16/12/2020

These Kids Are Suing European Governments Because Of The Climate Crisis

VICE - Tristan Kennedy

The young climate activists, aged from eight to 21 years old, appear to have judges from the European Court of Human Rights on their side.

L-R: Cláudia Agosthino (21) Martim Agostinho (17) Mariana Agostinho (8) Catarina Mota (20) André Oliveira (12) Sofia Oliveira (15). Photo courtesy of Global Legal Action Network. Background: RAFAEL MARCHANTE / REUTERS.
In June of 2017, wildfires ripped through central Portugal’s Leiria region, killing 66 and injuring hundreds more. Fuelled by an abnormally hot, dry spring, and fanned by winds whipping off the Atlantic, the flames moved so fast that many victims burned to death in their cars as they tried to flee. On one stretch of road, 47 people lost their lives, including families with children as young as four.

For Catarina Mota and her friend Cláudia Agostinho, who had recently celebrated her 18th birthday, it was a “very, very scary” summer. “Our houses were filled with ash from the fire,” Cláudia remembers, as I speak to the pair over Zoom. “Watching the news and seeing all the people that were dying, I think it's something that we can't forget. It was very overwhelming.”

Two hours to the south, in Lisbon, Sofia Oliveira and her younger brother André (who were 12 and nine at the time) were similarly traumatised by what they saw, and felt similarly powerless. Fast-forward three years, however, and the four of them – along with Cláudia’s younger siblings, Martim and Mariana – have just achieved a groundbreaking legal first in the fight against climate change.

Despite the fact the oldest among them is still only 21, and the youngest just eight years old, these six young adults and children are suing the governments of 33 countries, including the UK, in the European Court of Human Rights. Their case is based on the assertion that, by failing to act on climate change, these governments are violating their fundamental right to life.

So far, the judges have been incredibly receptive to their arguments. In October, barely a month after their case was filed, the Court announced they were granting it priority due to the “importance and urgency of the issues raised”. In early December, when the case was officially communicated to the defendant countries, the Strasbourg-based body took the even more unusual step of adding an extra element to the rap sheet. 

The Court’s communication included questions about whether, in failing to make meaningful cuts to emissions, these governments were violating not just Articles Two and Eight of the European Convention on Human Rights (the right to life, and the right to family life), but also Article Three, which deals with torture and the prohibition of inhuman treatment.

Gerry Liston and Gearoid O Cuinn. Photo by the author.
For the lawyers working on the kids’ case, this response has been hugely gratifying. I meet Gearóid Ó Cuinn and Gerry Liston on a cold, bright day in Galway, on the west coast of Ireland, where their legal NGO, the Global Legal Action Network (GLAN), is based.

When the organisation started, everyone worked pro bono; it’s only recently that it’s been able to employ “five-and-a-half” full-time staff. The pair met Cláudia, Catarina and the other kids through a Portuguese legal researcher who was volunteering for free with them in 2017. Having decided they could build a convincing case, they raised the money to do so through crowdfunding.

To the untrained eye, the idea that government inaction on climate change might violate treaties on torture could seem a stretch. But having immersed himself in the case since 2017, Gerry explains that he’s not surprised by the Court’s response. “I remember being shocked by the evidence myself, and feeling that the judges could only be equally shocked,” he says. 

If greenhouse gas emissions continue on their current trajectory, he explains, these children and young adults could live to see a world in which global average temperatures are four degrees hotter by 2100. “That's a world where, in Portugal, you could have heat waves with daytime temperatures of over 40 degrees, lasting for over 30 days at a time.”

Heatwaves are killers in their own right. According to the World Health Organisation, 166,000 people worldwide died as a direct result of exposure to extreme temperatures between 1998 and 2017. GLAN’s submission to the court points out that even if emissions continue on a lower trajectory, leading to a 2.8 degree increase in average global temperatures by 2100, the news still isn’t positive.

“Thirty times more people would die from extreme heat in western Europe in the final three decades of this century, compared to the first decade of the century,” Gerry says.

Long dry spells would also massively increase the risk of further devastating forest fires within the kids’ lifetimes. “The number of days on which there's an extreme risk of forest fires would quadruple in some parts of the country, rising up to 90 days a year,” says Gerry. “Portugal is one of the most vulnerable parts of Europe to climate change,” and the horrific impacts that the kids have witnessed even in their short lifetimes look set to get immeasurably worse unless “deep and urgent” cuts to emissions are made, he says.

Armed with this evidence, the case for arguing human rights violations becomes obvious. After all, as Gerry explains, “human rights law doesn't just require states to refrain from harming people. Obviously, not torturing people is a very important part of human rights law, but it's also about states proactively protecting people. When you think about it, climate change poses a bigger threat to human life and wellbeing than almost anything else.”

