Showing posts with label climate emergency. Show all posts
Showing posts with label climate emergency. Show all posts

Monday 17 July 2023

Climate Change State of Play in 2023: as seen from Yamba, Australia and the rest of the world

 

Yamba (pop. est. 6,388) at the mouth of the Clarence River estuary on the NSW far north coast, has an official weather station ID: 058012 which has been recording observations since May 1877 from a headline on the northside of the town.


What this relatively long history, of measuring air temperature, humidity levels, wind direction & velocity along with rainfall, is currently indicating is that from January to June 2023 monthly temperatures have been hotter than the 145 year averages.


While over the same period rainfall is so far below monthly averages that by June - the first month of Winter - rainfall was est. 125-127mm below the 145 year average for that month and occurred across only 7 of the 30 June days.


Yamba, like much of the Clarence Valley and 23.3% of the North Coast has been classified as Drought Affected on the NSW DPI Combined Drought Indicator (CDI).


NSW DPI CDI mapping as of 12 July 2023














Reading the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) webpages, it is looking increasingly likely that an El Niño event will be declared in the southern hemisphere before September 2023.


It seems that little Yamba and Australia are marching in step with the rest of the world.......


Washington Post, 13 July 2023:


The world is hotter than it’s been in thousands of years, and it’s as if every alarm bell on Earth were ringing.


The warnings are echoing through the drenched mountains of Vermont, where two months of rain just fell in only two days. India and Japan were deluged by extreme flooding.


They’re blaring from the scorching streets of Texas, Florida, Spain and China, with a severe heat wave also building in Phoenix and the Southwest in coming days.


They’re burbling up from the oceans, where temperatures have surged to levels considered “beyond extreme.”


And they’re showing up in unprecedented, still-burning wildfires in Canada that have sent plumes of dangerous smoke into the United States.


Scientists say there is no question that this cacophony was caused by climate change — or that it will continue to intensify as the planet warms. Research shows that human greenhouse gas emissions, particularly from burning fossil fuels, have raised Earth’s temperature by about 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.2 Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels. Unless humanity radically transforms the way people travel, generate energy and produce food, the global average temperature is on track to increase by more than 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 Fahrenheit), according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — unleashing catastrophes that will make this year’s disasters seem mild.


The only question, scientists say, is when the alarms will finally be loud enough to make people wake up.


This is not the new normal,” said Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at Imperial College London. “We don’t know what the new normal is. The new normal will be what it is once we do stop burning fossil fuels … and we’re nowhere near doing that.”….


Read the full article here.


The Sydney Morning Herald, 14 July 2023, p 22:


Natural disasters and extreme weather are thrashing the northern hemisphere as temperature records rapidly topple. Floods are overwhelming parts of Asia and Europe, fires are ravaging the US, sea surface temperatures off Europe are the hottest on record and the global average temperature has been at a record high four times in the past week.


Drought is sapping northern parts of China and heatwaves are paralysing cities at the same time deadly floods displace thousands in the south. It's just a taste of what's to come as climate change worsens.


Marine heatwaves


The ingredients for the catastrophic weather events in the northern hemisphere have been brewing in global oceans for months. In the lead-up to Earth's hottest week in recorded history, between July 3 and 9 this year, 40 per cent of the world's oceans were stewing through severe marine heatwaves.


"A big part of the fact that we've got these records occurring is because the oceans are so warm," said marine heatwave expert Associate Professor Alex Sen Gupta from UNSW's Climate Change Research Centre. "It means it's very likely that this is going to be the warmest year on record."


Much of the North Atlantic suffered the most extreme marine heatwaves in history. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration called a Category 5 (beyond extreme) heatwave in waters west of Ireland as temperatures climbed 5 degrees above the June average.


The record marine heat in the Atlantic spurred the formation of Tropical Storm Bret, the most eastward ever tropical storm this early in the year. Bret churned westward and swept through the Caribbean, damaging water infrastructure in Barbados and shuttering schools in St Lucia.


The ocean heatwaves have a high chance of holding strong for months, potentially contributing to bursts of damaging rain or intensifying heatwaves in Britain and Europe; one of either extremes. The warm water will mix deeper down into the ocean and have global effects - including on Arctic sea ice - for months.


The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicts that by September, 50 per cent of the world's oceans could be experiencing marine heatwaves. The normal global rate is 10 per cent.


Weatherzone meteorologist Yoska Hernandez said the sea surface temperatures off Australia are the warmest on record, about 0.3 to 0.5 degrees warmer than last year.


