Publications

Our climate: past and future Illustrated in 11 easy slides Download PDF Download Powerpoint	4 degrees hotter: A primer Download	Climate policy dissonance Download
A Rough Guide to Door-Knocking on Climate Download	A carbon tax... and then? Download	High Stakes: Climate Change, the Himalayas, Asia and Australia Download
A collection of provocative ideas and proposals for the 2010 Australian Climate Action Summit Download	The permafrost: Bubbling our way to the apocalypse Download	A collection of articles and ideas for the 2009 Australian Climate Action Summit Download
The October 2007 look at the Arctic story, which triggered the writing of "Climate Code Red". Download	"Climate Code Red" Find out more	A primer on sea-level rise Download

Putting politics before science is a dumb strategy

David Spratt

On the "Rooted" blog today, Tim Hollo asked: Is an ETS automatically more ambitious than a tax?

This debate is urgent, as a grouping of large NGOs enters the public arena to advocate for politically-based climate targets. It's disturbing to see that the Climate Institute and the Southern Cross Climate Coalition (SCCC) are it again, pitching for climate policy targets that fall well short of what the climate science requires.

[It is interesting that the SCCC sees the ACTU still linking with the Climate Institute, which was founded with philanthropic support, but is now financially dependent on big business, including GE, Westpac, KPMG, OgilvyEarth, PacHydro, AGL and Jemena!  This seems an usual relationship for the ACTU to be engaged in.]

The SCCC says a policy foundation is that "Australia’s domestic pollution levels are declining by 2013 and are able to be reduced by at least 25 percent by 2020 (from 1990 levels) as our contribution to an ambitious international climate agreement."

This blog has previously looked at how a number of large environment and NGOs went minesweeping for Labor's crook emissions trading scheme, and what's up with emisions reductions of 25-40% by 2020.

Testing Victorian Labor's climate credentials

Having watched federal Labor take a battering at the polls over its climate backflips, the Victorian Labor Government has learned some lessons in preparing for the state poll of 27 November.

Labor is working hard to get on the front foot on climate, especially in preparing to defend a number of northern inner-city seats which on the results from relevant booths at the federal poll would either fall to the Greens (Melbourne, Richmond) or are line-ball (Northcote, Brunswick). Whilst the Greens as yet do not appear to have released an election-ready climate and energy policy, Labor is promoting its recent climate initiatives, exemplified by this current local newspaper advertisement, on-the-ground campaign material, and social media.

But how well does Labor stack up? Premier Brumby has made much of the government's climate bill, but the Victorian Government has also promised a $50 million subsidy for a new coal power station in Victoria, to be built by the company HRL-Dual Gas. The project is currently seeking EPA approval. It will increase Victoria’s greenhouse gas emissions by up to 4.2 million tonnes each year.

That's the same amount that emissions will be cut with Premier Brumby's plan to close one-quarter of Hazelwood power station. That's a dirty trick, saying you will close a small part of one coal power station because you care about the climate, then handing over taxpayers' money to build a new one!

Hazelwood was due to close in 2009, but instead the state Labor government extended its life past 2030. It is an industrial dinosaur and the dirtiest coal-fired power station in Australia.

Victoria’s brown-coal emissions have increased 10% in the last 10 years, and new, dirty brown coal reserves have been handed over to industry. Deals have been signed to dig up and export more brown coal.

Key messages of Climate Code Red

On the publication of "Climate Code Red" in mid-2008, we tried to elaborate some of the key themes in the book:

1. Our goal is a safe-climate future – we have no right to bargain away species or human lives

• No species has the right to consciously determine what proportion of all other species on earth should become extinct — as the compromise 2 and 3-degree temperature rise targets do. Lacking the collective will to act in a sustainable manner is no excuse.
  
• Humans have created the looming catastrophe of global warming and we have the capacity and duty to undo the damage and act in a sustainable manner, to cool the earth back to the safe-climate zone.
  

Bubbling our way to the apocalypse

Here's an article published in Rolling Stone in November 2008, which while focused on the permafrost issue, made some comments about the trajectory of the Rudd Labor government on climate. They turned out even worse that expected.

Bubbling our way to the apocalypse

Despite some public stunts that suggest concern about carbon, the Rudd Government's global warming plan just doesn't add up

by David Spratt and Damien Lawson

Kevin Rudd should send his climate change minister, Penny Wong, to Siberia.

