Garnaut: Australia will lose competitive advantage if no clean energy transition

A strong future Australian economy can be created by embracing a low emissions economy, and risks sacrificing much of its economic advantages if its doesn’t, according to one of Australia’s leading economists.

Ross Garnaut - we need to accelerate our transition to renewable energy.

Addressing the Stimulus Summit co-hosted by the Smart Energy Council and RenewEconomy, leading economist Professor Ross Garnaut said that there is an increasing appreciation of the benefits of acting on climate change, and the opportunities that exist in accelerating the transition to a clean energy economy.

Expressing optimism about the opportunities that exist in a transition to zero net emissions, Garnaut said that the transition provides a way for Australia to invest in future industries, while also supporting the economy to recover after the impacts of Covid-19.

Read the story from RenewEconomy by Michael Mazengarb - “Garnaut: Australia will lose competitive advantage if no clean energy transition.”

Climate change: Lack of action enough to make a mother weep

The climate crisis is back in the news, well, at least in the letters section of The Melbourne Age.

Writing about Mothers Day, one writer said:

“My girl will be 35 in 2050 and by scientific projections that future looks grim: frequent extreme weather events, such as our recent firestorms; soaring temperatures; extended droughts; ecosystem collapse; mass extinction; migration wars; fresh water and food shortages, unbreathable air and, well, it's enough to make a mother weep.”

Another asked: “Why can't we move from laggard to leader on climate change?”

Another questioned the idea of using fossil fuels to create hydrogen saying: “Invest in new hydrogen energy projects including those powered by fossil fuels is dumbfounding.”

Read the letters from The Age - “Climate change: Lack of action enough to make a mother weep.”

Planners say pandemic shows farmland on city fringes is crucial

If housing keeps concreting over land previously used for farming, they say reliance on imported food will become the norm.

Farmland on Melbourne's city fringe has been central to
how well Melbourne is coping during the coronavirus
pandemic, academics Michael Buxton (L) and Andrew Butt say.

“Urban sprawl and rural subdivision could halve Melbourne’s peri-urban food production capacity,” said Andrew Butt, from meeting 41 per cent of the city’s current food needs now to just 18 per cent by 2050.

Professor Butt and Michael Buxton, two RMIT planning academics, have this month released a new book, The Future of the Fringe, published by the CSIRO. In it, they show that a quarter of Australia’s agricultural production now comes from land on city fringes.

“In this pandemic, both food production and supply chains have proved increasingly vulnerable,” Professor Buxton said. “Dependency on international and interstate food assumes that stable conditions will continue, but long and complex supply chains can be disastrous in a crisis."

Read the story from The Age by Clay Lucas - “Planners say pandemic shows farmland on city fringes is crucial.”

New EPA powers delayed by a year in coronavirus 'omnibus' bill

Strong new powers promised to the environment watchdog have been delayed by more than a year, sparking fears cowboy companies will persist with unsafe management of toxic waste.

Firefighters on platforms battle the West Footscray factory fire of August 30, 2018.

The new laws to beef up the Environment Protection Authority’s power to crackdown on environmental offenders and tough penalties for polluters were due to come into effect in July this year.

Read the story from The Age by Benjamin Preiss - “New EPA powers delayed by a year in coronavirus 'omnibus' bill.”

Logging likely had significant effect on summer fires: scientists

Logging native forests increases the severity and risk of bushfires and likely had a significant effect on Australia's unprecedented summer fires.

Burnt bushland on the NSW South Coast, which was heavily hit by bushfires.

New research from five scientists published in Nature Ecology & Evolution on Wednesday finds that public debates about the links between climate change and bushfires are warranted and should prompt action, but the contribution of logging to bushfires also needs greater scrutiny.

And, unlike much of the action needed to halt global warming, land management is within the control of Australians, write the scientists from the Australian National University, Macquarie University and the University of Queensland in their review of evidence.

Read the story from The Age by Miki Perkins - “Logging likely had significant effect on summer fires: scientists.”

Billions Could Live in Extreme Heat Zones Within Decades, Study Finds

As the climate continues to warm over the next half-century, up to one-third of the world’s population is likely to live in areas that are considered unsuitably hot for humans, scientists said Monday.

A cow skull in Chile in January. By 2070, extreme heat could
encompass larger parts of South America and other regions. 

Currently fewer than 25 million people live in the world’s hottest areas, which are mostly in the Sahara region in Africa with mean annual temperatures above about 84 degrees Fahrenheit, or 29 Celsius. But the researchers said that by 2070 such extreme heat could encompass a much larger part of Africa, as well as parts of India, the Middle East, South America, Southeast Asia and Australia.

With the global population projected to rise to about 10 billion by 2070, that means as many as 3.5 billion people could inhabit those areas. Some of them could migrate to cooler areas, but that would bring economic and societal disruption with it.

The parts of the world that could become unsuitably hot “are precisely the areas that are growing the fastest,” said Timothy A. Kohler, an archaeologist at the University of Washington and an author of the study, which was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Read the story from The New York Times by Henry Fountain - “Billions Could Live in Extreme Heat Zones Within Decades, Study Finds.”

Massive Pilbara wind and solar export hub gets environmental green light

Plans for a massive renewable energy generation and export hub based in the Pilbara region of Western Australia have firmed up this week, after being recommended for approval by the state’s Environmental Protection Authority.

Plans for Pilbara massive renewable energy generation and export hub.

Environmental approval for the 9GW Asian Renewable Energy Hub was recommended on Monday, subject to conditions including consultation on management plans with traditional landowners and managing and monitoring impacts on migratory birds.

The project is one of a handful of truly massive proposed renewable energy investments, along with the 10GW solar plant and huge battery storage project initially backed by billionaires Mike Cannon-Brookes and Andrew Forrest in the Northern Territory. 

There is another 5GW renewable energy project proposed for W.A., and numerous other plans also emerging as developers look to the possibility of renewable hydrogen, either to support the export of green fuels, or even “green metals” – value-added manufacturing underpinned by cheap, green power.

Read the RenewEconomy story by Sophie Vorrath - “Massive Pilbara wind and solar export hub gets environmental green light.”