A clear path to climate action for Australia
 The Princes Highway to climate action, SMH, Jono La Nauze 2 Feb 2020 In the past few weeks a clear path to real action on climate change has emerged. State and territory governments are aligning on the need for stronger climate policy.If the states act decisively and act together on setting emissions targets they can reduce pollution through an alternative route. Let’s call it the Princes Highway to climate action, because, like the famous road, it passes through the eastern capitals and deliberately avoids Canberra.
The biggest barrier to action has been a lack of political will and outright climate denialism in Federal Parliament, mainly from the Liberal and National parties. Even after the bushfires, the Prime Minister has tried to deflect attention from his party’s failure by focusing the debate on how we can “adapt” to a hotter, more chaotic climate, rather than cutting the pollution that causes it. But at the state level, things have been different. In recent weeks, senior Liberals have been speaking out about the need to cut pollution and have called for stronger climate policy – including the South Australian Premier, the outgoing and incoming Tasmanian premiers, the Victorian Opposition Leader and the NSW Climate and Energy Minister. In South Australia, the Liberal Party shifted a long time ago. When a freak storm toppled transmission lines and blacked out the state, the federal Coalition rolled out an aggressive misinformation campaign blaming the then Labor government’s renewable energy leadership. But when the Liberals came to power they didn’t follow their federal counterparts in trashing wind and solar – instead, they embraced it. “A lot of people thought when I got elected that we would be scaling back the state’s focus on renewable energy, when in fact we are putting the foot to the floor,” said Liberal Premier Steven Marshall on Friday. South Australia is now on track for 75 per cent renewable energy by 2025, and the Premier has linked the recent bushfires to climate change. Every single state and territory in the country has now set a goal of net zero emissions by 2050 – a long-term target the Prime Minister has so far rejected. Of course, the reality is that emissions cuts in the next five and 10 years will count the most. That’s why it’s critical that premiers such as Gladys Berejiklian and Daniel Andrews seize this moment to work with their fellow premiers on a national climate change strategy…….. This is a critical moment that could shift the national debate. If Victoria adopts emissions targets in line with the Paris Agreement, it is possible for other states to follow suit, passing similar legislation and creating a de-facto national climate change strategy – whether Scott Morrison decided to help out or not. In a few years, rather than being stuck in a stalemate at the federal level while temperatures rise and the country burns, we could have agreement between states and territories to get on with the job of lowering emissions and creating a safer future. https://www.smh.com.au/national/the-princes-highway-to-climate-action-20200131-p53wg6.html |
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Australian govt’s dodgy process, with “jobs promises” for getting support for Kimba nuclear waste dump.
Megan Jo I Fight To Stop A Nuclear Waste Dump In South Australia 3 Feb 2020 I feel empathy for the people that voted yes. I think they truly believe that the promises of jobs, safety and prosperity are going to materialise. Sure, the government has promised 45 jobs….. but the current definition of ‘employed’ is 1 hour per week. Indigenous community votes down proposed nuclear waste bunker near Lake Huron,
‘We were not consulted when the nuclear industry was established in our territory’,https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/indigenous-community-votes-down-proposed-nuclear-waste-bunker-near-lake-huron The Canadian Press , Colin Perkel, February 1, 2020
TORONTO — An Indigenous community has overwhelmingly rejected a proposed underground storage facility for nuclear waste near Lake Huron, likely spelling the end for a multibillion-dollar, politically fraught project years in the making.
After a year of consultations and days of voting, the 4,500-member Saugeen Ojibway Nation announced late Friday that 85 per cent of those casting ballots had said no to accepting a deep geologic repository at the Bruce nuclear power plant near Kincardine, Ont.
“We were not consulted when the nuclear industry was established in our territory,” SON said in a statement. “Over the past 40 years, nuclear power generation in Anishnaabekiing has had many impacts on our communities, and our land and waters.” Continue reading
Europe to be the first carbon neutral continent, and WITH NUCLEAR POWER EXCLUDED
Renew Extra 1st Feb 2020, Dave Elliott: With Climate Change at the top of the agenda, the EU aims to be the first carbon neutral continent, working towards net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, with a new climate law being enacted soon. That’s taken some fighting for and fiddling, given the opposition from heavy coal users like Poland, but there’s a proposed Just Transition mechanism to help countries like that move to carbon neutrality, with nuclear excluded from support for this.
