Climate

Morrison backs fossil fuels over farmers

roman November 19, 2021

The Morrison government’s modelling of its emissions reduction “plan” reveals how the government has chosen fossil fuels over farmers, how it plans to grow – not shrink – Australia’s fossil gas industry and how it fails to deliver on a claimed commitment to reaching zero net emissions by 2050.

[…]

The government’s chosen path does not spell out how Australia would get to net zero emissions in 2050. Instead, a so-called “Plan” maps a path for Australia to cut domestic emissions by around 60 per cent, a further 25 per cent of Australia’s emissions being offset with credits purchased from overseas.

[…]

The modelling highlights how the government is counting on a substantial and ongoing role for Australia’s fossil fuel industries – with the gas industry expected to grow by 13 per cent out to 2050.
While the coal sector is projected to decline in coming decades, it will still be operating at around 50 per cent of its current capacity in 2050, with Australia maintaining its position as a major global exporter of both coal and gas.

[…] the Morrison government considered an alternate scenario, which evaluated the potential outcomes of Australia achieving the complete 100 per cent reduction in net emissions by 2050.

This scenario would see Australia increase its investment in domestic carbon sequestration, achieved primarily through increased re-vegetation of Australian land (and not the government’s favoured carbon capture and storage technology).

The modelling found that setting a more ambitious target – one that gets Australia all the way to full net zero by 2050 – would have a negligible impact on the Australian economy, amounting to just a 0.01 per cent change in GDP by 2050, which is meaningless for a projection three decades into the future.

The more ambitious scenario, as one might expect, has a more detrimental impact on the coal and gas sectors, with the modelling estimating that a complete net zero pathway would “have adverse impacts on fossil fuel based sectors, with $4.9 billion lower output value from coal and gas in 2050 relative to the Plan.”

Yet the modelling shows that this hit to the fossil fuel sector is almost entirely offset by increased benefits to farmers, saying that the 100 per cent net zero scenario “involves higher volumes of land sequestration, which provides $4.3 billion in additional revenue to participating land holders”.

It shows the Morrison government – and the Nationals party room – made a choice between two scenarios: adopt a “Plan” that cuts emissions by 85 per cent by 2050 and leaves the fossil fuel industry better off; or adopt a full net zero emissions target that negatively impacts the coal and gas sectors, but substantially boosts incomes for farmers, and has virtually no impact on the broader Australian economy.

—— full details in “Morrison chooses fossil fuels over farmers in “laughable” net zero modelling” by Michael Mazengarb, reneweconomy.com.au

Climate, Old_Notes

Smart Energy Summit 2020 worth watching

roman October 21, 2020

Global Smart Energy Summit 2020 Event Summary

On Tuesday 29 and Wednesday 30 September 2020 the Smart Energy Council and partners the Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation and Zoom delivered an amazing lineup of international and local industry and political leaders in exploring ways to tackle the economic and climate crises simultaneously.

some of the stand out speeches from both days include:

More details at https://www.smartenergy.org.au/global-smart-energy-summit-2020-event-summary

Adelaide FoE Notes, Clean Futures, Climate

GreenCities

roman September 10, 2020

Reprinting the Adelaide Green Cities Handbook

The original Green Cities Handbook was first published at the end of May, 1991 by FoE Nouveau.

It as meant to be a discussion starter on how we might change cities to be better for people and the environment.

It was published a year before the Ecocity 2 conference held in Adelaide, and was inspired by ideas from Peter Berg (Planet Drum Foundation), Richard Register (from Urban Ecology in the US, convenor of the first ecocity conference), and Peter Newman, who identified the benefits of a low energy, car-free city.

Paul Downton, architect of Christie Walk, a fragment of eco-city, was involved with the Green Cities Project team, comprised of students from the Mawson Graduate Centre of Environmental Studies at the Uni of Adelaide.

