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As Australia burns, attitudes are changing. But is it too late?

Raging wildfires are forcing many to rethink their stance on climate change. But there’s little time left to reduce emissions
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Tim Flannery

The Guardian, Friday 11 January 2013 18.59 GMT

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‘Large parts of the continent will be uninhabitable, not just by humans but by Australia’s spectacular biodiversity as well.’ Illustration: Phil Disley

This summer, life in Australia resembles a compulsory and very unpleasant game of Russian roulette. A pool of hot air more than 1,000 miles wide has formed across the inland. It covers much of the continent, and has proved astonishingly persistent. Periodically, low pressure systems spill the heat towards the coast, where most Australians live. At Christmas it was Perth. Then the heat struck Adelaide, followed by Tasmania, Victoria, and southern New South Wales and Canberra. Over this weekend, it’s southern Queensland and northern New South Wales that look set to face the gun. And with every heatwave, the incidences of bushfires and heat-related deaths and injuries spike.

Australians are used to hot summers. We normally love them. But the conditions prevailing now are something new. Temperature records are being broken everywhere. At Leonora, in the Western Australian interior, it reached 49C this week – the national high – and just one record temperature among many. The nation’s overall temperature record was set on 7 January. Then the following day that record was exceeded, by half a degree celsius.

The breaking of so many temperature records indicates that Australia’s climate is shifting. This is supported by analysis of the long-term trend. Over the past 40 years we’ve seen a decline in the number of very cold days, and the occurrence of many more very hot days. All of this was predicted by climate scientists decades ago, and is consistent with the increasing greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere.

The new conditions have seen the Bureau of Meteorology add two new colour categories to Australia’s weather prediction maps. Temperatures of 48-50C used to be the highest, and where such extremes were anticipated, the weather map was marked black. Over the last week, purple patches have begun to appear on some maps. They mark temperatures above 50C. Pink, which is yet to be deployed, will denote temperatures above 52C.

Climate extremes have a way of stacking up to produce unpleasant consequences. Two years ago, the ocean temperature off northwestern Australia reached a record high, and evaporation of the warm seawater led to Australia’s wettest year on record. This was followed, in central Australia, by the longest period without rain on record. The vegetation that had thrived in the wet now lies dried and curing, a perfect fuel for fires.

With abundant fuel and increased temperatures, the nature of bushfires is changing. Australians have long rated fire risk on the MacArthur index. On it, a rating of 100 – the conditions that prevailed in the lead-up to the devastating 1939 bushfires – represents “extreme” risk. But after the 2009 fires a new level of risk was required. “Catastrophic” represents a risk rating above 100. Under such conditions fires behave very differently. The Black Saturday fires of 2009, which killed 173 people, were rated at between 120 and 190. They spread so fast, and burned so hot, that the communities they advanced upon were utterly helpless.

The superheated air currently monstering the continent is fickle. This week, Sydneysiders watched in relative thermal comfort as those living just 100km to the south endured scorching heat, blustering winds, and unstoppable fires. The forecast for coming days indicates that Sydney might once again be lucky, with the worst fire conditions striking 50km to the north of the city. But, of course, things might work out differently.

The unprecedented conditions of recent weeks have seen many Australians rethinking their attitude to climate change. A good friend of mine farms just outside Canberra. A few years ago the drought was so severe that his 300 year-old gum trees died of thirst. Then the rains came on so violently that they stripped the precious topsoil, filling his dams with mud and sheep droppings. This week he watched as his cousin’s property at Yass was reduced to ashes. When I called he was trying to secure his own historic homestead and outbuildings from fire. He asked me if I thought the family would still be farming the area 50 years from now. All I could say was that it depended upon how quickly Australia, and the world, reduced their greenhouse gas emissions.

Australia’s average temperature has increased by just 0.9 of a degree celsius over the past century. Within the next 90 years we’re on track to warm by at least another three degrees. Having seen what 0.9 of a degree has done to heatwaves and fire extremes, I dread to think about the kind of country my grandchildren will live in. Even our best agricultural land will be under threat if that future is realised. And large parts of the continent will be uninhabitable, not just by humans, but by Australia’s spectacular biodiversity as well.

