Earlier this week, I published two articles (here and here) explaining why Australia’s mass immigration program – which adds around a Canberra-worth of population every year – will make it next to impossible to meet our Paris Agreement targets to reduce carbon emissions. The logic is simple: adding millions more people to Australia’s population means
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews says it would not be appropriate to discuss potential changes to the state’s carbon emissions reduction policy until the bushfire crisis is over. An independent advice panel chaired by former federal MP Greg Combet has recommended that the government adopt more aggressive targets, including reducing emissions by 40% on 2005 levels
Yesterday, Prime Minister Scott Morrison was quizzed by the media on whether the government intended to meet Australia’s emissions targets as laid-out under the Paris Agreement, and promised to go even further: Australia has pledged to cut emissions by 26 per cent on 2005 levels by 2030, under the Paris Agreement. “It is my intention
I honestly don’t know how Millennials don’t burst spontaeously into flames of rage, via Domain: With properties hidden away off the grid in remote locations, popular travel startups based out of tiny houses are keeping a careful eye on bushfires. Startups including Unyoked and Shacky advertise themselves as enabling users to get “easy access to the
I guess because they are not quiet enough, ignored firies are rallying their own national fire crisis summit, via The Guardian: Former emergency leaders who have been pushing the Morrison government to take action on the climate say they will “go it alone” and convene their own summit on the bushfire crisis. The Emergency Leaders
Via your burning PM today: “I’m a Sydneysider and I know how unusual it is to see that haze across my city, and I know how distressing that has been, particularly for young people, who wouldn’t have seen that before.” “And I can understand that is deeply unsettling to a lot of Australians, particularly those
The new AEMO Integrated Energy Plan makes for facinating reading: The objective of an ISP is to minimise long-term total system costs, thereby maximising benefits in the interest of consumers, while meeting the NEM’s reliability, security and emissions expectations. We have set out in Part B our modelling approach to determine a least-regret development path
You wouldn’t be her for quids. She was far too young to know what she was getting into. On the one hand she’s up in lights: On the other hand, she’s now being blamed by the child abusive right for everything from polio to the death of god. My own view is that Greta is
Sydney has disappeared, at The Guardian: The New South Wales environment minister Matt Kean has split from his federal Coalition counterparts, arguing climate change is behind the bushfire crisis and calling for greater emissions reduction. Kean’s intervention piles pressure on Scott Morrison to do more on emissions reduction and disaster management after his predecessor Malcolm
Via Domain comes Economist Ross Garnaut: …Carryover credits refer to an accounting measure, where a country counts historical emissions reduction that exceeded old international goals against its current target. Australia will include its carryover credits from its over-achievement on the Kyoto Protocol in its efforts to meet the Paris target. Most countries don’t count their credits,
Welcome to the new frontier of LNG doom. Via FTAlphaville: This is a guest post by Rauli Partanen, an author, analyst and communicator on climate change, environment and energy systems. Partanen co-founded and leads Think Atom, a non-profit think tank advocating nuclear energy alternatives. In this post he argues Germany’s interests in natural gas are jeopardising the European Taxonomy for
Some more good news for the species, not, from the World Meteorological Organisation: The year 2019 concludes a decade of exceptional global heat, retreating ice and record sea levels driven by greenhouse gases from human activities. Average temperatures for the five-year (2015-2019) and ten-year (2010-2019) periods are almost certain to be the highest on record.
