Gutting ARENA will make renewable revolution near impossible

A renewable energy revolution is in
progress but gutting Australian
Renewable Energy Agency will make
 it harder for Australia to play a role.

The federal government plans to strip the Australian Renewable Energy Agency of most of its funding, as well as its ability to give grants now that Parliament has resumed. Remarkably, the ALP, which established ARENA when in government, may allow this to happen. This is an existential threat to renewable energy research, innovation and education in Australia.

The solar photovoltaic industry is big business. It now makes up a quarter of all new electricity generation capacity installed each year across the world, and it's growing at 20 to 30 per cent a year. Together, solar and wind energy make up half of all new generation capacity installed globally and all new generation capacity installed in Australia. A renewable energy revolution is in progress, and Australia is at the forefront. Gutting ARENA directly threatens our leadership position.

Read The Sydney Morning Herald story - “The sun will set on solar if the Australian Renewable Energy Agency is gutted.”

Arid regions to get eight years of rain in two days

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rare intense tropical cyclone has formed in the Arabian Sea and is forecast to dump eight years of rain in about 48 hours on typically arid regions of the Arabian Peninsula.

Cyclone Chapala has already generated sustained winds of 95 knots (175 km/h), according to the Joint Typhoon Warning Centre. It was also producing significant wave heights of more than seven metres.

Eric Holthaus, a US meteorologist, estimates the storm will dump as much as eight times the annual rainfall of coastal regions of Yemen and Oman. These regions typically collect just 100-130 millimetres of rain a year.

Read the Melbourne Age story by Sydney Morning Herald environment editor, Peter Hannan -  “Raretropical cyclone: Yemen, Oman expect eight years of rain in two days as Chapala forms in Arabian Sea.”

Abbott Government decisions on solar power to impact on pensioners

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n cold days Mal Owen is happy to run an electric heater in the bathroom, and doesn't worry about the cost.

Nicole Hasham - 
considers the impact
of solar cuts on
pensioners.

The pensioner draws on the sun's energy to run an electric clothes dryer during the day, and in a decade is expected to save more than $400 a year on his electricity bills.

"I've always wanted solar but I couldn't afford the outlay," said Mr Owen, 77, of Thornbury in Melbourne.

"The local council offered to cover the installation and let me pay it off through the rates over 10 years. So it worked out very nicely for me."

But a controversial Abbott government move means thousands of other low- and middle-income Australians may not see the same benefits.

Read Nicole Hasham’s story in the Sydney Morning Herald - “Solar subsidies: Pensioners could miss out on lower power bills after Abbott government solar cuts”

Front-line climate change troops change their position

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armers are thought by many to be the front-line troops when it comes to the struggle with climate change.

Whatever, the peak NSW farm lobby group has shifted its climate change policy stance and has called on governments to back "the transition from fossil fuels".

Environment editor with the Sydney Morning Herald, Peter Hannam, has written about New South Wales changing their stance of climate change mitigation.

“The NSW Farmers Association ended its annual conference on Wednesday by voting to remove clauses in its official policy that had called for a royal commission "to explore the scientific veracity and soundness of claims that carbon is a pollutant" and to investigate "whether the activities of mankind are responsible for causing any change".

“In their place, members voted to replace those calls with a recognition that primary producers "are on the front lines of seasonal variability, exacerbated by a changing climate", he wrote.

Read Hannam’s story - “Climate change: NSW Farmers Association changes policy, calls for fossil fuels transition”.

Lucy contemplates the world in 2050

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Lucy McCormack.

ydney Morning Herald writer Lucy McCormack writes about what Australia and the world will be like in 2050.

She writes: “Anna pulls up to her garage just in time. She's been driving all day and needs to get her electric car back on charge.

“It's the fifth day above 40 degrees and December hasn't even begun. Upstairs, Anna's family have barricaded themselves in with the airconditioning. “Her husband Ben was worried about overworking their battery storage system in the unrelenting heat, but there has been plenty of sun lately, meaning prime conditions for their solar panels.

“Over in Manly, Lee has just finished doing the books for his cafe opposite the beach. Again, business hasn't been great this summer. People just don't head to the beach much these days, especially after the storm took to the sand last winter. He can't even remember the last time he had a surf.”

Read Anna’s story - “Welcome to 2050: Here's what the planet has in store”.

Australia's politicians procrastinate as Europe swelters

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ustralia’s politicians continue to procrastinate about whether or not global warming is human induced as Europe swelters in a record breaking heatwave that scientists are “nearly certain” is worsened by climate change.

