Monday, June 21, 2021

(AU The Conversation) Three Weeks Without Electricity? That’s The Reality Facing Thousands Of Victorians, And It Will Happen Again

The Conversation - 

James Ross/AAP
Author
 is Researcher and Teacher, Centre for Urban Research, RMIT University     
Last week’s storm system wreaked havoc across Victoria. Some 220,000 households and businesses lost power, and residents in the hills on Melbourne’s fringe were warned yesterday it might not be restored for three weeks.

The extreme weather severely damaged the poles and powerlines that distribute electricity, particularly in the Mount Dandenong area. Senior AusNet official Steven Neave said of the region this week, “we basically have no network left, the overhead infrastructure is pretty much gone. It requires a complete rebuild”.

That leaves about 3,000 customers without electricity for weeks, in the heart of winter. The loss of power also cut mobile phone and internet services and reportedly allowed untreated water to enter drinking supplies.

So, could this disaster have been avoided? And under climate change, how can we prepare for more events like this?

Fallen trees brought down power lines across Melbourne. Daniel Pockett/AAP

An uncertain future

The Mount Dandenong area is heavily forested, and the chance of above-ground power infrastructure being hit by falling trees is obviously high.

Without electricity, people cannot turn on lights, refrigerate food or medications, cook on electric stoves or use electric heaters. Electronic banking, schooling and business activities are also badly disrupted. For vulnerable residents, in particular, the implications are profound.

Such disruptions are hard to avoid, at least while the electricity network is above ground. Good management, however, can prevent some trees coming down in storms.

The more pertinent question is: how can we prepare for such an event in the future?

Scientists warn such extreme weather will increase in both frequency and severity as climate change accelerates. The Australian Energy Market Operator is acutely aware of this, warning climate change poses “material risks to individual assets, the integrated energy system, and society”.

However, it’s challenging to predict exactly how future heatwaves, storms, bushfires and floods will affect the power network. As AEMO notes, many climate models related to storms and cyclones involve an element of unpredictability. So, plans to make the electricity system more resilient must address this uncertainty.

As researchers have noted, there is no “one future” to prepare for – we must be ready for many potential eventualities.

Under climate change, extreme weather is predicted to become more severe. Daniel Pockett/AAP
Yallourn – the bigger problem?

Meanwhile, in Victoria’s LaTrobe Valley, a situation at the Yallourn coal-fired power station which may have even greater consequences for electricity supplies.

A coal mine wall adjacent to the station is at risk of collapse after flooding in the Morwell River caused it to crack. If the wall is breached and the mine is flooded, as happened in 2012, there will be no coal to power the station and almost a quarter of Victoria’s power supply could be out for months.

Victoria’s energy needs are increasingly supplied by renewables. However, losing Yallourn’s generation capacity would reduce the capacity of the network to adapt to other possible disruptions.

If further disruptions seem unlikely, it’s worth noting the Callide Power Station in Queensland is still operating at reduced capacity after a recent fire.

A wall adjacent to the Yallourn power plant may collapse. Julian Smith/AAP

Look beyond the immediate crisis

The Victorian government has offered up to A$1,680 per week, for up to three weeks, to help families without power buy supplies and find alternative accommodation.

Welfare groups say the assistance could be improved. They have called for changes to make it quicker and easier for people to access money, cash injections to frontline charities and more temporary accommodation facilities for displaced people and their pets.

While no doubt needed, these are all reactive responses targeted at those without electricity. When any system is disrupted, however, the effects can be widespread and felt long after the initial problem has been addressed.

Take dairy farmers in Gippsland, for example, who could not milk their cows without electricity. Cows must be milked regularly or else they stop producing milk – they cannot be “switched back on” when electricity is restored. Longer-term assistance may well be required for farmers facing such ripple effects.

And as welfare groups have noted, power companies should support affected customers over the long-term, with electricity discounts, deferrals and payment plans.

Relief centres offer affected residents a hot shower and electricity access, but longer-term solutions are also needed. Daniel Pockett/AAP

A call for backup

So, what else can be done to prepare for future power disruptions? Those with backup options, such as portable fuel-powered generators, or off-grid household batteries connected to solar panels, will undoubtedly be more resilient in such events.

