Emergency Services Minister Craig Crawford will today release a plan designed to help first responders get ready for future weather extremes.
It warns of the potential for climate change to increase the frequency, intensity, duration and distribution of bushfires, heatwaves and coastal inundation.
“We’ve all got to accept the world is changing. Queensland is changing,” Mr Crawford said.
“There are plenty of people out there who are climate change sceptics… but the consensus is our fire seasons are getting hotter and longer and our flood and cyclone seasons are certainly getting stronger and more frequent.”
The Emergency Management strategy has been developed in conjunction with the environment department, Griffith University Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility, local councils, the Bureau of Meteorology, CSIRO and the Queensland Farmers Federation.
Mr Crawford said emergency services had to be prepared for “anything and everything”. “This is massive state. We’re one of the only states in Australia where we could potentially have wild fires burning in the southern part of the state on the same day as we have a cyclone ravaging the north, so we have to be ready for whatever the future holds for us,” he said.
That could mean extra training and equipment for first responders and rethinking how quickly they could be deployed across larger parts of the state.”If we’re going to have cyclones happening in parts of Queensland that they don’t normally happen right now it means that we’re going to have to expand all the areas where we have response training, capability and everything like that,” Mr Crawford said.
“That will cause a significant financial cost to us that we’ll have to manage as we go into the future.”
Cairns Regional Council Deputy Mayor and Local Disaster Management Group chair Terry James said local governments needed to prepare for the consequences of climate change.
“We recognise that our coastal communities are facing increased threats from erosion, storm tide flooding and rising sea levels,” Counsellor James said.
“That is why it is so important all levels of government work together to assess risks and identify practical solutions that will help them prepare for the growing threat of climate change.”
Queensland is no stranger to natural disasters and weather extremes.
This year the bushfire season started early, with crews battling more than 1,000 vegetation blazes in August alone.
Cyclone Debbie in 2017 and Cyclone Marcia in 2015 wrought billions of dollars in damage to parts of the central and North Queensland coasts.
September 8, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
climate change - global warming, Queensland |
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Paris climate deal doesn’t stop us building new coal plants, Canavan says
Minister says agreement Australia committed to ‘doesn’t actually bind us to anything in particular’, Guardian, Katharine Murphy Political editor @murpharoo 7 Sept 18 Australia does not need to quit the Paris climate agreement because our commitments are non-binding, and new coal plants can continue to be constructed, according to the resources minister, Matt Canavan.
Canavan told Sydney broadcaster Alan Jones on Friday he had never been to Paris, and was “happy to leave the Champs-Élysées for others”, but people needed to be clear the treaty Tony Abbott committed Australia to in 2015 “doesn’t actually bind us to anything in particular”.
But Canavan said on Friday the Paris commitment was a three-page document that allowed Australia flexibility to build new coal plants. The resources minister said rather than focusing on the situation in 2030, “what I want to focus on is solving the crisis we have in energy today”……
Broadcaster Alan Jones declared the prime minister, Scott Morrison, needed to “recall Marise Payne and replace her”. He said the Morrison government would have no hope of winning the next federal election if it wanted to “persist with the global warming rubbish and the Paris agreement”.
The 2GB host said Paris needed to be “ripped up”.
A recent forecast by the Australian Energy Market Operator predicted 30% of Australia’s coal generators will approach the end of their technical life over the next two decades, and it said it was important to avoid premature departures if the looming transition in the national energy market is to be orderly.
But it was also clear that the most economical replacement for the ageing coal fleet was not new coal, but “a portfolio of utility-scale renewable generation, storage, distributed energy resources, flexible thermal capacity, and transmission”.
September 8, 2018
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Australia gets out the wrecking ball, again, in international climate talks https://reneweconomy.
com.au/australia-gets-out-the-wrecking-ball-again-in-international-climate-talks-17099/
The international community is looking on in horror, and so are the main business lobby groups in Australia, such as the Business Council of Australia – who have campaigned vigorosuly for a decade to minimise Australia’s contribution to climate action, but understand the considerable reputational, trade and business consequences of choosing to do nothing.
Morrison has so far resisted calls from the party’s far right to follow Trump out of the Paris climate treaty, but in crucial and complex climate talks in Bangkok this week, sided with the US and Japan in a dramatic attempt to weaken climate finance obligations.
