Alan Kohler: Scott Morrison, the Murdochs and the crime of the century (excerpt)

 "It’s not entirely Scott Morrison’s fault that he managed to look like a dissembling idiot at President Joe Biden’s leader’s summit on climate change last week.

He probably hasn’t read a word of the science about global warming and the grim future that awaits his children and grandchildren.

That’s not an excuse, but it tells us the scientists and bureaucrats who advise him and other politicians have been falling down badly on their jobs.

Those people who actually know what’s going on have allowed themselves to be intimidated by Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch and their bullies, who in turn have been collaborators in the crime of the century.

That the fossil fuel industry managed to turn global warming into a political issue – Left saying it’s happening, Right saying it’s not – might have been tactically brilliant, but it was also a vast global crime.

A looming catastrophe verified by scientists was turned into just another political debate to protect the profits of oil, gas and coal companies."

 

Go to original story in The New Daily

Opinion: No gas-led recovery thanks, we need clean energy : Excerpt from BCS

 "The Morrison-McCormack government is planning a massive expansion of the gas industry as a way to recover from COVID-19. However, a gas-led recovery is not the way to go. It's the way to lock Australia into a climate-destroying, fossil-fueled disaster.

A recovery should, if the science is respected as it is with COVID, transition Australia to 100 per cent clean energy, create thousands of clean jobs, boost the economy, and bring Australia's emissions down. A recovery that would make Australia a renewable energy superpower.

Despite the scientific, economic and health evidence that we must decarbonise rapidly, the government is planning a vast increase in fossil fuels. They have no plan to transition away from coal, and no plan to close down coal-fired power stations, although they will anyway because they are getting old.

There are a staggering 22 new gas projects, starting with three vast areas - the Beetaloo Basin in the Territory, and the North Bowen and Galilee Basins in Queensland. In NSW, there are plans for enormous volumes of gas to be extracted just off the coastline between Newcastle and Sydney."

Read the complete Bellingen Courier Sun Opinion piece by Harry Creamer.

Coalition quietly adds fossil fuel industry leaders to emissions reduction panel (excerpts): The Guardian

"The Morrison government has quietly appointed fossil fuel industry leaders and a controversial economist to a committee responsible for ensuring the integrity of projects that get climate funding.

Critics have raised concerns about whether some appointees to the Emissions Reduction Assurance Committee may have a potential conflict of interest that could leave its decisions open to legal challenge.

The overhaul of the committee follows the government indicating it plans to expand the industries that can access its $2.5bn emissions reduction fund, including opening it to carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects by oil and gas companies."

........

 "Bill Hare, the chief executive and senior scientist with Climate Analytics, said it appeared the government had appointed “mostly people concerned with the status quo” rather than aiming for a rapid shift towards zero emissions.

He said he was concerned the government planned to allow fossil fuel companies to receive climate funding for merely reducing emissions below inflated estimates of what their CO2 output otherwise might be."

............

"The emissions reduction fund has so far operated with limited success in reducing national emissions. The government has paid $740m for emissions cuts and signed contracts for another $1.66bn. Despite this, national emissions had dipped only slightly since the Coalition was elected in 2013 prior to the Covid-19 shutdown.

Government data shows the small reduction was overwhelmingly due to the rise of solar and wind energy, which are not supported through the fund." 

 To go to the original The Guardian article

Climate and Covid-19: converging crisis (excerpt): The Lancet

"That health and climate change are interwoven is widely accepted, with extensive evidence of their interactions. For the past 5 years, the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change has monitored and reported more than 40 global indicators that measure the impact of our changing climate on health. The newly published 2020 report includes novel indicators on heat-related mortality, migration and population displacement, urban green spaces, low-carbon diets, and the economic costs of labour capacity loss due to extreme heat. The breadth of the indicators has deepened scientific understanding of how climate affects health and puts stress on health systems. This is manifested in, for example, the health effects of air pollution leading to asthma, challenges to global food security and reduced crop yield potentially leading to poor diets, limited access to green space increasing risk factors for mental health conditions, and vulnerability to heat in people older than 65 years. Treating these resultant health conditions effectively depends on health systems' capacity, which is in turn dependent on the resilience of health services that are increasingly stretched in response to the two crises."

To go to The Lancet article 

 

 

Looking Ahead to 2021: COP26, Clean Air, and Biden's Next Steps (excerpt): DeSmog

President-elect Joe Biden delivers remarks about the U.S. economy

 during a press briefing at the Queen Theater on Nov. 16, 2020

 in Wilmington, Delaware. Credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

"Biden’s next steps

If winning the U.S. election wasn’t exactly straightforward, Joe Biden now has a mountain to climb. He takes over the White House from the most climate-sceptic President in history; President Donald Trump scaled back over 70 environmental regulations during his time in office and weakened Obama-era regulations on everything from oil and gas companies to air pollution.