Not as punishment, but because our future may depend on Penny Wong and climate policy-makers around the world understanding what’s going on there. For beneath its frozen landscape a catastrophe is lurking, and Siberia may about to become the scene of global retribution for our extravagant consumption of fossil fuels.

"Siberia" has become a metaphor for exile and deprivation. In the nineteenth century more than a million prisoners were deported there. Last century at last 18 million people were banished to the Soviet Union's labour camps for political and other prisoners, known as the Gulag, scattered across north-east Siberia.

What would 3 degrees mean?

David Spratt

The failure of international climate negotiations means that if all countries acted on ALL their commitments, the world would still warm by more than 3 degrees, according to Climate Tracker. 

So what would a world 3 degrees warmer llok and feel like? Scientists draw on a number of disciplines and methods to answer the question, including paleo-climatology (study of past climate history), complex mathematical models of the world's climate system tested and refined against past climate data, observation of current events and specific research testing hypotheses. Mark Lynas surveyed much of this research for his book "Six degrees: our place on a hotter planet" (Harper Collins, 2007). Drawing from his work and other sources, the following is an overview of some of the scientific projections as the world warms. These are not all certain events, but they are what scientific research thinks is likely. A full set of references on pp. 301-327 of "Six Degrees".

Three degrees of warming

Three degrees may be the “tipping point” where global warming could run out of control, leaving us powerless to intervene as planetary temperatures soar. America's most eminent climate scientist, James Hansen says warming has brought us to the "precipice of a great “tipping point”. If we go over the edge, it will be a transition to “a different planet”, an environment far outside the range that has been experienced by humanity. There will be no return within the lifetime of any generation that can be imagined, and the trip will exterminate a large fraction of species on the planet" ["Wild" magazine, April 2007].

Liberals would cut $1.5 billion in climate funding

A detailed statement outlining the savings measures or cuts that would be made by the Coalition has been released by the opposition's finance spokesman Andrew Robb.
Based on the content of the statement it seems the Coalition would cut over $1.5 billion in climate related funding set out in the Budget over the forward estimates (next four years). This includes the $653 million renewable energy and energy efficiency fund announced in the Federal Budget.
In addition they would also reduce funding to the Carbon Capture and Storage Flagships Program by $200 million.
Further evidence that the Coalition like Labor don't have a real plan to tackle climate change.

Door knocking in Coburg

Climate Action Moreland and the Climate Action Centre held our second day of door knocking in Coburg today.

Hundreds of residents of the city of Moreland found out about the campaign to Replace Hazelwood with Clean Energy and signed our petition.

Many commited to asking the local Labor candidate where she stood on the Hazelwood election test.

More door knock days are planned for inner city electorates to find our more sign up for email updates and keep an eye on the Replace Hazelwood page of the Climate Action website.

10 lessons for the climate movement

Damien Lawson

[First published for the second Australian climate action summit, Canberra, March 2010]

For the 2009 climate summit, I wrote a short article titled “Looking back - moving forward: ten lessons for the climate movement”. It attempted to articulate some of the challenges and opportunities for the community climate movement after two years of rapid growth in scope and capacity.

A lot has happened since the last summit: the dominance of the debate on the government’s carbon-trading plan, the failed Copenhagen conference, the division over climate in the Liberal Party and the emergence of the climate denier Tony Abbot as leader. In many ways the harsh reality of the terrain in which we are working is even more stark than it was a year ago, and requires us to face up to the enormous challenge we face.

Taking "Replace Hazelwood" to the streets

The Labor member for Northcote, Fiona Richardson, is greeted by members of Darebin Climate Action Now, Fairfield shops, Saturday 24 April 2010.
More on the campaign...
and help door-knock in Moreland

A climate of can-do

by David Spratt

[First published in Earth Song Journal (Perspectives in Ecology, Spirituality and Education), Autumn 2010]

In an Australia Day speech this year, prime minister Rudd evoked the "two great spirits, that of the can-do, that of the fair go, (which) essentially hold together the narrative of our nation" and "this great... ennobling attitude of Australians where we have the sense and the spirit of the fair go etched deeply into the Australian soul".

But are those attitudes simply to be lauded in others when the nationalist "spirit" peaks on ceremonial occasions, or they should they inform our national leadership in facing global warming, the great challenge of our time?

The greens’ proposal for a carbon tax

by David Spratt
[First published for the second Australian Climate Action Summit, 12 March 2010]

On 21 January, The Greens proposed a “levy on polluters” or carbon price/tax to break the Senate deadlock on climate change. The Greens are currently negotiating with the government on the plan.