These are examples of “system redundancy”, providing alternative electricity until the network is restored.

But it costs money to invest in household batteries or a generator that may never be used. Resilience is often a function of wealth, and the less well-off risk being left behind.

Certainly, governments can act to make society as a whole more resilient to power outages. For example, mobile phone towers have backup battery life of just 24 hours. As Victoria’s Emergency Management Commissioner Andrew Crisp said this week, extending that is something authorities “need to look at”.

Power and communications infrastructure could be moved underground to protect it from storms. While such a move would be expensive, it has been argued not doing so will lead to greater long-term costs under a changing climate.

The recent challenges at Yallourn and Callide show the risks inherent in a centralised electricity network dominated by coal.

Certainly, integrating renewable energy sources into the power network comes with its own challenges. However, expanding energy storage such as batteries, or shifting to small, community-level microgrids will go a long way to improving the resilience of the system.

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(AU The Guardian) ‘From Denial To Delay’: A Forehead-Slapping Week In Australian Climate Policy

The Guardian - 

Australia sees a high-profile show of political backing for gas even as world leaders and investors exert pressure to shift away from fossil fuels

The Woodside gas plant at Burrup, Western Australia. A ‘gas-led recovery’ is likely to further exacerbate Australia’s rising emissions at a time when they need to be falling. Photograph: Daniel Munoz/Reuters
It took a major international investment group with $279bn under its control to break through the climate-laden rhetoric of geopolitics last week.

You may not have heard of Robeco Institutional Asset Management, but on Thursday the Netherlands-based asset manager made a stunning declaration, singling out Australia as a country with a “particularly high-risk profile” that it wants to pressure to transition out of fossil fuels.

The warning that it would look to restrict investments in the country’s government bonds came after a week that started in the village of Carbis Bay in Cornwall and careered through an oil and gas conference in Perth.

Robeco’s position shows it’s unconvinced by the Morrison government’s claim its technology-led approach to cutting greenhouse gas emissions stands credibly on the international stage.

The prime minister, Scott Morrison, had taken his technology-focused, Australia-first talking points to Cornwall’s Carbis Bay for the G7 summit.

Robeco’s bruising intervention suggests the government’s carefully crafted climate messaging is now being usurped by reality.

“It can’t have been easy for the prime minister to be at a meeting like that, with [US president] Joe Biden and [German chancellor] Angela Merkel, and then taking a position to put a foot on the brake,” says Prof Frank Jotzo, an expert in climate economics at the Australian National University.

“In the context of the type of actions these countries are taking, talking about the development of future technologies really doesn’t cut it.”

Morrison did return to Australia with some endorsements, signing agreements with Germany and Japan on developing lower emissions technologies.

But he also returned without any update to Australia’s 2030 emissions target that remains stuck in its 2015 position to cut emissions by 26% to 28% below 2005 levels. He also did not commit Australia to a date to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions.

Political backing for fossil fuel gas

Over in Perth, the country’s oil and gas sector kicked off its annual conference with a video message from Morrison, who told the gathered executives their fossil fuel industry “will always be” a major contributor to Australia’s prosperity.

Not surprising, given the Morrison government has gone full-bore on identifying gas, rather than renewables, as the key feedstock for Australia’s economic recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic.

By Thursday’s close – and after the resources minister, Keith Pitt, and Labor’s spokeswoman, Madeleine King, had both injected heavy praise on the industry – the chief executive of the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association (APPEA), Andrew McConville, was bullish.

He said the industry saw a clear future in a lower emissions world. It could help the world to a lower emissions future, he said, and provide the feedstock for an expected hydrogen boom.

But, like Pitt and King, he took a swing at climate “activists” who, he said, “will say and do anything to get their way”.

“We are the innovators and the doers, while our opponents are the naysayers,” he said.

But what is inescapable here (aside from how those activists now include other governments, major banks and major investors), is that gas extraction and LNG production has been identified by the federal energy department as a major new contributor to Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions.

