02/12/2020

The Ministry For The Future: A Novel By Kim Stanley Robinson

 Yale Climate Connections - 

Readers will develop a better understanding of the puzzle humanity must confront to meet challenges of climate change.

Kim Stanley Robinson inset photo: Gage Skidmore
Author
Michael Svoboda Ph.D. is an Asst. Professor of Writing in the University Writing Program at George Washington University. In his writing classes he alternates between the related themes of communicating climate change and political psychology.
In The Ministry for the Future, his twentieth novel, science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson creates something truly remarkable: a credible, very-near future in which humans effectively solve the problem of climate change.

Climate lukewarmers may be tempted to interpret this upbeat summary as support for their technological optimism. That would be a mistake. Though it ends well, the story Robinson tells is harrowing.

That story starts in January 2025 in Bogota, Colombia, at the 29th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Frustrated by their failure to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement, representatives of the 189 ratifying countries form a new sub-agency “to advocate for the world’s future generations of citizens” and “to defend all living creatures present and future who cannot speak for themselves.” Although it is given a large budget for a UN agency, The Ministry for the Future, as it comes to be known, can achieve these lofty objectives only by leveraging its influence.

Just six months later a heat wave strikes Uttar Pradesh, the state along India’s border with Nepal. Not an uncommon occurrence. This time, however, instead of tempering after a few weeks, the wave intensifies. Night brings no relief. A young American aid worker, Frank May, does what he can to help, inviting his neighbors into his air-conditioned offices to cool themselves. Then the power goes out. Then the agency’s generator and window units are stolen by a gang of armed young men who curse Frank for the West’s pillaging of their country and of the planet’s climate.

The only way to cool off now is a plunge into the lake at the edge of town. By immersing themselves in its waters, they hope, they can escape the pulsing heat of the air. Instead the water feels like a hot bath. But having stepped into it, they now feel too weak and too muddled to step out.

The heat wave kills millions – in a fortnight. (If that seems incredible, consider that the temperature and humidity levels Robinson imagines are only modestly worse than the levels India actually experienced in 2019.) The 1.3 billion Indians who survive to witness this climatic atrocity are shaken – and outraged.

Robinson has long made a point of expanding the political geography of science fiction and cli-fi. The Arab world played a key role in his Mars trilogy. Nepal and Bangladesh provided political counterpoints in his Science in the Capital trilogy. And China shared the top billing with the United States in Robinson’s 2018 novel Red Moon. In Ministry, India has its turn.

The heatwave sparks a political upheaval, forcing old parties out of power and western corporations out of the country. India decides to conduct a geoengineering exercise to reduce the amount of sunlight heating the subcontinent, an operation its military carries out proudly and publicly. In secret, however, another group of Indians seeks to avenge the deaths of their innocent compatriots and to change the calculus of global capitalism. The eager recruits of the Children of Kali, a group named after Hinduism’s goddess of death and destruction, become the world’s newest, and most determined, eco-terrorists.

In Robinson’s  new ‘Ministry’ novel, different chains of choices point humanity in new directions … and ultimately to health and happiness.

In Zurich, Mary Murphy, the Irish ex-diplomat who runs the Ministry, looks for ways to shape and direct the instabilities created by India’s public and covert actions. Now, on page 27 of this 563-page book, the real plot begins, a plot that entwines the lives of the Irish director of the Ministry and the traumatized American aid worker who survived the Indian heat wave.

No one event or action changes the world in this novel, not even the deaths of millions; rather it is the different sequences of choices that nudge humans, individually and collectively, in new directions. The first choices force the next choices. The Ministry succeeds when it finds subtle ways to tip the scales toward the more sustainable options.

Robinson’s account of these decades of change resembles the selective public memory of the civil rights era, in which the non-violent protests of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the kindred groups around him take center stage while black power organizations and activists, like Malcolm X, are usually consigned to the margins.

In The Ministry for the Future, acts of eco-terrorism are clearly major drivers of the changes that first slow and then halt the centuries-long rise in greenhouse gas emissions, but Robinson keeps these actors offstage. The results of their actions – bombed power plants, downed jetliners, infected CAFOs – are reported third hand, in brief summaries of newscasts. Although each of these daring actions could be the plot of a thriller, Robinson does not spin out their stories, likely because he does not want to valorize violence even when it’s clearly necessary to his plot.

