11 January 2018, ABC News – Science: Forget Paris: Australia needs to stop pretending we’re tackling climate change. As the Bureau of Meteorology confirms another record-breaking year for temperatures in Australia, we should expect a sense of urgency to be creeping into Australia’s climate policy. Instead, we’re seeing the opposite. While 2015-17 were all within the hottest six years on record, our carbon emissions also continued to increase during the same period, including an all-time peak in 2017, when unreliable land-use data was excluded from the analysis. This is despite signing up to the Paris Agreement in 2015, which outlined a plan to reduce our carbon emissions by 26-28 per cent by 2030. Government data pushed out under the cloak of Christmas indicates that we will be about 140 million tonnes — or about 30 per cent — above that target based on current growth Government optimism at odds with UN: Despite last financial year’s continued emissions growth, Environment and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg remains upbeat about Australia’s commitment to the Paris Agreement. “If you look on a yearly basis that is true [that emissions went up]. But if you look on the last quarter, they went down. If you look at the trend, it is improving. And when you talk about the 2030 target, which is our Paris commitment, the numbers that were most recently shown, indicate that they were 30 per cent better than when Labor were last in office,” the Minister told RN Breakfast. But his optimism is at odds with a number of experts, and is contrary to what was reported in the United Nations Emissions Gap Report (see below), 2017. “Government projections indicate that emissions are expected to reach 592 [million tonnes] in 2030, in contrast to the targeted range of 429-440 [million tonnes],” the report states.. Read More here
Category Archives: Australian Response
19 December 2017, Renew Economy, Turnbull’s big climate fail, and no positive change in policy. The Turnbull government has declared its climate policies a success, in a self-generated review released alongside data revealing yet another rise in the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions – and no plans to do anything to reverse the “shameful and embarrassing” trend. In a statement on Tuesday accompanying the federal government’s 2017 Review of Climate Change Policies, environment minister Josh Frydenberg said the report showed the Coalition’s “economically responsible” approach to meeting its international climate commitments was working as planned. “The climate review found that …Australia is playing its part on the world stage through bilateral and multi‑lateral initiatives and the ratification of the Paris Agreement to reduce our emissions by 26 to 28 per cent on 2005 levels by 2030,” he said. And indeed it does; declaring on page 6 that “we will meet our 2030 target and we will do so without compromising economic growth or jobs. Our current policy suite can deliver this outcome.” Read More here
14 December 2017, The Conversation, Instead of congratulating ICAN on its Nobel Peace Prize, Australia is resisting efforts to ban the bomb. Earlier this week in Oslo, the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize was officially givento the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), a global campaign that was launched in Melbourne in 2007. ICAN lobbied to establish a special UN working group on nuclear disarmament, campaigned for the UN General Assembly’s December 2016 resolution to launch negotiations on a prohibition treaty, and was an active presence at the UN conference that negotiated the treaty. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull failed to congratulate the Australian faces of ICAN, adding to the growing body of evidence of his flawed political judgement. There were no political downsides to phoning ICAN, noting the difference of opinion on the timing and means to effective nuclear disarmament, but warmly congratulating ICAN for the global recognition of its noble efforts to promote nuclear peace. Out of step with the global nuclear order The global nuclear order has been regulated and nuclear policy directions set by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) since 1968. The 2015 Iran nuclear deal and North Korea’s unchecked nuclear and missile delivery advances show the benefits and limitations of the NPT respectively. The transparency, verification and consequences regime mothballed Iran’s bomb-making program by enforcing its NPT non-proliferation obligations. These will remain legally binding even after the deal expires in 2030. By contrast, the crisis over North Korea’s nuclear program has intensified within the NPT framework. Heightened geopolitical tensions in Europe, the Middle East and south and east Asia have further stoked nuclear fears. Meanwhile the NPT-recognised five nuclear weapon states have no plan to abolish their nuclear arsenals. Frustrated by the stubborn resistance of the nuclear weapon states to honour their NPT commitment to nuclear disarmament and alarmed by rising nuclear threats, on July 7 this year, 122 countries adopted a UN treaty to stigmatise and ban the bomb. Read More here
7 December 2017, The Guardian, Is this the end of the road for Adani’s Australian megamine? Adani’s operations in Australia appear to be hanging on by a thread, as activists prove effective at undermining the company’s chances of getting the finance it needs. China seems to have ruled out funding for the mine, which means it’s not just Adani’s proposed Carmichael coalmine that is under threat, but also its existing Abbot Point coal terminal, which sits near Bowen, behind the Great Barrier Reef. The campaign against the mine has been long. Environmentalists first tried to use Australia’s environmental laws to block it from going ahead, and then failing that, focused on pressuring financial institutions, first here, and then around the world. The news that Beijing has left Adani out to dry comes as on-the-ground protests against construction of the mine pick up. Two Greens MPs, Jeremy Buckingham and Dawn Walker, have been arrested in Queensland for disrupting the company’s activities. Is China’s move the end of the road for Adani’s mega coalmine in Australia, and will the Adani Group be left with billions of dollars in stranded assets? Environmental laws fail to halt mine Despite the mine threatening to destroy some of the best remaining habitat of threatened species of birds and lizards, federal environmental laws proved unable to stop the mine in the face of a government that wanted it to go ahead. The initial federal approval for the mine was overturned after it was revealed the then-minister for the environment, Greg Hunt, had ignored his own department’s advice about the mine’s impact on two vulnerable species, the yakka skink and the ornamental snake. One by one, each of the big four Australian banks ruled out financing the mine But Australia’s environmental law leaves very little opportunity for challenging the merits of a minister’s decision – it only allows for challenges on whether those decisions considered everything required by the law. As a result, the minister needed only approve it again, after formally considering the impact on the two species. Another court challenge argued the approval was invalid because the emissions caused by the mine – which would be greater than those of New York City – were a threat to the Great Barrier Reef. Hunt argued in court, successfully, that there was no definite link between coal from Adani mine and climate change. It became apparent Australia’s environmental laws were unable to stop a project like this if the government of the day was determined to push it through. Read More here