*Pic: Foreign Minister Julie Bishop … ‘Marshall Islands Foreign Minister Tony de Brum is photographed being tightly embraced by a dazzling Julie Bishop …’
At the UN Climate Jamboree at Le Bourget, near Paris, the little red engine of the Climate Concord 2015 finally rattles into sight, completing a journey which began in Berlin in 1995.
The road trip, takes just over ten hours, but the ancient coal-fired steam train of international climate diplomacy has suffered decades of setbacks and delays.
Global warming must be kept below 1.5 degrees, it is agreed. No-one has a clue how this may be achieved, however. Hurrah! It is a breakthrough and a catastrophe. All aboard!
Bleary-eyed delegates totter wearily aboard, thankful any train has arrived at all, knowing full well, that while the Paris 2015 agreement is the best we can do, it is nowhere near good enough to get us home safely. It is not a treaty. For all the talk of it being legally binding, it is only an ‘aspirational goal’ of 1.5 degrees. We have no agreed route to get there. Our voluntary carbon-cut pledges are too little, too late.
Father of climate change awareness, NASA scientist, James Hansen, thinks we are all being taken for a ride.
‘It’s a fraud really, a fake, he says, … just bullshit for them to say: “We’ll have a 2C warming target and then try to do a little better every five years.” It’s just worthless words. There is no action, just promises. As long as fossil fuels appear to be the cheapest fuels out there, they will be continued to be burned.’
The final ‘aspirational target’ of 1.5 degrees is better than Hansen expected but there is a big gap between this and the woefully inadequate targets nations have set themselves which might, perhaps, limit global warning to 3 degrees at best. A carbon price is required. Hansen and proposes a ‘carbon fee’ on major emitters as the only way to curb global warming to a rise of 1.5 degrees. Yet this is a bridge too far for most governments.
lock in 1.5 degrees warming.
CICERO, Centre for International Climate and Environmental Research – Oslo predicts that at our current rate of emissions, the world will have produced enough carbon dioxide by 2020 to lock in 1.5 degrees warming. But, hey, there will be regular inspections every 5 years to confirm we are on our way to certain extinction.
Yet no-one can make a profit out of a dead planet. Business and finance have been eagerly hopping aboard the climate change train recently.
In the last year, investors have rushed into a low carbon economy. John Kerry, US Secretary of State is upbeat. ‘While we’ve been debating, … the clean energy sector has been growing at an incredible rate.’
Clive Hamilton of Charles Sturt University calls it an amazing shift among investors and ‘non-state actors’ that ‘signals a sea-change in climate action that now seems unstoppable’.
Self-interest is worth backing because it is a horse which will always run on its merits. In one year, The Montreal Carbon Pledge under which large investors commit to measuring and reporting on the carbon footprint of their portfolios, has been signed by investors controlling more than US$10 trillion in assets.
A ‘Science Based Targets’ initiative, has seen 114 large corporations pledge to reduce their emissions in a way consistent with a 2? objective. Big corporations including Ikea, Coca-Cola, Dell, General Mills, Kellogg, NRG Energy, Procter & Gamble, Sony and Wal-Mart have already signed up and are implementing plans.
Curbing climate change has long been presented as a choice between development or environment, thanks largely to the propaganda units of fossil fuel interests such as Peabody Energy. Recent developments seem set to challenge this logic. A bloc of vulnerable countries has now formed. Combine these voices with the development of renewable energy capacity. Add a commitment by rich nations to fund poor nations’ climate mitigation and adaptation and the old equation is set to be disproved.
Agreement has been a slow train coming. In 1995 in Berlin, the first UN Conference would have been able to achieve a 1.5 degree warming target but the train was derailed by fossil fuel lobbyists who were able to take advantage of politicians only too willing to trade short term gain for long term disaster. Now the witching hour is upon us.
… twenty years in the making …
50,000 delegates, media, rent-seekers and hangers-on from 193 nations skitter all over the talking shop in a last minute flurry of pledges, alliance building, mutual suspicion, misunderstanding and folie à foule. Only two things are certain. This moment has been twenty years in the making yet no-one can predict exactly what it all means. It will never happen again.
Marshall Islands Foreign Minister Tony de Brum is photographed being tightly embraced by a dazzling Julie Bishop, who channels her inner Pirelli calendar girl to glamorise Australia’s Leyland P76 lemon of a climate change policy. She also covers for Hunt who puts in a pretty ordinary performance, even for him.
Jules is all over her ‘good friend’ Tone like a rash but even her full frontal frottage fails to gate-crash his ‘coalition of ambition’, a melange of 80 developed and developing countries including the US, EU, Canada and Brazil – aimed at offsetting a push by China, India and Saudi Arabia to water down the wording as negotiators go at it hammer and tongs well after the final siren.