The Bangkok talks were called to give negotiators extra time to put together the so-called “rule-book,” which will provide the fine details of the Paris agreement, particularly as countries gear up to increase their climate targets to try and drag the collective efforts closer to the target of limiting global warming to “well below” 2°C, and possibly 1.5°C.
But little progress has been made in Bangkok, forcing the UNFCCC, which runs the climate talks, to call for the annual talks scheduled this year in Poland to begin a day earlier, in the hope that visiting heads of state have something to work with when they turn up.
One of the biggest road-blocks has been erected by Australia, the US and Japan, who put in a joint submission that seeks to water down climate finance guidelines, and casts doubt that this week’s Bangkok negotiations will deliver the clear climate rules UN leaders have been calling for. Climate campaigners say the proposed text on article 9.7 of the Paris accord, which refers to accounting and is meant to establish rules about how developed countries report what finance they provide to developing countries, serves to muddy the rules rather than clarify them.
The campaigners say that the proposal would allow countries to report whatever items they like – including commercial loans ≠ as climate finance, in contrast to demands of clear financial and technical packages to help them developing countries cope with future extreme weather-related events.
“(This) does not create any meaningful rules on how climate finance is accounted for, and instead it essentially says ‘countries should report what they want,’” Brandon Wu, director of policy and campaigns for ActionAid USA, told Devex.
“This would completely let rich countries off the hook and deprive developing countries of real money for real action,” Wu said. Other campaigners said this meant climate finance could just be re-badged existing aid.
These problems are being felt acutely in the Pacific, where island nations are furious with Australia’s stance on climate, its attachment to coal, and its refusal to act on its declarations that “it takes climate change seriously.”
The current Coalition government still has no policy in place to try and reach what is regarded as a very low interim target of a 26-28 per cent reduction in emissions by 2030. Continue reading →
September 7, 2018
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AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, climate change - global warming, politics international |
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Australia signs declaration on Pacific climate ‘threat’, islands call on US to return to Paris deal, ABC News, By Pacific affairs reporter Stephen Dziedzic, Michael Walsh and Jack Kilbride, 5 Sept 18
Australia, New Zealand and Pacific nations have signed a declaration highlighting climate change as “the single greatest threat” to Pacific people, while island nations called on the United States to return to the Paris agreement.
Key points:
- The declaration expands the idea of regional security to include environmental issues
- It specifically names climate change as the region’s “single greatest threat”
- It recognises that the Pacific is “increasingly crowded” in terms of geopolitics
The communique was signed at the end of the Pacific Islands Forum in Nauru, attended by large and small island states as well as New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Australia’s Foreign Minister Marise Payne.
But there was last-minute wrangling over the language on climate change, with some Pacific nations privately accusing Australia of trying to water down the final declaration from leaders.
Australia would also not back a statement from small island states which calls for countries to “urgently accelerate” reductions in carbon emissions.
Tuvalu’s Prime Minister Enele Sopoaga didn’t directly name Australia, but when pressed by journalists confirmed a country “starting with a capital A” had objected.
“The issues are so critical for leaders of smaller island states because of their vulnerability to climate change,” Mr Sopoaga said.
“We appealed to Forum leaders to endorse [the statement] so we can walk the talk.”
Australia and New Zealand also didn’t join a call from other Pacific Island Forum members for the United States to re-join the Paris climate change agreement.
Washington formally announced it would withdraw from the landmark climate agreement in August last year.
The Boe Declaration is named after the district in Nauru it was signed in.
It declares that climate change “remains the single greatest threat to the livelihood, security and wellbeing of the peoples of the Pacific”.
Leaders also signed a communique saying they would work together in the lead-up to this year’s COP24 climate conference in Poland, in order to “ensure effective progress on Pacific priorities with regards to the Paris Agreement”……. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-05/australia-and-pacific-nations-sign-climate-security-declaration/10204422
September 7, 2018
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Australia relationship with Pacific on climate change ‘dysfunctional’ and ‘abusive’
Palau’s climate change coordinator says Australia provides aid to region but on world stage undermines attempts to halt global warming, Guardian, Kate Lyons in Koror and Ben Doherty 5 Sep 2018 Australia’s relationship with the Pacific region on the issue of climate change has been described as “dysfunctional” and “abusive” – providing aid to the region to deal with the effects of global warming but undermining attempts to halt its progress, according to a climate change representative for the Pacific nation of Palau.