A “gas-led recovery” is likely to further exacerbate Australia’s problem of rising or plateauing emissions in the transport, heavy industry and agriculture sector at a time when they need to be falling steeply.

All this comes before fossil fuel gas is burned, accumulating more and more greenhouse gas molecules in the atmosphere that will remain there for decades, heating the planet, acidifying the ocean and driving the climate crisis.

Scott Morrison at the table with other world leaders at the G7 summit in Cornwall. Photograph: Reuters

APPEA says its use of gas is helping to cut emissions, claiming it has the potential to cut 170Mt a year in Asia.

The energy minister, Angus Taylor, has been criticised for making a similar claim – that LNG is replacing coal in power plants and is “saving” emissions to the tune of 148Mt a year.

The International Energy Agency’s data does not back this up, and says replacing coal with less dirty gas in the power sector only saved 58Mt in 2020, compared to 440Mt for renewables. 

The agency’s most recent report detailed a path to reaching net zero, with its scenario being clear that to get there (which Morrison says he wants to do as soon as possible) there can be no more new fossil fuel production.

When you add the pressure from the world’s capital investors on both companies and governments, and then multiply that by the geopolitical pressure that could end with countries placing trade tariffs on goods from intransigent economies, Australia is starting to look a little surrounded.

Yet the political backing for fossil fuel gas – from both sides of Australian politics – continues.

‘Before the curtain falls’

Prof Chris Wright, of the University of Sydney, is an expert in climate and energy politics. In a study last month, Wright and colleagues looked at how the fossil fuel industry had managed to maintain its grip on political discourse over the past decade.

“In some ways the politicians take a more extreme position [than industry groups]. The industry associations are the mouthpieces of the corporations and gives them some deniability.

“But the politicians on the conservative side have become even more extreme. It’s like they operate as an extreme flank in the public debate.”

Wright’s analysis finds fossil fuel groups have moved away from attacking the science and, instead, deploy one of four arguments. They back the science and the need to act, but paint themselves as being part of Australia’s prosperity, and as pragmatists that can be part of the solution in a measured response to the climate crisis.

“It’s gone from denial to delay,” Wright says.

Part of the fossil fuel industry’s success at capturing political discourse, Wright says, is down to the revolving lobby door that sees personnel moving between high political offices and the industry.

Even before the G7 dust had settled onto the Cornwall cobbles, the Morrison government was releasing more offshore areas for oil and gas – some 80,000sq km, including a swathe of ocean just 5km from the picture-perfect tourism mecca of the Twelve Apostles on Victoria’s Great Ocean Road.

In submissions to the government before it released the new acreage, other stakeholders – including the government’s own environment department – lined up to either oppose it on climate grounds, or note the risks to wildlife and fish stocks.

The conservation division of the government’s own environment department pointed out some areas being released overlapped with areas vital for whales and turtles.

Last month the International Energy Agency’s landmark report set out how the world could still reach net zero emissions by 2050 – a mark that would give the planet a fighting chance of keeping global heating below 1.5C.

Jotzo says it was notable, coming from the usually conservative global energy advisory group, but it was just a scenario “and not a projection”.

But the fact Morrison chose to keep talking up the fossil fuel industry in its wake, and as he sat with international leaders bearing more ambitious 2030 plans, “shows how deep the politics must be running [in Australia]”.

The global shift away from fossil fuels is inevitable, he says, and there now appears to be a race on to “squeeze the most out of fossil fuel reserves before the curtain falls”.

“Continued investment in new fossil fuel supply infrastructure at this point means betting on the world not reaching the Paris agreement goal. It is that clear.”

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(BE Common Dreams) 'Historic': Belgium Court Says Inadequate Climate Policy A Human Rights Violation

Common Dreams - Andrea Germanos

Climate campaigners welcomed the ruling as a victory.

Youth protest during 7th Brussels youth climate march on February 21, 2019 in Brussels. (Photo: Maja Hitij/Getty Images)
Climate campaigners claimed a "historic victory" after a Brussels court on Thursday condemned Belgium for its climate policy that breaches the country's duty of care and human rights obligations.

