One of the few bright spots in an otherwise dismal global response to the escalating climate crisis has been the preparedness of financial market regulators to force their regulated institutions to face up to the implications of climate risk.
With Covid, the government has shown itself manifestly incapable of leading or managing its core responsibilities, beset by corruption and secrecy. The climate challenge is far greater than Covid, and there are no vaccinations or quarantine against climate impacts, which from now on will increase inexorably in the absence of decisive leadership. (more…)
It is entirely appropriate that President Biden launched his global climate summit on Earth Day 2021. Earth Day began in the US in 1970, triggered by massive pollution across the country, and the need to fundamentally change concepts of industrial development if society was to prosper, rapidly leading by the end of 1970, to the creation of the US Environmental Protection Agency, with bipartisan political support.
The think tank idea that the world can still make a gradual transition to a low-carbon world by tweaking neoliberalism is totally unrealistic. We need to undertake a massive risk management task, the first step of which must be a brutally frank assessment of the challenge we face. It is something that business, finance and politics continues to avoid. Achieving net zero emissions by 2050, is totally inadequate. It must be reached as soon as possible, ideally by 2030.
How fast does Australia need to reduce greenhouse emissions to play its fair part in responding to the global climate emergency?
The Australian Government is dangerously out-of-touch as climate change accelerates and a cascade of tipping points risks unstoppable global warming.
In Australia, denial mounts. The recent “Gas-Led Recovery” and “Technological Roadmap” announcements of the Morrison government confirm the continued influence of the fossil fuel industry and its lobbyists.
Governments are abrogating their first responsibility, which is to safeguard the people and their future well-being.
The first part of historian Judith Brett’s Quarterly Essay, The Coal Curse – Resources, Climate and Australia’s Future, is a masterly dissection of Australian economic history since WW2.
A rational response from Australia’s leaders to the unprecedented and disastrous 2019-20 megafires would have recognised, first, that they are another warning— and the strongest yet — that the catastrophic impacts of human-induced climate change are here now as lives are lost and livelihoods destroyed. Second, it would accept the need for emergency action. (more…)
The first Australian National Climate Emergency Summit was in Melbourne Town Hall, 14-15 February 2020 – there will be many more. (more…)
The current bushfires are unprecedented in terms of their extent, intensity, fire season length, economic and social impact. They are, without doubt, intensified by human-induced climate change. (more…)
The drought and bushfires ravaging large parts of Australia are a foretaste of the climate emergency which, after three decades of inaction by our political and corporate leaders, is locked-in for years to come. (more…)
How good is Australia’s climate leadership?
In short, appalling, as the recent disputes on the linkage between climate change, drought, water availability and bushfires confirm only too well. (more…)
The Real Climate Challenge
After three decades of inaction, human-induced climate change is the greatest threat, and opportunity, facing this country, far outweighing the issues dominating our domestic political discourse, such as the US/China impasse, a faltering economy and religious freedom. The world faces the same threat. (more…)
The first priority of any government is the security of its people. The greatest threat to that security today is human-induced climate change. Because of the refusal of political and corporate leaders over the last two decades to take climate change seriously, it now represents a threat which will wipe out civilisation as we know it, unless we move to emergency action. We have left it too late to make a gradual transition to a low-carbon world. (more…)
The government opts for conflict rather than change, while suppressing details on the implications of its climate inaction
A year ago, discussion of climate change as an existential threat, and the corresponding need for emergency action, was anathema to those leading debate on climate policy in the political, corporate and NGO incumbencies globally. Incremental change remained the order of the day. But even that was too much for Australia, where political denial of climate change remained dominant. (more…)
The hysteria surrounding Brian Fisher’s economic modelling of Coalition and ALP climate policies typifies the predatory delay which has bedevilled the development of any sensible response to our climate and energy dilemma since Australia signed the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, namely: “The blocking or slowing of needed change, in order to make money off unsustainable, unjust systems in the meantime”. (more…)