For reasons that are less clear, the protagonists, too, are often kept at a distance, presented in abbreviated form in minutes from meetings or in surveillance reports.

And then there are the digressions. Many of the book’s 106 chapters are devoted to such technical topics as the history of central banking, modern monetary theory, the Gini index, blockchain technology, Mondragon, carbon taxes, clean energy technologies, Jevon’s Paradox, different forms of geoengineering, population biology, and wildlife corridors.

With these many different pieces, Robinson assembles a Rube Goldbergian machine for social change that ultimately delivers the goods: a more equitable social economy and a more stable climate, one in which CO2 levels are actually falling from the peak level (478 ppm) reached in the 2040s. The Ministry finally achieves its goals when complex, interconnected social and economic processes are repurposed to direct power and money away from the production of fossil fuels, away the conspicuous consumption – and waste – of other goods, and toward health, human interconnection, and happiness.

The Ministry for the Future, then, is both an optimistic and a difficult work. Morally difficult for the role it envisions for violence, and sometimes a slow read for the many complex topics that must be explained along the way. But precisely because of the extra effort required, readers will finish Ministry with a clearer view of the big picture and a much better understanding of the many different pieces humanity must puzzle together to meet the challenge of climate change.

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European States Ordered To Respond To Youth Activists' Climate Lawsuit

The Guardian - 

European court of human rights case could result in countries being bound to take greater action

A firefighter tries to extinguish flames in Leiria, Portugal, during the 2017 wildfires. Four of the youth applicants are from Leiria, one of the worst-hit areas. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

The European court of human rights has ordered 33 European governments to respond to a landmark climate lawsuit lodged by six youth campaigners, the Guardian has learned.

The plaintiffs’ British barrister says it could be the most important case ever tried by the Strasbourg-based judges.

In a sign of the urgency of the climate crisis, the court will announce on Monday that it has green-lighted the crowdfunded case, which was filed two months ago. It has already confirmed it will be treated as a priority, which means the process will be fast-tracked.

The states – the EU27 plus Norway, Russia, Switzerland, the UK, Turkey and Ukraine – are obliged to respond by 23 February to the complaints of the plaintiffs, who say governments are moving too slowly to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that are destabilising the climate.

If the defendant countries fail to convince the Strasbourg-based judges, lawyers say they will be legally bound to take more ambitious steps and to address the contribution they – and multinational companies headquartered in their jurisdictions – make to overseas emissions through trade, deforestation and extractive industries.

“It is no exaggeration to say that this could be the most important case ever tried by the European court of human rights,” said Marc Willers QC, who is representing the young plaintiffs.

He said the onus was on the 33 governments. “We know they are not yet doing enough and the court’s decision to give the case priority status will add to the ever-growing pressure on European governments to act on the science and take the necessary steps to tackle climate change.”

The plaintiffs – four children and two young adults from Portugal – argue tougher climate action is needed to safeguard their future physical and mental wellbeing, to prevent discrimination against the young and protect their rights to exercise outdoors and live without anxiety.

The case was filed in September after Portugal recorded its hottest July in 90 years. It was initiated three years ago after devastating forest fires in Portugal that killed more than 120 people in 2017. Four of the plaintiffs are from Leiria, one of the worst-hit areas. The two other applicants live in Lisbon, which sweltered through record-breaking 44C (111F) heat in 2018.

Twelve-year-old André Oliveira, one of the youth applicants, said in a statement: “It gives me lots of hope to know that the judges in the European court of human rights recognise the urgency of our case. But what I’d like the most would be for European governments to immediately do what the scientists say is necessary to protect our future. Until they do this, we will keep on fighting with more determination than ever.”

The young applicants are being represented by British barristers, including Willers, who is an expert in environmental and climate change law, and supported by the London- and Dublin-based NGO Global Legal Action Network (Glan).

“These brave young people have cleared a major hurdle in their pursuit of a judgment which compels European governments to accelerate their climate mitigation efforts,” said Gerry Liston, Glan’s legal officer. “This comes just weeks ahead of the EU decision on its 2030 emissions target. Nothing less than a 65% reduction by 2030 will be enough for the EU member states to comply with their obligations to the youth applicants and indeed countless others.”