Warm oceans are particularly concerning because they increase moisture in the atmosphere, which can lead to more intense rain events. In the past two weeks, major floods have swept across the US, China, Japan, Europe and Pakistan. Hernandez said the drivers behind the rain events were all separate, but all occurred in the context of climate change.


For example, the Pakistan event has been the result of seasonal monsoonal rains, with as much as six months' of rain falling in 18 hours over some cities.


The floods in the north of America have been driven by an intense front moving over the region, dumping a lot of rain. There's a lot of moisture in the atmosphere driven by the warming ocean temperatures.


In Spain, a large thunderstorm has resulted in flash flooding across Zaragoza in the country's northeast - with about 64mm falling over some parts in a few hours. This is almost the average rainfall during summer for the country.


Last week, there were four days in which Earth's average temperature reached record highs. The global average temperature hit 17.2 degrees on Thursday, July 6, surpassing the 17.18-degree record set on July 4 and equalled on July 5, according to data from the University of Maine's Climate Reanalyser. The previous record of 17.01 degrees was set on Monday, July 3.


The data relies on satellite information and computer simulations to measure the world's condition. It is, however, worth noting NOAA said it could not yet validate the data but that the agency recognised the warm period was due to climate change.


"Combined with El Niño and hot summer conditions, we're seeing record warm surface temperatures being recorded at many locations across the globe," the agency said last week.


The World Meteorological Organisation, a specialised agency of the UN, declared the El Niño event last week. It's one of the most important drivers of unusual weather over the entire globe. In the southern hemisphere, El Niño tends to have a drying effect, but in the northern hemisphere it can increase rainfall.


For most of Australia, El Niño brings dry weather, increasing bushfire risk. But in other parts of the world it leads to wetter conditions, as in southern America.


The Bureau of Meteorology is yet to formally declare an El Niño event, but is expected to do so in the coming weeks. The agency has different criteria than other international weather agencies.


Sen Gupta said it was unusual so many weather events associated with El Niño, including fires and marine heatwaves, were striking before the weather system had even formed (the system has a 90 per cent chance of fully taking hold in the second half of the year).


Countries including Australia were warned to prepare for bad fire seasons. North America is currently in the midst of its most catastrophic fire season ever, which has seen nearly 4000 fires tear across Canada. Smoke spewed from the incineration of 9.5 million hectares and caused the worst air pollution in large swathes of the US in recorded history, draping cities such as New York in orange clouds of smog last month.


Last week in Beijing, as heat records topple across Asia, the government ordered a pause in outdoor work as the city hit a 10-day streak of days above 35 degrees, at the same time floods carried off cars and destroyed buildings, killing at least a dozen people and displaced thousands more in central and southern China.


Pinpointing the effect of climate change on one weather event is a difficult science, but a network of global researchers from the World Weather Attribution zeroed in on a four-day heatwave that killed 13 people. They concluded that human-induced climate change made the deadly heat 30 times more likely. (Another 96 people died from heat-related conditions in India in June.)


Tipping point


It's a question we keep coming back to as records tumble.


Dr Nandini Ramesh, a senior research scientist at CSIRO Data61, said it's important to understand what a tipping point is.


"A tipping point is when you push something until it can't be undone and it exacerbates further warming. An example is the west Antarctic ice sheet collapsing, which would cause irreversible effects on ocean circulation and climate," she said…..


"The ocean will [have] almost constant marine heat waves if we keep on pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. We have to continually update what we class as a marine heatwave or, or go to more extreme definitions."


More than 61,000 people died because of last year's brutal summer heat waves across Europe, according to a study in the journal Nature Medicine. The findings suggest that two decades of efforts in Europe to adapt to a hotter world have failed to keep up with the pace of global warming. Extreme heat had been expected that summer based on how much the planet had warmed in the past decade, the report notes. This trend is likely to continue.


"Having a warmer atmosphere makes both intense rain and heat waves worse," Ramesh said. "It will push us into temperatures that are dangerous to the human body."


Friday 19 May 2023

World Meteorological Organization predicts one year in the next five will almost certainly be the hottest on record and there’s a 66% chance a single year will cross the crucial 1.5℃ global warming threshold


….So what is driving the bleak outlook for the next five years? An expected El Niño, on top of the overall global warming trend, will likely push the global temperature to record levels. Has the Paris Agreement already failed if the global average temperature exceeds the 1.5℃ threshold in one of the next five years? No, but it will be a stark warning of what’s in store if we don’t quickly reduce emissions to net zero.” [Dr Andrew King, Climate Extremes Research Fellow, School of Earth Sciences, Faculty of Science, University of Melbourne, writing in The Conversation on 17 May 2023]


World Meteorological Organization (WMO), media release, 17 May 2023:


Global temperatures set to reach new records in next five years


Geneva, 17 May 2023 (WMO) – Global temperatures are likely to surge to record levels in the next five years, fuelled by heat-trapping greenhouse gases and a naturally occurring El Niño event, according to a new update issued by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).