Central banks, regulators and insurers are starting to acknowledge that the risks of human-induced climate change will have far greater economic and financial consequences than the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. Likewise, global investors and corporations are finally accepting that climate risk is fundamentally changing their business models. (more…)
The first duty of a government is to “protect the people”, their safety and well-being. Nowhere is this duty more important than in addressing climate change, which now constitutes a near-term existential threat to human civilisation. It is an open, and pressing, question whether the Australian Public Service (APS), and particularly the intelligence services, currently have the capacity to properly consider and assess the climate threat to the people of Australia, and to offer sound advice on action to minimise that threat. (more…)
As the debacle of Australian climate and energy policy unfolded over the last three decades, the continuing bleat from peak industry bodies, such as the BCA, MCA and APPEA, has been the need for policy certainty and consistency. Notwithstanding the fact that those same organisations too often have wilfully undermined achievement of those objectives. (more…)
Human-induced climate change is happening faster than officially acknowledged. Extreme events intensify, particularly in Australia, Asia and the Pacific. Victoria and Tasmania are ablaze again. Queensland needs a decade to recover from recent floods. Much of SE Australia has become a frying pan, curtailing human activity. The economic and social cost is massive, as Reserve Bank Deputy Governor Guy Debelle warned us this week, but our leaders refuse absolutely to acknowledge climate change as the cause. (more…)
Defence Minister Christopher Pyne recently gave us the benefit of his wisdom on the parlous state of Australian politics, doubting that it is any longer capable of acting for the long-term good of the nation. Prime Minister Morrison confirmed the truth of Pyne’s observation in his 11 February 2019 National Press Club speech on “Keeping Australians Safe and Secure”. A masterpiece of obfuscation and scaremongering.
The insults hurled by David Leyonhjelm at Sarah Hanson-Young recently put parliamentary discourse in the gutter. Leyonhjelm was roundly condemned, but not by our leaders. A limp slap across the knuckles from Turnbull and Shorten, then on to more pressing matters, hoping it will all go away. (more…)
Sir John Monash was a visionary engineer, military leader and much more, who succeeded in spite of the prejudices of the conservative Melbourne establishment (read: The Coalition right wing), to become, in Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery’s view, “the best general on the Western Front” in WW1. Monash was renowned for his vision and innovation. In 1920 he became Chair and General Manager of the newly-formed State Electricity Commission of Victoria, continuing for many years to oversee major power developments, particularly the opening up of the Latrobe Valley brown coal deposits. (more…)
Humanity has a big decision to make very soon about its future on warming planet, but the Federal Coalition is still in denial that human-induced climate change even exists, let alone that the climate end-game is upon us. (more…)
The insults hurled by David Leyonhjelm at Sarah Hanson-Young recently put parliamentary discourse in the gutter. Leyonhjelm was roundly condemned, but not by our leaders. A limp slap across the knuckles from Turnbull and Shorten, then on to more pressing matters, hoping it will all go away. (more…)
After 30 years of inaction, the focus on climate risk is accelerating as the physical impact of climate change worsens and the transition risks to a low-carbon world intensify. Despite effusive official rhetoric, nothing has been done to seriously address climate change, notwithstanding increasingly urgent warnings[1] [2]. Global climate-related losses are running at record levels [3]. (more…)
“Fiduciary: a person to whom power is entrusted for the benefit of another”
“Power is reposed in members of Parliament by the public for exercise in the interests of the public and not primarily for the interests of members or the parties to which they belong. The cry ‘whatever it takes’ is not consistent with the performance of fiduciary duty” Sir Gerard Brennan AC, KBE, QC
After three decades of global inaction, none more so than in Australia, human-induced climate change is now an existential risk to humanity. That is, a risk posing large negative consequences which will be irreversible, resulting inter alia in major reductions in global and national population, species extinction, disruption of economies and social chaos, unless carbon emissions are reduced on an emergency basis. The risk is immediate in that it is being locked in today by our insistence on expanding the use of fossil fuels when the carbon budget to stay below sensible temperature increase limits is already exhausted. (more…)