The verdict from the Court of First Instance followed a six-year legal battle first launched by non-profit group Klimaatzaak (Climate Case) representing over 58,000 citizens. According to the Guardian: "By not taking all 'necessary measures' to prevent the 'detrimental' effects of climate change, the court said, Belgian authorities had breached the right to life (article 2) and the right to respect for private and family life (article 8)" of the European Convention on Human Rights.

The federal government and those of three regions—the Brussels-Capital, the Flemish, and the Walloon regions—had "not behaved as generally prudent and diligent authorities, which constitutes an offense," reported Agence France-Presse.

In an explanation of the legal action on its website, Klimaatzaak references a 2019 ruling from the Supreme Court of the Netherlands:
This lawsuit is necessary because temperature records continue to be broken, because flooding is becoming more frequent… but above all because there is no real Belgian climate policy. We've seen in the Netherlands that this can be enforced via legal action: the Dutch climate organization Urgenda won a similar case that has led to an ambitious climate law.
The climate group had sought from the Brussels court specific emissions reduction targets: at least 42% compared to 1990 levels by 2025 and at least 55% compared to 1990 by 2030, with zero net emissions reached in 2050. The judge did not authorize those demands, however, citing separation of powers. Greenpeace Belgium called the court's verdict "a clear condemnation of our country's climate policy" and urged all ministers to "get to work." 

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Sunday, June 20, 2021

(Bloomberg) IMF Staff Propose Carbon-Price Floor To Slow Climate Change

Bloomberg Green - 
  • Measures could help meet Paris Agreement goals, IMF staff says
  • One option is varying price based on nations’ development rung
In a paper published on Friday and still under discussion by the IMF executive board and members, fund staff proposed as one option different minimum carbon-price levels for countries based on their stage of development. The proposal parallels the debate on a minimum global corporate-tax rate.

Implementing a three-tier price floor among the U.S., China, the European Union, India, U.K. and Canada, with prices of $75, $50 and $25 a ton for advanced, high- and low-income emerging markets, respectively, could help cut global emissions 23% from baseline levels by 2030, the fund staff wrote.

That would greatly enhance the effectiveness of the Paris Agreement goal of keeping temperature increase to below 2 degrees Celsius (35.6 Fahrenheit), the IMF staff said. Focusing on a small number of large emitters “would make negotiations easier and could still cover a big percentage of global emissions, thereby taking a major step towards the cuts in greenhouse gases we need,” IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said in remarks prepared for a Brookings Institution event.

While a tax is one option for achieving the price floor, it could also work through regulation or emissions trading, Georgieva said.

The revenues could be used to compensate households for price increases and helping businesses and workers move from activities with high- to low-carbon intensity, she said.

The plan would also be more effective and less divisive than border-adjustment carbon taxes, which are levies on the carbon content of imports.

The plan could spur a modest further reduction in emissions if scaled up to include the full Group of 20 largest economies, which will be responsible for 85% of projected global carbon-dioxide emissions in a decade, according to the report, the IMF staff said in the paper.

The global carbon price needs to increase to $75 a ton or more by 2030 in order to limit global warming to 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius, according to the paper. Currently about four-fifths of global emissions remain unpriced, and the global average emissions price is $3 a ton, the IMF staff said.

"The last window of opportunity to keep alive the possibility of containing global warming to 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius is about to close,” Ian Parry, the principal environmental fiscal policy expert at the IMF, said in the Brookings online event. “There’s an awful lot that we need to do over the next decade.”

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(BBC) Climate Change: UN Virtual Talks Make Little Progress

BBC - Matt McGrath

Pakistan has been enduring an extreme heat wave that has taken many lives. Banaras Khan
Exhausted delegates have concluded three weeks of virtual climate negotiations with little progress on key issues.

The UN subsidiary bodies meeting was meant to clear the decks ahead of the major COP26 gathering in Glasgow in November.

But technical glitches, and multiple time zones scuppered attempts to find common ground.

