Feed aggregator

Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 2 June 1916

Although we could not see them, shoals of small fish raced seaward on the falling tide, hastening through the shallowing water on the banks; the terns, however, could see them, and, following in a dense, screaming crowd, literally fell upon them. Out of the mass of noisy hovering birds a score or more at a time dived head-long, splashing up the water as they struck. Nearer shore, where the water runs in channels between the rocks and banks, the lesser terns were feeding in smaller numbers, and one amorous male carried his squirming captives to his mate upon the shore. A mob of pied oystercatchers lined the edge of the water, and now and then a whimbrel, with rippling call, flew down to join them.

Where the sand was dry the ringed plovers fed, where still wet the dunlins ran, probing the mud, and wading till the water washed their breasts were a number of short-billed sanderlings. Turnstones, some gay in the black and orange dress of summer, tossed the seaweed strands with their slightly upturned and stout bills; they knew where to find the lurking crab and sand-hopper.

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Australia is a land of extreme weather. Events such as the 2009 Victorian bushfires, the 2011 Queensland floods and Cyclone Yasi in 2013 are stark examples of climate-related risks faced by Australian households. Many homes are built in high-risk locations including floodplains, coastlines and bushfire-prone land.

The Climate Institute has today released a report detailing the critical role Australian housing plays in the economy, and the risks housing faces with a changing climate.

It also sets out the role of banks and insurers in promoting risk reduction and climate adaptation for Australian housing.

Built on sand

Housing represents many Australians' biggest financial commitment – including those who rent rather than buy. Housing accounts for up to one-third of the economy, through direct and indirect means and across sectors such as finance, insurance and construction. With population projections forecasting continued growth and attraction to risky locations, banks and other financial institutions have a crucial role to play in minimising the economic threat posed by climate change.

But while the role of land-use planning and insurance with regard to climate risks has been well documented, the role of banks as gatekeepers to housing finance has been largely overlooked.

As the Climate Institute’s report points out, banks have a “unique ability and incentive” to steer housing purchases, because they are the main providers of residential financing. As such, they have large financial liabilities if homes are lost to fires, floods or other climate effects.

There are a range of tactics banks might use to reduce or mitigate climate risk. For instance, they could favour lending on homes that meet specific risk-reduction requirements, such as raised floor levels for homes in flood zones, or fireproof construction materials in bushfire-prone regions. This approach could also be used in setting mortgage insurance premiums as well as the mortgages themselves. Another approach is to better apportion their exposure - by lending on a reduced percentage threshold of the total property value.

Westpac has a Climate Change Position Statement and both the Commonwealth Bank and NAB have committed in reducing carbon. But more needs to be done for housing.

If banks continue under a business as usual approach, they face the risk that many properties will be devalued over time, through continued exposure to extreme weather events. This represents a significant financial liability, especially when you consider that a home loan typically takes 30 years to play out – a similar time scale to the many climate impacts expected for Australia.

Banks are already making moves to restrict lending based on location.

But the report outlines several other things banks could do, such as:

• examine climate risk exposure in their current lending practices

• use their role as financiers to support good policy, by engaging policymakers and financial regulators

• encourage stakeholders, including the public, private sector and civil society sectors, to develop ways to minimise climate impact risks for housing

• ensure losses are addressed in an equitable way.

A climate insurance policy

The report also details how the insurance sector assesses risk to housing, and how it might improve its approach in the future, given the intersection of urbanisation, population trends and the trend towards living in climate-threatened areas.

The insurance sector has historically been seen as the messenger of housing market signals, because of its keen focus on assessing weather-related risk. But the 2011 Queensland floods highlighted many weaknesses in relying on insurance alone.

Many properties did not have adequate flood insurance, leaving many people without a home after losing their house to the floods. The Australian and Queensland governments and the private sector struggled to co-ordinate a cost-effective response, partly because of previous bad land-use planning decisions, but also because of the lack of adequate insurance cover.

A federal government levy helped the affected regions to “build better back”. Some chose to rebuild in the same high-risk locations.