De Brum re-adjusts his spectacles. He is happy to take down Bishop’s particulars but Australia will have to make its case. ‘We are delighted to learn of Australia’s interest and look forward to hearing what more they may be able to do to join our coalition of high ambition here in Paris,’ he says coolly.
Kiribati’s President Anote Tong, who voted for Australia to be on the UN security council because of its pledge to put climate change on the agenda, says his country now feels betrayed by Coalition policy on global warming. He is far less diplomatic in his assessment of Australia’s commitment. ‘They don’t feel it, they don’t know it, [and] they don’t care: They care about the next election.’
Clearly, a window of opportunity opens for Australia’s Minister for a coal-powered future, George Brandis’ ‘climate intellectual’ Greg Hunt who whispers that curbing global warming to less than 20′ is ‘a deeply personal goal’ of his whilst eagerly, hastily, approving vast new coal mines. If anyone can wangle us a seat on the coalition of high ambition, it is the agile, nimble back-flipper Hunt. If only someone could find him.
Conflicted and compromised publicly by his flawed performance as protector of the Great Barrier Reef, Hunt’s profile in Paris is lower than a Yakka skink by Thursday. He may just have nodded off. Luckily, crowd-pleaser Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop, always makes herself freely available. And hits a bum note.
Bishop attracts attention and unkind parodies. Marie Antoinette caricatures of her appear as if by witchcraft for advocating coal as a solution to world hunger. ‘Let them eat coal.’ Later she evades questions about coal mines claiming ‘it’s up to each country’. No-one would impose anything on anybody – not even the UN.
‘a common but differentiated responsibility’
Bleary-eyed, sleep-deprived negotiators hold all-night indaba, a Zulu word for discussions around huge tables of 80 officials from as many countries in which everyone present must speak and be heard. Agreement on ‘a common but differentiated responsibility’, a Nicene Creed of climate change ownership in its complexity, is reached by attrition through an exhausting series of redrafts and revisions.
Specifics are edited into hazy generalities until real commitment to curb global warming threatens to disappear completely, like the Cheshire Cat, leaving nothing behind but its smile – of good intentions.
Delegates of rich nations seek to erase their oversize carbon footprints; their historic responsibility for polluting the planet’s atmosphere. Poor countries lobby to lock in emissions exemptions in the name of development. Convention mastermind, Ban Ki-moon, UN Secretary General, says the talks are ‘the most complicated and difficult negotiations’ of his career. Bishop embraces him also.
The fate of the planet hangs by a thread, a frayed, well-chewed-over form of words, a universal agreement on climate change achieved by a ‘consensus model’ in which every official of every nation has to agree to every word in six languages in a marathon of talking. It is a miracle there is any consensus at all.
Inexplicably out of range of ABC microphones, veteran talkfest-meister Greg Hunt is last seen publicly in a failed attempt to put his case at a screening of naturalist David Attenborough’s documentary on the Great Barrier Reef. Australians are forced instead to endure rational, informed and objective commentary on proceedings from bodies such as The Climate Institute, although, as always Julie Bishop gets a good look in to shore up optimism and positivity. Minister for Are We There Yet?, she stays relevant by reporting agreement is imminent and that it’s all been a lot of hard work.
At the end Bishop grabs the microphone in what is surely best grandstand of the conference, presuming to speak for vulnerable nations. Strangely she makes no mention of the 11 billion cut from Australia’s foreign aid under her regime which is down to 22 cents per 100 dollars we earn, the lowest ever and one third of our UN pledge.
Is the vulnerable Hunt sulking? Or just skulking? In the panel discussion after the Attenborough screening, Thursday, Aussie biologist Ove Hoegh-Guldberg who has made a lifetime study of the reef says Australia must choose to either proceed with its $16 billion Adani coal mine or protect the Great Barrier Reef.
Hunt, mistakenly believing Australia has funded some of the BBC documentary in yet another of his hilarious crossed wires, forcefully requests to speak at the end of the film only to riff about Australia’s innovative neo-neo-colonialism.
…it lacks moral justification.
Rather than choose to address the disconnect between promoting coal mining and protecting the reef, Hunt, instead, boosts Australia’s piddling $140m ‘reef trust’ aimed to combat soil erosion, crown of thorns starfish and other threats. Earlier he explains that Australia approved Adani because we are not a ‘neo-colonialist’ power that tries to tell poor countries what to do. For Hunt, that clears up the issue. For Tong, it lacks moral justification. Above all it is a specious argument that ignores Australia’s history.
