Thinking in boxes, Australian Government's Intergenerational Report misleads and fails to connect the climate dots

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

The Australian Government’s public analysis of climate risk, our greatest threat, is dangerously misleading. The Intergenerational Report 2023 (IGR) is a prime example. By dumbing down the implications of climate change with simplified economic models, the IGR and similar reports are institutionalising the global failure to face climate reality.

The US inquiry into the 9/11 World Trade Centre attack in New York concluded that the greatest government shortcoming was the intelligence agencies’ failure to “connect the dots”. The Brookings Institute explains that “thinking in silos” meant that “pieces of the puzzle were to be found in many corners of the US government but no one connected the dots well enough or in a timely enough manner to predict with sufficient accuracy the attack that came”.

Australia’s greatest security threat is a Canberra secret

by David Spratt, first published at The Canberra Times and Newcastle Herald

It's a no-brainer: China is the greatest threat to Australians' future.

The government and the opposition and the Sinophobic commentators tell us so. Often. 

Then there is AUKUS, the Quad, the endless regional hand-shaking, more joint military exercises, nuclear-powered submarines and upgraded US bases in Australia's north.

But there is a much greater security threat that the government seems determined to keep secret.

The World Economic Forum each year surveys public and private sector global leaders on the biggest risk the world faces and publishes the results. Their 2023 survey finds that the biggest three risks in the  decade from now were all climate-related, whilst "geo-economic confrontation" (read China) came in ninth.

Are we failing to see the wood for the trees on climate risks?

 by David Spratt, first published at Pearls and Irritations

Extreme climate impacts are exploding in this year’s Northern Hemisphere summer. We urgently need to understand how climate disruption will affect Australians: their safety and well-being in the face of ever-more-extreme climate events, the viability of public and private infrastructure, communications and logistical systems, challenges to food security, and much more.

The Australian Government is spending $28 million to assess climate risks to the nation’s future. But the National Climate Risk Assessment (NCRA) initiated by the Department of Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Water is poorly conceived, won’t do the job and should not proceed in its present form.

It proscribes mitigation (emissions reduction) options and says the focus is on adaptation and resilience responses only. A bit like telling the frog it can do what it likes as it sits in a pan of slowly heating water, as long as it does not jump out to save itself.

A recent report for the UK government by Chatham House on climate risks concluded that before 2050 it is likely that impacts will “become so severe they go beyond the limits of what nations can adapt to”. Which may leave the NCRA’s adaptation-only mandate dangerously detached from reality.

The Australian Government refuses to say what it knows about climate-security threats, so we gave policymakers a helping hand

By David Spratt

Last year the Australian Government asked the Office of National Intelligence (ONI) to assess climate-related security risks. Due to time constraints, ONI looked at the global and regional picture, but not the domestic one, and their report was given to the government last November.  

Eight months later, the Prime Minsters’ Office has decreed that the report is not to be released, even in a declassified form. This is contrary to the practice of the government that the prime minister likes to call our best ally, which regularly releases climate and security assessments, such as Climate Change and International Responses Increasing Challenges to US National Security Through 2040. Likewise, the Pacific Islands Forum has just published a Pacific Climate Security Assessment Guide.