"The coal industry in New South Wales and Queensland is using as much water as all of Sydney’s households, according to new research.
A new report by University of Adelaide water resources academic Ian
Overton, commissioned by the Australian Conservation Foundation, used
public data to examine the impact of coal mining and coal-fired power on
water resources.
It finds the amount of water consumed by coal mining and coal-fired power in NSW and Queensland is about 383bn litres a year, roughly equivalent to the household water needs of 5.2 million people."
' “While farmers recover from the last devastating drought and prepare
for the next, each year the coal industry uses as much freshwater as
every household in Queensland or the entire population of Sydney,” she
said.
“When
you add coal-fired electricity’s water consumption and contamination to
its climate pollution, it’s clear Australia should rapidly replace
coal-fired power with clean energy.
“Becoming a modern renewable energy nation will enable us to weather
future shocks and become a safer, more sustainable and resilient
country.” '
'Basically, Moore and his colleagues have made a film attacking
renewable energy as a sham and arguing that the environmental movement
is just a tool of corporations trying to make money off green energy.
“One of the most dangerous things right now is the illusion that
alternative technologies, like wind and solar, are somehow different
from fossil fuels,” Ozzie Zehner, one of the film’s producers, tells the
camera. When visiting a solar facility, he insists: “You use more
fossil fuels to do this than you’re getting benefit from it. You would
have been better off just burning the fossil fuels.”
That’s not true, not in the least — the time it takes for a solar
panel to pay back the energy used to build it is well under four years.
Since it lasts three decades, it means 90 percent of the power it
produces is pollution-free, compared with zero percent of the power from
burning fossil fuels. It turns out that pretty much everything else
about the movie was wrong — there have been at least 24 debunkings, many of them painfully rigorous; as one scientist wrote in a particularly scathing takedown, “Planet of the Humans is deeply useless. Watch anything else.” Moore’s fellow filmmaker Josh Fox, in an epic unraveling
of the film’s endless lies, got in one of the best shots: “Releasing
this on the eve of Earth Day’s 50th anniversary is like Bernie Sanders
endorsing Donald Trump while chugging hydroxychloroquine.” ' Read the Rolling Stone article
In these times of unprecedented uncertainty, my to-do list helps me stay sane.
It doesn’t matter that I have no places to go or people to see. With
COVID-19 tossing normal life down the drain the world over, the shred of
normalcy helps me stave off apathy, paralysis, and my sudden aversion
to wearing proper pants.
I’m not the only one desperate for a little structure in my life in
the age of social distancing and sheltering in place. Many of us who are
fortunate enough to stay home during this crisis have been busy
establishing work-life boundaries, maintaining an exercise routine, and
staying in touch with loved ones. While these are all great ways to
break up the monotony of sheltering in place, it’s also possible to
pencil climate action into your newfound daily routine. To get started, Grist put together a to-do list of daily
climate-related activities that are compatible with social distancing
for two weeks straight.
Day 1: Stock up — thoughtfully. Before you speed out
to the store and panic-buy everything in sight, stop and take
inventory. Check out everything you already own, notice what should be
consumed soon, and write down what you really need. Bulk beans, lentils,
and grains are solid options: They’ll stay good for ages, are healthy
and versatile, and are climate-friendly foods. And having a
consolidated, well-planned list and an organized fridge will prevent
food waste — a major contributor to climate change
— and save you unnecessary trips to the store. You can even take a
first step towards growing some of your own food by buying an herb to
grow on your windowsill — mint, sage, oregano, parsley, and rosemary are
all pretty hard to kill. (Before you finalize your shopping list, check
out the action items for Days 2, 5, and 10.)
Day 2: Power strips to the rescue. Now that you’re
working from home (alongside a partner, perhaps, or kids home from
school), consolidate your outlets and save electricity by plugging your
chargers into power strips that can be switched off when you don’t need
them. Ditto if you have a toaster, coffee machine, and electric kettle
all plugged in on the kitchen counter. If you don’t own power strips,
add them to your list for Day 1 — lots of essential stores sell them.
It’s easy to forget about all the appliances we leave plugged in to suck up power like vampires, but now that you aren’t rushing off to work, it’s easy to stop wasting power.
Day 3: Junk mail begone! By your third day indoors,
it’s probably become apparent just how much junk mail piles up when left
to its own devices. Why companies still send snail mail advertisements
addressed to “Current Resident” is beyond me, but asking to be taken off
their lists will save paper, energy, and your time. The website Catalog Choice
makes it easy to get off the mailing lists of businesses that just
won’t leave you alone. Now’s also a good time to switch all your monthly
bills and medical statements to online only if you haven’t already.
