Concerns for environment as Morrison merges government departments

A major shake-up of the federal public service has raised concerns the Morrison government's focus on environmental and climate issues will be downgraded as the areas are subsumed into two new mega departments.

Scott Morison has announced a major shake-up of the public service.

The number of government departments will shrink from 18 to 14, four new departments will be created and five department heads will lose their jobs in changes that will take effect on February 1 next year.

Read the story from The Age by Mike Foley - “Concerns for environment as Morrison merges government departments.”

Clean, green machines: the truth about electric vehicle emissions

Despite the overwhelming evidence that electric vehicle technology can deliver significant economic, environmental and health benefits, misinformation continues to muddy the public debate in Australia.

Evidence shows electric vehicles have significant
economic, social and health benefits.

An article in The Australian recently claimed that on the east coast electric vehicles are responsible for more carbon dioxide emissions than their petrol counterparts.

The findings were largely attributed to Australia’s reliance on coal-fired power to charge electric vehicles. The report on which the article was based has not been publicly released, making it difficult to examine the claim.

So instead, let’s review the available evidence.

Read the story from The Conversation by a Research Fellow from The University of Queensland, Jake Whitehead - “Clean, green machines: the truth about electric vehicle emissions.”

Jair Bolsonaro launches assault on Amazon rainforest protections

Hours after taking office, Brazil’s new president, Jair Bolsonaro, has launched an assault on environmental and Amazon protections with an executive order transferring the regulation and creation of new indigenous reserves to the agriculture ministry – which is controlled by the powerful agribusiness lobby.

Jair Bolsonaro - Brazil's new
hard-right president

The move sparked outcry from indigenous leaders, who said it threatened their reserves, which make up about 13% of Brazilian territory, and marked a symbolic concession to farming interests at a time when deforestation is rising again.

“There will be an increase in deforestation and violence against indigenous people,” said Dinaman Tuxá, the executive coordinator of the Articulation of Indigenous People of Brazil (Apib). “Indigenous people are defenders and protectors of the environment.”

Read the story from The Guardian by Dom Phillips - “Jair Bolsonaro launches assault on Amazon rainforest protections.”

Banks urged not to fund coal power as government moves to underwrite projects

Environmental and progressive activist groups are urging Australia’s major banks and financial institutions not to fund new coal projects now that the Morrison government has flagged taxpayer assistance for power generation.

 Government conservatives are focused on the Liddell
power station and want to use new ‘big stick’ powers
to extract the ageing plant from its owner AGL.

The Australian Conservation Foundation, GetUp, Greenpeace, Environment Victoria, the Australian Youth Climate Coalition, the Australian Centre for Corporate Responsibility and the Australia Institute wrote on Thursday to chief executives of the major lenders, warning the provision of finance for new coal, or retrofits of old coal-fired power stations, would be inconsistent with their public commitments to the Paris agreement.

The pressure on financial institutions follows the energy minister, Angus Taylor, calling for expressions of interest in new power generation projects to be underwritten by taxpayers, including, potentially, new coal builds or retrofits.

Read the story from The Guardian by Katharine Murphy - “Banks urged not to fund coal power as government moves to underwrite projects.”

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.”

More questions about the Turnbull/Frydenberg proposal for the LaTrobe Valley

New Zealand bans all new offshore oil exploration as part of 'carbon-neutral future’

The New Zealand government will grant no new offshore oil exploration permits in a move that is being hailed by conservation and environmental groups as a historic victory in the battle against climate change.

 New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern
looks to the future with oil exploration ban. 

The ban will apply to new permits and won’t affect the existing 22, some of which have decades left on their exploration rights and cover an area of 100,000 sq km.

The prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, said her government “has a plan to transition towards a carbon-neutral future, one that looks 30 years in advance”.

Read Eleanor Ainge Roy’s story from The Guardian - “New Zealand bans all new offshore oil exploration as part of 'carbon-neutral future’.”

Australia’s 2017 environment scorecard: like a broken record, high temperatures further stress our ecosystems.

While rainfall conditions were generally good across Australia in 2017, record-breaking temperatures stressed our ecosystems on land and sea, according to our annual environmental scorecard. Unfortunately, it looks like those records will be broken again next year – and again in the years after that.

