The Conversation

With a federal election looming, Australia’s top mandarins will once again be turning their minds to the incoming government briefs, the so-called blue book if the Coalition is returned and the red book if Labor is elected.

High on the agenda will be the organisation of the bureaucracy and it won’t get any trickier than climate change.

A question for an incoming government will be whether to re-establish a Department of Climate Change?

And if not, what should be done?

Pass the parcel

To state the obvious, the past decade of Australian climate politics has been anything but stable. Climate agencies have been established, abolished and merged at a rate reflecting the volatility of policy settings.

As prime minister, John Howard established Australia’s first standalone climate agency in 1998, the Australian Greenhouse Office. Six years later, it had been merged into the then Department of the Environment and Heritage.

As a statutory agency it was the first in the world dedicated to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but it didn’t have a secretary to represent it at the highest levels of government.

This changed in 2007 with the election of the Labor government, which had campaigned on climate change. The new prime minister, Kevin Rudd, created the Department of Climate Change.

This was the first time that climate change was given its own secretary and its own minister in cabinet. Both were within the prime minister’s portfolio to underline the importance of climate change to the government.

Martin Parkinson, now the secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, had the task of establishing the new department as its first secretary. It was to have a broad scope, with a remit not just for domestic climate policy, but also responsibility for international climate change negotiations. This had until that point resided in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT). It was to be responsible for policy but not implementation.

The new department lasted only six years. In 2013, it was merged into the Department of Industry under then prime minister Julia Gillard, perhaps in the hope that it would be saved from the wrath of the Liberal opposition leader, Tony Abbott, whose likely victory had been based on abolishing Labor’s climate policies.

Abbott’s ascension to the prime minister’s office later that year coincided with another shift. History was repeated as climate change was sent to the Department of Environment, with the international negotiations returning to DFAT.

Do we need a climate department?

Little has changed since under Malcolm Turnbull’s prime ministership and, with this history, only a fool would predict what’s next. But with an election in the offing, there is every reason to believe more change is on its way.

There are three things to consider.

First, representation. Climate change is arguably the greatest economic and security threat that Australia faces. As a result, it demands proper representation within government.

That means that climate change needs to be represented by its own departmental secretary in the bureaucracy and its own minister in the cabinet. In practice this could mean either a separate department, or the explicit inclusion of climate change in the title of a department with additional responsibilities.

Second is the scope of the portfolio. At the domestic level, the causes of climate change – fuel combustion for energy, and land-use change – are associated with almost every domestic economic activity. This means that the climate portfolio must have a wide remit.

But a climate change department cannot be a department of everything. Where to draw the line?

Other countries (such as Denmark and the United Kingdom) have combined climate change and energy, but that implies that the land sector is of secondary importance. In Australia that would be a mistake because agriculture, for example, produces roughly 13% of our emissions and land use is hugely important in adapting to the changing climate.

At the international level, the fact that climate change is a global problem means there will always be a diplomatic dimension to the portfolio. DFAT’s prioritising of fossil fuel trade lost it the leadership of international climate change processes under Labor, but under Foreign Minister Julie Bishop DFAT has been more strategic.

The Paris climate summit last December represented a major shift towards integrating climate and development policies. Aid policies will play a critical role, so the case for continued DFAT leadership internationally is strong.

The third thing to consider is transparency. If Australia is to meet its emissions targets, which are likely to become more stringent over time, business is going to have to shoulder the burden of change. To be sure, an emissions trading scheme, or something like it such as a baseline and credit scheme, will require fundamental changes to the Australian economy.

Any climate change agency will need to be open and transparent in the way it consults and manages not only environment groups but business too. These will have to be brought on board if change is to proceed smoothly.

Doing what’s possible

On this basis, there are good reasons for the incoming government briefs to recommend the re-establishment of a department of climate change. This would satisfy the question of representation, especially if a well-respected senior public servant were appointed to the helm.

If it develops a transparent culture that is open to all stakeholders, Australia might just be able to establish a climate department for the long term.

What recommendations end up in the red or blue book we may never know. The choices of a new government may express simple political preference. Labor may be more inclined to bring climate change policy under one bureaucratic roof and the Coalition to maintain the status quo.

Regardless, history suggests we need top-down co-ordination to build coherent policy. If a department of climate change is too difficult, a standing committee of cabinet will be essential to avoid reliving past failures.

The authors do 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.

AAP/Lukas Coch

Two weeks into a protracted election campaign, it is looking ever-more likely that climate change is to be placed way down the order of business – at least for the major parties.

The contest over climate change that characterised the previous three elections seems to have disappeared off the political radar despite the issue being more urgent than ever. Since the Paris climate summit, global average temperatures continue to break month-on-month records.

Just a few weeks after the summit, the North Pole was briefly not even able to reach freezing point – in the middle of winter. And just this month, Cape Grim surpassed a 400 ppm baseline minimum.

Then there is the truly frightening climate spiral developed by Ed Hawkins from the University of Reading. It shows what an El Niño amplified global temperature has climbed to. The spiral assumes a tight-knit but ever-expanding ball until April 2015, when the spiral line starts to separate dramatically from the ball. This year it careers dangerously close to the 1.5℃ threshold.

Climate spiral. Ed Hawkins The diminishing political and media spiral on climate

While global temperatures may be spiralling out of control, the opposite appears to be happening with the climate issue attention cycle in Australia.

Apparently, climate is less important than jobs and growth – or, in Labor’s case, health and schools.

A big part of this change in political climates is undoubtedly the Paris summit itself. The political triumphalism of the summit belies the scientific pessimism of so many climate scientists and activists.

Kevin Anderson from Manchester University’s Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research even declared the summit to be “worse that Copenhagen”, in that it is based on out-of-date science, does not include aviation and shipping, and includes negative emissions in its scenarios for achieving abatement.

On the other hand, after the collapse of talks at Copenhagen, some activists see no choice but to climb aboard with the Paris agreement, insofar as it at least signifies a mainstream seachange in action – even if the actual measures are inadequate. The INDCs that came out of the conference still put the world on a path to 3.5℃.

Yet so many politicians from around the globe have sought to convince their constituents that the climate problem is all but solved. The Coalition is banking on such a sell to the Australian electorate as it gambles with a climate attention minimisation strategy. Much of this sell has been left to the “best minister in the world” Greg Hunt, both before and after the Paris summit.

Hunt has already claimed success on meeting the 2020 target, and with strategies to meet the 2030 target.

Little of the Government’s progress in meeting the 2020 target is due to reducing emissions. Rather it has been the reduction in land-clearing, consumer-driven domestic solar, and the decline in manufacturing that have been decisive in meeting the 2020 targets.

The Guardian’s Lenore Taylor has pointed out that while the Coalition is bringing back the “carbon tax” scare campaign of 2013, its own scheme would have to draw on the “safeguard mechanism” component of Direct Action – which is itself a disguised ETS – to have any chance of meeting the targets.

Short of leaning on this mechanism, the only other option the Coalition has is to increase the taxpayer-funded emissions reduction fund to a level that would make a mockery of any claims to budget responsibility.

Add to this the fact that recent academic research on Direct Action has reaffirmed its status as a form of corporate welfare that is allocated to projects that would have happened anyway. And all this is in an Australia that has increased its already high emissions 3% since 2000.

Shifting voter attitudes on climate

But have Hunt’s strategies worked on the Australian electorate? Not according to a recent ReachTEL poll of 2,400 respondents on May 9, which revealed that 56% believed the government needed to do more to tackle global warming.

64% said they would be more likely to vote for a party that has a plan to source 100% of Australia’s electricity from renewable sources like wind, solar and hydro in the next 20 years.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull seems to have switched off his personal barometer on climate as an issue that is too politically fraught. In 2010, he said:

We know that the consequences of unchecked global warming would be catastrophic … We as a human species have a deep and abiding obligation to this planet and to the generations that will come after us.

But since then, Turnbull appears to have sacrificed his convictions to the climate-illiterate backbench of his party.

Labor has not done much better. While it has more ambitious 2030 abatement targets than the Coalition, it has been particularly silent in reminding voters of its climate policy alternative.

Labor and the Greens

Both major parties have opted to entrench their duopoly by not going after big targets on any of the issues that are usually recycled at election time.

Instead, much airtime has been spent in the opening weeks of the campaign attacking the Greens. Liberal ministers take every opportunity to pillory any alliance between the Greens and Labor. Last week, Finance Minister Mathias Cormann told Fairfax Media:

We see them very much on a unity ticket. In our judgement, Labor and the Greens are now on an anti-business, anti-jobs, and anti-growth unity ticket.

In the same week, Turnbull labelled Labor’s proposal to double the intake of refugees as a “gesture to the Greens” on the back of Immigration Minister Peter Dutton’s attack on the Greens’ asylum-seeker policy.

But, curiously, Labor and the Greens are at war themselves, or at least they are desperately giving the appearance they are. According to Michael Cooney from the Labor thinktank the Chifley Research Centre and Ben Oquist from the Australia Institute, Labor and the Greens have attacked each other because nearly every inner-city seat the Greens have a chance of winning for the first time are Labor-held.

The Greens are also distancing themselves from Labor because they want to capture the anti-politics vote. This is best achieved by showing yourself to be radically different from the major parties.

Labor, on the other hand, is almost forced into attacking the Greens because of the long-run stigma that News Corp papers have attached to any such alliance. During the first days of the election campaign, the Daily Telegraph and The Australian were jumping in with stories that no major party would ever form government with the Greens.

In contrast to the 2013 election campaign, the Tele even had a pro-Labor story “Save Our Albo" over the Greens’ challenge to Anthony Albanese’s inner-city seat of Grayndler.

But nothing much has changed. Back in the 2010 federal election, the The Australian declared the pride with which it had smashed any alliance between the Greens and Labor, and that the Greens:

… should be destroyed at the ballot box.

In October the same year Rupert Murdoch referred to the “bloody Greens” as a party that would ruin Australia’s economic prosperity.

What is clear to the Coalition, Murdoch, and big business in Australia is that Labor and the Greens must be permanently isolated from each other in a sustained ideological crusade. Failing to achieve this would spell nothing short of game over for the Coalition.

The entire crusade, which is based on castigating the Greens as a loony left party that would bring down the Labor Party, requires so much journalistic theatre, compared to what could more easily be done with the Liberal-National Party marriage of convenience. One is a party of agrarian socialists, and the other a party serving mining capital and finance capital. But News Corp has been particularly disciplined at ignoring any of the tensions that these parties have had over the years.

Were Labor to form an alliance with the Greens it could take great leadership on climate. But there are a great many forces arraigned against them achieving a left-progressive coalition.

Whether the Labor Party has the courage to come out and challenge the Coalition to a contest over climate remains to be seen.

The Greens, for their part, are making many more inroads into this election than the last. They certainly have the strongest climate policy, with a renewable energy target of 90% by 2030. The ReachTEL poll referred to earlier shows the Greens have four times the primary vote than the National Party.

The Greens know that for under 30 voters they are already matching the primary vote of the major parties, and that a core platform of strong action against global warming is a big part of this support. Whether the major parties can ignore this support that springs from climate will be one of the biggest gambles of this election.

Coastal management in Australia is subject to competing interests and challenges. These range from land use and strategic planning issues to ecosystems preservation. Local councils are at the coalface as both key decision-makers and the first point of contact for communities.

Exacerbating these day-to-day challenges for councils are risks to property. A quantitative assessment undertaken by the then-Department of Climate Change in 2009 identified impacts of sea-level rise as a serious threat to property.

