If the Coalition has had a climate epiphany, I'm Beyoncé

Let’s start with the good news. Scott Morrison is talking constructively about climate change because he is intelligent enough to understand that failing to do that renders the Coalition unelectable in parts of the country, and with parts of its own base.

Monday's climate policy pivot reflects Morrison’s limited options.

Compared with where we’ve been, a Liberal prime minister standing up at a podium, accepting the science of climate change and making the case for action, is progress.

We need to acknowledge it.

But this isn’t, ultimately, a test of talking points.

It has to be a test of substance, and a test of whether or not you are prepared to be a grown-up government facing up to a significant policy problem – and the truth is the Coalition has been here before.

Read the story from The Guardian by Katharine Murphy - “If the Coalition has had a climate epiphany, I'm Beyoncé.”

What Martin Luther King Jr. Can Teach Us About Climate Denial

Historically, Martin Luther King Jr. Day offered a chance for elected officials to set aside policy differences and pay homage to the late civil rights leader. But in our present moment of disunity and discord, the holiday has become yet another flashpoint in the culture war. To help heal the nation and continue to work for progress, we might consider the source of our racial, cultural and political divisions. On this, King can offer some insight.

Martin Luther King helps us understand our
disunity and discord over climate change.

In 1965, he gave a speech on the steps of the Alabama state capitol in which he explored the history of segregation. When poverty and exploitation threatened to unite black and white voters in the South, King said, “the southern aristocracy began immediately to engineer this development of a segregated society,” with the aim of dividing the working class. The result, he explained, was that when the white man’s “wrinkled stomach cried out for the food that his empty pockets could not provide, he ate Jim Crow, a psychological bird that told him that no matter how bad off he was, at least he was a white man, better than the black man.”

As King made clear, institutionalized racism was an attack on the working class, a way to keep poor white voters on the side of white elites. His insight applies equally to other ideologies of ignorance: sexism, xenophobia — even climate change denial. Each is deployed to divide the working class.

Read the Nexus Media story by Jeremy Deaton - “What Martin Luther King Jr. Can Teach Us About Climate Denial.”

GDP is destroying the planet. Here’s an alternative.

GDP is a poor measure of progress — it increases as we destroy the natural capital of the planet.

The value of the planet needs to be factored into our financial system.

We need economic growth, but we cannot continue to measure it using GDP. We need a ‘quality adjusted’ GDP linked to transactions which recognise how much social and natural capital they are building.

Although the International Energy Association reported that carbon emissions stabilised for 3 years in the 2014–2016, the best estimates for 2017, which are waiting formal confirmation, are that they increased 2%. This is in the context of Christina Figueres, former chair of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, together with leading scientists, saying that we have “three years for carbon emissions to peak and drop rapidly to avoid catastrophic climate change”. That was June 2017. We now have two years.

Read the World Economic Forum story - “GDP is destroying the planet. Here’s an alternative.”

Sunburnt Country review: Joelle Gergis on a fraught future with climate change

Sunburnt Country by Joëlle Gergis.

More than half a century ago, the French historian Ferdinand Braudel issued a challenge to historians, arguing the time had come to look past the business of nations and empires and their narratives of progress, and instead engage with what he termed the longue duree.

Likening the social time of traditional history to "a surface disturbance" or "waves stirred up by the powerful movement of tides", he argued the time had come to try to explore what he called geographical time, in the hope of divining the deeper currents that flow through human affairs, shaping them across generations, centuries, even millennia.

As the historian Tom Griffiths has observed, Braudel's formulation has taken on new urgency in recent years. As our impact on the planet has grown the division between geological time and human time has collapsed, demanding we recognise the radical interconnectedness of processes, phenomena, even ideas we would once have regarded as separate. As temperatures rise and icecaps melt, it is no longer possible to pretend the business of our everyday lives and their dependence upon cheap energy does not have planetary implications, or that the planet's changing climate will not affect us personally and collectively.

Read the review by James Bradley from today’s Age - “Sunburnt Country review: Joelle Gergis on a fraught future with climate change.”

‘Delicate': Energy chiefs warn of risks without advance on energy plan

Buoyant confidence in Australia's electricity sector has seen power prices retreat but it remains fickle and likely hinges on progress on the federal government's keystone energy plan, leading energy firms say.

Power prices have been falling but the market remains fickle, companies say.

State and territory energy ministers are preparing to debate the National Energy Guarantee (NEG) - a plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions while improving reliability and security of the grid and lowering prices - at a Council of Australian Governments (COAG) meeting in Melbourne on Friday.

Companies such as Origin and EnergyAustralia say while the policy lacks ambition in cutting greenhouse gas emissions in electricity generation, its design has improved since being floated by the government last year.