Indicators of Australia’s environment in 2017 compared to the
 previous year. Similar to national economic indicators
they provide a summary, but also hide regional variations,
complex interactions and long-term context.

Our terrestrial environment has done relatively well in 2017, mainly thanks to good rainfall and leftover soil moisture from the year before. However, such a short summary for a country the size of a continent is bound to hide large regional differences. 2017 was no exception.

Western Australia and the Northern Territory received good rains, with vegetation growth, river flows and wetland area all coming in above average. By contrast, Queensland and particularly New South Wales saw a reversal of the previous year’s gains.

Read the story from The Conversation - “Australia’s 2017 environment scorecard: like a broken record, high temperatures further stress our ecosystems.”

Documents shed light on BP’s failures in the Great Australian Bight

BP’s plans to drill for oil in the Great Australian Bight were controversial from the outset. Even more so after the regulator twice rejected its environmental safety plan.

The coast of the Great Australian Bight. 

For the first time, Climate Home News can reveal why. Government documents have been released under freedom of information laws, nearly two years after they were requested. BP had tried to suppress the information.

A major oil spill in the sensitive seascape would pollute up to 750km of beaches and shoreline, according to BP’s own modelling, and the company thought drilling may disrupt migration of the endangered southern right whale.

Read the ClimateHome story by Karl Mathieson - “Documents shed light on BP’s failures in the Great Australian Bight.”

Recycling crisis is a chance to slash waste

China’s decision to slash imports of recyclable rubbish has roiled the global recycling market – causing short-term shocks including the near-collapse of the Australian industry, but creating a long-term opportunity here and elsewhere to improve environmental outcomes while generating revenue and employment.

Community confidence in the environmental value
of separating rubbish has been crushed.

It is also a chance to reduce the amount of waste by providing financial incentives to households and individuals. At this level, too, China, which is facing dreadful pollution problems, is taking a lead by banning all non-reusable containers. It is not far-fetched to imagine we could slash waste by giving paramount importance to reusing, rather than recycling. Further, innovations around the world include furnaces that generate electricity from waste. Many nations, including Australia, are banning plastic bags.

Read the Editorial in today’s Age - "Recycling crisis is a chance to slash waste.”

First U.S. City to Ban Fossil Fuel Expansion Offers Roadmap for Others

On a clear July morning three years ago, dozens of environmental activists pushed their kayaks into the Willamette River in Portland while others rappelled 400 feet from the top of St. Johns Bridge in an attempt to block a Shell Oil ship and its drilling equipment from leaving the port and entering Alaskan waters.

Portland, Ore., climate activists celebrate a win
 against Big Oil as city- and state-level initiatives
 gain momentum across the country.

A key piece of Shell’s Arctic drilling fleet, the vessel had arrived in Portland for repairs but its departure was delayed by protesters chanting “coal, oil, gas, none shall pass!” during two days of civil disobedience that became known as Summer Heat.

By the time the vessel finally sailed, the stage had been set for what would be a yearlong battle, culminating in an ordinance that banned construction and expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure in the city.

Last month, the Oregon Court of Appeals upheld Portland’s ban as constitutional, affirming the city’s power to regulate the safety and welfare of its residents and sending a powerful signal to cities that they too can take the lead to limit fossil fuel use.

Read the Yes! Magazine story by Kevon Paynter - “First U.S. City to Ban Fossil Fuel Expansion Offers Roadmap for Others.”

Ease of living without a clean environment is meaningless

In the last few months, the environmental status of the country has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. Delhi’s air pollution became an international incident when Sri Lankan cricketers wore face masks during the third Test against India at the Feroz Shah Kotla Stadium. Some of the players vomited on the ground due to noxious smog.

 A national action plan to combat air pollution backed with
significant budgetary allocation would have been appropriate. 

At the World Economic Forum meet in Davos, Switzerland, where Prime Minister Modi gave the opening address, a report on the environmental performance index of countries published by the Yale and Columbia Universities, ranked India as 177th out of the 180 countries. Only Burundi, Bangladesh and Congo were found worse than India.