This week’s extreme conditions have once again raised the political heat around climate change. The Greens party condoned an anti-coal activist who created a false press release claiming that the ANZ bank had withdrawn support for a major coal project, causing its share price to plunge. Meanwhile the acting leader of the (conservative) opposition, Warren Truss, said it was simplistic to link the hot spell to climate change, and “utterly simplistic to suggest that we have these fires because of climate change”.

Australia is the world’s largest coal exporter, and the mining lobby is exceptionally strong. As calls to combat climate change have increased, the miners have argued that “mum and dad investors” will lose out if any effort is made to reduce the export or use of fossil fuels. But the smart money is no longer backing fossil fuels. In South Australia, wind energy has gone from 1% to 26% of the mix in just seven years, and nationally solar panel installations are 13 years ahead of official projections. Last year, in fact, Australia led the world in terms of number of individual solar installations.

And finally, with a carbon price in place, Australia’s emissions curve is beginning to flatten out. Despite these efforts, Australians are already enduring the kind of conditions they’d hoped to avoid if strong, early action had been taken. Now, more than ever, we’re in a race against time to avoid a truly catastrophic outcome.

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Country getting hotter: Climate Commission

AAPJanuary 12, 2013, 12:02 am

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Australia was already a land of extremes but it’s hotter than before with a greater risk of more heatwaves and more severe weather.

The Climate Commission says the length, extent and severity of the present heatwave is unprecedented and shows climate change is making extreme heat and bushfires worse.

It says the impact needs to be understood to plan for more of the same.

In a report called Off the charts: Extreme Australian summer heat, one of the authors, David Karoly, says the heatwave has affected over 70 per cent of Australia and longstanding temperature records have been broken.

“Although Australia has always had heatwaves, hot days and bushfires, climate change is increasing the risk of more frequent and longer heatwaves and more extreme hot days, as well as exacerbating bushfire conditions,” Professor Karoly said in a statement.

“The baseline conditions have shifted.

“We live in a hotter world and the rise of more frequent and severe extreme weather has already increased.”

The current conditions are unusual because of their widespread nature and duration, the report says.

Heat is a “silent killer” because small changes in the environment can have dramatic impact on the human body.

The report says if the core body temperature exceeds 38 degrees Celsius for several hours judgment and behaviour can be impaired.

Heatwaves in recent years have resulted in increased hospital admissions and death.
The Climate Commission says having a good understanding of climate change risks can ensure that action is taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and plans are made to respond to more extreme weather.

Annus Horribilis

Posted: 31 Dec 2012 12:47 PM PST

2012 was the worst year for the environment in living memory.

By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 1st January 2013

It was the year of living dangerously. In 2012 governments turned their backs on the living planet, demonstrating that no chronic problem, however grave, will take priority over an immediate concern, however trivial. I believe there has been no worse year for the natural world in the past half century.

Three weeks before the minimum occurred, the melting of the Arctic’s sea ice broke the previous record(1). Iconic remnants of the global megafauna – such as rhinos and bluefin tuna – were shoved violently towards extinction(2). Novel tree diseases raged across continents(3). Bird and insect numbers continued to plummet, coral reefs retreated, marine life dwindled. And those charged with protecting us and the world in which we live pretended that none of it was happening.

Their indifference was distilled into a great collective shrug at the Earth Summit in June. The first summit, 20 years before, was supposed to have heralded a new age of environmental responsibility. During that time, thanks largely to the empowerment of corporations and the ultra-rich, the square root of nothing has been achieved. Far from mobilising to address this, in 2012 the leaders of some of the world’s most powerful governments – the US, the UK, Germany and Russia – didn’t even bother to turn up.

