Where is our flight from a safe climate taking us? It's time to expose the layers of aviation industry greenwash

 

 by Mark Carter

Qantas says it doesn’t buy political favours. But it has illegally sacked its workforce, short changed its customers, and paid no income tax last year. 

Now it could be found guilty of greenwashing its efforts to reach net zero emissions by 2050. Qantas’s misleading claims about its net zero actions were exposed recently by Climate Integrity.

But that ain’t the half of it. 

Focusing on its failure to reach that target allows an even bigger and more dangerous deception to linger. It is the illusion that net zero emissions by 2050 is sufficient to keep warming to the Paris Agreement target. The harsh reality is that even if its emissions were actually independently validated as tracking to a ‘net zero 2050 target’,  that won’t stop warming significantly exceeding 2ºC.

For Qantas ‘net zero 2050’ has never been a way to effectively and rapidly stop its contribution to global heating. It’s known all along that it can’t do that and stay in business, 

‘Net zero 2050’ for Qantas, is about maintaining its social license. It’s about maintaining the illusion that net zero emissions by 2050 is a safe climate destination. 

If we can be sold that illusion, then we’ll keep flying and new runways can be built — even though both will enable increasing flight emissions. So long as the industry and government keep us in the dark about the ineffectiveness of the ‘net zero 2050’ plans they spruik, we won’t know that their  actions will help push warming to 3ºC and beyond. 

So long as we aren’t told about aviation’s climate-crash flight path we won’t know how quickly we really need to stop aviation emissions to avoid the crash. 

For the aviation industry as a whole, and, for that matter our federal government too, ‘net zero 2050’ is just the latest layer of greenwash. The sector is a serial offender, having misrepresented its global warming impact for decades. 

Back in the day, the industry told us its emissions were marginal at best, and not worthy of global attention. Then under political and social pressure it was forced to address its emissions. Which is when they started greenwashing their accountability for aviation’s contribution to global heating.

In 2015 the aviation industry successfully avoided having its biggest generator of emissions, international flights, being regulated under the Paris Agreement. They argued that assigning flight emissions to the country of departure would be way too difficult, and anyway, it was better for the sector to self regulate its emissions reductions.

In 2017, it set up CORSIA, the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation to address only emissions in excess of 2019 levels and to make any subsequent cuts to them voluntary, not mandatory — allowing 60% of Qantas flight emissions to continue unabated. 

Now, four years after Covid19 forced global cuts, flights and emissions have returned to the pre-Covid norm of 4% growth each year, and caveats to actual emissions reductions abound. 

Even the government is in cahoots. Under the Safeguard Mechanism, Qantas is required to cut its domestic emissions in 2022 by 4.9% each year to 2030, or from 4.4mt CO2e to 2.9mt — way short of the 2.3mt required by 2030 under the Climate Change Act’s inadequate 43% cuts to 2005 emissions.

But don’t worry, we’re told in the government’s Aviation White Paper, aviation will ‘look to maximising its contribution to reaching net zero emissions in 2050’. Elsewhere, airlines say they’ll ‘work toward’ reducing emissions using so-called ‘Sustainable Aviation Fuels’, that don’t cut actual inflight emissions, and won’t completely replace jet diesel for decades, if ever. 

They tell us their actions are ‘climate friendly’, ‘carbon neutral’, and ‘climate positive’. Chris Bowen tells us that what the government is ‘trying to do is avoid the worst’ impacts, even though warming is right now nudging the Paris 1.5ºC threshold, and, according to the IEA, emissions in 2050 will be only marginally lower than now. 

They tell us not to worry because they’re focussing on trying to get to a ‘low carbon future’, even though the IPCC carbon budget for a net zero 2050 target only ever had a less than 50:50 chance of holding warming to 2ºC. 

‘Net zero 2050’ greenwashing is a dangerous fantasy. It’s magical thinking. Is it even psychotic thinking? If we want to be safe we should be looking for the emergency exit. 

The dangerous, deceitful and delusional diversions, from the necessity of immediate & deep aviation emissions cuts, must be called out. Their perpetrators — the aviation industry and its federal government regulator — must abandon the sector’s flightpath, land the plane and, aside from emergency flights, stay grounded until flying is emissions free.

America first, Earth last: Australia’s security now needs a climate focus

 

by David Spratt, first published at Pearls and Irritations

There’s a new, stark reality we must face: Donald Trump’s victory will push the Earth system further down a perilous path towards three degrees Celsius of global warming or more, with catastrophic consequences for human civilisation and the environment.

