Call to tackle climate change from Shepparton’s state MP.

Over the next few weeks, The News will run a series of interviews with community leaders about their views on climate change. We asked four questions: 

1: What is your position on global warming and climate change? 

2: Are we doing enough to mitigate the impact of climate change in the region? 

3: Do community and business leaders have a role in advocating for more action, and positioning our region to take advantage of emerging opportunities? 

4: What is your number one priority to help mitigate the impacts of climate change?

Today we feature the responses of State Member for Shepparton Suzanna Sheed.

State Member for Shepparton Suzanna Sheed.

What is your position?

The dairy industry strategy for the Murray region for 2019, ‘Future Focus’, has rated climate change as one of most significant challenges facing the industry. It points out that the future operating environment is likely to be characterised by increasing variability and volatility requiring adaptation.

Organisations and industries in our community have been adapting and continue to innovate in preparation for further change, but it is time there was a broader acknowledgement from our government.

Faced with this unfolding national and global crisis, it can be easy to wonder what one person or one electorate or even one country can do. The onus is on all of us to come together, individually, nationally and internationally, to address this crisis.

Are we doing enough?

Tackling climate change is being taken very seriously by many at the personal and local government level. Initiatives include those being undertaken by the Greater Shepparton City Council, led by chief executive Peter Harriott, who joined me at the recent students’ climate change rally in Maude St. It is encouraging council is moving to electric vehicles in their car f leets and supports the One Tree Per Child program. These are local actions that have been taken to reduce the region’s carbon footprint.

In 2017, I voted for the Climate Change Act (Vic) to achieve zero net emissions in Victoria by 2050 and set interim emissions targets for 2025 and 2030.

But the Federal Government is not doing its part. I was disappointed to see Emissions Reduction Minister Angus Taylor walk away from the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Madrid with no meaningful commitments.

I believe our community is crying out for leadership on energy and climate change but federal leaders are missing in action on these issues.

We almost had an energy policy with the National Energy Guarantee but the then Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull could not get it across the line — and the rest is history.

Do community and business leaders have a role?

Everyone has a role. Our community and our young people are depending on us.

Climate change is exacerbating normal conditions, such as high temperatures and drought, and all the predictions are that this will continue and likely worsen in south-east Australia. Most of the action being taken in relation to climate change is coming from business and industry leaders who understand the science and the future impacts and are being innovative in their attempts to mitigate the effects of climate change.

The uptake of solar energy in our region is heartening, and businesses and homeowners have been turning to alternative energy sources for some time.

It is often overlooked that our farmers are some of our best environmentalists. Good environmental practices make for profitable farms. It is essential that we invest in projects to improve efficiency of water use and also act to maintain our natural environment.

What is your number one priority?

The big picture is a move away from carbon energy sources such as coal and to take action to reduce, as quickly as possible, the rising global temperature.

It is important for clear information to be provided to everyone of the impact of not adopting such a policy and also what the impact on our day-to-day lives will be of adopting such a policy. Communities must be brought along in the process and access to clear information is essential.

While there are major policy issues to address I am also passionate about planting more trees. I want to see large-scale programs introduced by governments to plant forests and care for trees. We have the people and the resources capable of doing this work.

It is happening in other countries such as China and the United States and it should become a priority here.

Trees regulate temperature, CO2 and oxygen levels. They encourage rainfall. They enrich the environment and function as carbon sinks.

If I could encourage a single policy, particularly at a local level, it would be a much greater commitment to large-scale tree planting and their ongoing care in our regional towns and here in Shepparton.

It is incredibly disappointing to see beautiful trees planted in our streets and then not looked after. The street I live in has had significant investment in tree planting over the years. So many do not thrive, presumably through neglect — and, of course, vandalism is an issue.

I would like to see every householder take responsibility for the trees on their nature strip and ensure they have enough water to grow and provide shade. This will become much more important as our climate gets hotter and it is large trees that will be even more important. The most beautiful streets in any town or city are those that are lined by large, shady trees.

Story from The Shepparton News - “Call to tackle climate change from Shepparton’s state MP.”

A Wet Year Causes Farm Woes Far Beyond the Floodplains

The damage from the destructive spring flooding in the Midwest has been followed in parts of the country by a miserable autumn that is making a bad farming year worse, with effects that could be felt into next spring.

