24/07/2020

Biggest Ice Sheet On Earth More Vulnerable To Melting Than Thought

National Geographic - Douglas Fox

Shocking evidence suggests that the last time the East Antarctic ice sheet collapsed, it added over 10 feet to sea level rise, and that it’s likely to happen again.

A new study concludes that the East Antarctic ice sheet last collapsed much more recently than believed, and that it could happen again over the next centuries. Photograph by George Steinmetz, Nat Geo Image Collection

A rare, translucent, black-and-white crystal that sat in a box for 30 years has led scientists to a startling discovery: The East Antarctic ice sheet, which holds 80 percent of the world’s ice, may be even more vulnerable to warming than once believed.

Scientists had determined that this ice sheet last retreated about three million years ago. But a new paper in the journal Nature suggests—based on a study of crystals collected from the region—that a large part of it collapsed only 400,000 years ago. Most startling of all, the team’s calculations suggest that the dramatic change happened during an extended but relatively mild warm spell.

NG MAPS

During that time period, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere never rose very high, peaking at only about 300 parts per million (ppm), says David Harwood, who studies Antarctic glacial history at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln.

“That’s the scary thing,” says Harwood. Modern carbon dioxide levels blew past 300 ppm way back in 1915—and they currently sit at 410 ppm. In the coming centuries, that extra carbon dioxide could raise temperatures, and sea level, well above what happened 400,000 years ago, he says. “This doesn’t bode well for the future.”

The world’s other ice sheets, including those in Greenland and West Antarctica, are already predicted to lose ice in the coming century. Greenland sits far from the North Pole, exposing it to warm air, and West Antarctica sits in a broad bowl that dips below sea level, exposing it to warm ocean currents. But the East Antarctic ice sheet was considered more secure, because it occupies the frigid South Pole, and most of it sits on land that shields it from the ocean’s warmth.

“For decades, the East Antarctic ice sheet has been dressed in this armor of invincibility,” says Slawek Tulaczyk, a glaciologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who took part in the research. To speak of it shrinking “was, until recently, unthinkable.”

If these new findings bear out, then East Antarctica may contribute to sea level rise sooner than expected. The greenhouse gases that humans have produced to date may have already locked in 42 feet of eventual sea level rise from all of the glaciers predicted to melt in the coming centuries, including the ones in East Antarctica.

Solving a mystery

This discovery stemmed from a study of the delicate layers of a black-and-white crystal from deep beneath the ice sheet. Tulaczyk and Terry Blackburn, a geochemist at UC Santa Cruz, happened upon the crystal while studying something else. It began in 2017, as they visited Taylor Valley, on the coast of East Antarctica, to investigate a mystery: Measurements by them and other scientists had shown that water seeping through the ground there was unusually high in uranium.

“This signal was coming from somewhere else” further up the valley, says Graham Edwards, Blackburn’s doctoral student who was also on that trip. And so they went looking for the source of the uranium signal, hoping it might reveal something interesting about the history of the ice sheet.

Although most people know uranium as a nuclear fuel, tiny traces of it are found throughout the world’s rocks, rivers, and oceans. Most of it exists in a heavy form, called uranium-238. But mixed in with it, scientists always find a few atoms of a lighter version, called uranium-234, which is produced when its heavier cousin undergoes radioactive decay. Across the world’s oceans, the ratio of these two forms is relatively constant—about one atom of uranium-234 for every 16,000 atoms of uranium-238.

Crystal layers like these, which formed 200,000 years ago beneath the East Antarctic ice sheet, reveal that it melted 400,000 years ago, much more recently than thought. Photograph by Michael Scudder

Scientists theorize that when an ice sheet covers a continent for a long time, the water trapped under it slowly accumulates uranium-234. This happens as uranium-238 in the rocks and gravel under the ice decays, tossing atoms of light uranium into the water, where they accumulate over time.

The water seeping through Taylor Valley is unusual because it holds two to five times the usual level of the lighter uranium-234. “Those fluids have been in contact with rock for a significant period of time,” speculates Blackburn.