More than 1,300 climate-related lawsuits have been filed worldwide since 1990. The most successful so far was in the Netherlands, where the Urgenda Foundation forced the government into scaling back coal-fired power plants and taking other compliance measures worth about €3bn (£2.7bn).

The impact the Strasbourg judges could have is potentially greater as they sit on a standard-setting court and this case crosses multiple international boundaries.

The court has also taken the unusual step of expanding its consideration of the case by asking the 33 countries to explain whether their failure to tackle global heating violates article 3 of the European convention on human rights, which protects the right not to be subjected to ‘inhumane and degrading treatment’.

The Glan director, Gearóid Ó Cuinn, said he was encouraged by the judges’ sense of urgency. “As only a tiny minority of cases filed with the European court of human rights are fast-tracked and communicated, this development is highly significant. This is an appropriate response from the court given the scale and imminence of the threat these young people face from the climate emergency.”

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(AU) Bureau Of Meteorology Says The NT Experienced Its Hottest November In 100 Years

 ABC News - Dijana Damjanovic

The Northern Territory experienced its hottest November in more than 100 years. (ABC News: Michael Franchi)


Key points

  • Two high-pressure systems led to the past month's high temperatures
  • Rainfall was also below average due to a lack of cloud cover
  • The heat has particularly affected the Territory's vulnerable populations
The Northern Territory has sweltered through record-breaking November heat, recording daytime temperatures roughly 3.1 degrees Celsius above average.

It's the highest Northern Territory November average since records began in 1910.

In November 2019, the NT's monthly temperature was 2C above average — the fifth hottest and the third-driest on record.

This November, the hot air was dragged into the Territory by two high-pressure systems, which stayed consistent for most of the month.

"Basically the cause of the warm conditions right around the Territory has been twofold, one in the north which has been a ridge on the Queensland coast which has extended into the Top End and suppressed the showers and storm activity," said BOM senior forecaster Sally Cutter.

"Down through Central Australia, there's been troughs continually forming over WA and that's turned the winds northerly, it's just dragged that really hot air down through Central Australia."

Forecaster Sally Cutter say two high-pressure systems led to the past month's high temperatures. (ABC News: Erik Havnen)


Apart from small clusters in east and coastal parts of Arnhem Land, the entire Northern Territory also experienced above-average overnight temperatures.

Rainfall was also below average throughout the NT, except for a few regions south of the Top End and around Alice Springs, with November 2020 the eighth-lowest since records began.

"It sort of goes hand in hand, if you get those really hot temperatures, you need lack of cloud cover and therefore you get reduced amounts of rainfall," Ms Cutter said.

The lowest maximum temperature recorded at Darwin Airport was 31.9C on November 24 and its hottest was 37C on the 17th.

While in Alice Springs, the warmest daytime temperature came in at 43.5C on the 14th of November while its coolest was on the 16th when it was 28.9C.

Adam Thacker struggles to retain staff due to the hot working conditions associated with his landscaping business. (ABC News: Erik Havnen)


Total Yard and Garden Care director Adam Thacker says the hotter weather makes it hard to retain staff.

"I think the biggest thing is going to be trying to hire locals, because people from down south don't really last in the heat up here, we go through at least 20 workers a year," Mr Thacker said.

"I'm just sitting here trying to get workers, they might last a couple of days or they might do two weeks and then they burn out. They just can't handle the heat."

Vulnerable populations, such as the NT's homeless, have also been affected.

"We've had a number in the past week, our patrols had to deal with an incident on Friday afternoon that took them more than an hour, because someone had reacted because of the heat stress," said Robert Cooper, chief executive of Larrakia Nation.

"When the power was off, they had an old bloke collapsed in front of his accommodation," he said.

Robert Cooper CEO of Larrakia Nation, says their organisation is calling for donated water to hand out to people sleeping rough. (ABC News: Erik Havnen)
The Northern Territory has Australia's highest rate of homelessness, with figures from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare showing one in 26 people in the NT received help from support services in 2018-19 — well above the national rate of one in 86 people.

Larrakia Nation has daily contact with people sleeping rough on the street.

"We're trying to prepare them not only for the heat but also the potential of COVID-19, and having them understand that coming into the air conditioning [in shopping centres] is not always appropriate," Mr Robert Cooper said.