This moment requires clarity about the existential nature of the climate threat to humanity’s future; and a collective commitment to decisive action, because time has run out for slow, incremental policy change.

Climate’s economic impacts will have unexpected social and security consequences

 by David Spratt, first published at Pearls&Irritations

“I will not sacrifice Great British industry to the drum-banging, finger-wagging Net Zero extremists,” was the headline The Sun in London gave to a piece last week by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, defending the expenditure of 22 billion pounds on the cargo cult of carbon capture and storage. This headline captured the delusion at the core of climate-policymaking around the world: that there is an economically non-disruptive path out of the climate emergency. There isn’t. 

Either we close down the fossil fuel industry long before its physical infrastructure is exhausted, strand a whole lot of capital and engage in a non-incremental restructuring of work and the economy; or we will have a world of social breakdown, conflict and economic chaos. This was the picture painted by US analysts 17 years ago in a study titled The Age of Consequences, which warned of the damage at 2.6°C of warming, a target we will likely exceed on present indications:

A climate duty of care

In 2018, the UN Secretary General António Guterres noted that “We face a direct existential threat” from climate change as “we career towards the edge of the abyss”. It is a stark warning to all governments.

The first duty of a government is to “protect the people”, their safety and well-being. A government derives its legitimacy and hence its authority from the people, and so has a fiduciary duty: a responsibility to take reasonable care and act in accordance with the interests of all the people of the nation with integrity, fairness and accountability.

Internationally, private-sector company directors are facing legal action and personal liability for having refused to understand, assess and act upon climate risk, or for misrepresenting that risk. Compensation is being sought from carbon polluters for damage incurred from climate impacts. Legal opinion suggests similar action in Australia would be firmly based, and this duty has been recognised in several quarters, including by some public sector financial system regulators. 

State of the global energy system

Shane White at worldenergydata.org has an excellent, data-driven site about global and country-by-country emissions and energy use trends, as well as a newsfeed and a primer on climate change:

• World energy trends: worldenergydata.org/world-energy-trends
• Country energy trends: worldenergydata.org/country-energy-trends
• Greenhouse emissions: worldenergydata.org/greenhouse-gas-emissions
• Climate change: worldenergydata.org/climate-change
• Newsfeed: worldenergydata.org/the-anthropocene 

The big picture, as illustrated below, is that global fossil fuel carbon dioxide emissions continue to rise, after a Covid blip, and the production of coal, oil and gas all reached record highs in 2023. The most recent IEA report projects emissions peaking by 2030, though the 2023 UN Production Gap report suggested it could be a few years later than that. 

And the country-by-country breakdown shows China’s emissions at more than 30% of the global total, more than double that of the USA in second place, and quadruple that of India in third place. Australia comes in at number 17, with 1.1% of global emissions. 

 

Chart 1: Global fossil fuel CO2 emissions to 2023; and national shares 

Q: Are new liquid airline fuels good climate policy? A: Pigs might fly.

by Mark Carter

The Australian government has recently provided $1.7 billion in funding to commercialise ‘net zero innovations’ including the manufacture of ‘low carbon liquid fuels’ for the aviation sector, otherwise known as ‘Sustainable’ Aviation Fuels (SAF). The minister for transport, Catherine King, says the government is “working to decarbonise Australia’s transport system” and this funding will “support emissions reduction” in the aviation sector. According to her department’s Transport and Infrastructure Net Zero Consultation Roadmap, SAF is the primary way aviation can maximise its contribution to net zero emissions by 2050. 

But don’t be misled. These new fuels are not sustainable. Nowhere are the tonnes of CO2 emissions they can reduce or need to reduce stated. Their use will therefore greenwash growing fossil fuel emissions from Australian aviation. 

The Albanese government has created a climate vacuum, and we will pay the price

 by David Spratt and Ian Dunlop, first published at Pearls&Irritations

Whilst the global impact of climate disruption is rapidly accelerating, and the last, record-breaking year has been extraordinary, public concern in Australia about it is waning, and the government bears much of the responsibility.

Just two years ago, the Climate 200-sponsored Teals helped sweep a climate-denialist government from power, and the Greens had their best result ever. It was the climate election, but it doesn’t feel like that now.

