Climate and security risks? Shhh, says the Albanese Government

 by David Spratt, first published at Pearls&Irritations

The Los Angeles fires have again demonstrated the need for a steely-eyed approach by governments to climate risks, ensuring that the assessment of those risks is up-to-date, considers the plausible worst-case scenarios, and is made widely available so the public understands what we are facing.

But the Australian Government’s work-in-progress National Climate Risk Assessment appears to be sinking fast, leaving us ill-prepared.

You can’t get to the solution to a problem if you don’t first elaborate the question. That is why risk assessments have become such a big thing in business, at all levels of government, for community-based organisations… and even at my local tennis club, where one is to be done yearly.

But not if you are the Albanese Government, which has blithely set about its climate policy agenda — renewables, batteries, EVs and the grid, all well-mixed with a large expansion of Australia’s coal and gas industries — without ever understanding, or explaining to Australians, the basic question: what is the nature of the threat to be mitigated, and how does their policy contain that threat?

Mobilise as if our lives depend on it

by David Spratt

This article appears as the concluding section of Collision Course: 3 degrees of warming & humanity's future, recently published by Breakthrough.

“The problem is that the status quo is a suicide. Those (Paris) commitments, even if fully met, would lead to an increase in temperature […] above 3 degrees which would mean a catastrophic situation.”
— UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, May 2019

Download the report

In 2005 James Hansen, sometimes dubbed the “godfather” of modern climate research, warned that humanity was “on the precipice of climate system tipping points beyond which there is no redemption”. Nineteen years later, we are heading for eye-watering social and ecological disruption, and civilisational collapse.  Cities and regions and nations will drown and desertify. There will be an unrelenting global food crisis. Billions will be displaced and the global economic and governance systems of contemporary society will not work. 

In practical terms, the world has reached 1.5°C of global heating, the rate of warming is accelerating and will likely continue on that path for several decades, especially given the failure so far to bend the emissions curve down fast. That means 2°C by 2040 or shortly after, and the emergence of vast zones of unlivable heat two decades after that on the present course of grossly inadequate action. Tipping points have been passed or are close at hand for some of the biggest elements of the climate system, including polar ice sheets and vast forest and permafrost carbon stores; and system inertia and hysteresis make preserving and restoring those systems very challenging. Scientists are increasingly alarmed that we may be heading towards AMOC collapse by mid-century.

A(nother) year of scientific shock and awe

Aftermath of Cyclone Chido, Mayotte

 

by David Spratt, first published at Pearls&Irritations

If an unexpected leap in the global average temperature in 2023 was described by one scientist as “gobsmackingly bananas”, are there even words to talk about 2024?

This year, Death Valley hit 54.5°C and India 48.9°C during an April–May heatwave. More than 1,300 Hajj pilgrims died in Saudi Arabia as Mecca reached 51.8°C. September brought record-breaking rainfall to central Europe, with disruption costing billions of euros. Devastating floods hit Brazil and Kenya.  2024 ended with a tropical cyclone demolishing the French colony of Mayotte, completely or partly destroying over 35,000 houses.

It was a year when the global average temperature record was broken (again!), and the international climate policy-making charade suffered its own breakdown in Baku.  Here are some of the big stories.

Podcast: Facing the world at 3-degrees of warming

  Listen to The Climate Pod interview with David Spratt

What would the world look like at 3-degrees Celsius of warming above pre-industrial levels? 

In his latest work, Collision Course: 3-degrees of warming & humanity’s future, David Spratt explores the catastrophic implications of the planet we're heading towards as warming continues to accelerate. He argues we need to face up to realities of the crisis and have an honest discourse on risks and impacts already occuring. 

On the show this week, he joins us to discuss the significance of tipping points, and the systemic risks posed by climate change, and the non-linear, catastrophic impacts expected at 3-degrees. We also explore the dire implications for food security, agricultural yields, and social stability. David underscores the need for greater awareness and understanding of climate risks and the importance of leadership in tackling the climate crisis. 

David Spratt is a climate and policy analyst who serves as the Research Director for Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration. He is the co-author of the book Climate Code Red: The case for emergency action.
 

Read Collision Course: 3-degrees of warming & humanity’s future

 Listen to  The Climate Pod interview

Download the report

 

 

Climate's collision course: Science meets politics

Is humanity on a path to collapse in a 3-degree hotter world? That's the question Breakthrough's recent report, Collision Course, sets out to answer.  This is the report overview. 

There is a chasm in outlook between the global climate policy-making elite with their focus on distant goals and slow, non-disruptive change, and activists and key researchers who see the world hurtling towards climate breakdown and social collapse. What light does recent evidence shine on these dissonant views? 

In practical terms, the world has reached 1.5°C of warming and the pace of warming is increasing. An accelerated rate of warming is likely to continue to mid-century given the failure so far to reduce planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions.  Many impacts are occurring faster than forecast, and beyond model projections, including the form, severity and frequency of extreme events such as unprecedented heatwaves and floods.

Climate policy is on a collision course with physical reality

by David Spratt, first published at Pearls&Irritations

Download the report

There is a chasm in outlook between the global climate policy-making elite with their focus on distant goals, market solutions and non-disruptive change, and activists and key researchers who see the world hurtling towards climate breakdown and social collapse. 

A prime example was the 29th global gathering of 50,000 climate policymakers and lobbyists at the the United Nations’ COP conference, held this year in the petrostate of Azerbaijan, which failed much as its predecessors have done. It was not a surprising outcome. Every participating nation has a veto over every decision, which a bloc led by Saudi Arabia used to great effect. Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev told the conference that oil and gas are a “gift of God“. Climate activists were dismayed at the outcome.

The two main COP29 “successes” were a flawed carbon trading deal which means the system may essentially give countries and companies permissions to keep polluting, and a 2035 climate finance deal that was just 30% of the amount estimated by the Independent High Level Expert Group on Climate Finance as necessary for the most vulnerable states.

And key experts including former UN Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon, former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres and former president of Ireland Mary Robinson in a damning statement said that COP climate talks are “no longer fit for purpose” and need an urgent overhaul.

Whilst governments and policy wonks at the COP ritually reiterated their mantra about “keeping warming below 1.5°C”, several agencies are reporting it is almost certain that 2024 will be hotter than 1.5°C and surpass 2023, even though the El Niño had faded earlier in the year.

In practical terms, the world has reached 1.5°C and the pace of warming is increasing, an acceleration likely to be sustained to mid-century given the failure so far to reduce planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions and the remote prospect of a rapid decline.

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.