California Bans Insurers From Dropping Policies Made Riskier by Climate Change

California’s wildfires have grown so costly and damaging that insurance companies — a homeowner’s last hope when disaster strikes — have increasingly been canceling people’s policies in fire-prone parts of the state.

The Saddleridge fire in Porter Ranch, Calif., in October.

On Thursday, however, California took the highly unusual step of banning the practice, a decision that exacerbates the insurance industry’s miscalculation of the cost of climate change. 

The new policy imposes a one-year moratorium preventing insurers from dropping customers in or alongside ZIP codes struck by recent wildfires. The moratorium covers at least 800,000 homes around the state. The state has also asked insurers to voluntarily stop dropping customers anywhere in California because of fire risk for one year.

Read the story from The New York Times by Christopher Flavelle and Brad Plumer - “California Bans Insurers From Dropping Policies Made Riskier by Climate Change.”

As Extreme Heat Becomes New Normal in Europe, Governments Scramble to Respond

PARIS — In France, a once uncommon word is increasingly on people’s lips: “canicule,” or heat wave, and its growing usage is a stark reminder of what scientists say may be the new normal: extreme heat and its deadly toll.

Cooling off in the Trocadero fountain on Thursday in Paris.

Across France this week, and also in Britain, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, heat records were smashed, leaving millions of Europeans searching for solutions to endure temperatures soaring above 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

With summers getting hotter, and their populations suffering — and dying — officials across Europe have been scrambling to come up with measures to protect desperate residents in places that never even had the need for air-conditioning before.

France has taken what is arguably the most aggressive stance, moved by a heat wave in the summer of 2003 that killed 15,000 people.

Read the story from The New York Times by Elian Peltier - “As Extreme Heat Becomes New Normal in Europe, Governments Scramble to Respond.”

Ending climate change requires the end of capitalism. Have we got the stomach for it?

Climate change activism is increasingly the domain of the young, such as 16-year-old Greta Thunberg, the unlikely face of the school strike for climate movement, which has seen many thousands of children walk out of school to demand that their parents’ generation takes responsibility for leaving them a planet to live on. In comparison, the existing political establishment looks more and more like an impediment to change. The consequences of global warming have moved from the merely theoretical and predicted to observable reality over the past few years, but this has not been matched by an uptick in urgency. The need to keep the wheels of capitalism well-oiled takes precedence even against a backdrop of fires, floods and hurricanes.

 ‘The need to keep the wheels of capitalism well-oiled takes
 precedence even against a backdrop of fires, floods and
hurricanes.’

Today’s children, as they become more politically aware, will be much more radical than their parents, simply because there will be no other choice for them. This emergent radicalism is already taking people by surprise. The Green New Deal (GND), a term presently most associated with 29-year-old US representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, has provoked a wildly unhinged backlash from the “pro-free market” wing, who argue that it’s a Trojan horse, nothing more than an attempt to piggyback Marxism onto the back of climate legislation.

Read the story from The Guardian by Phil McDuff -  "Ending climate change requires the end of capitalism. Have we got the stomach for it?”

Florida Republicans confronted with climate change as midterms loom

Caught between recovering from a devastating, unprecedented hurricane and an ongoing algae crisis, Florida Republicans are increasingly facing pressure to address climate change from constituents as election day draws near — but many have found themselves floundering on the issue.

REP. CARLOS CURBELO, R-FLA., SPEAKS
WITH REPORTERS AS HE LEAVES SPEAKER
 RYAN'S OFFICE ON THURSDAY, JUNE 21, 2018,
AS HOUSE GOP LEADERSHIP TRIES TO FIND
 A PATH TO PASS IMMIGRATION LEGISLATION.

Pressure to discuss climate change has accelerated in the aftermath of Hurricane Michael, which has killed at least 21 people so far in Northwest Florida and reduced some areas in the Panhandle to rubble. Amid an election cycle that has largely centered environmental crises, all eyes are increasingly on Florida Republicans, many of whom have a lengthy history of downplaying climate change and its risks.

But when asked about the relationship between warming ocean waters and an uptick in deadly and historic hurricanes, several Republicans have tried to deflect the issue.

Read the story by E.A.Cruden from ThinkProgress - “Florida Republicans confronted with climate change as midterms loom.”

Climate change prompts idea for new cyclone classification

Increasingly powerful cyclones driven by climate change may require a new classification for the storms, category 6.

Cyclone Winston which hit Fiji in 2016 had winds exceeding 230km/h which was the highest margin of a category 5 cyclone, Climate Change Minister James Shaw told Radio NZ.

The Pacific Climate Change Conference is underway in Wellington, attended by politicians, scientists and policymakers.

Read the story from The New Zealand Herald - “Climate change prompts idea for new cyclone classification.”

Electricity prices jump 12 per cent, six times the average pay rise.

Electricity prices have jumped by six times the rate of the average pay rise, new figures reveal, as family wallets are increasingly squeezed by essential services such as education, utilities and fuel.

The price of oil has jumped by 11.4 per cent over the past year.