Ministers from 40 countries will meet in July to push the process forward.

Developing nations are also concerned that a lack of vaccines may limit their ability to take part in the Glasgow conference.

But the UK says it will ensure all accredited delegates will get their jabs ahead of the summit.

Thanks to the pandemic, this virtual gathering was the first significant meeting of UN negotiators since December 2019, when COP25 ended in Madrid.

That meeting had failed to find a way forward on a number of important technical questions including the role of carbon markets in curbing climate change.

UK minister Alok Sharma will preside over the COP26 meeting in Glasgow. Getty Images 
Despite an extended session that ran for three weeks of talks, these important issues have still not been resolved.

The challenges of delegates in differing time zones with varying internet connections made these difficult negotiations a real struggle.

"I think this was technically challenging for many parties, connectivity problems compounded and complicated the trust deficits that exist," said Quamrul Chowdhury, a climate negotiator from Bangladesh.

"Even the low hanging fruits couldn't be harvested," he told BBC News.

As well as the technical challenges, there were issues with access for observers with China objecting to their presence at talks on transparency.

With little movement from the negotiators, it will require ministerial intervention to push the process forward.

"The past three weeks have made one thing very clear - the most dangerous stumbling blocks on the road to COP26 are political, not technical," said Jennifer Tollmann, a senior policy advisor at environmental think-tank E3G.

"Parties know each others' positions, it's the will to find compromise options that drive ambition that's frequently missing."

Young protestors have been putting pressure on politicians to act on climate. NurPhoto 
The technical challenges mean there is a strong appetite among delegates for face to face talks in Glasgow.

However the question of Covid-19, especially in developing countries is a key issue of concern for many.

"Covid-19 remains a serious concern for many of us, and travel restrictions continue for many countries," said Ambassador Diann Black-Layne of Antigua and Barbuda, who is a lead negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States.

"A significant portion of our membership face onerous travel restrictions regardless of their personal vaccination status. Some islands in the Pacific have just two flights per month, with one month of quarantine, while other islands still have closed borders. This will not change unless their entire populations have vaccine access."

But UK minister Alok Sharma, who will chair the global gathering, told a news conference that delegates unable to get jabs from their own countries "will get support from us".

Details are still being worked out in discussions with the UN, according to Mr Sharma.

A message written in sand spells out the aims of COP26. Getty Images 

The incoming COP president says that he hopes to speed up the climate talks process by hosting a ministerial meeting in London in July with representatives from about 40 countries.

Across all these meetings, one issue keeps coming to the surface and that's the question of finance. The richer nations have promised $100bn a year in climate finance from 2020.

The developed world has still not succeeded in raising that total.

"History will not be kind to rich nations if they do not step up and fulfil their climate action commitments," said Harjeet Singh, with climate campaign group Climate Action Network International.

"We are already at a point where the world faces multiple crises, and the reality is that the rich world are offering a bandage when surgery is needed."

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(AU The Guardian) Net Zero By 2050? Over Our Dead Body, Bolshie Nationals Tell Scott Morrison

The Guardian - 

The ‘new energy economy’ unfolding all around us is once again hostage to Australia’s gruesome, internecine climate change politics

Michael McCormack, minding shop while Scott Morrison mingled with his global peers, insists the Nationals will not be embracing a firm 2050 target. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP
On Thursday morning, shortly after the resources minister, Keith Pitt, finished his “net zero by 2050: not on your nelly” sortie on the ABC, the governor of the reserve bank, Philip Lowe, touched down in Queensland Nationals country.

Lowe went to Toowoomba to deliver a keynote address at the Australian Farm Institute conference. The speech was principally about household debt, house prices and whether Australians could ever expect a pay rise. But during the questions that followed the presentation, the RBA governor was asked about decarbonisation in the agriculture sector.

Lowe told the conference he was often up late, participating in the international meetings that central bank governors participate in “and a very frequent question that comes up in those meetings is ‘what is Australian business doing to decarbonise?’”.