The Handbook has been out of print for the last two decades, and the only copies available were photocopies of photocopies. Adelaide Friends of the Earth decided they would reprint the original, as a start to revising and updating the handbook for the new millenium. We scanned the original copies, OCRed the scans, then edited and corrected the resultant text. We’ve tried to format it similar to the original, as close to the 1991 version as possible. Some things have changed since it was published, but a lot of the information in the Handbook is still relevant.

We invite you to peruse the original, and share your thoughts on how we might improve and update it. Adelaide FoE will be holding a number of workshops to discuss the update: let us know if you’re interested in getting involved.

View the reprint here: GreenCities Adelaide draft

Clean Futures, Climate, FoE, Green Cities

Principles for a Just Recovery from the COVID-19 crisis

roman September 3, 2020

from FoE International 25 August, 2020

The COVID-19 crisis is the result of an economic system that prioritises profits over peoples’ rights and the environment.

The systemic, inter-related socio-ecological crises we face — climate, biodiversity, food, water, economic and care — and this global coronavirus pandemic share the same root causes: a capitalist, patriarchal and racist system designed for capital accumulation and neoliberal, corporate-led globalisation.

This is why Friends of the Earth International believes that a “just recovery” built on environmental, social, gender and economic justice is urgently needed to comprehensively address the impacts of the COVID-19 crisis.

Recovery does not mean going “back to normal”. This is the time to prioritise the sustainability of life, peoples’ rights, and the protection of livelihoods and the planet.

We propose four principles for a just recovery:

1. Abandon neoliberalism and austerity and immediately put in place policies and measures founded on justice, recognising ecological limits.

The State must play a fundamental role in guaranteeing peoples’ rights and environmental justice.

Public recovery packages must:

Support people directly, first of all indigenous peoples, black and afro-descendant communities, people of colour, migrants, women at the grassroots, and the working class.
Include policies for the redistribution of wealth, women’s autonomy, tax justice, and specific support for small businesses, as well as pathways away from extractive industries and fossil fuel dependence, including support for workers to transition to new jobs.
Not pay for corporate financial loss with public money or bailout transnational corporations, especially those most responsible for systemic crises such as fossil fuel and mining companies, agribusiness, airlines and companies based in tax havens.

Governments must:

Stop harmful trade and investment negotiations, particularly Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) cases.
Commit to an international legally binding treaty on transnational corporations with respect to human rights.
Undo neoliberal reforms that have dismantled working class rights, for example by reversing the privatisation of social security by financial capital.

2. Recovery measures should be built on and enhance multilateral co-operation and internationalist solidarity.

Internationalism across movements and borders will help to build collective responses to this crisis. Internationalism means a common understanding and analysis of all forms of oppression, their interconnectedness as well as the need to tackle them all, globally.

International regulations must prioritise peoples’ rights and environmental, social, gender and economic justice. Countries must create policy space in which to address the root causes of the systemic crises. This means:

All Global South debt must be cancelled, and the principle of climate reparations and ecological debt applied. The Global North and international financial institutions must provide new public finance for the Global South, in the form of non-refundable grants.
Governments must work together to regulate the financial sector, prevent speculation, and stop financial and capital flows from Global South to North.
Any treatment including vaccinations for COVID-19 must be made available to all under the same conditions, without patents or other Intellectual Property Rights.
The primacy of human rights and peoples’ rights over trade and investment agreements must be enshrined in international law.
Economic blockades and occupations that clearly violate international humanitarian and human rights law (such as in Cuba, Palestine and Venezuela) must cease.

3. Strengthen democracy and protect human rights and peoples’ rights.

Democracy must be defended and strengthened through empowering peoples’ participation. Politics must be reclaimed, by demanding that it ensures peoples’ rights and the protection of nature. We must come together to ensure:

The health crisis does not serve as a cover for advancing big polluters’ and neoliberal corporate agendas, including further deregulation.
Peoples’ rights are protected at all costs, including the right to voice opposition, raise criticism, and protest. The criminalisation of social movements, organisations and communities must end.
An end to the erosion of women’s autonomy and rights over their lives and bodies is stopped.
An end to right wing and oppressive governments and their use of the covid crisis to increase militarisation of societies and territories and impose surveillance tactics and techniques.
The right to freedom from violence is fulfilled, especially for women, black and afro-descendant communities and people of colour, LGBTQ people, and defenders of territories.