The surge will increase concerns among policymakers over energy and household budgets as Parliament gets ready to resume next week, with both parties putting reducing cost of living pressures as their key policy pitches to voters this year.

Read Eryk Bagshaw’s story in today’s Melbourne Age - “Electricity prices jump 12 per cent, six times the average pay rise."

In battery boom cobalt-supply chain, Democratic Republic of Congo has the power

The cars of the future will depend increasingly upon supplies of an obscure metal from a country in the African tropics where there has never been a peaceful transition of power and child labor is still used in parts of the mining industry.

A "creuseur," or digger, climbs through a cobalt
and copper mine in Kawama, in the Democratic
 Republic of the Congo. Sixty per cent of the
 world's cobalt comes from the Congo.

Most major automakers are pledging to build millions of electric vehicles as the world's governments crack down on climate-damaging emissions from traditional-fuel engines. As a result, demand is surging for lithium-ion batteries and the materials needed to make them – including cobalt, a relatively rare substance found mostly in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The country formerly known as Zaire – which hosted boxers Muhammad Ali and George Foreman for their 1974 heavyweight title bout, dubbed the "Rumble in the Jungle" – supplies 63 per cent of the world's cobalt.

Congo's market share may jump to 73 per cent by 2025 as producers like Glencore expand mines, according to Wood Mackenzie. By 2030, global demand could be 47 times more than it was last year, Bloomberg New Energy Finance estimates.

Read the story by Tom Wilson in today’s Melbourne Age - “In battery boom cobalt-supply chain, Democratic Republic of Congo has the power.”

How the national interest can prevail over seven years of energy madness

As the new multimillion-dollar security fence encircles Parliament House, amplifying the impression that this is a place increasingly isolated from ordinary Australians, the temptation to expect the worst from those within rises daily.

Not-so-splendid isolation: The security fence at Parliament House. 

And yet.

Could it be possible that the most noxious political brawl, which has subsumed the better part of a decade, could be in the process of grinding to a  resolution? And could that be because the political class has finally recognised that the public and the national interest must be served if the parliament is to regain a shred of dignity?

We are referring, of course, to what is drolly called the energy debate.

Read Tony Wright’s analysis in today’s  Melbourne Age - “How the national interest can prevail over seven years of energy madness.”

Finding hope amid the hopeless doom of climate change

After another frigid Canberra winter, I've welcomed the warmer weather with joy. Yet it's increasingly too warm to leave a lasting smile. We are told to brace for punishing summers.

In a new book, Blueprints for a Post-Anthropocene Greenhouse Earth, the Australian National University's Dr Andrew Glikson says there's no turning back the greenhouse clock. He foresees mass extinctions and a breakdown of civilisation. In his book, Defiant Earth, Clive Hamilton of the Canberra-based Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics foresees something even worse: the possibility of our own extinction by an untameable Earth.

Hamilton writes it will probably be hundreds of thousands of years before most of the large reserves of carbon released during the human age can be rendered immobile again. People have rivalled the great forces of nature so much that we have changed the functions of the planet for an era. The Arctic is vanishing as is the Greenland ice sheet. This won't be reversed for tens of thousand of years.

While drifting into unparalleled catastrophe, I want to cling to hope, be slow to admit that all the facts are in, that all the doors have been tried and all is defeated. But how?

Read the comment by Toni Hassan in today’s Melbourne Age - “Finding hope amid the hopeless doom of climate change.”

Climate change will hit our farmers harder and hotter

A LEADING commodity trader has warned increasingly common extreme and volatile weather conditions will cause havoc for Queensland's agricultural producers .

Commodities trader Jonathan Barratt has warned record wet and dry periods will become more common as increasingly common extreme and volatile weather .

Mr Barratt, the CEO of CelsiusPro, said July 2017 was the driest July in 118 years - and as a result of climate change similar records were being set more often.

"The volatility we have experienced in the climate in the last three years has been unprecedented. I have been predicting that climate change will shift regional weather patterns and that adverse events not only occur but be more frequent. Now it's happening," he said.

"The combined deficits of rain and higher than normal temperatures in some areas this season have sapped what moisture profiles farmers had and, as some growers close the chequebook on crops, others are contemplating if it is worth adding another layer of costs to an already thirsty crop.”

Mr Barratt's warning comes just days after University of NSW research found farmland would get drier and cities flood more often under climate change.

Read Sunshine Coast Daily story - “Climate change will hit our farmers harder and hotter.”

Trump just gutted U.S. policies to fight climate change

Three months into President Donald Trump’s first term, one thing has become increasingly clear: Trump has no interest in maintaining the environmental protections ushered in by President Barack Obama.

A coal-fired power plant in Juliette, America.

Trump looks to solidify that intention on Tuesday, releasing a sweeping executive order that touches nearly every environmental action taken by the previous administration.

“There are a number of policies from the Obama administration that the president believes should be reviewed,” a senior White House official said during a press call on Monday night. “Some of them should be taken off the books immediately, to the extent that we can.”

Read Natasha Geiling’s ThinkProgress story - “Trump just gutted U.S. policies to fight climate change.”