Measuring the amount of uranium-234 under the East Antarctic ice sheet could therefore provide clues about how much time has passed since the ice sheet’s most recent retreat.

Unlocking the rocks

However, no one had ever measured uranium-234 under an ice sheet. So Blackburn, Edwards, and Tulaczyk set out to try to find minerals that formed in the water beneath the one in East Antarctica. Those rocks might record how much uranium-234 was in the water where they were created, which could, in turn, reveal when the sheet had last melted.

Finding rocks from under the ice sheet might sound like a pipe dream, but Tulaczyk and Blackburn knew of a place where rocks from beneath the ice make their way to the surface, an area called Elephant Moraine, just over the mountains from Taylor Valley.

Thousands of rocks cover the ice there. They are lifted from the bottom of the ice as it oozes over a buried mountain ridge, like a wave breaking at a glacial pace. Constant dry winds evaporate the ice surface by several inches a year, so the rocks eventually make their way to the surface.

At the end of Taylor Glacier, a hypersaline brine known as "Blood Falls" flows onto the ice surface. The red color comes from iron oxide. Researchers studied mineral deposits from such fluids and found surprising evidence of glacial retreat about 400,000 years ago. It was thought that the East Antarctic ice sheet had been stable for millions of years. Photograph by Terry Blackburn

During the 1980s, a scientist from Ohio State University collected hundreds of rocks from Elephant Moraine. Most were granites, sandstones, and basalts that formed before the ice sheet covered the continent. But among these, he found a few mysterious chunks of crystal, which sat in the collection for 30 years, until Blackburn read about them and acquired three from OSU’s Polar Rock Repository in 2019.

One of the rocks was especially striking, with paper-thin alternating bands of creamy-white opal and amber or black calcite stacked like tree rings throughout.

Blackburn chipped off individual layers and determined their ages by measuring their uranium-234 and another radioactive element, thorium-230, which the uranium decays into at a known rate. He found that the layers in the fist-sized rock had formed over a span of 120,000 years, starting about 270,000 years ago.

Next he measured the percentage of the lighter uranium-234 in each layer. He thought it would be constant from one layer to the next—because, he says, “there are these ideas that the East Antarctic ice sheet had been stable for millions of years.”

To his surprise, the crystals told him something very different: The amount of uranium-234 in successive layers actually grew by 50 percent. In the precise world of geochemistry, “this is a massive change,” says Blackburn. Two other layered crystals from Elephant Moraine showed similar results.

That finding could mean only one thing: The East Antarctic ice sheet had retreated more recently than anyone thought. When the ice disappeared, the water beneath it spilled into the ocean—resetting the amount of uranium-234 back down to a low level. Only after the ice sheet grew back did uranium-234 once again start to accumulate under it; it was that accumulation that was captured in the crystals.

This wasn’t a small retreat, either, says Tulaczyk. For seawater to approach Elephant Moraine, the ice would have had to retreat 400 miles from its present-day coastline. Elephant Moraine sits on the edge of a vast area, called Wilkes Basin, where the rocky, icy bed drops as far as 5,000 feet below sea level—exposing the ice to deep ocean currents that could have melted its underside.

Tulaczyk estimates that over an area of 115,000 square miles (about the size of Arizona), the ice sheet thinned by thousands of feet—until it peeled off its bed and floated on the ocean. Weakened, it couldn’t support as much ice upstream, and the Wilkes Basin lost more than 250,000 cubic miles of ice, enough to raise the sea level 10 to 13 feet.

It happened before

The new results fill in much-needed details, says Maureen Raymo, a marine geologist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in New York. She studies ancient shorelines around the world that now sit high above the waves, complete with sand, shells, and fossil shrimp burrows. Those shorelines show multiple times when sea levels were higher in the past, including 400,000 years ago, when she estimates that they peaked somewhere between 33 and 42 feet higher than today’s levels.

