We’ve had 57 bushfire inquiries. Another won’t tell us a single thing we don’t already know

As our country battles the most extensive fires of our lifetime, there are increasing calls for a royal commission into the states and territories’ preparedness and the Federal Government’s response to the disaster.

Good fire and land management needs to be done with
long-term perspective, not a short-term political focus. P

A royal commission has coercive powers beyond a government inquiry, and the need for one implies there are facts and evidence that would otherwise be “hidden” to an inquiry or review.

Research I’ve recently conducted with other fire experts has concluded there have been 57 formal public inquiries, reviews and royal commissions related to bushfires and fire management since 1939, most of which are listed here.

I have given expert evidence to at least seven of them, including the 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission.

That is more than one inquiry every two years in the past 80 years. Do we need yet another?

Read the story from The New Daily by Kevin Tolhurst - “We’ve had 57 bushfire inquiries. Another won’t tell us a single thing we don’t already know,”

Entrepreneur seizes business opportunity in China recycling ban

China's decision to stop importing much of the world's used plastic spelt disaster for countries around the globe. But Melbourne-based Chinese entrepreneur Harry Wang saw it as a business opportunity.

Harry Wang with a wall of plastics ready for recycling
at his Advanced Circular Polymers plant in Somerton.

Mr Wang has since invested $20 million on that idea and after several years of research and development, his new business - Advanced Circular Polymers - is open in Melbourne's outer north.

Read the story from The Age by Debbie Cuthbertson - “Entrepreneur seizes business opportunity in China recycling ban.”

The Darling River fish kill is what comes from ignoring decades of science

The mass death of fish in Menindee Lakes is a disaster that has been a long time in the making. The story goes back to another disaster on the Darling River, a massive outbreak of blue-green algae that poisoned hundreds of kilometres of the river in 1991 and 1992. The outbreak was a dramatic illustration of decades of warnings from scientists and economists that too much water was being extracted from the river.

 ‘Events like the Menindee fish kill bring home the cost of
treating the environment as a cultural battleground.’ 

The first response was the imposition, in 1995 of a cap on extractions. The cap was meant as an emergency measure to prevent further disasters while a long-term policy was worked out. Nearly 25 years later, it is still in effect. The cap is supposed to be replaced later this year by a system of sustainable diversion limits, worked out on the basis of scientific evidence. But a litany of disastrous policy failures, of which the fish kill is among the more dramatic outcomes, cast doubt on whether this schedule can be met.

The sustainable diversion limits were worked out in a massive scientific and economic exercise as part of the Murray-Darling Basin plan, launched by the Howard government in 2007.

Read the story from The Guardian by John Quiggin - “The Darling River fish kill is what comes from ignoring decades of science."

’Worst yet to come': 14 dead as North Carolina faces Florence flooding

As the death toll from Florence rose and hundreds were rescued from their flooded homes, North Carolina slid into the next stage of the disaster: catastrophic flooding.

Flooding - first responders check flooded cars for trapped
occupants during the flood in North Carolina in the U.S.

On Saturday Mitch Colvin, mayor of Fayetteville, told reporters: “The worst is yet to come.”

On Sunday, the death toll in North and South Carolina rose to 14; the city of Wilmington was cut off by floodwater; 15,000 people were in temporary shelters; and 760,000 North Carolinians remained without power.

“The storm has never been more dangerous than it is now,” Governor Roy Cooper said. “Many rivers are still rising, and are not expected to crest until later today or tomorrow.“

Read the story from The Guardian - “’Worst yet to come': 14 dead as North Carolina faces Florence flooding.”

(“Adaptation” will be centre-stage in understanding how we deal with the vastly different scenarios that arise from climate change, just as we are witnessing in North Carolina in the U.S. People were first forced to deal with the initial onslaught of Hurricane Florence, being the powerful winds and now it is lingering floodwaters of a magnitude never seen before, along with an ongoing loss of power.