Sofia and Andre Oliveira meet their lawyers, Gearoid and Gerry, in Portugal. Photo courtesy of Global Legal Action Network.
In many ways, says Gearóid, what’s more surprising is that this is the first time climate change has been put before the Strasbourg Court. Some of this has to do with complex questions of admissibility. What makes Gerry’s work unique, the pair explain, is his argument around causation, and his use of a legal principle famously applied in asbestos poisoning cases to show that all of the governments they’re suing bear a responsibility for the impacts of climate change on these Portuguese kids’ lives. 

The court’s reaction so far shows GLAN has also been successful in one of its other key arguments – that, as an international issue, this case should go straight to an international court, rather than taking the usual path through domestic courts first.

“They could've kicked us out for not exhausting domestic remedies,” says Gearóid. But the fact that they haven’t – and instead have fast-tracked the case – suggests there’s a keen appetite among these senior judges to consider the thorny legal issues at stake. “It is worth noting that only 15 percent of cases are communicated, typically,” he says, “and the number of cases that are communicated and given priority is even less than 15 percent – it's round the 7 percent mark.”

If the case has come a long way already, its future passage is potentially even more important. “[Decisions about] the European Convention on Human Rights have a huge effect on the domestic law of these countries,” says Gerry. If they’re successful, governments could be held responsible for breaking not just international law, but their own laws too. As Gearóid explains, “Having a decision from the [Strasbourg] Court would unlock the huge potential of domestic courts in the climate fight.”

The next steps will be hard. It’s a David and Goliath match-up that pitches six kids and what Gearóid himself calls “the underdog of legal NGOs” against the massed legal might of 33 European governments. It will also be expensive. GLAN and the young Portuguese applicants have already launched a second crowdfunding appeal to help cover their legal costs, at Youth4ClimateJustice.org. But for everyone involved, the stakes could not be higher.

As 12-year-old André Oliveira explains, “We just experienced the hottest November in recent history. It is not only in our lifetimes that we are going to be affected – this is affecting our lives now.”

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US To Hold World Climate Summit Early Next Year And Seek To Rejoin Paris Accord

The Guardian - 

Action points for first 100 days of Joe Biden presidency seen as boost to international action currently falling behind

Joe Biden said he would immediately start working with counterparts on climate change mitigation. Photograph: Susan Walsh/AP
The US will hold a climate summit of the world’s major economies early next year, within 100 days of Joe Biden taking office, and seek to rejoin the Paris agreement on the first day of his presidency, in a boost to international climate action.

Leaders from 75 countries met without the US in a virtual Climate Ambition Summit co-hosted by the UN, the UK and France at the weekend, marking the fifth anniversary of the Paris accord.

The absence of the US underlined the need for more countries, including other major economies such as Brazil, Russia and Indonesia, to make fresh commitments on tackling the climate crisis.

Biden said in a statement: “I’ll immediately start working with my counterparts around the world to do all that we possibly can, including by convening the leaders of major economies for a climate summit within my first 100 days in office … We’ll elevate the incredible work cities, states and businesses have been doing to help reduce emissions and build a cleaner future. We’ll listen to and engage closely with the activists, including young people, who have continued to sound the alarm and demand change from those in power.”

He reiterated his pledge to put the US on a path to net zero carbon emissions by 2050, and said the move would be good for the US economy and workers. “We’ll do all of this knowing that we have before us an enormous economic opportunity to create jobs and prosperity at home and export clean American-made products around the world.”

António Guterres, the UN secretary general, said: “It is a very important signal. We look forward to a very active US leadership in climate action from now on as US leadership is absolutely essential. The US is the largest economy in the world, it’s absolutely essential for our goals to be reached.”

Donald Trump, whose withdrawal of the US from the Paris agreement took effect on the day after the US election in November, shunned the Climate Ambition Summit. Countries including Russia, Saudi Arabia and Mexico were excluded as they had failed to commit to climate targets in line with the Paris accord.

Australia’s prime minister, Scott Morrison, had sought to join the summit but his commitments were judged inadequate, and an announcement from Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, of a net zero target just before the summit was derided as lacking credibility.

The Climate Ambition Summit failed to produce a major breakthrough, but more than 70 countries gave further details of plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in line with the Paris agreement goal of limiting temperature rises to well below 2C above pre-industrial levels, with an aspirational 1.5C limit.

Many observers had hoped India might set a net zero emissions target, but its prime minister, Narendra Modi, promised only to “exceed expectations” by the centenary of India’s independence in 2047. China gave some details to its plan to cause emissions to peak before the end of this decade but stopped short of agreeing to curb its planned expansion of coal-fired power.