Greenland, West Antarctica, and other glaciers globally might contribute 30 feet of rise if they melted. Adding another 10 to 13 feet from the Wilkes Basin in East Antarctica “is completely consistent” with those estimates, says Raymo.

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First Active Leak Of Sea-Bed Methane Discovered In Antarctica

The Guardian - 

Researchers say potent climate-heating gas almost certainly escaping into atmosphere

An image of the sea floor at the Cinder Cones dive site in Antarctica’s McMurdo Sound. The white patches indicate the presence of microbes feeding on methane as it seeps to the surface. Photograph: Andrew Thurber/Oregon State University

The first active leak of methane from the sea floor in Antarctica has been revealed by scientists.

The researchers also found microbes that normally consume the potent greenhouse gas before it reaches the atmosphere had only arrived in small numbers after five years, allowing the gas to escape.

Vast quantities of methane are thought to be stored under the sea floor around Antarctica. The gas could start to leak as the climate crisis warms the oceans, a prospect the researchers said was “incredibly concerning”.

The reason for the emergence of the new seep remains a mystery, but it is probably not global heating, as the Ross Sea where it was found has yet to warm significantly. The research also has significance for climate models, which currently do not account for a delay in the microbial consumption of escaping methane.

The active seep was first spotted by chance by divers in 2011, but it took scientists until 2016 to return to the site and study it in detail, before beginning laboratory work.

“The delay [in methane consumption] is the most important finding,” said Andrew Thurber, from Oregon State University in the US, who led the research. “It is not good news. It took more than five years for the microbes to begin to show up and even then there was still methane rapidly escaping from the sea floor.”

The release of methane from frozen underwater stores or permafrost regions is one of the key tipping points that scientists are concerned about, which occur when a particular impact of global heating becomes unstoppable.

“The methane cycle is absolutely something that we as a society need to be concerned about,” said Thurber. “I find it incredibly concerning.”

Very little was known about the Antarctic methane cycle but the good news, he said, was that the new seep provided a natural laboratory for further research.

Why the new seep formed is unknown. “That is a mystery that we still do not have an answer to,” Thurber said. “It is on the side of an active volcano but it doesn’t seem like it came from that.”

Prof Jemma Wadham, at the University of Bristol, UK, who was not involved in the study, said: “Antarctica and its ice sheet are huge black holes in our understanding of Earth’s methane cycle – they are difficult places to work.

“We think that there is likely [to be] significant methane beneath the ice sheet,” she said. “The big question is: how large is the lag [in methane-consuming microbes] compared with the speed at which new leaks of methane might potentially form in the wake of retreating ice?”

The research, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, reports the discovery of the methane seep at a 10-metre (30ft) deep site known as Cinder Cones in McMurdo Sound. It is a 70-metre long patch of white microbial mats, and a second seep was found during the 2016 expedition.

“We stumbled upon the methane seep at a site that has been dived at since the 1960s and it had just turned on,” said Thurber. There were no bubbles of methane, he said. “Most of the methane in many seeps actually comes out in what we call diffuse flows. So it’s just dissolved in the water.”

The source of the methane is probably decaying algae deposits buried under sediments and is likely to be thousands of years old. In most parts of the oceans, methane leaking from the sea bed is consumed by microbes in the sediment or the water column above. But the slow growth of microbes at the Cinder Cones site, and its shallow depth, means methane is almost certain to be leaking into the atmosphere.

Thurber said the first microbes to grow at the site were of an unexpected strain. “We’re probably in a successional stage, where it may be five to 10 years before a community becomes fully adapted and starts consuming methane.”

Widespread active methane seepage was reported off the sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia in 2014, a first for the Southern Ocean. “But that’s really a different oceanographic area than the Antarctic continent,” Thurber said.

Wadham said the five years for which the Cinder Cones seep has been studied is a short amount of time. “So it would be good to see what happens to this seep into the future. The discovery also makes you wonder if these features are more common than we might think around Antarctica, but are rarely stumbled upon.”

