Monday 18 November 2019

With 6 people burnt to death to date during the current NSW 2019 fire season, one reputable Australian journalist pointed the finger squarely at who and what is to blame


TheGuardian, 16 November 2019:

The history of climate policy in Australia is a history of self-interest, posturing and shameful inaction. Photograph: Sam Mooy/Getty Images

In a dispiriting political week like the one we’ve just had, it helps to keep things simple. Let’s begin with the organising idea of the week, where various politicians asserted, both in measured ways and unhinged ways, that it was inappropriate to talk about climate change while bushfires ravaged the country.

Let’s be clear about what this line of argument is.

It’s self-serving crap.

It is entirely possible to have a sensible discussion about climate change and the risks it poses, including the risks of longer and more intense fire seasons, and still do all the things that need to be done to protect lives and property.

We have that bandwidth. In fact Australia demonstrated amply over the course of the past few days our collective capacity to walk and chew gum at the same time.

Despite all the finger waggling from politicians, or perhaps because of it, the climate conversation happened in tandem with heroic efforts by emergency services workers to save lives and contain the damage. In fact, the most compelling part of the conversation about bushfires being a symptom of climate change was led by emergency service workers: a coalition of former fire chiefs, who point blank refused various invitations from politicians to shut up.

Given there is no law that says bushfires preclude sensible, evidence-based policy conversations, it’s reasonable to ask why this particular prohibition was asserted.

The answer to that is simple. The Coalition does not want its record raked over at a time when Australians are deeply anxious, because it’s hard to control the narrative in those conditions. The government does not want people who are not particularly engaged in politics, and who make a point of not following Canberra’s periodically rancid policy debates (and climate is the most toxic of the lot), switching on to this issue at a time where they have a personal stake in the conversation.

While Scott Morrison has acknowledged there is a link between climate change and natural disasters, and in attitudinal terms that acknowledgement is a positive development, it’s not really in the prime minister’s interests for anyone to press very assertively on that pressure point, particularly not at a time when the prolonged drought (another symptom of climate change) is already making the Coalition’s supporters restive.

Morrison doesn’t invite the climate action interrogation, because the government’s record is abysmal, and I don’t invoke that word lightly. The Liberal and National parties have done everything within their collective power to frustrate climate action in Australia for more than a decade. The Coalition repealed the carbon price. They attempted to gut the renewable energy target. They imposed fig-leaf policies costing taxpayers billions that have failed to stop emissions rising every quarter.

Lest this wrecking, self-interested, destructive behaviour seem a quirk of history – a quaint vestige of the Abbott era curtailed by the sensible man in the Lodge – be reminded that the Liberals blasted Malcolm Turnbull out of the prime ministership only last August in part for the thought crime of trying to impose a policy mechanism that would have reduced emissions in the electricity sector.

Reflections on a catastrophic week of bushfires

Not content with that, the Coalition, Morrison and his ministers, also claimed during the May election that an emissions reduction target broadly consistent with climate science would be a wrecking ball in the Australian economy. Not content with that, Morrison and his ministers characterised a sensible policy by Labor to try and encourage the electrification of the car fleet to reduce emissions in transport as a “war on the weekend”.

What Australian voters needed after the election in May was a government of whatever stripe prepared to put the country on an orderly path towards decarbonisation.

But what the Coalition needed was different. It wanted to remain in power, and one of the principle means to power it deemed necessary proved to be convincing voters in the outer suburbs and regions that Bill Shorten was crazy and shifty about climate change and would confiscate your ute.

To put this point very starkly, there was a climate election in May, and the climate lost.

I hope it’s clear by now, as a consequence of this heart-warming romp through recent political history, that the arbitrary prohibition of the week – we can’t talk about climate because the country is burning – is about politics, and about self-interest, and not about anything else.

And rather than applying false balance and blaming everyone and declaring the whole business of politics and democracy a debacle, let’s also acknowledge that everyone has certainly stuffed up at one point or another, but one political movement more than any other bears the responsibility for Australia’s failure to get on with the necessary transition to low emissions.

That’s the Liberal and National parties.

Read the full article here.

