As the science on the coastal impacts of climate change gets stronger, the protections for Australia’s coastal communities are getting weaker. If that continues, everyone will pay.

Along the eastern seaboard of Australia, where most of us live, state governments are relaxing their policies and largely leaving it to local councils to decide if homes can be built in low-lying areas.

The Queensland government confirmed this week that sea level rise will be removed from its State Planning Policy, just as it was in New South Wales a year ago, while Victoria has also relaxed its sea level rules.

Yet nearly 39,000 homes are already located within 110 metres of soft, erodible shorelines, according to the Australian Department of Environment, which states exposure to the effects of sea level rise “will increase as Australia’s population grows”.

With 85% of Australians living in coastal areas, and billions of dollars of buildings and roads at stake, if we don’t get coastal planning right we risk facing huge human and economic costs.

The Local Government Association of Queensland has warned that councils could be sent broke by the state policy change, particularly because of the legal liability they could face if they approve coastal developments that are subsequently hit by future storm damage or flooding.

And as we saw with the devastating Queensland floods of 2011 and other major disasters, when individual homeowners were not insured and needed help, or when individual councils can’t afford to fix damaged roads and infrastructure, who ends up footing much of the repair bill? All Australian taxpayers.

So this is not just a problem for the lucky few with homes by the beach: we all have something at stake in getting coastal protections right.

Sea level rise science

As the Department of Environment explains, the risks from rising sea levels are serious, and not limited just to the coast:

Click to enlarge

Rising sea levels will increase the frequency or likelihood of extreme sea level events and resultant flooding. The risks from sea level rise are not confined to the coast itself. In many cases flooding may impact areas some distance from the sea for example along estuaries, rivers, lakes and lagoons.

A study of 29 locations in Australia found that for a mid-range sea level rise of 50cm, extreme sea level events that happened every few years now are likely to occur every few days in 2100.

On average, Australia will experience a roughly 300-fold increase in flooding events, meaning that infrastructure that is presently flooded once in 100 years will be flooded several times per year with a sea level rise of 50cm.

But when you consider that many homes and suburbs that we build in Australia today will still be standing for decades to come, and that we don’t want to see those home owners left out of pocket or suing their council for letting them build in low-lying areas – just how much sea level rise should we be planning for?

I asked Dr John Church, a CSIRO Fellow and a coordinating lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change chapter on sea level, what the latest science indicated. He replied:

The science is clear. Historical sea level information around the world and in Australia tells us that in times of a warmer climate, sea level has been metres higher than at present and that the rate of sea level rise has increased since pre-industrial time.

The emission of greenhouse gases has been a significant contribution to the 20th century rise and will very likely result in a faster rate of rise during the 21st century than over the last 40 years, or the 20th century as a whole.

Projections for sea level rise around Australia are similar to the global average. If there was very significant mitigation of greenhouses gas emissions, the global average rise is projected to be 28cm to 61cm by 2100, but, if emissions continue to grow in a business as usual fashion as is happening at present, the rise is projected to be 52cm to 98cm, and possibly up to several tens of centimetres above these values if marine-based sectors of the Antarctic ice sheet collapse. Sea level will continue to rise well after 2100. – John Church, correspondence with the author, 9 December 2013.

Queensland’s old planning rules had factored in a sea level rise of 30 centimetres by 2050 and 80 centimetres by 2100. That meant that coastal development in such hazard areas was generally only permitted in special circumstances, such as for marine and fishing precincts .

As Dr Church and the Australian government’s sea level site both indicate, on current trends 80cm is within the range of business as usual projections.

A 2011 report by the Australian government found that more than A$226 billion worth of Australian homes, offices blocks, roads, rail and other built infrastructure would be potentially flooded or eroded with a sea level rise of 1.1 metres, which is the high end scenario they examined for 2100.

Ironically, of all Australian states, that report found Queensland faced the greatest combined risk from high tides and storm surges, and the costs they would face to replace damaged infrastructure. (The state-by-state cost estimates are shown below.)

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A national response to a national problem

In the two short years since that report was published, we have gone from a situation where all Australian governments were working together on a national approach to coastal planning, under the former National Coasts and Climate Change Council, to a trend towards dumping the risks and liabilities for coastal planning onto local councils.

This is already leaving some communities very exposed to rising costs. For instance, the Gold Coast is already hit by beach erosion costing tens of millions of dollars to remedy, and even greater costs could be incurred with further seawater intrusion and damage to infrastructure, such as storm water networks.