In New South Wales, under scenarios of a 1.1-metre sea-level rise, risks of damage or inundation to residential housing alone affected tens of thousands of properties, potentially costing millions of dollars. The NSW 2009 sea-level rise policy (now repealed) saw coastal councils considering this future risk when developing coastal zone management plans.

These metrics, while important, say little of the wide-ranging benefits of a freely accessible coast. Going to the beach is a fundamental part of Australian identity; it’s a “special place” for Australians.

Local councils are most exposed to the issues and challenges of a changing coastline in which there are many interests. Councils are often the first decision-makers for local development, asset management and land-use and strategic planning. Increased coastal erosion, storm events, more frequent and severe flooding impacts and higher tides can and will make these regular functions of councils more complicated.

In this context, the tabling of the NSW Coastal Management Bill on May 3 marks the formalisation of Stage 2 of the most significant law reform to coastal management since the 1970s. The NSW state government says that, by better integrating coastal management with land-use planning, the legislation offers:

… a modern, coherent coastal management framework that is responsive to current needs and future challenges.

Property rights hold sway

Despite a prominent focus on property values when it comes to coastal management issues, including climate adaptation, evidence is emerging that residents are attached to their property for more than financial reasons.

Private property interests often take priority as councils attempt to balance competing interests. An example of this is ongoing litigation over a sandbag wall on Belongil Beach in Byron Bay.

With coastal defences failing, some councils are moving to policies of ‘planned retreat’. Wikimedia Commons/Paul Sequeira, US EPA

After a series of severe coastal storms in the 1970s, Byron Shire Council adopted a policy of “planned retreat”. The location of this small northern NSW community on the most easterly point of Australia means it is already exposed to coastal hazards. These will become more frequent and more severe under future climate scenarios.

The planned retreat policy set requirements for the future relocation of private property. Local property owners, particularly those with beachfront property, have vehemently opposed the use of the policy to prevent coastal property protection.

In May 2009, a particularly severe coastal storm caused significant damage to private residential property and the beach. Beachfront property owners (the Vaughans) sought to reinstate council-approved sandbag protection works on their property. This sandbag wall had collapsed during the storm.

The Vaughans sued the council and the council sued the Vaughans. This particular matter settled in February 2010 and the failed sandbag wall has been reinstated.

More recently, council plans to install a permanent rock wall at the same location ran into fierce opposition from the community, for whom the public amenity of the beach is critical, and legal challenges.

This example highlights some critical aspects of coastal management:

• private property rights are deeply entrenched in Australian culture and legal systems

• climate adaptation is easier when it comes to future development

• recourse to litigation in protecting your property is much easier if you can afford it.

Climate adaptation planning, including planned retreat, can be more easily implemented for future development. There are excellent examples of local government in NSW providing landowners with a range of development options.

NSW reforms weigh future risks

Much of the coast of Australia, however, is already developed. The residential development includes affordable housing options. To balance competing interests along the coast, all members of coastal communities must be considered.

To this end, the NSW bill, if passed, would lead to a new Coastal Management Act, a new Coastal Management State Environmental Planning Policy and a coastal management manual. Together these advance a more forward-thinking coastal management response. This has a central focus on ecologically sustainable development that can better balance both the management of coastal hazards and the integrity of the coast.

Local councils will be responsible for implementing these new legal requirements. Under Part 3 of the Coastal Management Bill, councils will be required to monitor coastal hazards and to give effect to coastal management plans. It would appear this includes future sea-level rise.

As has been advocated in numerous policy reports, the councils can’t do this alone. They need assistance from the federal government as well as the state.

Tayanah O'Donnell undertakes research with the University of Canberra funded by the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility and the ACT Government. She also the principal of PlaceAdapt Consulting.

Kangaroos are much lighter on the land than sheep and cows. Kangaroo image from www.shutterstock.com

We may be what we eat, but our dietary choices also affect the health of the environment, and farmers' back pockets.

Energy and water use, native habitat cut down for crops and grazing, and emissions that exacerbate climate change, are just some of the profound effects agriculture has on Earth. And, there are more and more mouths to feed.

Perversely, both starvation and obesity are severe health issues across the world. With agriculture confronted by economic and environmental uncertainties, society faces enormous challenges.

But challenges also offer great opportunities. Drastically rethinking what we eat, and where and how food is produced, could help our health, the planet, and our farming businesses.

That means eating fewer sheep and cows, and more kangaroos, feral animals, and insects.

Unsustainable farming

Australia’s rangelands - the drier regions of the country predominantly used for livestock and grazing - cover about 80% of the country. They are often in poor condition and economically unviable. In part, this is due to the fact we still farm many animals, mostly in ways that are unsuited to the Australian climate and environment.

Hard-hoofed animals contribute to soil compaction and erosion, and have even been linked to the spread of the invasive cane toad. But the environmental impact of intensive stock farming extends much further.

Continuing to farm using a European-derived, intensive system is a recipe for land degradation and environmental collapse, especially with the compounding impacts of climate change (severe weather events, more frequent and intense droughts, and fires).

Starving stock in Julia Creek, Qld (1952). Queensland State Archives, Digital Image ID 4413

Past and current agricultural practices have also profoundly altered our environment. It may be impossible to restore these lands to their original condition, so we must learn to operate in the new environment we’ve created.

More broadly, many experts have identified our meat consumption and intensive farming as a significant driver of global problems.

Treading lightly

To address these issues, we need a cultural shift away from intensive agriculture. The days of riding and relying on the sheep’s back, cattle’s hoof, or the more recent, and increasingly popular, chicken’s wing, may need to pass.

Native wildlife and some feral animals tread more lightly on the environment than intensively produced livestock do, and thus provide more sustainable options for food production on Australia’s arid lands. Kangaroos and goats place one-third of the pressure on grazing lands compared with sheep.

We already eat some of these animals, but could arguably eat more of them, including feral goats, camels, deer, rabbits, pigs, and buffalo, as well as native emus and kangaroos.

Camels are already on the menu. Camel image from www.shutterstock.com

Yet more extreme proposals could include feral donkeys, cats, horses; and even cane toads. Horses are already consumed in Europe and cats in central Australia.

Eating more feral and native animals, and relying less on chicken, sheep, domestic pigs, and cattle would help meet ethical concerns too. Wild animals such as kangaroos are killed quickly, without the extended stress associated with industrialised farming, containment, and transportation to abattoirs.

And by harvesting sometimes overabundant wild native animals (such as kangaroos) and feral species, we may be able to reduce their impacts on ecosystems, which include overgrazing and damage to waterways.

An even greater leap would be to eat fewer four-limbed animals and more six-legged creatures. Insects are often high in protein and low in fat, and can be produced in large numbers, efficiently and quickly. They are already consumed in large numbers in some regions, including Asia.

Evidence that a market for such a food revolution exists is that shops are already popping up selling mealworm flour, ant seasoning salt, and cricket protein powder, among other delicacies.

A six-legged diet is even better. Insect image from www.shutterstock.com Boom and bust

Thanks to Australia’s variable climate, swinging between drought and flood, many farms are also tied to a boom-and-bust cycle of debt and credit.

As the climate becomes increasingly unpredictable, this economic strategy must be detrimental to the farmers, and is shown by many farm buy-backs or sell-offs.

It makes sense to use species that are naturally more resilient and able to respond to boom-and-bust cycles. Kangaroos and other species can forage on our ancient and typically nutrient-poor soils without the need for nutritional supplements (such as salt licks), and are physiologically more efficient at conserving water. This could lead to a more sustainable supply of food and income for farmers, without the dizzying economic highs but also without the inevitable prolonged and despairing lows.

Future-proofing

To be clear, we are not suggesting completely replacing livestock, but diversifying and tailoring enterprises to better suit Australia’s environment.

To support more diverse agricultural enterprises we will need to overcome many obstacles, such as licences to hunt, what we’re comfortable consuming, and land use regulation. But we shouldn’t shy away from these challenges. There are tremendous opportunities for rural, regional and Indigenous communities, and indeed cities too.

We need a more diverse mix of meat to adapt to the pressures of a growing population and climate change. Supermarket aisles that display beef, chicken, pork and lamb, alongside kangaroo, camel, deer, goat, and insects, could be just what the environmental, health and economic doctors ordered.

Euan Ritchie is affiliated with the Ecological Society of Australia and the Australian Mammal Society.

Adam Munn has previously received funding from the Australian Research Council and National Geographic Society. Adam Munn has been associated with projects recieving funding from Meat and Livestock Australia. Adam Munn is a member of the Australian Mammal Society and the Australian and New Zealand Society for Comparative Physiology and Biochemistry.

Green progress? The ANU needs to dig deeper on divestment. Nick-D/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

The Paris climate agreement has been praised for sending a strong signal to the world that we are now serious about cutting greenhouse emissions.

Yet despite the diplomatic acclaim, the Paris deal doesn’t offer much in concrete terms. It is a simple global show-and-tell regime with no enforcement – if countries miss their targets they will receive little more than a talking-to.

For many, the deal’s saving grace is the message it sends to investors, businesses and the wider world outside diplomatic and political circles. The Economist has summed up this “investment signal” idea well:

Perhaps the most significant effect of the Paris agreement in the next few years will be the signal it sends to investors… [After Paris] the idea of investing in a coal mine will seem more risky.

The problem is that there is little to no empirical evidence to support this idea. Will hard-nosed financiers change their ways purely on the basis of long-term pledges that are not supported by short-term actions? Will they redirect vast sums of money because of faith in a loose international treaty? In all honesty, we don’t know.

There are clues, however, if we know where to look. If we want to see whether the investment signal from Paris is working, then universities will probably be – for want of a better phrase – the canary in the financial coalmine.

If Paris has truly signalled to the world that the age of fossil fuels is coming to a close, then it should put the movement to divest from fossil fuels on steroids.

And universities are better placed to divest than many other types of institution. It therefore follows that the success of Paris can be measured by whether it spurs universities to quit investing in fossil fuels.

Going fossil-free

Fossil fuel divestment is spreading across the world. According to the campaign group Fossil Free, at least 518 institutions, collectively worth US$3.4 trillion, are either fully or partially divesting.

The list includes groups such as the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, local governments such as the Australian Capital Territory and the cities of Oslo and Copenhagen, among many others.

Meanwhile universities, which currently make up 12% of this list, have become a particular target for the divestment movement. This is because they are forward-looking institutions with progressive, well-educated stakeholders. After all, it was university faculty members across the world who helped to set out the problem of climate change, and young students who will be among the generations most affected by its future impacts.

Just as universities were among the first movers against apartheid, they can set an example to others in the case of climate. Universities, many of which manage multi-billion-dollar endowments, have both the ability and responsibility to exercise financial power and act early on long-term moral problems.

If the Paris investment signal exists, then, we can expect universities to act well in advance of those with much greater inertia and vested interests in the status quo, such as profit-making corporations (which make up just 3% of Fossil Free’s divestment list).

Mixed results

So far the response from universities has been patchy, particularly in Australia. The Australian National University (ANU) provides an informative case study. It shows both the potential of divestment and the limits of the Paris market signal.

In 2014, ANU blacklisted seven resource companies (including two fossil fuel firms, Santos and Oil Search) on the basis of its “socially responsible investment” policy. This triggered a backlash from the likes of the then treasurer, Joe Hockey, and prime minister, Tony Abbott, as well as sustained criticism from the Australian Financial Review.