4. Governments must respond to the multiple systemic crises—of the pandemic, inequality, climate, food, biodiversity, and care—and their root causes, by pursuing a transformative system change agenda.

The COVID-19 crisis has exposed how the destruction of ecosystems facilitates the spread of pathogens that affect our health. A just and healthy recovery means responding to the climate change crisis and the loss of biodiversity, forests and other ecosystems worldwide.

This means:

The collective rights of peoples must be recognised, implemented and respected, in order to maintain their age-old practices of collective management of territories.
A complete transformation of the food system away from industrial agriculture towards food sovereignty. Support for peasant, family and artisanal producers, building up national and local food supplies, and shifting public policies and subsidies away from corporate farming towards agroecology. Genuine agrarian reform, that gives peoples ownership and control over their seeds, land, water, knowledge.
Responding to the COVID-19 and climate crises simultaneously, applying the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities to move away from fossil fuel dependency to 100% community-owned, renewable energy for all.
Building a new economy that is distributive and healthy by design, where transport, communications, housing, water and sanitation, education, health, care work, energy and social security are recognised as rights and are available for all through public services funded through just taxation. A transformed system will be based on sustainable local and regional economies linked together through equitable trade relations.

We call for the following principles to be the basis for all national/regional decisions around bailouts, tax concessions, regulatory frameworks and public spending, and all the necessary international/multilateral measures intended to see us through a recovery from COVID-19 and the ensuing socio-economic crisis into sustainable and just societies founded on peoples’ sovereignty and participation.

Read the full Principles for a Just Recovery report here

Clean Futures, Climate, FoE

Legislation banning nuclear power in Australia should be retained

roman March 11, 2020

Jim Green, Online Opinion, 27 Feb 2020

Nuclear power in Australia is prohibited under the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act 1999. A review of the EPBC Act is underway and there is a strong push from the nuclear industry to remove the bans. However, federal and state laws banning nuclear power have served Australia well and should be retained.

Too cheap to meter or too expensive to matter? Laws banning nuclear power has saved Australia from the huge costs associated with failed and failing reactor projects in Europe and North America, such as the Westinghouse project in South Carolina that was abandoned after the expenditure of at least A$13.4 billion. The Westinghouse / South Carolina fiasco could so easily have been replicated in any of Australia’s states or territories if not for the legal bans.

There are many other examples of shocking nuclear costs and cost overruns, including:

* The cost of the two reactors under construction in the US state of Georgia has doubled and now stands at A$20.4 to 22.6 billion per reactor.

* The cost of the only reactor under construction in France has nearly quadrupled and now stands at A$20.0 billion. It is 10 years behind schedule.

* The cost of the only reactor under construction in Finland has nearly quadrupled and now stands at A$17.7 billion. It is 10 years behind schedule.

* The cost of the four reactors under construction in the United Arab Emirates has increased from A$7.5 billion per reactor to A$10-12 billion per reactor.

* In the UK, the estimated cost of the only two reactors under construction is A$25.9 billion per reactor. A decade ago, the estimated cost was almost seven times lower. The UK National Audit Office estimates that taxpayer subsidies for the project will amount to A$58 billion, despite earlier government promises that no taxpayer subsidies would be made available.

Nuclear power has clearly priced itself out of the market and will certainly decline over the coming decades. Indeed the nuclear industry is in crisis — as industry insiders and lobbyists freely acknowledge. Westinghouse — the most experienced reactor builder in the world — filed for bankruptcy in 2017 as a result of catastrophic cost overruns on reactor projects. A growing number of countries are phasing out nuclear power, including Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Belgium, Taiwan and South Korea. (more…)

Adelaide FoE Notes, Climate, Nuclear