community – Page 14 – ANGFA Queensland

In the corporate fight club, the environment usually loses

Oct 252013

Original story by Christopher Wright and Daniel Nyberg, University of Nottingham at The Conversation

Research shows the environment usually comes off second best when companies are forced to compromise between sustainability and profit. Photo: Mohammad Rhaman/Flickr

A commitment to sustainability has become a typical component of any modern-day corporation’s public face. Visit the homepages of major organisations in any sector, from coal-mining to cola-making, and you’ll find “green” credentials front and centre.

This might be viewed as a predictable and well-intentioned response to mounting concerns over climate change, deforestation, declining biodiversity and other environmental issues. Yet a distinctive component of that response has been to try to incorporate the environment within market capitalism.

For example, last year the UK government’s Environment department initiated an Ecosystems Market Task Force to review opportunities to “value and protect nature’s services”. This is typical of the fast-emerging trend for the environment to be accorded a market worth and for corporations to be seen as the central institutions through which that worth can be maintained.

Consequently, we seem to have reached a stage where both the environment and the market are treated as social goods. It follows then that the two will occasionally have competing interests. So which tends to benefit and which tends to suffer when compromise is inevitably sought? In a recent article in the British Journal of Sociology, we argue it is the market that is almost invariably and overwhelmingly favoured.

The study, focused on the sustainability approaches of a number of Australian and global companies and involved lengthy interviews with their sustainability managers and consultants. They were chosen because their work encompasses precisely the sort of compromises that have come to characterise the relationship between the environment and the market. Many saw their roles as involving not only an allegiance to their employers and shareholders, but also a concern for the environment and society. Some had even changed careers and reconsidered their personal values because of their dedication to environmental issues.

We also analysed a range of relevant material, including corporate sustainability reports, policy documents and statements relating to carbon emissions. As has become de rigueur, many of these were festooned with evocative images of forests, oceans and landscapes, as well as employees' testimonials about the environment’s significance in their personal and professional lives.

Yet beneath the warm glow of corporate social responsibility lurked the cold reality of economic exigency.

In the cold light of day…

Staff members expressed a keen and genuine interest in the environment, but at the same time were well aware of the constraints of challenging successful business practices likely to exacerbate ecological degradation. As the director of one sustainability consultancy remarked: “It always comes down to the optimum point. You want them to be as sustainable as can be, but you don’t want them to shut down their operation. There’s no simple path through this.”

Moreover, compromise was shown to be at best a temporary resolution – one subject to continued criticism, adaptation and refinement. The next step frequently led only to a new and ‘better’ compromise or an outright shifting of the goalposts.

Take, for instance, environmentalists' much-publicised claim that bio-fuels cause deforestation and food shortages: the result was the promotion of “second-generation”, more environmentally friendly bio-fuels. Or the company whose initial confidence in its “ambitious” carbon emissions reduction target of 40 per cent was followed by the observation that this would prove “difficult to deliver” because of an increase in business – despite investment in energy-saving equipment and “sustainable” retail outlets.

There are “win-win” situations – say, when new “green” products or initiatives cut costs or enhance revenues – but it is generally acknowledged that these are pursued only when the benefits to the market, not the benefits to the environment, can be guaranteed. In such instances compromise serves to deny the inequality of competing goods. There is no space for a reduction of profit or a decline in growth. Boosting the bottom line remains the primary objective. Ultimately, it is the market that records another lopsided victory.

Ironically, within any organisation it is the individuals who are most environmentally attuned who are also most often engaged in compromising the environment. They accept – albeit sometimes grudgingly – the impossibility of governing innocently. As the environment is reconstructed into a commodity and a tool for profit, they have to get their hands dirty.

One key question is whether the continued expansion of the market might be met with a counter-movement of protection and conservation through legislation. In short, can nature have a legal standing? There may be some hope in this regard.

In New Zealand a river was recently recognised as a legal entity with the same rights and interests enjoyed by a company. Constitutional amendments in Bolivia and Ecuador have embraced specific rights for the environment.

Irrespective of whether they eventually prove of limited practical impact, these fledgling efforts at least illustrate a social awareness of the need for some control over market capitalism’s excesses. They also underline – as if further evidence were needed – that the conflict between the environment and the market is likely to prove a source of even greater friction, criticism and compromise as the physical realities of the natural world’s decline become ever more profound.

Christopher Wright receives funding from the Australian Research Council for a Discovery Grant examining business responses to climate change..

Daniel Nyberg receives funding from the Australian Research Council for a Discovery Grant examining business responses to climate change.

This article was originally published at The Conversation.
Read the original article.