The outcry showed the power that universities can wield in the climate debate when they put their money where their mouth is. In this case it was a positive impact as it triggered a wider debate on climate policy and investments.

Last month, the ANU updated its policy, announcing a 39% reduction in the carbon intensity of its stock portfolio and pledging to divest from companies that draw more than 20% of their revenue from coal.

However, the policy allows for continued investment in diversified mining companies such as Woodside Petroleum, Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton. This potentially includes firms with significant fossil fuel holdings (BHP Billiton Mitsubishi Alliance is the largest Australian coal producer, accounting for a quarter of Australian coal exports).

This is partial, not full, divestment – it’s a positive step, but far from the seismic investment shift needed to meet the Paris climate goals.

Importantly, the trigger for change has come from within, rather than from Paris. There has been overwhelming pressure from staff and students to divest fully. Yet the university has resisted these calls. Indeed, ANU Vice-Chancellor Brian Schmidt last month tweeted that while the “future lies in being part of the transition to low emissions", fossils fuels are “good business for universities” for the time being at least.

There are several counterarguments to this , from the falling costs of renewable energy, to the improving performance of fossil-free investment funds, which often outstrip more conventional ones. But on a basic level it comes down to leadership.

The ANU has branded itself as a place of “thought leadership”. Its current actions show neither long-term thought nor leadership. True leadership would mean showing real belief in the implications of the Paris Agreement.

Widespread, full university divestment from fossil fuels would further pressure national governments to strengthen their commitments – which will be crucial if the Paris Agreement is to meet its goals.

In contrast, continued investment in fossil fuels weakens such pressure and bolsters a belief in the continued relevance of the fossil fuel industry in a post-Paris world.

Universities such as the ANU have not responded swiftly enough to Paris and the signalling of the end of the fossil fuel era. If thought leaders won’t do it, how can we ask the same of governments and banks?

Luke Kemp has received funding from both the Australian and German governments. As a staff member of the ANU he is an active participant of the 'Fossil Free ANU' campaign.

Rats are true natives of our cities. Rat image from www.shutterstock.com

Rats send shudders down many peoples' spines, and may in fact be Sir David Attenborough’s least favourite animal. But despite their poor reputation, rats are astonishingly successful.

Almost everywhere humans have built their cities, rats have set up their homes – to live with us and off us.

Know your rodents

In Australia we have two species of rat that can be considered truly commensal - a species that lives off the resources provided by us.

The black rat (Rattus rattus), or ship rat, is the species of rat that people will most often encounter in their houses in Australia. Then there is the brown rat (Rattus norvegicus), also known as the Norway rat (although it doesn’t come from Norway). This is the species that is often kept as pets and used in lab research.

In the northern hemisphere, the much larger brown rats seem to outcompete black rats. But in Australia and New Zealand, black rats are more widespread and common than brown rats, for reasons we don’t fully understand.

Australia also has 60 species of native rodents, including eight species of native Rattus that evolved from from ancestors which arrived about a million years ago. Similar in size to black rats, these native rats have probably prevented the spread of black rats into natural areas, as has happened in New Zealand and Pacific islands which lack native rodents.

It can be hard to tell a black rat from a native bush rat (Rattus fuscipes), but black rats are more slender with longer tails, and bush rats are chubbier. It is easier to pick a brown rat, which is more than twice the size of a black rat.

Arrival

Black rats probably came to Australia with the First Fleet. There are skeletons of black rats in the gun barrels of sunken Dutch ships off Western Australia, but there is no evidence that their invasion of Australia began before the English landed in Sydney, when they literally jumped ship.

The first black rat specimens collected in Sydney were mistaken for native rats.

The Macleay Museum at the University of Sydney has the first recorded black rat specimens. These were initially thought to be a native species and given the name Hapalotis arboricola. In fact, there are loving descriptions of it climbing in local fig trees and entertaining the residents of Mosman. These rats were, however, black rats. They still climb fig trees in Mosman, and are still mistaken for native rodents.

The name black rat is a bit of a misnomer. We have trapped black rats from around Sydney Harbour in many colours, from light fawn, to chestnut brown with white patches, to light grey and sometimes dark grey, and only occasionally black. They can be very cute.

A very long engagement

Remains of black rats have been found in Indus civilisations from 4,000 years ago, and even earlier from Israel and the Middle East. They probably originated in India, and are likely to have adapted to human settlement many times in their history.

The black rat is now one of the most widely distributed animals in the world, perhaps only surpassed by humans and house mice. The live on every continent except Antarctica.

What brings them to our houses? The houses we live in provide rats with the secure, thermally stable homes they need to breed in. They eat a vast range of foods, and so can exploit our waste. The urban environments we have created are also relatively free of predators.

When conditions are ideal, black rats can reach very high numbers, giving birth to up to 12 young every five weeks or so. But the urban myths that there is one rat for every person, or that you are never less than six feet from a rat, have little support. In truth, we have no real idea of how many introduced rats there are in Australian cities.

Unwelcome housemates

Rats are often unwelcome housemates because of the diseases they spread in their urine and faeces, including leptospirosis (Weil’s disease), salmonella, and E. coli. They are also hosts of ticks that transmit bacterial infections and induce allergic reactions.

Black rats are important hosts of the parasites Toxoplasmosis gondii and rat lungworm - both of which can be fatal to native wildlife and humans. Rats are also famous for carrying the plague, which arrived in Australia in the early 1900s but fortunately died out. Australia remains plague-free.

Rat damage infrastructure when building their nests. They chew electrical cables, increasing the risk of house fires, although why they do this is not clear.

But they actually spend less time in our houses than many people think, more often making use of backyards. They seem especially to love aviaries and hen houses, which provides a ready source of spilled food and underground shelter.

Aliens, or just wild?

Just as native rats belong in natural environments, cities are rats' natural habitat. They may be introduced in Australia, but they have evolved in the urban habitats we have imported.

However, black rats can spill over from cities to remnant bushland, entering an environment that has not adapted to them. Here they have the potential to wreak all kinds of havoc.

Black rats are adept climbers and raid birds nests to prey on the eggs of small native birds, which may be one reason why these birds are uncommon in city parks. They also prey on other tree-dwelling wildlife such as small bats, skinks and spiders.

In contrast, native bush rats are clumsy climbers, and the type of lungworm carried by native rats doesn’t seem to have the same impact on wildlife and people.

Black rats are aided in this conquest by humans. Almost 70% of rats living in bushland next to houses have visited those houses sometime in the previous two weeks. This undoubtedly helps to increase rat populations beyond what the natural environmental alone could support. In contrast, native rats rarely visit houses.

So even though black rats are native to our cities, they can still be pests to humans and other wildlife. Killing rats with poison or traps is one option, but the best strategy is to reduce their access to food and shelter. Make sure your neighbours are doing the same, and aren’t providing a refuge for the rats jumping ship from your home.

This article is part of a series profiling our “hidden housemates”. Are you a researcher with an idea for a “hidden housemates” story? Get in touch.

Peter Banks receives funding from The Australian Research Council, NSW Office of Environment and Heritage, Taronga Conservation Society Australia, Mosman Council, Rentokil, Bayer, National Parks and Wildlife Service, NZ Ministry of Business, Transport for NSW, The Paddy Pallin Foundation, Manly Council, and The Australian Wildlife Conservancy

One week into the extended federal election campaign, climate has not featured prominently. While prime minister Malcolm Turnbull campaigns on “jobs and growth”, opposition leader Bill Shorten has emphasised education and employment conditions. Climate also warranted no mention in the government’s pre-election budget.

This week’s National Press Club debate between federal environment minister Greg Hunt and his shadow counterpart Mark Butler largely retrod party lines, and received limited coverage.

Yet 2016 could still be a climate election. Here’s why.

Points of difference

There are major climate policy differences between the Coalition government and Labor opposition.

The government has committed to a target of 26% to 28% reduction in greenhouse emissions by 2030 (relative to 2005), and remains committed to its incentive-only auction scheme for industry to reduce emissions.

By contrast, Labor has committed to a 45% reduction in emissions over the same period, with a 50% renewable energy target. It has also pledged to set up an emissions trading scheme that is more consistent with how other countries are approaching climate policy.

These are substantial differences, especially given criticisms that the government’s Direct Action model is expensive and inefficient and offers no guarantee of achieving its stated targets. So there are opportunities for climate to feature prominently as a point of policy difference.

Public opinion

Public opinion tends to move in favour of the opposition on climate policy. For the past several years, the Lowy Institute has polled Australians on climate policy, among other international issues. It has found, perhaps surprisingly, that Australians tend to be most supportive of strong action when the government of the day is perceived as inactive.

The high point for public support was 2006. Conversely, the low point for public support on strong climate action was 2012, as the Labor government under Julia Gillard introduced the carbon tax.

There is evidence now of a rebound in support for climate policy, with perceptions that the government is dragging its feet on climate change. This clearly creates incentives for Labor to campaign on climate.

Green pressure

The Greens loom as a threat to Labor if it doesn’t emphasise its commitment to climate action. The Greens surprised many by winning the lower house seat of Melbourne in 2010, and Adam Bandt has held it since.

Now the Greens have their sights set on other lower house seats, and perception that it is the party that takes climate action seriously will have damaging effects for Labor in electorates most vulnerable to Greens campaigning.

Political opponents of all stripes have a real opportunity to wedge the prime minister on climate change. It appears likely that prime minister Turnbull is playing a long game and hoping that an election victory will allow him to marginalise those parts of his government that still oppose climate action.

This view involves placing weight on the claims Turnbull made on losing the coalition leadership to Tony Abbott in 2009. Then, he declared that he did not want to lead a party not serious about climate action, and questioned any policy that claimed to be cost-neutral. These statements may come back to haunt him.

Finally, civil society groups are mobilising aggressively on climate change. Groups such as GetUp! will be out in force come election day and are promoting climate action, while environmental groups are pushing hard to ensure that climate change will not be forgotten in the election.

Building on devastating reports of coral bleaching and David Attenborough’s most recent television series, many are using the Great Barrier Reef as a symbol of the need to take climate action seriously.

Dangers of a climate election?

For some analysts, Australia’s 2007 contest could rightly be described as “the world’s first climate election”.

The then Labor opposition leader Kevin Rudd rode a wave of support for strong climate action, and took office from a Coalition government perceived as weak on climate change.

In 2013, Coalition opposition leader Tony Abbott declared that the forthcoming election would be a “referendum on the carbon tax”, and in those terms he scored a resounding victory.

In both of these accounts, the role of climate policy in the election result is probably overstated. But it also helps to explain why leaders of both parties appear spooked by the idea of campaigning strongly on their climate policy. It may be easier for Labor to announce its climate position softly, and the government to run a scare campaign on economic costs of any stronger action than its own platform.

Indeed, for some advocates of climate action, a climate election may not be a good thing. The climate consensus that characterises the position of progressive countries has not been reflected in Australia. This undermines policy consistency, economic predictability for business, and public support for climate action.

But it is also the case that Australia’s most recent brief window of bipartisanship on climate policy in 2009 did not end well. The carbon pollution reduction scheme (CPRS) was never enacted. And both the then prime minister Kevin Rudd and current prime minister Malcolm Turnbull lost their jobs, at least partly because of it.

We may well see climate feature prominently in the weeks to come. And while there may be some dangers, it’s hard to think of a climate policy situation in Australia that’s any more problematic than what has come before.

Matt McDonald has previously received funding from the UK's Economic and Social Research Council.