Since coming to power, the Albanese Labor government has been working hard not to talk about climate warming impacts, not to lead the nation in a public conversation about how to face the greatest threat to our future, and it shows in recent public opinion research.

1.5 degrees Celsius is here and now

Surface air temperatures, 21 June 2024.
Credit: C3S/ECMWF (pulse.climate.copernicus.eu)

By David Spratt

Has the world already reached a global warming trend of 1.5°C (compared to ~1900 pre-industrial baseline)?

There have been some sharp disagreements between scientists over this question, with former NASA climate science chief James Hansen saying that for all practical purposes the climate system trend is now at the 1.5°C mark, whilst Penn State University’s Michael E Mann and others disagree and say we have up to a decade to go.

In May 2024, Hansen wrote that the 12-month mean global temperature “is still rising at 1.56°C relative to 1880-1920 in the GISS analysis through April. Robert Rohde reports that it is 1.65°C relative to 1850-1900 in the BerkeleyEarth analysis (for the same period).  El Nino/La Nina average global temperature likely is about 1.5°C, suggesting that, for all practical purposes, global temperature has already reached that milestone.”   [El Niño (the warm phase) and La Niña (the cool phase) lead to significant differences from the average ocean temperatures, winds, surface pressure, and rainfall across parts of the tropical Pacific. Neutral conditions are near their long-term average.]

One event could wreak global climate havoc. Neither side of Australian politics has got a clue about it.

This a case study from the report, Too hot to handle, recently published by the Australian Security Leaders Climate Group.

There is no greater disruptive physical climate risk than the collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC), the main current system in the South and North Atlantic Oceans, which is linked to circulation in the Southern Ocean. 

There is a non-trivial and unacceptable risk that the AMOC flow will collapse this century, with devastating consequences for global food production, for sea levels and for flooding in Australia. Shifts in global weather patterns would likely deprive Asia of vital monsoon rains, with enormous security consequences for the region and for Australia.

Yet in the Australian Government’s analysis of climate risks, no attention has been paid to the AMOC collapse. In fact, it does not get a mention in the Defence Strategic Review, or the first report of the current National Climate Risk Assessment (NCRA). 

No minister or member of either major party has even mentioned it in parliament since the ALP came to power in 2022. Neither side of Australian politics has got a clue about it. One of the greatest climate-related threats to our future appears completely absent from the Australian Government’s thinking. 

Are climate risks ‘too big’ for politics?

 by Adm. Chris Barrie (Rtd), first published at The Canberra Times.

We all know that climate change is a massive issue. So why is it not a priority for the powers that be?

The biggest risk to Australia’s future is not a priority for either side of politics in Australia, and that’s a problem for all of us.

Both the  government’s and the opposition’s security narratives are that China is the greatest threat to our future. It’s man-made. Hence we have AUKUS, the Quad, continual regional hand-shaking, more joint military exercises, the illusion of nuclear-powered submarines and an enhanced US presence in in Australia's north where bases are being expanded.

But this narrative represents siloed thinking on security. It does not align well with international perceptions. The World Economic Forum’s 2023 survey of public and private sector global leaders found that the biggest three risks in the coming decade were all climate-related, whilst “geo-economic confrontation” (read China) came in ninth.

Climate security risks and Australia’s failure

 by Ian Dunlop, first published at Pearls and Irritations

 “Too hot to handle: The scorching reality of Australia’s climate–security failure” is a report published on 2 May by the Australian Security Leaders Group (ASLCG) . This article is an extract from the report

You can’t solve a problem without talking about it, honestly. Take the impact of climate disruption on security.

One line of evidence for the Australian Government’s seriousness about climate–security risks is government activity, but there is little to see. The government’s most valuable initiative, the Office of National Intelligence risk assessment, has been buried. There have been no significant or specific announcements on climate-related security issues since the report was finished, and the government has not responded to a number of requests made by ASLCG for the report’s release of any of its key findings.

Climate-security risks too hot to handle for Australian Government

 

Register here for webinar.

by David Spratt

This week, the Australian Security Leaders Climate Group (ASLCG) released a new report, Too hot to handle: The scorching reality of Australia’s climate–security failure.

There will be a webinar on the report next Wednesday,  8 May at 6pm, and you can register here. I will be one of the speakers.

Ret. Adm. Chris Barrie, former head of the ADF and a member of the ASLCG Executive Committee says that: “It appears that the government either doesn't understand what our scientists are telling them, or they are deliberately hiding the facts from the Australian community. Facing down the climate threat will require unprecedented global cooperation, not a new arms race.”