Mr Cooper said Larrakia Nation was in desperate need for donated water, so his staff could distribute it among rough sleepers.

"We are currently trying to find a way to get more water out to our clients, particularly out where they're camping," he said.

"So if there's anyone out there from the supermarkets who want to help, please get in touch."

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01/12/2020

(CA) The World's Major Climate Zones — Polar, Temperate And Tropical — Are Transforming As We Watch

CBC Canada - Amanda Buckiewicz, CBC Radio Quirks & Quarks

Several recent studies look at how climate change is redrawing the map

A firefighter watches as a wildfire burns in California. Wildfire intensity has increased in recent years, and researchers believe this is partly due to the dry, arid edges of the tropics stretching more towards the poles. (RINGO CHIU/AFP via Getty Images)

Beyond the receding glaciers and disappearing coastlines, several recent studies have taken a big picture view of how climate change is affecting the globe's major climate zones and has brought about alarming transformations.

Climate zones — like tropical, temperate or polar — represent more than just temperature; they represent water resources, vegetation, animal life and even where and how humans can live.

"Often in our community, we say climate is what you expect and weather is what you get. And in this case, it's almost like we don't really know what to expect anymore," climate researcher Laura Landrum told Quirks & Quarks producer Amanda Buckiewicz.

Climate Zones Audio 17:34

Over the years, scientists have painted a stark picture of how climate change is altering the world's biomes in a fundamental way. A global 2018 study published in the journal Science showed that every ecosystem on Earth could face a dramatic shift if climate change continues unabated. Now scientists are reporting those shifts are beginning to happen — and showing how much worse it could get if it goes unchecked.

The Arctic is transitioning to a new climate

A recent study published in the journal Nature says that the Arctic is beginning to shift into a new climate regime.

"The Arctic climate is changing very rapidly and extremely, so it's in a different climate, meaning that the statistics of it now are very different than they were in the 20th century," said Landrum, the lead author of the paper.

A guide walks along a winding channel carved by rushing water on the surface of the melting Longyearbreen glacier during a summer heat wave in Norway. A recent study shows that the Arctic is shifting into a new climate zone. (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
Using decades of observations in the Arctic, combined with models and computer simulations, Landrum was able to statistically define the boundaries of a supposedly "normal" Arctic climate. And this showed that current conditions are well beyond normal.

They looked at indicators like sea ice cover, surface temperature and days of rain, and found that the year-to-year fluctuations have now moved completely outside the bounds of natural variability. 

The researchers then projected the trajectory of these shifts out to the year 2100. They found that a new, largely unrecognizable Arctic will have emerged by then. It will be completely ice-free for three to four months of the year; fall and winter temperatures could be 16 C to 28 C warmer than they are now; and the rainy season would be extended by two to four months each year.

A climate regime like this has never seen before in human evolutionary history. 

"It usually takes thousands of years to make these changes, and it certainly has not warmed up on a planetary scale over the last several thousand years, as warm as we're seeing now," said Landrum.

The Tropics are expanding

Another study looked at how the Earth's tropics are expanding — and found that the ocean is to blame.

The tropics wrap around the globe closest to the equator and get the most direct sunlight throughout the year. The interior of the tropics is hot and lush, and home to the world's rainforests. However, the edges of the tropics — the subtropical region — is hot and dry, and is where many of the world's deserts can be found.

A 2006 study in the journal Science found that the tropics were expanding toward the poles, causing those dry, arid regions to spread. This has caused the paths of tropical storms to shift, and led to more severe droughts — and seasonal wildfires — around the Mediterranean and in California and Australia.

The remains of houses can be seen after a wildfire in California. (SAMUEL CORUM/AFP via Getty Images)

"Under an expanding tropic, the Sahara-like, desert-like climate will move toward the North, then the Mediterranean countries will have a serious problem of water resources. Portugal, Italy, Spain, Greece and Turkey will suffer more drought in the future," said Hu Yang, a climate scientist at the Alfred Wegner Institute.

Yang recently led a study looking at whether ocean circulation could be the cause of this expansion. 

By analyzing water temperatures in the major ocean currents as well as satellite observations of sea surface temperature, they discovered that excess heat build up in the ocean is what is driving the expansion of the tropics.