Read the story from The Age by Peter Hannam and Cole Latimer - “‘Delicate': Energy chiefs warn of risks without advance on energy plan.”

Emissions Reduction Fund is almost empty. It shouldn’t be refilled

Australia’s flagship climate policy, the Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF), has come in for fresh questions over whether the emissions allowances offered to big businesses will wipe out much of the progress made elsewhere.

The Emissions Reduction Fund is not capturing
enough emissions from the most polluting industries.

This voluntary scheme – the central plank of Australia’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 26-28% below 2005 levels by 2030 – allows interested parties to reduce pollution in exchange for a proportion of the A$2.55 billion fund.

So far, through successive rounds of “reverse auctions”, the scheme has secured 191.7 million tonnes of emission reductions, at a price tag of A$2.28 billion.

Read the piece on The Conversation by a Senior Lecturer in Economics from The University of Queensland, Ian A. MacKenzie -  “Emissions Reduction Fund is almost empty. It shouldn’t be refilled.”

Everyone has a different excuse for the electricity stuff-up

The electricity market is such a mare's nest of stuff-ups and problems it's impossible to see the deeply divided Turnbull government making much progress in fixing it.

The gas industry has built massive export facilities in north Queensland. 

The goals of halting runaway power prices and reducing the risk of summer blackouts wouldn't be quite so daunting, for instance, were it not for the third goal of "sustainability" – the euphemism you use when you can't say "climate change”.

It's tempting to focus on the first two and forget the third, but even that wouldn't work because the inescapable reality of climate change means that, until the Turnbull government ends the "policy uncertainty" about its treatment of fossil fuels relative to renewables, it's unlikely to get sufficient investment in new production capacity to keep prices controlled.

Even if Turnbull were to patch together some weakened version of an (already toned down) clean energy target, that wouldn't do the trick if it failed to win the endorsement of the alternative government.

Read the story by Ross Gittins on The Sydney Morning Herald - “Everyone has a different excuse for the electricity stuff-up.”

Optimism abounds in Paris as first draft acheived in record time

Negotiators paving the way for a global climate change agreement in Paris have cleared a major hurdle, producing a draft accord in record time and raising hopes that a full week of minister-led talks can now clinch a deal despite many sticking points.

No part of the deal has been finalised because in the end it is likely to be a trade-off between developing countries’ demands – particularly for financing to help cope with the impacts of locked-in climate change – and wealthier nations’ insistence that over time all countries properly account for the progress they have made towards emission reduction goals.

Read The Guardian story - “Paris climate change talks yield first draft amid air of optimism.”

Time for parties in Paris to show the world they mean business - Damian Ryan

Damian Ryan.

Negotiations continued to move slowly on Friday at COP21, as officials began their final round of discussions before the process moves to the ministerial level from tomorrow.

The day began with the release of a new text that brought back into a single document all the different issues that spin-off groups have been working on over the week. Two versions of the document were released, a shorter 38-page paper that included ‘bridging proposals’ by facilitators and a longer 46-page compilation document.

Through the afternoon and into the evening a single group met to narrow down options ahead of tomorrow’s noon deadline for wrapping up the work of officials. Parties considered proposals to streamline the twin texts in order to come up with a cleaner, shorter, single document. Progress continued to be slow (or “slightly faster than normal slow” as one observer put it) with brackets remaining around many sections late on Friday.

Read what the of Head of International Policy, The Climate Group, Damian Ryan, writes about the 21st UN climate conference, COP21, in Paris - “COP21: Time for parties to show the world the mean business.”

'Innovative, scalable, and replicable examples' making a difference, says UN

T

here’s likely to be plenty of tension in the air when representatives of the world’s governments gather in Paris next month for a global conference on mitigating climate change.

The United Nations said this morning that the plans offered so far won’t limit warming to the dangerous 2ºC threshold.

But, perhaps determined to show where progress has been made, the UN plans at the conference to honor 16 projects around the world that it says have made a genuine difference. The projects, which come from grassroots organizations to multinationals, are “some of the most innovative, scalable, and replicable examples of what people are doing to address climate change,” according to the UN:

Read the Quartz story - “16 climate projects that are actually making a difference, according to the UN,”

Surviving progress is both interesting and relevant

Beneath the Wisteria supporters should find this Sunday screening on the ABC of “Surviving Progress” both interesting and relevant.

The promo for the one hour and 26 minute show says: “As humanity basks in the glow of a century unprecedented progress in the early years of the 21^st Century, a growing number of scientists wonder if we’re really as well off as we imagine”.

Take the time to watch the show, if you didn’t see it on Sunday evening, and decide for yourself.

(Watching it made me angry, depressed, and sad; sad that a life form as intelligent as ours seems intent on soiling our nest to such an extreme that we can no longer use it – Robert).