Interestingly, Shepparton heard about this phenomenon in 2013 when the former leader of the Australian Youth Climate Coalition, Anna Rose, told more than 600 people at the Slap Tomorrow forum, “Climate Change: a wake-up call”, that a warming world would see such events; events where massive amounts of water were absorbed from the oceans and then dumped over land, and that is just what is in the U.S. right now - Robert McLean)

Bin liners to takeaway containers – ideas to solve your plastic conundrums

Plastic has become an environmental disaster. Microplastic pollution has been found in our waterways, fish stocks, salt, tap water and even the air we breathe. Reducing our reliance on plastic by refusing it wherever possible has never been more important, especially as Australia’s recycling system is in crisis.

Plastic water bottles are derived from crude oil and take
thousands of years to break down in landfill. Choose
 stainless steel bottles with silicon lids. 

Yet there are conundrums that continue to defeat even those dedicated to going plastic-free. From bin liners to takeaway containers, Guardian Australia has tried to solve them. And we want to hear from you: share your plastic conundrums and the solutions. We’ll round up the best ideas for a follow-up article.

Read Koren Helbig’s story from The Guardian - “Bin liners to takeaway containers – ideas to solve your plastic conundrums.”

Harvey is a 1000-year flood event unprecedented in scale

Washington: As Harvey's rains unfolded, the intensity and scope of the disaster were so enormous that weather forecasters, first responders, the victims, everyone really, couldn't believe their eyes. Now the data are bearing out what everyone suspected: This flood event is on an entirely different scale than what we've seen before in the United States.

Beaumont firefighters rescue two horses
stranded in floodwaters from Hurricane
Harvey in Beaumont, Texas, onThursday.

A new analysis from the University of Wisconsin's Space Science and Engineering Centre has determined that Harvey is a 1-in-1000-year flood event that has overwhelmed an enormous section of Southeast Texas equivalent in size to New Jersey.

There is nothing in the historical record that rivals this, according to Shane Hubbard, the Wisconsin researcher who made and mapped this calculation.

"In looking at many of these events [in the United States], I've never seen anything of this magnitude or size," he said. "This is something that hasn't happened in our modern era of observations.”

Read Jason Samenow’s story in today’s  Melbourne Age - “Harvey is a 1000-year flood event unprecedented in scale.”

Pressure Mounting For Humans To Step Down As Head Of Failing Global Ecosystem

EARTH—Noting that the species’ tenure in the leadership role has been marked by an incompetence and shortsightedness that has caused irreparable damage, sources reported Thursday that humans are facing increased calls to give up their position as head of the world’s failing ecosystem.

Critics of humanity suggest that after hundreds of
millennia at the helm of the earth’s biosphere,
it was time for the species to resign in favor of
a more qualified life form.

The critics clamoring for Homo sapiens to step down argue that as leader of the earth’s environment they have been responsible for one disaster after another, while over the past several decades the global ecological organization has essentially stopped functioning due to humanity’s gross mismanagement.

“Since taking control of the ecosystem, human beings have misallocated its resources and left many of its operations teetering on the brink of collapse,” said Tracy Eldridge, a spokesperson for organisms demanding a change in leadership, noting that humans have overseen massive cuts in species around the world and that thousands more are expected to be eliminated within the next year alone. “Such wastefulness has threatened the long-term viability of the planet’s habitat, but humans appear unable to formulate an actionable plan to keep it running smoothly.”

Read The Onion story - “Pressure Mounting For Humans To Step Down As Head Of Failing Global Ecosystem.”

A three-track strategy for climate mitigation

In his analysis of the Paris Agreement on mitigating climate change, The Guardian’s George Monbiot said: “By comparison to what it could have been, it’s a miracle. By comparison to what it should have been, it’s a disaster.” On one hand the outcome was better than predicted as Article 2 states that parties to the agreement will hold global average temperature increases “to well below 2°C” and “pursue efforts” to limit this to 1.5°C.

The "carbon law" for the 2-degree target,
from “A roadmap for rapid decarbonisation”,
 Rockström, Gaffney, Rogelj, Meinshausen,
Nakicenovic and Schellnhuber, Science 355:
 1269-1271, 24 March 2017

On the other hand these goals are only aspirational and current (voluntary) climate mitigation commitments are too limited and too slow to prevent catastrophic outcomes. There is an enormous (and currently unbridgeable) lag between the pace of political, economic and technological change and the rapid (non-negotiable) rate of climate change. 