' “I think the main issue is that people focus way, way too much on
people’s personal footprints, and whether they fly or not, without
really dealing with the structural things that really cause carbon
dioxide levels to go up,” said Gavin Schmidt, a climatologist and the
director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York
City.
Transportation makes up a little over 20 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions, according to the International Energy Agency. (In the United States, it makes up around 28 percent.)
That’s a significant chunk, but it also means that even if all travel
were completely carbon-free (imagine a renewable-powered, electrified
train system, combined with personal EVs and battery-powered airplanes),
there’d still be another 80 percent of fossil fuel emissions billowing
into the skies.
So where are all those emissions coming from? For one thing,
utilities are still generating roughly the same amount of electricity —
even if more of it’s going to houses instead of workplaces. Electricity
and heating combined account for over 40 percent of global emissions.
Many people around the world rely on wood, coal, and natural gas to keep
their homes warm and cook their food — and in most places, electricity
isn’t so green either." '
Michael Moore is a dude known for provocation. Every documentary he
drops is designed to paint a world of sharp contrasts with clear bad
guys. They’re designed to get a reaction and get people talking, so in
some ways, him dropping a documentary he executive produced trashing
renewable energy on Earth Day makes total sense.
Planet of the Humans is directed and narrated by Jeff Gibbs,
a self-proclaimed “photographer, campaigner, adventurer, and
storyteller” who has co-produced some of Moore’s films. The documentary
came out on Earth Day, positioning itself up as some tough, real talk
not just about renewable energy but environmental groups.
And by real
talk, I mean it cast renewables as no better than fossil fuels and
environmental groups as sleek corporate outfits in bed with billionaires
helping kill the planet. As Emily Atkin put it in her HEATED newsletter
on Thursday, “[e]ntertaining good-faith arguments about how to stop
climate change is my job, and I have no reason at present to believe
Moore and director Jeff Gibbs argued in bad faith.” Indeed. So I decided
to listen to what they had to say.
I’ll leave the film criticism to those wiser than me (though I will
say I feel like I didn’t watch three acts but three separate movies),
but I will say this: The movie—which is available for free on YouTube
and is currently on the service’s trending list with 1 million views in
24 hours—is deeply flawed in both its premise, proposed solutions, and
who gets to voice them.
The movie’s central thesis is that we are on the brink of extinction
and have been sold a damaged bill of goods about all forms of renewable
energy by environmental groups motivated by profit. Essentially, the
argument is we’re all dirty and the stain will never come out no matter
how hard we try.
There are a few issues at play. One is that much of the issues the
film takes with solar and wind are based on anachronistic viewpoints. PV
Magazine, a solar trade publication,notes
that it’s “difficult to take the film seriously on any topic when it
botches the solar portion so thoroughly. Although the film was released
in 2020, the solar industry it examines, whether through incompetence or
venality, is from somewhere back in 2009.”
The film also goes through great lengths to throw solar and wind in
the same boat as burning biomass for power. The latter relies on serious
carbon accounting bullshittery
to be carbon neutral. A critique of biomass is fair and something I
would honestly have watched a whole film about. And ditto for the film’s
critique of large environmental organisations, which rely on large
funders that may provide money with strings attached (though Bill
McKibben, one of the film’s targets and founder of 350.org, came out strongly critiquing how he and the organisation were portrayed).
The film, for example, highlights the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign,
which has helped shutter more than 300 coal plants around the U.S. The
program’s biggest donor is Mike Bloomberg, who sees natural gas—which
has replaced much of that coal capacity—as a bridge fuel (which it is decidedly not).
And this is where the narrative Gibbs tells and the one we need to be
telling diverges. Gibbs is happy to trash the unholy alliance between
big green groups and big dollar funders who have, in some cases, made
their fortunes on extractive industries and the system that relies on
their existence. That can lead to conflicts—real or perceived—about how
green groups spend their time. And frankly, I’m there with him.
Gibbs’ uses this situation to take the leap to population control as
the only solution. Yes, renewables are bad and so are billionaires and
the corporate-philanthropic industrial complex so, Gibbs concludes, we
should probably get rid of some humans ASAP. Over the course of the
movie, he interviews a cast of mostly white experts who are mostly men
to make that case. It’s got a bit more than a whiff of eugenics and
ecofascism, which is a completely bonkers takeaway from everything
presented. If renewables are so bad, then what does a few million less
people on the planet going to do? Oh, and who are we going to knock off
or control for? Who decides? How does population control even solve the
problem of corporate influence on nonprofits and politics?
Those questions lead to a dark place. We’ve already had a glimpse of
what that ideology looks like in the hands of individuals. The alleged manifesto
penned by last year’s El Paso shooting suspect sounds an awful lot like
Gibbs’ movie, arguing that extractive companies “are heading the
destruction of our environment by shamelessly overharvesting resources”
and that we to “get rid of enough people” to get things back in balance.
