’s utterly pathetic climate change policy is given credence. And where the big issue about the ALP’s less-worse policy is the cost, not from the point of view that it could be achieved with a more efficient price on carbon but that it costs more than does the LNP’s nothing policy.
It is a position where editors give front-page space to modelling so redolent with bias that you can practically smell the coal dust on its pages.
It has meant those wishing to actually do something about climate change have to not just argue their policy is better, but that the need for the policy is there.
Election campaigns are often about costs – how much will your healthcare or education policy cost? But we do not as a rule talk costs to the economy, because such modelling is pretty nebulous and is reliant on assumptions that can distort any picture for better or worse.
That does not render modelling irrelevant, but it means it is no fact check.
And with climate change any costings that do not count the costs of inaction are worthless.
It would be like doing a costing of investing in the polio vaccine in the 1940s and not considering the cost of people continuing to die and suffer from polio. Clearly the costs of inaction massively outweigh the cost of acting.
The good news is we do have some research on the costs, because while in Australia we allow political parties to indulge the equivalent of arguing over which rat in a restaurant kitchen has the fewest number of fleas, in the UK things are rather more mature.
This week in the UK the Committee on Climate Change released a report arguing the UK needs to reduce emissions emission to zero by 2050.
In what should be a siren for all journalists, they note that “the costs of the low-carbon transition are critically dependent on the quality as well as the stringency of public policy”.
Note the issue is quality of the policy, not whether or not there is some precise hit to GDP they can come up with.
And what is quality? Policy with “long-term clarity on the regulatory landscape, prioritisation of the role of markets, and policy processes that are transparent, predictable, and based on cost-benefit analysis”.
And for it to be successful “it will also need to be credible (actors must believe the government means what it says), consistent across time and governments, and across different policy sectors, and yet adaptive to new circumstances”.
In other words: Tony Abbott and his ilk – your time is done.
The report also notes that “the very word ‘costs’ to describe decarbonisation expenditures is somewhat misleading, because in a very real sense such expenditures are also investments”. What’s more, it suggests “the correct answer to the question ‘what will it cost?’” is that it depends on “what is done now”.
Wait and it costs more; do it poorly now and it costs more; accept that a policy to reduce emissions by 26% including dodgy accounting as legitimate, and it will cost more.
And if you really are worried about economic growth the report also concludes that “there has been no appreciable difference in rates of economic growth between those countries that have reduced emissions substantially and those that have not”. But importantly, “yet the former camp are arguably in a stronger position to benefit from a global transition to a zero carbon economy in years to come”.
The report makes clear it is time to stop giving credence to cranks and demand better of our political parties – and there is no excuse for the media either.
We need at a minimum a 45% reduction by 2030 and to get to zero net emission by 2050. So parties need to explain what they are going to do to get there and argue why their way is best.
If a party is not even willing to come up with such a path then do not treat them with the respect that “balance” gives them.

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Climate Change Is A Federal Election Issue For Voters, So How Do The Policies Stack Up?

ABC News - Michael Slezak


"Right now, we are facing a man-made disaster of global scale. Our greatest threat in thousands of years. Climate change."
This was a message recently delivered by renowned naturalist Sir David Attenborough. And he meant it for our politicians.
"Leaders of the world, you must lead. The continuation of civilisations and the natural world upon which we depend is in your hands."
Globally this message — and others like it — seem to have been heard by the community. School students are striking. People are marching. Authorities are issuing warnings and businesses are doing what they can to adapt to changes already seen and predicted.
What policies need to achieve is clear both in the science and international agreements: net greenhouse gas emissions — mostly from burning coal and other fossil fuels — must be reduced to zero.
How the election will change
our response to climate change
Both the Coalition and Labor say they take the threat of climate change seriously, but they're offering different pitches on how to deal with it ahead of the federal election.
Against this backdrop, with climate at the top of many voters' minds, both major parties are spruiking their climate credentials ahead of this month's federal election.
Bill Shorten is offering stronger targets and policies, while Scott Morrison is proposing taking less action, on the grounds that this will be cheaper.
The Greens are calling for much stronger action and other parties have a range of views.
With the fundamental science of climate change settled, what does that science tell us about the adequacy of those policies? And do they compare to the demands of international agreements, and the action taken by other countries?