There is a 66% likelihood that the annual average near-surface global temperature between 2023 and 2027 will be more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels for at least one year. There is a 98% likelihood that at least one of the next five years, and the five-year period as a whole, will be the warmest on record.


This report does not mean that we will permanently exceed the 1.5°C level specified in the Paris Agreement which refers to long-term warming over many years. However, WMO is sounding the alarm that we will breach the 1.5°C level on a temporary basis with increasing frequency,” said WMO Secretary-General Prof. Petteri Taalas.


A warming El Niño is expected to develop in the coming months and this will combine with human-induced climate change to push global temperatures into uncharted territory,” he said. “This will have far-reaching repercussions for health, food security, water management and the environment. We need to be prepared,” said Prof. Taalas.


There is only a 32% chance that the five-year mean will exceed the 1.5°C threshold, according to the Global Annual to Decadal Climate Update produced by the United Kingdom’s Met Office, the WMO lead centre for such predictions.


The chance of temporarily exceeding 1.5°C has risen steadily since 2015, when it was close to zero. For the years between 2017 and 2021, there was a 10% chance of exceedance.


Global mean temperatures are predicted to continue increasing, moving us away further and further away from the climate we are used to,” said Dr Leon Hermanson, a Met Office expert scientist who led the report.


Key points


> The average global temperature in 2022 was about 1.15°C above the 1850-1900 average. The cooling influence of La Niña conditions over much of the past three years temporarily reined in the longer-term warming trend. But La Niña ended in March 2023 and an El Niño is forecast to develop in the coming months. Typically, El Niño increases global temperatures in the year after it develops – in this case this would be 2024.

> The annual mean global near-surface temperature for each year between 2023 and 2027 is predicted to be between 1.1°C and 1.8°C higher than the 1850-1900 average. This is used as a baseline because it was before the emission of greenhouse gases from human and industrial activities.

> There is a 98% chance of at least one in the next five years beating the temperature record set in 2016, when there was an exceptionally strong El Niño.

> The chance of the five-year mean for 2023-2027 being higher than the last five years is also 98%.

> Arctic warming is disproportionately high. Compared to the 1991-2020 average, the temperature anomaly is predicted to be more than three times as large as the global mean anomaly when averaged over the next five northern hemisphere extended winters.

> Predicted precipitation patterns for the May to September 2023-2027 average, compared to the 1991-2020 average, suggest increased rainfall in the Sahel, northern Europe, Alaska and northern Siberia, and reduced rainfall for this season over the Amazon and parts of Australia.


Paris Agreement


In addition to increasing global temperatures, human-induced greenhouse gases are leading to more ocean heating and acidification, sea ice and glacier melt, sea level rise and more extreme weather.


The Paris Agreement sets long-term goals to guide all nations to substantially reduce global greenhouse gas emissions to limit the global temperature increase in this century to 2 °C while pursuing efforts to limit the increase even further to 1.5 °C, to avoid or reduce adverse impacts and related losses and damages.


The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that climate-related risks for natural and human systems are higher for global warming of 1.5 °C than at present, but lower than at 2 °C.


The new report was released ahead of the World Meteorological Congress (22 May to 2 June) which will discuss how to strengthen weather and climate services to support climate change adaptation. Priorities for discussion at Congress include the ongoing Early Warnings for All initiative to protect people from increasingly extreme weather and a new Greenhouse Gas Monitoring Infrastructure to inform climate mitigation.


Ensemble mean forecast 2023-2027


Notes For Editors:


The Global Annual to Decadal Update is one of a suite of WMO climate products, including the flagship State of the Global Climate, which seek to inform policy-makers. WMO will release its provisional statement on the State of the Global Climate in 2023 at the UN Climate Change Conference, COP28, in December.


The UK’s Met Office acts as the WMO Lead Centre for Annual to DecadalClimate Prediction. This year there are 145 ensemble members contributed by 11 different institutes to the predictions, which start at the end of 2022. Retrospective forecasts, or hindcasts, covering the period 1960-2018 are used to estimate forecast skill.


Confidence in forecasts of global mean temperature is high since hindcasts show very high skill in all measures.