Which is a whole lot of nope.
I don’t mean to say Gibbs is therefor an ecofascist. But to see an
ostensibly serious environmental movie backed by an influential
filmmaker peddle these ideas is genuinely disturbing, especially at a
time when we’re seeing it pop up elsewhere in response to the coronavirus.
Also side note that it’s also incredibly myopic that Gibbs goes after
environmental nonprofits for taking corporate money while ignoring the
Sierra Club’s and other early conservation group’s history of support for racist ideas about population control he nods to as a solution (it should be noted some groups are trying to make up for past misdeeds today).
What’s most frustrating about Gibbs’ film is he walks right up to
some serious issues and ignores clear solutions. The critique of the
compromised corporate philanthropy model is legit. We should absolutely
hold nonprofits to account when they don’t live up to their missions.
But the solution isn’t to take the leap to population control. It’s to
tax the rich so they can’t use philanthropic funding as cover for their
misdeeds while simultaneously filling government coffers to implement
democratic solutions.
There’s a reason that Breitbart and otherconservativevoices
aligned with climate denial and fossil fuel companies have taken a
shine to the film. It’s because it ignores the solution of holding power
to account and sounds like a racist dog whistle.
We also should absolutely interrogate the systems and supply chains of renewable energy. The lithium industry’s violent toll
on land and people in Latin American countries with vast reserves is
real. Letting corporations run the show promises to lead to future
violence, regardless of how many people live on Earth. The film doesn’t
interview any of the new wave of environmental leaders who see the fight
against these injustices and the climate crisis as intrinsically linked. It’s too bad since that’s a message Gibbs—and the rest of the world—need to hear now more than ever.
But prominent environmentalist Bill McKibben, who was criticized in the film, issued this response to the movie:
I am used to ceaseless harassment and attack from the
fossil fuel industry, and I’ve done my best to ignore a lifetime of
death threats from right-wing extremists. It does hurt more to be
attacked by others who think of themselves as environmentalists.
Josh Fox, the director of Gasland, led a campaign to have the film taken down and for Michael Moore to issue an apology:
I just had the unfortunate displeasure of watching PLANET OF THE HUMANS the #Earthday freebie irresponsibly put out by Michael Moore @MMFlint.
The film is an unsubstantiated, unscientific, poorly made piece of
yellow journalism which attacks proven renewable energy and science..
— Josh Fox EndFossilFuels (@joshfoxfilm) April 22, 2020
Two days later, Fox said that the film’s distributor agreed to take
it down. But the direct-to-YouTube video remains online, now clocking
more than 1.5 million views.
1) I just received notice that the distributor of Michael Moore's #PlanetoftheHumans is taking the film down due to misinformation in the film.
The
full economic impact of the Covid-19 is still yet unknown, but it is
clear that world’s governments face a choice in their response: Do they
look to protect industries in terminal decline, or do they look to the
long-term, supporting new green industries to flourish in a
post-Covid-19 future?
A growing number of experts and global
leaders have joined calls for the response to Covid-19 to be a ‘green
response’, including the implementation of a ‘Green New Deal’ for a
sustainable economy popularised by US Democrats.
The Green New
Deal provides a vision for a sustainable future economy, and integrates
proposals for ambitious climate action, investment in clean energy, a
circular economy and includes a boost to direct public sector investment
in sustainable infrastructure, including electric vehicles and public
transport systems.
Unfortunately for Australia it is becoming
increasingly clear that the Morrison government is steadfast in giving
life support to the fossil fuel industry, clearly indication its
preference for short-term opportunities
for fossil fuel interests, and its ministers have been clearly working
reinforce the position of the oil, gas and coal sectors.
Resources minister Keith Pitt has gone in to bat for the gas and coal
sectors, while energy minister Angus Taylor is working to prop up
demand for oil and relaxing already weak regulations on the oil sector,
including fuel standards.
This includes the Morrison government gifting almost $100 million to the United States to purchase oil that will remain stored in the United State’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
On
Wednesday, Taylor announced that the government would also be looking
to soften fuel standards to allow the industry to redeploy stockpiled
aviation fuels for use in other parts of the transport sector. Australia
already has weak fuel standards by most international standards, and a
further weakening of the standards will likely lead to worse
environmental and health outcomes.
Pitt made the government’s
priorities even clearer, welcoming the expansion of Australia’s gas
sector with Arrow Energy’s commitment to a new gas project in
Queensland. “Notwithstanding COVID-19, our energy and resources will be
important in getting not just our economy back on its feet, but vital in
assisting our important trading partners to kickstart their economies,”
Pitt said.
“The Australian Government is committed to working
with the oil and gas industry in order to provide support and
flexibility given the changing circumstances at this time.
