Showing posts with label sustainability. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sustainability. Show all posts
Sunday 10 June 2018
The political endorsements of extinction by Turnbull, Berejiklian and Palaszczuk governments continue
The
Sydney Morning Herald,
5 June 2018:
Wild fish stocks in
Australian waters shrank by about a third in the decade to 2015, declining in
all regions except strictly protected marine zones, according to data collected
by scientists and public divers.
The research, based on
underwater reef monitoring at 533 sites around the nation and published in
the Aquatic Conservation journal, claims to be the first
large-scale independent survey of fisheries. It found declining numbers tracked
the drop in total reported catch for 213 Australian fisheries for the 1992-2014
period.
The biomass of larger
fish fell 36 per cent on fished reefs during 2005-15 and dropped 18 per cent in
marine park zones allowing limited fishing, the researchers said. There was a
small increase in targeted fish species in zones that barred fishing
altogether.
"Most of the
numbers are pretty shocking," said David Booth, a marine ecologist at the
University of Technology Sydney. “This paper really nails down the fact that
fishing or the removal of large fish is one of the causes” of their decline.
Over-fished stocks
include the eastern jackass morwong, eastern gemfish, greenlip abalone, school
shark, warehou and the grey nurse shark. The morwong catch, once as common as
flathead in the trawl fishery, dived about 95 per cent from the 1960s to 109
tonnes in the 2015-16 year to become basically a bycatch species……
…Peter Whish-Wilson, the
Greens ocean spokesman, said the new research was largely based on actual
underwater identification – including the Reef Life Survey using citizen
scientists. It suggests fishing stocks "are not as rosy as the industry or
government would like us all to think".
"This study also
shows that marine parks can be successful fisheries management tools but we
simply don’t have enough of them or enough protection within them to deliver
widespread benefits," he said.
"The new
Commonwealth Marine Reserves are woefully inadequate and won’t do anything to
stop the continuing decline in the health of our oceans."
Environmental Defender's Office NSW, July 2017:
Humane Society
International Australia (HSI), represented by EDO NSW, is seeking independent
review of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority’s (GBRMPA) decision to
approve a lethal shark control program in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.
HSI has lodged an appeal
in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) which will require a full
reconsideration of the approval of the shark control program. The 10 year
lethal control program targets 26 shark species in the Marine Park, including
threatened and protected species. The appeal is based on the public interest in
protecting the biodiversity of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.....
As apex predators,
sharks play a vital role in maintaining the health of the Great Barrier Reef.
HSI is concerned about the ongoing impacts caused by the use of lethal
drumlines which are known to impact not only on shark species but also
dolphins, turtles and rays. HSI is calling for non-lethal alternatives for
bather protection.
The
Sydney Morning Herald,
27 May 2018:
Forest covering an area
more than 50 times the size of the combined central business districts of
Sydney and Melbourne is set to be bulldozed near the Great Barrier Reef,
official data shows, triggering claims the Turnbull government is thwarting its
$500 million reef survival package.
Figures provided to
Fairfax Media by Queensland’s Department of Natural Resources, Mines and Energy
show that 36,600 hectares of land in Great Barrier Reef water catchments has
been approved for tree clearing and is awaiting destruction.
The office of
Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg did not say if his government was
comfortable with the extent of land clearing approved in Queensland, or if it
would use its powers to cancel permits.
The approvals were
granted by the Queensland government over the past five years. About 9000
hectares under those approvals has already been cleared.
Despite the dire
consequences of land clearing for the Great Barrier Reef – and billions of
dollars of public money spent over the years to tackle the problem – neither
Labor nor the government would commit to intervening to stop the mass
deforestation.
Environmental Defender's Office NSW, 25 May 2018:
Freedom of information
laws are an important mechanism for making government decisions transparent and
accountable. But the existence of such laws doesn’t mean access to information
is easy.
It took a three-year legal
process for the Humane Society International (HSI), represented by EDO NSW,
to access
documents about how the Australian Government came to accredit a NSW
biodiversity offsets policy for major projects.
The NSW policy in question
allowed significant biodiversity trade-offs (that is, permitting developers to
clear habitat in return for compensatory actions elsewhere) seemingly
inconsistent with national biodiversity offset standards. HSI wanted to know how
the national government could accredit a policy that didn’t meet its own
standards.
Despite Australia being
a signatory to important international environmental agreements and accepting
international obligations to protect biodiversity, in recent years it has been
proposed that the national government should delegate its environmental
assessment and approval powers to the states, creating a ‘one stop shop’ for
developers.
The original FOI request
in this case was submitted in early 2015, during a time when Federal and State
and Territory Governments were actively in consultation on handing over federal
approval powers under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity
Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act). This was to be done in the name of
efficiency, with the assurance that national standards would be upheld by the
states.
Over 60 documents
finally accessed by HSI show this was a false promise. The documents reveal
that federal bureaucrats in the environment department identified key areas of
the NSW policy that differed from federal standards.
Despite this, the policy
was accredited.
Accreditation meant that
the NSW policy could be used when approving developments with impacts on
nationally threatened species found in NSW, instead of applying the more
rigorous national offsets policy.
In the time it took to
argue for access to the documents, NSW developed a new biodiversity offsets
policy as part of broader legislative reforms for biodiversity and land
clearing. Unfortunately, the new NSW biodiversity offsets policy continues to
entrench many of the weaker standards. For example, mine site rehabilitation
decades in the future can count as an offset now; offset requirements may be
discounted if other socio-economic factors are considered; and supplementary
measures - such as research or paying cash - are an alternative to finding a
direct offset (that is, protecting the actual plant or animal that has been
impacted by a development).
While there have been
some tweaks to the new policy for nationally listed threatened species, there
is still a clear divergence in standards. The new policy, and the new NSW
biodiversity laws, are now awaiting accreditation by the Australian Government.
How our unique and
irreplaceable biodiversity is managed (and traded off) is clearly a matter of
public interest. And on the eve of a hearing at the Administrative Appeals
Tribunal, the federal environment department agreed and released over 60
documents. While it was a heartening win for transparency and the value of FOI
laws, it was a depressing read when these documents revealed the political
endorsement of extinction.
Thursday 31 May 2018
The people of the Liverpool Plains versus Santos and its irresponsible domestic and international shareholders
Oil and gas mining corporation Santos Limited is currently seeking approval to drill up to 850 natural gas wells on est. 425 sites over 95,000 hectares in the Pilliga Forest region of north-west New South Wales.