The dead to date in the 2019 NSW bushfire season

77 year-old man & 68 year-old woman burnt inside their home on Deadman Creek Road in Coongbar, Upper Clarence Valley in October
53 year-old woman burnt in her home at Johns River, north of Taree in November
elderly man found in a burnt out car at Wytaliba, east of Glen Innes in November
68 year-old woman burnt on her property at Wytaliba in November
58 year-old man burnt at the southern end of the Kyuna Track at Willawarrin, 34km west of Kempsey in November

Sunday 17 November 2019

One of the many calls from northern NSW for urgent national climate change action, that the Morrison Government appears determined to ignore


A cry from the heart......

The Sydney Morning Herald, 13 November 2019:

On Friday I lost my beautiful home. I am thankful we are all alive and safe and for the few possessions we were able to salvage. Many others in the small community of Nymboida, near Grafton, where I have grown up, were not even that lucky. They have lost pretty much everything.
I feel numb. It all feels so unreal but the fire was unstoppable. I know the firefighters did everything they could to protect our house and other homes and to them I am extremely grateful.
The fires that joined up and devastated our community were not normal bushfires. For weeks and weeks fires had been burning and community efforts had been unable to get them under control.

Fires burnt for weeks in the regions around Grafton. AAP

But the nightmare really began with the sky changing colour. The blue changed to an orange glow as the fire advanced over the hill. We watched from our veranda as it got progressively darker. It felt like an apocalypse and by 4.30pm it was dark as night. We evacuated from our home on Friday afternoon, following our carefully prepared bushfire action evacuation plan.

I haven’t returned home yet (I still call it home even though it’s gone). The fires are still burning and there is still a huge threat hanging over many places. I and many of my friends don’t want to return home yet; we’re not ready to see the results of the devastation. For many of us, this is where we have lived our entire lives; the only homes we have ever known, filled with memories, have been ravaged by a firestorm that has left only the ghosts of our past.

From what I know more than 45 houses have been lost in Nymboida, it could easily be more. I’ve heard from those who witnessed it that walls of flames 40 or more metres high ravaged the landscape. Catastrophic. 


We are devastated, but we are a strong community, we’ll support each other and get through this together. So many people have been so supportive, kind and helpful; it is incredible, we are so thankful. 

Australia is on fire. The federal government must take urgent action on climate change. Scientists and firefighters have been warning about the consequences of doing nothing for so long. Surely now, with multiple fires burning throughout NSW and Queensland, Scott Morrison must realise that doing nothing is not an option any longer. 

I’m heartbroken at what’s happened but I’m also angry. I’m angry that the government is not adequately addressing the climate crisis. We thank you for your thoughts and prayers Prime Minister, but we need action. 

I am thinking at this moment of everyone in other communities affected by these fires. Please, stay safe. 

Shiann Broderick is an 18-year-old year 12 student.

Australian cardiologist Arnagretta Hunter: “On the coast of NSW this week we know there are more respiratory illnesses, heart attacks and strokes as a consequence of the terrible air pollution from the fires"


The Guardian, 14 November 2019:


Bushfire smoke blankets the morning sky in Glen Innes, NSW, on 11 November. Respiratory illnesses are rising as a result of air pollution from this week’s fires, cardiologist Arnagretta Hunter says following the release of the latest Countdown report on climate change and health worldwide. Photograph: Brook Mitchell/Getty Images

The federal government’s lack of engagement on health and climate change has left Australians at significant risk of illness through heat, fire and extreme weather events, and urgent national action is required to prevent harm and deaths, a global scientific collaboration has found.