How the Murdoch press got it wrong on the Himalayan big melt

Published in Crikey, 20 January 2010

by Damien Lawson and David Spratt

Drawing on a January 13 New Scientist story by Fred Pearce reporting on a debate among glaciologists about the IPCC's claim, The Times (UK) and subsequently The Australian and other Murdoch papers have tried to shift from a debate about timing to a questioning of global warming.

A climate con: Analysis of the "Copenhagen Accord"

By David Spratt and Damien Lawson
21 December 2009
Climate Action Centre Briefing Note

''In biblical terms it looks like we are being offered 30 pieces of silver to betray our future and our people … our future is not for sale.'' Ian Fry, Tuvalu negotiator

"This is a declaration that small and poor countries don't matter, that international civil society doesn't matter, and that serious limits on carbon don't matter. The president has wrecked the UN and he's wrecked the possibility of a tough plan to control global warming. It may get Obama a reputation as a tough American leader, but it's at the expense of everything progressives have held dear. 189 countries have been left powerless, and the foxes now guard the carbon henhouse without any oversight." Bill McKibben, 350.org

Oil: enough energy to melt glaciers!

Thanks to Gristmill for pointing to this amazing advertisment from a 1962 issue of Life Magazine. Humble Oil later merged with Standard to become Exxon.

And it's all true!
Reporting in the journal Nature in September, researchers from British Antarctic Survey and the University of Bristol describe how analysis of millions of NASA satellite measurements from both vast, polar ice sheets shows that the most profound ice loss is a result of glaciers speeding up where they flow into the sea.

The authors conclude that this ‘dynamic thinning’ of glaciers now reaches all latitudes in Greenland, has intensified on key Antarctic coastlines, is penetrating far into the ice sheets’ interior and is spreading as ice shelves thin by ocean-driven melt. Ice shelf collapse has triggered particularly strong thinning that has endured for decades.

For an overview of the Arctic, check out the Arctic Report Card, released earlier this month.

Copenhagen reality check: 25% by 2020 isn't in the ball park

First published in Crikey, 4 November 2009

Climate policy analyst David Spratt writes:

Columnist David Roberts sees the Copenhagen climate change conference negotiating process so far as akin to "an aquarium full of hamsters connected to rudimentary motors. There's a lot of frantic running, a lot of sweat and heat, but in the end, very little light".

The dim light that does exists flickers on a target for Australia and the developed economies of reducing emissions by 2020 to 25% below the level of 1990.

In Bali two years ago, the European Union proposed a framework that included global emissions peaking in 10–15 years and for developed countries to achieve emissions levels 20–40% below 1990 levels by 2020. The United States, supported by Australia and others, strongly opposed this.

In a flood of tears and acrimony, the final Bali session sat through the night to produce a compromise that mandates "deep cuts in global emissions", with footnote references to the 2007 IPCC report which talks about the developed economies needing to reduce emissions 25 to 40% below 1990 levels to have a reasonable chance of holding warming to 2 degrees Celsius.

The Garnaut report quietly dropped the 40% end of the range and mischievously took 25% by 2020 as being a 2-degree target. The Rudd government followed in these footsteps and went for a 25% target, with highly conditional qualifications, in the revised CPRS in May, abetted by the ACTU-led Southern Cross Climate Coalition.

Now 2 degrees isn't the sort of target anyone with grandkids should aspire to. The research tells us that a 2-degree warming will initiate large climate feedbacks on land and in the oceans, on sea-ice and mountain glaciers 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-sheets; sea- level rises; the extinction of an estimated 15 to 40 per cent of plant and animal species; dangerous ocean acidification and widespread drought, desertification and malnutrition in Africa, Australia, Mediterranean Europe, and the western USA.

You can bet your house that Copenhagen will not conclude with a 25% mandatory target for all the developed economies, but is it what we need to do, or is the whole of the Copenhagen process wrapped in an enormous delusion?

In September, researchers from Oxford and Germany's Potsdam Institute, produced figures on a carbon budget to 2050. In essence, they estimated how much carbon in total can be put in the air to 2050 if the aim is to not exceed 2 degrees.

From there it's not too hard to work out what each country needs to do, and that what's the Potsdam Institute Director Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber did in his recent presentation to the "4 Degrees and Beyond" conference in Oxford.

Assume the present population, and divide it into the total carbon budget and you get a budget per person to 2050. [This is based in the assumption that each citizen of the planet has an equal right to the budget, a proposition disputed by many in the developing world who rightly point to the historic carbon debt on which the developed world built their economies].