Leave it in the ground! How fossil fuel extraction affects biodiversity

community, environment, threatened species, waterways/wetlands, wildlife

Oct 252013

By Nathalie Butt and Hawthorne Beyer at The Conversation

Photo: Yasuni National Park in Ecuador is one of the world’s most biodiverse regions. It’s home to country’s largest oil field. Photo: Flickr/joshbousel

Greenhouse gases produced by the burning of fossil fuels have resulted in well-publicised changes to the Earth’s climate. But the impacts of fossil fuels start long before their carbon dioxide reaches the atmosphere. Our new research, published today in Science, looks at the effects of coal, oil and gas extraction on biodiversity.

The problem

Biodiversity loss is accelerating, and the risks to biodiversity are increasing. We are in the midst of a global biodiversity crisis.

The biggest threats to biodiversity are human activities. These act across a range of scales. Even local biodiversity loss can have knock-on large scale impacts on ecosystem function and productivity.

Fossil fuel consumption and demand show no signs of levelling off, let alone decreasing. Of course more consumption means more refineries, power stations and infrastructure, in addition to the extraction itself.

Given the increasing demand and consumption, it is reasonable to assume that most if not all remaining fossil fuel reserves will be exploited, using conventional and new methods such as fracking.

Mining and drilling have often been seen as having limited environmental impacts. It’s often assumed that restoring ecosystems after fossil fuel extraction can ultimately return the ecosystem to a state close to what it was before.

And the effects of extraction activity have generally been considered trivial compared with other human activities, such as large-scale agricultural land clearing. But this is not the case: fossil-fuel extraction causes disturbance and degradation to ecosystems.

The impacts of fossil fuel extraction fall into three main categories: the direct impact of extraction activity, indirect impacts of infrastructure development and expanded human activity, and the consequences of extraction disasters. Road building is in fact the main catalyst for irreversible ecosystem change.

The various ways fossil fuel extraction impacts on biodiversity.

Critical areas

In our research we compared areas of biodiversity and reserves of fossil fuel. We identified two key regions where fossil fuel reserves coincide with high levels of biodiversity and threatened species: the western Pacific Ocean and northern South America.

The Western Amazon, in northern South America, includes parts of Bolivia, Columbia, Ecuador, Peru and western Brazil. It’s one of the most biodiverse areas on the planet and also contains large reserves of oil and gas.

The forest also provides vital ecosystem services - water, climate regulation and carbon storage, which all have implications for biodiversity conservation globally.

Large oil and gas projects already developed in the area have caused major environmental and social impacts, including deforestation for construction of roads, drilling platforms and pipelines, contamination from oil spills and waste-water discharge. Each kilometre of road constructed means 4-24 km² of deforestation for colonisation and related agricultural development.

We also looked at Western Papua New Guinea in the western Pacific, where oil extraction and transport pose an increasing risk to mangrove and coral ecosystems.

These mangrove forests support the highest diversity of mangroves globally, and are home to many rare and endemic plant and animal species. The abundant and diverse coral reefs in the region are some of the most pristine and least exploited in the world.

Oil spills would cause profound damage. Projections based on historic spill rates and estimated oil resources in the region suggest that the area could expect approximately four spills larger than 10,000 barrels in a 15-year period. As Gulf of Papua currents circulate to the Great Barrier Reef along Cape York in Australia, the potential biodiversity loss in the event of a catastrophic spill would extend far beyond the local waters.

Mapping of fossil fuels shows the risks to biodiversity.

What can we do?

We’ve identified a new substantial risk to key biodiversity areas globally, but are there any solutions?

Many countries in the high risk areas have weak governance and poor implementation and enforcement of environmental regulations, and may lack the ability to respond effectively to environmental disasters.

They may also be too remote or undeveloped to attract much media coverage - and so environmental damage may remain undetected and unaddressed.

International environmental organisations could fulfil an essential role by ensuring that fossil fuel extraction takes place according to best practises and ideally avoids areas of high biodiversity. It is crucial that trade-offs between biodiversity conservation and development are properly assessed to ensure threatened or endemic species are not lost.

International pressure can also help to ensure that any environmental damage that does occur is mitigated and the companies involved are appropriately penalised, as in the case of BP and the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

One possible mechanism to preserve biodiversity in fossil fuel-rich areas was recently attempted at Yasuní National Park in Ecuador. This highly biodiverse also area has the country’s largest oil reserves.

In 2007 the Ecuadorean government proposed that in return for not extracting the oil from the park, and keeping the forest biodiversity, they would be compensated. The funds were to be raised through the international Green Climate Fund (UNFCCC), to the value of $3.6 billion, about half the value of the oil.

Ten per cent of the money was raised, from countries, regions, corporations, foundations and individuals, to be invested in renewable energy projects. But unfortunately due to lack of global commitment and organisational support the project failed. Oil extraction will now go ahead. If the international support was strong, and organisation effective, schemes such as this could be a way of protecting biodiversity in fossil fuel rich areas.

Of course, the bottom line is that we need to decrease our fossil fuel demand, extraction and consumption; the rest is pretty much just rearranging the deck chairs.

