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New Zealand’s under-reported cyclone

cyclone-forestry-slash — Photo 01: Forestry waste (slash) piled up on Gisborne’s Waikanae Beach

A Pakeha (Non-Māori) friend in Auckland, who has been studying Te Reo Māori language for some years, thinks all New Zealanders should know at least 100 words.

On our visit there between February 9 and 24, I began to realise how many Māori words I do know, and this time I learned a few new ones including Huripari.

This is Māori for storm or, if expressing the extremity of a cyclone, hurricane or tornado, you might say: He āwhā nui, ā, he tino kino te pupuhi o te haumātakataka.

Cyclone Gabrielle swept through Northland, Auckland, Coromandel, Bay of Plenty, Waikato and down the East coast.

Gabrielle did not receive much media coverage here in Australia, despite inflicting a damage bill conservatively estimated at $NZ13.5 billion. More than 250 roads are closed; 1000 people are still living in shelters, many cannot return to their homes and at least 11 people died. Roads cut between Wairoa and Napier and Taupo and Napier could take months to clear, rebuild and re-open. Many homes have been red-stickered, which in local parlance means they are ‘munted’. (A non-Māori word meaning destroyed)

I’ll admit we took the Cyclone warnings too lightly. We landed in Auckland on February 9 and stayed with friends, who had their own disaster stories after Auckland’s dramatic deluge on January 30.

From there, we drove to Rotorua for a truly immersive experience. We were surely among the few Australian Pakeha people at the Indigenous All Stars vs NZ Māoris rugby league match. It was a beautiful sunny day with no hint of what was to come. The sport started early with a mixed touch footie game (a draw), then the Indigenous women’s team played their Māori counterparts (who won).

Then to the main event. Former NRL legend Greg Inglis appeared on camera, looking good in a suit. He was being interviewed by Sky Sports before the match. The crowd of 25,000 got involved in the pre-game Indigenous welcome dance and Māori haka. Much of the cheering and roaring was saved for the advancing haka party.

The match was played in good spirit; few injuries and only one sin bin for a high tackle. The Māori team more than held their own, but thanks to the athletic brilliance of Brisbane Broncos player Selwyn Cobbo, who scored three tries, the Indigenous team won 28-24.

We chatted to a group of Aboriginal women from Moree and other places. They flew over especially for the game and were ready to fly back on Sunday, weather permitting. They seemed happy to be among whanau (extended family). (I loved the whole experience. Ed)

Next morning we set off to walk through Rotorua’s Redwood forests, which are quite impressive, the tracks heavily used by locals cycling and walking their dogs. My sister texted, anxious about the weather report. She wanted us to drive through the Waioeka Gorge to Gisborne ASAP. There was evidence of previous slips on this road, which is quite often closed for a day or two while road crews clear the way. It is a mountainous valley road with steep hills prone to slips (landslides).

By the time we arrived in Gisborne, the ominous black clouds we saw building up beyond Rotorua had pursued us to the coast. We bunkered down for the night as strong winds and heavy rain developed. My sister lives close to but on the ‘high’ side of the river. Her house is sheltered and well insulated, so the only real clue we had to the ferocity of the weather was to watch the big pine tree swaying around behind her neighbour’s house.

We lost power on Monday, but thankfully it was restored by the evening. The Hawkes Bay towns of Wairoa, Napier and Hastings were less fortunate. By the end of the week, power had only been patchily restored in Napier, where a major substation was submerged by flood waters.

Our collective anxiety levels were high as we lost cell phone and internet connection so had no idea what was going on in the outside world, apart from staying glued to the 24/7 coverage on NZ1 TV. At least I had contacted my other sister in Hastings on Sunday night to tell her we had arrived safely in Gisborne. Then there was no phone communication for six days. So much for the VoiP phones foisted upon us all in place of reliable copper landlines. (What ‘genius’ didn’t foresee that this lack of communication would happen in the case of widespread power blackouts? Ed)

New Zealand’s Prime Minister Chris Hipkins was quick to get to the front line – no side trips to Hawaii for Hipkins, who replaced Jacinda Ardern as leader after her resignation on January 13.

One story I found while browsing Australian media was filed on Monday by the ABC, with Hipkins announcing a global fundraising effort.

The appeal will fund longer-term recovery projects and target wealthy expatriates, businesses and ‘anyone with affection for New Zealand’, Hipkins said.

According to the Department of Home Affairs, around 660,000 New Zealanders live in Australia, a third of them in Queensland.

Despite the obvious interest in news from home, people who were looking for it went to Stuff.co.nz. The Weekend Australian, by contrast, made no mention of Cyclone Gabrielle at all.

This FOMM was aided and abetted by the aforementioned ABC report and news drawn from Stuff.co.nz, the Gisborne Herald, Hawkes Bay Today and the NZ Herald.

Cyclone Gabrielle hit New Zealand’s North Island on February 12, taking out roads and bridges and leaving tens of thousands without power or connectivity. A National State of Emergency was declared for only the third time in the nation’s history. Disruption to supplies of clean water was just one of the problems.

The drama is by no means over. Police are still searching for four people who are not accounted for. Heavy rain at the weekend hampered clean-up efforts and, as is common in this part of the world, the occasional earthquake came along to ramp up anxiety levels.

Hipkins said early on in live TV broadcasts that it was time to ‘get real’ about New Zealand’s transport, power and communications infrastructure. Opposition Leader Chris Luxon started off well by acknowledging the role climate change had played in this catastrophe. But he later mounted a law and order campaign, after reports of looting and intimidation by gangs.

He described ex-Cyclone Gabrielle as the most damaging natural disaster in a generation. That didn’t stop the Reserve Bank from raising interest rates to 4.5%, in times when ordinary working Kiwis are finding it hard just to pay for groceries and fuel.

The New Zealand Government has announced an inquiry into forestry practices which saw tonnes of debris (known as ‘slash’) washed down rivers and into the ocean. Along the way, this trash inevitably aggravated damage to bridges and roads. The photo above shows forestry waste piled up on Gisborne’s Waikanae Beach. On a good day, it is the East Coast’s favourite safe swimming beach. What more can I say other than share this second photo.

On a positive note, hundreds of Kapa Haka groups from all over New Zealand (and a few from Australia), took part in Te Matatini, a celebration of Māori culture and traditions held at Auckland’s Eden Park.

I was particularly impressed by the group from Wairoa, a coastal town devastated by flooding. The dancers smeared their lower legs in mud, as if to say ‘Cyclone – what Cyclone?’ These are resilient people, caring for family and community, and, despite catastrophe, still with a sense of humour. Kia Kaha.

One big climate COP-out

climate-change-copout — Image: Tuvalu’s Foreign Minister Simon Kofe reading a speech in 2021 delivered electronically at COP26. Source: Facebook/Ministry of Justice, Communication and Foreign Affairs, Tuvalu Government

The United Nations Secretary-General set the tone for the 27^th annual COP climate conference by saying the world was “on the highway to climate hell”. Teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg no doubt agreed, earlier describing the two-week climate conference in Egypt as an exercise in ‘green-washing’.

Fair to say the representatives of 198 nations who gathered in Glasgow last year for COP26 have not done as much about climate change mitigation as we’d all hoped.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told the ABC he would not be attending the COP27 conference at Egyptian resort town Sharm el-Sheikh.

“This COP will be all about implementation,” he said, delegating the task to Climate Minister Chris Bowen and other representatives.

Team Albanese have made big strides in Australia’s climate policy since being elected six months ago. Albanese is banking on mending fences by backing his government’s turnaround of the Morrison administration’s poor climate record.

Unlike British PM Rishi Sunak, who has been forced by political pressure to reverse his decision to stay at home, Albanese justified his absence, saying “I can’t be in all places at once.”

“I have a very busy schedule of parliament, then the international conferences, then back to parliament again, making sure that our agenda gets through and that includes our agenda on clean energy and taking action on climate change.”

COP is a shorthand acronym for an alphabet soup of descriptors – the Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change). Despite this being the 27^th year this global talkfest has been held, there have been many promises and commitments, yet little has been done to slow the global ravages of climate change.