The UK pledged to stop funding fossil fuel development overseas, and the EU set out its plan to reduce emissions by 55% by 2030, compared with 1990 levels.

Alok Sharma, the UK’s business secretary, who will preside over UN climate talks called Cop26 next year, said much more action was needed. “[People] will ask: have we done enough to put the world on track to limit warming to 1.5C and protect people and nature from the effects of climate change? We must be honest with ourselves – the answer to that is currently no,” he said.

When Biden’s pledge to bring the US to net zero emissions by 2050 is included, countries accounting for more than two-thirds of global emissions are subject to net zero targets around mid-century, including the EU, the UK, Japan and South Korea. China has pledged to meet net zero by 2060, and a large number of smaller developing countries have also embraced the goal.

The task for the next year, before the Cop26 conference in Glasgow next November, will be to encourage all the world’s remaining countries – including oil-dependent economies such as Russia and Saudi Arabia – to sign up to long-term net zero targets, and to ensure that all countries also have detailed plans for cutting emissions within the next decade.

Those detailed national plans, called nationally determined contributions (NDCs), are the bedrock of the Paris agreement, setting out emissions curbs by 2030. Current NDCs, submitted in 2015, would lead to more than 3C of warming, so all countries must submit fresh plans in line with a long-term goal of net zero emissions. The US will be closely watched for its plans.

Nathaniel Keohane, a senior vice-president at the Environmental Defense Fund, said: “The [Climate Ambition] Summit captured and reflected the momentum of recent months, but didn’t push much beyond it. The world is waiting for Biden to bring the US back into the Paris agreement, and will be looking for how ambitious the US is willing to be in its NDC.”

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(AU) Stop Fighting And Start Adapting To Climate Change, Basin Authority Says

The Age - Mike Foley

Public battles between farmers and the environment movement must end, the Commonwealth's water agency says, warning a unified response is needed to tackle the damaging impacts of climate change in the Murray Darling Basin.

A joint study by the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO found the "middle of the road" climate scenario is for a 20 per cent reduction in streamflows across Australia's food bowl, assuming 2 degrees of global warming will be reached by 2060, as forecast by the United Nations.

The Darling River at Louth, Far West NSW. Experts are warning that climate change is expected to cause streamflows to fall, on average, at least 20 per cent across the Murray Darling Basin. Credit: Jenny Evans/Getty Images.
The extent of impacts are unclear due to uncertainty in weather modelling and the complex relationship between rainfall, rising heat and evaporation. The study says there are "plausible" scenarios where streamflows could decline up to 50 per cent.

The climate has already warmed by about 1 degree; over the past 20 years, this has caused an 11 per cent reduction in crucial rains in the southern Murray Darling Basin in winter, the region's wettest season. The Northern Basin's climate is even more variable and gets most of its rainfall in summer, where long term trends remain unclear.

The Murray Darling Basin Authority on Tuesday released its five yearly evaluation of the Basin Plan, which included the CSIRO's climate report and warned five of the hottest years on record occurred in the past seven. The authority's head of strategy, Vicki Woodburn, said "the climate has changed faster than anticipated", which brought "profound new challenges".

The greater the reduction in streamflow, the more detrimental the financial impacts to irrigation industry profits and the surrounding communities, the evaluation said. Under more intense drying scenarios, water prices might exceed a "tipping point" for financial viability of even large agribusinesses, which would create a "a radically different, opportunity based annual irrigation industry".

Reduction in long-term average inflows to the River Murray
Source: Australian government
The Basin Plan was launched in 2013 to help boost the river system's declining health, which had set in after years of excessive water extraction. Farmer groups and irrigation communities have campaigned to limit the volume of water recovery, and argued for changes to the Basin Plan to moderate the financial impacts on water owners.

The authority's chief executive, Phillip Glyde, said farmers, environmental advocates and policymakers needed to co-operate on new technologies and systems to adapt to a drier world, rather than continue public brawls over how much water should be recovered from irrigation under the Basin Plan.

"We've got to talk about adapting to climate change without triggering the debate about changing the water recovery target. Going down that road, you end up with people facing up at 100 paces shooting at each other," Mr Glyde said.

Professor Sue Jackson, of the Australian Rivers Institute at Griffith University, said: "We need to plan for the eventuality we may well see quite drastically reduced inflows that could harm many, if not all, of the economic and social activities and the lives people and communities have built around waterways."

While the overall drying trend is expected to set in over the long term, abnormally wet years are still expected from time to time, albeit less frequently, according to internationally recognised hydrologist Francis Chiew, a CSIRO research leader and a co-author on the climate report.

"We will also see longer and more intense drought," Dr Chiew said.

On Monday, federal Water Minister Keith Pitt announced $35 million in funding for a new water information website, and an expanded monitoring network of cross-border river flows.