"When we found the answer of expanding topics, of course, we are very excited because we worked on this topic for more than five years," said Yang. "But on the other hand, we're also very sad because our result shows that expanding tropics are not some natural climate variability. It is really climate change."

Amazon rainforest could shift to a savannah

Another study found that shifting rainfall patterns in the tropics could see large parts of the Amazon rainforest shift into a drier, savannah-like ecosystem. 

"What we know is that the rainforest needs certain rainfall amounts to be sustained. And what happens with climate change is that the rainfall in Amazon decreases so much that you don't have a lot of areas with rainfall — about 2,000 millimetres — anymore, so you don't have a large zone with stable rainforest," said Lan Wang-Erlandsson, an author on the study.

Dead trees stand behind power lines in a recently degraded section of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil. A recent study suggests that decreasing rainfall in the Amazon could see more of it turning into a savannah-like ecosystem. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)

The study, which was produced by the Stockholm Resilience Centre, looked at current rainfall levels, and found that they could support either a savannah or a rainforest ecosystem. But the team also looked ahead to the end of the century, and found that if greenhouse gas emissions remain at their current rate and rainfall levels continue to fall, by the end of the century the Amazon rainforest could shrink by 66 per cent, as vast swaths shift into open forest and grassland. 

Wang-Erlandsson cautions that while these results may seem catastrophic, they're not set in stone yet.

"What we show is this scenario of severe climate change. We don't have to head toward this severe climate scenario," she said.

"We can see where we could be heading if we don't do anything; that is what is at stake. That's a cost of inaction, but also that we still have that space for action, I think."

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Sydney Records Hottest November Night As Heatwave Sweeps City

Phys.org - AFP

A fiery sunset over the Members' Stand during the one-day cricket match between India and Australia at the Sydney Cricket Ground in the sweltering city.

Sydney recorded its hottest November night as Australia's largest city suffered through a weekend heatwave that saw daytime temperatures peak above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit).

The overnight did not drop below 25.3 degrees Celsius Saturday into Sunday in central Sydney, according to the meteorology bureau, making it the hottest November night since records began.

The temperature had already hit a scorching 30 degrees Celsius by 4:30 am Sunday, before reaching above 40 degrees for the second consecutive day.

"New South Wales is in the midst of a severe heatwave with very warm conditions already being experienced yesterday, and today being a repeat of some of those conditions," said the Bureau of Meteorology's Agata Imielska.

Daytime records for November fell elsewhere in Australia's southeast, with the outback towns of Griffith and Mildura reaching 43.2 and 45.7 degrees Celsius respectively on Saturday.

The heatwave saw bans on lighting fires imposed across large swathes of New South Wales (NSW) state, which was badly hit by catastrophic bushfires during the last southern hemisphere summer.

A number of blazes broke out Sunday, including one on Sydney's western outskirts that the NSW Fire and Rescue Service said damaged a property.

More than 60 bushfires were still burning across the state, but most had been brought under control by firefighters as a southerly wind change led to a rapid drop in temperatures.

It was the first burst of significant activity since the devastating 2019-2020 fires, which burned an area roughly the size of the United Kingdom and left 33 people dead as tens of thousands fled their homes.

The fire season also killed or displaced nearly three billion animals and cost the economy an estimated US$7 billion.

The latest comes just two weeks after government scientists warned the fossil-fuel reliant country should brace for worse to come, predicting climate change will continue to exacerbate bushfires, droughts and cyclones in Australia.

Conservative Prime Minister Scott Morrison has repeatedly played down the link between climate change and the bushfires, and has committed to keeping Australia as one of the world's leading fossil fuel exporters.

But Australians are increasingly concerned about , with a recent poll by Sydney's Lowy Institute showing almost 90 percent believing it is a critical or important threat.

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(AU) Charities Commission Warns Australian Conservation Foundation Over Angus Taylor Open Letter

The Guardian - 

Exclusive: ACF has been cautioned its charity status prevents it ‘opposing a political candidate’ over letter calling out climate change inaction

The Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission has issued a warning to the ACF about its open letter urging Scott Morrison to remove Angus Taylor from the emissions reduction portfolio. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP
The Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission has fired a warning shot at the Australian Conservation Foundation, asking the environment group to “immediately read the guide on political advocacy” and consider withdrawing an open letter of complaint about Angus Taylor’s lack of action on climate change.