Nationals send warning to Scott Morrison on net zero emissions target.  Read more

It is worth letting Lowe explain: “Many international investors are very focused on this issue and it’s particularly important for the agricultural sector because up to 70% of agricultural output in Australia gets exported – so you are relying on overseas markets, and increasingly overseas investors are asking about the carbon content of production, and that is a trend that is only going to continue.

“So agriculture has tremendous opportunities here, but we need to find ways to disclose to global investors and global customers the decarbonisation strategy and how successfully we are doing that.

“It is a really important issue and it’s going to become more important.”

Lowe inhabits a universe where climate change is real, the science is settled, and global capital has already made its choice.

If you inhabit that world, there’s very little grey area. You can see that transformation is coming. You can see countries are now in a race to prosper in what Scott Morrison now likes to call the “new energy economy”.

That race is only intensifying.

Over the past couple of months, the International Energy Agency has said fossil fuel expansion must end now if the planet is to address the climate crisis; there has been a G7 declaration (with Morrison in attendance) that public financing of unabated coal-fired power must stop this year and a pledge that net zero emissions must be achieved by 2050 “at the latest”; Joe Biden, Yoshihide Suga and Justin Trudeau have pledged much deeper cuts in emissions by 2030; and Boris Johnson says climate action is Britain’s top priority and the UK will deliver a 78% emissions cut by 2035 compared with 1990.

While Lowe and his financial sector colleagues inhabit the decarbonising world, and while Morrison, ever flexible, ever protean, now seems to grasp that world is non-negotiable (an epiphany that has led the prime minister to try to reboot a domestic debate that the Coalition has shamefully poisoned and weaponised for a decade to win elections), things look different if you are Keith Pitt.

Pitt, and his colleagues from regional Queensland, have told their constituents, hand on heart, that coal is king and nothing needs to change – and then Biden went and made a liar of him. After Biden vanquished Donald Trump and brought the US back into the Paris agreement, the global disposition on climate action shifted decisively.

Over this past week, while Morrison bounced from Singapore, to Cornwall, to London and Paris, Nationals MPs back home watched with growing trepidation.

During one mildly hilarious moment in London this week, Johnson, who has been entirely clear that he wants Australia to step up its climate policy ambition before Cop26 in Glasgow in November, told reporters breezily that Morrison had already “declared” for net zero by 2050. BoJo flashed a cherubic grin while the Australian prime minister’s face froze in a rictus.

Perhaps Pitt feared Morrison would race home after all the summiting, infected with G7itis, to stitch up that “declared” net zero agreement, posthaste.


Donors say they won’t support University of Newcastle after coalmining executive made chancellor.  Read more
In any case the resources minister took himself to the Radio National studio in Parliament House early on Thursday morning to tell Morrison what would be happening.

The resources minister said publicly what he’s been telling colleagues privately for months: Morrison might want to pivot on climate policy to placate metropolitan Liberal voters and his global peers, particularly Biden and Johnson, ahead of Glasgow.

But the prime minister can’t do that in any substantive way unless the National party agrees. Implied but not stated was: “Over our dead body, mate.”

What Pitt said on Thursday morning reflected the bolshie mood in the Nationals party room this week. As one of the resources minister’s colleagues put it to me bluntly: “Scott needed to be told to shut up.”

A boiling anger has been growing in the junior Coalition partner that Morrison has been out since Biden won the US election laying the groundwork for the government to adopt a net zero position, without asking the Nationals whether or not that was OK. “He hasn’t even bothered to have the conversation,” one Nationals MP told me this week.

It’s a strange sort of business, this pent-up fury, this terrible foreboding in the Nationals that when it comes to climate action things are about to take a substantive turn, because there is no sign that Morrison actually wants his climate pivot to be substantive.

While the world is moving more decisively into a climate science-adjacent position, all Morrison has done (thus far at least – I keep hoping the prime minister will prove me wrong), is plaster an aspirational sounding talking point on the status quo.

The prime minister says he wants to achieve net zero emissions as soon as possible and “preferably” by 2050. But heavily qualified aspiration isn’t action. Thus far, the official guidance is a mid-century target – assuming the Nationals can ultimately be persuaded – wouldn’t be legislated.