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15/12/2020

(AU) Carbon Targets On Agenda At World Leaders' Summit, But What Is Business Doing To Bring Emissions Down?

ABC Illawarra | Nick McLaren

The steelworks at Port Kembla is the largest steel production facility in Australia. (ABC Illawarra: Ainslie Drewitt-Smith)




As world leaders meet in the hope of agreeing to tighter global emission targets, carbon-intensive industries operating in Australia are watching closely.

The 2020 United Nations Emissions Gap report this week found that despite a brief dip in carbon dioxide emissions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the world was still heading for a temperature rise in excess of 3 degrees Celsius this century.

That is far beyond the Paris Agreement goals of limiting global warming to well below 2C and pursuing 1.5C.       

Australia has promised to cut its 2005 emission levels by 26-28 per cent before 2030 as part of the Paris Agreement and is now on track to meet those targets without the need to count carry over credits, the Federal Government said this week.

Meanwhile, there are no agreed targets for businesses in Australia, nor a mechanism to ensure they commit to meaningful targets.

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Richie Merzian from the Climate Institute says this poses a real problem.

"The Government system is pretty weak so it doesn't actually cap those emissions," he said.

"If you are a company that has very little public profile, you have no retail facing element to your company, then you could try and hide behind the barriers and try and get away with it.

"One would hope there is enough integrity, enough goodwill to do more, because the climate is only getting worse. We are seeing more bushfires, more floods, more intense storms."

As human induced global warming increases, extreme bushfires like this at Bawley Point in December 2019 will occur more often.(ABC Illawarra: Ainslie Drewitt-Smith)

Coal expansions continue to be approved

Wollongong Coal is an Illawarra-based coal miner exporting all its coking coal to India, so has little interaction with the local community.

This week it gained approval to reopen its mothballed Russell Vale mine and generate 1.5 million tonnes of CO2 emissions over five years.

As part of the approval process it was required to do little if anything to reduce emissions, and does not mention emissions at all in its environmental policy published on its website.

It was also not required to reduce carbon emissions in the final approval report from NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment (DPIE).

"The project, in isolation, is unlikely to influence global emissions and climate change trajectories," the DPIE report said.

"This increase [in emissions] is unlikely to affect Australia achieving its national mitigation targets in any material way."

Another coal mining company, South32, is seeking approval to extract 78 million tonnes of metallurgical coal from its Dendrobium mine expansion project near Wollongong up until 2048.

As well as coming out strongly to sell the benefits of ongoing employment, and coal supply to the Port Kembla steelworks, South32 is actively promoting its emission targets.

"South32 is committed to achieving net zero emissions by 2050," a company spokesman said.

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The spokesman said the company supports the Paris Agreement objectives to limit global temperature rise to below 2C this century, and is working on ways to decarbonise its operations by reducing Scope 1 emissions at its Worsley Alumina mine in Western Australia and its Illawarra mines.

"At Appin Mine, our gas drainage and capture network enables the reuse of waste coal mine gas to generate power," the company said.

"In 2019, the gas captured was used to generate equivalent electricity for around 52,000 homes, or roughly 45 per cent of all homes in Wollongong."

South32 has also completed a 7,200-panel solar farm in Cannington in Queensland to offset gas consumption with solar energy.

But does this go far enough to enable to company to achieve significant carbon emission targets?

Creative accounting in emissions

Mr Merzan from the Climate Institute said commitments to offset emissions by coal mines need to be looked at carefully.

"A coal mine is a hard one to offset because you have got the emissions that come with the actual production of the coal, but then most of the emissions from coal come when you actually burn it," he said.

Scope 3 emissions refer to emissions not generated directly by the miner, but indirectly by the consumer — and often in another country.
"So are they looking to just offset the emissions they are directly responsible for? Or will they be looking to offset the emissions that come with actually producing that coal when its finally consumed?" Mr Merzan asked.
"The best practise is to offset your entire carbon footprint, that includes the Scope 3 emissions."

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Greg Bourne from the Climate Council is a former president of BP Australasia and believes the road ahead will vary a lot, depending on what kind of company you are.

"If you are talking steel, to move from using coking coal to make steel to eventually move to using hydrogen, or hydrogen mixed with other gases, to create steel is actually a fundamental restructuring of that part of the industry," he said.
"That's very capital intensive and very difficult, but it will happen around the world. 
"Given they compete against each other it's going to be capital intensive, its going to be difficult."