In correspondence seen by Guardian Australia, the ACNC has expressed objection to a climate change open letter to Scott Morrison published in early November on the ACF’s website.

The document was signed by the ACF as well as by thousands of doctors and health and medical professionals. The material also ran as an advertisement in the Australian newspaper.

The open letter brokered by the ACF urges Morrison to remove Taylor from the emissions reduction portfolio because he is “failing in his ministerial duties in three critical ways”.

The three ways specified in the open letter were:

  • continuing to “allocate public money to gas and other polluting fossil fuel projects while overseeing a nationwide 50% decline in large-scale renewables investment from a record high in financial year 2018-19”;
  • “failing to reduce Australia’s emissions in line with our international obligations”; and
  • failing “to commit Australia to a 2050 net zero emissions target, isolating the federal government from its state counterparts, business, farmers, and civil society and Australia from the international community”.

The ACNC’s compliance division contacted the ACF in writing on 13 November. The charities watchdog told the ACF it had “come to [their] attention” that the organisation “has been engaging in activities that appear to be opposing a political candidate”.

Guardian Australia understands some other groups involved in crafting the open letter have also been approached by the commission.

The ACNC told the ACF: “While a registered charity can advocate issues that relate to its charitable purpose, it cannot have the purpose of promoting or opposing a political party or a candidate.

“This is not limited to candidates during election periods – it includes current members of parliament.”

The ACF has rejected that assessment and has told the commission there is no justifiable basis for the climate change open letter to be withdrawn.

The chief executive officer of the ACF, Kelly O’Shanassy, has told the commission the open letter was entirely “an exercise in advocacy in furtherance of the charitable purpose of ACF”.

O’Shanassy points out that the ACF is a charity registered for the advancement of the natural environment.

“ACF regularly undertakes advocacy in relation to climate change and, in particular, preventing catastrophic climate change on the scale that would destroy rather than protect our natural environment,” the ACF chief says in a letter back to the commission on 27 November.

“As a charity for the advancement of the natural environment it is of course entirely appropriate for ACF to make public comment about whether the minister for emissions reduction is succeeding at reducing Australia’s emissions of harmful greenhouse gasses.

“All such commentary is wholly in line with our charitable purpose.”

The ACF notes the open letter makes no mention of any political party, and it points out that Taylor is a sitting member of parliament, not a candidate for political office.

“In calling for minister Taylor to be removed from his ministerial position, the ACF makes no comment about whether he should remain as a member of parliament,” O’Shanassy said, adding the letter “relates only to minister Taylor’s role as minister for emissions reduction”.

The ACF says it believes it is fully compliant with the requirements.

But the commission has warned the ACF “entitlement to registration as a charity is based on continued compliance with the obligations under the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission Act 2012 (ACNC Act) and Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission Act Regulation 2013 (Regulation).

“It is important that Australian Conservation Foundation Incorporated ensures its activities are furthering its charitable purposes and that the board is exercising its powers and duties with reasonable care expected of it.”

Charities are allowed to take part in public debate, and oppose or support policies, laws, or government practices, as long as it is relevant to their charitable purpose. But they are not allowed to directly promote or oppose a political party or a candidate running for office.

The commission warned publicly in 2017 it would crack down on improper political advocacy in the sector, citing a growing number of complaints about charities – which benefit from significant tax concessions – engaging in political advocacy. A report in that year found Australian charities were avoiding political advocacy and “self-silencing” out of a fear that dissent would attract political retribution.

The ACF has been audited by the commission during election cycles but the complaint about the open letter is unusual.

O’Shanassy has responded to the demand the organisation read the political advocacy guidelines by saying: “Thank you for your recommendation that ACF should familiarise itself with the ACNC guide on political advocacy.

“The board and staff are already familiar with the publication and receives great benefit from it. We remain focused on these important matters, in accordance with ACF’s ongoing good governance practices.”

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30/11/2020

(AU) Scott Morrison's Climate Language Has Shifted – But Actions Speak Louder Than Words

The Guardian -  |

Analysis: The PM changed tone as soon as Joe Biden was projected likely next US president. Will a policy pivot follow?