Also, the further Morrison tiptoes along his pivot curve, the more obvious it becomes that the prime minister’s “pivot” involves ensuring the fossil fuels industry remains tucked in snugly at the heart of the transition.

While Morrison articulates his “preference” to achieve net zero by 2050, Australia is opening up new gas basins (because gas must be the new coal before hydrogen becomes the new gas); taxpayers are building a gas peaking plant in the Hunter Valley even though the energy market operator says there are cheaper firming options; and “renewable” energy agencies are being tasked with trying to nail carbon capture and storage, because if we can crack CCS at scale, that keeps abated fossil fuels in the game for longer, so the same club of companies that prospered in the carbon economy can continue to prosper in the new energy economy.

Given all that – given Morrison is very obviously working within the constraints the National party would always impose – you might wonder why Pitt felt it necessary to shirtfront Morrison.

But there it was. Shots fired.

The Nationals leader, Michael McCormack, minding shop as acting prime minister while Morrison mingled with his global peers this week, was on song with Pitt. On a podcast with the Conversation this week, McCormack said his party would not be embracing a 2050 target as a firm commitment in the run up to Glasgow.

It’s hard, right at the moment, to say whether this no is a firm no, or whether no means “negotiate, Scott”.

‘Dead in the water’: key crossbenchers reject Coalition demand to back new environment standards.  Read more
It would not surprise me at all if the Nationals decided to absolutely dig in.

I’ve been pointing out for months it’s a really difficult thing for the Queensland crew, who increased their margins in 2019 by telling constituents the Coalition was implacably for fluoro shirts and fossil fuels, to turn on a dime.

How, exactly, do people like Pitt go home to the same electorates and say, ‘actually, we are now for net zero’ without looking like a bunch of frauds? So it is possible this will be a firm veto. But it is also possible, now everything is reaching the business end, that the Nationals are positioning for a deal of some kind.

So what is the price of admission? The trade portfolio? That coal plant in Collinsville, or a small fleet of modular nuclear reactors? A legislated undertaking that all Queensland preschoolers will be gifted a coal-fired unicorn?

In any case, one thing is clear: the world of tremendous opportunity Lowe spoke about in Toowoomba, the world that is unfolding all around us, the world of science and facts and economics, is once again hostage to Australia’s gruesome, internecine climate change politics.

That reality could not be more depressing.

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Saturday, June 19, 2021

(AU The Conversation) Grattan On Friday: Will Bolshie Nationals Or Joe Biden Have More Sway With Morrison On 2050 Target?

The Conversation - 

Mick Tsikas/AAP

Many observers have been assuming Scott Morrison’s strategy is to creep towards endorsing the 2050 target of net zero emissions, finally embracing it before the Glasgow climate conference in November.

But this week’s developments suggest the prime minister might have to adopt another course.

He could stay with his present position, which has the target as an aspiration he surrounds with a web of subsidiary policies, such as the multiple bilateral technology agreements he announced while he was overseas.

Morrison’s present commitment, reiterated in his major speech in Perth before leaving Australia, is to reach net zero “as soon as possible, preferably by 2050”.

In London British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, in an intriguing but unexplained moment at their joint news conference, stated Morrison had “declared for net zero by 2050”. Of course he hadn’t, and Johnson was aware of that – he has been urging him to do so. We don’t know whether there was intent in Johnson’s comment, or just sloppiness.

In the mouth of a politician, the word “preferably” is like that handy phrase “the government plans to …” (or “has no plans to …”). It is cheap coinage. It certainly wouldn’t buy much in Glasgow.

But it is useful and it may be the coinage Morrison will need to continue to deal in. Remember we are talking here about political reality, not what is the best policy, which clearly would be to sign up to the target.

We’ve thought Morrison would want to shift before Glasgow so Australia would have a more credible position internationally, respond to the pressure from the US and Britain, and minimise isolation. That’s apart from the electoral implications surrounding an issue many voters feel strongly about.

But Morrison this year has already worn the awkwardness of taking Australia’s weak position through Joe Biden’s “virtual” climate summit and maintaining it during his trip to the G7 meeting.