Nathalie Butt receives funding through the ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions at the University of Queensland

Hawthorne Beyer receives funding through the ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions at the University of Queensland.

This article was originally published at The Conversation.
Read the original article.

Moreton Bay’s grade falls in Healthy Waterways report

community, environment, government, waterways/wetlands

Oct 242013

Original story by James Kelly, ABC News

Flooding from ex-tropical cyclone Oswald earlier this year has taken its toll on Moreton Bay, off Brisbane, with its overall grade in a Healthy Waterways report declining slightly from B- to C.

Northern Moreton Bay. Image: Wikimedia Commons/Cruickshanks/Sandbox

The Healthy Waterways annual report card ranks the health of south-east Queensland rivers and estuaries from A to F.

Waterways' spokesman Professor Jon Olley says reduced water clarity and increased algae in Moreton Bay are a direct result of mud and nutrients deposited during the 2011 and 2013 floods.

The central part of Moreton Bay declined the most from A- to C+.

Professor Olley also says the report also shows a decline in seagrass beds and coral in Moreton Bay.

"This year I'm sorry to report the seagrass beds and the corals are now showing signs of stress and decline, which is what we predicted would happen," he said.

State Environment Minister Andrew Powell says farmers have also had an impact on the health of waterways.

"We need to work with them, through incentives, through grants programmes to ensure we get a great environmental outcome," he said.

The Redlands catchment recorded an F, down from D-.

However, Professor Olley had good news for the Bremer River, which flows through Ipswich.

"The Bremer going from an F to a D-," he said.

"That's only the second time in 13 years of monitoring that the Bremer hasn't rated an F."

The Noosa, Tingalpa, Eprapah and Albert estuaries also improved.

Gore enters NSW bushfire climate debate

community, environment, government

Oct 242013

Original story from Sky News

Tony Abbott's insistence that bushfires aren't linked to climate change is like the tobacco industry claiming smoking doesn't cause lung cancer, Nobel laureate Al Gore says.

In light of the NSW bushfire disaster, the former US vice president says the prime minister's comment that bushfires are a function of life in Australia and nothing to do with climate change reminds him of politicians in the US who received support from tobacco companies, and who then publicly argued the companies' cause.

'For 40 years the tobacco companies were able to persuade pliant politicians within their grip to tell the public what they wanted them to tell them, and for 40 years the tragedy continued,' Mr Gore told ABC TV's 7.30 program from Los Angeles on Wednesday night.

'And bushfires can occur naturally and do, but the science shows clearly that when the temperature goes up and when the vegetation and soils dry out, then wild fires become more pervasive and more dangerous.

'That's not me saying it, that's what the scientific community says.'

Mr Gore says it's a political fact of life that politicians and commercial enterprise collude to achieve goals after he was asked if there was a conspiracy between polluters and politicians.

'I don't think it's a commercial conspiracy. I think it's a political fact of life,' he said.

'It certainly is in my country. In the United States, our democracy has been hacked.

'Special interests control decisions too frequently. You saw it in our recent fiscal and debt crisis.

'The energy companies, coal companies and oil companies particularly, have prevented the Congress of the United States from doing anything meaningful so far, to stop the climate crisis.'

The Nobel laureate says Australia's new direct action strategy was not workable.

'The meaningful way to resolve this crisis is to put a price on carbon and in Australia's case, to keep a price on carbon,' he said.

He argues the price needs to be at an effective level with the market sending accurate signals so that renewable systems of energy are encouraged.

Ok Tedi immunity gone, with implications beyond BHP

community, environment, government, waterways/wetlands

Oct 242013

By Sara Bice, University of Melbourne at The Conversation

The reversal of ‘immunity laws’ surrounding Papua New Guinea’s Ok Tedi mine means former owner BHP could face claims on environmental damage. Photo: AAP Image/Lloyd Jones

Remote Mount Fubilan, near the source of Papua New Guinea’s Tedi River, is once again the site of global controversy surrounding the Ok Tedi copper gold mine.

Since the late 1980s, Ok Tedi has symbolised the David and Goliath struggle between major multinational miners, remote developing communities and the environment.

Ok Tedi resumed the spotlight in recent weeks when the Papua New Guinean Parliament removed former mine operator BHP Billiton’s immunity from legal prosecution for environmental damages caused.

On 19 September, PNG Prime Minister Peter O'Neill led Parliamentary actions to pass a bill allowing the Papua New Guinean Government to take complete ownership of the Ok Tedi Mine. In a separate bill passed at the same time, new legislation removed BHP Billiton’s immunity from legal action for environmental damage caused by the mine’s operations.

BHP Billiton’s legal immunity arose through a 2001 agreement in which the company voluntarily divested its interests in Ok Tedi, placing its majority shareholding into a charitable trust, the PNG Sustainable Development Program (PNGSDP). The Program held 63.4% ownership of the mine, with the PNG Government holding the remainder. This recent legislation transfers full ownership to the PNG state and removes that agreed immunity.