On Thursday, international medical journal the Lancet published its Countdown report, a multi-institutional project led by University College in London that examines progress on climate change and health throughout the world.
Its first two assessments were published in 2017 and 2018, with annual assessments continuing until 2030, consistent with the near-term timeline of the Paris climate agreement. Findings relating to Australia were tracked and published by the Medical Journal of Australia.
Australia was assessed across 31 indicators divided into five broad sections: climate change impacts, exposures and vulnerability; adaptation, planning and resilience for health; mitigation actions and health co-benefits; finance and economics; and public and political engagement.
The report found that while there had been some progress at state and local government levels, “there continues to be no engagement on health and climate change in the Australian federal parliament, and Australia performs poorly across many of the indicators in comparison to other developed countries; for example, it is one of the world’s largest net exporters of coal and its electricity generation from low-carbon sources is low”.
“As a direct result of this failure, we conclude that Australia remains at significant risk of declines in health due to climate change, and that substantial and sustained national action is urgently required in order to prevent this … This work is urgent.”“We also find significantly increasing exposure of Australians to heatwaves and, in most states and territories, continuing elevated suicide rates at higher temperatures,” wrote the authors, led by Associate Professor Paul Beggs of Macquarie University’s Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences.
Spokeswoman for Doctors for the Environment Australia, Dr Arnagretta Hunter, agreed Australia was poorly prepared for the health challenge of climate change.
“Doctors around Australia are already seeing multiple health effects from climate change,” Hunter, a cardiologist, said.

“On the coast of NSW this week we know there are more respiratory illnesses, heart attacks and strokes as a consequence of the terrible air pollution from the fires. Doctors see the mental health effects of drought in rural communities. Patterns of infectious diseases are changing.
“Average summer temperatures in Australia have risen by 1.66C in the past 20 years, with the intensity of heatwaves rising by a third. And with the increasing temperatures over summer we know there has been increased hospital admissions with ill health. Mortality rates are also affected.”

In 2014, Melbourne experienced temperatures over 41C from 14 to 17 January, as well as 167 excess deaths and a new record set for the highest number of calls for ambulance services ever received in a day, she said. Hunter described Australia as the developed country with the most serious vulnerability to climate change through heat, fire, water shortages and extreme weather events.
“Doctors for the Environment Australia joins the loud chorus across Australia calling for the federal government to acknowledge the risk and act in proportion to the magnitude of the threat,” she said. [my yellow highlighting]

Read the full article here.

The 2019 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change, 13 November 2019, can be found here.
  

Saturday 16 November 2019

Quote of the Week


"We mustn’t bring politics into the disastrous situation that was created by ... wait for it ... POLITICS"

Tweets of the Week


Friday 15 November 2019

How the world sees Australia's response to climate change


It seems it isn't just our Pacific island neighbours or other members of the United Nations which view Australia as a nation governed by backward environmental vandals intent on destroying their own country.....

https://youtu.be/m6DO3zbD83U


Channel 4 News is made for Channel 4 by Independent Television Network Ltd. Channel 4 is a publicly-owned and commercially-funded UK public service broadcaster.

It is reported that Channel 4 has a monthly audience reach of est. 79% of all UK television viewers.

This is the gist of a 13 minute news segment aired in Britain on 12 November 2019 and, which had over 17 million views on YouTube:

Despite briefly boasting more than 50% renewable power generation on its national grid this year, Australia is struggling to move on from an energy, labour and political market built on a 1950s coal-based model. (Subscribe: https://bit.ly/C4_News_Subscribe) Even as eastern Australia is consumed by flames after years of drought, the New South Wales parliament is today trying to push through a law to stop proposed coal mines from having to examine the carbon impact of the coal they’re exporting. And they’re exporting a lot. Australia's coal export market is the most lucrative on the planet, valued at £36 billion. Three people have been killed, over 150 homes destroyed, Sydney faces ‘catastrophic’ conditions, and at least 45 of the 65 fires burning through the region are out of control. Yet when Australian Green MPs suggest the industry is on the wrong side of history, they get called 'raving loonies’ by the Deputy Prime Minister. Australia is now among the very worst G20 keepers of promises made in the Paris Climate Accord. It plans seven giant new opencast pits for Queensland, even as the bush to the east is incinerated by drought caused by climate change, caused by carbon emission caused - in part - by coal.

UPDATE

The Sydney Morning Herald, 14 November 2019:

Sweden's central bank has sold off bonds from parts of Australia and the oil-rich Canadian province of Alberta because it felt that greenhouse gas emissions in both countries were too high.
Riksbank Deputy Governor Martin Floden said on Wednesday the bank would no longer invest in assets from issuers with a large climate footprint, even if the yields were high.