Pilliga Forest is consdered a rare example of intact temperate forest and covers an est. 300,000 hectares sitting atop a recharge area of the Great Artesian Basin.
Santos presents itself as an Australian company, yet two affilated Chinese companys hold over 624 million voting shares in the company1 and its top institutional shareholders contain the usual mix of international banks, finance and investment companies2.
In its 2017 annual report Santos admits; A range of environmental risks exist within oil
and gas exploration and production activities3.
This is the response of the people living on the Liverpool Plains.
The backyard of New
South Wales is facing its biggest threat yet – invasive gasfields. Betrayal by
governments has meant protectors are fighting to save the things they love. The
Pilliga, Great Artesian Basin, Liverpool Plains – all are at risk. This is a
David and Goliath battle to save our land, air and water from destruction. It’s
also a fight for the soul and future of Australia. In this film we meet the
experts and people living in the sacrifice zone and uncover the truth behind
the real gas crisis confronting ordinary Australians.
https://youtu.be/h3h1FxwI1CE
Footnotes
1. As of 27 June 2017 Hony Partners Group, L.P and ENN Ecological Holdings Co Ltd acting in concert
2. At Page 130 https://www.santos.com/media/4319/2017-annual-report.pdf.
Footnotes
1. As of 27 June 2017 Hony Partners Group, L.P and ENN Ecological Holdings Co Ltd acting in concert
2. At Page 130 https://www.santos.com/media/4319/2017-annual-report.pdf.
3. 15 February 2017 Queensland Department of Environment and
Heritage Protection fined Santos $12,190
for non-compliance with a Soils Management Plan.
Sunday 6 May 2018
Problems with the Murray-Darling Basin plan just keep mounting and the NSW Northern Rivers needs to make sure these problems don't become ours
When it comes to the Murray-Darling Basin river systems there is never any really good news - we go from reports of town water shortages, pictures of permanently dry river beds and allegations of widespread water theft to the possibility of a fundamental legal
error in the master plan circa 2012.
The
Guardian, 2
May 2018:
One of Australia’s
foremost lawyers has issued an extraordinary warning that the Murray-Darling
basin plan is likely to be unlawful because the authority overseeing it made a
fundamental legal error when it set the original 2,750-gigalitre water recovery
target in 2012.
Bret Walker QC, who
chairs the South Australian royal
commission into the Murray-Darling basin plan, issued the warning
in a
second issues paper. He also spelled out the far-reaching implications of
the plan being unlawful.
Not only does it mean
that the original water recovery target of 2,750GL was likely to have been set
too low to deliver the environmental goal of the Water Act and
could be challenged in court, but it also means that amendments to the plan now
being debated by the Senate are likely to be invalid as well.
These include a
plan to trim 70GL from the northern basin water recovery targets and a suite
of projects, known as the sustainable
diversion limit adjustment projects, which would be funded in lieu of recovering
605GL in the southern basin.
Both are being strongly
criticised by scientists and environmentalists because they believe that they
further undercut the environmental outcomes of the plan.
The Murray-Darling
Basin Authority (MDBA) says it has relied on the best available
science in recommending the changes.
The new uncertainty over
the validity of the amendments will make it difficult for crossbenchers to
support them as the Coalition government has urged.
Walker has provided a
roadmap for environmental groups or an individual affected to challenge the
plan in court.
At the heart of his
advice is his view that the Water Act directs the MDBA to ensure environmental
outcomes are achieved when it set the environmentally sustainable level of take
(ESLT) from the river system. This is the flipside of setting the water
recovery target.
But instead of
considering the environmental outcomes only, the MDBA applied a triple bottom
line approach, giving equal weight to social and economic impacts of water
recovery.
“The MDBA also appears
to have approached the word ‘compromise’ in the definition of ESLT in a manner
involving compromise between environmental, social and economic outcomes rather
than in relation to the concept of ‘endangering’ or ‘putting in danger’
environmental criteria such as key environmental assets, and key ecosystem
functions,” the SA royal commission said.
“The commissioner is inclined to take the view
that this approach to the word ‘compromise’ in s4 of the Water Act is not
maintainable, or alternatively that he is presently unable to see how it is
maintainable,” the paper says.
“There is also evidence
that recovering an amount of water for the environment of 2,750GL does not, as
a matter of fact, represent an ESLT in accordance with the definition of that
term under the Water Act.”
Walker pointed to
numerous reports, including a 2011 CSIRO report which said modelling based on a
2,800GL recovery target “does not meet several of the specified hydrological
and ecological targets”.
There is also evidence
that the MDBA received legal advice on more than one occasion, consistent with
the commissioner’s concerns.
The issue of
water sustainability in the Murray-Darling Basin affects not just those living
in the basin and the economies of the four states this large river system runs
through – it also affects the bottom line of the national economy and those
east coast regions which will be pressured to dam and divert water to the Basin
if its rivers continue to collapse.
One such
region is the Northern Rivers of New South Wales and in particular the Clarence
River catchment area and the Clarence Valley Local Government Area.
Almost every
year for the past two decades there have been calls to dam and divert the
Clarence River – either north into south-east Queensland or west over the
ranges into the NSW section of the Murray Darling Basin.
The latest
call came last month on 18 April from Toowoomba Regional Council in south-east Queensland:
The response came on 24 April via NBN News and it was a firm NO:
NO TO CLARENCE WATER DIVERSION via @nbnnews https://t.co/w6DcTaIt4M— no_filter_Yamba (@no_filter_Yamba) May 1, 2018
However, because
communities in the Murray-Darling Basin have for generations refused to face
the fact that they are living beyond the limits of long-term water
sustainability and successive federal governments have mismanaged water policy
and policy implementation, such calls will continue.
These calls for water from other catchments to be piped into the Basin or into SE Queensland are not based on scientific evidence or sound economic principles.
They are based on an emotional response to fact that politicians and local communities looking at environmental degradation and water shortages on a daily basis are still afraid to admit that they no longer have the amount of river and groundwater needed to maintain their way of life and, are wanting some form of primitive magic to occur.
These calls for water from other catchments to be piped into the Basin or into SE Queensland are not based on scientific evidence or sound economic principles.
They are based on an emotional response to fact that politicians and local communities looking at environmental degradation and water shortages on a daily basis are still afraid to admit that they no longer have the amount of river and groundwater needed to maintain their way of life and, are wanting some form of primitive magic to occur.
The Clarence
River system is the most attractive first option for those would-be water
raiders, but experience has shown the Northern Rivers region that once a formal
investigation is announced all our major rivers on the NSW North Coast become
vulnerable as the terms of reference are wide.