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Yet there is plenty of evidence to show why protecting coastal areas is the sensible option, and how to do it.

Over the past 50 years, there have been 25 national inquiries and reports into coastal management, including a comprehensive 396-page 2009 Coasts and Climate Change federal parliamentary report. Those inquiries have overwhelmingly come to the conclusion that rather than leaving it to local councils, we need one set of clear, national guidelines on coastal development and infrastructure.

That’s the opposite of what we’re now seeing around Australia, with a mish-mash of different rules in different states.

All of which increases the risk of more development in areas at risk of coastal erosion, sea level rise and storm surges. Unless this changes, who’ll pay the price for this lack of foresight and planning? If you’re an Australian taxpayer, you will, and in the future so will your children.

Rivers and streams release more greenhouse gas than all lakes

Posted: 09 Dec 2013 09:41 AM PST

Rivers and streams release carbon dioxide at a rate five times greater than the world’s lakes and reservoirs combined, contrary to common belief.

Survey of supposed deep-sea chemical munitions dump off Southern California

Posted: 09 Dec 2013 09:45 AM PST

Researchers have described a preliminary seafloor survey of an area off the Southern California coast marked on charts as a chemical munitions site. The preliminary survey turned up trash and 55-gallon drums, but no chemical munitions.

Why this ad? Next Generation Firewall – mcafee.com/NextGenFirewall – Get Advanced Network Protection Across Your Enterprise w/ McAfee.

George Monbiot news@monbiot.com via google.com	7:19 PM (1 minute ago)
to me

One Rolex Short of Contentment

Posted: 09 Dec 2013 12:37 PM PST

Materialism promises satisfaction. It delivers despair.
By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 10th December 2013

That they are crass, brash and trashy goes without saying. But there is something in the pictures posted on Rich Kids of Instagram (and highlighted by the Guardian last week(1)) that inspires more than the usual revulsion towards crude displays of opulence. There is a shadow in these photos – photos of a young man wearing all four of his Rolex watches(2), a youth posing in front of his helicopter(3), endless pictures of cars, yachts, shoes, mansions, swimming pools, spoilt white boys throwing gangster poses in private jets – of something worse; something that, after you have seen a few dozen, becomes disorienting, even distressing.

The pictures are, of course, intended to incite envy. They reek instead of desperation. The young men and women seem lost in their designer clothes, dwarfed and dehumanised by their possessions, as if ownership has gone into reverse. A girl’s head barely emerges from the haul of Chanel, Dior and Hermes shopping bags she has piled onto her vast bed(4). It’s captioned “shoppy shoppy” and “#goldrush”, but a photograph whose purpose is to illustrate plenty seems instead to depict a void. She’s alone with her bags and her image in the mirror, in a scene that seems saturated with despair.

Perhaps I am projecting my prejudices. But an impressive body of psychological research appears to support these feelings. It suggests that materialism, a trait that can afflict both rich and poor, which the researchers define as “a value system that is preoccupied with possessions and the social image they project”(5), is both socially destructive and self-destructive. It smashes the happiness and peace of mind of those who succumb to it. It’s associated with anxiety, depression and broken relationships.
There has long been a correlation observed between materialism, a lack of empathy and engagement with others, and unhappiness(6,7,8). But research conducted over the past few years appears to show causation.

For example, a series of studies published in June in the journal Motivation and Emotion showed that as people become more materialistic, their well-being (good relationships, autonomy, a sense of purpose and the rest) diminishes(9). As they become less materialistic, it rises.

In one study, the researchers tested a group of 18-year-olds, then re-tested them 12 years later. They were asked to rank the importance of different goals: jobs, money and status on one side, self-acceptance, fellow feeling and belonging on the other. They were then given a standard diagnostic test to identify mental health problems. At the ages of both 18 and 30, materialistic people were more susceptible to disorders. But if in that period they became less materialistic, their happiness improved.

In another study, the psychologists followed Icelanders weathering their country’s economic collapse. Some people became more focused on materialism, in the hope of regaining lost ground. Others responded by becoming less interested in money and turning their attention to family and community life. The first group reported lower levels of well-being, the second group higher levels(10).

These studies, while suggestive, demonstrate only correlation. But the researchers then put a group of adolescents through a church programme designed to steer children away from spending and towards sharing and saving. The self-esteem of materialistic children on the programme rose significantly, while that of materialistic children in the control group fell. Those who had little interest in materialism before the programme experienced no change in self-esteem(11).