Biden, and his Vice President Kamala Harris, have vowed to put the climate at the heart of his presidency. But all the rhetoric in the world won’t be enough to reduce the footprint of the world’s second largest emitting nation, so they’ll have their work cut out for them — especially if the Democrats fail to win the Senate.

On the global stage, Biden’s first major act after his January 20 inauguration will be to rejoin the Paris Agreement after Trump officially withdrew in November. This will commit the U.S. to contribute its fair share to keeping global warming to 1.5C or 2C above pre-industrial temperatures. But actually delivering adequate reductions in emissions will be an uphill battle.

We’ll be looking to see how this plays out on a global stage – and scrutinising how Biden plans to cut U.S. emissions while keeping environmental justice firmly in focus. It remains to be seen whether Biden and Boris Johnson manage to bond over climate change, as has been suggested, despite the president-elect’s serious concerns over Britain’s Brexit policy."

To go to Complete DeSmog article _  By Phoebe Cooke

 

Related:  Is Climate-Related Financial Regulation Coming Under Biden? Wall Street Is Betting on It (excerpt): Inside Climate News

Impacts of Climate Change as Drivers of Migration (excerpt): Migration Policy Institute

A family in Pakistan walks through

 flooded streets. 

(Photo: Asian Development Bank)

"Future Projections and Prospects

This article has provided an overview of the major strands of research on climate change-induced migration. Returning to the question posed at the beginning, how likely is it that we will witness mass migration as result of climate change in coming decades?

Researchers have used a variety of techniques to try and predict numbers of future migrants and, to some degree, source and destination areas. At the simplest level, exposure models identify the number of people who will likely be exposed to a given hazard—most often sea-level rise, but also recurrent flooding or drought—and estimate the proportion of people likely to move. For example, researchers Scott Kulp and Benjamin Strauss estimate that 1 billion people now occupy land less than 10 meters above current high-tide lines, including 230 million below one meter who will presumably need to relocate as sea levels rise. At a more sophisticated level, statistical models of populations’ past tendencies to migrate in response to climate anomalies project possible numbers of migrants under various future scenarios. "

 Original article 

 Related:  Sea-level rise from climate change could exceed the high-end projections, scientists warn (excerpt): CBS News

 

https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/infographic/2018/03/19/groundswell---preparing-for-internal-climate-migration

 

 

How The Fracking Revolution Is Killing the U.S. Oil and Gas Industry (excerpt): DeSmog

"Competition from Renewables

At the same time, cheap renewable energy is out-competing gas.

A new report released in December by industry analysts Wood MacKenzie predicts that “More than 75% of new liquefied natural gas global supply could be at risk due to competition from renewable energy.”

In December, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) predicted that the share of electricity in the U.S. produced by natural gas would decline “in response to a forecast increase in the price of natural gas delivered to electricity generators.” The EIA predicts that the percentage of U.S. power generated from natural gas could fall from 39 percent in 2020 to 34 percent in 2021 due to a rise in prices. And the EIA predicts renewable energy, and a return to coal in some locations, will replace that market share.

This highlights a fundamental problem facing the gas industry. Current prices are too low for the industry to make money. But when prices rise to levels where the industry could make money, the gas is no longer economically competitive because renewable energy is cheaper right now.

As gas prices rise and renewable energy prices continue to fall, the U.S. gas industry is in a no-win situation.

Solar is now ‘cheapest electricity in history’, confirms IEA https://t.co/mdhhqjsbgG

— Christian Breyer (@ChristianOnRE) December 13, 2020

A recent analysis by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), for instance, found that shale gas producers in the Appalachian region of the U.S. lost another $500 million in the third quarter of 2020.

The U.S. gas industry also is suffering due to the warmer winters the U.S. is experiencing — warmer weather due in part to the burning of fossil fuels and the methane released by the natural gas industry. Warmer weather depresses gas prices because there is less heating demand.

IEEFA, which has been tracking the industry’s decline, recently summed up the reality of what the “shale revolution” has done: “The shale revolution has turned the U.S. into the world’s most prolific gas producer. Yet in financial terms, the gas production boom has been an unmitigated financial bust.”

It’s Not Easy to Pay Off Debt

Despite all of this, to this day, the U.S. oil and gas industry is still producing large amounts of oil and gas by fracking — and it continues to lose money doing it. The companies that are doing this have taken on large amounts of debt to make this happen."

By Justin Mikulka • Tuesday, December 22, 2020 - 07:26 

 From: How The Fracking Revolution Is Killing the U.S. Oil and Gas Industry (excerpt): DeSmog

Related:  Big batteries are getting bigger and smarter, and doing things fossil fuels can’t do (excerpt): RenewEconomy