Despite Egypt’s police state reputation, climate activists are there and some have already said harsh things about COP27’s major sponsor, Coca-Cola.

Environmental campaign group Greenpeace said it was baffling for COP27 to choose the “world’s biggest plastic polluter” as a sponsor, given that “99% of plastics are made from fossil fuels”.

On what it cost to stage COP26 in Glasgow last year, this year’s conference in the Egyptian town of Sharm el-Sheikh will probably top $200 million. It is clearly now an annual ‘Expo” that wealthier countries want to host. It’s expensive to participate, with organisations being charged as much as $500,000 to hire a pavilion. More than 30,000 people registered to attend this year, representing governments, businesses, NGOs, and civil society groups.

Australia’s Climate Council, which has sent several delegates to Cop27, reminded us that Australia signed the Glasgow Pact in 2021.

The Pact called for countries to bring forward a 50% emissions reduction plan to COP27 and increase on that target during this decade.

Australia may be pressured to finally sign the Global Methane Pledge and other important deals it avoided under the Morrison Government.

Key issues which will emerge at COP27 include “loss and damage” financing. This refers to developing countries at the frontlines of the crisis who are suffering from the consequences of climate change. As one example, the low-lying Pacific island of Tuvalu, population 12,000, is suffering serious consequences from the CO2 emissions of others.

The Climate Council says countries like Australia, which have built considerable wealth off the back of fossil fuels, can and must do more to support climate action beyond their shores.

Back in 2009, developed countries committed to mobilise $100 billion per year in climate finance to developing countries, but have consistently fallen short. Australia would need to lift its annual contribution by 10 times to fulfil its share towards this global goal, the Climate Council said.

The UNFCCC Secretariat is the United Nations entity tasked with supporting the global response to the threat of climate change. There has been almost universal commitment to join, with 198 countries signed up. Until this year, Australia was seen as a laggard, to the extent that former PM Scott Morrison was initially not invited to attend COP26.

Heads of State and Government attended the Climate Implementation Summit at COP27 on November 7 and 8 with a high-level meeting for climate Ministers from 15-18 November.

The main aim of the UNFCCC is to uphold the 2015 Paris Agreement. As we all should know, this bare-minimum pledge was to keep the global average temperature rise this century as close as possible to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Seven years on though, only 190 of the 195 signatories have ratified the agreement.

The ultimate objective is to stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that will prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system. The sticking point, I suspect, is the proviso that this is done in a time frame which “allows ecosystems to adapt naturally and enables sustainable development”.

The Guardian’s pre-conference report posed some scenarios for the Australian delegation, led by climate and energy minister, Chris Bowen. The Guardian’s environment writer Adam Morton said Australia can expect questions about what it is prepared to support on finance and loss and damage. Questions could be asked about the Australian government’s exit (under the Morrison government) of the green climate fund. Morton expects Australia to be under close scrutiny due to its bid to host COP in 2026.

There will (or should be) an examination of Australia’s support for an expansion in fossil fuel exports, at odds with its green policies at home.

The UN secretary-general’s COP27 opening address, where he twisted the meaning of the famous AC/DC song, was not wildly inaccurate. He was no doubt reflecting on the ongoing effects of flooding in Pakistan.

Since mid-June, unprecedented floods in Pakistan have killed 1,717 people. The floods were caused by heavier than usual monsoon rains and melting glaciers; these events following a severe heat wave. All are linked to climate change, with poor urban planning playing a significant role.

In Australia, we might make pale comparisons with the inundated New South Wales town of Lismore, battered by one flood after another. There is talk of writing the town off and rebuilding it on higher ground. Many of those badly affected by the floods have not waited to find out, relocating to supposedly less flood -prone towns (like Warwick).

The agenda-setters for climate change mitigation may well be the world’s largest manufacturing industries. International vehicle manufacturer Volvo chose this week to announce it would stop making fossil fuel-driven cars in Australia by 2026. This is unlikely to stampede the manufacturers of cheaper, mass market vehicles. All the same, it is a line drawn in the sand. We must hope that rising tides do not wipe it away too soon.

As for Tuvalu’s social media post (above) which went viral last year, it is probably not much of an exaggeration. Climate change in Tuvalu is particularly threatening for the long-term habitability of the island state. The average height of the islands is less than 2m above sea level, which has been rising at 3mm per year, about twice the global average. On a per capita basis, its CO2 emissions are 0.9 metric tonnes, compared to between 15mt and 17mt for developed countries.

As Sunshine Coast songwriter Noel Gardner sarcastically comments, in a pithy song of the same name:

So it’s toodle loo to Tuvalu, it’s not that we don’t care

But I can’t support this warming crap, taxes and despair

We can’t reduce our standards, two houses, shares and land

So its Toodle loo to Tuva Lu, I hope you’ll understand.

The global rise of Green politics

global-green-politics — Stephen Bates (Brisbane)

From grass roots beginnings as an anti-war/anti-nuclear movement in the 1960s and 1970s, the Green party has grown to be a global force in politics. Our 2022 election clearly shows the rise of the Australian Greens, which traces its origins to Tasmania in 1972. From just one Federal member in 1992, the Greens now have 22 State MPs, 4 Federal MPs, up to 12 seats in the Senate and 134 councillors in local government.

Photos L-R: Stephen Bates (Brisbane), Max Chandler-Mather (Griffith), Elizabeth Watson-Brown (Ryan), Penny Allman-Payne (Senate for Queensland).

Just over 12% of eligible voters gave The Australian Greens their primary vote in the May 21 Federal election, the party’s best result since formation in 1992. The Australian Greens went from holding one seat in Federal Parliament in 2019 to four seats this time around. While the polls show that 2.2 million people gave their primary vote to the Greens, preferences made by Green voters also helped oust the Liberal party. If current trends continue, the Greens could hold as many as 12 Senate seats, double its 2019 tally.

What Greens leader Adam Bandt dubbed a ‘Greenslide’ on May 21 resulted in key Brisbane suburbs with Green MPs in both State and Federal Parliament.

This is quite a growth path from a grass roots Tasmanian organisation which first ran for Parliament in 1972 and won its first Senate seat in 1990. The Greens now have 16 MPs in State governments and six in the ACT Government. The Greens are also a force in local government, with 94 councillors in New South Wales and Victoria and another 40 in other States and Territories, including two in the Northern Territory.

Despite their influence in local politics, the Greens will be seen to best effect whenever the Senate is asked to approve bills which go against the party’s environmental and sustainability policies.

Despite Labor this week winning two extra seats (77 in total), they will still have to work with up to 12 independents, as well as the four Green MPs.

The conservative forces that ruled this country for almost a decade would say the swing to Greens and Independents will make Australia ‘ungovernable’. What’s needed (as one can now hear as a faint echo from the days of Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison), is a strong government with a clear mandate (and a strong border, all 59,681 kms of it). This time, more Australian voters have said no to being ruled by major parties, even if, as it turns out, we’ll end up governed by a Labor party with a two-seat majority in the lower house.

We should have seen this coming. Political parties have been falling out of favour with the public for decades. The Pew Research Centre concluded from a survey of voters in 14 European countries that few express positive sentiments towards political parties.

Only six parties (of the 59 tested) were viewed favourably by half or more of the population. Populist parties across Europe also received largely poor reviews. The Pew research found that of the 21 populist parties it asked about in the survey, only six received positive reviews. (all were part of the government in their respective countries).

There are at least 80 Green parties around the world and all subscribe to much the same principles and aims espoused by the Australian Greens.

The philosophy is anchored in what Greens call the four pillars – peace and non-violence, ecological sustainability, participatory democracy, and economic and social justice.

Council for Foreign Relations writer James McBride says the climate change debate has enhanced the rise of the Greens from a one-issue party to a group with the ability to hold key positions in government.

But he adds that the movement remains divided over issues such as nuclear energy, military force, foreign policy, and co-operation with right-wing and populist parties.