However, the researchers are unlikely to be able to return to Antarctica soon. The continent is currently free of coronavirus but the risk of infection has disrupted expedition plans.

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(AU) Australia Wants To Build A Huge Concrete Runway In Antarctica. Here’s Why That’s A Bad Idea

The Conversation -  | 

AAD

Authors
  •  is a University Associate, University of Tasmania
  •  is an Adjunct Senior Lecturer, University of Tasmania
Australia wants to build a 2.7-kilometre concrete runway in Antarctica, the world’s biggest natural reserve. The plan, if approved, would have the largest footprint of any project in the continent’s history.

The runway is part of an aerodrome to be constructed near Davis Station, one of Australia’s three permanent bases in Antarctica. It would be the first concrete runway on the continent.

The plan is subject to federal environmental approval. It coincides with new research published this week showing Antarctica’s wild places need better protection. Human activity across Antarctica has been extensive in the past 200 years – particularly in the coastal, ice-free areas where most biodiversity is found.

The area around Davis Station is possibly Antarctica’s most significant coastal, ice-free area. It features unique lakes, fjords, fossil sites and wildlife.

Australia has successfully operated Davis Station since 1957 with existing transport arrangements. While the development may win Australia some strategic influence in Antarctica, it’s at odds with our strong history of environmental leadership in the region.

The Vestfold Hills, the proposed site of the aerodrome. Nick Roden

Year-round access

The Australian Antarctic Division (AAD), a federal government agency, argues the runway would allow year-round aviation access between Hobart and Antarctica.

Presently, the only Australian flights to Antarctica take place at the beginning and end of summer. Aircraft land at an aerodrome near the Casey research station, with interconnecting flights to other stations and sites on the continent. The stations are inaccessible by both air and ship in winter.

The AAD says year-round access to Antarctica would provide significant science benefits, including:
  • better understanding sea level rise and other climate change impacts
  • opportunities to study wildlife across the annual lifecycle of key species including krill, penguins, seals and seabirds
  • allowing scientists to research through winter.
Leading international scientists had called for improved, environmentally responsible access to Antarctica to support 21st-century science. However, the aerodrome project is likely to reduce access for scientists to Antarctica for years, due to the need to house construction workers.

Australia says the runway would have significant science benefits. Australian Antarctic Division





Australia: an environmental leader?

Australia has traditionally been considered an environmental leader in Antarctica. For example, in 1989 under the Hawke government, it urged the world to abandon a mining convention in favour of a new deal to ban mining on the continent.

Australia’s 20 Year Action Plan promotes “leadership in environmental stewardship in Antarctica”, pledging to “minimise the environmental impact of Australia’s activities”.

But the aerodrome proposal appears at odds with that goal. It would cover 2.2 square kilometres, increasing the total “disturbance footprint” of all nations on the continent by 40%. It would also mean Australia has the biggest footprint of any nation, overtaking the United States.

The contribution of disturbance footprint from countries in Antarctica measured from Brooks et al. 2019, with Australia’s share increasing to 35% including the aerodrome proposal. Shaun Brooks



Within this footprint, environmental effects will also be intense. Construction will require more than three million cubic metres of earthworks - levelling 60 vertical metres of hills and valleys along the length of the runway. This will inevitably cause dust emissions – on the windiest continent on Earth - and the effect of this on plants and animals in Antarctica is poorly understood.

Wilson’s storm petrels that nest at the site will be displaced. Native lichens, fungi and algae will be destroyed, and irreparable damage is expected at adjacent lakes.

Weddell seals breed within 500 metres of the proposed runway site. Federal environment officials recognise the dust from construction and subsequent noise from low flying aircraft have the potential to disturb these breeding colonies.

The proposed area is also important breeding habitat for Adélie penguins. Eight breeding sites in the region are listed as “important bird areas”. Federal environment officials state the penguins are likely to be impacted by human disturbance, dust, and noise from construction of the runway, with particular concern for oil spills and aircraft operations.