The forecasts shown here are intended as guidance for Regional Climate Centres (RCCs), Regional Climate Outlook Forums (RCOFs) and National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHSs). It does not constitute an official forecast for any region or nation, but RCCs, RCOFs and NMHSs are encouraged to appropriately interpret and develop value-added forecasts from this Climate Update.


The World Meteorological Organization is the United Nations System’s authoritative voice on Weather, Climate and Water


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Excerpts from WMO Global Annual to Decadal Climate Update: Target years: 2023 and 2023-2027 specifically mentioning Australia:


  • Predicted precipitation patterns for the May to September 2023-2027 average, relative to

the 1991-2020 average, suggest an increased chance of above average rainfall in the Sahel, northern Europe, Alaska and northern Siberia, and reduced rainfall for this season over the Amazon and parts of Australia.


Near-surface temperatures in 2023 are likely to be higher than the 1991-2020 average in almost all regions except for Alaska, South Africa, South Asia and parts of Australia (Figure 7). Parts of the South Pacific Ocean are likely to be cooler than average. Skill is estimated from hindcasts to be medium or high in most regions (Figure 8) giving medium to high confidence in the forecast…..


This section shows predictions for the average of the next five extended seasons for May to September and November to March.

For the May to September average, predicted temperature patterns over the years 2023-2027 show a high probability of temperatures above the 1991-2020 average almost everywhere, with enhanced warming over land (Figure 9). Skill is very high in most regions, giving high confidence in this prediction (Figure 10). For the same season, sea-level pressure is predicted to be anomalously low over the Mediterranean and surrounding countries, and high over the maritime continent and surrounding countries.

There is medium skill for most of these regions, giving medium confidence.

Predictions of precipitation show wet anomalies in the Sahel, northern Europe, Alaska and northern Siberia, and dry anomalies for this season over the Amazon and western Australia. Skill is low to medium for these regions, giving low to medium confidence.

For the November to March average over the years 2023/24-2027/28 (Figure 11), the predictions show warm anomalies are likely almost everywhere, with land temperatures showing larger anomalies than those over the ocean. The Arctic (north of 60°N) near-surface temperature anomaly is more than three times as large as the global mean anomaly. The North Atlantic subpolar gyre shows negative anomalies, the so-called warming hole, which has been liked to a reduction in the AMOC. Skill is high in most regions apart from parts of the North Pacific, some areas in Asia, Australia, and the Southern Ocean (Figure 12), giving medium to high confidence…..


NOTE: My yellow highlighting throughout this post


Friday 3 March 2023

CLIMATE COUNCIL, February 2023: “There is no doubt that the consequences of climate change are now playing out in real time across Australia"

 

There is no doubt that the consequences of climate change are now playing out in real time across Australia.

Every Australian is being impacted by climate

change. Whether we’ve paid exorbitant prices

for produce at the supermarket, choked our

way through bushfire smoke blanketing our

communities, faced evacuations during

dangerous extreme weather events or lost our

homes in a bushfire or flood, life as we know

it is being disrupted in many ways.”


[Opening lines to Introduction, Climate Trauma: The Growing Toll Of Climate Change On The Mental Health Of Australians”, February 2023]



Foreward to Climate Council’s report, Climate Trauma: The Growing Toll Of Climate Change On The Mental Health Of Australians, 28 February 2023:


On the last day of summer 2022, an ominous mass of red and blue was on the radar, showing a massive, slow moving low-pressure system headed straight for Lismore.


Like everyone else, I worked all day and into the night to prepare for the deluge. Our community went to sleep ready, everything was lifted and packed and we felt strong as we braced for a ‘normal’ flood. But the rain kept coming.


More than a metre of rain fell and the water poured down out of the hills. At 3am the flood warning was revised to a height we had never seen before and I knew that we were about to experience something unimaginable.


The flood inundated our city. Thousands of people were displaced and it left destruction so intense, even members of the Australian Defence Force described it as looking like a war zone.


The wounds this disaster has left on the Northern Rivers are a very long way from healed. our CBD is only at about 20% occupancy; hundreds of homes are still in ruins and houses in the hills have been totally swept away by landslides. We still don’t have common community facilities like a cinema or an indoor kids play centre.


Our major civic buildings are still out of action: our library, our City Hall and our town pool are all still shut. 

We don’t have many places where we can gather and be together as a community.


Twelve months on and we still cannot live ordinary lives.


As shocking as it is seeing the physical damage to our homes, our city, and our landscape - the level of trauma and suffering across our community is even more significant.