The Port Kembla steelworks could increase production in response to demands for renewable energy infrastructure. (ABC News: Gavin Coote)


Paris Agreement goals
  • Deal to limit global warming to "well below" 2 degrees C, aiming for 1.5 degrees C
  • Greenhouse gas emissions need to peak "as soon as possible", followed by rapid reduction
  • Deal will eliminate use of coal, oil and gas for energy
  • Fossil fuels to be replaced by solar, wind power
  • Developed countries to provide $US100b a year from 2020 to help developing nations
For Bluescope Steel, Australia's largest steelmaker with extensive operations also in South-East Asia, South Asia, North America and New Zealand, the transition is underway but yet to fully ramp up.

The company supports the 2050 Paris Agreement target and has a near-term target of reducing "carbon emissions intensity" by at least 12 per cent by 2030.

Bluescope may also be working on plans to transition to so-called "green steel" and to adopt hydrogen into its energy mix.
"Climate action is now embedded in Bluecope's new corporate strategy," a company spokesman said.
The company in November this year announced a $20 million investment program in conjuction with the NSW Government to manufacture components used in wind and solar projects, but is yet to go into detail on plans for green steel.

"Watch this space as we will have a lot more to say in the new year," the spokesman said.

Hydrogen seen as a way out of coal

Either way, the use of hydrogen could be the key to bringing emissions towards zero, including offsets.

CSIRO's Daniel Roberts says Australia is seeing more large-scale green hydrogen projects in preparation to meet demand from overseas markets. (ABC News: Mark Leonardi)
CSIRO director of hydrogen energy Dr Daniel Roberts said hydrogen was still largely limited to industrial applications in Australia — fertilisers, explosives, oil refining processes and the like — but its use was becoming more widespread.

He said, in Australia, 'brown' hydrogen was usually made from natural gas, while in some locations 'black' hydrogen was made from coal.

But making both 'blue' and 'green' hydrogen opened up significant opportunities to decarbonise the smeltering process.

"The carbon credentials of using hydrogen in any process relies strongly on where you get that hydrogen from," he said.

"Hydrogen from renewables via electrolysis is one way to go, and making it from gas and storing the CO2 is also carbon neutral and could be another way to go."

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Mr Bourne from the Climate Council said it was important to keep all energy pathways open without relying too heavily on potential fixes.

"The key thing is not to use 'hydrogen as coming along' as an excuse not to do the hard graft today," he said.
"We have to do the hard graft in transport as we electrify our industries, we have to do the hard graft moving away from coal, we have to do the hard graft not bringing on new gas fields and new pipelines.
"We have to do all of that, and as we do that over this decade we will build the possibilities of a new hydrogen industry. But its not an either-or."

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(AU) 'Sacrificial Canary': Fiji Warns Australia Not To Let Pacific Sink

Sydney Morning Herald - Nick O'Malley | Bevan Shields | David Crowe

The Fijian Prime Minister has warned Australia's climate targets must increase to net zero emissions by 2050 or risk sacrificing Pacific nations, as Prime Minister Scott Morrison insisted he was not frustrated about missing a speaking spot at a global climate summit.

Mr Morrison addressed the Pacific Islands Forum about Australia's climate commitments on Friday night, but he will not speak at a larger summit in the early hours of Sunday morning after Australia was denied a spot.

Prime Minister of Fiji Frank Bainimarama and Prime Minister Scott Morrison during a signing ceremony in September 2019. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
Speaking with The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age hours before the start of Friday night's Pacific Islands Forum on urgent climate action, Fiji Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama welcomed news Australia would not use Kyoto credits to reach emissions targets, but called for more ambitious action.

"When it comes to climate change, I'm fond of saying every nation is in the same canoe. Currently, that collective canoe is taking on water and there are too few of us trying to patch the holes," he said.

"I am glad the Australian government has recognised you cannot fix those leaks with Kyoto credits.

"Every nation must put forward more ambitious emissions reduction targets by 2030 as part of a net zero commitment by 2050, and not one day later."

Likening Pacific island nations to a canary in a coal mine, he said he refused to allow "Fijians and our Pacific Island sisters and brothers to be some sacrificial canary for coal-burning countries and high-emitting companies."

"We must not stand idly by and watch the world's most vulnerable countries suffer, only to warn other, wealthier nations that their own fate will soon follow."

Mr Morrison dismissed the suggestion he was frustrated over this weekend's global summit, and he emphasised his message to Pacific Island Forum leaders about Australian help in dealing with climate change.

"We're committed to achieving net zero emissions as soon as possible," he said. "Our long term emissions reduction strategy to be launched ahead of COP26 will provide the necessary detail on our plan.

"We believe the what and the why are really no longer the issue. I think we're well beyond that now. Unless we can actually understand the how, then these things won't be achieved and achieving them is what matters.

"The how is so critically important and that's where Australia is focusing our efforts."

But government officials are privately furious and much of their anger is directed towards British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is hosting the conference in partnership with the UN and France.