At the same time, Taylor – who doubles as emissions reduction minister – has praised the electricity and gas sectors for overseeing significant falls in domestic prices. But he studiously
avoided any mention of the ongoing significant cuts in greenhouse gas
emissions in the grid, or the prominent role played in that by
investment in wind and solar.
Despite Covid-19, the threat of climate change has not subsided and
the need to transition the global energy system to one with
significantly less greenhouse gas emissions will remain a pressing
global issue during and after the world has dealt with the pandemic. And
studies show that acting on climate change will deliver substantial
economic benefits for those who embrace it.
The International
Renewable Energy Agency this week published new analysis that shows
ambitious investment in the clean energy sector would provide
substantial benefits to the global community, boosting global economic
output by as much as A$160 trillion by 2050 above a ‘business as usual’ scenario.
This
included the potential to create almost 250,000 new jobs in Oceania’s
renewable energy sector by 2050, with growth more than compensating for
inevitable job losses in the fossil fuel sector. A global poll
conducted by Ipsos in April found that 71 per cent of adults globally
still view climate change as serious a long-term crisis as Covid-19. The
figure was lower in Australia, with 59 per cent agreeing with the
proposition locally.
“Despite the environment taking a back seat
compared with other current issues, it’s still important to people.
There is strong support among the public for a green economic recovery
from the COVID-19 crisis,” Ipsos Australia public affairs director,
Jennifer Brook, said.
While it still sees a majority of
Australians ranking the climate change response as equal importance with
Covid-19, the Morrison government will likely see the weaker response
as an opportunity to put climate action event further on the backburner.
Bruce Robertson from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial
Analysis told RenewEconomy that moves to prop up ailing parts of the
fossil fuel sector were a mistake.
“While governments say they are
not supposed to be picking winners, they are certainly not supposed to
be picking losers,” Robertson said.
“Globally since the
coronavirus pandemic, there’s been a permanent shift down in demand –
and the world is swimming in gas and oil. How will this investment get
us out of the hole? It is not a governments role to pick winners. It is
definitely not a governments role to pick proven losing industries to
shower tax payer dollars on.”
“The government is making big
decisions about our future right now. We need a new normal, not going
back to the old ways of a reliance on emissions-intensive gas, which is
both a fossil fuel and a loss-making industry. Gas is not the industry
of the future. We have the choice now. We can do things differently
going forward,” Robertson added.
With a long-term view, strategic
investments in the green infrastructure required for the long term
offers the best possible economic response to the Covid-19 crisis.
The
government can do this by heeding the calls of the clean energy sector
to include investment and support for new zero-emissions generation and
energy efficiency in stimulus measures.
Doing so will not only
provide a powerful form of short-term economic stimulus, but will also
leave Australia better placed in the long-term, well after the crisis of
Covid-19 as been resolved.
RenewEconomy and its sister sites One Step Off The Grid and The Driven
will continue to publish throughout the Covid-19 crisis, posting good
news about technology and project development, and holding government,
regulators and business to account. But as the conference market
evaporates, and some advertisers pull in their budgets, readers can help
by making a voluntary donation here
to help ensure we can continue to offer the service free of charge and
to as wide an audience as possible. Thankyou for your support.
Michael
Mazengarb is a journalist with RenewEconomy, based in Sydney. Before
joining RenewEconomy, Michael worked in the renewable energy sector for
more than a decade.
New
Zealand climate minister says governments must not just return to the
way things were, and instead plot a new course to ease climate change
James Shaw
James Shaw, New Zealand’s climate change minister, has asked the
country’s independent climate change commission to check whether its
emissions targets under the Paris agreement are enough to limit global
heating to 1.5C. He explains why he’s prioritising the issue during a
strict national lockdown to stop the spread of Covid-19, which could
send New Zealand’s unemployment rate soaring.
To say that we find ourselves in an unprecedented moment is so
obvious and has been so often repeated it’s almost become white noise.
What is less obvious, however, is where we go from here.
In any significant crisis, let alone one as catastrophic as the
Covid-19 pandemic, it is an entirely understandable human reflex to want
things to “return to normal”, to “go back to the way they were before”.
And, when faced with economic headwinds – in recent decades, the
Asian financial crisis, the global financial crisis and, in our own
case, the Christchurch earthquakes) successive governments the world
over have directed their efforts to meeting public expectation and
getting back to business as usual.
Unfortunately, one of the features of business as usual was a highly
polluting and ecologically unsustainable economy on a pathway that was
locking in catastrophic climate change.
Successive responses to economic crises have seen climate change and
the natural environment we depend on for life on Earth as a
nice-to-have, something to think about once we’ve got the economy back
on track and there’s a bit more money to go round.