The full report can be found at:

https://www.climatecouncil.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Report-Climate-Change-and-Mental-Health.pdf (58 pages)


According to the report:


  • A national poll of over 2,000 people conducted by the Climate Council shows that the majority (80%) of Australians have experienced some form of extreme weather disaster since 2019.


  • Communities across Australia are reporting mental health challenges as a result of worsening extreme weather events. The situation is particularly tough for rural and regional Australians


  • People living in rural and regional areas are significantly more likely to have been affected by flooding at least once since 2019 (61%) than people living in urban areas (38%), and significantly more likely to have been affected by bushfires (49%) than people in urban areas (36%).


  • People outside of metropolitan areas are also more likely to have difficulty accessing mental health support and more likely to feel that their state emergency services and state governments are poorly equipped to deal with climate disasters.


  • People in Queensland and New South Wales are the most likely to have experienced multiple disasters since 2019. Specifically, 38% of Queenslanders and 34% of people in New South Wales reported experiencing flooding more than once since 2019. (National average of 24%.)


  • One in 12 (8%) of the nearly 500 Australians who shared their recent experiences of an extreme weather disaster said the event had severely impacted their home – leaving it destroyed or deemed uninhabitable.


  • Among the more than 2,000 respondents to our national poll, one in five (21%) reported having no insurance. Of those who did have insurance, nearly two thirds (64%) reported that their premiums had increased in the last two years. Most (81%) said “climate disasters” were part of the reason why.


  • One in 20 (6%) of those surveyed said they had cancelled their insurance coverage due to the increase in their premium.



Need support for your mental health?


HERE ARE SOME ORGANISATIONS AND RESOURCES


General information


Psychology for a Safe Climate

www.psychologyforasafeclimate.org


For advice on looking after your mental health following a disaster


Natural Disasters and Your Mental Health (Beyond Blue)

www.beyondblue.org.au/mental-health/natural-disasters-and-yourmental-health


For children and young people


I’m Worried About the Environment (Kids Helpline)

kidshelpline.com.au/teens/issues/worried-about-environment


Understanding Anxiety About Climate Change (Headspace)

headspace.org.au/explore-topics/for-young-people/understandinganxiety-about-climate-change



Sunday 8 January 2023

STATE OF PLAY: By 2022 the Earth was an est. 1.14°C hotter than its pre-industrial era average. Australian had warmed on average by 1.47 ± 0.24 °C since national records began in 1910. WHO warns that global heating of even 1.5°C is not considered safe & every additional tenth of a degree of warming will take a serious toll on people’s lives and health.

 

World Health Organisation, Climate change and health, excerpts, 30 October 2021:


The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has concluded that to avert catastrophic health impacts and prevent millions of climate change-related deaths, the world must limit temperature rise to 1.5°C. Past emissions have already made a certain level of global temperature rise and other changes to the climate inevitable. Global heating of even 1.5°C is not considered safe, however; every additional tenth of a degree of warming will take a serious toll on people’s lives and health......


Climate-sensitive health risks


Climate change is already impacting health in a myriad of ways, including by leading to death and illness from increasingly frequent extreme weather events, such as heatwaves, storms and floods, the disruption of food systems, increases in zoonoses and food-, water- and vector-borne diseases, and mental health issues. Furthermore, climate change is undermining many of the social determinants for good health, such as livelihoods, equality and access to health care and social support structures. These climate-sensitive health risks are disproportionately felt by the most vulnerable and disadvantaged, including women, children, ethnic minorities, poor communities, migrants or displaced persons, older populations, and those with underlying health conditions.




Figure: An overview of climate-sensitive health risks, their exposure pathways and vulnerability factors. Climate change impacts health both directly and indirectly, and is strongly mediated by environmental, social and public health determinants.



Although it is unequivocal that climate change affects human health, it remains challenging to accurately estimate the scale and impact of many climate-sensitive health risks. However, scientific advances progressively allow us to attribute an increase in morbidity and mortality to human-induced warming, and more accurately determine the risks and scale of these health threats.


In the short- to medium-term, the health impacts of climate change will be determined mainly by the vulnerability of populations, their resilience to the current rate of climate change and the extent and pace of adaptation. In the longer-term, the effects will increasingly depend on the extent to which transformational action is taken now to reduce emissions and avoid the breaching of dangerous temperature thresholds and potential irreversible tipping points.



NatureClimate change is making hundreds of diseases much worse, excerpt, 12 August 2022:


Climate change has exacerbated more than 200 infectious diseases and dozens of non-transmissible conditions, such as poisonous-snake bites, according to an analysis. Climate hazards bring people and disease-causing organisms closer together, leading to a rise in cases. Global warming can also make some conditions more severe and affect how well people fight off infections.