Mr Johnson invited Mr Morrison to speak at the December 12 summit several weeks ago but walked away from the offer this week amid a behind-the-scenes diplomatic tussle over whether Australia's climate change policies were insufficient to warrant a speaking slot.

The Prime Minister had planned to use his speech to announce Australia would drop its controversial plan to use Kyoto carryover credits to achieve its 2030 emissions reduction targets.

Selwin Hart, the special adviser to UN secretary-general António Guterres on climate action, said Australia had not met the threshold needed to speak.

"The three co-hosts – the UN, UK and France – provided all member states with very clear guidance from the outset that speaking slots would go to countries and other actors who show the most ambition right now," he said.

He repeated the UN's position that countries should sign up to achieving net zero emissions by 2050 ahead of a major climate summit in Glasgow next November.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was also excluded from the list of nearly 80 world leaders given permission to address Saturday's summit.

China, which is building dozens of new coal-fired power plants but has committed to net zero emissions by 2060, was given a spot.

"Rather than focusing on those countries that are not on that list as of now, we really should be celebrating those that have decided to come forward this early - many of them from the developing world who despite the challenges of the pandemic, [are] on the frontlines of the climate crisis including many countries in the Pacific - to make bold and ambitious commitments around net zero," Mr Hart said.

"Some have brought these commitments forward and I think we should celebrate those leaders who have come forward and decided to take this ambitious step before COP26.

"We have a long way to go before Glasgow and we hope that this coalition around net zero by mid-century will grow."

Mr Johnson offered Mr Morrison the chance to speak even though France, the UN and other supporting partners like Italy and Chile had a say on who made the final list.

The government is furious that Mr Johnson was unable to guarantee the promise. There had already been tensions between the UK and Australia over climate in the weeks since Downing Street publicly claimed Mr Johnson had urged Mr Morrison to take "bold action" during a phone call on October 28.

"He has thrown us under the bus," one government official said on Thursday.

Suega Apelu bathes a child in the lagoon in Funafuti, Tuvalu. The low-lying South Pacific island nation of about 11,000 people has been classified as extremely vulnerable to climate change by the United Nations Development Programme. Credit: Mario Tama
Diplomatic sources not authorised to speak publicly said Britain's Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office was determined to not let Australia speak.

Japan, Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru and Cambodia are the only countries in the Asia-Pacific region given a speaking slot.

Mr Hart said the UN wanted to see more commitments on climate financing and appeared to take a swipe at Australia for not doing more to help its Pacific neighbours.

"Ten years ago developed countries promised to mobilise $US100 billion per year in new climate finance to support mitigation and adaptation in the developing world," he said.

"That goal has not yet been met."

Mr Morrison last year pledged to redirect more than half a billion dollars in foreign aid towards renewable energy projects and disaster relief throughout the Pacific.

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(AU) The Liberal Minister Forcing Action On Climate Change

Saturday Paper - Mike Seccombe

In his first major interview since passing a landmark energy package, NSW Environment Minister Matt Kean outlines his philosophy for a new kind of politics.

NSW Energy and Environment Minister Matt Kean. Credit: AAP Image / Dean Lewins

When Matt Kean was made minister for Energy and Environment in the New South Wales government last April, he says, his first thought was: “I must have upset the premier. What have I done?”

He was only half joking. While he was “excited” at the opportunity to make his mark in the new portfolios – he has had a lifelong concern for the environment and his father worked for decades in the energy sector – Kean was also “filled with trepidation”.

“You know,” he tells The Saturday Paper, “this is a contested space in Australian politics. It has brought down three prime ministers, it’s torn down governments.”

Kean had good reason to fear the people who had torn down those leaders and governments – fellow Liberals and Nationals, the vested interests in the fossil fuel sector and reactionary media. They have come after him, and are still coming.

Nonetheless, he took the role determined to “fly the flag for the brand of liberalism that I believed in and that I felt that my community supported”. He says, “That’s exactly what I’ve been trying to do.”

At the end of last month, Kean saw through the state parliament legislation to support a plan to build 12 gigawatts of large-scale renewable energy generation – about as much as currently exists in all of the country – along with two gigawatts of storage, largely pumped hydro, over the next decade. It is anticipated it will attract $32 billion in private investment, create 6300 construction jobs and 2800 operational jobs, mostly in regional areas, and cut power bills by an average $130 per household and $440 per small business, per year.

It took a while to get through the parliament: more than 30 continuous hours of debate in the state’s upper house, largely due to the spoiling tactics of One Nation’s Mark Latham, who put up 249 amendments. 

But while Latham’s nitpicking made the process protracted, it made no dent in the multipartisan backing Kean had brought together in support of his package. The Greens voted for it. So did the Christian Democrats’ Fred Nile, the left-leaning minor parties and independents, and Labor.