Waterlogged, unplanted farm fields near Gardner, Ill., in
May. Record rainfall in the area postponed crop planting,
 and some 19 million acres went unplanted this year.

Even the widespread flooding in the spring was worse for many farmers than the images of sodden river towns would suggest, said Scott Irwin, an agricultural economist at the University of Illinois. While the images of overwhelmed levees were dramatic, “that’s not the real story.” Across much of the Midwest and Northern Plains soils were saturated throughout the spring, he said, and many farmers couldn’t get crops in the ground or had to delay planting until perilously late in the season. “Farmers told me in Eastern Illinois it felt like they were in a monsoon from April til May.” 

It was the wettest year on record for the lower 48 states, with the kind of extreme rainfall events that are increasingly associated with climate change. And then fall came in with unseasonably heavy rains and snow. That was the case for Aaron Heley Lehman, a farmer in central Iowa and president of the Iowa Farmer’s Union. “This has definitely been a bad year for almost all farmers in Iowa, even if you weren’t on river bottom ground and having your grain bins explode and your land underwater for weeks and weeks at a time,” he said. “It was still a very rough year.” 

Read the story from The New York Times by John Schwartz - “A Wet Year Causes Farm Woes Far Beyond the Floodplains.”

(The wettest year on record in parts of the U.S. and hitherto unseens droughts in Australia. This, surely, must be the chaotic climate - Robert McLean)

Defence chief sounds warning on climate refugees, conflicts

Australia’s military has warned of a rise in international conflicts and an influx of refugees as the effects of climate change start to bite.

The ADF has warned that climate change could
bring an influx of refugees to Australia..

Defence chief Angus Campbell has also reportedly warned that China could take advantage of rising sea levels to occupy abandoned islands in the Pacific.

The ABC has obtained internal Australian Defence Force briefing notes from last year under Freedom of Information, which also predict that the military might have to increase patrols in Australia’s northern waters to deal with “sea-borne migration” sparked by rising sea levels in the Indo-Pacific.

One document warns that climate change could “exacerbate the potential for conflict” and contribute to “state fragility and the undermining of economic development in our immediate region”

Read the story from The New Daily - “Defence chief sounds warning on climate refugees, conflicts.”

Global Warming ‘Could Be’ Total Disaster? We’re Way Past That

Experts agreed in 2015 that if we did not cap global warming at another 0.5 degrees Celsius (0.9 degrees Fahrenheit), the effects will be “catastrophic” and “irreversible”. A panel of UN scientists recently predicted that it is all but impossible for us to meet that goal.

There are no "maybes" about global warming, it's here now!

“If you don’t hang on to that goal, what you’ll achieve is a total disaster,” United Nations Secretary General António Guterres told AP reporters last week. He believes that, despite the odds, enacting transformative measures immediately could prevent some of the most destructive effects of global warming from coming to fruition.

To move in this direction, ‘global warming’ as a topic of discussion and point of concern needs to move from the realm of theoretical and future-oriented conversation into that of current events and action. The worst case scenario of the rapid heating of the planet is happening, now.

Read the VozWire story Kathleen Livingston - “Global Warming ‘Could Be’ Total Disaster? We’re Way Past That.”

Maybe We’re Not Doomed After All

As the effects of a warming climate intensify and a sense of impending catastrophe grows stronger, it’s becoming easier to give in to environmental despair. Having spent the past five years studying the Arctic and traveling around Greenland, I feel the pull as well. 

We have the technology to deal with the climate crisis, we just need the will.

Glaciers and sea ice are melting at an alarming rate; temperatures are rising at a steady clip. To make matters worse, the Trump administration’s recent efforts to ignore a fact-based, scientific approach — rejecting, for instance, the use of computer projections to assess how a warming world might look after 2040 — leads me to worry that climate denialism is moving from the scientific fringes to the institutional center.

Still, it’s worth considering that things may not be as bad as they appear. I say this with a full understanding that most indicators are pointing in the wrong direction. Yet I also feel we’re in danger of losing sight of two crucial and encouraging aspects of our predicament.

The first is the extraordinary value of the climate knowledge we’ve amassed over the past 100 years — a vast archive of data and wisdom that gives us a fine-grained understanding of how the planet is warming and how we can change the trajectory we’re on.