Most studies on the associations between climate change and disease have focused on specific pathogens, transmission methods or the effects of one type of extreme weather. Camilo Mora, a data scientist at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, and his colleagues scoured the literature for evidence of how ten climate-change-induced hazards — including surging temperatures, sea level rise and droughts — have affected all documented infectious diseases (see ‘Climate hazards exacerbate diseases’). These include infections spread or triggered by bacteria, viruses, animals, fungi and plants (see ‘Mode of transmission’). The study was published in Nature Climate Change on 8 August.


The study quantifies the many ways in which climate change affects human diseases, says Mora. “We are going to be under the constant umbrella of this serious threat for the rest of our lives,” he adds.


Literature review


Mora and his colleagues examined more than 77,000 research papers, reports and books for records of infectious diseases influenced by climatic hazards that had been made worse by greenhouse-gas emissions. More than 90% of the relevant papers had been published after 2000. Ultimately, the team found 830 publications containing 3,213 case examples.


The researchers discovered that climate change has aggravated 218, or 58%, of the 375 infectious diseases listed in the Global Infectious Diseases and Epidemiology Network (GIDEON), and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System. The total rises to 277 when including non-transmissible conditions, such as asthma and poisonous-snake or insect bites. The team also identified nine diseases that are diminished by climate change. [my yellow highlighting]


Research paper "Over half of known human pathogenic diseases can be aggravated by climate change" (Mora, C. et al, August 2022) can be accessed at:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-022-01426-1



On the subject of COVID-19…..


World Health Organisation, Zoonoses, excerpt, 29July 2020:


A zoonosis is an infectious disease that has jumped from a non-human animal to humans. Zoonotic pathogens may be bacterial, viral or parasitic, or may involve unconventional agents and can spread to humans through direct contact or through food, water or the environment. They represent a major public health problem around the world due to our close relationship with animals in agriculture, as companions and in the natural environment. Zoonoses can also cause disruptions in the production and trade of animal products for food and other uses.


Zoonoses comprise a large percentage of all newly identified infectious diseases as well as many existing ones. Some diseases, such as HIV, begin as a zoonosis but later mutate into human-only strains. Other zoonoses can cause recurring disease outbreaks, such as Ebola virus disease and salmonellosis. Still others, such as the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19, have the potential to cause global pandemics. [my yellow highlighting]


North Coast Voices readers may have noticed that "zoonoses" are mentioned in "Climate-sensitive health risks" and that zoonoses, as one of the nine categories listed  as such health risks in the graphic insert, are considered to be strongly mediated by environmental, social and public health determinants.


It may be that a potential exists for the SARS-CoV-2 virus to alter its nature in unexpected ways as the climate continues to change. If Australia's response to the virus remains almost entirely politically driven as it has been since the second half of 2021 and does not return swiftly to a predominately science based policy and public health implementation, then any increase in virulence will likely markedly weaken the nation's social and economic bonds. Alternatively, if a new highly infectious zoonosis with significant morbidity emerges and, because our governments and their health agencies have not leant the lessons of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the nation will not be anymore prepared than it was in January 2020.


Friday 6 January 2023

Global oil and gas industries make a combined US$4 billion in profit a day (or US$1 trillion annually) & have done so for the past 50 years. That obscene wealth is thought to be how these industries induce politicians & governments to only pay lip service to the urgency of a world-wide climate emergency which is now lived experience

 

It’s a huge amount of money,” he said. “You can buy every politician, every system with all this money, and I think this happened. It protects [producers] from political interference that may limit their activities.....The rents captured by exploiting the natural resources are unearned. It’s real, pure profit. They captured 1% of all the wealth in the world without doing anything for it.”

[Prof Aviel Verbruggen, one of the lead authors of a 2012 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) special report & current Emeritus Professor Energy and Environmental Economics, University of Antwerp, Belgium, quoted in The Guardian, 21 July 2022]



Crikey, 8 December 2022, reprinted in Crikey Holiday Read, 5 January 2023:


Short of dictatorships, we are world leaders’: Australia’s record on criminalising environmental protest

MAEVE MCGREGOR


'The jailing of peaceful protesters is chilling for anyone who cares about our democracy — we need to restore and protect the right to protest before it’s too late.'


After the High Court’s decision on the Franklin River on 1 July 1983,” said Bob Brown to Crikey, referring to the famous Tasmanian dam case during which he was arrested, “I stated we had entered a new era of environmentalism and that it would never be so hard as it was in the Franklin campaign.”