Morrison's target
Australia's current target for 2030, put in place by Tony Abbott, is to reduce our emissions by at least 26 per cent below 2005 levels.
According to the Government's Climate Change Authority, that target puts "Australia at or near the bottom of the group of countries we generally compare ourselves with".
Professor Andy Pitman, head of the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of NSW says the Coalition's target — if replicated by other countries — isn't nearly enough to avoid two degrees of global warming.
He says the 26 per cent cut to emissions is "about a third" of what's needed.
Using an accounting measure rejected by many comparable nations, the Coalition plans to reduce that target to what is effectively about a 16 per cent cut — cashing in "carry-over credits" claimed by beating earlier targets.
The Coalition hasn't indicated what further targets it may commit to for decades following 2030.
Australian bosses 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.
Defending the existing targets on Radio National Breakfast last week, Energy Minister Angus Taylor said "a successful Paris Agreement" was what mattered, and proposing stronger targets would be "going way beyond what is required to meet our Paris obligations".
But a successful Paris Agreement means stopping global warming — not just meeting whatever targets we put forward in 2015.
Specifically, the Paris Agreement demands that Australia "pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5C" and binds countries to stop global warming "well below 2C".
Our existing targets are not compatible with achieving that.
So if the Paris Agreement is the measure of success, those targets will need to be increased very rapidly. In fact, the Paris Agreement demands that the world aim for net zero emissions in the second half of the century — or sooner for rich countries like Australia.
The Coalition targets are a long way from what the science demands and will require a rapid ratchet to catch up with commitments made in the Paris Agreement.
Shorten's target
The Labor Party has ruled out the use of carry-over credits and said it will strengthen Australia's 2030 target to 45 per cent.
Speaking to the ABC's 7.30 program, Mr Shorten said of the target: "I didn't pluck that out of nowhere. That was the Paris agreement. That's what the scientists tell us."
Director of the Centre for Climate Economics and Policy at ANU Professor Frank Jotzo says Labor's target "will be seen as a strong target for Australia".
According to earlier analysis by the Climate Change Authority, it would place us below what the UK is doing, but above what the US and EU are currently pledging.
But Professor Pitman says it still won't mean Australia does its fair share to stop global warming at below 2C, so it would need significant ratcheting to comply with the aims of the Paris Agreement.
"There is a fundamental misunderstanding I think across western governments on how deep the emission cuts need to be to achieve the 2 degree limit on warming," says Professor Pitman.
That view is backed by the Climate Change Authority, which has recommended a range of targets for Australia: somewhere between 45 per cent and 63 per cent. By that recommendation, Labor's target just scrapes in at the bottom end.
Labor has also said it will aim to reduce net carbon emissions to zero by 2050. The same target has been discussed by the EU and has just been recommended to the UK by its official climate adviser.
"If implemented globally that would be a good and strong target," Professor Pitman says.
Dr Bill Hare from Climate Analytics says Labor's 2030 target of 45 per cent isn't consistent with the Paris Agreement, but assuming the 2050 target of a 100 per cent cut in emissions is accounted for rigorously, that would be consistent.

Shorten and Morrison clash over electric cars in leaders' debate (ABC News)

 Can the policies cut all emissions?
Another important measure is whether the policies offered are scalable to help Australia eliminate greenhouse gas emissions entirely in the next few decades.
The centrepiece of the Coalition's policy is Tony Abbott's Emissions Reduction Fund — now called the Climate Solutions Fund.
Fundamentally, it uses taxpayer money to pay polluters to pollute less.
Professor Jotzo says the policy will not scale-up in a cost-effective way.
"The emissions fund will reduce Australia's emissions piece-by-piece, project-by-project but ... it is not a mechanism that will allow comprehensive action."

Scott Morrison outlines his new climate change policy (ABC News)

Without an overarching policy to systematically drive down emissions in any sector, the Coalition also announced a range of policies subsidising specific projects such as Snowy Hydro 2.0, more pumped hydropower in Tasmania ("Battery of the Nation") and an undersea cable to help transport that hydropower to the mainland.
But Professor Pitman says that's not enough: "There's nothing wrong with any of those policies. The question is whether the scaling of those policies is sufficient to cut Australia's emissions proportionately ... to avoid 2 degrees."
And the Coalition has not proposed any systematic way of reducing emissions from the electricity sector — the biggest contributor to emissions, and the sector considered the easiest and cheapest to clean up.
Mr Shorten has proposed expanding the Coalition's existing cap-and-trade system (the "safeguard mechanism") to cover more large businesses, and instituting something like the Coalition's abandoned National Energy Guarantee, to drive down emissions from both industry and the electricity sector.
A range of Labor policies cover other areas — including an electric vehicle policy, a renewable energy target and controls on land clearing.
Given a simple economy-wide carbon price has become a political no-go zone, Labor has tackled each sector of the economy separately.
Professor Jotzo says the details on some of the policies are lacking, but together they could "deliver emissions reductions across the economy, which is ultimately what is needed".

And what of the Greens?
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Greens have called for much stronger action — phasing out coal exports by 2030, reaching net zero emissions by 2040, and a new public authority called Renew Australia, which would oversee the transition to a zero-carbon economy.
In a minority government, these ambitions could influence final policy outcomes.
Dr Hare says some aspects of the Labor and Greens policies are not entirely consistent with the Paris Agreement, but they could be adjusted to be.
"Structurally, both the ALP and Greens policies are capable of being ratcheted up," he says. "The Coalition doesn't have policies that could be ratcheted up."
Australia is small — do we matter?
Australia produces just 1.3 per cent of global emissions — but that is no small amount. We have one of the highest emissions per capita, and similar total emissions to the UK.
Professor Pitman concedes that if Australia eliminated its emissions completely, and every other country did nothing, it would have virtually no impact on global warming.
But that's not the point, he says. "If we're not cutting emissions we have no leverage, no influence, no moral right to ask other countries to do the same."
Professor Jotzo says this is the approach Australia takes to a range of other issues.
"We do our bit — which is often not a very large bit — on every significant issue of international cooperation: We send troops to where there's peacekeeping action to be supported. We support the global effort in aid. We support the global effort in developing new medicines."
Professor Pitman says Australia has a "vested interest" in taking a lead on climate action.
"We are vulnerable to heat. We're vulnerable to flood. Our ecosystems seem to be quite vulnerable like the Barrier Reef and so forth."