Most significantly, all the Liberals and Nationals endorsed the ambitious plan. In so doing, they endorsed Kean’s view that there is nothing radical about taking strong action in response to climate change, that it is not just an environmental imperative but also an economic one, and not at all in conflict with the tenets of political conservatism.

Quite the opposite, in fact.

“For me,” says Kean, “it was always confusing as to why there were elements of the Liberal Party that were sort of anti-environmental or anti taking action on climate change.

“I mean, conservatism is about conserving those things that are important … and I can’t think of anything more important than our environment.

“So, you know, I’m looking to take action on climate change, not in spite of the fact I’m a conservative, but because I’m a conservative. I’m looking to protect our environment, because I believe that conservatives have an obligation to hand our planet to our kids better than we found it.”

Kean points to conservative governments elsewhere in the world, such as in Britain, where Boris Johnson’s Tories have committed to cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 68 per cent by 2030, and Germany, where Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union is pushing a cut of 50-55 per cent by 2030, not just for her country but for the whole European Union.

He continues to reel off examples: “Just recently, we’ve seen a new conservative prime minister of Japan commit to net zero emissions by 2050. So these guys are not doing it in spite of the fact they’re conservatives, they’re doing it because they are conservatives.”

Simple prudence, an important conservative value, would dictate serious action to cut greenhouse emissions.

“Seventy per cent of our two-way [trade] is now with countries that have committed to achieving net zero emissions by mid-century. So if we don’t get ahead of the curve, then our ability to continue to export products into those international markets is going to be massively curtailed,” Kean says.

“We’ve already seen some moves towards trade barriers. For example, in the EU, they’re looking to put tariffs in place for goods that are carbon intense.”

But Kean would rather focus less on these threats than on the opportunities presented by de-carbonisation.

“We’ve got to bust the myth that being good custodians of our planet comes at the expense of our prosperity. It doesn’t,” he says.

The economics of energy have shifted in the past 10 years, and shifted even more in the past five, he says. The cost of generating and storing renewable energy has plunged.

“Today the cheapest way to generate electricity is not coal, gas or nuclear; it’s a combination of wind, solar, pumped hydro and batteries.

“And that’s not me saying that. It’s the CSIRO saying it. It’s AEMO [the Australian Energy Market Operator, set up by the Council of Australian Governments to plan our energy future] saying it. It’s the market saying that.

“There is now an economically rational argument, which is what the Liberal Party has traditionally been focused on: the economics of free markets.

“And that’s provided a bridge for a lot of those conservatives that previously campaigned against taking action on climate change to walk across.”

To those concerned about climate change, this observation from a Liberal Party insider is encouraging. But when Kean expressed that same view almost a year ago, it caused him considerable grief.

The circumstances were these: with the fires of what was to become known as Australia’s Black Summer burning out of control, some people stated the scientifically obvious reality, subsequently restated in the findings of the royal commission into the fires, that climate change was a major factor.

Kean was one of those people. Speaking at an energy conference on December 10 last year, he said what was happening was “exactly what the scientists have warned us would happen”, which was “longer drier periods, resulting in more drought and bushfire”.

“If this is not a catalyst for change, then I don’t know what is,” he said.

A number of senior conservative politicians, most notably Scott Morrison, responded by saying it was “not the time” for such things. The prime minister suggested offering prayers instead.

But Kean did not stop repeating the unpalatable truth, and on January 19 he went further, saying some members of the Morrison cabinet favoured a stronger policy response to the climate crisis.

Morrison came down on him like a ton of bricks.

“Matt Kean doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” the prime minister said. “He doesn’t know what’s going on in the federal cabinet and most of the federal cabinet wouldn’t even know who Matt Kean was.”

This response prompts two observations.

First, Kean didn’t say he knew what was going on inside cabinet, only that some cabinet ministers wanted the government to do more, which was correct. One of them, Josh Frydenberg, had actually proposed doing more when he was previously Environment minister, before pressure from the government’s climate sceptics forced a backdown, and shortly thereafter the removal of Malcolm Turnbull from the prime ministership.

Second, it is quite implausible that most cabinet ministers did not know of Kean, a leader of the moderates in NSW.

In any case, Morrison’s response and the wide reporting it prompted of the Coalition’s divisions served to raise Kean’s profile as a climate realist. And now, almost a year down the track, there is no doubt at all that everyone in the federal Coalition, not just in cabinet, knows who Matt Kean is. He and his plan to massively expand renewable generation and storage were major issues of debate within the Coalition party room at its two most recent meetings.

The federal government’s internal fossil fuel lobby, led by Queensland Nationals senator and former Resources minister Matt Canavan, attacked Kean’s clean energy road map, urging Morrison to pull out of a $2 billion energy agreement struck earlier this year between the federal and NSW governments, and calling for a new coal-fired power station in the Hunter Valley.