Lastly, the Economic Survey 2018 found that climate change is now hurting Indian agriculture and farmers considerably. The survey found that the effect of extreme temperature shocks on productivity in un-irrigated areas, which account for more than half of our agricultural land, is significant. An extreme temperature shock in unirrigated areas reduces yields by 7 per cent for Kharif and 7.6 per cent for Rabi. Similarly, extreme rainfall shocks lead to 14.7 per cent and 8.6 per cent reduction in yield for Kharif and Rabi, respectively. These losses could rise significantly in the coming years as the warming level reaches 1.5 degrees Celsius in the next 10 years.

With the country in the throes of an impending crisis, one was hoping that the Finance Ministry Arun Jaitley would give due recognition to the environmental challenges in his last full budget before the general elections next year. Alas, it was a damp squib.

Read the Down to Earth story by Chandra Bhushan - “Ease of living without a clean environment is meaningless.”

NT fracking inquiry's key environmental findings questioned by scientists

One of Australia's top legacy mines researchers has questioned the scientific accuracy of some of the Northern Territory fracking inquiry's key environmental findings.

The inquiry panel thinks fracking chemicals will not
 spill near Katherine or in areas with similar geology.

The practice of hydraulic fracturing — in which a mixture of chemicals, water and sand are injected at high pressure into rock to release gas — has been controversial in the NT over the past decade since applications to frack began pouring in.

It was a key election promise of the Labor Government to respond to community concerns by imposing a moratorium while an inquiry was held.

The March deadline for the inquiry's final report is looming, and it has another round of community consultations to hold following last month's release of its draft report.

Read Jane Bardon’s ABC News story - “NT fracking inquiry's key environmental findings questioned by scientists.”

(The purveryors of profit invevitbale question anything, including science, that puts their profit at risk and the same dynamicx is being witnessed in the Northern Territory with those in the pro-fracking camp ignoring, and questioning, any advice that suggests these modern attempts to unlock these hitherto inaccessible gases are noit just qestionsable, but simply wrong.

This, again, is an example of profit, at whatever expense, being put ahead of protection of our country - it's short term gain for a handful of people at the long-term cost for the broader community.

The territory's fracking moratorium should not onhy be maintained, but converted into an ouright ban - Robert McLean)

The ‘utopian’ currency Bitcoin is a potentially catastrophic energy guzzler

The recent upsurge in the price of Bitcoin seems to have finally awakened the world to the massively destructive environmental consequences of this bubble.

These consequences were pointed out as long ago as 2013 by Australian sustainability analyst and entrepreneur Guy Lane, executive director of the Long Future Foundation. In recent months, the Bitcoin bubble has got massively bigger and the associated waste of energy is now much more widely recognised.

In essence, the creation of a new Bitcoin requires the performance of a complex calculation that has no value except to show that it has been done. The crucial feature, as is common in cryptography, is that the calculation in question is very hard to perform but easy to verify once it’s done.

Read the piece on The Conversation by Professor from the School of Economics at The University of Queensland, John Quiggin - "The ‘utopian’ currency Bitcoin is a potentially catastrophic energy guzzler.”

Victoria’s environmental watchdog 'ignores big polluters, cracks down on oBikes’

Victoria's environmental watchdog is doing nothing to rein in global warming, preferring to crack down on dumped oBikes rather than regulate carbon emissions.

Victoria's environmental watchdog has been accused of
prioritising dumped oBikes over addressing climate change.

So argues a new report by Environment Victoria, which finds the Environment Protection Authority is letting the state's biggest carbon polluters off scot-free even though it has the power to make them cut their greenhouse gas emissions.

If the EPA continues to turn a blind eye, Victoria could ultimately fail to reach its goal of emitting no carbon dioxide by 2050, the report warns.

The 2050 target is integral to Victoria's plan to play its part to limit global warming to below two degrees of pre-industrial levels and avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

Read Adam Carey’s story in the Melbourne Age - “Victoria’s environmental watchdog 'ignores big polluters, cracks down on oBikes’.”

Why Turnbull’s plan could be disaster for renewables climate prices

On the face of it a twin-pronged system focusing on reliability and environmental outcomes could have appeal. But we just don’t know because the details of Malcolm Turnbull’s National Energy Guarantee (NEG), and even the basics of how it will work, have not been explained.