The summer population at Davis Station will need to almost double from 120 to 250 during construction. This will require new, permanent infrastructure and increase the station’s fuel and water consumption, and sewage discharged into the environment.

The AAD has proposed measures to limit environmental damage. These include gathering baseline data (against which to measure the project’s impact), analysing potential effects on birds and marine mammals and limiting disturbance where practicable.

But full details won’t be provided until later in the assessment process. We expect Australia will implement these measures to a high standard, but they will not offset the project’s environmental damage.

An Adélie penguin colony near Davis Station. Nick Roden





Playing politics

So given the environmental concern, why is Australia so determined to build the aerodrome? We believe the answer largely lies in Antarctic politics.

Australian officials have said the project would “contribute to both our presence and influence” on the continent. Influence in Antarctica has traditionally corresponded to the strength of a nation’s scientific program, its infrastructure presence and engagement in international decision-making.

Australia is a well-regarded member of the Antarctic Treaty. It was an original signatory and claims sovereignty over 42% of the continent. It also has a solid physical and scientific presence, maintaining three large year-round research stations.

But other nations are also vying for influence. China is constructing its fifth research station. New Zealand is planning a NZ$250 million upgrade to Scott Base. And on King George Island, six stations have been built within a 5km radius, each run by different nations. This presence is hard to justify on the basis of scientific interest alone.

A Weddell seal and her pup near Davis Station. Nick Roden

Getting our priorities straight

We believe there are greater and more urgent opportunities for Australia to assert its leadership in Antarctica.

For example both Casey and Mawson stations – Australia’s two other permanent bases – discharge sewage into the pristine marine environment with little treatment. And outdated fuel technology at Australia’s three stations regularly causes diesel spills.

At Wilkes station, which Australia abandoned in the 1960s, thousands of tonnes of contaminants have been left behind.

Australia should fix such problems before adding more potentially damaging infrastructure. This would meet our environmental treaty obligations and show genuine Antarctic leadership.

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23/07/2020

Greta Thunberg Gives €1m Award Money To Climate Groups

The Guardian - AFP

Influential climate campaigner says Gulbenkian rights award gave her ‘more money than I can begin to imagine’

Climate campaigner Greta Thunberg won the Gulbenkian prize for humanity on Monday. Photograph: Mattias Osterlund/AP

Greta Thunberg has been awarded a Portuguese rights award and promptly pledged the €1m ($US1.15m) prize to groups working to protect the environment and halt climate change.

“That is more money than I can begin to imagine, but all the prize money will be donated, through my foundation, to different organisations and projects who are working to help people on the front line, affected by the climate crisis and ecological crisis,” the Swedish teenager said in a video posted online on Monday.


She was awarded the Gulbenkian prize for humanity for the way she “has been able to mobilise younger generations for the cause of climate change and her tenacious struggle to alter a status quo that persists”, Jorge Sampaio, chair of the prize jury, said earlier.

The first €100,000 of the prize money will go to the “SOS Amazonia” campaign led by Fridays For Future Brazil to tackle the coronavirus outbreak in the Amazon.

Another €100,000 will go to the Stop Ecocide Foundation “to support their work to make ecocide an international crime”, Thunberg said on Twitter.



The €1m is the largest prize won by the 17-year-old environmental campaigner who has also won Amnesty International’s top human rights prize and the Swedish Right Livelihood Award, often presented as an alternative Nobel.

She said on Monday she was “extremely honoured” to receive the annual Gulbenkian prize.

Thunberg and three other young climate activists on Thursday launched an appeal to EU leaders to “face up to the climate emergency”, in an open letter signed by 150 scientists and a host of celebrities.