So renewables should boom even more. Renewables have
certainly been doing well. Germany will soon get around half of its power
from renewables, Portugal is already at over 54%, Denmark near 60%, while
Sweden is at 66% and Austria over 70%. By 2030 some of these countries
could be getting near 100% of their electricity from renewables and should
also be beginning to meet significant shares of their heat and transport
needs using renewables. Sweden already gets around 54% of all its energy
from renewables, Norway and Iceland are both at around 70%.
https://renewextraweekly.blogspot.com/2020/02/there-have-been-divergent-views-on.html
Australia’s extreme bushfires – forests might not recover
Wildfires have spread dramatically—and some forests may not recover. An explosion in the frequency and extent of wildfires worldwide is hindering recovery even in ecosystems that rely on natural blazes to survive. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/01/extreme-wildfires-reshaping-forests-worldwide-recovery-australia-climate/
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BY JOHN PICKRELL, JANUARY 30, 2020, Pungent and damp, the so-called tall, wet forests of southeastern Australia are home to the tallest flowering plants on Earth. Eucalyptus regnans, the Latin name of the mountain ash, means “ruler of the gum trees”—which is fitting, given these giants can reach more than 300 feet high.
Many of Australia’s gum trees, particularly those in drier forest types, are famously able to tolerate fire, throwing out new buds and shoots within weeks of being engulfed in flames. But even these tenacious species have their limits. Old-growth forests of the mountain ash and a related species, the alpine ash, are among the gum trees that are less tolerant of intense blazes. In the state of Victoria, these trees had already been severely depleted by logging and land clearing. Now, the bushfires that have burned more than 26 million acres of eastern Australia in recent months are putting the forests at even greater risk. Some of the forests razed this year have experienced four bushfires in the past 25 years, meaning they’ve had no chance to recover, says David Lindenmayer, an ecologist at the Australian National University in Canberra. “They should be burning no more than every 75 to 125 years, so that’s just an extraordinary change to fire regimes,” he says. “Mountain ash need to be about 15 to 30 years old before they can produce viable amounts of seed to replace themselves following fire.” The loss of these dominant trees is a significant problem, since they provide vital habitat for threatened animal species such as the sooty owl, the giant burrowing frog, and a fluffy arboreal marsupial called the greater glider. (Also find out how Australia’s fires can create big problems for freshwater supplies.) |
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Federal Government chooses Kimba farm Napandee on the Eyre Peninsula for nuclear dump
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Federal Government chooses Kimba farm Napandee on the Eyre Peninsula for nuclear dump, ABC, 1 Feb 2020
The Federal Government has selected a farm on South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula as the site of a controversial nuclear waste dump. Key points:
Jeff Baldock’s Napandee property 20 kilometres west of Kimba will be used to permanently store low-level waste and temporarily store intermediate-level waste. The decision to use the 160-hectare area for what the Government calls a “disposal and storage facility” was made after four years of consultation. Nearly 62 per cent of people voted in favour of the site being used in November, while a site near Hawker in the Flinders Ranges was opposed by Aboriginal traditional owners and residents……. Dump to consolidate nuclear wasteLocal federal Liberal MP Rowan Ramsey said waste would come in from more than 100 sites around Australia, such as hospitals and universities, and the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor in Sydney. Processed medium-level nuclear fuel rods from Lucas Heights will be temporarily stored at Kimba while a permanent site is found for them, he said. Mr Ramsey, who tried to nominate his own property near Kimba for the dump but was barred as a federal MP, said there would be no fly-in, fly-out workers at the facility……. Aboriginal group opposed the voteThe Barngarla Determination Aboriginal Corporation launched legal action in 2018 against the District Council of Kimba, arguing it contravened the Racial Discrimination Act by excluding native title holders from a ballot due to be held that year. The Federal Court dismissed the claim last year because it said no contraventions of the Racial Discrimination Act had been established…….. The Howard government proposed a similar dump in South Australia in 1998 but withdrew its plans after losing a fight with the South Australian Labor government in the Federal Court. In 2007, a property called Mukaty Station in the Northern Territory was put forward to host the nuclear waste facility. The plan was abandoned in 2014, again because of legal action, this time by the area’s traditional owners. A group called No Radioactive Waste Facility for Kimba District held a rally against the decision in the town on Sunday.Friends of the Earth national nuclear campaigner Jim Green said the Federal Government promised the facility would not be approved unless it received at least 65 per cent of community support. “They’ve ignored the traditional owners, ignored South Australians. South Australia’s got legislation banning the imposition of nuclear waste dumps and that’s been ignored and it’s just disrespectful from start to finish,” he said. “South Australians have got greater ambitions for our state than to be someone else’s nuclear waste dump.”https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-01/kimba-farm-eyre-peninsula-chosen-for-nuclear-dump/11920514 |
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Bushfire state of emergency in Australian Capital Territory (ACT)
Times 2nd Feb 2020, An inferno was raging near the Australian capital, Canberra, yesterday as a heatwave combined with high winds to prolong the country’s devastating bushfire season. The tiny Australian Capital Territory (ACT), between Sydney and Melbourne, declared a state of emergency as the fire, covering 140 square miles, threatened Canberra’s southern suburbs.