Atmospheric scientists worldwide are seeking to save Australia’s involvement in a NASA-led global network of instruments that monitor microscopic particles called “aerosols”, which play an important role in cooling and warming the Earth’s climate.

When most people think of aerosols, their mind turns to fly spray or deodorant. But the term has a much broader meaning, covering any microscopic particle that can remain airborne for long periods. Think of household dust floating in a ray of sun through your window. It’s an aerosol. So is smoke, salt spray from the sea, ultrafine sand from beaches and deserts, ash from volcanoes, and the carbon soot emitted from car and truck exhaust pipes.

These aerosols sometimes give us blazing red sunsets. But they are also crucial in controlling the Earth’s climate, acting as both warming and cooling agents. Although, molecular gases like methane and carbon dioxide garner more attention for their strong warming effect.

A stark example of the role atmospheric aerosols can play is the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines. The 20 million tonnes of aerosol ejected into the atmosphere by this eruption reduced average global temperatures by 0.5℃ for the following two years.

Crucial monitoring

An important tool in the study of atmospheric aerosols is an international monitoring network, led by NASA, called the Aerosol Robotic Network AERONET. It consists of more than 450 monitoring stations across seven continents, including several sites in Australia.

AERONET’s data help atmospheric scientists worldwide to understand how aerosols influence both the global climate, and the daily weather at local scales. The importance of aerosols in the weather is twofold. In addition to affecting atmospheric heat balance, aerosols are also responsible for seeding the formation of clouds.

CSIRO’s reported plans to withdraw from AERONET has dismayed atmospheric scientists, including NASA’s Brent Holben, lead scientist on the AERONET program. CSIRO chief executive Larry Marshall has reportedly justified his planned changes to the agency’s climate science program on the need to divert resources towards a focus on climate change mitigation and adaptation.

A shift in focus towards action is certainly admirable. As any rational citizen knows, climate change is a clear and present danger to our future, and the need for compelling action towards mitigation and adaptation is urgent.

Government action on climate change is highly encouraged by atmospheric scientists. But it’s dangerous to develop climate policies without reference to reliable, up-to-date environmental data on global temperature, carbon dioxide levels and aerosols, just as it would be foolhardy to develop national economic policy without reliable economic data on national debt, government revenue and expenditure, and unemployment figures.

Whether it’s the economy or the climate, without an eye on the data, how can one be sure that policy is having the intended outcome?

Aerosol tracking is vital

Aerosol data of the kind that AERONET provides are vital to the climate change mitigation and adaptation goals upon which CSIRO is now focusing its efforts. Here are two clear reasons why.

A key strategy to reduce greenhouse emissions is the widespread uptake of renewable energy sources, particularly solar energy. Australia, the sunburnt country, has enough sunshine to power not just our own population, but with future storage technologies, enough to export for national profit.

Aerosols have a significant influence on how much sunlight makes it onto the surface of a solar panel. Aerosol particles scatter and absorb the Sun’s rays, and they also help to form clouds which can reduce solar panels' effectiveness. Thus having precise data on atmospheric aerosols in Australian skies is vital to maximising the output, efficiency and stability of our solar energy facilities.

The second reason involves adapting to climate change, rather than mitigating it. Australia’s agriculture industry is highly dependent on rainfall. Droughts and floods are highly damaging, and both are predicted to become more frequent and severe due to climate change.

Once again, aerosols' role in cloud formation is a crucial factor here. Aerosols also affect the properties of existing clouds, such as droplet size, which in turn has a significant impact on rainfall.

Adaptation to changing rainfall patterns and climatic events such as El Niño are vital to continued output and growth in Australian agriculture. Reliable aerosol data – obtained in Australia, by Australia, and specific to the Australian atmosphere – are vital to making informed decisions about how to protect agriculture in the future.

These two examples – one focused on energy and the other concerning agriculture – show how two of Australia’s key economic sectors each rely on atmospheric aerosol monitoring. CSIRO has for many years played a major role in providing these data, and NASA’s Brent Holben, lead scientist on the AERONET program, has rightly urged CSIRO not to stop now.

More broadly, it’s vital to realise that climate monitoring and modelling, and mitigation and adaptation go hand in hand. We can’t build proper policy for action without reliable data and forecast models. The government certainly knows this when it comes to the national economy; the same holds when it comes to climate policy.

This article was amended on May 20, 2016 to reflect the fact that the stated views about CSIRO’s involvement in AEROSPAN are those of Brent Holben, AERONET Lead Project Scientist, NASA, rather than of NASA as a whole.

Surya Karthik Mukkavilli receives funding for this PhD from Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation and the Australian Postgraduate Award at UNSW, Australia. Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and should not be attributed to the official policy or position of any agency the author is associated with at present or in the past.

Merlinde Kay has received funding from ARENA.

The Great Barrier Reef's health has declined in recent years Reef image from www.shutterstock.com

The Great Barrier Reef has been in the spotlight thanks to severe coral bleaching since March, leaving only 7% of the reef untouched. The bleaching, driven by record-breaking sea temperatures, has been linked to human-caused climate change.

Apart from bleaching, the reef is in serious trouble thanks to a variety of threats. Many species and ecosystems of the Great Barrier Reef are in serious decline.

It is now overwhelmingly clear that we need to fix these problems to give the reef the best chance in a warming world. In fact, the upcoming election is arguably our last chance to put in place a plan that will save the reef.

In a recent paper, we estimate that we need to spend A$10 billion over the next ten years - about five times as much as current state and federal governments are spending – to fix up reef water quality before climate change impacts overwhelm it.

Stop water pollution

Poor water quality is one of the major threats to the Great Barrier Reef. Sediment and nutrients (such as nitrogen) washed by rivers onto the reef cause waters to become turbid, shutting out light for corals and seagrass. It can also encourage algal growth and outbreaks of coral-eating crown-of-thorns starfish.

The Queensland and Australian governments have made plans with targets to improve water quality, but the main plan - the Reef 2050 Long Term Sustainability Plan – is completely inadequate according to the Australian Academy of Science. Its targets are unlikely to be met. And others have suggested ways to improve water quality on the Great Barrier Reef.

To provide resilience for the Great Barrier Reef against the current and rapidly increasing climate impacts, water quality management needs to be greatly improved by 2025 to meet the targets and guidelines. 2025 is important as it’s likely that climate change effects will be overwhelming after that date. It is also the target date for the Reef 2050 Long Term Sustainability Plan.

What needs to be done

In our recent article, we analysed what we need to do to respond to the current crisis, especially for water quality.

1. Refocus management to the “Greater Great Barrier Reef (GBR)” – that is, include management of Torres Strait, Hervey Bay and river catchments that run into the reef as priorities along with the world heritage area. This area is shown in figure above.

2. Prioritise management for ecosystems in relatively good condition, such Torres Strait, northern Cape York and Hervey Bay which have the highest current integrity. These areas should still be prioritised despite the recent severe bleaching in the northern Great Barrier Reef.

3. Investigate methods of cross-boundary management to achieve simultaneous cost-effective terrestrial, freshwater and marine ecosystem protection in the Greater GBR.

4. Develop a detailed, comprehensive, costed water quality management plan for the Greater GBR. In the period 2009-16, more than A$500 million was spent on water quality management (with some success) without a robust comprehensive plan to ensure the most effective use of the funding.

5. Use existing federal legislation (the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Act and the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act) to regulate catchment activities that lead to damage to the Greater GBR, together with the relevant Queensland legislation. These rules were established long ago and are immediately available to tackle terrestrial pollutant discharge.

6. Fund catchment and coastal management to the required level to largely solve the pollution issues for the Greater GBR by 2025, to provide resilience for the system in the face of accelerating climate change impacts. The funding required is large – of the order of A$1 billion per year over the next ten years but small by comparison to the worth of the Great Barrier Reef – estimated to be of the order of A$20 billion per year.

7. Continue enforcement of the zoning plan.

8. Show commitment to protecting the Greater GBR through greenhouse gas emissions control, of a scale to be relevant to protecting the reef (for example those proposed by the Climate Change Authority), by 2025.

Unless immediate action is taken to improve water quality, the onset of accelerating climate change impacts mean there is little chance the current decline in reef health can be prevented.

Jon Brodie has received funding over the last two years from the Australian Government, the Queensland Government, Natural Resource Management groups, WWF, UNEP, Melbourne Water, NSW EPA.

Richard Pearson has in the past received funding from the Australian Government through the Australian Research Council and the Marine and Tropical Science Research Facility. He is a member of ACF.

New mapping of one of the most remote areas in Antarctica has revealed regions deep within Earth’s largest ice sheet that are particularly prone to rapid melting.

Our study, published today in Nature, is focused on East Antarctica’s Totten Glacier, the outlet for the world’s largest ice catchment. The results suggest that if rising global temperatures trigger the glacier to retreat rapidly – as has happened previously in its history – this region alone could deliver sea-level rises of well over a metre over the ensuing centuries.

The Totten Glacier region is a key area for understanding the long-term vulnerability of the Antarctic Ice Sheet, but until now, knowledge of this region’s glacial history has been very limited.

Our study shows that, although the region near the coast is quite stable on timescales of several millennia, regions further inland have potential for significant and rapid retreat as the climate warms.

Specifically, we identified two stable zones where the ice sheet is not prone to rapid collapse, and two unstable zones, where it is. We have also discovered that transitions between these states have happened repeatedly during the life of the ice sheet.

Stable and not so stable

As part of the international ICECAP project, my colleagues and I used ice-penetrating radar, as well as magnetic and gravity data, to chart the rocks beneath the glacier.

By mapping the shape of the ice-sheet and its base, as well as the thickness of the rocks and sediments beneath, we were able to study the characteristic patterns of erosion left behind by the ice sheet’s previous advances and retreats – thus revealing the ice sheet’s past behaviour.

The observed patterns suggest that the ice sheet has spent much of its history in one of two configurations: either the edge has been close to the current Antarctic coast (within 150 kilometres); or it has been located some 350-550 kilometres inland. In either of these states, the ice would be relatively stable, with this glacier providing sea level fluctuations of less than a metre over the course of glacial cycles.

But the pattern of erosion also shows that melting has periodically forced the ice sheet out of either of these stable states, causing the ice sheet to collapse and retreat far inland. These events might have typically driven up global sea levels by 1.3-1.4 metres over the course of a few centuries.

What is happening today?

Previous studies from satellite data have indicated that the coastal part of the Totten Glacier region and its floating ice shelf are melting rapidly. Last year, the ICECAP team discovered that there is currently warm water circulating underneath a floating portion of the glacier that is causing more melting than might have been expected.

Our results show that following a rapid loss of coastal ice due to the collapse of the floating ice shelf, this region is likely to respond more slowly than other parts of Antarctica to warming temperatures, due to the existence of a “stable zone”.

But as temperatures continue to increase, this glacier is likely to retreat into the unstable zone, and make a rapid and proportionally greater contribution to sea levels.

Our ice sheet modelling suggests that while the Totten region is not the first region in Antarctica to respond to warming climate, it is likely to become progressively more unstable as warming proceeds over hundreds to thousands of years. Ultimately this region could become the “fat end of the wedge” in terms of Antarctica’s overall contribution to rising seas, accounting for almost 15% of Antarctica’s total contribution to sea-level rise. This is likely to happen while other regions have become ice-free, or are stabilising after periods of rapid ice loss.