Is scientific reticence the new climate denialism?

 
Jonathon Porritt (technically, Sir Jonathon Espie Porritt, 2nd Baronet, CBE) has an excellent piece out, called "Mainstream climate science: The new denialism?" 

It really is worth the read.  For people who have followed this blog, it won't be shockingly new, but in a forthright manner  he questions the startling new reality we are facing, which we discussed in  recent series for Pearls&Irritations: 

• Humanity’s new era of “global boiling”: Climate’s 2023 annus horribilis 
• Towards an unliveable planet: Climate’s 2023 annus horribilis
• Shock as warming accelerates, 1.5°C is breached faster than forecast

Porritt focusses on the "deceit" of "mainstream scientists, NGOs and commentators" have been "holding back" because of the alleged need to "protect people from the truth of climate change", noting that this strategy has not worked "as a way of enlisting the huge numbers of people required to force our politicians to start getting serious".

And he concludes that "we have to see off this patronising, manipulative, self-serving deceit ONCE AND FOR ALL".

Pigs might fly: Australian aviation’s delusional emissions future

by Mark Carter, first published at Pearls and Irritations

Australian aviation is in the news again. Having ripped off passengers, illegally sacked workers, and impacted the health of residents under airport flight paths, the industry has now received $30m from taxpayers to manufacture “sustainable aviation fuel” (SAF). And investors and airlines are clamouring for more.

Having “committed to net zero emissions by 2050”, or Net Zero 2050, (Aviation Green Paper, p.1) the federal government says sustainable aviation fuel will help maximise “aviation’s contribution” (Aviation Green Paper, p.73).

So, yes. Pigs might fly. Literally and metaphorically.

Literally as pig fat in SAF. And metaphorically because the government’s emissions reduction proposals for aviation can never make flying climate safe.

As warming accelerates and 1.5°C is breached faster than forecast, Australian Government stumbles on climate risks

 by David Spratt and Ian Dunlop, first published at Pearls and Irritations

If there was shock and awe last week when the Copernicus Climate Change Service announced that global average warming over the last twelve months — February 2023 to January 2024 — had exceeded 1.5 degrees Celsius (°C), it was likely because too many people had succumbed to the predominant but delusional policy-making narrative that holding warming to 1.5–2°C was still on the cards.

What does this symbolically important moment mean for the poor understanding of climate-risk analysis by Australian governments? To begin, the idea that emissions could continue till 2050 and still achieve the 1.5–2°C goal was always a con; now it is fully exposed.

Towards an unliveable planet: Climate’s 2023 annus horribilis

The "production gap". Government plans and projections would lead to an increase in global coal production until 2030, and in global oil and gas production until at least 2050 (UNEP).

 

by David Spratt and Ian Dunlop, first published at Pearls and Irritations.

This is the second article in a two-part series.  Read the first part here.

 The heat and extreme climate records of 2023 shocked scientists. So where are we heading? Given current trends, the world will zoom past 2°C of warming and the Paris climate goal of limiting warming to 1.5-2°C.

Climate model scenarios similar to current policies project 2°C of warming before 2050; if James Hansen is right (see Part 1) and warming sharply accelerates, it could be a decade sooner. These outcomes will be driven by the high energy imbalance, continuing high emissions, the accelerating accumulation of heat in the oceans, and decreases in short-term aerosol cooling.

Several years ago a group of eminent scientists proposed a “carbon law”, which said that keeping warming to 2°C required emissions to be halved every decade from 2020 onwards, including a halving between 2020 and 2030, plus some carbon drawdown. Instead, the level of greenhouse gases and coal use both hit record highs in 2023. And the largest national fossil fuel producers plan to keep on expanding production As a result, current government plans worldwide will likely result in emissions in 2050 almost as high as they are today, according to the UN Environment Programme’s 2023 Production Gap report.

Humanity’s new era of “global boiling”: Climate’s 2023 annus horribilis

 

by David Spratt and Ian Dunlop, first published at Pearls and Irritations

For climate change, 2023 was an “unprecedented” year, “absolutely gobsmackingly bananas” and “scary” and “frightening”. And that was what climate scientists said! The UN Secretary General called it the year in which humanity crossed into a new climate era — an age of “global boiling”.