As one clean energy advocate said on Tuesday: “We’re still trying to understand whether we love or hate the NEG”. Part of that hesitation is based around the oft-made assumption that it might be better to have something, rather than nothing. But that remains to be seen.

The mainstream media certainly embraced it, but analysts see red flags all over the place – it is potentially bad news for renewables, bad news for emissions, and bad news for prices. It is potentially Turnbull’s energy trilemma turned upside down.

Most of all, the proposal appears to be the most ill-considered, poorly detailed and potentially useless policy that anyone can remember – the work of Australia’s so-called “energy mafia” hungry to defend the power of the incumbent oligopoly, commercial interests and their ideology.

Read the RenewEconomy story by Giles Parkinson - “Why Turnbull’s plan could be disaster for renewables climate  prices.”

Trump taps climate skeptic for top White House environmental post

President Trump on Thursday tapped Kathleen Hartnett-White, a former chairman of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, to head a key White House office that coordinates environmental and energy policies across the government.

Surrounded by miners, President Trump signs
 an “energy independence” executive order at
the Environmental Protection Agency in March. 

The nomination of Hartnett-White to chair the administration’s Council on Environmental Quality is not entirely surprising — she previously had been considered to head the Environmental Protection Agency — but nevertheless is sure to infuriate environmental advocates.

Like other members of the Trump administration, she has long questioned the overwhelming scientific consensus on human-fueled climate change and has criticized the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a volunteer group of climate scientists whose findings are considered the gold standard of climate science. And she has described efforts to combat global warming as little more than an attack on the fossil fuel industry.

Read the story from The Washington Post - “Trump taps climate skeptic for top White House environmental post.”

Charity crackdown would be a 'torpedo' to environmental groups, Bob Brown says

The Federal Government has denied it is trying to silence environmental activists, as prominent voices in the environment and charities sectors speak out against a series of regulatory changes.

Bob Brown - "putting the fox in
charge of the chicken coop".

As Treasury canvasses a proposal to limit tax concessions for green groups, there have been changes at the top of the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC), including the appointment of Peter Hogan, chairman of coal seam gas company, Carbon Energy, to the regulator's advisory board.

That has raised the ire of environment groups, many of which are registered charities.

"We've got the Turnbull Government arranging to put the fox in charge of the chicken coop," former Australian Greens leader Bob Brown told 7.30.

Read the ABC News story - “Charity crackdown would be a 'torpedo' to environmental groups, Bob Brown says.”

New coalmines will worsen poverty and escalate climate change, report finds

New coalmines will leave more people in poverty, Oxfam has said in a new report, calling on Australia to commit to no new coalmines and to end public subsidies for coalmining.

 An Oxfam report says the climate change impacts of coal-fired
power will disproportionately affect the world’s poor. 

The report comes as the Queensland and federal governments continue to push for the controversial Adani coalmine in the Galilee basin, signalling potential infrastructure support and “royalty holidays”.

The government’s support for the mine, which would be the biggest in Australia, has been met with a fierce campaign of resistance from environmental, legal, social justice and human rights groups.

Read Ben Doherty’s story on The Guardian - “New coalmines will worsen poverty and escalate climate change, report finds.”

Make climate change an economic - not green - issue, urges ex-president of Maldives

Winning effective action on climate change will require treating the problem less as an environmental or human rights crisis and more as a sensible economic shift, the former Maldives president said Thursday.

Former Maldives president Mohamed Nasheed,
seated with former US vice president and
climate activist Al Gore and film producer Jeff
 Skill, addresses the audience at Sundance 2017,
Park City, Utah. 

“While it remains an ethical or human rights issue, it’s not so easy to have it in your political manifesto,” Mohamed Nasheed said, pointing to climate change’s political divisiveness in the United States.

But any politician, he said, can win votes by promising more jobs and a stronger economy – something eminently achievable if the world transitions to cleaner and more sustainable energy, a move that also would bring environmental and social benefits.

The world needs to package the benefits of a low-carbon transition in a way “that political parties can embrace”, said Nasheed, speaking at the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship in Oxford.

Read the Eco-Business story - “Make climate change an economic - not green - issue, urges ex-president of Maldives.”