For example, the Alliance 90/Greens members of Germany’s government have advocated for stronger Western support for Ukraine in the wake of Russia’s invasion.

According to the Global Green Network, some party members hold key positions in European governments. For example, Germany’s Federal Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock is chair of the Alliance 90/Greens party.

Like so many Green parties around the world, Alliance 90/Greens grew out of student protests and anti-war/anti-nuclear movements in the 1960s and 1970s. The present-day German party is a merger between two Green parties and Alliance 90, which describes itself as ‘Centre-Left’. Having finished in third place with 14.8% of the votes, the party entered coalition talks with the centre-right FDP and socialist SPD, eventually joining a coalition under Chancellor Olaf Scholz. The Greens have five ministers in the Cabinet.

This insight into European politics does, to some extent, predict the future for Australia’s newbie Green politicians, taking their lead from veteran Adam Bandt. But there is more trenchant opposition to Greens here than there is in cosmopolitan Europe. In Australia, the Greens are seen by conservative forces as anti-farming, anti-coal and anti-development. At times, the more ardently left Greens have given the establishment cause to think so.

Former Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce, interviewed on ABC Breakfast this week, reiterated (his view of) the conservative country party’s positions on coal. He advocated nuclear energy (so coal production workers can keep their jobs) and stressed that Australia should hold firm to a 2050 zero emissions deadline.

Two things about this interview: hello, he’s not leader any more. So why did the ABC interview Barnaby rather than the incoming leader, David Littleproud? Secondly, has the National Party learned anything from the relatively huge swing to Greens and independents on May 21? Or is it just that Barnaby is (still) allowed to speak for them, enhanced by the media’s constant quest for ‘colour’ and controversy.

As James McBride observes, Green parties all tend to share the same four principles, but more broadly include opposition to war and weapons industries, especially nuclear weapons. The Greens are sceptical about global trade arrangements and consumerist industrial society.

“They have a preference for decentralised decision-making and localism, a commitment to social justice, racial and economic equality, and women’s empowerment.”

Underpinning this story is the Global Green New Deal, an initiative launched in 2021 to accelerate the pace of cleaning up industry and reducing CO2 emissions.

As you’d expect, the G7 spends proportionately more on clean industry initiatives. The GGND states that high-income OECD countries spend at least 1% of their GDP over two years aimed at reducing carbon dependency. Developing economies should also spend at least 1% of GDP on improving clean water and sanitation for the poor and reducing carbon dependency.

The Guardian reported last year that while many government leaders had promised to “build back better” from the pandemic, few countries were investing in the new infrastructure needed. Research by Vivid Economics found that about a tenth of the $17 trillion being spent globally to rescue stricken economies was going on projects that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions or restore nature.

Incoming Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said in his victory speech on election night that Australia could become “a renewable energy superpower”. Australians who voted Green 1/Labor 2 after enduring the trauma from climate change storms, bushfires and floods will probably hold him to that.

Australia enters a brave new world

crossbench-history-green — Australia’s crossbench in history. Chart courtesy of Ben Raue

The reactions to Labor’s somewhat unexpected election win on Saturday night have reflected the about-turns that occur when the political climate changes. As always, there were positive opportunities for some. Sydney University wasted no time congratulating incoming PM Anthony Albanese, an alumni member. It should also be noted that former Prime Ministers who attended Sydney University included Gough Whitlam, John Howard and Malcolm Turnbull. So much for universities being the breeding ground of Marxists.

Former Liberal PM Malcolm Turnbull took to social media to wish Albo (as he is known in Aussie shorthand), all success in his new job ‘from one good bloke to another’.

Another former PM, John Howard, was drafted late into the Liberal campaign to mix it up in marginal Sydney seats in an election Howard said was ‘too tight to call’. As far as I can tell, Mr Howard has not had anything to say in the aftermath of Saturday’s poll. Why would he?

The Guardian’s top satirist, First Dog on the Moon, gave a harsh farewell to Scott Morrison’s government: “Good riddance you jabbering ghouls.” At the same time, the cartoonist was sharpening his quill ready to skewer the incoming PM. One dog says “I love Albo, I really do” while the other says Albo is a “gazillionaire landlord with a bunch of properties”. (His register of interests doesn’t indicate this. Ed) It won’t take long for the honeymoon to end.

Fair to say the Labor Party did not win this election – rather, the Liberal Party lost it, giving up seats not only to Labor but the Greens and Independents. The Greens improved their national vote, up 1.9% to 12.3%. This might give you some clue to the voting tendencies of young voters. As polls had shown, the 18-34 cohort was most worried about climate change. Given that neither of the major parties had bold things to say in the campaign about the climate crisis, it’s not surprising that young people would vote Green.

My favourite pundit accurately predicted the partial disintegration of the major parties vote in favour of independents. Veteran blogger Everald Compton wrote an unequivocal essay detailing why the Liberals would lose seats (and where) and who would gain. He was mostly right.

Top of Everald’s wish list was that we would end up with a Prime Minister who is neither Albo or ScoMo. Well that didn’t quite happen, but as the 90-year-old blogger rightly asked:

“Why have we reached this point where politics is at its lowest ebb of my lifetime. Indeed, a huge percentage of voters rank it as the lowest of the low?

“The cause is that political parties on both right and left are tightly controlled by small groups of power brokers who produce privileges for elite people, while arrogantly insisting that it is all really ultra democratic.”

The mainstream media, represented for the most by Rupert Murdoch’s News Ltd., is still to fully mount a persuasive argument as to how and why their editorials got it so wrong.

Retired News executive Chris Mitchell came out swinging, blaming journalists, particularly the ABC, for inaccurately portraying Scott Morrison as someone who had a problem with women.

Peta Credlin and others on the conservative channel Sky News had some predictably caustic things to say which lost their sting as a result of the undeniable swing to Labor, Greens and Independents.

Former PM Kevin Rudd, who is leading a campaign for an inquiry into News Corp and the power it wields, posted a telling graph on social media. It showed that in the lead up to the election, News Corp front pages ran 188 pro-Liberal stories, compared with just 38 for Labor and 99 ‘neutral’. Our State newspaper, the Courier-Mail, carried more than a few anti-Labor stories, going hard with an ‘Albo’s S****show’, story based on the Labor leader’s first campaign gaffes, including not knowing the current official interest rate. (By the bye, I didn’t know what it was either).

The media in general will have some dungeon-searching to do, given the extent to which their political writers failed to see the rout coming, particularly Western Australia’s swing against the Liberals.

American broadcaster CNN reported the election result as a clear win for climate action. CNN said the election showed a strong swing towards Greens candidates and Independents who demanded emissions cuts far above the commitments made by the ruling conservative coalition.

CNN said the climate crisis was one of the defining issues of the election, as one of the few points of difference between the Coalition and Labor, and a key concern of voters, according to polls.

Marija Taflaga, lecturer in politics and international relations at the Australian National University, said the swing towards the Greens was remarkable. “I think everyone has been taken by surprise by these results…I think it will mean there will be greater and faster action on climate change more broadly.”

Labor has promised to cut emissions by 43% by 2030 and to reach net zero by 2050, partly by strengthening the mechanism used to pressure companies to make cuts.

As the Prime Minister-elect headed to Tokyo for talks with the leaders of the US, India and Japan, China made its first official comment on the election win.

As the ABC reported, Beijing showed it is willing to patch things up with the newly elected Albanese government after more than two years of a cool relationship with the former government.

Premier Li Keqiang’s congratulatory message used ‘warm language’ referencing the Whitlam Labor government’s establishment of diplomatic ties with the People’s Republic 50 years ago.

Mr Li said China was “ready to work with the Australian side to review the past, face the future, uphold principles of mutual respect, mutual benefit.”

While vote counting continues (it could take a week or more to decide the close seats), one thing is certain, this government will have the largest cross-bench in our history.

The cross-bench refers to independent politicians who usually vote with the government but can and will cross the floor to vote with the opposition if so moved. Australia has only ever had between three and five cross-benchers.

This time around, there will be 15 and maybe more Green and Independent politicians helping to inform the government of the day.

As Everald Compton said last Friday, this will create a long overdue and stable government that achieves progress and prosperity with justice and compassion.

“The Coalition will be decimated and divided and in need of total reform as they have self-destructed.

“The remnants of the Liberal Party will break up, with the Pentecostals separating from the Moderates. The National Party, having lost seats, will have a bitter leadership turmoil. Their extreme right will join with the Pentecostals.” (Everald was wrong about the National Party losing seats- they were re-elected in all of the seats they held before the election. Otherwise, his predictions are pretty accurate. Ed)

The one big loser from Saturday’s election is the United Australia Party, which reportedly spent $100 million trying to make an impact. UAP won no seats and only improved its vote by 1.7% to 4.1%. By contrast, the Legalise Cannabis Party attracted more than 75,000 Senate votes on a shoe-string budget and may gain a Senate seat, at the expense of perennial campaigner Pauline Hanson.

The shape of things to come may be that Albanese’s Labor government will need support from the cross-bench to introduce new policy. The numbers so far suggest Labor should be able to govern in its own right. Failing that, welcome to a European-style government where Greens and Independents have the final say. It’s not a bad thing.

Climate Crisis on Election Back-burner

climate-crisis-election — Coal-fired power station in Germany – Catazul www.pixabay.com

My reading of election coverage (such as it is), is that both major parties have shuffled the climate crisis to the back burner. It must be crowded back there, with homeless people and refugees trying to stay warm.

What has been widely ridiculed as the ‘shouty’ debate (on Channel Nine) said nothing meaningful about the most important issue of all – the climate crisis. Such has been the pre-occupation with the election here, we haven’t seen much coverage of Canada’s wet, cold spring, India and Pakistan’s lethal heatwaves, or debate about whether our wet autumn is driven by climate change or something else.

People who deny climate change theory often dismiss it with ‘there’s always been climate change’. Well, yes, but it’s been accelerating since 1950 and in 2022 we have the technology to make material changes.

Andrew Wallace, Federal member for Fisher and Speaker of the House, recently told a public meeting in Montville he was not convinced that climate change was caused by emissions from human industry.

Sunshine Coast resident Gillian Pechey, who was at the meeting, wrote to the Glasshouse News after hearing this statement.

“I asked him (Wallace) whether he had worries about the predicted ocean level rise, loss of the sandy beaches which tourists flock to holiday on. He smiled! His position is predicted to lead to global temperature rise of 3-4 degrees. Parts of Queensland will become unliveable unless you’re wealthy enough to live and work in a solid air-conditioned building.

“It is frustrating to see the lead political party turning its back on climate science which predicts that over this century we will continue to have destructive bushfires, floods, eroded beaches and gradual loss of the Great Barrier Reef.”

FOMM’s observation is that Andrew Wallace, elected in 2019 with a 62.7% two-party preferred vote, is obviously going to stick to the LNP’s position on subsidising fossil fuel at the expense of investment in renewable energy. He persists with this line even when campaigning in the Green-friendly towns of the Sunshine Coast hinterland.

Whatever politicians are saying (or not saying) about the climate crisis, there is evidence that the general population has been trying to self-educate. The ABC found a researcher who uncovered a 5,000% increase in the volume of climate questions on Google since 2019.

The data has been ‘normalised’, meaning interest has increased relative to that of other topics. The use of ‘big data’ to reach conclusions is called ‘culturomics’.

For the past 18 months, social researcher Rebecca Huntley has been conducting focus groups to understand climate change concerns among Australians.

Dr Huntley said the Google search data broadly aligns with the focus group results. Various other polls concur – the climate crisis is a hot-button issue. The ABC’s Vote Compass shows an overwhelming number of Australians want more action to reduce carbon emissions.

“The basic theory as to why this is happening now rather than, say, three years ago, is stuff builds up,” Dr Huntley said.

She told the ABC the 2019/20 Black Summer fires were not enough on their own to “shift the dial” on climate concern. But they were followed by two other major climate crisis events.

Australia was criticised for inaction on climate change at the November 2021 COP26 climate conference in Glasgow. Australia did present a net zero emissions plan, but it lacked detail and critics pointed this out.

The third event which may have tipped some Australians over the climate fence was the 2022 floods in Queensland and New South Wales. There’s no evidence yet to blame that individual weather event on climate change. But it was consistent with predictions of the type of epic natural disaster we can expect under global warming scenarios.

The ABC delved into the Google research to find that the top ‘searchers’ came from very small towns, which suggests the data may not be that reliable. A reporter asked Lawrence Springborg, Mayor of Goondiwindi Shire and president of the Queensland Liberal National Party, what he thought.

He suggested people were searching “because they don’t believe” climate change and wanted ammunition to disprove the science when the topic came up in conversation.

“I have absolutely no idea why they’re searching,” he added.

One of the common searches on Google is ‘when did climate change start’.

The latest research now suggests that atmospheric warming began in the early to mid-1800s, rather than the mid-20^th century. Until 1950, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels had never been above 300 parts per million. Now the readings are over 400 ppm and rapidly increasing.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Report says the current warming trend is unequivocally the result of human activity since the mid-20^th century.

“It is undeniable that human activities have warmed the atmosphere, ocean, and land and that widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere, and biosphere have occurred.”

The Sydney Morning Herald said the Resolve Political Monitor found young voters (18-34) ranked climate change as the second-most important issue in this year’s election. Not surprisingly, the number one issue for young voters was keeping the cost of living low.

Meanwhile, the LNP is sticking to its target of reducing emissions by at least 26% by 2030. Labor’s target is 43% although climate experts warn Australia must cut emissions 75% by 2030. Both major parties want to keep on exporting coal, despite the US Environmental Protection Agency stating that the burning of coal, natural gas, and oil for electricity and heat is the largest single source of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Professor Stephen Bartos was recently commissioned by Farmers for Climate Action to prepare a report on the impact of climate change on food supply. Farmers for Climate action is part of the National Farmers Federation (which has 7,000 members).

Writing in The Conversation, Prof Bartos, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University, explained his methodology. He reviewed research in this area, interviewed more than a dozen farmers, farmer representative bodies, and other participants in the food supply chain. Among the issues identified were the impact of drought, diseases and stress on livestock, the loss of food due to hotter weather, and shorter shelf lives.

“An unexpected finding was the degree to which everyone involved in the supply chain is affected by uncertainty caused by climate change. It is making future weather highly unpredictable, making planning harder for both farms and in transport networks.”

Climate change has made a further impact on lending and insurance, where unpredictability means higher costs for financial products. Some farmers reported that they were unable to insure due to climate risks. All these costs are passed on to consumers in the form of higher food prices.

This concurs with the Climate Council’s findings that one in 25 Australian properties would be ‘uninsurable’ by 2030. The Climate Council says this is directly due to the rising risk of extreme weather and the impact of climate change.

The Climate Council created at interactive map so households, businesses and farmers can assess the likely risk. Queensland is looking vulnerable.

Finally, though this report is five months old and I’ve mentioned it before, it should be remembered that Australia ranked last in a survey of 60 countries on climate change policy. The Climate Change Performance Index, published annually since 2005, gave Australia a zero for its policy response to the climate crisis, citing ‘a lack of ambition and action’.

As we post this, the Condamine River has risen so much overnight authorities are about to close the bridge into town. The Cunningham Highway to Brisbane is closed and the road to Toowoomba must surely be compromised.

Climate crisis? What climate crisis.

Extreme weather reminds us of Black Summer

black-summer-extreme-weather — Photo: View from our veranda, Yangan November 2019 (see after photo below). BW

As Australia Day passes by, is it safe yet to say the eastern seaboard of Australia has dodged a ‘Black Summer’ in 21/22? This typically runs from December to May in most parts of Australia. Too soon?

The 2020-2021 bushfire season so far is relatively subdued due to the effects of La Nina and the wet winter and spring it brought in many parts of Australia.

We’ve seen some freaky weather, though, including heat-waves, a cyclone and hail storms. Reports of bush fires from far away Western Australia this month may have sparked anxiety in those who suffered through Black Summer in 2019.

The WA coastal town of Onslow sweltered through a 50.7C day this month, equalling a 62-year-old record set in Oodnadatta. The ABC observed that if confirmed, this will be only the fourth day over 50C for an Australian location since reliable observations began.

It is apparent that climate change will rank among the top three issues debated in the upcoming Federal election.

There is concern at the top end of town, with a survey by Deloitte’s revealing that 77% of business executives think the world is at a “tipping point”. The global survey found that businesses are starting to take action, but the level of action often doesn’t match the scale and urgency of business and moral concerns expressed in the survey.

Whatever we as individuals think about how the Federal Government is handling climate change policy, the world has already judged us.

Australia’s latest climate policies are failing to “take advantage of its potential” and it ranks last among nations surveyed, according to the 2022 Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI).

Advocacy group Germanwatch ranks the performance of 63 nations and the European Union on each country’s progress working towards goals in the Paris Agreement.

Australia slipped from 54^th place overall to 59^th, well below other developed countries. Australia was rated last on the climate policy table (64^th), the worst of the bottom 15 countries rated as “very poor”.

“The (Australian) government does not have any policies on phasing out coal or gas, but CCUS (carbon capture, utilisation and storage) and hydrogen are being promoted as low-emissions technologies,” the report said.

Experts consulting to the report said Australia’s international standing has been damaged by climate denialism by politicians. A “lack of ambition” and refusal to recommit to international green finance mechanisms. https://ccpi.org/

The Climate Council’s extreme Weather Communication Guide, available in 10 different languages, explains how cyclones, flooding, bush fires, heat waves, and poor air quality are being supercharged by climate change.

The Climate Council’s Nathan Hart said Australians were already paying the price for more frequent and severe extreme weather.

He cited floods in Maryborough, QLD, and the Top End, fuelled by ex-tropical cyclone Tiffany.

The independent, not-for-profit Climate Council was launched not long after incoming Prime Minister Tony Abbott scrapped the Australian Climate Commission in September 2013.

The Climate Council’s chief councillor is Professor Tim Flannery, who also chaired the ACC. Prof Flannery and Climate Council councillor Greg Mullins (former Commissioner, Fire and Rescue NSW) are the faces behind an award-winning documentary, Burning.

The climate change documentary was first shown at the COP26 conference in Glasgow and was released on Prime Video and distributed to 260 countries.

The documentary about Australia’s devastating Black Summer was directed by Australian film-maker Eva Orner. The film recaps the Black Summer bush fires that scorched Australia in 2019-20. More than 450 Australians were killed, either directly by the fires or from the toxic air that covered three of Australia’s major cities for weeks. The fires burnt over 18 million hectares, destroyed 3,113 homes and killed 3 billion animals. Former Fire Commissioner Greg Mullins features in the film.

“I’ve never seen fires like it and I hope I never will again,” he said. “Sadly though, we are going to see more Black Summers – and even worse. Despite the extreme danger we face, the federal government refuses to ramp up emissions cuts this decade or to embrace Australia’s incredible renewable potential.

“Not long after the flames had settled, the COVID-19 pandemic rolled in and the world moved on. But for survivors, fire-fighters, business owners and mental health workers, the road to recovery was only just beginning.”

In some small way we count ourselves among the millions of Australians who suffered physical and mental anguish during the Black Summer fires.

I recall going to see a GP in late 2019 about some unrelated complaint. He scrolled through my records and asked if my asthma was worse than usual. A Monash University study found there were 6% more weekly emergency department presentations for respiratory disease and 10% more cardiovascular presentations compared to the previous two fire seasons. The study was the first to look at the impact of bush fires on actual ED attendance numbers.

In Australia, during the 2019-20 season, the density of particulate matter in the air peaked on 14 January – at fourteen times more than the historically highest level previously recorded. According to Monash’s Professor Yuming Guo, it is known that PM1.0, PM 2.5 – the two most common particle-sized matter in smoke – can cause respiratory disease, chronic obstructive disease, pulmonary disease and asthma.

“The results indicate that the unprecedented bush fires led to a huge health burden, showing a higher risk in regions with lower socio-economic areas and more bush fires,” Professor Guo said.

Hence my GP asking about asthma. At the time we were living at Yangan, 18 kms from Warwick in the foothills of the Dividing Range. Long-burning bush fires in the hills shrouded the valley in smoke most days. On occasions, it was so bad it drifted into town (Warwick). Asthma aside, the constant pall of smoke, the visible fires (at night) and the unpredictability of bush fires made us anxious.

The University of Western Australia conducted a survey of professional and volunteer fire-fighters after Black Summer which reveals the extent of mental anguish among those who battled the blazes.

The survey identified a third of volunteers and a quarter of employees had felt there was a time when their life was threatened by the fires. Some 4.6% of volunteers and 5.5% of employees had since shown very high psychological distress indicative of serious mental illness.

A study published last October found the physical and mental impacts of exposure to smoke from the black summer fires was likely greatly underestimated by official health statistics.

Prof Iain Walker of the Australian National University surveyed 2,084 adults affected by the bush fires close to Canberra.

“Virtually all of them – 97% – said they had experienced at least one physical symptom attributed to the smoke. Half of respondents reported symptoms of anxiety and depression, as well as sleep loss.

“Only one in five people sought medical attention for their symptoms, suggesting the breadth of health impacts was far greater than the number of cases officially recognised by the health system,” Walker said.

“A much wider segment of the population was exposed to bushfire smoke than bush fires directly.”

Yes, and how we still remember that late afternoon in 2019 singing Christmas carols in Warwick’s main intersection. A sudden change of wind brought clouds of bushfire smoke rolling into town like a London fog. We all ran for our cars, forced to put the lights on to drive home.

But then, after some rain…

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Purple haze – the jacaranda story

On Remembrance Day (November 11), we met a Year 12 student who had been singing in our community choir but had taken time out to concentrate on her studies. She told us (with some excitement), that school was set to finish the following week. That reminded me of the old Queensland maxim about flowering jacarandas and exam times. The story goes that if the jacarandas are flowering and you are behind on your studies, it is too late!

That may have changed over the decades as climate change has led to earlier flowering, not only of jacarandas, but cherry blossoms (and pohutakawas). More on that later.

When I visited Brisbane in late September, the jacarandas were already starting to bloom. They flower later across the Southern Downs, as we know, but even so, this old jacaranda in the grounds of St Mark’s Anglican Church (above) was starting to lose its blooms as I took this photo on November 9.

Warwick has some lovely mature examples of this tree, many of them in the front or back yards of private homes. In some towns and cities (Grafton, Toowoomba, Brisbane, Sydney’s north shore), jacarandas were planted on either side of city streets, to create a stunning, if ephemeral display from mid-October to mid-November.

Jacaranda is the name for a genus of 49 species of flowering plants in the family Bignoniaceae, native to tropical and subtropical regions of the Americas. Wikipedia describes it as a ‘cosmopolitan’ plant.

It is common across many continents and countries including Argentina, Botswana, Brazil, Florida, Israel, Italy, Mexico, Paraguay, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Southern California, Spain, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The jacaranda is also found in New Zealand. It has been introduced to most tropical and subtropical regions and is widely planted in Asia, with trees visible in Nepal, Pakistan and India.

These days, the tree is seen as an invasive foreigner although with a loftier status than the camphor laurel, deemed to be an invasive weed. Regardless, Australian towns and cities compete for status of champion jacaranda; examples including Grafton, Brisbane, Toowoomba, Sydney, Melbourne and Perth (although not until December in WA).

Apart from the obvious connection with school and university exam times, the jacaranda’s purple haze is the first real sign of Spring. Many romances have hatched under their sheltering boughs. Songwriters have mentioned the jacaranda in songs, even!

When at their peak, the showy trees are hard to beat for a visual spectacle. Unfortunately, the triumph is short-lived, with storms, rain and wind soon littering the ground with purple flowers. As staff in hospital emergency rooms would attest, ‘slipped on wet jacaranda flowers’ is a common refrain when patients present at the fracture clinic.

When visiting Brisbane on September 27, I was surprised to see this jacaranda on Coronation Drive. Although I set out to write a ‘light and fluffy’ piece, it did not take much to uncover the climate science take on this. An article in The Conversation and republished in other journals similarly observed the early flowering of jacarandas in South Africa.

Jennifer Fitchett, Associate Professor of Physical Geography, University of the Witwatersrand, explained why early flowering of Jacaranda mimosifolia is a ‘warning sign’. Gauteng Province’s proliferating jacarandas have in recent years started flowering in early September. Octogenarian residents interviewed by researchers recalled the trees flowering in mid-November in the 1920s and 30s. The trees, native to Brazil, were introduced to Pretoria and Johannesburg in the late 1800s. Civic leaders of the time deemed them an ornamental worthy of lining streets in the suburbs and CBD. You could write a thesis about how the seeds ended up germinating in foreign soil.

Professor Fitchett wrote that jacaranda flowering had gradually advanced over the decades to mid-October and now to September. She described this process as ‘phenological shift’, which has been observed in multiple flowering tree species around the world. The earlier flowering is a key indicator that the planet is warming.

Prof Fitchett initiated the first known phenological shift study done in South Africa, singling out the jacaranda. Phenological research is rare in South Africa, compared to the work done across Europe, Asia and North America.

“Because jacaranda blossoms result in such a dramatic change in the urban landscape each year, they are often reported on in the news and, more recently, in social media posts,” she said.

“We mined these sources to compile a list of flowering dates of jacaranda trees spanning 1927-2019.”

These records allowed researchers to confirm the advance in flowering dates, quantifying a mean rate of advance of 2.1 days per decade.

The flowering took place against a backdrop of warming temperatures, ranging from 0.1-0.2°C per decade (daily maximums) and a more rapid 0.2-0.4°C per decade for daily minimums.

Japan’s world-famous tourist attraction, cherry blossom season, has been under threat in 2020 and 2021. Covid restrictions meant that international tourists keen to witness the ‘sakura’ were unable to travel. Those who managed to sneak in a tour in early 2020 may have found their timing was off. The data suggests the peak blooming date in Kyoto has been gradually moving from mid-April to the beginning of the month.

She Who Itches to Travel had a Japan trip lined up for 2020 to see the cherry blossoms, ride the bullet trains and, if not actually climb Mt Fuji, take photos from miles away and say we did. That this never happened was more about my tendency to procrastinate and worry about becoming destitute.

In January SWITT decided we’d left our run too late and postponed the 2020 trip to Japan’s autumn. I agreed, imagining parks blazing with autumn colours, all the while converting yen to dollars. Then Covid appeared and everything changed.

The Japanese have been studying phenological change for centuries, so they have a better handle on it than most. Cherry blossom flowerings last only a few weeks. They have been occurring earlier and earlier in recent decades.

The ABC reported in April this year that the famous cherry blossoms in Kyoto, Japan, peaked on March 26, the earliest date in 1,200 years, according to data compiled by Osaka University. Records that date back to 812 AD in imperial court documents and diaries show that the previous record was set in 1409, when the cherry blossom season reached its peak on March 27.

Kyoto experienced an unusually warm spring this season. The average temperature for March in Kyoto has climbed from 47.5 degrees Fahrenheit in 1953 to 51.1 degrees Fahrenheit in 2020. Japan’s national newspaper Mainichi reported that despite diminished human activity stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic, carbon dioxide levels in surrounding areas did not decrease.

The ABC’s report also mentioned that Washington DC’s famous cherry trees bloomed early this year.

Similarly, New Zealand botanists have observed the early blooming of the pohutakawa, often known as the country’s Christmas Tree. The pohutakawa, with its distinctive red flowers, usually blooms in mid-November through to early January. Early flowering north of Auckland was noted in October. News portal Stuff says the early flowering is due to a relatively dry and warm winter. This might thwart the gathering of kina (sea egg), with local Maori tradition of taking the flowering as a sign that the shellfish is ready to harvest.

As I said, I didn’t set out to do yet another climate change story, but it’s a bit ubiquitous. In the spirit of ‘do your own research’ I have provided more links which confirm what you have just read. As Greta Thunberg would say “Wake up! Your house is on fire.”

Go out into the suburbs with your camera or phone and capture those luscious jacaranda blooms while they last.

https://www.brisbanekids.com.au/jacarandas-brisbane-find-year/

https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2021/4/1/japan-sees-earliest-cherry-blossoms-on-record-as-climate-warms

https://www.sciencealert.com/japan-s-cherry-blossoms-burst-into-color-sooner-than-they-have-in-1-200-years

ScoMo’s Climate Plan to Save the Planet

ScoMo-climate-Plan — Image: twitter@GeorgeBludger, reposted from 2018 because it is so clever.

It occurred to me, having just volunteered to work for three different community groups, that what I need, apart from worrying about the Australian government’s failed policies on Covid, climate change and refugees, not to mention bushfire risk mitigation, is a Plan.

I use the capital letter deliberately as it seems that is what our peerless leader, Scotty from Marketing, wants us to do. His Plan (well, actually it’s not his Plan) should be called a Process because after all, that is what the National Party agreed to support. As we know, Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce and his country party cohorts emerged from days of climate talks to announce with fanfare great that it had ‘agreed to support a process’ to meet the government’s bare minimum target of zero net emissions by 2050.

Australia’s emissions are still among the highest in the world on a per capita basis, well behind similar developed countries.

At the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow this week, PM Scott Morrison somehow wangled his way into the discussions. It’s not that long ago (December 2020), that he was snubbed by a United Nations climate conference in London hosted by the UK and France.

British PM Boris Johnson had invited Morrison to speak at the December 12 summit but reneged. Selwin Hart, the special adviser to UN Secretary-General António Guterres on climate action, said at the time Australia had ‘not met the threshold needed to speak’.

But given a platform at COP26 (after pledging to meet zero net emissions by 2050), Morrison gave an optimistic speech, claiming that Australia’s emissions could fall by 35% by 2030. Greens leader Adam Bandt described the speech as ‘cringeworthy’, saying it contradicted statements made in Australia. The national climate plan (NDC) merely reaffirmed the formal 2030 target of 26-28% set by former PM Tony Abbott, he said.

“Australia is also siding with Russia and China to block global action on the climate crisis, refusing to phase out coal and gas, the leading causes of global heating,” he added.

The Guardian said Morrison’s 2050 plan lacked modelling, with almost a third of the abatement task comprised of cuts via unspecified “technology breakthroughs” and “global trends”, while a further 20% will be achieved through offsets.

To be fair, Morrison has been thwarted by climate change resistance from his Coalition partner, the National Party. The Plan may or may not be influenced by trade-offs demanded by the Nationals (which has a rural support base), regarding the issue of methane emissions.

Michelle Grattan wrote in The Conversation that Emissions Reduction Minister Angus Taylor had rejected the US push for a 30% reduction of methane emissions by 2030.

For city folk, methane is a global warming gas produced by cows burping and farting. Morrison backed his Minister, saying the government never had any intention of agreeing to the (methane) reduction.

Veteran finance commentator Alan Kohler has had a bit to say about climate change and the urgent need to keep temperature increases below 1.5 degrees celsius. As he wrote in The New Daily a few months ago, precise risk analysis of global warming is difficult because ‘feedback loop tipping points’ are unknown and unpredictable.

“It’s known that with 1.5 to 2 degrees of warming, the combination of permafrost melt in Siberia, wildfires in the world’s forests and warming of the ocean will release more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

“(This) means a feedback loop could take the temperature to 2.5 degrees above pre-industrial temperatures – and perhaps beyond – no matter what we do.”

Kohler is good value, in that he often exposes seemingly turgid reports that no-one else has looked at and translates them into plain English.

For example, the Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority (APRA) issued a draft prudential practice guide on climate change which included 4 degrees of warming as one of its two “scenarios” for banks to use in their future planning.