The environmental damage caused by the Ok Tedi mine is extensive and, many scientists argue, likely to be irreversible.

During the 1980s and 1990s, the mine dumped an estimated 80,000 tonnes of limestone sludge, containing chemicals and minerals, into the upper Tedi River.

A 1984 effort to build a tailings dam failed, with the company arguing that a dam was impossible in a geologically unstable terrain with heavy rainfall. Scientific studies found the large amounts of contaminated sediments have changed the river’s ecosystem, with severe loss of fish, reports of death to riverside rainforests and areas along the river’s considerable flood plain.

In passing the legislation, PM O'Neill declared to Parliament that the immunity granted to BHP Billiton marked “a very bad decision [by the then-PNG Government led by PM Mekere Morauta]…preventing its own people from exercising their right under law to sue for permanent damages done to their environment and their livelihood”.

Global fallout

The PNG Government’s decisions raise substantial questions for mining companies, mine-affected communities and governments worldwide. All of whom continue to grapple with balancing the economic and social development possible through mining, and the industry’s negative environmental and social impacts.

What, if any, ongoing protection should companies expect or receive when immunity deals are struck? Which individuals within mine-affected societies should contribute to decisions about when and how mining companies are held to account? Are agreements made with one era’s elected officials themselves immune to the attitudes and decisions of those who follow?

The Ok Tedi case is particularly thorny. Despite the extraordinary environmental damage, Papua New Guinea of the late 1990s was a country struggling under enormous economic pressures, including ballooning interest and inflation rates blamed on years of gross mismanagement. Government services strained under the weight of economic failure, leaving many remote communities bereft.

At the time of the 2001 agreement, BHP Billiton’s preference was for closure of Ok Tedi. Yet the mine comprised an estimated 11 per cent of GDP and produced 19 per cent of total exports. For a country in economic strife, the closure costs associated with such an asset were deemed too great, the environment another victim of national economic necessity.

The reneging of legal immunity for Ok Tedi comes at a time when serious concerns are once again being raised about other PNG mining operations. The Panguna Mine in Bougainville, for example, holds the ongoing attention of international NGOs and local activists. Local communities are now fighting a potential reopening of the mine, which Jubilee Australia highlights as having a history of military-community conflicts.

The continued operations of the Hidden Valley Morobe Joint Venture also garner ongoing attention from NGOs and activist groups worried about tribal conflicts, land disputes, environmental damage and insufficient compensation.

The recent raising of Ok Tedi’s ghost highlights the pernicious nature of mining’s impacts and the ongoing requirements of redress and responsibility.

Interestingly, the PNGSDP claims that the immunity granted to BHP Billiton also extended to the State as partial mine owner. Removal of the immunity does not only affect BHP, they argue, but the Government itself. The legal reality of this assertion has yet to play out or be investigated.

Along with these questions, the case also reminds governments, especially those of developing nations, of the importance of foreign direct investment. Highlighting the tricky relationships between encouraging investment and protecting local societies and environments. In response to the legislative changes, BHP Billiton has warned the Government’s actions raise PNG’s ‘sovereign risk’. In other words, investors considering PNG as an option will now more carefully consider the levels of risk and uncertainty which may come with business commitments in PNG.

Miners, governments, mine-affected communities and NGOs are monitoring the Ok Tedi case with great interest. It remains a terribly compelling, modern day example of the tensions between corporations, communities, government and the environment. And now a stark reminder that forgiveness or impunity once agreed may be reversible.

Sara Bice does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.

This article was originally published at The Conversation.
Read the original article.

2013 Report Card for South East Queensland’s waterways released

community, government, waterways/wetlands

Oct 232013

Media release from Healthy Waterways

Healthy Waterways launched the 2013 Ecosystem Health Report Card today, providing insight into the health of South East Queensland’s waterways and Moreton Bay.

The Report Card revealed the overall health grade for Moreton Bay declined from B- to C, mainly due to reduced water clarity and increased algae. However, there have been small improvements in freshwater and estuarine grades across the region.

The annual Report Card was released today at four launch events across the region, presenting ‘A to F’ waterway health grades based on data collected through an intensive, ongoing Ecosystem Health Monitoring Program coordinated by Healthy Waterways.

At the launch event in Brisbane, Ms Leith Boully, Chairman of Healthy Waterways, stated that our waterways provide over $5 billion per year to South East Queensland’s economy through industry, tourism, recreation and fishing.

“Investing in waterway health supports the region’s economic growth by protecting agricultural land and infrastructure, ensuring the security of drinking water and supporting our tourism industry,” Ms Boully said.

“The investment in wastewater treatment plant upgrades has been effective in lowering the nutrient loads in many estuaries. However, to further protect waterway health and improve Report Card results, we must address diffuse source pollution by reducing the amount of mud and nutrients washing off the land into our waterways.

