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CCA report will sanction further delay and slow pace of action
ARENA an endangered species: It’s time to speak out
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Spider lurks in its perfect wire entanglement: Country diary 100 years ago
Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 8 September 1916
The autumnal touch of morning mist reveals the fact that spiders are more numerous than we imagine. Over the hedge-top, slung between the garden plants stretched across the road and pathway, and suspended beneath the bushes are innumerable lines, nets, and traps, all carefully prepared to ensnare the heedless fly or other insect. They are there, these nets, on every summer day, but it is only when the moisture ropes them with scintillating minute drops –
“every fairy wheel and thread
Of cobweb dew-bediamonded” –*
Giant pandas rebound off endangered list
Climate Change Authority's plan is 'a dog's breakfast', say dissenting members
Climate scientist and economist publish minority report calling for full emissions trading scheme and closure of brown-coal-fired power plants
The Climate Change Authority’s latest report is a “recipe for further delay” on climate change, contravenes the authority’s legal obligations and recommends “a dog’s breakfast” of policies, say two key members in a dissenting minority report.
Climate scientist David Karoly and economist Clive Hamilton said they could not “in good conscience” put their name to the majority report, which they said privileged “political feasibility” over environmental effectiveness and economic efficiency.
Continue reading...The Climate Change Authority report: a dissenting view
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As Members of the Climate Change Authority who have participated fully in the Special Review of Australia’s Climate Goals and Policies, we reached the conclusion, after much consideration, that we could not in good conscience lend our names to its report, published last week.
Rather than resign from the Authority we decided to write a minority report. Here we present edited extracts from our report, which is released today.
The basis of our disagreement with the majority report is its failure to recognise the importance of the constraint put on all future emissions-reduction targets and policies by Australia’s carbon budget. The carbon budget is the total emissions that Australia can release between now and 2050 while still contributing its fair share in holding the global temperature rise to less than 2℃ – a key goal of the Paris climate agreement negotiated last December.
The majority report should, but does not, address the relationship between its recommendations and Australia’s carbon budget, consistent with a fair and equitable national contribution to the global carbon budget.
This is all the more regrettable because the requirement to do so is embedded in the Special Review’s terms of reference and was analysed in the First Report of the Special Review released in April 2015 (before the appointment of six new Members to the Authority in October 2015).
The budget constraintIn 2014 the Authority recommended an Australian emissions budget of 10.1 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases for the period 2013-2050. On this basis, it advised that Australia should set an emissions-reduction trajectory for 2030 in the range of 45-65% below 2005 levels. Contrast that with the current 26-28% target set by the Abbott government.
Against the constraints of the carbon budget, the majority report accepts – explicitly in some places, implicitly in others – the government’s current target.
But accepting this less ambitious target for 2030 is consistent neither with the Authority’s own advice to government, nor with Australia’s commitment under the Paris Agreement to play its role in holding warming below 2℃.
The graph below shows the carbon budget for Australia put forward by the Climate Change Authority in its earlier report. (The budget is the area under the curve.)
The embedded pie chart shows the sliver of emissions that would remain to cover the 20-year period after 2030 if there is no change from the 26-28% target. More than 90% of Australia’s carbon budget to 2050 would be used up by 2030. Australia’s emissions would have to decline precipitously and reach net zero by 2035.
Such a dramatic reduction would be impossible to achieve. So the current target of 26-28% lacks credibility because it is wholly inconsistent with Australia’s international obligations. If pursued it is likely to lead to a policy crisis within a decade or less.
Political independenceIn our view, the failure of the majority report to make this clear to government and the public contravenes the Authority’s legislated obligation to deliver independent advice and to recommend measures that are “environmentally effective” and based on science.
We believe that the effect of the majority report will be to sanction further delay and a slow pace of action, with serious consequences for the nation. Those consequences include either very severe and costly emissions cuts in the mid-to-late 2020s, or alternatively a repudiation of Australia’s international commitments, and free-riding on the efforts of the rest of the world.
As we see it, the recommendations of the majority report are framed to suit a particular assessment of the prevailing political circumstances. We believe it is inappropriate and often counterproductive to attempt to second-guess political negotiations, especially for a new and uncertain parliament.
The unduly narrow focus of the majority report, seemingly based on a reading from a political crystal ball, has ruled out policies, such as a strengthened renewables target and stronger land clearing restrictions, that have a proven capacity to respond most effectively to the nation’s climate change goals.
Policy recommendationsAt the centre of the majority report’s recommendations is the retention of the current Direct Action policy as the basis for further action. Its two pillars are the Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF) and its incorporated Safeguard Mechanism, which sets an upper limit on emissions from major polluters.
The report also recommends a new emissions trading scheme for electricity generation, based on an emissions-intensity baseline. Such a scheme would have lower price rises than the kind of cap-and-trade scheme favoured everywhere else in the world, and which Australia would have now if not for the Abbott government. After the rancour that engulfed the carbon price, the intensity-based scheme is presumably seen as more appealing to nervous politicians.
The majority report downplays the drawbacks of emissions-intensity schemes and the Safeguard Mechanism. There is not space to discuss them here, but we would like to comment on the flaws in the ERF because the majority report recommends that it be hugely expanded.
Flaws in the ERFUnder an expanded ERF policy, the cost to the federal budget would increase sharply, and even more so if Australia adopted tougher emissions targets in line with the science. Using the ERF in this way would be, in Professor Ross Garnaut’s words, “an immense drain on the budget”.
We believe it is unwise to make Australia’s climate policy hostage to disputes over fiscal policy.