The next National General Assembly of Local
Government (NGA) runs from 7-20
June 2018.
If Toowoombah
Regional Council’s motion is placed on the assembly agenda it is highly likely
that a number of councils in the Murray-Darling Basin will announce their support of the proposal.
Northern Rivers
communities need to watch this NGA closely.
Tuesday 27 March 2018
Just because Nationsls MP for New England Barnaby Joyce is now sitting on the backbenches in disgrace doesn't mean the Turnbull Government can ignore all those dodgy water deals he made
Example of a dodgy water deal par excellence where a Cayman Islands corporation can pocket $78.8 million from a suspect water sale in the beleaguered Murray-Darling Basin........
Eastern Australia Agriculture Pty
Ltd (EAA) was
incorporated in 2007 and is based in St George, Australia. It operates as a
subsidiary of Eastern Australian
Irrigation Limited.
According to The
Courier Mail on 21 March 2018; the company is based in the tax haven of the
Cayman Islands.
The
Land reported
on 19 October2011 that; EAA shareholders are based in Grand Cayman
in the Cayman Islands. Its directors include former Ridley Corporation managing
director Matthew Bickford-Smith and former Colly Farms's grower services
manager Peter Cottle.
EEA’s portfolio
comprises two properties - “Kia Ora” (7km south of St. George) and
“Clyde”
(10km south-west of Dirranbandi) totalling 37,590ha made up of
12,800ha of cotton producing irrigation land with further areas of development
potential.
These
properties are close to the notorious water harvester,“Cubbie Station”, in the Condamine-Balonne Valley.
EAA’s entire
properties, including the water licences were reported to have been independently valued at est. $107m in 2017.
In 2017
the Turnbull Government agreed to purchase over 29
gigalitres of water for $80,041,455 from
EEA, which originally insisted on $2,200 per megalitre. But after negotiation,
the Government paid a higher price - $2,745 per megalitre.
Then Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Water, Barnaby Joyce, approved the final purchase of 29,159 megalitres of OLF licences in May 2017 - 14,969 ML from “Clyde” and 14,190 from “Kia Ora”.
Department of
Agriculture and Water Resources (DAWR) due diligence later reduced the total volume to 28,740 megalitres and the price paid to $78,891,300.
The water purchased was
for Over Land Flow (OLF) licences, which cannot be traded between irrigators,
because they are attached to land. They have no legal status or any recognition
at a location other than where they were originally purchased. That is, there
appears to be no legal basis for the Commonwealth to ensure it gets to the
places it is intended to be used. [The Australia Institute, March 2018, “That’s
not how you haggle”, p.3]
The sale of
EAA’s OLF licences represented 74% of the value of both EAA properties.
EAA recorded a $52m gain on the sale in their 2017 Annual Report. [ibid, p.8]
The purchase appears to
be in breach of the Commonwealth Procurement Rules because it was not made
available to all licence holders in the valley…. [ibid,
p.3]
Thursday 8 March 2018
Murray-Darling Basin: water mismanagement just keeps rolling on
Image sourced from Twitter
Having miserably failed to enforce even the most basic of safeguards against widespread water theft in the Murray Darling Basin - such as not allowing unmetered water extraction - the Murray Darling Basin Authority and then water resources minister and now humble Nationals backbencher Barnaby Joyce have left us having to rely on leaks to the media to find out the true state of play in the national water wars.
The
Sydney Morning Herald,
4 March 2018:
The ailing state of the
Darling River has been traced to man-made water extraction, according to a
leaked report by the agency charged with overseeing its health.
The "hydrologic
investigation", dated last November and obtained by Fairfax Media,
analysed more than 2000 low-flow events from 1990-2017 on the
Barwon-Darling River between Mungindi near the NSW-Queensland border down to
Wilcannia in far-western NSW .
The draft report – a
version of which is understood to have been sent to the Turnbull government for
comment – comes days after WaterNSW issued a
red alert for blue-green algae on the Lower Darling River at Pooncarie
and Burtundy.
Bourke
is among towns also on stage-two water restrictions as the Darling
dries up in places
The paper by
Murray-Darling Basin Authority's (MDBA) own scientists found flow behaviour had
changed since 2000, particularly in mid-sections of the river such as between
the towns of Walgett and Brewarrina.
On that section, low or
no-flow periods were "difficult to reconcile with impacts purely caused by
climate", the scientists said.
Indeed, dry periods on
the river downstream from Bourke were "significantly longer than
pre-2000", with the dry spells during the millennium drought continuing
afterwards.
Water resource
development – also described as "anthropogenic impact" – must also
play "a critical role" in the low flows between Walgett and
Brewarrina, the report said.
The revelations
come after
the Senate last month voted to disallow changes to the $13 billion
Murray-Darling Basin Plan that would have cut annual environmental water savings
by 70 billion litres…..
A spokeswoman for the
authority said the report was "undergoing quality assurance processes
prior to publication", with a formal release on its website likely in
coming days.
The MDBA commissioned
the internal team to "address some of the specific concerns raised"
by its own compliance reviews and those of the Berejiklian government, she
said.
Terry Korn, president
of the Australian Floodplain Association, said the report confirmed
what his group's members had known since the O'Farrell government changed the
river's water-sharing plan in 2012 to allow irrigators to pump even during
low-flow periods.
Poor policy had been
compounded by "totally inadequate monitoring and compliance systems",
Mr Korn said.
"Some irrigators
have capitalised on this poor management by the NSW government to such an
extent that their removal of critical low flows has denied downstream
landholders and communities their basic riparian rights to fresh clean
water," he said. "This is totally unacceptable."….
Fairfax Media also
sought comment from federal Agriculture Minister David Littleproud.
Once publicly outed for sitting on the review report the Murray Darling Basin Authority finally decided to publish it this week.
https://www.scribd.com/document/372999806/Murray-Darling-Basn-Compliance-Review-Final-Report-November-2017Once publicly outed for sitting on the review report the Murray Darling Basin Authority finally decided to publish it this week.
The
Sydney Morning Herald,
20 February 2018:
The NSW government
intervened to urge the purchase of water rights from a large irrigator on the
Darling River that delivered a one-off $37 million profit to its owner while
leaving downstream users struggling with stagnant flows.
Gavin Hanlon, the senior
NSW water official who
resigned last September amid multiple inquiries into allegations of
water theft and poor compliance by some large irrigators, wrote to his federal
counterparts in the Agriculture and Water Resources Department, then
headed by Barnaby Joyce, in late December 2016 urging the buyback of water from
Tandou property to proceed.