Xavier Matsutaro, the national climate change coordinator for Palau, a small nation in the north-west Pacific, said Australia’s relationship with the Pacific was “dysfunctional”, adding that Australia was also responsible for diluting the strength of previous regional declarations on climate change.
“Australia is a bit of an anomaly, because on the floor [of climate summits] they’re basically sometimes as far right as Trump in some of their views on climate change, at one point they even denied that it existed … But then on a regional basis they’ve actually given a lot of support to our region,” said Matsutaro.
“Sometimes the way I think about it … it’s like you’re in a relationship and you get abused by your spouse but at the same time they feed you and clothe you and things like that,” he said. “You could say it’s a bit of a dysfunctional relationship.”…….
Matsutaro said Australia, which has historically been the key aid partner for the Pacific region, had supported projects in Palau related to climate change, including a coastal erosion project and research on coral bleaching. Australia even provided research on the impact of climate change on Palau which formed the basis for a section of Palau’s climate change policy.
But when it came time to make commitments on climate change, Matsutaro, who has attended COP meetings on Palau’s behalf for the last five years, said Australia was regularly out of sync with the rest of the region, and was responsible for diluting the strength of resolutions on the environment.
“They’re responsible for making our declarations weaker sometimes in the region. So there’s been forums that were formulated so [Australia] won’t be involved in it, they’re not members, so that whatever language that really reflects our views and our circumstances is actually reflected in the declaration,” he said.
Pacific leaders have called for Australia to do more to reduce emissions and act to curb the effects of climate change……..https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/sep/05/australia-relationship-with-pacific-on-climate-change-dysfunctional-and-abusive
September 7, 2018
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Scott Morrison contradicts energy advice, saying Paris targets can be met ‘at a canter’, Guardian, Katharine Murphy Political editor@murpharoo 5 Sep 2018
Prime minister claims Australia will easily meet its obligations without an emissions reduction policy Scott Morrison is continuing to insist that Australia will meet its Paris climate commitments “in a canter” despite the government having no emissions reduction policies to achieve that result.The prime minister used a radio interview on Wednesday afternoon to declare “the business-as-usual model gets us there in a canter” –
which contradicts advice from the Energy Security Board that says business as usual will mean the electricity sector will “fall short of the emissions reduction target of 26% below 2005 levels”.
Even if the the ESB projections are wrong, and the electricity sector managed to reduce emissions by 26% with no policy to drive that result, the Paris target applies across the economy, not just to the electricity sector, and the government’s own data shows emissions in other sectors of the economy are rising.
Morrison told 2GB on Wednesday that business as usual “and technology and the amount of renewable technologies that are already in the system and not being subsidised off into the future means these [Paris] targets are hit”.
A summary of modelling undertaken by the ESB and released only a month ago said if no policy was put in place in the electricity sector – which is the business-as-usual case the prime minister refers to – emissions would fall initially, then flatten out and rise towards the end of the decade to 2030 as forecast demand increased, then dip again in 2029-30.
The ESB said if the national energy guarantee wasn’t implemented, the national electricity market would “fall short of the emissions reduction target of 26% below 2005 levels”.
On Wednesday the prime minister initially said that the renewable energy target was driving up power prices “and that’s why we are stripping [subsidies] out of the system”, then said later in the same interview that the biggest driver of higher power prices was gold-plating of the electricity networks.
Asked by his host on 2GB what was ultimately more important, complying with Australia’s international climate obligations, or lowering power prices, Morrison said: “Power prices.” He counselled against being “distracted by ideological debate”.
The ESB has warned that if governments fail to implement the national energy guarantee – the policy Malcolm Turnbull shelved to try and stave off the civil war that ultimately cost him the prime ministership – that will “prolong the current investment uncertainty, and deny customers more affordable energy”……..https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/sep/05/scott-morrison-contradicts-energy-advice-saying-paris-targets-can-be-met-at-a-canter
September 7, 2018
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Australia’s authority in Pacific ‘being eroded by refusal to address climate change’
Top climate scientist says leaders disenchanted with Australia’s promotion of coal and slowing down action on meeting Paris targets, Guardian, Ben Doherty, 6 Sept 18 Australia’s regional authority and influence is being eroded by its refusal to address the threat climate change poses to many of its Pacific neighbours, according to a pre-eminent climate scientist.