Nevertheless, by taking the per capita allocation to 2050 and comparing it to a nation's current annual emissions per person, you get a clear picture of national responsibilities, and that's what Schellnhuber did in a single chart.

Australia, like the USA, is top of the pops for per capita emissions.

If we maintain that rate, our carbon budget to 2050 runs out in five years. Five years!! Or put in another way, as the chart illustrates, Australia and the USA would need to be at zero emissions by 2020. Just follow the black line.

Not 25% by 2020, but 100% by 2020 for Australia. That's the science, unadorned. God forbid the politics.

A 4 degree world

A recent conference in Oxford attended by the best and brightest of the climate science academy examined the prospects and impacts of 4 degrees of global warming. The prognosis is not good. New Scientist have done a good summary with a Google Earth interactive guide (download .kmz file), but if you have a spare hour listen to some of the presentations available on the conference website; Prof. Schellenhuber's and Richard Betts' from the Met Office are a must.

Copenhagen in a Nutshell

This figure from the Washington Post and statement by Jose Barroso sums up what we can expect from the current Copenhagen process.

As Prof. Prof Schellnhuber, the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Change, said this week the chances of the getting a deal that could keep warming below two degrees was "pie in the sky".

Forget about 2050, we're blowing the carbon budget right now

by David Spratt

Sick of hearing about greenhouse emission reduction targets for 2020 or 2030 or 2050? Now there's a new way to think about what we need to do in Australia, and its a million miles from the Canberra debate: The carbon budget for Australians to 2050 for a 2-degree target runs out in five and a bit years!

Focusing on targets decades ahead has a bad side to it, because it transfers responsibility for action to the future, rather than the here and now. Perhaps that's why the 10:10 campaign in the UK has picked up such a groundswell of support so quickly, because its action time horizon is the next year.

As the world head towards COP15 in Copenhagen this December, the question about how far / how fast emissions need to be reduced is always lurking. The mainstream public debate is still focused on the Kyoto Annex 1 (advanced industrial economies) reducing emissions by 25-40% compared to a 1990 baseline by 2020. But that is the wrong target and the Australian governments proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme won't reduce Australia's actual emissions below the 1990 level for another quarter of a century.

And there are some startling new figures about what we need to do, right now. Earlier this year this blog looked at two new research papers published this week in Nature on emissions targets.

One paper looked at how much carbon "budget" was left to 2050 to keep warming to 2 degrees. Now 2 degrees is not a good idea, but the results were sharp. They found that almost a third of that budget had been used in the first 8 years! From that work, a number of conclusions can be drawn:

• If emissions keep growing at 3.5 per cent a year, then the carbon budget for 2 degrees runs out in 2021. That is, after that time, emissions would need to drop to zero immediately to have a 75 per cent chance of not passing 2 degrees.
• If global emissions reduce 2 per cent a year from now, the carbon budget will run out in 2030 for 2C, and
• With a 4 per cent annual reduction in global emissions, it will run out in 2040.

And in would take a miracle for COP15 in Copenhagen to produce a result that would even stabilise global emissions at their current level by 2020, in which case COP15 will blow the carbon budget to 2050 for 2 degrees in less than 20 year from now.

And that for a target that will that 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.

Now there's an even more compelling way to look at the issue, thanks to Potsdam Institute Director Hans Joachim Schellnhuber in The Guardian of 10 September: Developed countries are 'carbon insolvent'.

Applying his logic to Australia...

1. The total carbon budget 2050 to have a 2-in-3 chance staying below a 2-degree temperature increase is 750 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2).
2. If you take the world population now at 6.9 billion people (and assume no population increase!) and...
3. Then assume that the world's population has an equal right to emit carbon (a starting point which ignores historic carbon debt and responsibility), then...
4. The carbon budget per person to 2050 is 110 tonnes CO2 (750 divided by 6.9). Of course if you allow for increasing population (estimated at 9 billion by 2050), that figure is lower.
5. We know that Australia emissions today are 20.58 tonnes CO2 per person per year, the world's highest per capita carbon dioxide emissions from energy use.
6. Divide that budget of 110 tonnes by the yearly figure of 20.58 and the result is that:
7. The carbon budget for Australians to 2050 for a 2-degree target runs out in 5 and a bit years!

Or do we reckon that we have some inherent right to pour more CO2 into the air that the billions in the developing world who lack the infrastructure and standard of living that our historically high emissions have bought us?