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(AU) 'World-First' Legal Case: Student Accuses Australia Of Misleading Investors On Climate Risk

The Guardian - 

Katta O’Donnell, 23, says her claim will put government ‘on trial for misconduct’ for failing to address climate change

Katta O’Donnell, a law student who has filed a legal claim against the Australian government over its failure to disclose the risks posed by climate change. Photograph: Molly Townsend

A Melbourne university student has launched what has been described as a world-first legal case against the Australian government, accusing it of misleading investors in sovereign bonds by failing to disclose the financial risk caused by the climate crisis.

In a claim filed in the federal court on Tuesday, Katta O’Donnell, a fifth-year law student at La Trobe University, said the government was breaching a legal duty and deceiving investors by not informing them upfront of the climate risk they face.

Climate risk refers to assessments of the expected impact of the climate crisis on investments, including the likelihood that fossil fuel investments will lose value and potentially become stranded as the world reduces greenhouse gas emissions.

The Reserve Bank of Australia and the country’s corporate and financial regulators have warned that climate change exposes the economy and financial system to risks that will get worse if action is not taken.

O’Donnell’s case, backed by David Barnden of Equity Generation Lawyers, argues that the government and its officials have failed in their duty of care by not taking climate change into account when doing their job.

The student said the case had been developed after she introduced herself to Barnden when he gave a lecture at La Trobe on climate risk last year. She said it would put the government “on trial for misconduct” for failing to deal responsibly with the climate crisis.

“I’m 23, I look to the future and I can definitely see that climate change is here and is going to get worse,” O’Donnell said. “It’s time the government told the public about the impact climate change will have on our future and the economy.”

She said young Australians owned bonds through their superannuation funds but were in the dark about government assessments of the climate risk their investment faced. Sovereign bonds are issued by governments to fund spending. Australia’s are worth more than $700bn, mostly held by central banks and pension funds.

“While the current government will be long out of power by the time we can access this money, our financial security … will bear the brunt of its climate legacy,” O’Donnell said.

Barnden said he believed it was the first case that dealt with climate change as a material risk to the global sovereign bond market. 

He said the risk was increasingly being recognised by institutional investors, pointing to the Swedish central bank last year selling bonds from Western Australia, Queensland and the oil-rich Canadian province of Alberta due to their failure to do more to address climate change.

“Australia is on the frontline of sovereign climate risk,” Barnden said. “We confront the harrowing physical impacts of drought and bushfires and we also face the financial risks of an economy over-exposed to fossil fuels being left behind as the world shifts to clean energy.”

He said the legal claim had been filed after he wrote to the government on O’Donnell’s behalf asking for it to change its disclosure policy. O’Donnell is also represented by the barrister and former federal court judge Ron Merkel QC.

The government had not responded publicly at the time of publication.

Rob Henderson, a former National Australia Bank markets chief economist, now an economics and financial consultant, said it was a “really interesting claim”.

He said there had been a significant shift in thinking over the past decade that had accelerated after the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority warned in 2017 that it was not safe for companies to ignore climate risks. He said Australia’s major banks now all published annual climate reports and issued green bonds.

“In some ways I’m surprised this claim hasn’t been brought earlier, and the commonwealth hasn’t taken the initiative in laying out how it would do this properly,” Henderson said. “It’s an anomaly in our current financial system.”

Apra is developing a climate risk variability assessment for investors based on scenarios published by the Network for Greening the Financial System, a collection of 66 central banks, including the Reserve Bank of Australia. The assessment was expected to be finished by September but has been delayed by the Covid-19 shutdown.

The scenarios included an estimate that global GDP could fall by 25% this century if the world did not act to reduce emissions.

The Morrison government has set a 2030 climate target of a 26% to 28% cut in emissions by 2030 – less than scientists say is necessary to play its part under the Paris agreement. It is resisting a global push to set a goal of net zero emissions by mid-century.

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(AU) Review Of Australia’s Hopeless Environmental Laws Completely Ignores Climate Change

RenewEconomy - 



A review of Australia’s primary environmental law has delivered a well reported and damning assessment of its effectiveness, or lack of it. But perhaps its greatest failure is that it completely ignores the impacts of climate change on the Australian environment.

