Taylor gets energy and emissions portfolio, Price dumped from environment

Prime minister Scott Morrison has abandoned the Coalition’s short lived separation of energy and emissions reduction responsibilities, and handed Angus Taylor the job of combining energy policy and meeting the government’s modest emissions reduction targets.

Angus Taylor (left)
and Matt Canavan.

In unveiling his new ministry and cabinet after the Coalition’s surprise re-election on May 18, Morrison also punted the much criticised Melissa Price from the environment portfolio, naming instead Sussan Ley, a minister in both the Abbott and Tunbull government who had to resign from the front-bench following investigations into her travel expenses and entitlements.

Price has been handed a minor defence ministry portfolio – defence industry – following her poor performance as environment minister which was marked by her indifference to major international reports, including the UN warning on massive loss of species, and her controversial and last-minute approvals for the Adani coal mine and a W.A. uranium mine.

Read the RenewEconomy story by Giles Parkinson - “Taylor gets energy and emissions portfolio, Price dumped from environment.”

WA watchdog abandons carbon-neutral push after oil and gas industry criticism

Western Australia’s environmental watchdog has abandoned a recommendation to the state government that new emissions-intensive projects should be carbon neutral following widespread criticism.

 Western Australia’s EPA has abandoned a recommendation
that new emissions-intensive projects should be carbon
neutral after criticism from the oil and gas industry.

The Environmental Protection Authority last week released updated guidelines on mitigating emissions from new or expanding projects, suggesting proposals with emissions higher than 100,000 tonnes a year should be fully offset.

Read the story from The Guardian by Australian Associated Press - “WA watchdog abandons carbon-neutral push after oil and gas industry criticism.”

Building a post-carbon future: California tries to lead — will the world follow?

Last July, California Gov. Jerry Brown announced a “Climate Action Summit” meeting in San Francisco in September 2018, with the direct goal of supporting the Paris climate agreement recently abandoned by President Trump. “No nation or state is doing what they should be doing,” Brown said at the time. “You can’t do too much to sound the alarm because so far the response is not adequate to the challenge.”

California aims for a post-carbon future - will the world follow?

California’s own record  during Brown's tenure is muddled, as I’ve previously noted, but the state could start to change that, according to a new report called “The Sky’s Limit California,” from Oil Change International in collaboration with a broad coalition of environmental justice and consumer groups. California can do this by matching its existing policies to reduce fossil fuel consumption with new policies for “a managed decline of oil extraction” — an approach described in a recent paper as “cutting with both arms of the scissors” — and by providing for a "just transition" for workers and communities who would otherwise suffer, a major moral and political challenge that’s been neglected far too long. 

Read the Saloon story by Paul Rosenberg - “Building a post-carbon future: California tries to lead — will the world follow?”

What the World Will Look Like 4°C Warmer.

Polynesia is gone – sunk beneath the waves. Pakistan and South India have been abandoned. And Europe is slowly turning into a desert. This is the world, 4°C warmer than it is now. 

But there is also good news: Western Antarctica is no longer icy and uninhabitable. Smart cities thrive in newly green and pleasant lands. And Northern Canada, Scandinavia and Siberia produce bountiful harvests to feed the hundreds of millions of climate refugees who now call those regions home.

This map, which shows some of the effects a 4°C rise in average temperature could have on the planet, is eight years old, but it seems to get more contemporary as it ages (and the planet warms).11 Antarctica is white with snow and ice, on the ground and, traditionally, on most maps. 

This map has turned the continent's western end incongruously green. And only last week did reports confirm that Antarctica is indeed turning green.

Read the Big Think story - “What the World Will Look Like 4°C Warmer.”

‘Capitulation’: Clive Hamilton exits Climate Change Authority, blasts Turnbull

PM's perverse behaviour prompts ethics
professor, Clive Hamilton, to resign.

The Turnbull government's recent embrace of coal-fired power shows it has "abandoned all pretense of taking global warming seriously", Climate Change Authority member Clive Hamilton said, explaining why he resigned from the agency.

Professor Hamilton, who teaches public ethics at Charles Sturt University, sent his resignation letter to Environment and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg on Friday, saying it was "perverse" that the government would be boosting coal when 2016 marked the hottest year on record.

Read Peter Hannam’s  story in The Canberra Times - “‘Capitulation’: Clive Hamilton exits Climate Change Authority, blasts Turnbull.”