“Healthy Waterways’ members are working together to plant native vegetation along riverbanks, improve stormwater runoff, support best practice agriculture and restore floodplains,” she said. A representative of the Healthy Waterways Scientific Expert Panel, Professor Jon Olley, presented the 2013 Report Card results to the Minister for Environment and Heritage Protection, the Hon. Andrew Powell MP.

Professor Olley said the 2013 Report Card results show the mud and nutrients deposited into Moreton Bay during the 2011 and 2013 floods continues to reduce water clarity and stimulate the growth of algae.

“There was a slight overall decline in Moreton Bay (B- to C), with Central Bay (A- to C+) showing the greatest decline,” Professor Olley said.

“Last year, the health of seagrass beds and corals appeared to improve slightly. However, this year corals and seagrasses are showing signs of ongoing stress and decline due to the large amount of mud and nutrients deposited into Moreton Bay during the 2011 and 2013 floods.

“On a positive note, most of Moreton Bay showed an improvement in the sewage indicator, which led to improvements in Broadwater (C- to B-) and Pumicestone Passage (C- to C+).

“Noosa, Bremer, Tingalpa, Eprapah and Albert estuaries all improved, receiving some of the highest grades on record for these estuaries, with the Bremer River improving above an F,” he said.

Minister Andrew Powell said the Newman Government will continue to contribute $4.6 million of cash and in-kind investment to protect South East Queensland’s waterways.

“This includes $950,000 funding for Healthy Waterways to work with local governments and the development industry to reduce the amount of sediment running off construction sites and into our waterways,” Mr Powell said.

Brisbane City Council Lord Mayor Graham Quirk said the Lower Brisbane (D+ to D-) and Oxley Creek (D- to D-) had maintained grades above an F for the second year in a row, but Council was continuing to work on improving sediment and erosion control.

“Brisbane City Council’s vision is to become Australia’s most clean, green and water-smart city and this financial year we are investing more than $16 million to improve the health of our waterways,” Cr Quirk said.

“This year we have undertaken a number of key waterway projects to help achieve this, such as installing creek filtration systems, tree plantings within creek catchments, litter removal and stabilisation works to decrease erosion.

“Today’s results are reflective of the circumstances we’ve endured from the 2011 floods and this year’s Australia Day storms, and our aim is to continually work on improving sediment and erosion control in our waterways to improve their overall health,” Cr Quirk said.

Healthy Waterways has released a free Report Card iPhone App providing a quick reference tool to access the Report Card grades. Search for ‘2013 Report Card’ in the App Store. For more information, visit www.healthywaterways.org.

Bundaberg and climate change

community, environment, waterways/wetlands

Oct 222013

Original story at the Gladstone Observer

BUNDABERG’s record floods will feature in a climate change documentary, 24 Hours of Reality: The Cost of Carbon. Photo: Alistair Brightman

BUNDABERG's record floods will feature in a climate change documentary, 24 Hours of Reality: The Cost of Carbon which screens online today and tomorrow.

Members of Al Gore's climate advocacy group The Climate Reality Project, visited Bundaberg last month during the flood forums to film footage for the documentary.

Australia is one of six continents featured in the project and Bundaberg will feature in the Australian segment which looks at how human health threats are exacerbated by climate change.

To view the Australian section featuring the Bundaberg floods visit www.24hoursofreality.org at 6pm or midnight tonight or 6am and noon tomorrow.

Before 24 Hours of Reality screens, we asked The Climate Reality Project CEO Maggie L. Fox what you need to know about climate change.

Why was 24 Hours of Reality and The Climate Reality Project started and what does it hope to achieve?

For years we have known that climate change is real, it's happening now, and we're causing it. We also know that carbon pollution from fossil fuel emissions is the culprit. After all, the overwhelming majority of the world's leading climate scientists agree on this fact and have consistently spoken out to policymakers about exactly what's happening and why we need to act soon. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which reflects the consensus of 800 experts and 195 governments around the world, just released a report stating scientists are 95% certain we're causing climate change.

But the truth is, we don't even have to look at scientific reports to see the truth about climate change. We can just look out our windows or turn on the television to see the many ways that climate change has become a daily reality for all of us, from the Angry Summer you just experienced in Australia to the biblical rains and flooding we've just had in my hometown of Boulder, Colorado. And despite the fact these dirty weather events are happening more and more frequently and at greater and greater cost to our lives and livelihoods, many world leaders haven't taken the steps necessary to confront the problem. And even when they have, as in Australia, citizens have to keep standing up to ensure political developments don't undermine the important progress that's been made.