As a rule, the replacement of the widely accepted “polluter pays” principle with the ERF’s “pay the polluter” principle is bad economics, bad ethics and bad policy. The practical drawbacks include the need for an expert bureaucracy to evaluate each prospective project and then to monitor, over several years, each successful project to ensure that the promised emissions reductions actually happen.
There are also serious and continuing concerns about the issue of “additionality”. Under the ERF, it is hard to know whether the Commonwealth is wasting money by paying for emissions reductions that would have taken place anyway – that is, projects that are not additional. Bear in mind that businesses plan energy-saving projects all the time, so why wouldn’t they try to get a subsidy if one is on offer?
Surveys show that a large majority of Australians want stronger action to reduce Australia’s emissions. The role of the Climate Change Authority is to advise on how that desire can be realised, in a way that is consistent with the best scientific and economic evidence.
The full minority report can be read here.
![The Conversation](https://counter.theconversation.edu.au/content/64819/count.gif)
David Karoly receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He also shares in funding from the European Commission for his role as a Research Director in the EU Centre on Shared Complex Challenges at the University of Melbourne. He is a member of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists.
Clive Hamilton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.
Eastern gorilla now critically endangered due to illegal hunting
Largest living primate joins three other great ape species on International Union for Conservation of Nature’s red list
Humanity has moved a step closer to wiping out our closest evolutionary relatives, with four of the six great ape species now listed internationally as critically endangered.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has listed the eastern gorilla, the largest living primate, as critically endangered in its latest “red list” of threatened species. The eastern gorilla has suffered a 70% population collapse over the past 20 years, primarily due to illegal hunting.
Continue reading...Eastern Gorilla now 'critically endangered', says world conservation congress - in pictures
Orangutans, Gorillas, Duiker antelopes, and Plains Zebras, are amongst the animals that have moved up the global list of endangered species
Continue reading...First they came for our plastic bags, now they’re coming for our coffee cups
Having led the way with the coalition’s popular 5p bag levy, the Lib Dems have another cunning plan ...
Name: The 5p cup charge.
Status: Just a possibility.
Continue reading...Enphase says NSW solar tariff closure driving surge in battery storage demand
Zika pesticide kills millions of bees in South Carolina
US beekeepers fear for livelihoods as anti-Zika toxin kills 2.5m bees
- ‘It kills everything’: conservationist warns over threat to other animals
- Regulators: ‘clear and public health crisis’ allows use of Naled chemical
Huddled around their hives, beekeepers around the south-eastern US fear a new threat to their livelihood: a fine mist beaded with neurotoxin, sprayed from the sky by officials at war with mosquitos that carry the Zika virus.
Related: Miami fears Zika virus may hit $24bn tourism industry hard
Continue reading...Panda twins born at Zoo Atlanta to Lun Lun - again
The National Trust, the sheep farm and the fight for a Lakes way of life
Deep in the Borrowdale valley, where England is observed in its finest garments, there is ferment in the fields and on the hillsides. The gnarled farming communities who toil with their sheep on these lakeland slopes have prevailed in the face of Vikings, Normans and rampaging Scots for thousands of years and have learned to harness tempests. Now they believe they are in a mortal struggle with what they regard as a more implacable enemy: the National Trust.
The trust, guardian of England’s natural treasures, is one of the biggest landlords in this part of the Lake District. Of the dozen or so farms scattered in these parts, only three are not owned by the NT. That number is now down to two, following the trust’s £950,000 purchase of the land around the historic Thorneythwaite farm.
Continue reading...‘Human swan’ conservationist takes to skies on 4,600-mile migration
In a few days, conservationist Sacha Dench will take to the air in the most unusual company. She will launch herself from the tundra of Siberia in a motorised paraglider and, when airborne, she will follow the thousands of Bewick’s swans that will have begun their annual migration from the Arctic to their wintering grounds in western Europe.
The 4,600-mile trip will take several weeks to complete. Dench will either camp in the open or seek shelter with local people, including Nenets, nomadic reindeer hunters.
Continue reading...I am the river and the river is me
Fantasy art: the future of energy and water technology - in pictures
They look like designs from the pages of a futurist’s notepad, but the concepts below are all finalists in the biennial public art contest held by the Land Art Generator Initiative (Lagi).
These ideas illustrate the possibility of marrying aesthetics with renewable energy and water technology and educate the public about the challenges of addressing climate change and feeding a growing population.
Santa Monica, a beach town west of Los Angeles, is the setting for this year’s competition. The theme is clean water, to acknowledge California’s fifth year of serious drought. The winners will be announced on 6 October.
Cash prizes are $15,000 for first place and $4,000 for second place. While winning doesn’t guarantee that the concept will be brought to life, Lagi works with city governments and local businesses to try and turn the more feasible projects into reality.
Continue reading...Latin America's largest Ramsar Site facing 586 km transmission line
Indigenous peoples in Peru’s Amazon demand to be consulted about electricity project that would cut through their territories
Indigenous peoples in Peru are demanding to be consulted about a proposed electricity transmission line that would run for approximately 586 kms through the Amazon. The stated aim of the line is to connect Iquitos in Peru’s northeast, often described as the world’s largest city or town without road or rail access, to the national grid.
Doing so would mean crossing the territories of numerous indigenous peoples, including the Achuars, Kandozis, Kichwas, Kukamas-Kukamirias and Urarinas. Representative organisations are expressing serious concern about the project’s potential impacts and say they have not been consulted about it despite the government’s obligation to do so under Peruvian and international law.
Continue reading...