The interim findings of a review of the federal Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (EPBC Act), being undertaken by former ACCC chair and professorial fellow at the Monash Business School Graeme Samuel, were published on Monday, detailing how Australia’s environment is on an “unsustainable” trajectory.

The review found Australia’s environmental laws are ineffective, and “do not enable the Commonwealth to play its role in protecting and conserving environmental matters that are important for the nation.”

“It is not fit to address current or future environmental challenges,” the report says.

However, while the report has flagged a range of possible reforms to Australia’s environmental laws, it has stopped short of recommending that climate change considerations are incorporated as part of Australia’s environmental laws.

Climate change was ignored by the review, and it appears the EPBC Act will continue to lack any consideration of the contributions that projects like coal and gas developments can have on global warming, nor will the environmental laws consider the need to address climate adaptation measures.

Greenpeace Australia campaigner Jonathan Moylan told RenewEconomy that climate change was already causing damage vulnerable part’s of Australia’s ecosystems and that it was imperative that Australia’s core environmental law was responsive to the impacts of global warming.

Moylan added that it was disappointing to see climate change ignored, given the clear impacts it has had on the Australian environment in recent times.

“Species extinction, habitat destruction, and the repeat mass bleachings of the Great Barrier Reef are monuments to the failure of the Environment Protection Biodiversity and Conservation Act,” Moylan said.

“However, as it stands the government’s response to the review will fail to stem and indeed exacerbate the tide of threats to biodiversity, air, water and the climate. It is extraordinary that after a summer of deadly bushfires we still have no mention of the biggest threat to biodiversity – climate change – in our main national environmental law.”

“We need a new generation of environmental laws that are effective in protecting nature, governed by an independent, transparent and accountable regulator and access to justice,” Moylan added.

The review of the EPBC Act was commissioned by federal environment minister Sussan Ley, who expressed a desire to see the obligations imposed by the EPBC Act wound back in an effort to reduce “green tape”.

In launching the review, Ley indicated the Morrison government wants to see the EPBC Act amended to reduce the opportunity for environmental groups to use the Act as the basis for legal challenges, with a range of project developers, particularly those in the fossil fuel industries, complaining of “environmental lawfare”.

“This is our chance to ensure the right protection for our environment while also unlocking job-creating projects to strengthen our economy and improve the livelihoods of every-day Australians. We can do both as part of the Australian Government’s COVID recovery plan,” Ley said.

While the review did not seek to expand the scope of the environmental protections provided by the EPBC Act, it found the laws were ineffective and inefficient, and that they failed to deliver meaningful protections of Australia’s vulnerable environmental systems.

“Australia’s natural environment and iconic places are in an overall state of decline and are under increasing threat. The current environmental trajectory is unsustainable,” the report says.

“The EPBC Act is ineffective. It does not enable the Commonwealth to protect and conserve environmental matters that are important for the nation. It is not fit to address current or future environmental challenges,” Samuel added.

In many ways, the findings of the review are perplexing, as they identify many of the shortcomings of the existing EPBC Act, but mostly offers recommendations for how the scope of protections established by the act can be narrowed.

One notable example is the approach the review has taken to consideration of groundwater protections that apply to proposals for new coal and gas projects.

There had been calls to loosen the environmental laws for coal and gas projects, particularly concerning the “water trigger” which requires the federal government to consider the impacts of coal and gas projects on water resources before awarding approval for a project.

The review has resisted the calls to abolish the “water trigger” altogether, but said that its application should be limited to situations where impacts of coal and gas projects on water resources present a risk to threatened species, world heritage sites and wetlands of international significance, or where there are issues that cross state borders.

The regulation of more general impacts on water resources should be handed back to state governments, the review recommended.

Such suggestions have been deeply criticised by environmental groups, which say state governments lack the ability to consider environmental issues of national concern.