“Mercenary science”- crooked science funded by corporations
Why is the nuclear industry not mentioned in relation to “mercenary science”? 
Independent Russian scientists gave comprehensive accounts of the effects of the Chernobyl disaster – they were vilified by both Russia and the West . That’s another side of this issue -destroy the credibility of honest scientists.While the vast majority of scientists, both employed publicly and privately, are honest and do their work as part of a larger quest for truth, there are a few notable exceptions. Specifically, a few mercenary science consulting firms have been very effective at helping corporations continue selling harmful chemicals and drugs long after they should have stopped.
Michaels, who has a new book on the topic titled “The Triumph of Doubt: Dark Money and the Science of Deception,” has been studying this problem for years, in part by virtue of his 8-year tenure at OSHA. Now a public health professor at George Washington University, Michaels’ book pulls back the curtain on the way that dark money and for-profit science is quite literally killing Americans.
David Michaels: Mercenary science means [when scientists] produce studies that aren’t designed to better understand the world, or they help make the world a better place — which is why most scientists are in the business of science – but to defend products and to defend corporations. And often to influence regulation or to slow the compensation of victims.
This is the Enron-ization of science. It’s created a fiction in order to promote an actual game, fiction around science. And it is quite mercenary. In fact, this phrase is not one that I invented, but actually is used by these consulting companies whose business model is to provide some using reports and testimonies to corporations, so they can continue to market dangerous products or activities without being hindered by regulation or by compensating the people they’ve hurt.
What would you say is the most shocking, real-life example of something like this — of mercenary science becoming embedded in mainstream discourse?
I think the most famous [example] is in the tobacco industry… who didn’t invent it, but who certainly gained the most from it — and in climate change. There’s actually some overlap between some of the same mercenary scientists in both examples.
But as I write [in my book], this is now become standard operating procedure for virtually every industry, and in many cases, it’s the same so-called scientists who are involved in doing it. Nowadays, the instinct of corporate leaders — CEOs and executives —when there’s an allegation that their product could be causing harm is to say, “How can we show that it isn’t causing harm?” Not, “how can we determine whether or not we cause harm,” and then figure out what to do about it.
Other examples [include] opioids, and essentially how a few pharmaceutical companies misrepresented the studies to make it look like these opioids were not addictive. We have a death toll of tens of thousands a year as a result of that…………
David Michael’s new book, “The Triumph of Doubt: Dark Money and the Science of Deception,” is out from Oxford University Press on February 3, 2020. https://www.salon.com/2020/02/02/the-art-of-scientific-deception-how-corporations-use-mercenary-science-to-evade-regulation/
Drinking water threatened by forest fires
As forests burn around the world, drinking water is 
at risk https://www.westhawaiitoday.com/2020/01/31/features/as-forests-burn-around-the-world-drinking-water-is-at-risk/
In Australia’s national capital of Canberra, where a state of emergency was declared on Friday because of an out-of-control forest fire to its south, authorities are hoping a new water treatment plant and other measures will prevent a repeat of water quality problems and disruption that followed deadly wildfires 17 years ago.
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“The forest area burned in Australia within a single fire season is just staggering,” said Stefan Doerr, a professor at Swansea University in England who studies the effects of forest fires on sediment and ash runoff. “We haven’t seen anything like it in recorded history.” The situation in Australia illustrates a growing global concern: Forests, grasslands and other areas that supply drinking water to hundreds of millions of people are increasingly vulnerable to fire due in large part to hotter, drier weather that has extended fire seasons, and more people moving into those areas, where they can accidentally set fires. More than 60% of the water supply for the world’s 100 largest cities originates in fire-prone watersheds — and countless smaller communities also rely on surface water in vulnerable areas, researchers say. Continue reading |
Scott Morrison, in the grip of fossil fuel lobby, is wrong about more gas for Australia
So, Scott Morrison, let’s come clean and let the public know that there’s no domestic case for increasing gas extraction. Given that gas extraction threatens landscapes and has a major problem with emissions, it’s better we leave it in the ground
The prime minister, Scott Morrison, surrounded by advisers out of the fossil fuel industry, is stuck in a time warp.
His claim that “there is no credible energy transition plan, for an economy like Australia in particular, that does not involve the greater use of gas as an important transition fuel” is demonstrably wrong. There are many. Continue reading
225 $billion for Australia’s submarine plan – a fleet of B-21 bombers would be better
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Scrap submarines project before it’s too late says former public service boss, Michael West media, by Jon Stanford | Feb 3, 2020 Australia’s $225 billion SEA 1000 submarine project is so high risk, it would be better for Department of Defence to scrap it and start again, writes former public service chief, Jon Stanford, in the final instalment of his Second Rate Leadership series. In addition to some very serious problems with progress with the SEA 1000 program, there are some more fundamental questions to be addressed in the longer term. The first of these is whether the Attack class will embody the technologies required to be successful in its operations in the mid-2030s and beyond. In other words, will it be fit for purpose? An associated question is around the submarine’s cost effectiveness. The escalating cost of this acquisition means that the opportunity cost is also going up. With the submarines being designed mainly for joint operations with the US Navy, there are also significant risks in the future around whether a continuing US presence can be assumed.
In regard to the first question, it is very difficult to be able to judge whether the submarines will be fit for purpose if we do not know what that purpose is. Based on comments and submissions to Parliamentary inquiries from former Australian submariners we can be fairly confident that our submarines’ main area of operations (AO) is in the South China Sea, 3,500 nautical miles from base. But once there, we are not told what they do. In Australia at least, the missions the submarines undertake are classified….. ……..In addition, at a whole of life cost of $225 billion, this deterrent, such as it is, has a very high opportunity cost. Two former RAAF Chiefs have recently proposed that the ADF needs to acquire a long-range bomber force. Even if the new American B-21 bomber delivers only half the capability currently being spruiked, the early acquisition of two squadrons – 48 aircraft off the shelf – at a cost of around $50 billion looks an attractive power projection proposition. By comparison, the ability to put one conventional submarine on station “up threat” at any time at an acquisition cost of $80 billion, with associated doubts around its effectiveness and survivability, must be of questionable value………. |
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Katherine Hayhoe on A BETTER WAY TO TALK ABOUT THE CLIMATE CRISIS
Don’t start with fear, judgment, condemnation, or guilt. And don’t start with just overwhelming people with facts and figures. Do start by connecting the dots to what is already important to both of us, and then offer positive, beneficial, and practical solutions that we can engage in.
climate change affects the economy, the availability of natural resources, prices, jobs, international competition, and more. Failing to account for climate change in future long-range planning could lose us a competitive edge even in a best-case scenario, and potentially mean the end of a product line or an entire business in the worst case. By connecting climate impacts to what we already care about, we can recognize the importance and urgency of taking action.
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A BETTER WAY TO TALK ABOUT THE CLIMATE CRISIS GRETCHEN GAVETT, Harvard Business Review, JANUARY 30, 2020 Many of us care about the climate, but it can be challenging to talk about. It’s easy to get bogged down in stats and statistics, for one. And it can be nerve-racking to approach someone if you don’t already know what their beliefs on the topic are. Sometimes, it’s easier to just keep our mouths shut. Given the urgency of the climate crisis, however, many of us feel that silence is no longer an option. And Dr. Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University, is the person to talk to about how to talk about climate change. Continue reading |
30 years of Australia’s hollow promises on climate policy- podcast
30 years of Australia’s hollow promises on climate policy, https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/audio/2020/feb/03/30-years-of-australias-hollow-promises-on-climate-policy This summer, Scott Morrison has faced international criticism over his climate change policies. But this government is just the latest in a long line that have either failed on meaningful climate policy at home, or blocked stronger climate action on the world stage.In this episode of Full Story, Guardian Australia editor Lenore Taylor explores Australia’s long track record of stalling on climate
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February 2 Energy News — geoharvey
Opinion: ¶ “It’s Time For Solar And Wind To Fight Back In Fossil’s War On Renewables” • Fossil-fuel companies are doing all they can to thwart the development of renewable energy, one renewables developer said this week, but renewables now have the clout to fight back. It’s a pitched battle because both industries are forcing […]
Past time to listen to Greta — Beyond Nuclear International
And to act on her climate warnings
via Past time to listen to Greta — Beyond Nuclear International
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 