Back in 2006, former U.S. Vice President Al Gore saw that despite the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change, the international community lacked the resolve to implement real solutions. In response, he started The Climate Reality Project to launch and power a social revolution for climate action. We tell the story of climate change to people around the world and how it affects all of us directly now in our daily lives. Because when people understand what's really at stake and that this isn't just some problem for the future in far-off countries, they speak up and they start demanding real action from their leaders. The effects of climate change are as much a part of our daily reality as the price of milk, and so we use contemporary culture to connect the dots between dirty weather events and the costs we're all already paying for carbon pollution.

Of course, it's one thing to know man-made climate change is a reality. The question that remains, though, is what can we do to solve it? We knew that we could only address a problem that affects the entire world when the entire world comes together to work on a solution. And to solve a problem, first you have to talk about it. The idea for 24 Hours of Reality came from a desire to create a major event that would truly bring the world together and tell the many stories of what climate change means for communities from Alaska to Zimbabwe. Our goal was to share these stories with the world and use the incredible media presence and visibility of an online broadcast format to get millions talking about this problem and working together on solutions.

This year's 24 Hours of Reality: The Cost of Carbon is the third-annual event in this series and was designed to be the world's largest conversation about the cost of carbon pollution.

This year's theme, The Cost of Carbon, explores the reality that we are all paying the price for carbon pollution today in the form of tax dollars diverted for disaster relief, lost land and produce from droughts, and the intangible costs of lives displaced by flooding and wildfires.

By exploring these costs we hope to galvanize all of our leaders to shake off climate denial and do what Australia has done in putting a price on carbon.
What are the most concerning things you have seen around the world since working on this project?

It's a two-part answer. In the field we're seeing how climate change transforms lives in places like Bundaberg, which was hit by horrific flooding. There's the immediate devastation of the event itself, but then the most concerning aspect is seeing how people are left trying to rebuild their lives and live with this new reality long after the news cameras have gone and the rest of the world moves on.

We see this over and over again with extreme weather events, and it's a reality we're facing now in Colorado after being hit with record rains and flooding just last month. The second deeply concerning part is that our world leaders are seeing these devastating weather events happen more and more frequently, and they're seeing the immense economic and social costs mount, but they still aren't willing to take the action necessary.
How will Bundaberg feature it this year's project and what do you think is the most significant thing about the Bundaberg floods from a climate change point of view?

This year, Sarah Backhouse will host an hour dedicated to the Australian continent, during that time we'll share mini-documentaries on how climate change has impacted Australia - from severe wildfires in New South Wales to this summer's record-setting heat and, of course, the deadly floods in Queensland and along the Gold Coast. As part of our video coverage, we'll speak to local residents who experienced these dirty weather events firsthand.

Bundaberg is an essential part of this story. Although we can't say unequivocally that climate change alone caused the floods, what happened in Bundaberg is happening over and over all around the world where an extreme weather event strikes and shatters all kinds of records. Unfortunately, these 1-in-100 and even 1-in-1000 events keep happening. What climate change does is to, in effect, load the dice for our natural systems so these kinds of events become more likely, frequent, and intense.
What is the most important thing you think the world needs to know about climate change?

The most important thing people should know is that we can still stop climate change before the worst impacts hit. Solutions are out there and stopping climate change starts with a price on carbon pollution. The situation is far from hopeless - Australia has certainly proven that where there is political will, we can put a price on carbon pollution. The rest of our world leaders need to act to put these solutions into place now, while we can still avoid the worst.
Why do you think some sections of the community won't accept climate change? I think some people won't accept climate change because they don't know how it affects them directly and so they don't worry about it. Once you understand what climate change means for you - particularly if you've experienced one of its severe impacts firsthand - it becomes pretty hard to deny. Just ask the firefighters out in the American West or people who were living on Staten Island when Superstorm Sandy came through. With others, it's a conscious choice.

After all, if 97% of doctors told these same people that their son or daughter needed to have an operation to live, they listen to the experts and get the operation.

But when 97% of climate scientists are telling them man-made climate change is a reality, they ignore the experts and seize on some myth to explain their beliefs. That's a choice. And the fossil fuel industry and climate deniers perpetuate this process by publicly repeating things they know aren't true and have been disproven countless times to confuse people and protect their bottom line.

What is the most important piece of information you hope to convey with 24 Hours of Reality and The Climate Reality Project?

Carbon pollution is costing us right now - in tax dollars for disaster relief, in rising food prices, in lost livelihoods and ways of life. We need our leaders to step up, confront denial head on, and put a price on carbon pollution. We can still solve climate change before we cross the point of no return. And we have to - what's at stake here is everything.

Stradbroke Island sand mine extension is reckless

community, government, waterways/wetlands

Oct 202013

Sand mine on Stradbroke Island. Photo: Robert Rough/Brisbane Times

Media release from ACF

The Queensland Government is being reckless by announcing it will allow the extension of sand mining on Stradbroke Island when current mining does not even have proper environmental approval, the Australian Conservation Foundation said today.