As part of the Pacific Islands Forum, Australia was a signatory to the Boe declaration in Nauru on Wednesday which said climate change represented “the single greatest threat to the livelihoods, security and wellbeing of the peoples of the Pacific”.
But Australia attempted to water down the language of the declaration, other Pacific countries have said, resisting language around urgent action to cut emissions, and issued qualifications to part of the Pacific Islands Forum communique over the Paris climate agreement.
The prime minister of Tuvalu, Enele Sopoaga, said the name of the country seeking qualifications “[started] with capital A”. Australia is the only country in the PIF beginning with A.
Several sources from the PIF forum have corroborated Australia’s efforts to weaken the Boe Declaration. Vanuatu’s minister for foreign affairs Ralph Regenvanu said: “I was there, and can confirm this is true. And unfortunate.”
Asked specifically by Guardian Australia whether Australia had sought to weaken the language of the declaration, Australia’s foreign minister Marise Payne neither rejected nor confirmed the allegation……
Dr Bill Hare, managing director of Climate Analytics and a lead author on the IPCC fourth assessment report, told Guardian Australia that Pacific leaders were growing increasingly disenchanted with Australia’s refusal to commit to cutting carbon emissions, even as their nations faced massive economic, physical and social disruption, even existential threat.
“The leaders are not fools, and they are increasingly confronted by the problems of climate change, in all its different dimensions,” Hare said. “The problem for Australia is it doesn’t have credibility on climate…….https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/07/australias-authority-in-pacific-being-eroded-by-refusal-to-address-climate-change
September 7, 2018
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Scott Morrison contradicts energy advice, saying Paris targets can be met ‘at a canter’, Guardian, Katharine Murphy Political editor@murpharoo 5 Sep 2018
Prime minister claims Australia will easily meet its obligations without an emissions reduction policy Scott Morrison is continuing to insist that Australia will meet its Paris climate commitments “in a canter” despite the government having no emissions reduction policies to achieve that result.
The prime minister used a radio interview on Wednesday afternoon to declare “the business-as-usual model gets us there in a canter” – which contradicts advice from the Energy Security Board that says business as usual will mean the electricity sector will “fall short of the emissions reduction target of 26% below 2005 levels”.
Even if the the ESB projections are wrong, and the electricity sector managed to reduce emissions by 26% with no policy to drive that result, the Paris target applies across the economy, not just to the electricity sector, and the government’s own data shows emissions in other sectors of the economy are rising.
Morrison told 2GB on Wednesday that business as usual “and technology and the amount of renewable technologies that are already in the system and not being subsidised off into the future means these [Paris] targets are hit”.
A summary of modelling undertaken by the ESB and released only a month ago said if no policy was put in place in the electricity sector – which is the business-as-usual case the prime minister refers to – emissions would fall initially, then flatten out and rise towards the end of the decade to 2030 as forecast demand increased, then dip again in 2029-30.
On Wednesday the prime minister initially said that the renewable energy target was driving up power prices “and that’s why we are stripping [subsidies] out of the system”, then said later in the same interview that the biggest driver of higher power prices was gold-plating of the electricity networks.
Asked by his host on 2GB what was ultimately more important, complying with Australia’s international climate obligations, or lowering power prices, Morrison said: “Power prices.” He counselled against being “distracted by ideological debate”.
The ESB has warned that if governments fail to implement the national energy guarantee – the policy Malcolm Turnbull shelved to try and stave off the civil war that ultimately cost him the prime ministership – that will “prolong the current investment uncertainty, and deny customers more affordable energy”……..https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/sep/05/scott-morrison-contradicts-energy-advice-saying-paris-targets-can-be-met-at-a-canter
September 6, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, climate change - global warming, politics |
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‘Is this a red line for us?’ $15b European trade deal doomed if Australia dodges Paris pledge, SMH, By Nicole Hasham, 31 August 2018 The Coalition’s internal climate war risks damaging the economy after Europe declared it would reject a $15 billion trade deal with Australia unless the Morrison government keeps its pledge to cut pollution under the Paris accord.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison this week reset his government’s course on energy policy, declaring a focus on lowering electricity bills and increasing reliability, while relegating efforts to cut dangerous greenhouse gas emissions.
He has reaffirmed his government’s commitment to the Paris accord despite persistent calls by conservative Coalition MPs, led by Tony Abbott, to quit the agreement.