SEE also discussion in Sydney Morning Herald: Lost opportunities from the crisis.

Punting on coal is a loser, tell the Government

First published in The Age, 10 September 2009

Everyone else can see the folly of propping up polluting industries.

THERE'S an irony in the rushed construction of a new security fence around the Hazelwood power station, in anticipation of a community protest this weekend.

The Government, it seems, is more in interested in protecting Hazelwood from protesters, than protecting our climate from Hazelwood.

Victoria has been shamed as the least climate-friendly state, running three of Australia's four dirtiest power stations. And Hazelwood is one of the dirtiest in the developed world, scheduled to close this year but in 2005 given a lifeline by the State Government to 2031.

The timing is significant, because it reflects the climate policy strategy of the major parties: hang on with dirty coal till 2030-35, and hope that by then carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology will work. For now, pour money into CCS research, but stall on serious emission-reduction strategies.

This is reflected in the proposed carbon pollution reduction scheme. Treasury modelling for the defeated legislation shows that Australia's actual emissions don't drop below the 1990 baseline until 2035, when it assumes CCS will be commercially viable. Meanwhile, the ''decrease'' in emissions is engineered by buying carbon credits at the lowest price, likely from Papua New Guinea and Indonesian forest offset schemes, which are beginning to look like scams in the making.

Another indication of the punt on coal is the Federal Government's expansion of Australia's coal export capacity. The two infrastructure projects announced in 2008 will alone result in destination nation emissions 17 per cent greater than Australia's total emissions.

If you are going to bet your house on a horse, you need to be assured that it is going to hit the winning post first. But already CCS is stumbling, and the 2030 timeframe is being pushed further into the future.

Recent analysis from a team at the Potsdam Institute in Germany, whose work was influential in the emissions reduction work published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is startling. Assuming a global warming target of two degrees - now far too high according to IPCC chair Rajendra Pachauri - they find that the carbon budget from 2000 to 2050 has already been one-third consumed. If global emissions can be cut 2 per cent a year in Copenhagen, which is highly unlikely, the carbon budget to 2050 will run out by 2030. If emissions keep growing at the present rate, the carbon emissions budget for the two degrees target will run out in 2021!

The increasingly grim observations of global warming impacts demand that we move to a zero-emissions energy system quickly. CCS simply cannot deliver such an outcome in the relevant time-frame, if it is ever proven to work at scale. Recently the British Government admitted that proposals to require existing power plants to fit CCS technology would force their closure on cost grounds.

Retrofitting current generators isn't cost-effective, so CCS depends on building a whole new array of coal-fired power stations, at which point our carbon budget will already be in planet-threatening deficit. Waiting to see if CCS is technologically viable at scale, let alone cost-competitive in two or three decades time, defies the principles of sensible risk management.

It just doesn't add up. A recent Harvard University study finds that electricity costs could double for first-generation CCS plants. At the same time, innovation continues to lower the cost of renewable energy at an estimated 10 per cent a decade, and increasing scale of renewable plants is also moving that cost curve down.

China says it is more interested in spending resources on energy efficiency and building renewable energy capacity than adding CCS to coal power stations.

It plans a national feed-in tariff for large-scale solar plants by the end of 2009, paying up to half of the price of solar power systems of more than 500 megawatts, with support rising to 70 per cent in remote regions. ''The idea that carbon capture has to happen in China is a Western idea,'' says Stanford University researcher Richard Morse.

Former Queensland premier Peter Beattie, now his state's trade commissioner in Los Angeles, says time is running out for coal: ''The traditional markets for its product will start slowly shutting down as green energy becomes more price-competitive and public policy continues to demand greener outcomes.'' The result in the US is that plans for 100 coal-fired power plants have been stopped in the past 18 months.

The writing is on the wall. Robin Batterham of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences says that if within three years from now ''we don't see some of these large-scale plants actually happening, then people are going to say, 'This is not a real alternative'.'' Large-scale CCS plants in three years is a pipe dream, a bet on a horse that isn't going to make it to the starting gate.

Clean coal has become a cargo cult for government and the coal industry, but what may descend from the skies is less likely to be salvation than the recognition that the dirty, big cloud overhead is killing our planet's wonderful diversity of life and habitat.

That fence around Hazelwood is locking in a disaster, but it will not keep its critics at bay.

David Spratt is the co-author of Climate Code Red: The Case for Emergency Action, shortlisted for the 2009 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards.