Yarra Climate Action Now!

The view from the USA - this excellent article, published in the LA Times, gives a fascinating perspective on climate change in Australia, one we don't usually get from within this country.


Reporting from The Murray-Darling Basin, Australia -- Frank Eddy pulled off his dusty boots and slid into a chair, taking his place at the dining room table where most of the critical family issues are hashed out. Spreading hands as dry and cracked as the orchards he tends, the stout man his mates call Tank explained what damage a decade of drought has done.

"Suicide is high. Depression is huge. Families are breaking up. It's devastation," he said, shaking his head. "I've got a neighbor in terrible trouble. Found him in the paddock, sitting in his [truck], crying his eyes out. Grown men -- big, strong grown men. We're holding on by the skin of our teeth. It's desperate times."

A result of climate change?

"You'd have to have your head in the bloody sand to think otherwise," Eddy said.

To read the full report, including a video and pictures, click here.

The following text is from a flyer that Yarra Climate Action Now has produced. For electronic or hard copies of the flyer contact us on YarraCAN@gmail.com.



The world’s scientists are telling us that we are facing a climate emergency. We are running out of time to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, and need to act urgently. The effects of runaway climate change are unthinkable and must be avoided at all costs. However, our governments are beholden to vested interests in the fossil fuel and other dirty industry lobbies and are not dealing with this issue adequately. This is what you need to know:

1. The Federal Government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) is worse than nothing.
The scheme will:
- Lock in inadequate emissions reduction targets of 5-25% by 2020 on 2000 levels - completely out of touch with what the scientists are calling for.
- Undermine international negotiations on a global emissions agreement by showing Australia is not willing to pull its weight.
- Expose taxpayers to possible compensation claims when we have a government that will actually take climate change seriously by giving pollution property rights to polluters.
- Result in a massive transfer of wealth from all of us to already rich, polluting companies, through free permits and other "compensation" giveaways.
- Disenfranchise voluntary action by households and communities, by ensuring their efforts do nothing to reduce emissions and only free up more permits for polluters.

It needs to be scrapped and sent back to the drawing board. Even without a scheme Australia must participate in international negotiations and so will be forced to reduce emissions in any case.


2. Climate science (it’s worse than you think)
As climate scientists study our climate system, they are discovering that they initially underestimated the effects of carbon pollution. Global warming is happening faster than previously stated, and most governments are basing their policies on outdated science. See key outcomes from the March 2009 gathering of climate scientists in Copenhagen.


3. Climate change is bad for the economy, fighting climate change creates jobs!
Climate change will cause progressively worsening economic shocks, which we are already witnessing, such as prolonged drought and extreme events (bushfire, heatwaves and windstorms). It will do the same to our trading partners. As climate change worsens, it has the capacity to cause recessions and depressions. Fighting climate change on the other hand, is likely to stimulate the economy and create jobs, since it will require a large investment to install renewable energy technologies and these technologies are more labour intensive than the old-fashioned dirty ones. See: www.unep.org/greeneconomy


4. Individual action is not enough
Governments like to talk about black balloons and changing light bulbs, but the truth is to stop climate change we will need significant change to business and politics as usual. This will require not only individual, but collective action that shifts the power balance in this country away from the big polluters and towards the Australian public.


5. The necessary technologies already exist
The technologies required to shift our economy to 100% renewable energy already exist. We do not need to wait for unproven technologies that are decades away like carbon capture and storage (clean coal). We can make the change now while leaving the coal in the ground. See: www.beyondzeroemissions.org and www.wecansolveit.org

Yesterday, thousands of people went to St Kilda beach to send a message with our bodies to our so called leaders on climate change. The wording of the sign was chosen by local grade six student Sophie Dickinson.

Yarra Climate Action Now was a proud participant in this event, brilliantly organised by Locals Into Victoria’s Environment, supported by Bayside Climate Change Action Group, both local climate action groups in Melbourne.

The sign stretched for 350m and we are yet to hear if it broke the record for the world’s biggest human sign.


Kevin Rudd are you listening? John Brumby are you listening?

Our future is more important than the vested interests of a few large corporations. We need you to listen to the scientists and transition our country to 100% renewable energy as soon as possible. That means stop giving money to the big polluters, and invest in a green future and green jobs. Now.

If an eleven year old child can see it so clearly, why can't you?

For more photos of the event, click here, and for a video of the event, click here.

Faced with a much worse recession than we are facing here, the UK Labour Government has pledged to cut Britain's emissions unconditionally by 34% on 1990 levels by 2020, with this to increase under an international deal.

The UK Government aims to do this without importing international credits, which have been heavily criticised by scientists and environment groups.

While these cuts are still not what climate scientists are saying the rich world needs to cut emissions by in order to avoid runaway climate change (well over 40% by 2020), compare it to the measly 5% by 2020 Kevin Rudd has offered for Australia - complete with importing of international permits.

If the UK can do this, why can't Australia do even better with our abundant renewable energy resources?

To read further on these policies click here.

The letter below was sent to Kevin Rudd today and signed by 66 climate action groups, including Yarra Climate Action Now.

RE: PROPOSED CHANGES TO AUSTRALIA’S TARGET AND CPRS

Dear Prime Minister,

The 66 Climate Action Groups signing this letter are completely shocked by your decision yesterday to further weaken Australia’s position on climate change.

We believe that you have abandoned your duty of care to protect the Australian people as well as our species and habitats from dangerous climate change.

Groups strongly oppose your new 2020 emissions reduction target band of 5-25% below 2000 levels:

• We have consistently called for targets based on the best available climate science, which calls for reductions of at least 40 – 50% by developed countries by 2020.
• The 5% unconditional target would, according to the world’s top scientists, commit us to catastrophic climate change and the IPCC’s worst-case scenarios.
• The 25% upper target, if applied globally, would lead to at least 2°C of warming and the loss of the Great Barrier Reef. This is an untenable position and we cannot accept it.
• These targets also remain out of step with the unconditional targets agreed to by other developed nations (the UK, US and EU have agreed to cut emissions by 34-46%, 20% and 20-30% from 1990 levels respectively).

Groups also assert that a global agreement based on 450ppm CO2e will not protect the Great Barrier Reef, as you suggested yesterday. International scientists estimate that atmospheric CO2 needs to be no more than 350ppm, but preferably closer to 300ppm, to avoid dangerous climate change.

Your decision to further weaken the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) by increasing the number of free permits, delaying the Scheme by a year and introducing a $10 price cap in the first year, completely flies in the face of the thousands of submissions that were lodged by concerned communities, scientists and individuals.

Groups, once again, recommend you urgently fix the fundamental flaws in the CPRS:

• Urgently exclude international permits from the CPRS so that actual emissions in Australia will begin to fall from 2010 onwards, rather than reductions only taking place from 2035 onwards (as forecast by the Federal Treasury).
• Remove the emission floor in the CPRS (which prevents emissions from falling below the 5% target), to ensure that individual action can contribute to additional emissions abatement over and above the 5-25% emissions reduction target band.
• The proposed ‘Australian Carbon Trust’ does not address our concerns on the need for individual action to be additional to the 5% target. The Trust simply formalises what individuals were always able to do anyway. Nomatter what individuals do to reduce emissions we can never go beyond the 5% target.
• Exclude both reforestation and deforestation from the Scheme – Groups note the current treatment creates a market distortion in favour of increasing native forest logging. This requires urgent rectification.
• Replace ALL free-permits in the CPRS with a system of Border Adjustments, to ensure that these sectors transition to a lower emissions intensity without being unduly disadvantaged in the international market.
• Change the requirements for the $3.9 billion of assistance to coal-fired generators under the CPRS to be conditional upon a phase-out plan for these generators.

Yesterday’s announcement has confirmed to us that you have not been able to stand up to the immense pressure exerted upon you by industry.

Your election promises to the Australian people on climate change were clear and unequivocal. Despite all of this, you have chosen to put industry interests above the national interest.

We stand by our comments to the Senate last month – we believe that your climate change ‘spin’ is deceptive and misleading to both the Australian public and the international community.

The 66 Climate Action Groups signing this letter urge you to treat climate change as the emergency it is, and broker an ambitious new climate deal for Australia that truly addresses the needs of future generations, builds new jobs in ecologically sustainable industries and protects our precious species and habitats.

Yours sincerely,

Yarra Climate Action Now and 65 other climate action groups

Rally
1pm Wednesday 6 May
Steps of Parliament House, Spring Street

This protest is to demand a real feed-in tariff for Victoria, as opposed to the pointless scheme being proposed by the Brumby Government.

A real, gross, feed-in tariff will:

• increase the number of solar panels on Victorian roofs
• grow green collar jobs in Victoria
• support our solar industry
• and reduce our greenhouse gas emissions

Come out to support green jobs and solar energy. We have a unique opportunity to influence the Victorian Parliament to amend the flawed legislation!

For further information on solar feed-in tariffs, see our previous blog entry here, and see Environment Victoria’s website.

Contact Victoria@envict.org.au for further information.

To send Ted Baillieu a message on this issue instantly, click here.

Today the world's average temperature is just under one degree Celsius above what it was in pre-industrial times. Some scientists are saying that with the current level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, a two degree rise is locked in unless we can reduce emissions to almost zero and actively remove carbon from the atmosphere. It is also likely that on current emissions trajectories, we will reach a six degree rise by 2100.

The Australian Federal Government and most governments around the world have yet to officially set what temperature rise they believe is adequately safe. Many unofficially subscribe to the aim of keeping temperature rise to two degrees or below. However, the most recent science indicates that this may be too high and trigger feedback loops that result in more temperature rises outside of humanity's control.

So what do these temperature rises mean in reality?

The following summary has been taken from two sources. Mark Lynas' article in The Guardian and David Spratt's presentation at the Moreland Climate Group's recent climate debate. We will count down from six to one.

Six Degrees and Above
Danger of "runaway warming", perhaps spurred by the release of oceanic methane hydrates. Could the surface of the Earth become like Venus, entirely uninhabitable? Most sea life is dead. Human refuges are now confined entirely to highland areas and the polar regions. The human population is drastically reduced. Perhaps 90% of species become extinct, rivalling the worst mass extinctions in the Earth's 4.5 billion-year history.


Five Degrees
Global average temperatures are now hotter than for 50 million years. At this time breadfruit trees grew on the coast of Greenland, while the Arctic Ocean saw water temperatures of 20 degrees Celsius. There was no ice at either pole (today that means a 70-metre sea-level rise), and much of the world would have been desertified.

At five degrees, most of the topics, sub-tropics and even lower mid-latitudes are too hot to be inhabitable. Sea level rise is now sufficiently rapid that coastal cities across the world are largely abandoned.

Prof. Hans Joachim Schellnuhuber, Director of the Potsdam Institute and adviser to the European Union and to the German Chancellor, told the Copenhagen science conference in March that a rise to 5–6 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels would reduce "the carrying capacity of the planet (to) below 1 billion people".


Four Degrees
A tipping point sees massive amounts of methane - a potent greenhouse gas - released by melting Siberian permafrost, further boosting global warming and making further human action to mitigate emissions futile. Much human habitation in southern Europe, north Africa, the Middle East and other sub-tropical areas is rendered unviable due to excessive heat and drought. Deserts are spreading in Italy, Spain, Greece and Turkey. The focus of civilisation moves towards the poles, where temperatures remain cool enough for crops, and rainfall - albeit with severe floods - persists. All sea ice is gone from both poles; mountain glaciers are gone from the Andes, Alps and Rockies, with severe water supply implications for these areas.


Three Degrees
3 degrees Celsius is the cap effectively being advocated by Australia’s Labor government. Labor policy is a 60 per cent reduction in Australian emissions by 2050. Sir Nicholas Stern says explicitly that for developed nations this is a 3 degrees Celsius target, telling the National Press Club in Canberra it would be "a very good idea if all rich countries, including Australia, set themselves a target for 2050 of at least 60 per cent emissions reductions" and this would leave us with "roughly a fifty-fifty chance of being either side of 3 degrees above pre-industrial times".