The Tandou water
purchase proposal "should be progressed...given the high cost of the
alternative water supply solution" for the property south-east of Broken
Hill, Mr Hanlon wrote, according to a document sent on December 23, 2016 and
obtained by Fairfax Media.
Early in 2017, the
Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences estimated
the property's annual water entitlements of 21.9 billion litres to be
$24,786,750 "based on recent trade values", according to another
document listed as "Commercial in Confidence".
Despite this valuation,
the federal government by 16 March, 2017 would pay Tandou's owner Webster Ltd
more than $78 million. At its announcement on 21 June last year, Webster said
in a statement it "expects to record a net profit on disposal in the order
of $36-37 million".
The transfer of the
water rights are apparently the subject of inquiries by the NSW Independent
Commission Against Corruption, with several people saying they have discussed
their knowledge of the deal with the agency. An ICAC spokeswoman declined to
comment.
Webster Ltd
styles itself as a leading
Australian agribusiness company with a rich, diverse history spanning over 180
years.
Liberal Party donor Christopher
Darcy “Chris” Corrigan is Executive Chairman and a significant shareholder in this company
Tuesday 27 February 2018
The mess that Barnaby left
Environmental Defender’s Office NSW, undated 2017:
EDO NSW, on behalf of
its client the Inland Rivers Network, has commenced civil enforcement
proceedings in the NSW Land and Environment Court in relation to allegations of
unlawful water pumping by a large-scale irrigator on the Barwon-Darling River.
The two water access
licences at the centre of these allegations allow the licence holder to pump
water from the Barwon-Darling River in accordance with specified licence
conditions, as well as rules set out in the relevant ‘water sharing plan’. The
conditions and rules specify – amongst other things – how much water can be
legally pumped in a water accounting year (which is the same as the financial
year) and at what times pumping is permissible (which depends on the volume of
water flowing in the river at any given time).
Our client alleges that
the holder of these licences pumped water in contravention of some of these
conditions and rules, thereby breaching relevant provisions of the Water
Management Act 2000 (NSW) (WM Act). The allegations are based on licence
data obtained by EDO NSW earlier in 2017 from Water NSW, a state-owned
corporation charged with the responsibility of regulating compliance with the
WM Act.
Analysis of this data,
along with the relevant rules and publicly available information on river
heights, indicates that the licence holder may have pumped significantly more
water than was permissible on one licence during the 2014-15 water year, and
taken a significant amount of water under another licence during a period of
low flow when pumping was not permitted in the 2015-16 water year. Despite
being made aware of these allegations by EDO NSW on two occasions, in April and
August 2017, and having had access to the data since at least July 2016, Water
NSW has not provided any indication that it intends to take compliance action
against the licence holder.
Both allegations concern
the potentially unlawful pumping of significant volumes of water, which may
have had serious impacts on environmental flows in the river and downstream
water users. However, our client is particularly concerned by the alleged
over-extraction in the 2014/15 water year, as this period was so dry that the
Menindee Lakes – which are filled by flows from the Barwon-Darling River – fell
to 4 percent of their total storage capacity. This in turn threatened Broken
Hill’s water security and led the NSW Government to impose an embargo on water
extractions during part of that year in order to improve flows down the
Barwon-Darling into the Lakes and Lower Darling River.
In these proceedings,
the Inland Rivers Network is seeking, amongst other things, an injunction
preventing the licence holder from continuing to breach the relevant licence
conditions. In addition, and in order to make good any depletion of
environmental flows caused by the alleged unlawful pumping, our client is also
asking the Court to require the licence holder to return to the river system an
equivalent volume of water to that alleged to have been unlawfully taken, or to
restrain the licence holder from pumping such a volume from the river system,
during the next period of low flows in the river system. Failure to comply with
a court order constitutes contempt of court, which is a criminal offence.
EDO NSW is grateful to
barristers Tom Howard SC and Natasha Hammond for their assistance in this
matter.
Brendan Dobbie, Senior
Solicitor at EDO NSW, has carriage of this matter for IRN.
The Australia Institute, Moving
targets: Barnaby Joyce, Warrego valley buybacks and amendments to the Murray
Darling Basin Plan, February 2018:
In 2008, then Senator
Joyce criticised the Labor government’s purchase of water in the Warrego
valley: that is going to have no effect whatsoever in solving the problems of
the lower Murray-Darling, and especially the southern states.
Despite the now Deputy
Prime Minister and Water Minister’s own fierce criticism of that purchase, he
approved the $16,977,600 purchase of another 10.611 gigalitres of water in the
Warrego valley in March 2017 at more than twice the price paid by the Labor
government. Questions should be raised about what changed the Deputy Prime
Minister’s mind and whether that purchase was value for money.
This purchase also has
serious implications for the recent amendments to the Basin Plan that was
disallowed by the Senate on 14 February 2018.
This purchase was not
required to meet the water recovery target in the Warrego under the
Murray-Darling Basin Plan. Instead, it was intended to count towards the water
recovery target in the Border Rivers. This swap required an amendment to s6.05
of the Basin Plan, which was tabled in parliament and disallowed by the Senate.
Yet, the Warrego purchase was not reflected in the Sustainable Diversion Limits
(SDLs) put to Parliament as part of the amendments.
Murray-Darling Basin
Authority (MDBA) is required to base its recommendations to change SDLs based
on best available science, but the proposed amendments allowed MDBA and States
to subsequently change the SDLs in a valley without any consideration of the
science.
While MDBA was seeking
public submissions on changes to valley SDLs, based on science; the Department
of Agriculture and Water Resources (DAWR) was in negotiations to change those
valley targets, not based on science.
Parliament was asked to
pass an amendment to the Basin Plan with SDLs that would have been changed
based on a deal agreed over a year earlier, if the amendment had passed.
Given that the new SDLs
were known and agreed by governments, it is not apparent why the MDBA did not
include the new SDLs in the amendment put to parliament.
Thursday 15 February 2018
Gas industry finally admits that its lobbying spin contains untruths?
Tucked into the wall-to-wall spin of this media release is a tacit admission that safe aquifer recharge with treated water is little more than a convenient deception offered up to governments and citizens in the gas industry's drive to create more gasfields and extract more water from the natural environment in the mining process.
Gasfields Commission Queensland, 12 December 2017:
Research into the effects of the Coal Seam Gas industry on groundwater is continuously improving our understanding about underground water movements and implications for coal seam development.
