Dear Tony, your change of heart on Paris treaty is as insincere as it is desperate

Dear Tony. We need to talk about your flip flopping. It’s just not reasonable to have every single position on an issue and present yourself to voters as a conviction politician. These two conditions are, fundamentally, irreconcilable.

 Former prime minister Tony Abbott has changed his mind
 on climate change. Again. He says we no longer need to pull
out of the Paris treaty.

Let’s lay this out.

When Tony Abbott was prime minister, he took the decision to sign Australia up to the Paris climate treaty. When Malcolm Turnbull took over the Liberal leadership, Turnbull went on to ratify the agreement.

In 2015, when Abbott signed Australia up to Paris, he said we were making a “definite commitment” to a 26% reduction in emissions and “with the circumstances that we think will apply ... we can go up to 28%”.

When that position became inconvenient, because he was waging war on Turnbull during the vicious internal proxy war over the national energy guarantee, Abbott then declared he didn’t anticipate, as prime minister, “how the aspirational targets we agreed to at Paris would, in different hands, become binding commitments”.

Read the story from The Guardian by Katharine Murphy - “Dear Tony, your change of heart on Paris treaty is as insincere as it is desperate.”

Josh Frydenberg rules out stronger climate policies despite Wentworth debacle

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has insisted the government’s climate policies are “settled” despite acknowledging the issue was a factor in the Wentworth byelection, where the government suffered a battering on Saturday night.

Kerryn Phelps is embraced by her wife Jackie Stricker-Phelps
 during her victory speech on Saturday night.CREDIT:

Mr Frydenberg brushed aside suggestions the Morrison government needs to overhaul its climate action policies, saying its suite of existing measures were enough to “meet and beat” Australia’s emission reduction pledges.

Independent Kerryn Phelps campaigned hard on climate change and Liberal volunteers on the booths have reported it was a key issue for Wentworth voters. Dr Phelps still appears to have won the Sydney seat in one of the largest byelections swings in federal political history, though pre-polls and postal votes that are still being counted will make the final result close.

Read the story from The Sydney Morning Herald by David Wroe - “Josh Frydenberg rules out stronger climate policies despite Wentworth debacle.”

Away from the public gaze, serious threats to the environment keep rising

Threats to the Australian environment get reported in bursts – a contested development decision or a particular conservation campaign can thrust an issue into the headlines and on to the nightly news bulletins for weeks before a deal is crunched and a “solution” heralded.

Our environment is always under threat, especially when we divert our gaze.

But the “solutions” are often illusory and the actual threats keep rising, away from the scrutiny of the political and news cycles.

As the last five-yearly and independent “state of the environment report” found: “The main pressures facing the Australian environment today are the same as in 2011: climate change, land use change, habitat fragmentation and degradation, and invasive species,” with interactions between them amplifying the threats.

It noted that in a few cases (such as air quality and poor agricultural practices) the pressures had eased, but in most (such as grazing, invasive species, habitat destruction, coalmining and urban growth) they had worsened.

After 30 years of environment reporting, on and off, it’s evident that the “deals” to end headline-grabbing environmental battles often aren’t enduring solutions at all, with the scrapping continuing away from the national public gaze.

Read the story by Lenore Taylor from The Guardian  - “Away from the public gaze, serious threats to the environment keep rising.”

Why the Adani project should be rejected

Adani was always going to be a significant issue in the forthcoming Queensland state election. It is a divisive issue and one where the major players have sought to play excessive, short-term, politics in recent years.

Protestors against the Adani coal mine rally outside
Adani's headquarters in Brisbane. 

With an urgent global challenge to transition to a low carbon society, Paris Agreement and well beyond, any sensible carbon budget to achieve net zero emissions by mid-century would suggest that 70-plus percent of known coal reserves should never be mined. Nor burned for electricity generation. At just this level, it is impossible to justify a new coal mine, let alone one that aspires to be among the world's largest.

Of course, some simply reject the climate challenge, let alone its severity and urgency, while others suggest it can be "delayed" to "better economic times", as if we could wait to (say) 2049, to make the necessary "adjustments" in one big bang.

Clearly, the latter view completely ignores the significant shifts required in government, business, social and individual behaviour, and the time it would require to restructure the industrial, power and transport base of society away from dependence on fossil fuels.

Read the comment by John Hewson in today’s Melbourne Age - “Why the Adani project should be rejected.”