David Attenborough - World facing existential risk with climate change

COP24, Katowice, Poland, 3rd December 2018: Transcript of speech by David Attenborough

Your excellencies, ladies and gentlemen.

‘We the peoples of the United Nations’. These are the opening words of the UN Charter. A charter that puts people at the centre. A pledge to give every person in the world a voice on its future. A promise to help protect the weakest and the strongest from war, famine and other man-made disasters.

Right now, we are facing a man-made disaster of global scale. Our greatest threat in thousands of years. Climate Change.

If we don’t take action the collapse of our civilisations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon.

Funeral for Our Future - Time to #stopAdani

Funeral for Our Future - a Service conducted by Stop Adani Melbourne and friends, officiated by Uniting Church Minister Rev Alex Sangster.

Included a Processional march by Riff Raff Marching Band, Songs lead by the Climate Choir, Eulogy for the Reef by Alan Cuthbertson from Stop Adani Melbourne, Eulogy for Nature by Joseph Birckhead and Audrey Cooke, Euology for Children's Future by teenager Marco Bellemo, Call to Action by Rev Alex Sangster and Marco Bellemo.

Queensland's Catastrophic bushfire, extreme heatwave and climate change

Queensland: Catastrophic fire conditions, a week long extreme heatwave with record breaking temperatures, mass bushfire evacuations at Gracemere near Rochhampton, State and Commonwealth disaster response plans triggered.

But no mention of climate change intensifying heat and bushfires.

Guest Post: Frank Jotzo on Labor's new energy policy using the #NEG and the need to do so much more

Labor's policy can smooth the energy transition, but much more will be needed to tackle emissions

Frank Jotzo, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

The Labor party’s energy policy platform, released last week, is politically clever and would likely be effective. It includes plans to underwrite renewable energy and storage, and other elements that would help the energy transition along. Its approach to the transition away from coal-fired power is likely to need more work, and it will need to be accompanied by good policy in other sectors of the economy where greenhouse emissions are still climbing.

The politics is quite simple for Labor: support the transition to renewable electricity which is already underway and which a large majority of Australians support, and minimise the risk that its proposed policy instruments will come under effective attack in the lead-up to the 2019 election.

Storms and flooding for Melbourne Cup day, but media dares not mention climate change

Melbourne Cup day dawned with rain falling. Storms escalated with torrential rain through the morning. Power outages, train disruptions, flashflooding of stations and many low lying roads across the city eventuated. But the mainstream media failed to add 2 + 2 with the influence of climate change in this extreme weather event.

The previous day racing officials had ordered more racetrack irrigation overnight to reduce the firmness of the track. Perhaps they should have checked the weather forecast.

Intense rain events are becoming more frequent, the science is clear not only from models but also observational data. Part of the reason for this is a Warmer atmosphere that can carry more moisture. For every 1 degrees Celsius of warming the extra atmospheric carrying capacity is increased by an extra 6-7 per cent. So heavier rain. That means more flash flooding.

The IPCC 1.5C report and a visit to Bill Shorten to #stopAdani

In this photo I am making a short speech outside Labor MP and Opposition leader Bill Shorten's office at Moonee Ponds on the major transformation necessary if we are to meet the 1.5C Paris climate target, as detailed by the recent IPCC 1.5C report (which I am holding up in the air). The climate science report says unequivocally that there is no physical or chemical impediment to us limiting climate change warming to 1.5C, the problems are entirely political and would entail at this stage massive social transformation of our energy, transport, agriculture and social systems.

We have at most perhaps another decade to start significantly on the path of this social transformation. Actually, I think we need to be well on the path to deep decarbonisation by 2020.

IPCC 1.5C report needs to inform Moreland's transport strategy

I attended the Brunswick Town Hall, for a special hearing by Moreland Council considering oral presentations to submissions on the Moreland Integrated Transport Strategy and the Moreland Parking Policy.

I was number 19 on the list of presenters as I had made a submission on behalf of Climate Action Moreland (Read it here).

Many of the presenters spoke on the personal circumstances of traffic, parking, cycling and walking in Moreland, and concerns how the strategy and policy might affect employment or business.

Guest Post: Why our carbon emission policies don't work on air travel

Just came across this post from the Conversation from July 2018. It argues that there are two possibilities to reduce aviation emissions as part of an across the board reduction in Australian emissions.

Firstly, and given the difficulty of technological change, this will require that people fly less.

The second option is to be much more aggressive in reducing emissions in another sector, say electricity, where known solutions are far more viable and can be done relatively quickly.

"Airline emissions are likely to remain a difficult problem, but one that needs to be tackled if we’re to stay within habitable climate limits." the article concludes.

I would add that we need to consider demand management of flying through either taxing frequent flyers or using a personal carbon budget allowance system, both of which the airline and airport industry will strongly argue against but are far more equitable for constraining aviation demand. See Alice Bows Larkin assessment in the December 2014 research paper: All adrift: aviation, shipping, and climate change policy.

Report on Darebin Climate Emergency Conference

The last two days - 11-12 September - I attended the Darebin climate emergency conference in northern Melbourne suburb of Northcote. I was one of 350 people that registered and attended. Some good speeches and presentations, interesting panel discussions and useful one-on-one conversations.

This was Darebin Council hosting and facilitating this conference as part of it's climate emergency strategy and plan. There were a small number of councillors from other cities present including the Deputy Mayor of neighbouring municipality of Moreland, and other organisations. But mostly local people and people from neighbouring suburbs. I saw Lidia Thorpe, the local Greens State MP there, but no other state or federal politicians.

Aviation Emissions and Consultation on the Melbourne Airport Masterplan

Last night I attended the last public consultation on the Melbourne Airport Masterplan which involves substantial expansion of the terminals, roads and a future 2nd east-west runway. And complete silence on aviation emissions, except when I pushed the Environment Manger to reluctantly concede this impact.