Our results suggest that the Totten region has severe implications for global sea level rise in warming climate conditions, especially once warming reaches the critical thresholds likely to tip the glacier out of its stable states. Given the long timescales involved for ice-sheet melting it is difficult to say with confidence when this tipping point might be reached.

Increases to carbon dioxide levels today will commit us to temperature increases that persist for thousands of years. The upper limit of the coastal stable zone could be crossed under conditions similar to those predicted for the next century, based on the higher emissions scenarios envisaged by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Alan Aitken receives research funding from the Australian Research Council, the Science and Industry Endowment Fund and the State Government of Western Australia. These funding sources relate to other projects. His contribution to this work was funded by the University of Western Australia's Goodeve Foundation.

The records keep on falling Thermometer image from www.shutterstock.com

We’re not even halfway through the year but already you may have heard talk of 2016 being the hottest on record. But how can scientists be so sure we’re going to beat the previous record, set just last year?

Even before the end of 2015, the UK Met Office was forecasting with 95% confidence that 2016 would beat the record. Since then, that confidence has grown still further, as record after record has tumbled. April 2016 broke the record for the hottest April after we had experienced the hottest February and March on record already this year.

NASA climatologist Gavin Schmidt recently estimated at least a 99% likelihood of 2016 being hotter than 2015.

The role of El Niño

The main reason why scientists are so sure that 2016 will be the hottest year is El Niño, which is associated with warmer sea surface temperatures in the eastern Pacific Ocean. The 2015-16 El Niño was among the strongest on record and has increased global average temperatures.

Even though the El Niño is now decaying, the second year of a major El Niño event is often associated with much warmer than normal conditions and is typically warmer than the first.

For instance, the 1997-98 El Niño was by some measures the strongest on record, and contributed to 1998 becoming the hottest year on record globally at the time.

Since the start of this year, we have seen global temperature records smashed time and time again. This means that much colder temperatures for the second half of the year would be needed for 2016 not to surpass the 2015 record.

Even a strong La Niña event (the cooler opposite of El Niño), which some analysts are forecasting, is unlikely to produce cold enough temperatures.

One thing that could prevent 2016 becoming a record-breaking hot year is a major volcanic eruption in the tropics. Volcanic eruptions at low latitudes can eject aerosols high into the atmosphere reducing the amount of energy from the sun reaching the Earth’s surface.

Previous eruptions such as Pinatubo in 1991 and Tambora in 1815 (which caused 1816 to be “the year without a summer”) reduced temperatures across much of the globe.

However, it is the year after the eruption that often experiences the most severe cooling, so an eruption would have to be pretty soon and very strong to scupper 2016’s chances of being the hottest year on record.

What about climate change?

The role of climate change is smaller because we’re comparing 2016 with last year (the previous record). Over such short periods of time, the contribution from global warming doesn’t change much.

However, scientists estimated that 2015 was about 1℃ hotter than it would have been without human-caused climate change. As the human influence on the climate has not increased greatly since last year this 1℃ estimate will also apply to 2016.

The highly likely record temperature of 2016 will join the previous 17 record-breaking hot years back to 1937 which were all made more likely due to human-caused climate change (the rising global temperatures were even noticed as far back as 1938).

So even if El Niño is driving the 2016 record, we can say that the temperatures of this year (and indeed the temperatures associated with all the records over the last few years) would be virtually impossible without climate change.

An omen for the future?

We expect 2016 to beat the 2015 record for global average temperature as the decaying El Niño event pushes up surface temperatures.

This year, we’ve already seen devastating events associated with unusually warm temperatures, like the mass coral bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef, which has been largely attributed to human-induced climate change.

In future, we can expect to see more extreme heat events, like we’ve already seen in 2016, impacting society and ecosystems across the world.

And even though 2016 is likely to be the hottest year by some margin, we wouldn’t bet on this record lasting too long. While 2017 is very likely to be cooler due to a possible La Niña, with the strong warming trend the world’s experiencing it’s only a matter of time before we have another record-breaking hot year.

Only if we substantially reduce our greenhouse gas emissions now will we see the benefit of fewer record heat events in the future.

Andrew King receives funding from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science.

Ed Hawkins receives funding from the Natural Environment Research Council (UK).

For much of this year, up to 1,700 kilometres of the Murray River has been hit by a serious outbreak of potentially toxic blue-green algae, which has flourished in the hotter-than-average conditions. After three months, the river is now recovering with the arrival of wet weather. But we are unlikely to have seen the last of these poisonous microbes.

Large blue-green algal blooms are a relatively new phenomenon in inland waterways. In 1991 an algal bloom affected more than 1,000 km of the Darling River, the first time such an event had been reported in an Australian river, and one of the few times internationally. It was an environmental disaster, killing livestock and striking a telling blow against Australia’s reputation as a clean, green farming nation.

The response was decisive: a state of emergency was declared, and the bloom ultimately gave rise to significant investment by state and federal governments into freshwater research, particularly in the Murray-Darling Basin.

Why no emergency now?

Fast forward two and a half decades to the latest bloom afflicting the Murray River, one of Australia’s most socially, economically and culturally significant waterways. The past decade has seen four similar blooms on the Murray River: in 2007, 2009, 2010 and now. Yes, they have garnered press attention, but there has not been the same call to arms that we saw when the Darling River was struck in 1991.

It is almost as if such significant environmental events are now simply seen as the new normal. Why the apparent complacency?

The 2007, 2009 and 2010 algal blooms on the Murray River all happened during the Millennium Drought, and hence were probably ascribed to an aberration in the weather. In reality, the situation may have more to do with how we manage water in Australia – particularly during periods of scarcity, such as the one we may well be entering now.

Those three earlier events all started in Lake Hume, a large reservoir in the Murray River’s upper reaches, originally created in the 1930s to help “drought-proof” Australia. All of the blooms began after the water level was drawn down to below 10% of the lake’s capacity. At these low levels, disturbances (such as when transferring water between the Snowy River and Murray River systems) can easily lead to the mixing of warm surface waters (ideal for bloom formation) with nutrient-rich water at the bottom of the reservoir (ideal for feeding the bloom).

The resulting blooms were then released downstream into the Murray River by managed water releases from Lake Hume. The blooms most likely reformed in other constructed water bodies downstream – most notably Lake Mulwala, a shallow reservoir about 250 km along the river from Lake Hume.

Lake Mulwala’s principal purpose is to create hydraulic pressure to allow irrigation water to be diverted into farmland in southern New South Wales and northern Victoria. As a result, its shallow depth and mostly still waters make it an ideal incubator for blue-green algae.

The climate factor

This year’s algal bloom on the Murray River is different. The main blue-green alga in the current outbreak, Chrysosporium ovalisporum, has previously been reported in the river, but generally in very low numbers. It has never before formed a bloom in the Murray River since monitoring began in 1978. But crucially, this species flourishes in very warm temperatures; overseas blooms of this species have occurred when water temperatures reach 26℃.

The other difference between the current and earlier blooms is that, when this year’s event started, Lake Hume was much fuller, at about 30% capacity. So reservoir operation probably had less to do with the bloom’s formation than other factors, such as the climate. Both the maximum and minimum temperatures were consistently above the long-term average during the past few months, as was the amount of sunlight reaching the surface of Lake Hume.

We still do not know exactly what triggered this year’s bloom, but if it was indeed a result of unusually warm temperatures, it is very likely that we will see more blooms of this type in the future.

Are we really ready for recurrent blue-green algal blooms on the Murray River? These blooms come at a significant economic cost: drinking water has had to be specially treated to remove potential toxins, and the bloom has impacted on regional tourism, coinciding with the Labour Day and Easter long weekends. It also hit farmers, who had to get drinking water for their livestock from elsewhere.

More importantly, what do these frequent blooms say about how we manage water in this country – especially as we start to see the impacts of climate change on our environment? Dwindling water could mean more than just drought – it could also fill much of the water that remains with poisonous microbes.

Darren Baldwin has received funding from the Murray-Darling Basin Authority to study blue-green algal blooms in the Murray River , including the current bloom.

Our EcoCheck series takes the pulse of some of Australia’s most important ecosystems to find out if they’re in good health or on the wane.

When Europeans first saw Victoria’s native grasslands in the 1830s, they were struck by the vast beauty of the landscape, as well as its productive potential.

The explorer Sir Thomas Mitchell described the western Victorian plains as “an open grassy country, extending as far as we could see … resembling a nobleman’s park on a gigantic scale”. His fellow pioneer John Batman, in 1835, described the grassy plains to the north and west of what is now Melbourne as “the most beautiful sheep pasturage I ever saw in my life”.

Victoria’s volcanic plain, home to a rich variety of wildflowers. Hesperian/IBRA/Wikimedia Commons

The native temperate grasslands of southeastern Australia are a group of ecosystems defined mainly by the presence of dominant native grasses. Trees are either completely absent, or occur in very low numbers.

In Victoria, native grasslands can be found on the volcanic plains that stretch from Melbourne as far west as Hamilton. Despite their rather plain name, native grasslands are extraordinarily diverse, containing many species of wildflowers that grow between the tussocks of grasses.

It is possible to find more than 25 different plant species in a single square metre of native grassland, and the wildflowers produce dazzling displays of colour during spring.

The animals that inhabit these grasslands are equally diverse and fascinating. The striped legless lizard, grassland earless dragon and golden sun moth are three that live there today, although many others are now locally extinct. One can only imagine how impressive it would have been to see brolgas, rufous bettongs and eastern barred bandicoots roaming, nesting and digging on these plains.

Grassland earless dragon. John Wombey/CSIRO/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

Native grasslands were a significant food source for Aboriginal people. They provided both meat (kangaroos and other grazing animals were attracted to the open grassy landscapes) and vegetables.

Many of the native forb plants produce energy-rich tubers or bulbs that can be eaten much like a potato. These made up a large part of the diet of Aboriginal people living in these areas.

Fire is critical to maintaining the diversity and health of native grasslands, and fire regimes used by Indigenous people are an important aspect of grassland management.

Plains to pasture

The story of Victoria’s native grasslands since European settlement is not a happy one. Grasslands offer extremely fertile land (by Australian standards, at least), which made them attractive for agriculture and grazing. Overgrazing by sheep and cattle, the addition of fertilisers to “improve” pastures, and changes to the frequency and extent of fires in the landscape led to a noticeable degradation of Victoria’s native grasslands by the early 20th century.

Since then, habitat loss and degradation from intensive grazing, cropping and – more recently – urbanisation have reduced the native grasslands of the Victorian volcanic plain to less than 1% of their original extent (as documented in the paper titled “Vegetation of the Victorian Volcanic Plain” available here).

Land clearing for urban development continues to pose a major threat to Victoria’s native grasslands. Many remnants exist in and around Melbourne’s key urban growth corridors.

A 15,000-hectare grassland reserve is planned to the west of the city to offset the losses that will occur as Melbourne grows. This is an exciting prospect – such a large reserve would provide an opportunity to showcase this threatened ecosystem on a landscape-wide scale.

But successful implementation of this reserve requires significant investment in restoration and management, and only time will tell whether it truly compensates for the inevitable losses elsewhere.

Saving what remains

A major challenge for the conservation of Victoria’s native grasslands is to maintain the patches that remain. These remnants, nestled in agricultural and urban landscapes, are often small and fragmented, and are subject to threats such as weed invasion and broad-scale use of herbicides and fertilisers.

Without regular fires or some other form of biomass removal, the native grasses grow too big and smother the wildflowers. Over time, grasslands can lose their species diversity, and with it the intricate beauty of their varied wildflowers.