Via the Climate Council today: A long-term warming trend from the burning of coal, oil and gas is supercharging extreme weather events, putting Australian lives, our economy and our environment at risk. The Climate Council’s new report, ‘Dangerous Summer: Escalating Bushfire, Heat and Drought Risk‘, has found this summer is shaping up as a terrible trifecta
IPSOS via Domain: The environment has for the first time surpassed healthcare, cost of living and the economy to be the number one concern for Australians. The Ipsos Issues Monitor, which asks a representative sample of Australians to select the three top issues facing the nation, found 32.1 per cent rated the state of the
Slowly but surely, Europe is declring carbon war on Australia. Ealrier this year we saw the begiing of divestitures: Norway’s massive sovereign wealth fund may soon rip up to $3.7 billion out of Australian fossil fuel companies after the Norwegian Parliament passed a tightened set of ethical investment rules. The laws were adopted late on
Via FTAlphaville: We admire German economist Hans-Werner Sinn for taking it upon himself to warn us that driving an electric vehicle is a halfhearted fix to global warming. From The Guardian’s comment pages: Electric vehicles also emit substantial amounts of CO2, the only difference being that the exhaust is released at a remove — that is, at
The UN is warning that the globe is headed for a massive overshoot on carbon emissions and associated climate catastrophe: Global temperatures could rise sharply this century with “wide-ranging and destructive” consequences after greenhouse gas emissions hit record levels last year, international climate experts warned on Tuesday. The head of the World Meteorological Organization said
Idiot: Maybe the 23 fire experts that have been trying to meet with #LiarFromTheShire need to set a sports team to get a meeting and media #ClimateEmergency https://t.co/mw17agoYHT — 💧🌱 wentworth falls (@tilly64) November 20, 2019
Via the ABC: Do Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions account for more than 5 per cent of the global total once exports are included, as Mike Cannon-Brookes says? The claim In a recent speech to the United Nations, Prime Minister Scott Morrison sought to downplay Australia’s contribution to world greenhouse gas emissions, arguing the nation is responsible for
Via The Australian comes a choking Scummo: Scott Morrison has hit back at claims his climate change policies have contributed to the fire season, declaring it “doesn’t bear up to credible scientific evidence”. With fires burning in Queensland, South Australia and NSW, the Prime Minister said Australia’s emissions had no impact on the dry and
As they should, at News: NSW hasn’t even entered what’s traditionally the most devastating period of bushfire damage. “We’ve got the worst to come,” former NSW fire commissioner Greg Mullins told news.com.au. …“So we need to brace ourselves. If we don’t get summer storms to wet everything down, we are in dire straits.” Mr Mullins,
Welcome to the future at the AFR: Sweden’s central bank said on Thursday (AEDT) it had sold off bonds from the oil-rich Canadian province of Alberta and parts of Australia because it felt that greenhouse gas emissions in both countries were too high. Riksbank Deputy Governor Martin Floden said the bank would no longer invest
Via the ABC: Hong Kong police have warned violence is bringing the Chinese-ruled city to the “brink of total breakdown” after more street battles raged in several parts of the territory. Police on Tuesday fired tear gas in the heart of the central financial district and at two university campuses to break up pro-democracy protests.
Via The Australian comes scum of all colour and hue: Senior Coalition and Labor MPs have launched a bitter attack on the Greens for suggesting climate change policies are responsible for the catastrophic bushfire threat confronting NSW and Queensland. As firefighters braced for the arrival of high winds and low humidity that threaten some of
Via Morgan Stanley: In three weeks, the world’s leaders will begin to gather in Madrid for the 25th United Nations Climate Change Conference. The intensity of the global climate strikes this year suggests that the proceedings will be scrutinized as never before. But the decisions made, or not made, will also have repercussions for global markets.
Last year, a team of scientists published their recommendations for slowing current rates of biodiversity loss in a paper in Nature Ecology and Evolution, which will include limiting human population growth: Although key threats to biodiversity include habitat clearing for cattle, mining, and urban sprawl, these are all consequences of population pressure and high rates
Ross Garnaut is a professorial research fellow in economics at the University of Melbourne: Four years ago in December 2015, every member of the United Nations met in Paris and agreed to hold global temperature increases to two degrees Celsius, and as close as possible to 1.5C. The bad news is that four years on
New research from Roy Morgan shows a record high 41% of Australians regard Environmental problems as the major concern facing Australia – up 17% points since June: This is the first time Environmental problems have topped the list of concerns facing both Australia and the World since February 2011 when massive floods hit Queensland, and
Via Bloomie: The answer to the renewable energy industry’s biggest challenge is emerging in the Australian outback. Early next year, one of the first power projects that combine solar and wind generation with battery storage is planning to start up in northern Queensland state. The Kennedy Energy Park, just outside the sleepy town of Hughendon,
Every modern nation needs good billionaires to fight evil ones. I have my issues with Mike Cannon-Brookes and the Atlassian cheap labour arbitrage model but on climate change he’s excellent, via David Crowe: “The people protesting over climate change are not quiet Australians. They are being loud because the government is quiet on the climate,”