Those who see growth and profit through business as usual have latched onto that infinitesimally small segment of doubt that sits between “nearly certain” and “certain” to call for a “do-nothing” approach, or “let’s wait until the real evidence is in” before we act.

Meanwhile Germany and Spain sweated and London sweltered through its hottest July day on record this week, scientists said it is "virtually certain" that climate change is increasing the likelihood of such heat waves in Europe.

In real-time data analysis released on Friday, a team of international climate scientists from universities, meteorological services and research organisations said the kind of heat waves hitting Europe this week - defined as three-day periods of excessive heat - are becoming much more frequent in the region.

In De Bilt in the Netherlands, for example, a heat wave like the one forecast for the next few days would have been a roughly 1-in-30-years event in the 1900s, according to the scientists.  It is now likely to happen every three and a half years, they said.

Read the Sydney Morning Herald story - “Scientists convinced European heat waves made more likely by climate change”.

Government warming to tougher greenhouse gas emissions targets

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urmurings by the Abbott Government of tougher greenhouse gas emissions targets is encouraging, but still fall short of what is needed.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that “The Abbott government is weighing tougher emissions reduction targets for the post-2020 period than conservatives in cabinet had wanted in a move that would restore Australia to the international mainstream on climate change policy and challenge the Prime Minister's reputation as a global warming denier.”

“Fairfax Media understands the push for a more urgent approach, which could see Australia running with Canada and the US who have both announced stronger targets than expected, is coming from within the government and is aimed at cutting Australia's greenhouse emissions more rapidly, perhaps by as much as 24 to 28 per cent by 2030,” the newspaper reports.

Although this appears a marked change of heart for the Abbott Government, it is still an inadequate target in the view of those conscious of what is really needed if the world’s climate is to be stabilized.

Read the Sydney Morning Herald story - “Climate change: Prime Minister Tony Abbott warming to bigger greenhouse cuts”.

Global climate pledges buy as just eight months of 'safety'

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ew global pledges to cut greenhouse gases have delayed by just eight months the moment when the world is expected to breach a threshold that keeps global warming at safer levels, the world's leading energy agency has found.

In a new report the International Energy Agency has warned collective emissions targets, along with the energy plans in those countries yet to set out new goals, puts the world on track by 2040 to release more than the total greenhouse gases than can be allowed and still have a strong chance of keeping global warming below two degrees - a threshold known as the carbon budget.

That is just eight months later than previous forecast, despite a new spate of targets and plans currently being pledged by countries, the agency said on Monday morning.

Countries have agreed to keeping global warming below two degrees through the United Nations. It is a goal that many scientists say would stave off the worst impacts of climate change, such as ever worsening droughts, floods and sea-level rise.

Read Tom Arup’s Sydney Morning Herald story - “New climate pledges only buy eight more months before climate tipping point”.

'Climate babble' seems never-ending

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ustralians are subjected to never-ending “climate babble”.

Treasurer, Joe Hockey, -
stealing his term
- Australia has become a
 nation of
global warming "leaners".

Listen to the government and Australia, and Australians, are climate mitigation champions – Environment Minister, Greg Hunt, confidently delivered that message just today.

Listen to climate change credentialed people from other parts of the world and Australia is a “free-rider”, contradicting Minister Hunt’s message.

To plagiarize Treasurer Joe Hockey’s phrase, when it comes to dealing with the dilemma of global warming, Australia is a “leaner” and we are leaving the “lifting” up to other countries.

Australians are among the world’s worst per-capita emitters of carbon dioxide and the situation has only worsened since the Abbott Government removed what it wrongly described as the “carbon tax”.

The judgement of Australians being “free-riders” is not parochial political view, rather a consideration of an international panel.

Environment Editor, The Sydney Morning Herald, Peter Hannam, has written about that in today Age in a story headed: “Australia singled out as a climate change 'free-rider' by international panel”.

Driverless cars offer little help with adaptation

by Robert McLean.

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riverless cars offer little in the way of adaptation to climate change.

A driverless car - still at the sharp
edge of consumerism.

Autonomous they may be, a measurable saver of human lives and convenient in the extreme, but still they represent the sharp edge of consumerism and are the products of carbon-rich ideas.

Although public in the sense in that they open to use by anyone willing, or able to pay the “fare”, the driverless car is still a tool of answering private want.

Adaptation to climate change is about many things, but among them is the need to live in a way that society is able to limit/reduce/restrict the use of carbon-rich ideas that enable people to fulfil private wants.

The driverless car, as wonderful as is might be and such a striking illustration of human innovation and creativity, it is really just another way of answering further human wants with a carbon-intensive idea.