Redreaming the Plain. Digital composite created for Imagine The Future (ITF) Inc. by Csaba Szamosy, 1996, from photographs by James Ross (Victorian National Parks Association), Mike Martin (Victoria University), Tom Wheller (VNPA), Vanessa Craigee (Department of Natural Resources and Environment), John Seebeck (NRE) and Ian McCann (courtesy NRE/McCann Collection), and based on a concept by Merrill Findlay for ITF.

On the face of it, the prognosis for these grasslands does not look great. They are certainly one of Australia’s most endangered ecosystems, and their conservation must necessarily occur alongside human-dominated land uses. This brings social challenges as well as ecological ones.

Native grasslands suffer from a public relations problem. The need for regular fires is not always well aligned with objectives for human land uses. What’s more, all those wildflowers only appear in season, and even then their beauty is only really evident at close quarters.

But grasslands have a few tricks up their sleeves. First, high-quality grasslands can be maintained in relatively small patches. There are some great examples around Melbourne, including the Evans Street Native Grassland, which covers just 4 hectares. But as tiny as they are, these reserves can be just as diverse as larger grassland remnants.

Second, native grasslands can be surprisingly resilient, in both urban and agricultural landscapes. A case in point is the tiny grassland at the Watergardens shopping centre northwest of Melbourne, which has been maintained despite being completely surrounded by a car park. Several high-quality grasslands in pastoral areas have been maintained for decades under grazing at low stocking rates.

Third, native grasslands represent a great opportunity to engage urban residents with nature in cities. Many beautiful remnants exist in some of Melbourne’s newest suburbs. Some already benefit from the efforts of dedicated community groups, while others are still waiting to be discovered.

Grasslands in other parts of the world, such as North America’s prairies or the African savannah, are viewed with romanticism and awe. In the Australian consciousness, grasslands take a back seat to the mythical outback. But the future of the grasslands of southeastern Victoria may well depend on our capacity to generate the same public profile for this truly remarkable but critically endangered ecosystem.

Are you a researcher who studies an iconic Australian ecosystem and would like to give it an EcoCheck? Get in touch.

Georgia Garrard is supported by funding from the National Environmental Science Programme's Threatened Species Recovery Hub.

Sarah Bekessy receives funding from the Australian Research Council and through the National Environment Science Programme's, Threatened Species and Clean Air and Urban Landscapes Hubs.

Tasmania's hydro power is dependent on rains. Dam image from www.shutterstock.com

Fighting climate change will involve massive changes to the way we produce and distribute energy. Those changes are already happening. Several studies have looked at how our energy systems will change as clean energy increases and fossil fuels are replaced.

But climate change must be planned into this transition.

For instance, temperature is a key driver of demand for electricity, and future increases in heatwaves will probably drive higher electricity demand for air conditioners.

So how could future climate changes affect the ability of the system to generate enough electricity?

Climate and energy

Renewable energy technologies are highly dependent on climate-related factors including sunlight, wind speed and water availability. Water is also a key requirement for coal and nuclear power stations. Heatwaves can impact on the capacity of transmission lines to move energy around the national grid.

The changes to climate in Australia resulting from increased greenhouse gas emissions include more extreme heat events, longer and drier droughts, and longer and hotter heatwaves, as well as stronger storms and rainfall events. Shifts in large-scale circulation patterns may have some impact on wind speed but these effects are less clear.

These climate events and trends affect almost all energy generation and distribution systems, and need to be factored into good management. There is a broad range of intersections between the changing climate and the energy systems of the future that need to be considered.

The future is here

The current mix of generation technologies in the energy system is in a state of flux and undergoing relatively rapid change, as renewable energy, particularly wind turbines and rooftop solar, increase. And the changing climate is already affecting the current energy infrastructure.

Recent years have seen several extreme weather events – with a detectable influence from climate change – that have seriously impacted electricity generation in Australia.

Tasmanian hydro dam levels are currently at record lows. With the Basslink connector also out of action, the shortfall in energy generation is being made up through the use of diesel generators.

Much has been made of this situation already, but the lack of rainfall over the past year is consistent with long-term projections for rainfall in southeast Australia.

In 2014, the Hazelwood mine fire was started by bushfire embers in rural Victoria. It burned for 45 days in the wake of a heatwave that brought temperatures not seen since the extreme heat of 2009.

The 2009 heatwaves themselves shut down the Basslink transformer in Georgetown, Tasmania, reducing the electricity available to Victoria and South Australia. At the same time, two transformers in Victoria failed, leading to supply loss that significantly impacted Melbourne and western Victoria.

In Queensland, the 2010-11 floods caused widespread damage to the electricity network. Substations were flooded, high-voltage feeder lines were damaged and, in the Lockyer Valley, much of the electricity infrastructure was destroyed.

The costs of replacing and repairing electricity networks damaged by extreme weather events can be seen as one consequence of our continuing reliance on fossil fuels.

More variable rain and sun

As the climate changes further, electricity networks will have to manage increasingly variable rainfall – less in southeast and southwest Australia and possible increases in the north.

In 2013, Australia had more than 120 operating hydroelectric power stations, with a total generation of almost 20 terawatt-hours (8% of total energy generated).

Most hydro power is produced at dams on Australia’s major river valleys, and only a few of these have been left untouched. As water availability becomes more uncertain, this type of generation is unlikely to expand much further.

Australia has the highest average solar radiation per square metre of any continent in the world. More than five gigawatts of solar photovolaic panels have been installed, both on rooftops and more recently as large-scale installations.

These panels are prone to extreme weather events, such as hail. Events such as Melbourne’s 2010 storm and Perth’s freak storm the same year could dramatically impact a high-penetration renewable energy system.

Similarly, plans for large-scale solar plants that create steam to drive turbines should take changes to rainfall and available water resources into consideration at the planning stage. Solar radiation is affected by El Niño, with up to 10% less radiation available during La Niña conditions.

Other areas of generation (such as wind, ocean and bioenergy) may also be affected by climate change, as circulation changes result in shifts in wind fields and precipitation patterns (affecting biofuel crop yields).

The likely effects of these changes are much harder to project, but the potential for reduced output needs to be taken into consideration when making plans for future energy systems.

Roger Dargaville receives funding from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA).

Jane Mullett receives funding from the Cooperative Research Centre for Contamination Assessment and Remediation of the Environment (CRC-CARE).

As we predicted last year, the background atmospheric carbon dioxide levels measured at Cape Grim on Tasmania’s northwest coast have officially passed the 400 parts per million (ppm) mark. Our measurements, compiled by our team at CSIRO together with the Bureau of Meteorology, show that the milestone was reached on May 10.

In the past few days, the 400 ppm level has also been breached in Antarctica, where CSIRO’s measurements at Casey Station show the 400 ppm level was exceeded on May 14.

Together, these measurements show that the atmospheric CO₂ concentration of the entire southern hemisphere is now at or above 400 ppm. It is unlikely to dip back below this level for many decades to come.

Cape Grim’s carbon dioxide record shows that background levels have now exceeded 400 parts per million.

The threshold was reached earlier than we and our colleagues had anticipated, as a result of a recent, strong increase in the growth rate of atmospheric CO₂. This was probably driven by increased emissions from fossil fuels, as well the impact of the recent strong El Niño, which reduced the capacity of natural systems such as oceans and plants to absorb CO₂.

Southern hemisphere lag

CO₂ concentrations over the southern hemisphere are trailing those in the planet’s northern half, where 400 ppm level was breached in 2014-15. The northern hemisphere’s carbon dioxide levels are higher because most CO₂ sources (such as vegetation and fossil-fuel-burning installations) are mainly found in the north, whereas CO₂ “sinks” such as oceans are predominantly in the southern hemisphere.

The northern hemisphere’s CO₂ levels also show a much stronger seasonal variation. Ironically, the only place on Earth where baseline levels of CO₂ are likely to stay under 400 ppm for the next few years is the high Arctic, where the extreme summer carbon dioxide minimum will likely result in sub-400 ppm averages for 2017 and 2018.

After that, however the world’s background levels of CO₂ are unlikely to fall back below 400 ppm for many decades – perhaps a century or more – depending on the success of humankind’s efforts to reduce emissions.

What does 400 ppm really mean?

The 400 ppm level of atmospheric CO₂ is largely symbolic. The real concern is the current rate at which this figure is increasing: roughly 3 ppm per year. If this were to continue for another two decades, we would pass 450 ppm of CO₂. Once that level is reached, the levels of all greenhouse gases put together (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and synthetic greenhouse gases) would add up to the equivalent of about 550 ppm of CO₂.

This is the level at which average global temperatures would be likely to reach 2℃ above pre-industrial levels in the decades thereafter (given the time lag between atmospheric CO₂ and its global warming impact).

This is the amount of global warming that the Paris Agreement is designed to avoid – indeed, the agreement calls for temperatures to be held well below this level.

It is clear that strong, worldwide initiatives aimed at curbing carbon dioxide emissions are needed now if we are to avoid the most dangerous predicted effects of climate change.

A relentless trend

Atmospheric CO₂ has been increasing relentlessly over the past 200 years or so, as can be seen in the chart below. Air and ice measurements allow us to trace the dramatic rise in CO₂ levels from about 280 ppm, before the start of the industrial era around the year 1800, to the current level above 400 ppm.

Ice core measurements show the rise of carbon dioxide since 1800, combined with Cape Grim measurements starting in 1976. CSIRO

That is an increase of 43% in scarcely more than two centuries, largely as a result of human activities. The time to start reversing that trend is now.

Paul Krummel receives funding from MIT, NASA, Australian Bureau of Meteorology, Department of the Environment, & Refrigerant Reclaim Australia.

Paul Fraser has received funding from MIT, NASA, Australian Bureau of Meteorology, Department of the Environment, & Refrigerant Reclaim Australia.

Delegates will meet at the World Conference Centre in Bonn. Qualle/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

The dust has long settled from December’s Paris climate summit, which hammered out the first truly global deal to reduce emissions. But the negotiations ended with widespread acknowledgement that the deal needs significant strengthening if its overall goal of keeping warming well below 2℃ is to be met.

The Paris Agreement therefore requires countries to ramp up their efforts significantly over the coming years and decades.

That job arguably begins today, with the opening of an 11-day meeting in Bonn, Germany, featuring the first session of the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Paris Agreement (APA).

The APA functions rather like a much more modest version of the Paris conference. Parties to the Paris Agreement send delegations, and small groups can be tasked with resolving specific issues before reporting back to the larger group for decision-making.

Among the most important items on the meeting’s agenda is the Global Stocktake to assess overall progress towards fulfilling the Paris Agreement’s goals. This stocktake will kickstart the process of five-yearly reviews to strengthen the Paris Agreement, the first of which will happen in 2023.

A new approach

The Paris Agreement sets down a new model for confronting global warming. Unlike the Kyoto Protocol, which imposed emissions targets on each country in a “top-down” way, the Paris process allowed countries to pledge their own climate targets.

This approach has been credited for the Paris negotiations' success, in contrast with previous talks which descended into recriminations over the burden that each country should bear.

But one obvious weakness of the new model is that the countries' voluntary commitments will not deliver anything like the necessary emissions reductions to prevent dangerous warming.

The five-yearly review mechanism thus aims to ensure that nations ramp up their commitments in coming years.

The question of fairness

As the Paris regime’s core review mechanism, the Global Stocktake will consider many aspects of the parties’ collective progress. While it will focus mainly on practical and scientific issues, the Paris Agreement also requires it to assess the collective progress “in the light of equity”.