Scientists from Queensland's independent Office of Groundwater Impact Assessment (OGIA) and the University of Queensland Centre for Coal Seam Gas have been wading through an enormous amount of data being contributed by landholders, government, industry and other research projects to build up a better understanding of groundwater movements.
Early studies suggest that the recharge of underground aquifers may not be as effective as once thought and recharge flow paths may not be what we first thought.
Research indicates that much of the rain recharging the Hutton and Precipice Sandstone aquifers in the North-East Surat Basin is discharging into the local low topography of the Dawson River.
That means the water is flowing in a north easterly direction, rather than to the south west into the regional Great Artesian Basin as was thought prior to 2009.
These findings were applied by OGIA in the development of regional groundwater flow models in 2012 and 2016 but many landholders remain unaware of the new findings.
It's also thought there could be small faults that create a localised connection between the Precipice and Hutton Aquifers in the vicinity of what is known as the Moonie-Goondiwindi fault system.
Researchers stress that this is still a work in progress and it is currently being reviewed by UQ and CSIRO researchers working independently on multiple data sets to either confirm or refute the hypothesis.
Lead researcher at the UQ Centre for Coal Seam Gas, Prof Jim Underschultz says, "Our understanding of the Great Artesian Basin is increasing as researchers analyse the growing amount of data collected from the basin.
"The use of groundwater monitoring data, water production figures, detailed geographic distributions of water levels and hydrocarbon migration 'fingerprints' are giving us a level of detail never seen before".
The UQ researchers are collaborating closely with CSIRO, OGIA and the CSG Compliance Unit to ensure that research findings are made publicly available as quickly as possible.
Jim's research publications can be found at: http://researchers.uq.edu.au/researcher/8868
Labels:
Coal Seam Gas Mining,
sustainability,
water
Friday 9 February 2018
Falling biodiversity, degradation of productive rural land, intensification of coastal & city development, and the threat of climate change require Australia to produce blueprint for a new generation of environment laws
“The next
generation of environmental laws will need to recognise explicitly the role of
humanity as a trustee of the environment and its common resources, requiring
both care and engagement on behalf of future generations.” [APEEL,
Blueprint for the Next Generation of Environmental Law,
August 2017]
The Guardian, 6 February 2018:
Environmental lawyers and academics have called for a comprehensive rethink on how Australia's natural landscapes are protected, warning that short-term politics is infecting decision-making and suggesting that the public be given a greater say on development plans.
The Australian Panel of Experts on Environmental Law has launched a blueprint for a new generation of environment laws and the creation of independent agencies with the power and authority to ensure they are enforced. The panel of 14 senior legal figures says this is motivated by the need to systematically address ecological challenges including falling biodiversity, the degradation of productive rural land, the intensification of coastal and city development and the threat of climate change.
Murray Wilcox QC, a former federal court judge, said the blueprint was a serious attempt to improve a system that was shutting the public out of the decision-making process and failing to properly assess the impact of large-scale development proposals.
"We found the standard of management of the environment is poor because everything is made into a political issue," Wilcox said. "Nothing happens until it becomes desperate.
"We need a non-political body of significant prestige to report on what is happening and have the discretion to act."
The legal review, developed over several years and quietly released in 2017, resulted in 57 recommendations. It was suggested by the Places You Love alliance, a collection of about 40 environmental groups that was created to counter a failed bid to set up a "one-stop shop" for environmental approvals by leaving it to the states. The panel undertook the work on the understanding it would be independent and not a piece of activism.
Review report can be found here.
Tuesday 30 January 2018
Scientists issue a final warning to humanity
THEN……
1992 World Scientists'
Warning to Humanity
Scientist Statement: World
Scientists' Warning to Humanity (1992) (PDF document)
Some 1,700 of the
world's leading scientists, including the majority of Nobel laureates in the
sciences, issued this appeal in November 1992. The World Scientists' Warning to
Humanity was written and spearheaded by the late Henry Kendall, former chair of
UCS's board of directors.
Introduction
Human beings and the
natural world are on a collision course. Human activities inflict harsh and
often irreversible damage on the environment and on critical resources. If not
checked, many of our current practices put at serious risk the future that we wish
for human society and the plant and animal kingdoms, and may so alter the
living world that it will be unable to sustain life in the manner that we know.
Fundamental changes are urgent if we are to avoid the collision our present
course will bring about.
NOW……
World
Scientists’ Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice (PDF Document)
WILLIAM
J. RIPPLE, CHRISTOPHER WOLF, THOMAS M. NEWSOME, MAURO GALETTI, MOHAMMED
ALAMGIR, EILEEN CRIST, MAHMOUD I. MAHMOUD, WILLIAM F. LAURANCE, and 15,364
scientist signatories from 184 countries
Twenty-five years ago,
the Union of Concerned Scientists and more than 1700 independent scientists,
including the majority of living Nobel laureates in the sciences, penned the
1992 “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity” (see supplemental file S1).
These concerned
professionals called on humankind to curtail environmental destruction and
cautioned that “a great change in our stewardship of the Earth and the life on
it is required, if vast human misery is to be avoided.” In their manifesto,
they showed that humans were on a collision course with the natural world. They
expressed concern about current, impending, or potential damage on planet Earth
involving ozone depletion, freshwater availability, marine life depletion,
ocean dead zones, forest loss, biodiversity destruction, climate change, and
continued human population growth. They proclaimed that fundamental changes
were urgently needed to avoid the consequences our present course would bring.
The authors of the 1992
declaration feared that humanity was pushing Earth’s ecosystems beyond their
capacities to support the web of life. They described how we are fast
approaching many of the limits of what the biosphere can tolerate without
substantial and irreversible harm. The scientists pleaded that we stabilize the
human population, describing how our large numbers—swelled by another 2 billion
people since 1992, a 35 percent increase—exert stresses on Earth that can
overwhelm other efforts to realize a sustainable future (Crist et al. 2017).
They implored that we cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and phase out fossil
fuels, reduce deforestation, and reverse the trend of collapsing biodiversity.
On the twenty-fifth
anniversary of their call, we look back at their warning and evaluate the human
response by exploring available time-series data. Since 1992, with the
exception of stabilizing the stratospheric ozone layer, humanity has failed to
make sufficient progress in generally solving these foreseen environmental
challenges, and alarmingly, most of them are getting far worse (figure 1, file
S1). Especially troubling is the current trajectory of potentially catastrophic
climate change due to rising GHGs from burning fossil fuels (Hansen et al.