But they did send their representatives to sabotage it. The Obama administration even sought to reverse commitments made by George Bush senior in 1992(4). The final declaration was a parody of inaction. While the 190 countries that signed it expressed “deep concern” about the world’s escalating crises, they agreed no new targets, dates or commitments, with one exception. Sixteen times they committed themselves to “sustained growth”, a term they used interchangeably with its polar opposite, “sustainability”(5).

The climate meeting in Doha at the end of the year produced a similar combination of inanity and contradiction. Governments have now begun to concede, without evincing any great concern, that they will miss their target of no more than two degrees of global warming this century(6). Instead we’re on track for between four and six(7,8,9). To prevent climate breakdown, coal burning should be in steep decline. Far from it: the International Energy Agency reports that global use of the most carbon-dense fossil fuel is climbing by around 200 million tonnes a year(10). This helps to explain why global emissions are rising so fast.

Our leaders now treat climate change as a guilty secret. Even after the devastations of Hurricane Sandy and the record droughts and wildfires that savaged the United States, the two main presidential contenders refused to mention the subject, except for one throwaway sentence each(11). Has an issue this big ever received as little attention in a presidential race?

The same failures surround the other forces of destruction. In 2012 European governments flunked their proposed reform of the Common Agricultural Policy, which is perfectly designed to maximise environmental damage. The farm subsidies it provides are conditional upon farmers destroying the vegetation (which also means the other wildlife) on their land(12). We pay €55bn a year to trash the natural world.

This contributes to what I have come to see as a great global polishing: a rubbing away of ecosystems and natural structures by the intensification of farming, fishing, mining and other industries. Looking back on this year a few decades hence, this destruction will seem vastly more significant than any of the stories with which the media is obsessed. Like governments, media companies have abandoned the living world.

In the UK in 2012, the vandals were given the keys to the art gallery. Environmental policy is now in the hands of people – such as George Osborne, Owen Paterson, Richard Benyon and Eric Pickles – who have no more feeling for the natural world than the Puritans had for fine art. They are busy defacing the old masters and smashing the ancient sculptures. They have lit a bonfire of environmental regulations(13), hobbled bodies such as Natural England and the Environment Agency and ensured that the countryside becomes even more of an exclusive playground for the ultra-rich, unhampered by effective restraints on the burning of grouse moors, the use of lead shot, the killing of birds of prey and the spraying of pesticides that are wiping out our bees and other invertebrates(14,15).

In the same spirit, the government has reduced the list of possible marine conservation zones from 127 to 31(16). Even these 31 will be protected in name only: the fishing industry will still be allowed to rampage through them. A fortnight ago, the UK lobbied successfully for quotas of several overexploited fish species to be raised, while pouring scorn on the scientific evidence which shows that this is madness(17).

George Osborne has done the same thing to the UK’s climate change policies. Though even the big power companies oppose him(18), he is seeking to scrap or delay our targets for cutting carbon emissions and to ensure that we remain hooked on natural gas as our primary source of power. The green investment bank which was supposed to have funded the transition to new technologies is the only state bank in Europe which is forbidden to borrow(19). It might as well not be there at all.

If there is hope, it lies with the people. Opinion polls show that voters do not support their governments’ inaction. Even a majority of Conservatives believe that the UK should generate most of its electricity from renewables by 2030(20). In the United States, 80% of people polled now say that climate change will be a serious problem for their country if nothing is done about it: a substantial rise since 2009(21). The problem is that most people are not prepared to act on these beliefs. Citizens, as well as governments and the media, have turned their faces away from humanity’s greatest problem.

To avoid another terrible year like 2012, we must translate these passive concerns into a mass mobilisation. Groups like 350.org show how it might be done(22). If this annus horribilis tells us anything it’s that action, in the absence of such mobilisation, is simply not going to happen. Governments care only as much as their citizens force them to care. Nothing changes unless we change.

www.monbiot.com

Building resilient food systems in a world of climate uncertainty

Unpredictable weather patterns leave farmers and the global food system most vulnerable to climate change but there are scalable solutions out there, says Keith A Wheeler
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Keith A Wheeler

Guardian Professional, Friday 21 December 2012 16.33 GMT

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A woman examines her crops during a period of extreme drought severe drought in Qinghai, China. Photograph: China Newsphoto/REUTERS

Unfortunately for the agriculture community, there was little progress in improving the prospects for addressing climate change challenges at the 18th Conference of the Parties (COP18) that concluded in Doha last week.

All farmers, no matter their size, depend on the weather to the grow crops that feed the world, while providing a livelihood for their families and communities. This makes them among the most vulnerable to the changing climate. By 2050, if farmers are not assisted to meet these changes, agriculture yields will decrease with impacts projected to be the most severe in Africa and South Asia, with productivity decreasing by 15% and 18% respectively. Therefore, strategies to adapt to the significant shifts in weather patterns are greatly needed.

Furthermore, agriculture today accounts for 14% of total greenhouse gas emissions, with another 17% attributed to land use change linked to deforestation. Concerted action must be taken to empower farmers with the knowledge, practices and technologies needed to adapt and reduce agriculture’s contribution to global warming.

At COP 18, leading experts from around the globe offered case studies and solutions that focused on synergistic strategies to enable farmers to adapt and preserve yields to feed a world of nine billion, while providing the conservation benefits that can contribute to mitigation. Central to these discussions were identifying scalable solutions.

Amidst these colossal challenges there is hope. The agriculture community is in a strong position to achieve the win-win scenario of both adapting to, and addressing, the underlying causes of climate change – particularly if identifying these win-wins is a focus from the onset. We know this, because it has been done before. For those of us who remember the global food security crisis in the 1950s and 60s, when millions of people in Asia were on the brink of famine, we know that the promotion of technologies that utilise water efficiently and access to new high-yield seed varieties, not only increased productivity, but also reduced historical agricultural emissions by nearly a third.

The same is possible today. The production advances in the global food supply chain achieved over the past 40 years were based to a high degree on “climatic certainty”, which there no longer is. The challenge now lies in how to manage the increased risk of rapid weather pattern shifts and disruptions to water availability.

Technological innovations are at the forefront of meeting the world’s growing food demands, while reducing carbon emissions. High tech methods such as Precision Agriculture, for example, calculate the exact amount of fertilizer required by the soil on your farm, preventing over application and the release of unnecessary greenhouse gases, while simultaneously improving yields.

Other practices, such as integrated pest management and pest information systems, improved training for farmers at all levels and new finance and risk management tools for smallholder farmers will all go a long way to building more resilient food systems.

The thread that ties all of these innovations together is greater access for farmers to research, information and extension. A new tool, my organisation Field to Market presented at Agriculture Day in Doha, the Fieldprint Calculator, offers a good example of a scalable solution that uses supply chain co-operation and smart application of information technology to put data in the hands of farmers so they can see how operational decisions impact the overall sustainability performance of their farms. The calculator is an online tool farmers can use to build scenarios about decisions that affect their current land use, energy use, water use, greenhouse gas emissions, and soil loss compared with state and national averages. The tool has demonstrated to farmers that the decisions they make don’t have to be either/or. They do not have to sacrifice their productivity in the name of sustainability – they can achieve both goals.

Public-private partnerships with farmers as stakeholders at the table can also be fruitful. They can develop tools grounded in the best science and technology to achieve continuous improvements in productivity, environmental quality, and human well-being across the agricultural supply chain.

Some 70% of the potential for mitigating climate change is in developing countries. If tools such as the Fieldprint Calculator were able to be scaled up and taken to global audiences, farmers would be empowered to make better, more sustainable decisions that will improve their productivity, and reduce their impacts on the planet and its climate.

Although the negotiations in Doha did not advance agriculture’s standing sufficiently with regard to climate change challenges, the agriculture community is committed to continuing to create a portfolio of solutions that build climate resilient food systems. The solutions exist, and they are being put into practice, building the pathway to food security in a world of climate uncertainty.

Keith A Wheeler is chairman and CEO at ZedX Inc.

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