In international climate negotiations, “equity” refers to an array of moral principles developed by the parties since 1992. These principles flesh out ethical priorities, such as ensuring the sustainable development of poorer countries.

They also inform burden-sharing decisions – for example, requiring countries that are more able to fight climate change, or that bear greater historical responsibility for it, to shoulder more of the burden.

As such, those five short words – “in the light of equity” – are arguably the first ever attempt to formalise the idea of countries doing their fair share when considering their contribution to the global fight against climate change.

What will the meeting achieve?

It is too early to know exactly how the APA will implement its mandate. However, in order to cover equity appropriately, the stocktake will need to include an official consideration of how well each country’s climate efforts accord with the Paris goals and principles. This means considering two key questions:

• Is each country doing what it promised?

• Is it promising enough?

This is not what normally happens when parties discuss ethics and fairness. Because the climate negotiations have had no principled system of moral evaluation and deliberation, countries can make implausible and inconsistent ethical claims as they defend climate targets that were actually chosen on the basis of national self-interest.

In the ideal case, the stocktake will encourage countries' delegates to talk in a reasonable and structured way about the ethical principles that inform their national climate targets. It will hopefully prompt them to be clearer about what principles they think are important, and how those principles justify their contribution.

As well as encouraging laggards to lift their game, the stocktake could clarify the application of specific equity principles. This could lead to improved overall ambition, more fairness in burden-sharing, and a greater shared belief in the regime’s legitimacy. Indeed, the process leading up to the stocktake can itself realise important procedural values, such as inclusiveness, reciprocity and deliberation.

In time, the process may prove to be an essential part of a functioning Paris regime.

What could possibly go wrong?

Opening up an official space for moral appraisals offers perils as well as promises. We must bear in mind that the Kyoto model failed precisely because it proved impossible to get consensus on questions of burden-sharing. An equity-based review might just reignite these past disagreements.

Indeed, any appeal to ethics carries some risks. Sometimes it’s better to speak of collective risk reduction rather than taking an adversarial position of preaching, lecturing or blaming others.

Despite these dangers, the Paris model desperately needs a principled mechanism for reviewing national climate targets so as to scale up the overall level of ambition to what’s needed globally.

The task is not impossible. The drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights shows that, with clear structures and strong leadership, constructive international moral deliberation is possible.

Crucially, the stocktake will not need to take a single authoritative position on what equity requires. It can still drive improved ambition even if it allows coutries substantial flexibility in how they understand and apply equity principles.

While 2023 may seem a long way off, if the APA wants to ensure a constructive process, it will need to start laying the groundwork soon. It can start engaging states on equity issues in small meetings at the upcoming annual climate summits, starting with this year’s talks in Marrakech, or more formally at the Facilitative Dialogue scheduled for 2018.

After all, any assessment of this type does its best work long before it happens. In signalling that an ethical reckoning is on the horizon, it can encourage countries to start seriously considering whether their current commitments are fair, and what they could do better.

Hugh Breakey receives funding from the Australian Research Council for the Discovery Grant 'Towards Global Carbon Integrity' (DP140101897)

Energy efficiency projects could receive more subsidies if Direct Action is continued. David González Romero/Flickr, CC BY

Direct Action is the centrepiece of Australia’s current greenhouse gas reduction efforts. To date, A$1.7 billion in subsidies has been committed from the government’s Emissions Reduction Fund to projects offering to reduce emissions.

The scheme replaced Australia’s two-year-old carbon price in 2014 and is a key part of the government’s plan to reduce emissions by 5% below 2000 levels by 2020, and 26–28% below 2005 levels by 2030.

Environment Minister Greg Hunt has called Direct Action a “stunning success” and “one of the most effective systems in the world for significantly reducing emissions”.

In a new article in Economic Papers, I look into the economics of Direct Action and how it is working. I conclude that the scheme is exposed to funding projects that would have happened without government funding.

This issue has long been known as a threat to schemes of this type, and means that the scheme is likely to be less useful in reducing emissions than the government is claiming.

Commonwealth Procurement Rules require value for money in government purchases. It is not clear we are getting that with Direct Action.

Information problems

The key challenge for schemes like Direct Action is information. What exactly is the scheme buying, and would that have happened without it?

Direct Action works by inviting voluntary project proposals and then allocating funds to the lowest bidders in reverse auctions.

Unfortunately, projects that would have gone ahead even without a subsidy – call them “anyway projects” – have a cost advantage that makes them well placed to win the auctions. It is often difficult for the government to identify such projects. When projects of this type receive funding, taxpayers’ money is being used ineffectively.

Economists call this adverse selection, or the “lemons problem”.

All about that baseline

The government has developed a set of methods for defining projects and measuring the emission reductions provided by each project against estimated baselines. It is an economy-wide scheme, and there are methods covering everything from energy efficiency to aviation.

As is, the methods leave opportunities for anyway projects to qualify. The Emission Reduction Fund White Paper states that a “flexible approach” is being pursued so as to encourage participation.

One rule is that projects be new. But across the Australian economy, new projects are launched every year. Some happen to reduce emissions. These projects are being attracted into the Direct Action auctions.

Carry-overs from the former Carbon Farming Initiative have also been allowed to side-step the newness requirement.

The experience so far

Three Direct Action auctions have been held to date, with the most recent in late April 2016.

Some of the funded projects are likely to be providing genuine reductions in emissions. Unfortunately, however, some project categories are rather questionable.

Landfill operators have been awarded Direct Action subsidies in each of the auctions. Their projects are often already generating revenues from electricity sales and renewable energy certificates.

Other projects to win subsidies include upgrades to lighting in supermarkets and to the fuel efficiency of vehicles. These are activities that are supposed to happen anyway.

The biggest winner to date has been vegetation projects. Among these are projects to reduce tree clearing, including of invasive native species near Cobar and Bourke in New South Wales. The large payments for these projects are likely to have preserved some vegetation. But some farmers appear to have not actually been planning to clear. If so, funding is going to anyway projects.

Projects potentially in line for the next auction include boiler upgrades and modifications to aircraft. If Direct Action were to continue for years to come, the bill could become very big.

Journalists such as Lenore Taylor and Tristan Edis are among those who have raised concerns about the quality of Direct Action projects. The government has yet to properly engage with this issue.

This problem could be avoided

There are far better policy approaches than Direct Action subsidies.

A key advantage of either an emissions tax or an emissions trading scheme is that the government does not need to evaluate individual projects from covered enterprises.

These schemes instead introduce a price per unit of emissions and leave the private sector to decide which projects to implement. Large emitters are already required to report their emissions, so implementation is comparatively straightforward. Any revenue raised could be used to reduce other taxes or Australia’s budget deficit.

Regulations could also be put to more use. Strengthened restrictions on vegetation clearing and on the release of coal mine gas are examples.

Eligibility to generate offset credits should be tightened to cover only credibly genuine emission reductions that are difficult to achieve using other policies. Some carbon farming activities can meet this criterion, and could generate revenue from private-sector buyers. Public expenditure on new offset projects could be ended.

Better off going back to what was working

There are many other downsides to Direct Action. These include its administrative complexity, the issue of emissions reappearing elsewhere in the economy, and the subsidy culture it inculcates.

The scheme is yet to induce emissions reductions in key sectors of the economy. Emissions from electricity generation are rising again.

Australia has a big challenge ahead in decarbonising our economy. There are many opportunities, but we need to get our policy settings right. It would be better to move on from Direct Action subsidies. An approach centred on pricing emissions makes more sense.

An open-access version of Paul’s paper can be downloaded here.

Paul Burke 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.

Labor has promised half of Australia's electricity will come from renewables in 2030. Wind turbine image from www.shutterstock.com

Yet again, electricity prices are set to be a key point of contention in an Australian federal election.

The Coalition responded quickly to Labor’s election commitment to an emissions trading scheme (ETS), with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull warning of “much higher electricity prices” and a “very big burden” on Australians.

Other ministers joined in. Treasurer Scott Morrison labelled the plan a “a big thumping electricity tax” and Environment Minister Greg Hunt branded it “Julia Gillard’s carbon tax on steroids”, warning of “even higher electricity prices for Australian families”.

The centrepiece of the Coalition’s climate policy, meanwhile, is the A$2.5 billion Emissions Reduction Fund. An important element of this scheme is the “safeguard mechanism”, which is due to kick in on July 1 this year. This has implications for the electricity sector and may also affect electricity prices.

National summary of retail electricity cost components 2015 Residential Electricity Price Trends

These policies will affect the wholesale electricity market, in which electricity is bought from power generators and sold on to retailers and consumers.

As you can see from the figure to the right, the competitive component of the retail prices makes up about 50% of the typical household electricity bill, and the wholesale component typically makes up half of that. The other major cost is poles and wires.

So how exactly will the different climate policies affect electricity prices?

The safeguard mechanism (Coalition)

The safeguard mechanism will require Australia’s largest emitters to keep emissions below a baseline. This will prevent emissions reductions under the ERF being offset by increases elsewhere. Businesses that go over the baseline will have to pay.

The safeguard is based on the high point in annual emissions from the whole electricity sector between 2009-10 and 2013-14. Generators' individual baselines and associated penalties only come into play if the whole sector goes over the baseline.

As you can see in the figure below, emissions have fallen by almost 20 million tonnes per year since the first baseline year (2009-10), partially in response to years of declining demand.

Electricity Sector Emissions Quarterly Update of Australia’s National Greenhouse Gas Inventory: December 2015

Current projections for electricity growth suggest that the baseline won’t be breached for some years. As such, individual generators are unlikely to be penalised, and wholesale prices would not be expected to change dramatically.

Electricity sector emissions trading (Labor)

Labor’s electricity sector ETS is a “baseline and credit” scheme, based on a model proposed by the Australian Energy Market Commission (AEMC), which actually submitted the proposal to consultation on the safeguard mechanism.

This also places a baseline on the electricity sector, but it is calculated on the basis of emissions intensity (tonnes of emissions per unit of electricity generated) rather than overall emissions. Generators with emissions intensity below the baseline (for example, gas generators) would earn credit, so “cleaner” power plants would generate more credits.

Power plants that go over the baseline (for example, brown coal) would have to buy credits for the amount they go over. “Dirtier” plants would thus have to buy more credits.

This is substantially different to a carbon tax or the previous emissions trading scheme. Under these policies, all generators are penalised, some more than others, as you can see in the figure below.

Impact of carbon price and baseline and credit scheme on different generation technology in the electricity sector. A carbon prices increases all prices, relative to emissions intensity. A baseline and credit scheme increases the price of high-emissions-intensity generation, but lowers the price of low-emissions-intensity generation. Author

This difference is important for electricity prices. Dirtier plants would be expected to increase their selling price to cover the financial penalty on their emissions. But cleaner plants, earning revenue from selling credits, could afford to sell their electricity more cheaply.

This is important, because cleaner plants (typically black coal or gas) set the price. Gas in particular would probably be significantly cheaper under this proposal. As such, the impact on wholesale prices would be small, or negative.

In fact, as the AEMC itself noted, the impact on the wholesale market could be an increase or decrease in prices (depending on where the baseline is set).

The brown coal exit (Labor)

Another component of Labor’s climate platform is a plan to finance the closure of brown coal power stations, an idea first proposed by ANU climate economists Frank Jotzo and Salim Mazouz.