However there is deep uncertainty over how Australia will meet the Paris goal of reducing Australia’s carbon emissions by 26 per cent by 2030 given the government does not have a national strategy to meet the target.
The policy ructions did not go unnoticed at a meeting of the European Parliament’s Committee on International Trade in Brussels, where the EU’s chief negotiator on the deal, Helena König, faced angry questions from the floor over Australia’s commitment to climate action.
Australia and the EU will in November enter a second round of negotiations over the deal that would end restrictions on Australian exports and collectively add $15 billion to both economies.
In a video of this week’s proceedings, Ms König told the committee that “it’s the [European] Commission’s position … that we are talking about respect and full implementation of the Paris agreement [as part of the trade deal]”.
“No doubt we will see what comes out in the text [of the deal agreement] but that I expect to be the minimum in the text, for sure.”
Her assertion is a clear signal that any failure by Australia to meet its international climate obligations would have serious economic consequences.
Ms König fired off the warning after a question by Klaus Buchner, a German Greens member of the Parliament who said “the intention of the new Australian regime to withdraw from the Paris Agreement unsettles not only Australians”. …….
The EU bloc is Australia’s second largest trading partner, third largest export destination and second largest services market. The EU was also Australia’s largest source of foreign investment in 2017.
…….The Paris climate accord is deeply unpopular with conservative MPs, including Nationals MPs whose electorates would benefit from an EU trade deal. Keith Pitt resigned as an assistant minister last week in protest at the Paris treaty. “I will always put reducing power prices before Paris,” he said.
A 2017 report by the United Nations environment program that found Australia’s emissions were set to far exceed its Paris pledge and government data released in January showed Australia’s annual emissions had risen for the fourth year running.
Labor’s climate change and energy spokesman Mark Butler said the government had no emissions reduction plan and would fail to meet its Paris goal.
“The Prime Minister might think he can get away with [failing to cut emissions] domestically, but it is clear it will not be accepted by our international trading partners, who rightly have an expectation the Australian government will act to deliver on our international obligations,” he said.
European Australian Business Council chief executive Jason Collins, whose organisation has lobbied for the trade deal, said Europe’s commitment to the Paris agreement was “fundamental”. ……
Australian Conservation Foundation chief executive Kelly O’Shanassy said the European Union’s stance on the trade deal showed the Coalition’s climate policy division “has real-world consequences for our country”. https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/is-this-a-red-line-for-us-15b-european-trade-deal-doomed-if-australia-dodges-paris-pledge-20180831-p50109.html
September 3, 2018
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For Pacific Island nations, rising sea levels are a bigger security concern than rising Chinese influence, The Conversation, Michael O’Keefe, Head of Department, Politics and Philosophy, La Trobe University, August 31, 2018 When the Pacific Islands Forum is held in Nauru from September 1, one of the main objectives will be signing a wide-ranging security agreementthat covers everything from defence and law and order concerns to humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.
The key question heading into the forum is: can the agreement find a balance between the security priorities of Australia and New Zealand and the needs of the Pacific Island nations?
Even though new Prime Minister Scott Morrison is not attending the forum, sending Foreign Minister Marise Payne instead, the Biketawa Plus security agreement remains a key aim for Canberra……….
A focus on climate change as a security issue
One key reason for updating Biketawa is to realign Australia’s security interests with those of Pacific Island countries that have grown more aware of their shared interests and confident in expressing them in international relations. This growing confidence is clear in the lobbying of Pacific nations for climate change action at the United Nations and in Fiji’s role as president of the UN’s COP23 climate talks.
In the absence of direct military threats, the Pacific Island nations are most concerned about security of a different kind. Key issues for the region are sustainable growth along a “blue-green” model, climate change (especially the increasing frequency and intensity of natural disasters and rising sea levels), illegal fishing and over-fishing, non-communicable diseases (NCDs), transnational crime, money laundering and human trafficking. ……..
Climate change adaptation and mitigation must also be elevated to the top of the agenda in Australia’s relations with the region. It is the most pressing problem in the Pacific, but for political and economic reasons, it hasn’t resonated to the same extent with Canberra.
In fact, Australia has recently been identified as the worst-performing country in the world on climate action. This has not gone unnoticed in the Pacific. Fiji’s prime minister, in particular, has been clear in highlighting that Australia’s “selfish” stance on climate change undermines its credibility in the region.