The recent shift in the prime minister’s language invites two questions: is there a pivot under way, and is the shift real?’ Photograph: Dean Lewins/AAP


Scott Morrison’s language about Australia adopting an emissions reduction target of net zero by 2050, and about climate action more generally, is starting to warm up. The recent shift in the prime minister’s language invites two questions: is there a pivot under way, and is the shift real?

The story so far

We know the Coalition’s history on climate policy. The Abbott government repealed Labor’s climate price, attempted to gut the Renewable Energy Target and abolish agencies driving a transition to low emissions energy. Morrison while treasurer brandished a lump of coal in the parliament, telling his opponents not to be “scared”. For much of this year, the Coalition has ignored persistent entreaties from environmentalists and major business groups to adopt a target of net zero emissions by 2050 at the latest, and to use the economic recovery from Covid-19 to lock in the transition to low emissions. Morrison has never ruled out adopting a net zero target but has created the impression the government wasn’t interested – an impression reinforced by the government’s declaration that it would pursue a “gas-led recovery” after the pandemic.

When and why did the language change?

In the couple of weeks before the US presidential election on 3 November, Japan, China and South Korea adopted pledges taking them closer to net zero. Morrison also had a private conversation with the British prime minister, Boris Johnson, in which net zero was raised. Leaders were anticipating the likely election of Joe Biden. The Democrat had promised to end the backsliding of the Trump era and revitalise international climate negotiations, starting with bringing the US back into the Paris deal. Biden’s appointment of John Kerry as his climate envoy after winning the election is a further signal of seriousness. From the moment Biden was projected as the likely winner, Morrison’s language began to change. It became noticeably warmer. Morrison now says Australia wants to “reach net zero emissions as quickly as possible”.

What about 2030?

Before we get to 2050, Australia has an emissions reduction target for 2030, and the government will be under pressure to update that commitment with a higher level of ambition in the next round of international climate talks.

Australia’s current target is a 26%-28% cut below 2005 levels, and the government has been planning to meet that (not very ambitious) target using carryover credits from the Kyoto period. Official government emissions projections released in December last year found Australia was not on track to meet the 2030 target unless it used the credits. Australia’s use of the Kyoto-era concessions has been strongly opposed by a large number of nations in international climate discussions, and experts say there is no legal basis for their use under the Paris agreement.

After Biden’s victory, Morrison used a speech to business leaders to signal, hey presto, magic happens: Australia might not deploy the accounting trick to help meet the 2030 target after all. The prime minister said: “My ambition is that we will not need them and we are working to this as our goal, consistent with our record of over-delivering.” The hint from Morrison was that new projections, expected to be released in December, will show Australia is on track to meet the promised cut without carryovers.

How can that happen?

In part, because the Australian government has not been great at forecasting future emissions and tends to substantially change its estimates each year.

Estimating future emissions is difficult. Each year, officials make assumptions about what will happen in 50 areas of the economy and come up with projections of how much will be emitted. For more than a decade, they have significantly over-estimated how much CO2 the country will emit in the years ahead before revising down the projections, sometimes significantly.

The biggest miscalculation has been in electricity generation. Renewable energy has come into the grid much faster than the government expected – the national 2020 renewable energy target was met ahead of time, state targets in Victoria and Queensland have started to have an impact and the cost of solar and wind energy continues to drop, making investment more attractive. Officials also overestimated how much grid electricity the country would use – demand has fallen, in part due to nearly a third of homes now having solar panels.

For reasons that are not clear, the official projections have assumed there would be less renewable energy in the system than the models used by the Australian Energy Market Operator, which runs the power grid. Addressing this will bring future projections down.

There are other anomalies. The projections do not factor in drought, which in recent years has reduced emissions from agriculture as farmers have had to substantially reduce cattle and sheep numbers.

Officials last year revised down the emissions forecast for the next decade by 344m tonnes. If a similar readjustment were to happen this year, it could lead to the government saying it was now on track to meet its modest 2030 target without the carryover credits.

Has anything else changed that could affect the projections?

The only new policy of note from the Morrison government this year has been its low-emissions technology roadmap. Released in September, it claimed developing five new technologies could “avoid” 250m tonnes of emissions a year by 2040.