Critically, gaps identified in building codes, land use and climate resilience still require a more co-ordinated response. The current Stage 2 coastal law reforms in New South Wales offer a potential example of how competing interests might be balanced.

At face value, this issue is a no-brainer. After all, risk mitigation is bread and butter for lending institutions and insurers, and we already know that extreme weather events are forecast to increase in frequency and severity. National resilience is required.

Quantifying this risk will be easier if financial institutions utilise access to relevant data on issues like coastal risk. Some of these data are becoming more freely available. Recognising the value of climate data is a trend that should continue. For a robust and resilient future, governments and the private sector should end their tango over who should pay for the information and agree that financial climate risks are best faced with eyes wide open.

Tayanah O'Donnell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

Leakage of natural gas from drilling and pipework means more methane is entering the atmosphere

One of the justifications for fracking is the use of natural gas as a bridging fuel between coal and a low-carbon future. However natural gas is mostly methane, which has strong global warming impacts in its own right. Natural gas therefore only provides climate benefits over coal if the leakage is no more than 2-3%.

We cannot measure leaks from every pipe joint. One alternative is to measure the sum of lots of leaks from a distance. Flights over US shale gas fields reveal large methane sources, but these areas also have cattle farms that produce methane and the two sources need to be separated.

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Climate Institute says risk data held by regulators, state and local governments, insurers and banks, but homebuyers and developers do not have access to it

The risk that houses in some areas of Australia are likely to become uninsurable, dilapidated and uninhabitable due to climate change is kept hidden from those building and buying property along Australia’s coasts and in bushfire zones, a Climate Institute report says.

The report says there is untapped and unshared data held by regulators, state and local governments, insurers and banks on the level of risk, but that most homebuyers and developers are not told about the data and do not have access to it.

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Extra cash for scientific monitoring and management promised by Bill Shorten to support one of party’s ‘highest priorities’

Labor is promising to invest $500m to boost scientific monitoring and management of the Great Barrier Reef over five years as it unveils its biggest environmental policy of the election campaign so far.

It says it will adopt every recommendation in the Great Barrier Reef Water Science Taskforce final report, released last week.

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As mass bleaching sweeps the world heritage site, scientists also find an average of 35% of coral dead or dying in the northern and central sections of the reef

The majority of coral is now dead on many reefs in the central section of the Great Barrier Reef, according to an underwater survey of 84 reefs, in the worst mass bleaching event to hit the world heritage site.

An average of 35% of coral was now dead or dying in the northern and central sections, according to the surveys led by the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies.

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There is a whole generation of women out here who were protesters at Greenham Common, Aldermaston, and the Newbury Bypass (Anti-Fracking groups plan protest camps, 26 May). Besides working with our partners to help our children carve out a life in a horribly hostile financial climate, we are volunteering on committees to help keep youth and children’s centres, libraries, and village halls open, because council budgets are totally inadequate. In our 50s, 60s and 70s, we are supporting the junior doctors, standing against welfare cuts, and for renewable energy. We want this government to publish the report, which they have been sitting on since the end of March, on the Environmental Impact of Shale Gas Technology, by the independent Climate Change Committee. Yes, I think there will be anti-fracking camps like Balcombe here in the north. I think there might be all sorts of imaginative social disobedience. We’ve been round the block already, and demographics show that our age group is growing. Even if we didn’t get to Greenham Common, there are quite a lot of us who might make up for it in Kirby Misperton, Preston New Road, or Roseacre Wood.
Janet Russell
Silsden, West Yorkshire

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After North Yorkshire allows test drilling, villagers in Misson are determined to stop the same happening in former bomber pilot testing ground

When councillors in North Yorkshire ignored widespread public opposition and granted planning permission for the fracking company Third Energy to carry out test drilling, there were groans around the Nottinghamshire village of Misson.

For the last two years, tenacious locals in this quiet fenland hamlet have been fighting attempts by another energy firm to set up a shale gas exploration site in a nearby field.

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Fears about damage to the Great Barrier Reef were removed from UN report along with concern about a threat to the environment in two other heritage sites

A draft UN report on climate change, which was scrubbed of all reference to Australia over fears it could deter visitors to the Great Barrier Reef, also outlined possible threats to the Tasmania wilderness and Kakadu.