This is the target that both Stern and Garnaut advocated, but Stern now says that “We haven't seen 3 degrees Celsius for a few million years, and we don't know what that looks like”. But from the Pliocene 3 million years ago we know what a 3 degrees Celsius world would likely be: a northern hemisphere free of glaciers and icesheets, where beech trees grew in the Transantarctic mountains, sea levels were 25 metres higher, and probably permanent El Nino conditions.

Glacier and snow-melt in the world's mountain chains will deplete freshwater flows to downstream cities and agricultural land. Most affected are California, Peru, Pakistan and China. Global food production is under threat as key breadbaskets in Europe, Asia and the United States suffer drought, and heatwaves outstrip the tolerance of crops. The Gulf Stream current declines significantly. Cooling in Europe is unlikely due to global warming, but oceanic changes alter weather patterns and lead to higher than average sea level rise in the eastern US and UK.

NASA climate chief Dr James Hansen has warned that a 3 degrees Celsius warming "threatens even greater calamity, because it could unleash positive feedbacks such as melting of frozen methane in the Arctic, as occurred 55 million years ago, when more than 90 per cent of species on Earth went extinct". Hitting three degrees may mean that we are not able to stop there.


Two Degrees
2 degrees Celsius has been a target of convenience in international negotiations, but is now losing consensus as the politicians head to 3 and 4 degrees Celsius, and the scientists towards zero.

To have a 2 in 3 chance of holding to 2 degrees Celsius, atmospheric carbon needs to be held to 400ppm CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent) and that requires a global reduction is emissions of 80% by 2050 (over 1990) and negative emissions after 2070. For Australia, a 2 degrees Celsius target means a more than 95% cut by 2050.

A rise of 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial temperatures will initiate large climate feedbacks in the oceans, on ice-sheets, and on the tundra, taking the Earth well past significant tipping points. Likely impacts include large-scale disintegration of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice-sheet; the extinction of an estimated 15– 40 per cent of plant and animal species; dangerous ocean acidification; increasing methane release; substantial soil and ocean carbon-cycle feedbacks; and widespread drought and desertification in Africa, Australia, Mediterranean Europe, and the western USA.

Hansen told the US Congress last year that: “We have reached a point of planetary emergency… climate is nearing dangerous tipping points. Elements of a perfect storm, a global cataclysm, are assembled… the oft-stated goal to keep global warming less than +2 degrees Celsius is a recipe for global disaster, not salvation.”

Summer heatwaves such as that in Europe in 2003, which killed 30,000 people, become annual events. Extreme heat sees temperatures reaching the low 40s Celsius in southern England. Amazon rainforest crosses a "tipping point" where extreme heat and lower rainfall makes the forest unviable - much of it burns and is replaced by desert and savannah. Dissolved CO2 turns the oceans increasingly acidic, destroying remaining coral reefs and wiping out many species of plankton which are the basis of the marine food chain. Several metres of sea level rise is now inevitable.


One Degree
Today at just less than 1 degree Celsius of global warming we are witnessing of the destruction of the Arctic ecosystem. Eight million square kilometres of sea ice is disappearing fast each summer and may be entirely gone within a few years. Already 80% by volume of summer sea-ice has been lost, and regional warming of up to 5 degrees Celsius may have already pushed the Greenland ice-sheet (eventual sea-level rise of 7 metres) past its tipping point.

At less than 1 degree Celsius there is more frequent and intense heatwaves, ongoing drought around the Mediterranean and in Australia, sub-Saharan Africa and the western US, and the swift retreat of river-feeding mountain glaciers. The eastern Amazon is drying (some tributaries ran dry in the 2005 drought), low-lying island states are on the edge of a precipice, as are coral reefs. Britain’s Hadley Centre calculates that warming of just 1C would eliminate fresh water from a third of the world’s land surface by 2100.


It is obvious from these predictions that we need to reduce emissions and draw down carbon from the atmosphere, to get warming back down to as close to zero as possible. We need to make politically possible what is scientifically necessary.