These shifting priorities in the Pacific present a greater challenge for Australia, especially now that there are more players in the region, such as China, Russia and Indonesia. Australia may see these “outsiders” as potential threats, but Pacific nations are just as likely to view them as alternative development partners able to provide opportunities………
there can be no authentic engagement with the region without addressing climate insecurity as well. https://theconversation.com/for-pacific-island-nations-rising-sea-levels-are-a-bigger-security-concern-than-rising-chinese-influence-102403
September 3, 2018
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Options on energy policy leave Coalition in a sticky situation, Guardian, Katharine Murphy, 1 Sept 18, The government finds itself in a mess after the national energy guarantee was used as a catalyst to evict Turnbull.
We’ve lost another prime minister in the front bar brawl that is Australian politics, but we’ve lost something else as well, something that’s a bit harder to see.
For the last decade or more, a group of people in the political system have been trying to land a bipartisan consensus on energy policy and climate change, persevering through all the dispiriting cycles of trying to achieve that end, hoping that a corner could be turned.
That animating current in politics, and it’s been a significant one, now seems to have hit a dead end. That’s the feeling. We’ve reached a point of no return
If that supposition proves to be correct, this a profound problem for the country, more profound than the revolving door at the Lodge, which is deeply disconcerting, but just one symptom of a deeper malaise.
The Coalition is in a terrible mess on this issue. The national energy guarantee, the last roll of the dice for consensus, was used as a catalyst to blow up a prime minister, just as emissions trading was deployed for the same end, removing the same party leader, in 2009.
As a consequence of that rancid history, the imperative of emissions reduction now hangs over Liberal leaders like the sword of Damocles. Any leader wanting to do something knows they will have to run the gauntlet of the conservatives, and the brains trust of the conservative faction has proven itself so resistant to facts and evidence that it can’t even count numbers for a leadership spill………
The Morrison government is in a position where it is a signatory to the Paris agreement, yet there are no policies to deliver the outcome. There is a talking point doing the rounds that Australia will meet its Paris commitments “in a canter” – but this is complete nonsense.
It is possible (although the Energy Security Board says otherwise) that we could reduce emissions by 26% in the electricity sector without a settled policy to get us there because emissions in the sector are already falling (because ageing coal is leaving the system and the renewable energy target has pulled forward investment).
But what about the rest of the economy? Emissions are rising elsewhere, and there is no plan or roadmap to curb them.
This government has dithered for years about the imposition of new emissions standards for vehicles. Ministers have not been brave enough to bring forward a concrete proposal because the Coalition party room would limber up for another implosion.
Then there’s agriculture. Many Nationals take it as a personal affront if someone suggests anything be done in agriculture. The fact that their own constituents are now being battered by horrendous drought and hanging on grimly in areas gradually being rendered unviable by inexorable climatic change is an irony that seems lost of many of our elected representatives.
So that’s the outlook on emissions. Now let’s ponder the concept of certainty.
The national energy guarantee was proposed to create policy certainty to help drive the correct mix of investment in Australia’s electricity generation assets. That was its purpose. That policy is now on the back burner.
What isn’t on the back burner is the new Morrison government’s need to deliver a fix on power prices once the prime minister has concluded the healing and stability tour. That’s on the front burner. But this is a problem with no easy fix.
The government slapped together a package of measures in the dying days of the Turnbull regime designed to lower power prices – work that would have normally taken months of careful deliberation in a cabinet subcommittee.
So now we have no over-arching mechanism for investment certainty, and a bunch of expedited measures proposed on the fly, including heavy handed market interventions, such as breaking up power companies if they don’t play ball with the government and lower prices.
Call me crazy, but that doesn’t sound like the building blocks of a stable investment climate……..https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/sep/01/options-on-energy-policy-leave-coalition-in-a-sticky-situation
September 3, 2018
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Samoan Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele hits out at climate change sceptics during fiery speech, ABC News 31 Aug 18 By Pacific affairs reporter Stephen Dziedzic Samoan Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele has lashed out at climate sceptics and urged Australia to make deeper cuts to carbon emissions to help save Pacific Island nations from the “disaster” of climate change.
Key points:
- Mr Sailele says “greater ambition” is needed to stop impact of climate change
- He warns geostrategic competition is creating uncertainty for small Pacific countries
- Australia, New Zealand and the US have been scrambling to reassert influence in the Pacific
Mr Sailele told the Lowy Institute in Sydney that climate change posed an “existential challenge” to low lying islands in the Pacific, and developed countries needed to reduce pollution in order to curb rising temperatures and sea levels.
“We all know the problem, we all know the solutions, and all that is left would be some political courage, some political guts, to tell people of your country there is a certainty of disaster,” Mr Sailele said.
The Prime Minister’s intervention came as some Coalition MPs press the new Prime Minister Scott Morrison to abandon Australia’s promise to cut carbon emissions under the Paris agreement.
New Foreign Minister Marise Payne is also expected to face questions about Australia’s climate change policies at the Pacific Islands Forum leader’s meeting in Nauru next week.
Senator Payne and Pacific leaders are set to sign the “Biketawa Plus” security agreement, which declares that climate change remains the “single greatest threat to the livelihoods, security and wellbeing of the peoples of the Pacific”.
Several other leaders — including Fiji’s Prime Minster Frank Bainimarama and the Marshall Island’s President Hilda Heine — have also called on Australia to do more to cut emissions.
Mr Sailele told the audience that “greater ambition” was needed to stop the destructive impact of climate change.
“While climate change may be considered a slow onset threat by some in the region, its adverse impacts are already being felt by Island communities,” he said……… http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-31/samoan-prime-minister-hits-out-at-climate-change-sceptics/10185142
August 31, 2018
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Oz is the only country in the world to adopt an ambitious price on carbon pollution and then promptly repeal it.
All this does not bode well for advocates of climate action. Extreme weather is battering Australia on all fronts: Carbon-warmed oceans are plundering its Great Barrier Reef, and a record-breaking drought is ravaging the country’s well-populated southeast. Yet even its center-right-led, middling attempt at a climate policy is withering on the vine. On Monday, in one of his first public appearances since taking office, Prime Minister Morrison declined to comment on whether climate change is intensifying the country’s drought.
The Global Rightward Shift on Climate Change, President Trump may be leading the rich, English-speaking world to scale back environmental policies. The Atlantic , ROBINSON MEYER, AUG 28, 2018 Last Thursday, Malcolm Turnbull was the prime minister of Australia. By the end of this week, he’ll be just another guy in Sydney.
Turnbull was felled by climate-change policy. His attempt at a moderate, even milquetoast energy bill—which included some mild cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions—proved too aggressive for his co-partisans. On Friday, members of Australia’s center-right Liberal Party voted him out of office…..
Turnbull’s tumble remains a disquieting sign for anyone hoping for an aggressive global climate policy. In Australia—where global warming has contributed to the die-off of half the coralin the Great Barrier Reef since 2016—even a mild climate bill could not pass under a conservative government.
It points to an emerging pattern: Moderate national leaders—on both the center-left and center-right—in some of the world’s richest and most advanced countries are finding it far easier to talk about climate change than to actually fight it.
At a basic level, this pattern holds up, well, everywhere. Every country except the United States supports the Paris Agreement on climate change. But no major developed country is on track to meet its Paris climate goals, according to the Climate Action Tracker, an independent analysis produced by three European research organizations. Even Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom—where right-wing governments have made combatting climate change a national priority—seem likely to miss their goals.
Simply put: This kind of failure, writ large, would devastate Earth in the century to come. The world would blow its stated goal of limiting atmospheric temperature rise. Heatwaves might regularly last for six punishing weeks, sea levels could soar by feet in a few short decades, and certain fragile ecosystems—like the delicate Arctic permafrost or the kaleidoscopic plenty of coral reefs—would disappear from the planet entirely.
Australia’s recent instability further complicates this unease. The global climate action of 2016 may be producing something like a worldwide climate backlash—especially in countries with powerful fossil-fuel interests, like Australia and Canada. Or—far more worryingly for climate advocates—these changes in policy may be trickling down from the biggest historical emitter of greenhouse gases of them all: the United States.
The victims of climate change are already here Continue reading →
August 31, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, climate change - global warming, politics international |
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‘Mad’ and ‘morally irresponsible’: Liberal moderates roast new emissions stance, Canberra Times By Nicole Hasham, 31 August 2018, Senior Liberal figures have labelled the Morrison government’s stance on climate change as “mad” and “morally irresponsible” as the party’s moderate wing reels at the ultra-conservative takeover of Australia’s energy policy.In his first speech as Energy Minister in Melbourne on Thursday, Angus Taylor reiterated the Morrison government’s intention to curb electricity prices, but made no mention of reducing greenhouse gas emissions created by burning fossil fuels for energy.