The massive Enterprise sand mine, which is destroying sensitive sand dunes within metres of an internationally significant Ramsar-listed wetland, does not have federal approval under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act.

“The last thing the Newman government should be doing is extending the Enterprise sand mine while the federal environment department is currently investigating the lack of approval or any formal exemption for the current mine under the EPBC Act,” said ACF healthy ecosystems campaigner Jess Abrahams.

“Today’s irresponsible move to extend mining on Stradbroke Island for a further two decades amply illustrates why environmental approval powers should not be handed to the states; they can’t be trusted to make decisions that look after the national interest.

“The state Minister for Natural Resources and Mines, Andrew Cripps, says an extension of mining will not occur within environmentally sensitive areas, yet much of the island, which is the world’s second largest sand island and is home to a number of threatened and endangered species, is environmentally sensitive and significant.

“Minister Cripps also claims mining will not impact the Quandamooka people’s Indigenous Land Use Agreement, but any extension of mining leases requires a further suppression of the Quandamooka people’s native title rights and interests. The Quandamooka people must be properly consulted and given the opportunity to give or withhold their consent before this occurs.

“Federal and state governments should not extend or expand the Enterprise sand mine’s operations – and federal approval powers should not be handed over to this reckless government,” Mr Abrahams said.

Fixing climate change: the future isn’t what it used to be

community, environment, government

Oct 152013

Original story by David Hodgkinson, University of Western Australia at The Conversation

This is the last part of a series following on from the release of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fifth Assessment Report and looking at emerging alternatives to the UN climate agreement process.

Optimism is lovely, but individual action won’t solve climate change. Photo: !/_PeacePlusOne/Flickr

State based action and sectoral agreements show some promise in dealing with aspects of climate change. But from humanity’s climate change experience to date and its failure to address the climate change problem through a global agreement, it’s safe to suggest we are headed for trouble.

Given our current path on generating and dealing with emissions, here are my predictions for the future of climate change and climate change action.

Individual action doesn’t and won’t matter

Much has been made of individual action as a means of dealing with the climate change problem, but what one does personally doesn’t on its own make the least bit of difference.

Put another way, the things individuals do in their daily lives, taken by themselves, have no effect. The planet doesn’t notice. It is collective action that matters, or what several billion people do.

Environmental economis Gernot Wagner argues that “[t]he changes necessary are so large and so profound that they are beyond the reach of individual action”.

Instead, what is required is policy that motivates individuals and major industrial sectors to reduce emissions and use resources more efficiently.

In any event, there is nothing to indicate that our behaviour is changing; if anything, it’s “business as usual”.

Policy focus will eventually be on adaptation

Climate change mitigation involves reducing emissions through, for example, price-based mechanisms like emissions trading. Climate change adaptation means coping with or adjusting to climate change.

With mitigation, adaptation becomes easier (and they are not alternatives). Together with mitigation, policies focused on adaptation are required, to make adjustments to the unavoidable changes that we now face.

The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society and others have suggested that achieving a limit of 2C global warming above pre-industrial levels may be impossible. This raises the possibility of global temperature rises of 4C this century. This could result, as the Royal Society says, in the “collapse of systems or require transformational adaptation out of systems, as we understand them today”.

The world’s failure to mitigate, the potential severity of impacts, and the challenges (behavioural, societal, economic) in dealing with such failure and such impacts, all argue for renewed efforts on adaptation.

There will be ‘ever more people’

David Attenborough asks us to make a list of all of the environmental problems which afflict the planet – climate change, desertification, famine, loss of rainforest, collapse of fish stocks, shortage of arable land, and so on. He argues that these problems share one underlying cause: all of these problems become “more difficult – and ultimately impossible – to solve with ever more people”.

The UN estimates (with qualification) that the world’s population will reach 10 billion and climbing by 2100. If families, on average, have half a child more than the UN projects, population will reach 16 billion by 2100.

In Reproduction and the Carbon Legacies of Individuals, statistician Paul Murtagh and others argue that a person’s reproductive choices must be considered together with his or her everyday activities to work out that person’s impact on the global environment. And it’s difficult to take issue with the view that the decision to have a child is an ethical decision.

Ethics also underpin any market-based approach to population control – how about “tradeable procreation credits”, for example, for buying and selling the right to have children? Market-based mechanisms – emissions trading schemes – are in vogue as a means to address the climate change problem. Why not use such mechanisms to address the population problem?

Perhaps, though, if having children is, as philosopher Michael Sandel says, “a central aspect of human flourishing, then it’s unfair to condition access to this good on the ability to pay”.

Growing global population amplifies a range of other threats, and they are all related to climate change: resource scarcity, for example, and the energy crisis. And energy of course goes to the heart of the climate change problem.

There will never be ‘enough stuff’

UCLA’s Laurence Smith poses this question:

What if you could play God and do the ethically fair thing by converting the entire developing world’s level of material consumption to that now carried out by North Americans, Western Europeans, Japanese, and Australians today?

Would you?

The world Smith depicts would be frightening. Consumption globally would rise elevenfold. Where would all that meat, fish, water, energy, plastic, metal, and wood come from in a carbon/climate-constrained world?

Suppose, though, that such conversion takes place gradually over the next 40 years. If demographers’ estimate that world population might stabilise at about 9.2 billion by 2050, and if the ultimate objective is for everyone on Earth to live like the developed world, we will need enough stuff to support the equivalent of 105 billion people.

Such a world is completely unsustainable – yet it is, as Smith points out, the “end goal implicit in nearly all prevailing policy”.

This is the ‘age of the Anthropocene’ and will be the end of the wild

Fully 80% of the world’s land surface (excluding Antarctica) is directly influenced by human activities. More than a decade ago, Nobel Laureate Paul Crutzen suggested we were living in the Anthropocene, a new geological epoch inadvertently brought on by the influence of human activity and behaviour on the Earth’s atmosphere.

Further, studies suggest that Earth’s creatures are on the brink of a sixth mass extinction. Perhaps three-quarters of animal species will vanish within 300 years.

This leads MIT’s Stephen Meyer to refer to the “end of the wild” and to conclude that “the extinction crisis … is over, and we have lost”.

Two alternative conclusions

The optimist is comforted by humanity’s ability to come up with solutions. As Brian Schmidt, the Australian winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize for Physics, said (though not in the context of climate change), “Humanity is remarkably clever at figuring out how to do things that are not obviously possible”.

But Stephen Emmott, Head of Computational Science at Microsoft Research, may be more accurate when he says in his book 10 Billion, “I think we’re fucked”.

Part one of this series is here and part two is here.

David Hodgkinson does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.

This article was originally published at The Conversation.
Read the original article.

Australia vulnerable in a warming planet, leaked IPCC report

community, environment, government

Oct 142013

Original story at The Sydney Morning Herald

More than a quarter of a million Australian homes could be at risk from rising sea levels, according to a leaked IPCC draft document. Photo: Paul Harris

Climate change will increase the likelihood of deaths from heat stress and bushfires, and potentially place more than a quarter of a million Australian homes at risk from rising sea levels, according to a United Nations-backed draft document.

The leaked “second-order draft” document of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) second working group examines impacts and vulnerabilities from global warming and details a grim outlook for Australia.

“Climate change is expected to increase the number of days with very high and extreme fire weather,” according to a copy of the document, posted on the Bishop Hill blog, a website sceptical about global warming. Fire management in Australia “will become increasingly challenging”, the report said.

“We've built properties in areas that are too vulnerable to fire but we've done the same with sea-level, we've done the same with houses on flood plains,” said Professor Andy Pitman, director of UNSW's ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science, commenting on the leaked report. “We haven't taken the Australian environment sufficiently into account where we've built.”

The IPCC last month released the final draft of the first part of its Fifth Assessment, examining the science behind climate change projections. The second report, now leaked in draft form, is scheduled to be approved in Japan in late March 2014, with a third report detailing mitigation options released a couple of weeks later.

Many Australian researchers have contributed to the IPCC reports. Several on Monday noted the reports bring together already-published research, and the latest statements would be subject to further scrutiny before being signed off in Japan. The draft is dated 28 March, 2012.

Assets at risk

The leaked document noted that a 1.1-metre rise in sea levels would put at risk some $226 billion in residential and commercial assets along Australia's coasts. These include some 274,000 homes, according to a federal government report in 2011. Separate research from 2012 cited in the draft noted that significant coastal road and rail infrastructure would also be at risk from a sea-level increase of just half a metre.

In the recent IPCC report on climate science, the expected sea-leavel range was between 26 and 82 centimetres by the end of this century alone, with a 98-centimetre rise estimated as the worst-case scenario.

In recent years, sea levels have been creeping higher by about 3.2 millimetres annually, in part because the world's oceans are heating up and expanding, and from melting glaciers.

Rising heat stress accompanying the expected increase in extremely hot days will also worsen. The draft report noted that the three days of extreme heat in south-eastern Australia ahead of the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria saw reported heat-related health problems rise 34-fold, with people aged over 75 accounting for almost two-thirds of the total.

Cities such as Sydney will see heat-related deaths soar by the end of the century, the draft said, citing research from UK researcher Simon Gosling. Without adaptation, heat-related deaths could triple to 7.4 per 100,000 in 2070-99, from 2.5 in 1960-99, based on one scenario.

Mental health issues, water- and food-borne diseases will also increase under global warming projections.

Along with the fire and heat risks, floods may also worsen as a warming atmosphere holds more moisture, leading to more severe rain events. One study found that 50-year and 100-year flood peaks will rise 10-20 per cent by 2050, the draft document noted, citing evidence in Australia and New Zealand.

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