“A 4 degree rise in the average global temperature would make large parts of the planet uninhabitable and lead to the total collapse of the banking system. No need for any planning,” Kohler commented.

“The other APRA scenario was for 2 degrees of warming or less, consistent with the Paris Agreement of December 2015, which should happen if all countries meet their Paris pledges (which they haven’t).”

Successive Australian governments have been terrified about drafting tough new laws to support carbon reduction. This is a country which cleared vast swathes of forest and scrub to establish pastoral land and open-cut coal mines. We have allowed fracking, built a vast network of gas pipelines, supported offshore oil drilling and relied on coal-fired power stations for much of our energy.

We also export millions of tonnes of coal to countries which have dirtier power stations than ours. We have exacerbated the global crisis rather than mitigating the effects of carbon emissions.

We here at FOMM HQ reckon we have been hearing about climate change, greenhouse gases and global warming since we became conservationists in the 1960s. She Who Taught Geography says she was aware of it when studying at university in the late 60s. We were called ‘tree huggers’ then and probably still would be now, despite knowing what we know.

So here in Australia, 50 years later, we are still in rampant denial about what rising carbon dioxide levels have done to the planet.

It’s no new thing. Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius first predicted in 1896 that changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels could substantially alter the planet’s ground temperature through the greenhouse effect. In 1938, Guy Callendar connected carbon dioxide increases in Earth’s atmosphere to global warming.

By the 1990s, a consensus emerged among scientists that greenhouse gases were deeply involved in most climate changes and human-caused emissions were bringing discernible global warming.

Unhappily, many people are climate change deniers. Just like those who subscribe to Covid-19 vaccine conspiracies, they defy the majority opinion of the world’s scientists.

Perhaps they were not paying attention when some of the world’s biggest fund managers started selling off their fossil fuel investments circa 2016. The latest local example of this was the State’s biggest investor, Queensland Investment Corporation, which manages State employees’ superannuation.

The topic of fossil fuels and divestment (selling oil, gas and coal stocks) was also debated at COP26. The pro-investment argument is that 80% of the world’s energy is still sourced from fossil fuel and a sudden rush for the turnstiles is unlikely.

Fossil fuel opponents understand how divestment can turn the tide quickly by shutting down fossil fuel ‘sponsorship’ (sometimes known as ‘greenwashing’).

Yet another conference, then, where world’s leaders (average age 60), left COP26 without doing anything meaningful.

The Greenhouse Gas Bulletin’s stark message this week is that from 1990 to 2020, the warming effect on our climate by long-lived greenhouse gases, increased by 47%, with CO₂ accounting for about 80% of the increase. The numbers are based on monitoring by the World Meteorological Organisation’s Global Atmosphere Watch network. As WMO Secretary-General Prof. Petteri Taalas said: “We are way off track.”

If I make it to 2050, I can imagine 102-year-old me, spilling jelly and custard on my vintage Homer Simpson T shirt muttering: “Meh” (having been moved in a dinghy to a nursing home on high ground).

Unfortunately, ‘meh’ (shorthand for callous indifference), is the attitude of far too many people who won’t see 2050. They have all obviously forgotten climate activist Greta Thunberg’s fiery speech at the 2019 World Economic Forum in Davos.

“I don’t want your hope. I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic,” she said. “I want you to feel the fear that I feel every day and I want you to act. Our house is burning.”

More reading: Seven years ago!!!

Heatwaves and the Winter Solstice

heatwaves-increasing-australia- — Graph by The Conversation/BOM refers to the situation in Australia)

As the Winter Solstice came and went and our wood heater consumed the last of 2020’s firewood, the US mid-west was sweltering through an early summer heatwave.

Australia is, hopefully, at least five months away from its first hot spell. But in the US mid-west states, which have been in the grip of the worst drought in 20 years, the mercury is rising. Cue Martha and the Vandellas..

Canadian relatives had already been posting photos on social media implying a very early summer, but across the border, things are grim.

The New York Times took the opportunity to conjure up an appropriate headline “Climate change batters the west before summer even begins”.

In Arizona and Nevada, temperatures soared to 115F (46 Celcius), which would raise eyebrows even in Birdsville. Four writers contributed to a New York Times special report last weekend as Lake Mead, which supplies water to three south-western states and Mexico, fell to its lowest level since 1930. Early wildfires are burning in Utah, Montana and Arizona, while in California communities are debating water rationing.

In Texas, power utilities are pleading with customers to go easy on air conditioning in case excess demand causes blackouts.

Moreover, the June trend appears to have surfaced in some European countries, notably France. After a freak late-winter heatwave, above-average temperatures are assailing Europe.

Those with relatives living in the Northern Hemisphere will be hoping this does not signal a return to the disastrous heatwave conditions that killed 72,000 Europeans in 2003.

Not that we are immune in Australia, where it could be easy to argue that many of us live in heatwave-like conditions for at least three months of the year. At which point I should mention it seems to matter not if it is heat wave or heatwave.

It is difficult in winter to recall how it is to live through consecutive days with temperatures in the 40s. We should take our cue from the dog, who slinks off to the bathroom and splays himself on the cool tile floor.

Scientists agree (apart from those who don’t), that climate change is accelerating the severity and duration of heatwaves. Certainly in this country extreme hot spells increased markedly between 2000 and 2020.

Australia’s weather authorities have decreed a heatwave to exist when temperatures are seven degrees higher than average in any 30-day period. A report in November last year by Ralph Trancoso and others in Science Direct summarises highlights for Australia:

Future heatwaves could last up to a month should global temperatures increase by 1.5% to 3% in coming years.
There has been major increases in the 2000’s in comparison to previous decades;.
heatwaves have intensified in the recent past and are projected to increase faster in future;
heatwaves may be 85% more frequent if global warming increases from 1.5 to 2.0 °C.

In hindsight, perhaps we should have paid more attention during Australia’s ‘angry summer’ (December 2012-January 2013). The severity of the heatwave conditions then prompted a flurry of research reports on climate change.

Climate Council chief executive Amanda McKenzie chose the ABC’s Q&A forum in 2017 to claim that Australia’s heatwaves were worsening, with hot days doubling over the last 50 years.

The Conversation put this assertion to the test, asking the Climate Council, which had recently commissioned a report, for more detail.

“Climate change is making hot days and heat waves more frequent and more severe,” a spokesperson said. “Since 1950 the annual number of record hot days across Australia has more than doubled and the mean temperature has increased by about 1°C from 1910.

“”On average, that there are almost 12 more days per year over 35°C.”

Andrew King, Climate Extremes Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne, said there was not a large body of research against which to test these claims.

“But the research we do have suggests there has been an observable increase in the frequency and intensity of heatwaves in Australia. A review paper published in 2016 assessed evidence from multiple studies and found that heatwaves are becoming more intense and more frequent for the majority of Australia.”

In Australia, the general population is well versed in the art of remaining hydrated in hot weather. Regardless, heat-related deaths happen here, even though it is not often stated as such on death certificates.

UK academic Professor William Keatinge says few deaths are directly caused by heat-stress, although extreme heat exacerbates medical conditions including diabetes, kidney and heart disease. Heat stress causes loss of salt and water in sweat, causing haemoconcentration, which in turn causes increases in coronary and cerebral thrombosis.

“Other deaths in heatwaves are probably due to overload of already failing hearts, unable to meet the need for increased cutaneous blood flow in the heat.”

Writing in the British Medical Journal, Prof Keatinge said people at risk in heatwave conditions include those unable to sweat (because of diabetic peripheral neuropathy), or those taking anticholinergic drugs, barbiturates or phenothiazines, which depress reflex regulation of body temperature. Alcohol can also be dangerous in the heat, he added.

Meanwhile back in the relatively chilly southern hemisphere, Macca is due to deliver a load of ironbark firewood on Saturday morning. Even though nights have been cold here, apart from a few bleak days, it warms up to 19 or so by midday. Perfect weather to strip down to a t-shirt and jeans and shift the firewood to the shed around the back. The truth about cold snaps is you can always add another layer, crank up the wood fire or turn on electric heaters. The only real damage is to the power bill.