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Zoo officials shoot dead a gorilla after it grabbed a four-year-old boy who fell into its enclosure in the US city of Cincinnati.

In the first of a series, we visit the Hellisheiði plant, which provides 300MW of power – and Reykjavik’s hot water

Thanks to its position on a volatile section of the Mid-Atlantic ridge, Iceland is a world leader in the the use of geothermal energy, and of the six geothermal power plants in Iceland, Hellisheiði (pronounced “het-li-shay-thee”) is the newest and largest. Fully operational since 2010, it sits on the mossy slopes of the Hengill volcano in the south-west of the country; a green and placid-looking landscape that belies the turbulent geological activity rumbling beneath it.

To access the potential energy under the surface, wells are drilled thousands of metres into the ground, penetrating reservoirs of pressurised water. Heated by the Earth’s energy, this water can be more than 300C in temperature, and when released it boils up from the well, turning partly to steam on its way. At Hellisheiði, the steam is separated from the water to power some of the plant’s seven turbines, while the remaining water is further depressurised to create more steam, used to power other turbines. At its maximum output the station can produce 303MW of electricity, making it one of the three largest single geothermal power stations in the world.

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Female opposition to drilling soars as mothers unite in desire to safeguard children’s future

“We are ready for them,” said Tina Louise Rothery. “It has been a long battle but we have been ready for a confrontation for a long time.”

Rothery is one of a growing group of women at the forefront of opposition to fracking. Of the 250 anti-fracking community groups that have sprung up in Britain in the past few years, very many are led, or strongly backed, by women, who say they have been outraged at plans to risk people’s health by exploiting the countryside for shale gas.

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Piecing together the bare bones of a sea reptile that swam at the time of the dinosaurs.

Time to help the creatures that, wrested from habitats where they swim thousands of miles, end up atrophying in tanks

We need to talk about Dory. As Pixar’s charming version of a tropical blue tang swims on to screens in Finding Dory next month, conservationists fear a wave of inappropriate fish buying.

Finding Nemo, which triggered just such a global craze in 2003, posed less of a threat. Clownfish (Nemo’s ilk) are usually bred in captivity for the aquarium trade, but blue tangs are “harvested” from the wild for aquariums, with up to 80% dying during capture and transportation. There is intense pressure on wild populations, especially around coral reefs.

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Alma telescope peers into space from Chile

A third of the CSIRO's climate scientists have been sacked. It's part of a radical change in direction at Australia's premier science organisation. Will this leave Australia vulnerable to climate change? Paddy Manning investigates.

Deep sea scientists exploring the remote waters between Hawaii and Midway atoll find a gigantic sea sponge “about the size of a minivan” that could be the oldest animal on earth. A remote-operated submersible found the sponge about 2,100m (7,000ft) down, while exploring the depths of the Papahānaumokuākea marine park

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An onboard camera has captured the successful landing of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, returning from space after launching an Asian communications satellite.

Mega dam on Congo river to produce electricity equal to 20 large nuclear power stations, but critics say it will displace 60,000 people and wreck the ecosystem

The largest dam in the world is set to begin construction within months and could be generating electricity in under five years. But 35,000 people may have to be relocated and it could be built without any environmental or social impact surveys, say critics.

The $14bn (£9.5bn) Inga 3 project, the first part of the mega-project, is being fast-tracked by the Democratic Republic of Congo government will span one channel of the vast river Congo at Inga Falls. It involves a large dam and a 4,800MW hydro-electric plant.

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Strathnairn, Highlands In all the years we had lived here, we had never had a red squirrel in the garden. This has been the subject of much banter in the village shop

One of the main wildlife mysteries in the strath is the distribution of red squirrels in gardens in the adjoining villages of Farr and Inverarnie. Over many years we have advised people over putting out peanuts and feeders, and every one has succeeded in attracting them. However, one garden of an acre with mature trees and seemingly ideal has not succeeded, and it is ours!

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