2013), deforestation (Keenan et al. 2015), and agricultural production—
particularly from farming ruminants for meat consumption (Ripple et al. 2014).
Moreover, we have unleashed a mass extinction event, the sixth in roughly 540
million years, wherein many current life forms could be annihilated or at least
committed to extinction by the end of this century.
Humanity is now being
given a second notice, as illustrated by these alarming trends (figure 1). We
are jeopardizing our future by not reining in our intense but geographically
and demographically uneven material consumption and by not perceiving continued
rapid population growth as a primary driver behind many ecological and even
societal threats (Crist et al. 2017). By failing to adequately limit population
growth, reassess the role of an economy rooted in growth, reduce greenhouse
gases, incentivize renewable energy, protect habitat, restore ecosystems, curb
pollution, halt defaunation, and constrain invasive alien species, humanity is
not taking the urgent steps needed to safeguard our imperilled biosphere.
As most political
leaders respond to pressure, scientists, media influencers, and lay citizens
must insist that their governments take immediate action as a moral imperative
to current and future generations of human and other life. With a groundswell
of organized grassroots efforts, dogged opposition can be overcome and
political leaders compelled to do the right thing. It is also time to
re-examine and change our individual behaviors, including limiting our own
reproduction (ideally to replacement level at most) and drastically diminishing
our per capita consumption of fossil fuels, meat, and other resources.
Read the full
Second Notice here.
ALL THE WHILE THE DOOMSDAY CLOCK IS TICKING.......
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 25 January 2018:
ALL THE WHILE THE DOOMSDAY CLOCK IS TICKING.......
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 25 January 2018:
It
is now two minutes to midnight
Editor’s
note: Founded in 1945 by University of Chicago scientists who had helped
develop the first atomic weapons in the Manhattan Project, the Bulletin of
the Atomic Scientists created the Doomsday Clock two years later, using
the imagery of apocalypse (midnight) and the contemporary idiom of nuclear
explosion (countdown to zero) to convey threats to humanity and the planet. The
decision to move (or to leave in place) the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock
is made every year by the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board in
consultation with its Board of Sponsors, which includes 15 Nobel laureates. The
Clock has become a universally recognized indicator of the world’s
vulnerability to catastrophe from nuclear weapons, climate change, and new
technologies emerging in other domains. A printable PDF of this statement,
complete with the President and CEO’s statement and Science and Security Board
biographies, is available here.
To:
Leaders and citizens of the world
Re:
Two minutes to midnight
Date:
January 25, 2018
In 2017, world leaders failed to respond
effectively to the looming threats of nuclear war and climate change, making
the world security situation more dangerous than it was a year ago—and as
dangerous as it has been since World War II.
The greatest risks last year arose in
the nuclear realm. North Korea’s nuclear weapons program made remarkable
progress in 2017, increasing risks to North Korea itself, other countries in
the region, and the United States. Hyperbolic rhetoric and provocative actions
by both sides have increased the possibility of nuclear war by accident or
miscalculation.
But the dangers brewing on the Korean
Peninsula were not the only nuclear risks evident in 2017: The United States
and Russia remained at odds, continuing military exercises along the borders of
NATO, undermining the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), upgrading
their nuclear arsenals, and eschewing arms control negotiations.
In the Asia-Pacific region, tensions
over the South China Sea have increased, with relations between the United
States and China insufficient to re-establish a stable security situation.
In South Asia, Pakistan and India have
continued to build ever-larger arsenals of nuclear weapons.
And in the Middle East, uncertainty
about continued US support for the landmark Iranian nuclear deal adds to a
bleak overall picture.
To call the world nuclear situation
dire is to understate the danger—and its immediacy.
On the climate change front, the danger
may seem less immediate, but avoiding catastrophic temperature increases in the
long run requires urgent attention now. Global carbon dioxide emissions have
not yet shown the beginnings of the sustained decline towards zero that must
occur if ever-greater warming is to be avoided. The nations of the world will
have to significantly decrease their greenhouse gas emissions to keep climate
risks manageable, and so far, the global response has fallen far short of
meeting this challenge.
Beyond the nuclear and climate
domains, technological change is disrupting democracies around the world as
states seek and exploit opportunities to use information technologies as
weapons, among them internet-based deception campaigns aimed at undermining
elections and popular confidence in institutions essential to free thought and
global security.
The Bulletin of the Atomic
Scientists Science and Security Board believes the perilous world security
situation just described would, in itself, justify moving the minute hand of
the Doomsday Clock closer to midnight.
But there has also been a breakdown in
the international order that has been dangerously exacerbated by recent US
actions. In 2017, the United States backed away from its long-standing
leadership role in the world, reducing its commitment to seek common ground and
undermining the overall effort toward solving pressing global governance
challenges. Neither allies nor adversaries have been able to reliably predict
US actions—or understand when US pronouncements are real, and when they are
mere rhetoric. International diplomacy has been reduced to name-calling, giving
it a surreal sense of unreality that makes the world security situation
ever more threatening.
Because of the extraordinary danger of
the current moment, the Science and Security Board today moves the minute hand
of the Doomsday Clock 30 seconds closer to catastrophe. It is now two minutes
to midnight—the closest the Clock has ever been to Doomsday, and as close as it
was in 1953, at the height of the Cold War.
The Science and Security Board hopes
this resetting of the Clock will be interpreted exactly as it is meant—as an
urgent warning of global danger. The time for world leaders to address looming
nuclear danger and the continuing march of climate change is long past. The
time for the citizens of the world to demand such action is now:
#rewindtheDoomsdayClock.
The untenable nuclear
threat. The risk that nuclear weapons
may be used—intentionally or because of miscalculation—grew last year around
the globe.
North Korea has long defied UN
Security Council resolutions to cease its nuclear and ballistic missile tests,
but the acceleration of its tests in 2017 reflects new resolve to acquire
sophisticated nuclear weapons. North Korea has or soon will have capabilities
to match its verbal threats—specifically, a thermonuclear warhead and a
ballistic missile that can carry it to the US mainland. In September, North
Korea tested what experts assess to be a true two-stage thermonuclear device,
and in November, it tested the Hwasong-15 missile, which experts believe has a
range of over 8,000 kilometers. The United States and its allies, Japan and
South Korea, responded with more frequent and larger military exercises, while
China and Russia proposed a freeze by North Korea of nuclear and missile tests
in exchange for a freeze in US exercises.