Read the story from The New York Times by John Gertner - “Maybe We’re Not Doomed After All.”

Climate’s Troubling Unknown Unknowns

Donald Rumsfeld famously popularized the term “unknown unknowns” in a 2002 news briefing when describing the challenges of linking Iraq to weapons of mass destruction. Troublingly, climate change may also be strewn with such unknowns, and they pose daunting tests for how we face the future.

Dirty air blanketing the New York skyline at sunset.

One is choosing among policy alternatives. Should we minimize tomorrow’s risks now by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, or save money today and spend it on adapting to the effects of planetary warming once threats emerge more fully, like rising seas or prolonged droughts? The policy debate increasingly tilts toward adaptation.

But we can’t adapt to perils from unknown unknowns. In such cases, adaptation will largely fail; only mitigation will be effective.

Read the opinion piece from The New York Times by William B. Gail - “Climate’s Troubling Unknown Unknowns.”

Learning about geoengineering

Climate geoengineering refers to large-scale schemes for intervention in the earth’s oceans, soils and atmosphere with the aim of reducing the effects of climate change, usually temporarily.

Learn more about what is happening and what is proposed from Geoengineering Monitor.

Switchee: the smart thermostat. Save energy and money on your bills

Protecting the environment and ameliorating the effects of climate change can be done through simple actions we take each day, including in our homes. 

The "Switchee" smart thermostat.

Switchee, a new and exciting company based out of London, is working to help both landlords and residents to foster in greater energy efficiency through its Smart Thermostat. Switchee’s Thermostat has been proven to help users save up to 15% on energy bills through a reduction in total energy expended. 

Read the Alessandro Du Besse from Impakter - “Switchee: the smart thermostat. Save energy and money on your bills.”

Arctic has warmest winter on record: 'It's just crazy, crazy stuff

The Arctic winter has ended with more news that is worrying even the scientists who watch the effects of climate change closely.

Frozen fields on the Lofoten Islands in the Arctic Circle in northern
 Norway. Scientists say conditions in the region are unprecedented.

The region experienced its warmest winter on record. Sea ice hit record lows for the time of year, new US weather data revealed on Tuesday.

“It’s just crazy, crazy stuff,” said Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, who has been studying the Arctic since 1982. “These heat waves – I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Experts say what’s happening is unprecedented, part of a global warming-driven cycle that probably played a role in the recent strong, icy storms in Europe and the north-eastern US.

Read the story from The Guardian - “Arctic has warmest winter on record: 'It's just crazy, crazy stuff’.”

India’s air pollution crisis risks becoming humanitarian catastrophe

Before heading off on a foreign assignment, journalists take a course about working in hostile environments — learning about things like trauma first aid, weapons effects, and how to survive earthquakes, floods and civil unrest.

ABC's Siobhan Heanue wears the face mask
she had to buy in order to breathe properly.

It's all pretty useful training. And heading off to live and work in India, I was more than aware of the everyday dangers I'd be facing.

For instance, India has one of the world's highest road tolls and Delhi is one of the worst places in the world for sexual violence against women.

Read the ABC News story by Siobhan Heanue - "India’s air pollution crisis risks becoming humanitarian catastrophe.”

East Coast Shatters Temperature Records, Offering Preview to a Warming World

There are records—like Wednesday being the earliest 80-degree day in Washington, D.C., history—and then there are the eye-popping effects of those records, like seeing people wearing T-shirts on the streets of Portland, Maine, in February.

Thermometers registered record highs across the eastern
U.S. in mid-February. The map shows temperatures in
 degrees Fahrenheit on Feb. 21, 2018, at 1 p.m. EST.

However you measure it, Feb. 20-21, 2018, were days for the books—days when the records fell as quickly as the thermometer rose, days that gave a glimpse into the wacky weather that the new era of climate change brings.

"What we have is a large-scale pattern that wouldn't be too uncommon in the spring," said meteorologist Patrick Burke of the National Weather Service. "But it's a little bit unusual to see it set up this way in February—and set up with such persistence.”

Read the Inside Climate News story by Sabrina Shankman - “East Coast Shatters Temperature Records, Offering Preview to a Warming World.”

Effects of climate change already present in Regina: University of Regina Professor

According to University of Regina professor Dave Sauchyn, the effects of climate change will look very similar to this winter — only worse.