To ensure safe outcomes the global economy will have to be rapidly restructured. This will require a massive response similar in scale and urgency to the Allied effort in World War II. However, at this time strong international action is a distant dream.

Read the Climate Code Red story by Graeme Taylor - “A three-track strategy for climate mitigation.”

Cyclone Debbie: Queensland braces for large scale disaster

Queensland is bracing for a large scale natural disaster ahead of the arrival of Cyclone Debbie, with authorities ordering evacuations, the closure of schools, ports and airports and thousands of military and emergency services personnel on alert.

Locals fill up sandbags in preparation
for Cyclone Debbie in Townsville. 

The Bureau of Meteorology predicts the “very destructive core” of Debbie will hit the mainland near the northern town of Ayr as a category four cyclone early Tuesday.

The bureau said Debbie was the worst cyclone in both “size and extent” to hit Queensland since Yasi in 2011, forecasting wind gusts of up to 260km/h and flash flooding.

Read Joshua Robertson’s story on The Guardian - “Cyclone Debbie: Queensland braces for large scale disaster.”

Tasmanian floods: BOM and SES lashed by farmers over weather warnings amid June deluge

The Latrobe and Kentish areas were
among those inundated last June.

Forecasting by the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) and SES phone alerts during flooding in Tasmania last June have been criticised as inadequate.

The Government has released 55 submissions to its review into the disaster, which is due to report in June this year.

The flooding claimed three lives and caused at least $180 million in damage.

Railton dairy farmer Paul Lambert lost 20 cattle and is still repairing extensive flood damage around his property.

He said SMS warnings came too late.

"It was nine o'clock the next morning that the warning from the SES came through, which it was only a few hours before the peak, so it was a bit late then to really do anything," he said.

Read the ABC story - “Tasmanian floods: BOM and SES lashed by farmers over weather warnings amid June deluge.”

Incompetence, ignorance and concessions have us 'going downhill fast' - Monbiot

George Monbiot.

These floods were not just predictable. They were predicted. There were clear and specific warnings that the management of land upstream of the towns now featuring in the news would lead to disaster.

On December 9, one of my readers told me this. “I live in the middle of Foss drainage board land above York, where flooding would not harm a single property but water is sent down as fast as possible to York”. A few days later, another reader wrote to me, warning that “upstream flood banks now protect crops, not the City of York.” On December 26th, the Foss exploded into York.

Read the piece by George Monbiot - “Going Downhill Fast.”

(The incompetence, ignorance and concessions to favoured interests George Monbiot writes about here will be repeated around the world as people, communities and nations wrestle with the consequences of the seriously disrupted world climate system – Robert McLean.)

'Strictest conditions in Australia's history' seen by some as a disaster

T

he nation's largest coal mine has passed a significant hurdle after Environment Minister Greg Hunt approved it with "the strictest conditions in Australian history", in a decision environment groups have declared "a disaster".

The proposed railway lines leading across
Queensland to Abbott Point
 close to the Great Barrier Reef.

Mr Hunt on Thursday said the Carmichael coal mine proposed by Indian mining giant Adani has been given the green light after the Federal Court in August set aside the previous approval.

Read The Age story - “Adani Carmichael: Australia's largest coal mine free to proceed after Greg Hunt gives approval”.

(Coal is unquestionably the villain in terms of carbon dioxide emissions and for Australia to be the source of this commodity on the eve of the UN Paris climate talks is a strangely discomforting conundrum. The mining of this “ancient sunlight” will of itself be the source of significant emissions, while the burning of the estimated resource, probably in Indian and Chinese power stations, will alone be sufficient to push the world into the catastrophic climate change zone. The massive coal resource at the Carmichael Mine will, of course, not be burned overnight, but locked up in that coal are carbon-emissions sufficient to bequeath the world serious climate difficulties. Beyond that, shipping of the coal from Abbott Point and through the nearby Great Barrier Reef, which is already registering damage because of climate change, faces the possibility of further damage from the increased heavy shipping.