And even if he changed for Glasgow, other countries wouldn’t be convinced. There’d be no foreign applause. The sharp point of the debate has moved from 2050 to the medium term, and Morrison won’t make Australia’s 2030 targets more ambitious (though he’ll argue it will exceed them and possibly even project to 2035).

The US and the UK have leaned on Morrison, and he hasn’t firmed his 2050 stand. Now, at home, it’s increasingly looking dangerous for him to do so, even though work is under way to map out Australia’s emissions technology plans and what that means for reductions.

It’s a risk-benefit judgment for Morrison, and the risk of moving could be high.

Not all the Nationals oppose the 2050 target but enough of them do – and very strongly – to create a serious obstacle for the PM. The opponents within the minor party are bolshie and willing to fight.

Nationals Senate leader Bridget McKenzie was a minister until she became the fall girl in the sports rorts affair. She doesn’t owe anything to Morrison or her leader, Michael McCormack.

McKenzie was on Sky with Alan Jones this week. “The National Party is the second party in this Coalition government. [It] has not signed up to net zero anything at any time and we’ll take a lot of convincing that that is actually the destination we need to get to,” she said. “Because we know it’ll be our miners, our farmers, our manufacturers that will be paying the price for all this posturing.

"We will not let our people be put under the bus to chase some fake ambition to appease overseas masters.”

In normal circumstances, Morrison might expect the Nationals’ leadership to be able to get a desired result – by pointing out there could be benefits for farmers – regardless of noisy dissidents.

But nothing is normal in the Nationals. It’s a wasps’ nest. Poke a stick in and anything could happen. McCormack, with a tenuous grip on the leadership, could easily be stung to death.

McCormack knows this. Pressed in a Wednesday podcast with The Conversation, he said the Nationals wouldn’t be agreeing to the target this year. When it was put to him, “we can be sure that the Nats would not embrace that target?”, he replied, “Correct”.
 
Politics with Michelle Grattan: McCormack on 2050

Resources Minister Keith Pitt told the ABC on Thursday that for the government policy to change to endorsing net zero by 2050 would require the Nationals’ agreement “and that agreement has not been reached or sought”. Asked what the mood of their party room would be now, he said: “I think they’d be unsupportive, but we are yet to have that discussion.”

If Morrison wants to trigger “that discussion”, it could be very messy and divisive in the latter months of this year.

Failing to embrace the target would not do the Coalition any harm in regional seats in Queensland – in fact it would maximise the difference with Labor. But what about climate-sensitive southern seats, such as Higgins in Melbourne and Wentworth in Sydney?

It would obviously be unhelpful. But many of those for whom climate is a major vote-changing issue may have shifted their vote anyway.

The prospects of independent Zali Steggall retaining Warringah would probably be assisted by the government failing to endorse 2050. But the Liberals are not reckoning on regaining this seat unless former NSW premier Mike Baird runs, and he has resisted that.

So while there would be clear costs in staying with the weasel words, “as soon as possible” and “preferably”, they are arguably not as great as a potential blow-up in the Nationals that could have unforeseen consequences.

How embarrassing would failure to have a firm target be for Morrison at Glasgow? Greater if he were there than if he just sent Foreign Minister Marise Payne and Energy Minister Angus Taylor, who wouldn’t be noticed. But will he go?

He’d remember Kevin Rudd’s presence at Copenhagen in 2009 played badly for him. He’d note Tony Abbott did not attend the 2015 Paris conference. Julie Bishop, as foreign minister, led the Australian delegation.

Morrison has said he hopes to go to Glasgow. Could he find a way to avoid an engagement that would have no upside for him? It would be a matter of scheduling.

He’ll be in Rome for the G20 at the end of October. The Glasgow conference, which runs from November 1-12, is expected to have a leaders’ segment at the start, facilitating them going straight from the G20.

If he attends, Morrison will be armed with a heap of policy on technology and how it will cut emissions. But he still mightn’t have that hard and fast 2050 target in his kit bag.

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