Australia’s neighbours may beg to differ with Hunt, especially those fielding boatloads of Border Force refugee turn-backs. Or Pacific Islanders, long colonised by Aussie multinationals. In Profits of Doom, Antony Loewenstein explains how PNG has been made dependent on Australian aid, about $500 million a year. About 60% of this will end up with Australian corporations. Bishop’s ‘New Aid Paradigm’ with its slogan of poverty reduction through economic growth continues to boost the fortunes of our neo-colonial investors.
Julie Bishop, mistress of the universe of diplomatic discourse does, however raise Australia’s profile with her lecture to delegates in which she upholds coal as the solution to world poverty. ‘Let them eat coal’ plays to bemused delegates who check their programmes in case they’ve accidentally wandered into the Climate Change Circus which runs concurrently with COP21. Consensus is rapidly reached. The Australian Foreign Minister has been at the Peabody Energy drinks cabinet again.
‘It will be innovation and technological breakthroughs that will ultimately be the game changer in our climate change response,’ Bishop waffles in what is billed as our ‘National Statement’, an embarrassing excuse for not being able to admit you have no ideas whatsoever. Or no intention of curbing emissions. And less concern.
Bishop’s statement reiterates Hunt’s misleading statistical nonsense about our target of a 26% reduction on 2005 levels being ‘ambitious’ and the falsehood that we are per capita leading the world in our emission cutting. Climate Change Authority analysis and projection, however, shows Australia continuing to lead the world right out to 2030 and beyond it in its pollution per capita.
…he is still bleating…
Surely now, Hunt will reveal Australia’s secret admirers’, those direct action fans or groupies, he alludes to so often. Yet it all seems a case of misreporting. All Hunt is claiming is OECD and IEA approval of his reverse auctions. And, yes, he is still bleating that his ERF is the best way to meet and beat our carbon reduction targets.
During an OECD panel discussion, Hunt claims ‘Both International Energy Agency and the OECD have said reverse auctions could be the most effective means of price discovery.’ Whatever the truth of his claim, it relates only to a small sub-component of his scheme and not Direct Action itself.
As Lenore Taylor notes, a deluded Hunt has wasted his time in Paris pretending that his ERF is a price on carbon and in peddling the preposterous lie that the world is remotely interested in his Direct Action.
At home, consumed by paranoid delusions of betrayal, Ayatollah Abbott is still barking mad. Still shrewd enough, however, to spot a strike-back opportunity, he rubbishes Islam. Helpfully, he further poisons the turbid well of the nation’s international relations and foments Islamophobia at home by attacking Islam for its backwardness. Pauline Hanson is interviewed on ABC shortly afterwards on the coattails of Abbott’s disingenuous mischief-making, rabble-rousing.
Unlike his own faith with its history of crusades, Inquisitions and conquistadors, Islam is a menace in Abbott’s eyes because it lacks the seasoning of reformation. ‘Cultures are not all equal. We should be ready to proclaim the clear superiority of our culture to one that justifies killing people in the name of God.’
God only knows what the coal lobby will find for Abbott to say next or how Hunt will claim that the UN decision is a victory for Direct Action and that we are already so far ahead of our targets we don’t’ need to do a tap until 2020. Add in Ian McFarlane’s defection to the National Party as a means to getting back in cabinet and it will take real leadership to steer government away from the fossil fuel obsessed towards something renewable.
Today’s news that Hunt was sidelined while Turnbull removed Abbott’s restrictions on Clean Energy Finance for wind farms is an encouraging sign that the PM is prepared to encourage green energy, yet he still owes favours to the Nationals’ agenda of retaining Direct Action.
…put his money where his mouth is…
‘There’s never been a more exciting time to be an Australian,’ PM Turnbull repeats, playing the straight man before a non-sequitur worthy of Hunt, ‘We need to embrace new ideas in innovation and science, and harness new sources of growth to deliver the next age of economic prosperity in Australia.’ What Turnbull will have to do soon, however, is stop talking and put his money where his mouth is.
We don’t need no innovation, with apologies to Pink Floyd. Keep coal in the ground and invest in clean, renewable energy without further ado. It’s our last chance to act to match the aspirations of Paris with deeds that may earn us some respite if not reprieve from the inexorable changes we have caused by allowing carbon in our atmosphere to reach 400 parts per million.
Cancel all coal mine projects at once. Get out of coal-fired power generation. Boost investment in solar and wind. Abandon the Peabody propaganda. We have nothing to lose by getting out of fossil fuels …
… And a whole world to re-gain.
• The exciting times we live in … really?