I was totally wrong.”


Nearly 40 years on since the historic victory — in which the Commonwealth government succeeded in stopping the large hydroelectric Franklin Dam being built in Tasmania — the founder and former leader of the Greens was once again arrested, but this time under newly introduced laws that carry $13,000 fines or two years’ imprisonment for protests on a forestry site. The same laws also impose $45,000 fines on organisations, such as the Bob Brown Foundation, which lend support to such protests.


Far from heralding a new dawn for environmental justice, Brown said, the Franklin campaign had proved something of an aberration.


We now have a situation across Australia where environmentalists are jailed and environmental exploiters are protected and subsidised,” he said of his arrest a few weeks ago.


Instead of increasing environmental protection, we have laws that do the reverse — laws which foster the self-made environmental tragedy of this planet.”…..


Criminalising climate activism


The larger and more pressing dilemma, Brown said, — and one which belongs to the current age — is the growing tendency of government to criminalise peaceful protest, while climate breakdown and mass extinction envelop the world, forever sealing its fate.


In August, Victoria’s opposition united with the Andrews government to pass laws comparable to Tasmania’s, running roughshod over a chorus of concerns voiced by civil liberties groups, unions and environmentalists.


Three years earlier, in 2019, the Queensland government rushed through sweeping limits on the right to protest, underpinned by unsubstantiated claims of “extremist” conduct by environmentalists. The resulting legislation expanded police search powers and criminalised “dangerous locking devices” — such as superglue or anything activists might use to secure themselves to pavement or buildings — as a means to silence dissent.


And in New South Wales, concerns about traffic disruption were similarly seized upon following climate protests in Sydney and Port Botany earlier this year to hurry the introduction of two-year jail terms and $22,000 fines for “illegal protests”.


The laws, which criminalise “illegal protests” on rail lines, bridges, tunnels and — most contentiously — public roads, were passed within two days with the unqualified support of the Labor opposition mere weeks after the government flagged a crackdown on environmentalists.


Though seemingly aimed at “anarchist protesters”, as NSW Attorney-General Mark Speakman put it, the breadth of the provisions suggests otherwise.


Because the provisions are so loosely drafted, so imprecise, the laws can apply to almost any situation of people being on a road,” said Coco’s lawyer, Mark Davis.


The Roads Minister Natalie Ward didn’t know herself if ‘public road’ meant ‘major road’ or any and every road. It’s a disgrace. It gives police an unlimited, utterly arbitrary discretion to arrest anyone on a road protesting about anything, not just climate.


Short of some prominent dictatorships, we are world leaders with this kind of legislation. And the courts, or at least one court, has shown us the gun is loaded and they’re willing to fire it.”


Disruption and democracy


Against the backdrop of this legislation, now the subject of constitutional challenge, environmental demonstrators across Australia have regularly been denied bail or otherwise forced to contend with disproportionate bail conditions, while those residing in New South Wales have had espionage activities undertaken against them by a new police unit, Strike Force Guard.


In a statement to Crikey on Wednesday, New South Wales Deputy Premier and Minister for Police Paul Toole defended the laws.


Illegal protests that disrupt everyday life, whether it’s transport networks, freight chains, production lines or commuters trying to get to work or school, will not be tolerated,” he said.


It was a sentiment shared by Premier Dominic Perrottet, who days earlier labelled Coco’s 15-month prison sentence “pleasing to see”, adding “if protesters want to put our way of life at risk, then they should have the book thrown at them”.


In answer, the famous physicist and climate scientist Bill Hare said, via Twitter, that the inconvenience occasioned by “protest is not comparable to [the] catastrophic risk to [the] environment and serious damage to our way of life caused by fossil fuel emissions”.


Hare — the lead author for the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, for which the IPCC was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize — added that Perrottet’s statement was one of the “most regressive, anti-democratic statements” he could recall in Australia “for a long time”. [my yellow highlighting]


It’s a view which throws the shifting definition of what is deemed lawful dissent into sharp relief, Ray Yoshida of the Australian Democracy Network told Crikey.


It’s doublespeak for the NSW government to say they support protests as long as they don’t break the law, and then pass new laws that shrink the space for people to act,” he said.


The jailing of peaceful protesters is chilling for anyone who cares about our democracy — we need to restore and protect the right to protest before it’s too late.”


Had such laws existed at the time of many of Australia’s historic environmental wins — from the Franklin River to the Kakadu and Jabiluka blockades — many, perhaps all, would have met with failure.