Climate disruption shocked climate scientists in 2023. “Surprising. Astounding. Staggering. Unnerving. Bewildering. Flabbergasting. Disquieting. Gobsmacking. Shocking. Mind boggling,” said Prof. Ed Hawkins when September 2023 exceeded the previous September record by a huge 0.5°C.

The decline in Antarctic sea-ice extent was much greater than model projections, leading the National Snow and Ice Data Centre’s Walt Meier to exclaim: “It’s so far outside anything we’ve seen, it’s almost mind- blowing.”

Many records were set for new climate extremes — record heat, rainfall and floods — with some of it driven by the destabilisation of the polar jet stream. “We are hitting record breaking extremes much sooner than I expected. That’s frightening, scary, and concerning, and it really suggests that we’re not as aware of what’s coming as we thought we were,” said Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick of the University of NSW.

COP28 adalah "tragedi bagi planet ini" saat Sindrom Stockholm berlangsung

 

Oleh David Spratt dan Ian Dunlop, diterjemahkan oleh Owen Podger. 

Aslinya: https://johnmenadue.com/cop28-a-tragedy-for-the-planet-as-stockholm-syndrome-took-hold/

Hingga 100.000 orang — yang sebagian besar memperoleh status profesional dan pendapatan mereka dari politik, advokasi, dan bisnis terkait iklim — terbang ke Dubai untuk menghadiri acara pembuatan kebijakan iklim global tahunan COP28, Konferensi Para Pihak di bawah konvensi iklim Perserikatan Bangsa-Bangsa. Dan hasilnya?

Bencana yang tak tanggung-tanggung. Masyarakat adat, komunitas garis depan, dan kelompok keadilan iklim menegur (rebuked) kesepakatan itu sebagai tidak adil, tidak adil, dan "bisnis seperti biasa". Pada sesi terakhir, resolusi kompromi (compromise resolution) yang lemah dan tidak koheren antara negara BBM dan negara-negara kecil dan pendukung – yang tidak menyerukan penghapusan bahan bakar fosil – diterima tanpa perbedaan pendapat dan disambut dengan tepuk tangan meriah, bahkan ketika delegasi Pasifik dan pulau kecil dilarang oleh keamanan memasuki ruangan.

Terlalu banyak tanggapan fasih adalah variasi pada tumbuk (mash) "bergerak ke arah yang benar, tetapi lebih banyak yang harus dilakukan", dengan "cacat tetapi masih transformatif" satu contoh klasik. Dua hari setelah itu, presiden COP28, yang juga mengepalai perusahaan Minyak Nasional Abu Dhabi, mengumumkan Uni Emirat Arab akan mempertahankan rekor investasinya dalam produksi minyak bumi baru.

COP28 a “tragedy for the planet” as Stockholm Syndrome took hold

A self-congratulatory standing ovation greets a deeply-flawed final resolution at COP28

by David Spratt and Ian Dunlop, first published at Pearls & Irritations 

Up to 100,000 people — most of whom derive their professional status and income from climate-related politics, advocacy and business — flew into Dubai for the COP28 annual global climate policy-making event, the Conference of the Parties under the United Nations’ climate convention. And the result?

An unmitigated disaster. Indigenous people, frontline communities and climate justice groups rebuked the deal as unfair, inequitable and “business as usual”. At the final session, a weak and incoherent compromise resolution between petrostates and smaller states and advocates — which did not call for the phase-out of fossil fuels — was accepted without dissent and greeted with a self-congratulatory standing ovation, even as Pacific and small island delegates were barred by security from entering the room.

Too many glib responses were variations on the “moving in the right direction, but more needs to be done” mash, with “flawed but still transformative” one classic example. Within two days the COP28 president, who also heads the Abu Dhabi National Oil company, announced the United Arab Emirates would keep up its record investment in new oil production.

How climate disruption turns strategic priorities upside down

 by Ian Dunlop and David Spratt, first published at Pearls and Irritations

Second of a two-part series.

The first article in this series highlighted the risks of accelerating climate change, and the existential threat humanity now faces because of global leaders’ collective failure to take timely action, culminating in the COP28 meeting in Dubai not acting decisively to rapidly phase out fossil fuels.

The bottom line is that a 1.5°C average global surface temperature increase will be approached this year and, without radically accelerated action, the world is headed toward a catastrophic 3°C of warming, bringing the curtains down on contemporary civilisation.

In short, the Paris Agreement is dead and the imperative for emergency action has never been greater. This demands a fundamental change to Australia’s strategic priorities.