In this proposal, brown coal plants would bid for the payment they would require to finance their own shutdown, with the cheapest bid being selected. The remaining plants would pay this cost, in line with their emissions.

Similar to the ETS, it would be expected that this cost would be reflected in increased offer prices to the market from the remaining generators. The direct costs would be temporary (a one-off payment) and small, relative to the overall wholesale price.

Indeed, Jotzo and Mazouz estimated it could cause a one-off rise of 1-2% in retail power bills. Analysis company Reputex found the impact could be between 0.2% and 1.3%.

However, Danny Price of Frontier Economics has suggested that the scheme could push up retail power prices by between 8% and 25%, as the result of a short-term price shock. But given the significant excess capacity in the market, and assuming that the market is indeed competitive, it is hard to see how such a increase would happen.

This point aside, the price argument misses the point of the scheme, which aims to deliver an “orderly transition” away from brown coal. The longer-term effects on supply and price of a brown coal exit will be similar, regardless of how the industry closes.

In fact, if it were left entirely to the market, the sudden retirement of an entire power plant might create even more of shock. This proposal is chiefly about ensuring an orderly, predictable transition.

50% renewable energy target (Labor)

The final element of Labor’s climate platform is a 50% renewable energy target by 2030. At this stage, not much detail has been unveiled other than shadow environment minister Mark Butler’s pledge that it will be “designed in a way that does not disturb investor sentiment around the delivery of the existing Renewable Energy Target” – something that a sector beset by uncertainty would welcome. As such, it is quite difficult to speculate on how electricity prices might react.

The current Renewable Energy Target is a certificate scheme that requires retailers to buy a certain amount of renewable energy. The cost of these certificates is passed on through electricity bills. However, as shown by the government’s own modelling, the interaction with the wholesale market results in a net saving to consumers.

Interestingly, and as the AEMC points out, the electricity ETS is designed to be flexible and integrate with a renewable energy target. Indeed, such an ETS could drive investment in renewable energy, replacing current subsidies through the Renewable Energy Target. The 50% target could theoretically be achieved through the ETS alone, if the baseline was set at the right level.

A bipartisan approach?

As it stands, the government’s climate platform is unlikely to have any impact on electricity prices. However, it will also not have a major impact on the electricity sector’s emissions.

Labor’s policies will have an impact, but as the AEMC notes it may occur “without a significant effect on absolute price levels faced by consumers”.

The government’s current polices will require strengthening to further reduce emissions. To achieve this, the Grattan Institute and others including the Business Council of Australia have supported ideas that would turn the Liberal platform into something very similar to Labor’s.

Indeed, modelling commissioned by the government itself assumes that Direct Action will eventually morph into a similar baseline-and-credit ETS, in order to meet long-term climate commitments.

Political slogans aside, perhaps a bipartisan approach is possible, without a significant effect on power bills.

Dylan McConnell received funding from the AEMC's consumer advocacy panel.

The closure of Port Augusta's Northern Power Plant marks the end of coal-fired generation in South Australia. Gary Sauer-Thompson/Flickr, CC BY-NC

South Australia’s last coal-fired power station closed on Monday this week, leaving the state with only gas and wind power generators.

The Northern Power Station, in Port Augusta on the northern end of the Spencer Gulf, has joined Playford B – the state’s other coal-fired power station which has already been retired.

The coal mine at Leigh Creek that supplied brown coal to the power stations also closed earlier this year, so there is no easy option for re-opening the power stations.

The immediate impact of the closure was a brief wobble in wholesale electricity prices, with more energy brought in from Victoria’s brown coal power stations (adding to carbon emissions).

But how could it affect the state in the long term?

Could South Australia run out of power?

Average electricity demand in South Australia is 1.4 gigawatts, and the state record for peak demand of 3.4 gigawatts was set in January 2011. In the past two years the highest demand was 2.9 gigawatts.

Rollout of rooftop solar panels is one of the reasons demand from the grid has been going down. The impact on the peak demand – the time of day when most people are using appliances – is less clear, because if the peak occurs after sunset, solar panels will not reduce it.

With the closure of the 520 megawatt Northern Power Station, South Australia is left with 2,800 MW of capacity in its gas-fired generators, which can be fired up when needed, and 1,500 MW of wind farms, which of course produce energy only when the wind blows. Most gas generation capacity comes from the Torrens Island A (480 MW) and B (800 MW) installations, built in the 1960s and 1970s, respectively.

There have been discussions about retiring Torrens Island A (it was mothballed for a period in 2014), but the departure of Northern appears to have delayed those plans.

The state also has a total of about 600 MW of rooftop solar, but, as noted above, this technically counts as reducing demand rather than adding to supply.

South Australia is also connected to Victoria via two transmission lines, one at Heywood (recently upgraded to 650 MW) and one at Murray Link (220 MW). This gives the state access to a potential 870 MW of Victorian power.

If South Australia gets close to record demand, the state clearly outstrips the capacity of the local gas generators. If the wind isn’t blowing, then the state will depend on the interconnectors.

But there is an unfortunate factor that transmission lines tend to fail under very high temperatures, which correspond to the times of highest demand.

It may sound unlikely, but South Australia is at risk of failing to meet demand. This would depend on a very specific set of circumstances:

• record demand (despite the increase in rooftop solar reducing demand)

• no wind

• failed interconnectors (or failure of local generators).

A role for storage

This situation means the state is the most likely location for investment in storage. The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) recently published a report on storage that identified several locations in South Australia that would be logical places to install commercial-scale batteries.

We at the Melbourne Energy Institute have previously written about pumped hydro storage options, in particular the novel approach of using salt water. This may be of particular use in a very dry state such as South Australia.

But batteries are only going to be attractive investments if there is sufficient volatility in the market to provide arbitrage opportunities. Arbitrage, put simply, is the process of buying low and selling high.

Storage systems need be able to be charged with low-cost energy (for instance, overnight when demand is low, or when the wind is blowing hard) and dispatch the power back onto the grid at a sufficient profit to cover the investment costs.

We are currently in a low-demand period of the year (the shoulder seasons have both low heating and cooling requirements). This means there has not been much shift in electricity prices coming out of South Australia with the removal of Northern. It might not be until next summer, with hot temperatures and increased demand from air conditioners, that we are able to see the true magnitude of the impact of this exit on electricity prices and market volatility.

To date (only a couple of days since the closure), the wind has been blowing hard and there has been no need to increase substantially the generation from other fossil generators. Likewise, there have been no discernible shifts in the spot market prices.

Finally, the impact on carbon emissions will also be interesting. This will depend on how the remaining generators respond. The gap left by Northern may be filled with South Australian gas, in which case total emissions will fall, but more likely the gap will be filled with Victorian coal power via the interconnectors, resulting in no reduction in net emissions.

We will know the net result in due course – watch this space.

Roger Dargaville receives funding from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA).

Dingoes on Queensland’s popular Fraser Island are healthy and well, contrary to local claims. In fact, they consume one of the widest size ranges of prey in the animal kingdom, according to recent research published in Scientific Reports.

Dingoes are a national and international icon of great public and conservation interest. As Australia’s largest terrestrial predator, they enjoy similar popularity to other top predators such as lions, bears and wolves.

Fraser Island’s dingoes helped to resolve the Azaria Chamberlain case and are regarded as one of the purest remaining strains of dingoes in Queensland.

About 100-200 dingoes, representing about 19 packs, live on the island at any one time. Most dingoes are seen on the popular eastern beaches, where the occasional euthanasia of dangerous dingoes always fans the flames of controversy and conspiracy.

Observations of “skinny” dingoes have led some to voice concerns that Fraser Island dingoes are starving with nothing to eat and some predicted they would even be extinct by now.

So why are they still alive and doing well in good numbers? The answer may have something to do with their eating habits.

A dog’s breakfast

Based on 2,196 dingo scats, 144 stomach samples and more than 30,000 camera trap records, my colleagues and I found that Fraser Island dingoes eat prey ranging from tiny insects to giant dead whales washed ashore – and everything in between.

The most frequently occurring food items in scats were northern brown bandicoots (47.9%), followed by fish (26.8%) and large skinks (11.5%).

Eastern grey kangaroos, feral pigs and even feral horses showed up, along with threatened long-nosed potoroos and eastern chestnut mice, confirming the continued presence of these animals on the island.

Plastic food wrappers, tin foil, human faeces, underwear, hats, a variety of different shoes, fish hooks, iPods, beer and soft drink cans, alcohol bladders, steel wool and plastic containers also made an appearance.

Dingo body weight and condition

Given the wide range of food items going down the hatch, it should come as no surprise that Fraser Island dingo body weight and condition are doing remarkably well.

From 455 weight records (the largest known sample of dingo weights ever reported), Fraser Island dingoes over 12 months of age weigh in at 16.6 kg on average, compared to mainland dingoes' typical weight of only 15.7 kg.

And when it comes to body condition scores (ranging from 1 for skinny dingoes to 5 for grossly obese animals), nearly 75% of dingoes scored 4 or 5. Only 5.6% had a score of 2.5 or less.

Parasite loads were also low and comparable to other dingo populations.

So what does this all mean for Fraser Island dingoes?

The available data does not support notions that Fraser Island dingoes are starving, have restricted diets or are in poor physical condition.

Rather, they indicate that dingoes on Fraser Island are capable of exploiting a diverse array of food sources, which contributes to the vast majority of them being in good-excellent physical condition.

Underweight or skinny dingoes are still sometimes seen, and will continue to be seen forever, but this is a normal and natural phenomenon associated with wild populations of dingoes and other wildlife, and is nothing to be concerned about.

Skinny dingoes may represent socially excluded individuals, females that have recently lactated and raised litters, sick or diseased animals, or those suffering from temporary nutritional stress during normal periods of food shortage.

Dingoes also have excess digestive capacity, meaning that they do not need to eat every day and regularly endure periods of several days without food or water. As a result, variable body condition scores and fat reserves can be expected in and between individuals under normal conditions.

It is unreasonable to expect that every individual in a population will be the same weight all the time, or that all individuals will survive. Although some individual dingoes may be “skinny”, the population actually contains far more “fat” individuals. Dingoes on the island are also known to live for over 13 years, which is a long time for a wild dingo.

Returning to natural diets

Comparisons with previous studies also suggested that dingoes have returned to a more natural diet over the past 20 years. This is in line with a range of sound non-lethal management approaches, including increased education and the exclusion of dingoes from open rubbish dumps and other substantial sources of human food (such as townships and campgrounds).

This is all good news for the future of Fraser Island’s dingoes. If dingoes focus more on eating natural food sources (such as bandicoots and stranded marine whales) and less on human-provided food, then we may see fewer negative dingo-human interactions or attacks in the future, and an ultimate reduction in the number of dingoes needing to be euthanased for dangerous behaviour.

Continuing to feed dingoes with human food would be a disaster for Fraser Island. The saying “a fed dingo is a dead dingo” is not far from the truth.

Research from around the world has shown that supplementary feeding of wild animals increases their numbers beyond the point that the environment can handle. This ultimately leads to more animals in need of feeding and subsequently greater numbers of deaths, in both the fed animals and other wildlife too.

This has been observed with dingo populations in other areas of Australia and can be easily avoided on Fraser Island with proper management and ongoing research.

Funding for components of the published study was provided to Ben Allen by the Queensland Government's 'Fraser Island Dingo Research Program' (Grant number: 06251-2015), administered by the Department of Science, Information Technology and Innovation. The funders had no role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the published study or this article.