“The review outlines the catastrophic impact of twenty years of failure in Australia’s environment laws, impacts that have been in plain sight throughout the operation of the EPBC Act. This is a law that was introduced by a Coalition Government and administered by Coalition governments for 14 of those 20 years,” The Wilderness Society’s Suzanne Milthorpe said

“Now this Coalition Government is asking us to trust them on immediately handing environmental safeguards to the states while promising at some time in the future to make changes of an ill-defined nature to improve environmental standards.”

The EPBC review will continue to receive submissions on the interim findings and is expected to be delivered in October.

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22/07/2020

(AU) Climate Council Unveils Plan To Create 76,000 Jobs In Three Years

The New Daily - Cait Kelly
The government could create 76,000 jobs if it focused on 12 policy areas. Photo: Getty

The federal government could create 76,000 jobs within three years if it invests more in renewables, a new report has found.

After a second wave of infections dashed hopes of a rapid economic recovery, the Climate Council has urged the government to invest in sustainable projects that rebuild employment.

In conjunction with economic consultants AlphaBeta, the Climate Council has released a 12-point plan to create 76,000 jobs while slashing emissions – recommending everything from restoring ecosystems to retrofitting public buildings.

“The opportunities identified in our modelling work are shovel ready,” AlphaBeta director Andrew Charlton said.

“One-third of the jobs would require less than 12 months of retraining, meaning that workers who lost their jobs because of the COVID-19 crisis could be rapidly employed.

“The job creation could start immediately and continue over three years. Federal, state and territory governments all have the opportunity to put these measures in train.”

Dr Charlton added: “Australia has seen steep job losses throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. But with the right policy measures, thousands of jobs could be created in large-scale renewable energy, ecosystem restoration and the collection and processing of organic waste.”

By targeting 12 policy areas, state and federal governments could create employment for communities hit hardest by the COVID-19 economic crisis.



The 12 areas include large-scale projects such as installing wind and solar and investing in pilot-scale green hydrogen, as well as more localised initiatives such as accelerating construction of public transport and increasing the amount of tree canopy cover in urban areas.

“Proposed policy opportunities build on existing capabilities in Australia’s renewable energy, agricultural services, construction and professional services sectors,” the report said.

“The 12 policy opportunities could generate 76,000 job openings over three years. Large-scale infrastructure projects are expected to create the most jobs.

“These include utility-scale renewable energy, public transport and organic (food and garden) waste management.

“Smaller-scale options, such as research, training and select community-scale projects, will create jobs rapidly while also meeting long-term objectives of reducing emissions and developing new industries.

“Job creation would begin immediately and continue throughout the three-year period.”

Climate Council CEO Amanda McKenzie said the report is designed to act as a blueprint for all governments.

“This is a guide for governments of all levels to say here is 12 high-priority opportunities to get people into jobs. We have identified in the report the opportunities for each state and territory,” she told The New Daily. 

“We hope it’s a clear and easy-to-use plan that can be taken off the shelf and put in practice.”

Ms McKenzie said the plan would create jobs, cut energy bills and reduce Australia’s emissions.

And she said taxpayers wouldn’t have to foot the entire bill, as private investors have a big appetite for investment in renewables.

“We know renewable energy is the cheapest source of power. It can attract the most private investment,” Ms McKenzie said.

“Where there’s a delay it’s because of ideology or old assumptions and we need to sweep those away.

“We’ve just gone through an experience where Australians worked together and trusted the science and experts. If we listen to the experts on this, it will have huge potential benefits. We can get people into jobs.”

Greg Bourne, Climate Councillor and former president of BP Australasia, said Australia needed to take urgent action.

“The latest modelling shows worse case, by 2100, we could be seven degrees hotter,” he said.

“The urgency of the moment is tackling COVID-19, and we must tackle it for our families and friends, but it will pass.

“With climate change, we have been sewing the seeds over the last 30 years. In doing very little, we must accelerate like mad if we want to avoid the [damage that] we’ve sewn.

“We have this opportunity to spur our investment in a future that will help us anyway, but will also lower emissions.”

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Lethal Heating is a citizens' initiative