Three weeks ago, Angus Taylor, the federal minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction, also defended coal generators, this time at an energy and climate summit sponsored by The Australian Financial Review.

“I’m concerned about models and analysis including unrealistic assumptions that don’t translate into the real world,” he said. “… We shouldn’t see models that assume large coal generators stay in the market despite policy changes that seriously undermine profitability and commercial sustainability. If policymakers want to force out coal generators prematurely, they should say that upfront.”

And at the same conference, Kean fired back: “I’m on the side of the public, I’m not on the side of the vested interests who want to drive up prices and make the mums and dads of NSW pay for it.”

He said he was confident of the modelling, and that his plan would not force the early closure of coal-fired generators. Rather, it was intended to cope with the imminent closure of elderly, unreliable stations.

Speaking to The Saturday Paper this week, Kean was animated, sitting in front of a portrait of his political hero, United States Democrat president John F. Kennedy. He elaborated further on why NSW had been forced into unilateral action to address the climate and energy crisis.

Of course, he says, it would have been better had there been a clear national framework to give the private sector the certainty it needed to invest in the inevitable transition away from fossil fuels.

“But there’s been several attempts to achieve that and they’ve fallen over,” he says. “Now, I can’t sit on my hands and wait for them to find a pathway forward in Canberra. I’ve got a responsibility to the citizens and businesses in NSW.”

Four of the state’s big coal-fired power stations are slated to close between 2028 and 2035, says Kean, “and my job as the minister for Energy in NSW is to make sure that when they close, that there’s something there to replace that capacity”.

Otherwise, there will be blackouts and price spikes. He points to what happened when Victoria’s Hazelwood Power Station shut with little warning in mid-2016: “Consumers in NSW saw 60 per cent increases on their bills.”

The lead times for building the replacement infrastructure are long and the costs are high. The first step to getting the necessary investment, he says, “is to make sure that the market signals and settings are right” and that the rules won’t change “every time there’s a change in government or change of leader within a government”.

This is exactly what has happened in Australian federal politics: there was a good policy under Labor, which was dismantled by the Abbott government, which Malcolm Turnbull, whom Kean greatly admires, tried and failed to restore, and which the Morrison government has done little about, because of internal resistance.

“I’ve been watching this car crash of public policy for over a decade,” says Kean. “And the key learning for me was that we need to find areas of common ground, we need to find the things that unite us if we’re going to move forward.”

Hence his assiduous efforts in putting together the grand coalition that passed his bill last month. “I went out and tried to understand what the different constituencies, what the different parties were concerned about.”

For the Nationals, he says, there was the promise of $58 billion worth of investment and thousands of jobs by 2042, plus an expected $1.5 billion in rent for landholders for hosting new infrastructure in the three earmarked regional “renewable energy zones”.

For Labor and its union constituency, the plan was amended to include another REZ, in the Hunter region, where coal is now a big employer. Plus, Kean says, “we mandated local content … a priority to build our energy system using Australian manufacturing, done by Australian workers”.

And for the Greens: “We supported their amendments to provide money for the hydrogen industry.

“It was about building the coalition as broad as possible, so it couldn’t be attacked by the vested interests and the political opportunists that have held our country back for so long,” he says.

“When you’ve got Mark Latham and the big energy companies lining up to protect their super-profits, you know you’re on the right side of the debate.”

But it’s not just Latham, of course. It’s also a significant cohort of Coalition members in Canberra. The irony is that even as Taylor and Morrison complain about Kean’s plan, they need it to work.

The prime minister has lately flagged a move away from his government’s previous, dodgy plan to use so-called carryover credits to meet Australia’s very modest commitment to a 26-28 per cent reduction in greenhouse emissions by 2030, made under the Paris Agreement. That shift has been made feasible because of the skyrocketing installations of rooftop solar panels by businesses and households, and by a reduction in energy demand – and thus emissions – due to the Covid-19 recession.

But if Australia is to make any improvement on its target in the next round of greenhouse reduction negotiations, it will rely on the states, all of which now have set more ambitious targets. In the case of NSW, the target is 35 per cent by 2030. All states and territories are now committed to net zero by 2050.

Talking to Matt Kean, you wouldn’t credit that he took his portfolio “filled with trepidation”. His confidence in a future powered by wind, solar, pumped hydro, hydrogen, batteries and, maybe short-term, a little gas, is infectious. As is his belief in Australia becoming a “renewable energy and economic superpower”.

He is a self-described “evangelist”, not only for the new technology but also for a new politics not dominated by “fear and division”.

If only his federal counterparts would catch the fire.

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