Climate change will likely bring warmer, drier weather to Saskatchewan.

“A lot of what’s unfolding, scientists have been predicting for decades,” Sauchyn said.

Those predictions include the world warming by two degrees, and increased precipitation from the warmer oceans.

Unfortunately, that precipitation will likely only come to regions near large bodies of water. For the landlocked province in the heart of Canada, it likely means a drier future.

Read the Global News report - “Effects of climate change already present in Regina: U of R prof.”

How Climate Change Fueled The Far-Right’s Rise And Why We Need To Stop Both

The notion of changing climates influencing politics in nations that have barely felt the effects of it and have the advanced technology and basic infrastructure to weather its worst effects may seem absurd at first glance. In every discussion of rising global temperatures, we’re talking about diseases and food shortages in the developing world, or political unrest in fragile and failing states while wealthy nations adapt and overcome, and isn’t that what has been happening? Yes, it has. All those assumptions are right. But because those assumptions are correct, the West is being indirectly, but very deeply affected by the effects of all this turmoil, and things are bound to get worse unless we do something serious about climate change.

Newly arrived Somali refugees wait outside a UNHCR
processing center at the Ifo refugee camp outside
Dadaab, eastern Kenya, 100 kilometers (62 miles)
from the Somali border. Human-induced climate
 change contributed to low rain levels in East Africa in
2011, making global warming one of the causes of
Somalia’s famine and the tens of thousands of
deaths that followed, a new study has found. 

You see, borders are not supernatural boundaries that allow nations to live in a vacuum and pretend that what happens in another country will always stay there. A painful transition to a post-industrial knowledge economy marked by wild inequalities and disparity in opportunities taking place in the West has created a lot of toxic strain between rural and exurban communities and their urban counterparts in the developed world. It’s arguably the defining struggle of these societies right now. Tens of millions began to feel as if the world was leaving them behind and changing into something they didn’t understand or really want to learn much about because it was too new, too scary.

Read the story on Politech by Greg Fish - “How Climate Change Fueled The Far-Right’s Rise And Why We Need To Stop Both.”

Want to play your part in combatting climate change? Eat less meat

C

limate change is the greatest challenge to human health, according to the recent Lancet Commission report which calls for action to protect the global population.

The report says that tackling climate change could deliver huge public health benefits, largely through phasing out coal, embracing renewable energy, and moving to a low-carbon economy. There is however one crucial issue the report fails to address: meat.

The commission’s recommendations are all based on solid evidence about the link between greenhouse gas emissions, global warming and human health. Focusing only on energy policy, however, will not be enough to head off climate change successfully.

Calls for action that do not include reduction in the world’s livestock production and meat consumption will not be able to protect public health from the effects of climate change.

Read The Conversation story - “Meat is a complex health issue but a simple climate one: the world needs to eat less of it”

Health needs demand Australians adapt to climate change

A

ustralians will have to adapt to reduce the risk of health impacts from climate change, according to a report released today by the Australian Academy of Science.

Bruce Armstrong, Professor of Public Health at the University of Sydney and co-chair of the report, said even if we are successful in mitigating the worst effects of climate change, “there will still be major adaptations required”.

“We have already had about 1C of global warming. On present trajectories it is highly unlikely that we will avoid 2C of global warming. We know that these are going to have major effects. We have to start thinking about it now,” he said.

Health issues identified in the report include extreme weather events such as fires, floods, and heatwaves; increased risk of infectious diseases; problems with food supply; loss of livelihoods including farming, fishing and tourism; and conflict provoked by displacement and migration.

Read the whole report here ….

Wealth won't make us safe from climate change, particularly if you are a woman

Should you imagine Australia’s underlying wealth makes it safe from the effects of climate change, think again!

The Thornbury-based Women's Health In the North – (WHIN) has looked at climate impacts in Melbourne and how they connect to gender, as well as to poverty and cultural and linguistic diversity.

Their report, “Women and Environmental Justice: a literature review” says environmental justice is realised by the fair and equitable distribution of

environmental burdens across the entire population, as well as equitable access to and involvement in the mechanisms used to address environmental issues.

This review reveals that women are likely to be disproportionately affected by

environmental injustice, even in wealthy, developed countries such as Australia.