The failure to secure a temporary
freeze in 2017 was unsurprising to observers of the downward spiral of nuclear
rhetoric between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
The failure to rein in North Korea’s nuclear program will reverberate not just
in the Asia-Pacific, as neighboring countries review their security options,
but more widely, as all countries consider the costs and benefits of the
international framework of nonproliferation treaties and agreements.
Nuclear risks have been compounded by
US-Russia relations that now feature more conflict than cooperation.
Coordination on nuclear risk reduction is all but dead, and no solution to
disputes over the INF Treaty—a landmark agreement to rid Europe of medium-range
nuclear missiles—is readily apparent. Both sides allege violations, but
Russia’s deployment of a new ground-launched cruise missile, if not
addressed, could trigger a collapse of the treaty. Such a collapse would
make what should have been a relatively easy five-year extension of the New
START arms control pact much harder to achieve and could terminate an arms
control process that dates back to the early 1970s.
For the first time in many years, in
fact, no US-Russian nuclear arms control negotiations are under way. New
strategic stability talks begun in April are potentially useful, but so far
they lack the energy and political commitment required for them to bear fruit.
More important, Russia’s invasion and annexation of Crimea and semi-covert support
of separatists in eastern Ukraine have sparked concerns that Russia will
support similar “hybrid” conflicts in new NATO members that it borders—actions
that could provoke a crisis at almost any time. Additional clash points could
emerge if Russia attempts to exploit friction between the United States and its
NATO partners, whether arising from disputes on burden-sharing, European Union
membership, and trade—or relating to policies on Israel, Iran, and terrorism in
the Middle East.
In the past year, US allies have
needed reassurance about American intentions more than ever. Instead, they have
been forced to negotiate a thicket of conflicting policy statements from a US
administration weakened in its cadre of foreign policy professionals, suffering
from turnover in senior leadership, led by an undisciplined and disruptive
president, and unable to develop, coordinate, and clearly communicate a
coherent nuclear policy. This inconsistency constitutes a major challenge for
deterrence, alliance management, and global stability. It has made the existing
nuclear risks greater than necessary and added to their complexity.
Especially in the case of the Iran
nuclear deal, allies are perplexed. While President Trump has steadfastly
opposed the agreement that his predecessor and US allies negotiated to keep
Iran from developing nuclear weapons, he has never successfully articulated
practical alternatives. His instruction to Congress in 2017 to legislate a
different approach resulted in a stalemate. The future of the Iran deal, at
this writing, remains uncertain.
In the United States, Russia, and
elsewhere around the world, plans for nuclear force modernization and
development continue apace. The Trump administration’s Nuclear Posture Review
appears likely to increase the types and roles of nuclear weapons in US defense
plans and lower the threshold to nuclear use. In South Asia, emphasis on
nuclear and missile capabilities grows. Conventional force imbalances and
destabilizing plans for nuclear weapons use early in any conflict continue to
plague the subcontinent.
Reflecting long decades of frustration
with slow progress toward nuclear disarmament, states signed a Treaty on the
Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, commonly known as the ban treaty, at the United
Nations this past September. The treaty—championed by the International
Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, which has been awarded the Nobel Peace
Prize for its work—is a symbolic victory for those seeking a world without
nuclear weapons and a strong expression of the frustration with global
disarmament efforts to date. Predictably, countries with nuclear weapons
boycotted the negotiations, and none has signed the ban treaty. Their increased
reliance on nuclear weapons, threats, and doctrines that could make the use of
those weapons more likely stands in stark contrast to the expectations of the
rest of the world.
An insufficient response
to climate change. Last year, the US government
pursued unwise and ineffectual policies on climate change, following through on
a promise to derail past US climate policies. The Trump administration, which
includes avowed climate denialists in top positions at the Environmental
Protection Agency, the Interior Department, and other key agencies, has
announced its plan to withdraw from the Paris Agreement. In its rush to
dismantle rational climate and energy policy, the administration has ignored
scientific fact and well-founded economic analyses.
These US government climate decisions
transpired against a backdrop of worsening climate change and high-impact
weather-related disasters. This year past, the Caribbean region and other parts
of North America suffered a season of historic damage from exceedingly powerful
hurricanes. Extreme heat waves occurred in Australia, South America, Asia,
Europe, and California, with mounting evidence that heat-related illness and
death are correspondingly increasing. The Arctic ice cap achieved its
smallest-ever winter maximum in 2017, the third year in a row that this record
has been broken. The United States has witnessed devastating wildfires, likely
exacerbated by extreme drought and subsequent heavy rains that spurred
underbrush growth. When the data are assessed, 2017 is almost certain to continue the trend of exceptional global
warmth: All the warmest years in the instrumental record, which extends
back to the 1800s, have—excepting one year in the late 1990s—occurred in the
21st century.
Despite the sophisticated disinformation
campaign run by climate denialists, the unfolding consequences of an altered
climate are a harrowing testament to an undeniable reality: The science linking
climate change to human activity—mainly the burning of fossil fuels that
produce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases—is sound. The world continues
to warm as costly impacts mount, and there is evidence that overall rates of
sea level rise are accelerating—regardless of protestations to the contrary.
Especially against these trends, it is
heartening that the US government’s defection from the Paris Agreement did not
prompt its unravelling or diminish its support within the United States at
large. The “We Are Still In” movement signals a strong commitment within the
United States—by some 1,700 businesses, 250 cities, 200 communities of faith,
and nine states, representing more than 40 percent of the US population—to its
international climate commitments and to the validity of scientific facts.
This reaffirmation is reassuring,
and other countries have maintained their steadfast support for climate action,
reconfirmed their commitments to global climate cooperation, and clearly
acknowledged that more needs to be done. French President Emmanuel Macron’s
sober message to global leaders assembled at December’s global climate summit
in Paris was a reality check after the heady climate negotiations his country
hosted two years earlier: “We’re losing the battle. We’re not moving quickly
enough. We all need to act.” And indeed, after plateauing for a few years,
greenhouse gas emissions resumed their stubborn rise in 2017.
As we have noted before, the true
measure of the Paris Agreement is whether nations actually fulfill their
pledges to cut emissions, strengthen those pledges, and see to it that global greenhouse
gas emissions start declining in short order and head toward zero. As we drift
yet farther from this goal, the urgency of shifting course becomes greater, and
the existential threat posed by climate change looms larger.