Digital Life in the Sydney Morning Herald has discussed the idea in the story: “Your driverless car is just around the corner, and it will change your life”.

According to the story, “A recent report by accountancy firm KPMG says driverless cars promise to remove traffic congestion, slash air pollution and save economies hundreds of billions of dollars by drastically reducing fuel consumption and the need for new traffic infrastructure.

"Platooning alone, which would reduce the effective drag coefficient on following vehicles, could reduce highway fuel use by up to 20 per cent, just as drafting behind the lead allows cyclists to reduce their exertion," the report says.

Interestingly, and as the story doesn’t point out, “platooning” has been around for a long time – it’s called a “train”.

A geographer in the School of Physical, Environmental and Mathematical Sciences (PEMS) at UNSW Canberra (the Australian Defence Force Academy) in Canberra, Associate Professor Paul Tranter, has argued frequently against the private motor car.

Lecturing in global change, social geography and transport geography, Prof Tranter can clearly show that human powered transport, walking and cycling, followed by genuine public transport easily outstrips in every efficiency measure the private movement of people by motor car, driverless or otherwise.

Prof Tranter’s research in global change, social geography and transport geography has made a pioneering contribution in the areas of child-friendly environments, active transport, and healthy and sustainable cities. We should listen to him.

Meanwhile, earlier this month, the same newspaper, writing in the same section (Digital Life) warned readers that driverless cars were not all they seemed.

Associate Professor
 Paul Tranter.

The story - “Driverless cars have a dirty little secret, university study shows” – tells readers about a counterintuitive conclusion of a new study to the robot-like cars.

“A self-driving car would make more trips to finish the same tasks, the University of Michigan researchers said. It might drop off one parent at work, return home to pick up the other, and then take the kids to school, return home, then start the return cycle,” the story says.

“What isn't known yet is how many people who don't currently drive, like kids and users of public transportation, will start sharing a self-driving car. Those new trips - and all the return trips in between - could mean more total driving.”

On the surface the driverless car appears a wonderful idea, but examined critically, it is simply continuing climate disrupting habits with a feel-good patina about it.

Newspapers agree to share information in the lead-up to Paris

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nformation not polluted by bias will be critical to in the lead up to the UN Climate Change summit in Paris later this year.

A group of newspapers eager to provide readers with the best and most accurate news about what will and should be discussed in Paris and banded together to form a “Climate change media network”.

The newspapers will share a pool of information about climate change and when and where they can, contribute their own copy.

Melbourne’s Age and the Sydney Morning Herald, both Fairfax newspapers, have joined this exchange.

A story - “The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald join climate change media network” – discussing this alignment was in today’s Age.

El Nino begins, worsening likelihood drought over inland Australia

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 "substantial" El Nino event has begun, raising the likelihood of worsening drought over inland Australia and higher daytime temperatures, the Bureau of Meteorology said.

"This will be quite a substantial event," said David Jones, head of climate monitoring at the bureau. "It's not a weak one or a near miss" as in 2014, he said. "This event is perhaps running ahead of where the models had predicted."

El Ninos are events in which equatorial trade winds in the Pacific weaken or even reverse their normal east-to-west pattern. Rainfall tends to shift eastwards away from the Australian continent and south-east Asia, while countries on the eastern Pacific fringe cop more rain than usual.

Read the Sydney Morning Herald story - “Bureau of Meteorology declares El Nino event in Australia”.

Business Council boss is climate change conspiracy theorist

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onspiracy theories have always busied the thoughts of those generously labelled as “kooks”.

Maurice Newman - "climate
change UN-led ruse".

But now it seem we have a “kook” wandering the halls of power in Canberra and influencing the countries decision makers.

Chairman of the Prime Minister's business advisory council, Maurice Newman, has written in The Australian arguing that scientific modelling showing the link between humans and climate change is wrong and the real agenda is a world takeover for the UN.

A story in the Sydney Morning Herald - “Climate change a UN-led ruse, says Tony Abbott's businessadviser Maurice Newman” – says Australia’s Environment Minister, Greg Hunt, has said Mr Newman's position was not a view "I have or would express".

Emulating Diggers' sacrifice to tackle climate change

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ydney Morning Herald essayist Elizabeth Farrelly discusses here her views about Anzac Day and its connections to climate change.

“This year, as fate had it, Anzac Day raised to our health two brimming goblets of sacrifice – Gallipoli and climate change. Sacrifice past, sacrifice future. In the

morning, the first had us ambling along sunny streets, basking in our Australianness. But by afternoon, the second had us scrambling for protection from freak storms and adamant hail.