There was been no explanation of how that number was reached, and with the arguable exception of “clean” hydrogen, the government has not yet committed significant new funding to develop the technologies. It is unclear how this policy could reasonably change the projections in a meaningful way.

More noteworthy is that, while the federal government has tried to slow the influx of solar and wind by neither continuing nor replacing the renewable energy target, the states keep stepping in to fill the gap.

The big one is the NSW plan to underwrite 12 gigawatts of new wind and solar over the next decade – a development that will be banked by Canberra as “progress” in terms of projected national emissions reductions, but also criticised by the federal energy minister, Angus Taylor, because it might bring forward the closure of coal plants, which is of course a necessary development if you are a government now wanting to trumpet a downward trend in emissions. You know it makes sense.

Would a lower emissions forecast be good news?

Lower emissions would, of course, be great. But if it happens it isn’t something we should get too excited about, for two reasons.

The first should be pretty obvious – the government will not have actually done anything yet. These are projections, not actual emissions.

Before Covid-19 hit, Australia’s national emissions remained stubbornly flat under the Coalition, having dipped only about 2% in the more than six years since it was elected. They will be lower this year due to the pandemic, but that is not something the government can claim credit for, and it may not continue.

The second reason is, as mentioned above, Australia’s target is nothing to crow about. It was a fudge from the beginning. The size of the cut – 26%-28% – was just a lift of the US commitment under the Paris agreement, with one notable difference – the Obama administration promised that target for 2025, while the Australian government pushed it back to 2030.

Getting to net zero emissions, as scientists say is necessary, isn’t just about the end goal. It’s about how much you emit as you get there. To play its fair part in meeting the goals of the Paris agreement, Australia can only emit so much over the next three decades.

Advice to the government in 2015 suggested playing its part would require a cut equivalent to between 45% and 65% by 2030. A recent analysis by analysts at the Climate Action Tracker found Australia’s fair share over that timeframe was 66%. The current target does not get the job done.

So will the government do more on climate?

It is not impossible, but it is far from guaranteed.

There will be pressure on Australia over the next year not only to set a target of net zero by 2050, but to go further by 2030 than promised. The US under Biden will be required to set a new target for that date and other major countries are expected to do the same. Dropping the plan to use carryover credits will not be enough to satisfy their expectations.

Apart from saying we can meet our (lowball) 2030 target without a Kyoto-era accounting trick (cue applause) there’s no sign at the moment the government is working up a higher 2030 target. It is working on a long-term climate strategy, which was a commitment under the Paris agreement. It was due this year, but has been pushed back to before the next major climate summit in Glasgow late next year. It is expected, but not guaranteed, to include modelling of what future action on climate will mean for Australia.

There are a couple of other policies in the works. The government has dumped a long-promised electric vehicle strategy and replaced it with the promise of a “future fuels” plan on hydrogen, electric and bio-fuelled vehicles, but it is not expected to deliver significant new commitments to accelerate an emissions cut.

Potentially more significantly, it has also said it will look at the safeguard mechanism, a Tony Abbott-era policy that was supposed to limit emissions from big industrial sites. So far, the scheme has barely justified its existence. Companies have mostly just been allowed to increase their CO2 limit, known as a baseline, and pollute more.

Presumably recognising this is not sustainable, the government earlier this year said it accepted a recommendation from a review headed by former Business Council of Australia president Grant King that the mechanism should be changed so that companies would be rewarded for cutting emissions below their baseline if they were undertaking “transformative” projects and not just producing less or shutting down. It sounds like a step back towards carbon pricing – rewarding cuts and, if the Coalition can stomach it, finally penalising increases in emissions.

Would the government go back to carbon pricing?

Morrison should use his political capital and his internal authority to drive a substantive change – but he won’t want to lose his job over it. Part of what’s going on with Morrison’s shift in language is the prime minister testing how much he can get away with: how positive can he sound about emissions reduction before the right of the Liberal party starts having a tantrum, or before the National party has a public meltdown because someone has whispered coal is not good for humanity after all? Think of Morrison as inching along a dimly lit ledge several stories above the ground.

But the rest of the world isn’t waiting for the Coalition to get its act together. Action on emissions is picking up elsewhere and at some point Australia will have to deal with rising CO2 from big industry and transport.

In the meantime, as the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO recently reported, climate change is already here and extreme weather events are getting worse.

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