Emerging technologies
and global risk. The Science and Security Board
is deeply concerned about the loss of public trust in political institutions,
in the media, in science, and in facts themselves—a loss that the abuse of
information technology has fostered. Attempts to intervene in elections through
sophisticated hacking operations and the spread of disinformation have
threatened democracy, which relies on an informed electorate to reach
reasonable decisions on public policy—including policy relating to nuclear
weapons, climate change, and other global threats. Meanwhile, corporate leaders
in the information domain, including established media outlets and internet
companies such as Facebook and Google, have been slow to adopt protocols to
prevent misuse of their services and protect citizens from manipulation.
The international community should establish new measures that discourage
and penalize all cross-border subversions of democracy.
Last year, the Science and Security
Board warned that “[t]echnological innovation is occurring at a speed that
challenges society’s ability to keep pace. While limited at the current time,
potentially existential threats posed by a host of emerging technologies need
to be monitored, and to the extent possible anticipated, as the 21st century
unfolds.”
If anything, the velocity of
technological change has only increased in the past year, and so our warning
holds for 2018. But beyond monitoring advances in emerging technology, the board
believes that world leaders also need to seek better collective methods of
managing those advances, so the positive aspects of new technologies are
encouraged and malign uses discovered and countered. The sophisticated hacking
of the “Internet of Things,” including computer systems that control major
financial and power infrastructure and have access to more than 20 billion
personal devices; the development of autonomous weaponry that makes “kill”
decisions without human supervision; and the possible misuse of advances in
synthetic biology, including the revolutionary Crispr gene-editing tool,
already pose potential global security risks. Those risks could expand without
strong public institutions and new management regimes. The increasing pace of
technological change requires faster development of those tools.
How to turn back the
Clock. In 1953, former Manhattan
Project scientist and Bulletin editor Eugene Rabinowitch set the
hands of the Doomsday Clock at two minutes to midnight, writing, “The achievement
of a thermonuclear explosion by the Soviet Union, following on the heels of the
development of ‘thermonuclear devices’ in America, means that the time, dreaded
by scientists since 1945, when each major nation will hold the power
of destroying, at will, the urban civilization of any other nation, is close at
hand.”
The Science and Security Board now
again moves the hands of the Clock to two minutes before midnight. But the
current, extremely dangerous state of world affairs need not be permanent. The
means for managing dangerous technology and reducing global-scale risk exist;
indeed, many of them are well-known and within society’s reach, if leaders pay
reasonable attention to preserving the long-term prospects of humanity, and if
citizens demand that they do so.
This is a dangerous time, but the
danger is of our own making. Humankind has invented the implements of
apocalypse; so can it invent the methods of controlling and eventually
eliminating them. This year, leaders and citizens of the world can move the
Doomsday Clock and the world away from the metaphorical midnight of global
catastrophe by taking these common-sense actions:
• US President Donald Trump should
refrain from provocative rhetoric regarding North Korea, recognizing the
impossibility of predicting North Korean reactions.
• The US and North Korean governments
should open multiple channels of communication. At a minimum,
military-to-military communications can help reduce the likelihood of
inadvertent war on the Korean Peninsula. Keeping diplomatic channels open for
talks without preconditions is another common-sense way to reduce tensions. As
leading security expert Siegfried Hecker of Stanford University recently wrote: “Such talks should not be seen as a reward or
concession to Pyongyang, nor construed as signaling acceptance of a
nuclear-armed North Korea. They could, however, deliver the message that while
Washington fully intends to defend itself and its allies from any attack with a
devastating retaliatory response, it does not otherwise intend to attack North
Korea or pursue regime change."
• The world community should
pursue, as a short-term goal, the cessation of North Korea’s nuclear weapon and
ballistic missile tests. North Korea is the only country to violate the norm
against nuclear testing in 20 years. Over time, the United States should seek
North Korea’s signature on the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty—and then,
along with China, at long last also ratify the treaty.
• The Trump administration should
abide by the terms of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action for Iran’s nuclear
program unless credible evidence emerges that Iran is not complying with the
agreement or Iran agrees to an alternative approach that meets US national
security needs.
• The United States and Russia should
discuss and adopt measures to prevent peacetime military incidents along the
borders of NATO. Provocative military exercises and maneuvers hold the
potential for crisis escalation. Both militaries must exercise restraint and
professionalism, adhering to all norms developed to avoid conflict and accidental
encounters.
• US and Russian leaders should return
to the negotiating table to resolve differences over the INF treaty; to seek
further reductions in nuclear arms; to discuss a lowering of the alert status
of the nuclear arsenals of both countries; to limit nuclear modernization
programs that threaten to create a new nuclear arms race; and to ensure that
new tactical or low-yield nuclear weapons are not built and that existing
tactical weapons are never used on the battlefield.
• US citizens should demand, in all
legal ways, climate action from their government. Climate change is a real and
serious threat to humanity. Citizens should insist that their governments
acknowledge it and act accordingly.
• Governments around the world should
redouble their efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions so they go well
beyond the initial, inadequate pledges under the Paris Agreement. The
temperature goal under that agreement—to keep warming well below 2 degrees
Celsius above preindustrial levels—is consistent with consensus views on
climate science, is eminently achievable, and is economically viable, provided
that poorer countries are given the support they need to make the post-carbon
transition. But the time window for achieving this goal is rapidly closing.
• The international community should
establish new protocols to discourage and penalize the misuse of information
technology to undermine public trust in political institutions, in the media,
in science, and in the existence of objective reality itself. Strong and
accountable institutions are necessary to prevent deception campaigns that are
a real threat to effective democracies, reducing their ability to enact
policies to address nuclear weapons, climate change, and other global dangers.
• The countries of the world should
collaborate on creating institutions specifically assigned to explore and
address potentially malign or catastrophic misuses of new technologies,
particularly as regards autonomous weaponry that makes “kill” decisions without
human supervision and advances in synthetic biology that could, if misused,
pose a global threat.
The failure of world leaders to
address the largest threats to humanity’s future is lamentable—but that failure
can be reversed. It is two minutes to midnight, but the Doomsday Clock has
ticked away from midnight in the past, and during the next year, the world can
again move it further from apocalypse. The warning the Science and Security
Board now sends is clear, the danger obvious and imminent. The
opportunity to reduce the danger is equally clear.
The world has seen the threat posed by
the misuse of information technology and witnessed the vulnerability of
democracies to disinformation. But there is a flip side to the abuse of social
media. Leaders react when citizens insist they do so, and citizens around the
world can use the power of the internet to improve the long-term prospects of
their children and grandchildren. They can insist on facts, and discount
nonsense. They can demand action to reduce the existential threat of nuclear
war and unchecked climate change. They can seize the opportunity to make a
safer and saner world.
They can #rewindtheDoomsdayClock.
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