“Neither of the sacrifices implied is our own. One is our grandfathers' generation; the other will be our grandchildren's. Yet in both cases we are the beneficiaries. And although one sacrifice we recognise, with the reverence of religion, the other frightens us so profoundly we can barely bring ourselves to peek from behind the couch.” she writes.

Read the whole story here: “Let's emulate Diggers' sacrifice to tackle climate change”.

Australia's renewable energy industry in investment 'freeze'

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ustralia's large-scale renewable energy industry has entered an investment freeze, with just one project securing finance in the past six months amid political uncertainty, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

The lone venture in the first three months of 2015 was worth just $6.6 million and following a complete drought during the December quarter, BNEF said. The project was a floating solar photovoltaic (PV) plant being developed in Jamestown, South Australia, by Infratech Industries.

Read the Peter Hannam story in the Sydney Morning Herald here - “Australia's renewable energy investment grinds to a halt”.

Cities might be our lifeboats, but we need to be villagers again

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any argue that our cities will be our “lifeboats” during the unfolding dilemmas of climate change.

As humanity wrestles with the changes settling upon it from our disrupted climate we will, they argue, retreat to our cities.

Elizabeth Farrelly has written in the Sydney Morning Herald about our need to again be living in villages in her story: “Why we need to become village people again”.

Those who advocate the idea of “lifeboat cities do, I think, see a city as little more than a series of interconnected villages that live happily within their specific confines, but then cooperate with all those around.

“We can't all have it all. The attempt just brings sprawl, congestion, unhealth and suburbia's deathly boredom. But perhaps there's another way.

“What if we leave the what of dwelling, and start with the where. For many of us, now, the ideal "where" is small, local, walkable, pretty and sustainable. In short, the village,” she writes.

Shiny packaging covers corporate sins of palm oil

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alm oil is a much sought after product, so much so that frequently we disregard human and environmental costs.

Easter sees a continuation of how the corporate ills of the world are hidden beneath some shiny packaging, with many of the traditional chocolate Easter eggs being made use palm oil.

Dense and climate sustaining forests are often cleared to allow for palm oil farming and frequently child labour is exploited to ensure production costs are kept as low as possible and, of course, corporate profits at the maximum.

In its story - “Child labour and palm oil lend chocolate Easter eggs a bitter taste” – the Sydney Morning Herald says that a growing number of ethical consumers are looking beyond the shiny packaging to buy chocolate made without the use of child, forced or trafficked labour, and palm oil, an ingredient linked with deforestation, animal cruelty and climate change.

RET frustrations creating delays and divisiveness

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rustrations with decisions on the Renewable Energy Target are creating both delays and divisiveness.

A story in today Sydney Morning Herald by Lisa Cox - “'Frustrated' renewable energy industry makes another plea to major parties” – says, “An increasingly agitated renewable energy industry has issued another plea to the government and opposition to end the stalemate over Australia's renewable energy target.”

The procrastination of all involved, particularly the Abbott Government, is simply wasting time that the world, and by implication Australia cannot afford.

Naturally, the blame game is in full swing and sadly while this finger pointing continues, Australia is doing little to sustain and build it renewable energy industry.

Urgent need for fossil fuels drives us to extremes

Society’s urgent need to find more fossil fuels is driving us to extremes.

One of those extremes is our search for coal seam gas; a search that has taken explorative companies to the edges, and under, communities.

Writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, Peter Hannam tells his reader that “CSG more trouble than it's worth for AGL”.

Hannam reports: “Back in December 2013, when Hunter Water, the state agency managing Newcastle's sewage network, learned energy giant AGL was seeking a place to dispose of wastewater from a pilot coal seam gas field, its management wanted none of it.

“For one thing, the gas field was about 100 kilometres to the north of Hunter Water's zone, and the agency's policy was to reject external waste. More to the point, it viewed the dangers as too high to rely on local waste processing sites to remove all potentially harmful chemicals before discharging the remaining water into its network.”

'Green tape' cleared of economic villain role

“Green tape” is not the economic villain it is claimed to be.

A story in the Sydney Morning Herald headed: “OECD says green tape is not damaging the economy” point to research that disproves the theory that green tape is prohibitively costly.

“But the economists at the OECD have made a surprising discovery: green tape might not cost nearly as much as politicians and business leaders claim. The Organisation has created an index that calculates the explicit and implicit cost of environmental policies.

“Its economists used this index to assess the strictness of environmental regulations across 24 wealthy OECD members – including Australia – between 1990 and 2012 and to measure the effect of those regulations on productivity,” the story reports.