We do not have the same choices when weather phenomena like a heat dome pushes ‘normal’ summer temperatures to the levels usually experienced in arid places like Marble Bar or Coober Pedy (for America, read Death Valley).

The reappearance of heatwaves this summer will see a renewed focus by climate change activists on the Australian government’s inaction on climate policy.

And it’s official: Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison has been formally rebuffed by the UK government, which is hosting a climate summit in Glasgow. Britain’s foreign secretary said Australia’s PM did not meet the required terms for attendance in November. The UK urged Australia to do more to reduce its carbon emissions.

It is illuminating, then, to revisit January 2020, when we were in the midst of catastrophic bushfires and a heatwave.

Mr Morrison told the media his policies on reducing emissions would ensure a “vibrant and viable economy, as well as a vibrant and sustainable environment”.

At the time, the United Nations had rebuked Australia, saying there had been no change in its climate policy since 2017. Emission levels for 2030, it said, were projected to be well above the target. The Climate Change Performance Index ranked Australia last out of 57 countries responsible for more than 90% of greenhouse gas emissions on climate policy.

Complicating matters now is the re-emergence of controversial politician Barnaby Joyce as Deputy Prime Minister. The conservative politician can fairly be described as a climate change denier. In 2012 he opposed the Labor government’s attempts to bring in a carbon pricing regime. Joyce was quoted in the SMH as claiming it would push the cost of a Sunday roast to $100. Infamously responding to public criticism of the Coalition’s environmental policies, he accepted the climate was changing, but insisted the solution was to respect God.

Heatwave? What heatwave?

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Rainwater Tanks Save The Day

rainwater-tanks-dams — Leslie Dam (reservoir 1,260ha) at 28%. Photo by BW.

Yay – the dams are full, creeks and gullies are running; rainwater tanks are spilling over. Everyone’s happy.

Our three rainwater tanks are full, as you might expect of a region where two water-starved dams reached 100% capacity in just two days.

Not so long ago (2018-2019), things were dire on the Southern Downs, with Warwick’s Leslie Dam at 7.66% (it’s now 28%), and the Granite Belt’s Storm King Dam virtually empty (now 100%).

In January 2020, a national news story told of the local council carting water to Stanthorpe from Connolly Dam in Warwick. The cost, borne by the State Government, was $800,000 a month. Carting ended last week after the March rains brought Storm King Dam back to capacity.

As you might expect, the district deluge was met by the relaxation of severe water restrictions which have been in place now for several years. Southern Downs Council had lifted daily water restrictions from 80 litres to 120 litres in mid-2020. Last week the limit was raised to 200 litres per person per day. There are caveats on this, however, with permanent restrictions applying to the use of hand-held hoses to water gardens or wash cars.

How quickly our mindset changes. We’ve gone from leaving the toilet water to mellow for days and collecting shower water in buckets to using a hose (between 7am-9am and 4pm-7pm) to wash cars. Last time I washed our car I used tank water in buckets.

It’s not so long ago that academics were advocating the use of recycled water to drought-proof houses. Writing at a time when at least seven New South Wales regional towns were in danger of running out of water altogether, Professor Roberta Ryan of the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) wrote that the only real obstacle to using recycled water for a range of purposes was community acceptance.

“Household waste water (which is what goes into the sewerage system from sinks, toilets, washing machines and so on), is a more consistent supply, with 80% or more of household water leaving as waste water.

“Furthermore, waste water goes to treatment plants already, so there is a system of pipes to transport it and places which already treat it, including advanced treatment plants that can treat the water to be clean enough for a range of purposes”.

You might recall that stories like this in 2019 and earlier were met with community opposition. In 2006, Toowoomba, Australia’s biggest inland city, voted against introducing recycled water.

Those advocating re-cycled water (extracted from treated sewage), suggest using it to operate washing machines and toilets in homes and to irrigate parks and sports grounds. Many Councils already use recycled water for those latter purposes.

As the Millenium Drought (1997-2009) worsened, State and local governments started creating rebate schemes to encourage households to buy and install rainwater tanks.

It’s been a hit and miss affair, with rebate schemes ending as quickly as eager queues started forming. Australia’s building code requires tanks to be installed and plumbed in to all new houses, although this differs from State to State. For example Queensland’s local governments can opt-in (or out).

In 2013, the Australian Bureau of Statistics found that 2.3 million households (26%) used a rainwater tank as a source of water, an increase from 1.7 million (19%) in 2007. The ABS said the increase from 2007 to 2013 may be attributed to water restrictions, government rebate schemes, water regulations and water pricing.

South Australia had the highest proportion of households that used water from a rainwater tank (46%), followed by Queensland (34%).

In the absence of an update, extrapolating the annual rate of growth assumes Australia now has close to three million rainwater tanks. This estimate could be rubbery, however. The unknown factor is the numbers of tanks which are self-installed without going through Council.

Although authorities generally do not recommend that households drink harvested rainwater, the supply can be used for a range of purposes, including washing, bathing, laundry and gardening. In some parts of Australia, it may be the main source of household water, while in others, it can supplement existing mains or town water supplies.

Rainwater Harvesting Australia, a committee comprised of irrigation industry leaders, advocates use of rainwater tanks as part of a blueprint for urban water management. A strategy is suggested (for South East Queensland), to consider re-use of storm water to improve the diversity and resilience of water supply. The strategy also recommends rainwater tanks and a basic form of passive irrigation for street trees.

The main criticism of rainwater tanks is that they breed mosquitoes and testing has shown sufficient pathogens in the water to dissuade many Councils from recommending it be used for drinking.

Despite the development of waste water recycling and desalination plants, Australia is still highly dependent upon rainfall as its main source of town water.

A Productivity Commission draft report in 2020 found that direct rainfall (surface or bulk water) or indirect (groundwater) accounted for 89% of all urban water in 2017-2018. The balance was attributed to recycled water (6%) and desalinated sea water (5%).

The report argued for a (national) integrated approach to urban water management, citing seven impediments to such an approach. The key stumbling block is the management of storm water, much of which flows out to sea.

For purposes of this discussion, the report criticises State government policies for mandating recycling or rainwater tank installation without a full cost benefit analysis.

“Many governments, for example, set recycled water targets, mandate the installation of household rainwater tanks or specify that recycled water is to be used in particular applications (such as for flushing toilets).

“These policy decisions are often set without clear and transparent evidence and analysis. They have driven significant investment and have sometimes resulted in higher costs than alternatives and failed to deliver their expected benefits.”

The report cited Marsden Jacob Associates, which found that the costs outweighed the benefits by more than $2000 per tank in most cases. Harvesting rainwater tends to be more costly than supply from centralised supply systems. For example, research in south-east Queensland found that the average cost of tank water was $9.22 per kL, substantially higher than the $4.40 per kL for potable water at the time.

The intangible benefits associated with rainwater tanks include reduced town water and storm water infrastructure costs and environmental benefits (reducing local storm water flows).

They also allow households to have flourishing gardens when water restrictions are in place.

A recent study by the CSIRO (apparently a first), found that 96% of participants identified benefits with their rainwater tanks. The most prominent were: watering during restrictions (88%), reduction in water consumption (82%) and benefit to environment (71%).

Cost-benefit analysis aside, I’d advocate for an integrated approach to installing rainwater tanks in every home and business in Australia. Surely we can solve the apparent downsides (including mosquitoes, water-born disease and contaminants (ash and debris from bushfires).

The key may be for Councils to implement an annual maintenance inspection and issue show-cause notices to those whose systems need work. As the CSIRO study found, only 58% of respondents in an ABS survey claimed to undertake any kind of rainwater tank maintenance. At present, householders have no legal obligation to undertake maintenance other than to minimize public health risks.

The practical advantage of a good rainwater tank system is that it ensures your allotment will dry out quickly once the rain stops.

Meanwhile, we have 9,200 litres of water stored to irrigate gardens through the traditionally dry winter.

It can’t be a bad thing.

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