There will be no ideology in what I do … my goal, the goal of my department and the goal of the electricity sector must be simple and unambiguous – get prices down while keeping the lights on,” he said.
Mr Taylor did not take questions after the speech at the Council of Small Business of Australia summit in Melbourne, reportedly avoiding waiting media by retreating to a meeting room then leaving via a back door.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Thursday confirmed that responsibilities for meeting Australia’s emissions reduction targets under the Paris treaty will now fall to new Environment Minister Melissa Price.
The Coalition’s plans to legislate emissions reduction as part of its energy plan were shelved in the final days of Malcolm Turnbull’s prime ministership following a backlash from conservative backbenchers who threatened to cross the floor.
Fairfax Media spoke to several moderate senior Liberal Party figures dismayed at the direction of the Morrison administration’s energy policy and concerned at the appointment of Mr Taylor, who has campaigned against wind farms and renewable energy subsidies.
A senior NSW government source said the federal Coalition’s avoidance of emissions reduction was “just putting off the inevitable”.
“[They] are going to have to deal with it because that’s what the Australian public wants. Kicking it down the road is unhelpful,” the source said.
It’s been 10 years now and we are still no closer to getting this issue resolved. Nobody in Canberra can hold their heads up high in regards to this.”
A senior NSW Liberal MP said any politician who acknowledged the science of climate change was “morally obliged to do something about it”…….https://www.canberratimes.com.au/politics/federal/mad-and-morally-irresponsible-liberal-moderates-roast-new-emissions-stance-20180830-p500r2.html
August 31, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, climate change - global warming, politics |
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‘Kick This Mob Out’: Hanson-Young Takes Aim Over Climate Policy Paralysis https://newmatilda.com/2018/08/28/kick-mob-hanson-young-takes-aim-climate-policy-paralysis/ By Sarah Hanson-Young on August 28, 2018
The Liberal Party of Australia is now officially a party split in half by climate denial. Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young explains. We have no chance of seeing the Liberal Government take any type of climate policy to the election.
After dumping Malcolm Turnbull for daring to utter the words “carbon emissions”, Scott Morrison, the man who brought a lump of coal into the Parliament, has appointed a climate sceptic as Environment Minister. He has put an anti-wind farm campaigner at the helm of the Energy Ministry.
While Scott Morrison’s new front bench will spend the week sopping up blood and repeating unconvincing lines of “unity and renewal”, the rest of the country looks on in disgust.
As the nation burns in winter, drought ravages New South Wales, and the Murray Darling River runs to a trickle, the mob governing the country couldn’t give a damn.
In a last-minute attempt to save his own job, Malcolm Turnbull served a fatal blow to the environment making it near impossible for the Coalition to have a climate policy for at least a generation.
Roughly half of the Liberal Party room don’t believe in the science of climate change, and now their leader is a bloke whose pet rock is a lump of coal. A growing number of Australians, tired of waiting for leadership out of Canberra, are taking matters into their own hands. And the good news is, there’s plenty of ways to make a difference.
Whether it is about the waste we create, the food we eat and putting solar panels on our homes to reduce power bills and pollution, we all have the opportunity to help reduce our impact on the planet and environment. But, while everyday Australians are chipping in, our politicians are tapping out, and unfortunately, some problems can’t be solved without political leadership.
The environment needs a strong political advocate. Sadly, the people Scott Morrison has put in place will do nothing to alleviate fears of Australians worried about our impact on the health of the planet.
New Environment Minister Melissa Price is a climate sceptic and advocate for the mining industry, and Angus Taylor, a known anti-windfarm campaigner will put a wrecking ball through renewables as Energy Minister.
After all the internal drama that stopped the Government from governing last week, political leadership on climate change is further away than ever. Dumping any emissions reduction target means there is now no prospect of a roadmap to help drive pollution down or support a transition to renewables. This is worse than policy paralysis, it is policy regression.
We need strong action to save the Murray Darling River system for future generations, arrest climate change by reducing pollution, protect our oceans and stop the extinction crisis in its tracks.
The battle lines are clear. The only way to do any of this now is to kick this mob out.
August 29, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, climate change - global warming, politics |
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Antinuclear 
Options on energy policy leave Coalition in a sticky situation