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07/05/2019

Biodiversity Crisis Is About To Put Humanity At Risk, UN Scientists To Warn

The Guardian - 

‘We are in trouble if we don’t act,’ say experts, with up to 1m species at risk of annihilation

Students protest in Adelaide. UN experts warned people alive today are at risk unless urgent action is taken. Photograph: Kelly Barnes/EPA 
The world’s leading scientists will warn the planet’s life-support systems are approaching a danger zone for humanity when they release the results of the most comprehensive study of life on Earth ever undertaken.
Up to 1m species are at risk of annihilation, many within decades, according to a leaked draft of the global assessment report, which has been compiled over three years by the UN’s leading research body on nature.
The 1,800-page study will show people living today, as well as wildlife and future generations, are at risk unless urgent action is taken to reverse the loss of plants, insects and other creatures on which humanity depends for food, pollination, clean water and a stable climate.
The final wording of the summary for policymakers is being finalised in Paris by a gathering of experts and government representatives before the launch on Monday, but the overall message is already clear, according to Robert Watson, the chair of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).
“There is no question we are losing biodiversity at a truly unsustainable rate that will affect human wellbeing both for current and future generations,” he said. “We are in trouble if we don’t act, but there are a range of actions that can be taken to protect nature and meet human goals for health and development.”
The authors hope the first global assessment of biodiversity in almost 15 years will push the nature crisis into the global spotlight in the same way climate breakdown has surged up the political agenda since the 1.5C report last year by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Like its predecessor, the report is a compilation of reams of academic studies, in this case on subjects ranging from ocean plankton and subterranean bacteria to honey bees and Amazonian botany. Following previous findings on the decimation of wildlife, the overview of the state of the world’s nature is expected to provide evidence that the world is facing a sixth wave of extinction. Unlike the past five, this one is human-driven.
Mike Barrett, WWF’s executive director of conservation and science, said: “All of our ecosystems are in trouble. This is the most comprehensive report on the state of the environment. It irrefutably confirms that nature is in steep decline.”
Barrett said this posed an environmental emergency for humanity, which is threatened by a triple challenge of climate, nature and food production. “There is no time to despair,” he said. “We should be hopeful that we have a window of opportunity to do something about it over these two years.”
The report will sketch out possible future scenarios that will vary depending on the decisions taken by governments, businesses and individuals. The next year and a half is likely to be crucial because world leaders will agree rescue plans for nature and the climate at two big conferences at the end of 2020.
That is when China will host the UN framework convention on biodiversity gathering in Kunming, which will establish new 20-year targets to replace those agreed in Aichi, Japan, in 2010. Soon after, the UN framework convention on climate change will revise Paris agreement commitments at a meeting in either the UK, Italy, Belgium or Turkey.
Watson, a British professor who has headed both of the UN’s leading scientific panels, said the forthcoming report will delve more deeply than anything before into the causes of nature collapse, chief among which is the conversion of forests, wetlands and other wild landscapes into ploughed fields, dam reservoirs and concrete cities. Three-quarters of the world’s land surface has been severely altered, according to the leaked draft. Humanity is also decimating the living systems on which we depend by emitting carbon dioxide and spreading invasive species.
Watson said the authors have learned from attribution science, which has transformed the debate on the climate crisis by showing how much more likely hurricanes, droughts and floods have become as a result of global heating.
The goal is to persuade an audience beyond the usual green NGOs and government departments. “We need to appeal not just to environment ministers, but to those in charge of agriculture, transport and energy because they are the ones responsible for the drivers of biodiversity loss,” he said.
A focus will be to move away from protection of individual species and areas, and to look at systemic drivers of change, including consumption and trade.
The political environment is changing in some countries due to overwhelming scientific evidence and increasing public concern about the twin crises of nature and climate, which have prompted more than 1 million students to strike from school and led to street protests by Extinction Rebellion activists in more than a dozen countries.
The UK parliament declared a climate emergency this week and the government’s chief climate advisory body recommended an accelerated plan to cut carbon emissions to zero by 2050. Until now, however, the nature crisis has been treated as far less of a priority. “Where are the headlines? Where are the emergency meetings?” asked the school strike founder, Greta Thunberg, in a recent tweet on the subject.
Extinction Rebellion activists said protests that blocked several London streets last month were as much aimed at the defence of nature as stabilising the climate. “They are two sides of the same destructive coin,” said Farhana Yamin, a coordinator of the movement who is also an environmental lawyer and formerly a lead author of the IPCC report.
“The work of IPBES is as crucial as the work done by the IPCC on the 1.5-degree report. That is why Extinction Rebellion is demanding an end [to] biodiversity loss and a net-zero phaseout by 2025. We can’t save humanity by only tackling climate change or only caring about biodiversity.”

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