There’s no doubt these laws would certainly have had an adverse impact on bringing to the public’s attention the Franklin Dam issue and, for that matter, a range of issues that have been brought to prominence in the public’s mind because of protests,” Greg Barns SC of the Australian Lawyers Alliance said.


He added people too often overlooked the hundreds of arrests which occurred during the Franklin River campaign, but under ordinary trespass laws that impose lesser penalties.


The reason [the new laws] are unnecessary is because there are already ample laws on the statute books, such as laws relating to trespass, criminal damage, that deal with these types of situations if people break the law,” he said.


What [Coco’s] sentence shows is that these new laws are draconian. Her sentence is a draconian penalty allowed for by a draconian law.”


Why now?


Given ours is the age of looming, if not inevitable, climate disaster, all of this poses the inevitable question: why the crackdown on environmentalists?


In Brown’s view, it’s no accident of history the techniques used by campaigners in the past are being targeted by government. It’s a phenomenon, he said, which conversely owes its existence to “state capture” by the fossil fuel and logging industries.


The extractive industries, who want to convert nature into profits, can no longer win the argument with the public on the environment, so they have to ‘take out’ the environmentalists,” he said.


These laws are meant to kill environmental activism and frighten people into silence.”


In this connection, there’s little denying climate anxiety, and concomitant calls for climate action pose a risk to such corporations.


A recent analysis of World Bank data undertaken by Belgian energy and environmental economist Aviel Verbruggen, a former lead author of an IPCC report, found the oil and gas industry had delivered more than $4 billion in profit every day for the past 50 years.


Following the report’s release, Verbruggen said: “You can buy every politician, every system with all this money, and I think this happened here. It protects [polluters] from political interference that may limit their activities.”


While Brown doesn’t believe any Australian politicians have been bribed or “bought”, so to speak, he said the lobbying power of the industry was obvious, both on a domestic and global level.


By and large, [our politicians] are just suborned by this lobbying tour de force, which is not being matched by the non-governmental sector, which is the guardian of the environment,” he said.


The striking similarity between Australian [anti-protest] legislation and the UK’s legislation is a clue which indicates we’ve got a global corporate governance.”


To buttress this view, Brown pointed to the $700 billion in taxpayer subsidies received by oil and gas companies globally in 2021.


Viewed in this context, he said, the anti-protest laws were self-evidently designed to shatter the unity underpinning the rise of collective, society-wide pressure to move on climate action.


Environmental Justice Australia ecosystems lawyer Natalie Hogan agreed the laws were a “politically motivated crackdown on legitimate political expression”, and ones that illustrated the efficacy of environmental campaigns.


These protests provide very important community oversight,” she said in reference to the illegal logging in Victorian forests exposed by environmental demonstrators and citizen science groups in recent years.


It seems very inconsistent to [tell Victorians] native logging will end by 2030, and then introduce laws that disproportionately criminalise or penalise people engaged in legitimate protests or citizen science in forests.”


Others, however, believe the anti-protest laws represent yet another skirmish on the law-and-order politics theme.


Banging the law-and-order drum has been fashionable for over 20 years,” Greg Barns said. “I think that’s the issue at play here — it just so happens to be climate change in this instance.”


The irony is that it will probably have the impact of emboldening protesters to take more extreme action because they see the laws as unjust.”


The future of protests


Not everyone has cast doubt on the deterrent effect of the laws, though. Coco’s lawyer Davis said the laws — which he defined as a “knee-jerk response to tabloid media” — would achieve their desired result.


Of course it will work — who would be insane enough to organise any sort of free protest? You can go to jail for a long time. It’s nuts,” he said.


Either way, Davis added, it’s clear such laws were placing the limits of Australia’s reputation as a liberal democracy under extraordinary pressure.


You cannot be a fully functional democracy if you cannot voice dissent to the government power,” he said. “It’s simply impossible.”


To be on a road, to use a road, is intrinsic to the right to protest and the fact that’s now seen as somehow radical tells you about the cultural shift we’re witnessing.”


Brown, for his part, believes it would be foolish to bet on a decline in environmental protest, notwithstanding the laws, given the climate predicament confronting the globe.....


But ultimately responsibility for [change will] fall to voters..... 


These laws will only continue to get worse if people don’t vote for the environment.”


After all, he said, dealing with global warming and the extinction crisis is, and always has been, about the balance of power.


BACKGROUND


North Coast Voices, Monday, 2 January 2023,

Who is undermining Australia’s climate change mitigation goals? Listing lobbyists contracted to act on behalf of fossil fuel industries.