• SMH: ‘Why would you bother?’: Turnbull government backbenchers warn against world’s emissions plan
• ABC: Ian Macfarlane blocked from moving to Nationals by LNP executive Federal MP Ian Macfarlane has been blocked from moving from the Liberals to the Nationals partyroom. The Liberal National Party State Executive has today decided against the move, after it was approved with a vote of 102-34 by local party members on Saturday. In a statement, LNP president Gary Spence said the decision to vote down the move was made after “taking into consideration the best interests” of the party … The decision has quashed the Nationals’ hopes to gain an extra Cabinet seat, but Mr Spence said he was hopeful that any future reshuffle would go “some way towards correcting that imbalance”. Mr Macfarlane said he was disappointed, and would take time to consider his options. Media player: “Space” to play, “M” to mute, “left” and “right” to seek. He said he was not ready to retire.
• ABC: Morrison on the defensive as MYEFO adds billions to deficit Treasurer Scott Morrison defends the Government’s inability to bring the budget back to surplus during its first term, after MYEFO figures show billions being added to projected deficits.
mike seabrook
December 13, 2015 at 12:18
1. 1.5 degrees c or 2 degrees c across the planet – on average??
2.how evenly across the planet will this outcome be distributed
3. if tassie only gets 1 degrees c and china and india for instance get 3-4 degrees c warming the tassie economy will be stuffed
4. however if tassie were to get 3-4 degrees warming – particularly in the long cold economicaly depressed tassie winter- the tassie economy would boom and my kids may return to tassie
Frank Strie (Terra-Preta Developments)
December 13, 2015 at 15:25
Reading yet another long negative article as counteraction to the positive initiatives around the world, is not very inspirational or motivating for most readers to get into creative mode.
NO ONE -, no group, community, state or country will be prevented to go beyond the intended initiatives, or to achieve their climate goal earlier than presently foreseen.
I can point to a regional initiative where the people in 7 Villages (Horticulture, Agriculture, Food processing, Hospitality and Tourism, work together since 2007 to become carbon neutral by 2020.
This climate / carbon action initiative was not initiated by party political agendas but by individuals who jointly share their knowledge, information, skills, vision and passion for a better future.
Rather than continually pointing to the shortcoming and gaps of others, they got on with what needs to be done.
Key words: “Ökoregion Kaindorf”; “Oekoregion Kaindorf”;”Ecoregion Kaindorf”
J. Callan
December 13, 2015 at 19:34
Thanks, Frank, for your positive comment. We,as individuals and communities need to work together to help bring about the changes that will create a sustainable future. Surely this would be preferable in developing countries too instead of the cost and the environmental effects of big coal and big hydro power generation.
john hayward
December 14, 2015 at 00:23
Who ever dreamt that our reps at the Apocalypse would be political titans such as Bishop, Brandis, and Hunt? Or that their hog-tied foes would be the avatars of human integrity and intelligence?
We have so much to learn, and almost no time to learn it.
John Hayward
Claire Gilmour
December 14, 2015 at 00:24
And they said … if you clear it – they will come
And they said … if you fell it – they will come
And they said … if you dam it – they will come
And they said … if you pipe it – they will come
And they said … if you sell it – they will come
And they said … if you gamble it – they will come
And then Julie Bishop said …
“But we don’t want to damage our economy without having an environmental impact.â€
Really Julie? Obviously the environmental impact is so profound a number of countries are prepared to consider new strategies and trading partners …
Apparently the environmental impact from your type of economy IS INFACT DAMAGING BOTH THE ENVRIONMENT AND ECONOMY.
C’est la vie … such is life …
Good grief she’s an idiot! I guess she got the party line wrong.
And who is she and her party really kowtowing to? …
Let us guess, perhaps …
http://www.msn.com/en-au/money/personalfinance/the-world’s-richest-families-revealed/ss-BBnsB05?ocid=spartanntp
rod
December 14, 2015 at 22:29
This is a wonderful agreement. It satisfies everyone except extreme greenies. It allows politicians to claim that they are tackling the problem but allows countries to carry on as before. It’s a con of course as nobody knows just how much CO2 will increase temperature 1.5 or 2 degrees least of all the IPCC – none of whose predictions in 2000 have come to pass. But it does allow them to claim they saved the World after all this proves to be so much hot air. The really good news is that CO2 will continue to rise unabated as it is the World’s best fertilizer. Not only does it increase plant growth but it enables plants to use water more efficiently so making more areas of the World open to agriculture. What’s more it is free to everyone and has only one by-product – Oxygen.