Greg Hunt’s approval of the mine is, by any measure, simply wrong)

Inadequate pledges for Paris - planet doesn't stand a chance

I

f the climate pledges countries have submitted are any indication of whether the world can save itself with a global climate treaty, the planet doesn’t stand a chance.

More than 140 countries have submitted plans to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change on how they will reduce carbon dioxide emissions to fight climate change. These countries account for about 90 percent of global emissions. They form the basis for final treaty negotiations that will take place in Paris in December.

Read the Inside Climate News story - “Climate Treaty Forecast: Cloudy With a Chance of Disaster”.

First it was 'sleepwalking into disaster', now it's 'blindly into tragedy'

G

oulburn Valley people were warned in the lead-up to the city’s first ever climate change forum that they were “sleepwalking into disaster”.

And now nearly three years later a similar warning comes from the director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University, Jeffrey Sachs.

Sachs has written in The Guardian that in separating nature from economics, we now walk blindly into tragedy.

The story - “‘By separating nature from economics, we have walked blindly into tragedy’” – tells readers that economic policy must be combined with climate and technology if we are to stand any chance of saving ourselves.

Queensland to spend $30M on disaster recovery centre

Q

ueensland has witnessed the costly reality of climate change and has decided to create a disaster recovery agency.

Queensland Deputy Premier,
Jackie Trad.

According to a story in The Guardian, “The Queensland government is to establish Australia’s first permanent disaster recovery agency to deal with a future of more extreme cyclones and floods brought on by climate change.”

“An ongoing series of natural disasters have cost the state billions since the 2011 floods, which killed 38 people and, according to the World Bank, cost an estimated US$15.9bn ($20bn),” the story says.

Deputy Premier Jackie Trad said the growing number and intensity of disasters like cyclones and floods had been “made clear by key scientists in the field of climate science” and was “the lived experience of regional Queensland”.

The story can be read here - “Queensland to create permanent disaster recovery agency”.

Cuts will hamper community groups in their helping role

Community groups will play a lead role when extreme weather events resulting from climate change unfold to trouble societies.

However, today’s Melbourne Age reports that the community sector in Victoria will not be equipped to handle natural disasters and emergencies, leaving vulnerable people at risk if disaster strikes.

The story: “Community sector struggles to cope after state and federal funding cuts” tells readers, “It is estimated that in the event of an emergency, about half of all community sector organisations would be out of operation for a week if they sustained serious damage – and many might never provide services again, according to a recent Victorian Council of Social Services report.”

Warmer atmosphere, more moisture, uncontrollable rain dumps

A warmer atmosphere will absorb more moisture and then dump it seemingly uncontrollably.

Examples of this can be seen all around the world and Malawi is presently wrestling with just that dilemma.

A Guardian story headed: “Malawi floods devastation far worse than first thought” tells of a disaster evolving from those circumstances that has displaced nearly a quarter of a million people, and threatens disease and malnutrition.

The crisis of water and the courage to stop its commercialization



Shearman and
 Smith explore
 the dilemmas
of climate change.

Warnings about the threats to the world’s water supplies arrived in my inbox about the time authors, David Shearman and Joseph Wayne Smith had explained near identical issues in the book, “The Climate Change Challenge and the Failure of Democracy”.

The Guardian, writing in its story headed: “China and India ‘watergrab’ dams put ecology of Himalayas in danger”, said that more than 400 hydroelectric schemes are planned for the mountain region, which could be an environmental disaster.

Shearman and Smith explain that a significant dam displaces thousands of people; seriously disrupts the whole ecology of the area; because of natural silting, the dams become somewhat ineffective; and beyond that they regularly need significant structural repair work.

About the same time The Guardian reported on the “A Texan tragedy: ample oil, no water”, pointing out that a fracking boom was sucking away precious water from beneath the ground, leaving cattle dead, farms bone dry and people thirsty.

Fracking is a matter to which we should pay attention for it is happening in Australia and as we are a liberal democracy, Shearman and Smith argues our present regime is powerless to stop it and so the ravaging of our water supplies, something Australia has little enough of, will continue unabated unless we have the courage to stop it.