Tackle global warming with hope, not fear

We used to only talk about climate change in the future tense. Heat waves will increase. Sea levels will rise. Droughts, floods and fires will get worse.

Heavy smoke covers the seaside enclave of Mondos
 Beach beside the 101 highway near Ventura,
California, as a vicious forest fire rages

Today, climate change is no longer a far-off threat; it’s hurting us now, where we live, in our daily lives. The wildfires still burning in California, during what is supposed to be the wet season, are the deadliest in the state’s history. Japan’s summer was a relentless barrage of heatwaves, torrential downpours and a disastrous typhoon. Hundreds were killed in India when Kerala suffered its worst cyclone in a century. The effects of Europe’s extreme summer — which brought heat-related deaths and wildfires — are still being felt, with crop failures increasing food prices.

And yet, as painful as these disasters may be, our failure to tackle climate change remains a remote issue of concern to most voters. At a time when people should be agitating for action, many are still reluctant to engage.

Read the opinion piece from Politico by Michael Mann - “Tackle global warming with hope, not fear.”

Politics podcast: Josh Frydenberg, George Christensen and Mark Butler on the Finkel review

Malcolm Turnbull declared on Wednesday he’d “provided decisive leadership on energy”. It is a claim perhaps better cast in the future tense.

Australia's Chief Scientist, Dr Alan Finkel.

The debate over the Finkel panel’s recommendation for a clean energy target (CET) is just beginning, and already it is clear that reaching an outcome that brings the certainty the business community needs to invest will be a hard slog for Turnbull, who will be undermined by critics on his own side.

In this podcast we talk Finkel with Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg, Nationals backbencher George Christensen, and opposition climate spokesman Mark Butler.

Frydenberg, charged with the detailed heavy-lifting, tells Michelle Grattan: “We have to work together as a team to land this difficult policy area.”

Christensen proudly wears the agrarian socialist title as he advocates for radical changes to the regulation of Australian energy prices. “Being bold is the answer and market intervention has to happen.” He’s sceptical of a CET without seeing the modelling and data.

Butler believes a CET is workable but it has to be consistent with principles, which means such a scheme shouldn’t incorporate so-called “clean” coal. “The discussion of the Finkel report shouldn’t include concessions for the hard-right-wing,” he says.

Listen to the Michelle Grattan from The Conversation - “Politics podcast: Josh Frydenberg, George Christensen and Mark Butler on the Finkel review.”

Hemisphere’s temperature reaches terrifying milestone

(Update, March 3, 2016: Since this post was originally published, the heat wave has continued. As of Thursday morning, it appears that average temperatures across the Northern Hemisphere have breached the 2 degrees Celsius above “normal” mark for the first time in recorded history, and likely the first time since human civilization began thousands of years ago.* That mark has long been held (somewhat arbitrarily) as the point above which climate change may begin to become "dangerous" to humanity. It's now arrived—though very briefly—much more quickly than anticipated. This is a milestone moment for our species. Climate change deserves our greatest possible attention.)

Our planet’s preliminary February temperature data are in, and it’s now abundantly clear: Global warming is going into overdrive.

There are dozens of global temperature datasets, and usually I (and my climate journalist colleagues) wait until the official ones are released about the middle of the following month to announce a record-warm month at the global level. But this month’s data is so extraordinary that there’s no need to wait: February obliterated the all-time global temperature record set just last month.

Read the Future Tense story - “Our Hemisphere’s Temperature Just Reached a Terrifying Milestone.”