Now that is becoming apparent that CO2 has much less effect on the climate as was being claimed we can all relax. Of course it is desirable that we encourage alternative energy sources as sooner or later we will run out of fossil fuels and any reduction in pollution is desirable but CO2 is not pollution and not a problem.
We can now look at weather records and realise that the World heated up more in the 1930s than in the 1980s and that 1000 years ago it was warmer and Greenland was green. At the time East Anglia in England, an area barely above sea level, was the most populated and wealthiest part of the country – not under water. So sea level rise was not an issue then and will not be a problem this century.
Bob Hawkins
December 16, 2015 at 19:06
That early vacuous suggestion that we have “never lived in a more exciting time” told us that our MT-rhetoric PM is no more in touch with reality than his predecessor. And then came the everyman utterance — “everything is on the table” — which means we now have a national leader who had the temerity to challenge for, and win, the nation’s top job without any semblance of an agenda. And, as for Paris, what a lot of tosh flowed from the lips of our foreign minister. Typical bloody Libs! As always, they make it up as they go along. No chance of visionary leadership, but at least MT and his henchmen could come up with something that at least looks like a program of reform.
Steve
December 23, 2015 at 23:25
#6; Love your confidence. Please could you provide some credible references? I’m not noticing the paddocks growing better this year due to the “Worlds best fertiliser”.
Simon Warriner
December 24, 2015 at 11:03
A read of the following might help your understanding of the issues, Rod.
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com.au/
Greer seems to be more comfortable quoting his sources than our elected reps, and his sources seem more free of conflicted interest than those favoured by the politarty.
Merry Christmas to all.
Rod
December 27, 2015 at 14:55
#8.
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/study-finds-plant-growth-surges-as-co2-levels-rise-16094
To save you reading it, the increase is 11% in 20 years.
Rod
December 28, 2015 at 14:53
#9. The author of this blogspot has not done his homework. The recent Arctic warming that has occurred recently (and is now reversing) is a regular event caused by warm currents and changing wind patterns. It has happened several times in the last 150 years. Miami is in danger of flooding mainly because of glacial rebound. The whole east coast of the USA is sinking. The sea level has been rising since the last ice age and will continue rising until the next whatever mankind does or has done. If ice shelves collapse then it’s happened before and is just part of the cycle of nature. There’s nothing we can do to prevent it.
There is no evidence that increased CO2 warms the World in spite of billions being spent looking for it. But there is evidence that it has little or no effect. In fact the climate scientists are now adjusting climate data to back up their theories which is disgraceful. There is no science on CO2 warming. It is not settled. And no consensus.
Frank again
December 28, 2015 at 23:48
Rod #11- I just wish you were right!
phill Parsons
January 1, 2016 at 10:24
So amusing. The reaction between the increased rate of GHG emissions by humans [mainly CO2]and by nature [mainly CH4] will transform the physical and chemical world which we experience as climate and food.
#1 posits a possible Nirvana from warming thinking somehow global heating is a thermostat whose consequence determines where you holiday.
The climate system is not one we can control and without costly comprehensive, adequate and timely action rest assured the life of future generations will be much poorer and harder.
The fossil fuel industry is an evil death cult that we have to abolish. It can help by volunteering to change but if not the force of law will have to be used or all the improvements in life resulting from past human activity will be severely degraded.
Rod
January 2, 2016 at 14:37
#13. How ridiculous to call the fossil fuel industry an evil death cult. Without it we would still all be back in the 17th century with all the hardships that that entailed for 99% of the World’s population. The existing World isn’t perfect I agree but who would swap it for living 250 years ago. I’d be dead for a start as modern medicine has already saved my life at least once.
There is no evidence that CO2 is having a detrimental effect on anything. In fact if you ignore the El Nino years, temperatures have been stable for quarter of a century. Hurricane activity is at a 30 year low. Rainfall patterns haven’t changed for 150 years. Droughts are fewer. Sea level rise is at the long term average. The Greenland ice cap is growing as is the Antarctic. Polar bear numbers have risen. The only proven effect is good – increased plant growth.
The real thing to fear is global cooling which may start fairly soon. That will effect climate and food. The worst storms ever recorded were during cold periods.
Chris Harries
January 9, 2016 at 17:52
Doesn’t make a jot of a difference how much you deny evidence, Rod, the proof of the pudding will be in eating. Or was that in the tweeting?
Wait awhile and we’ll graciously accept your apology.
Denial is a natural human condition, afflicting those who are unable to come to terms with a hard truth. But it’s a temporal condition. In time nearly everyone came around to accepting that the world is round and that we evolved from among the primates and other facts that were hard to stomach, even when presented with hard evidence.