Another paper, published in Psychological Science, found that people in a controlled experiment who were repeatedly exposed to images of luxury goods, to messages which cast them as consumers rather than citizens and to words associated with materialism (such as buy, status, asset and expensive), experienced immediate but temporary increases in material aspirations, anxiety and depression(12). They also became more competitive, more selfish, had a reduced sense of social responsibility and were less inclined to join demanding social activities. The researchers point out that as we are repeatedly bombarded with such images through advertisements, and constantly described by the media as consumers, these temporary effects could be triggered more or less continuously.

A third paper, published (ironically) in the Journal of Consumer Research, studied 2,500 people for six years(13). It found a two-way relationship between materialism and loneliness: materialism fosters social isolation; isolation fosters materialism. People who are cut off from others attach themselves to possessions. This attachment in turn crowds out social relationships.

The two varieties of materialism which have this effect – using possessions as a yardstick of success and seeking happiness through acquisition – are the varieties that seem to be on display at Rich Kids of Instagram. It was only after reading this paper that I understood why those photos distressed me: they look like a kind of social self-mutilation.

Perhaps this is one of the reasons why an economic model based on perpetual growth continues on its own terms to succeed, though it may leave a trail of unpayable debts, mental illness and smashed relationships. Social atomisation may be the best sales strategy ever devised, and continuous marketing looks like an unbeatable programme for atomisation.

Materialism forces us into comparison with the possessions of others, a race both cruelly illustrated and crudely propelled by that toxic website. There is no end to it. If you have four Rolexes while another has five, you are a Rolex short of contentment. The material pursuit of self-esteem reduces your self-esteem.

I should emphasise that this is not about differences between rich and poor: the poor can be as susceptible to materialism as the rich. It is a general social affliction, visited upon us by government policy, corporate strategy, the collapse of communities and civic life and our acquiescence in a system that is eating us from the inside out.

This is the dreadful mistake we are making: allowing ourselves to believe that more money and more stuff enhances our well-being, a belief possessed not only by those poor deluded people in the pictures, but by almost every member of almost every government. Worldly ambition, material aspiration, perpetual growth: these are a formula for mass unhappiness.

www.monbiot.com

References:

1. http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/dec/06/selfies-status-updates-digital-bragging-web

2. http://richkidsofinstagram.tumblr.com/post/67779474838/dont-know-which-rolex-to-wear-so-hes-rocking

3. http://richkidsofinstagram.tumblr.com/post/63579216840/weekend-at-the-farm-robertsonpark-by

4. http://richkidsofinstagram.tumblr.com/post/61764470661/shoppy-shoppy-by-iamcece-goldrush-onlyseeorange

5. Monika A. Bauer et al, 2012. Cuing Consumerism: Situational Materialism Undermines Personal and Social Well-Being. Psychological Science  23: 517.
DOI: 10.1177/0956797611429579. http://pss.sagepub.com/content/23/5/517

6. eg http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/06/20/research-finds-wealth-warps-your-perspective-and-makes-you-less-ethical/

7. Tamas Martos and Maria S. Kopp, 2012. Life Goals and Well-Being: Does Financial Status Matter? Evidence from a Representative Hungarian Sample. Social Indicators Research, 105: 561–568. DOI 10.1007/s11205-011-9788-7

8. http://healthland.time.com/2011/10/13/wealth-matters-part-2-materialistic-people-are-less-happy-in-marriage/

9. Tim Kasser et al, 2013. Changes in materialism, changes in psychological well-being: Evidence from three longitudinal studies and an intervention experiment.
Motivation and Emotion. DOI 10.1007/s11031-013-9371-4
link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11031-013-9371-4

10. Tim Kasser et al, 2013, as above.

11. Tim Kasser et al, 2013, as above.

12. Monika A. Bauer et al, 2012. Cuing Consumerism: Situational Materialism Undermines Personal and Social Well-Being. Psychological Science  23: 517.
DOI: 10.1177/0956797611429579. http://pss.sagepub.com/content/23/5/517

13. Rik Pieters, 2013. Bidirectional Dynamics of Materialism and Loneliness: Not Just a Vicious Cycle. Journal of Consumer Research,

Standing firm on a sea of troubles

Date

December 10, 2013

• Comments 18

Peter Hartcher

Sydney Morning Herald political and international editor

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Illustration: John Shakespeare

What’s it like for the Japanese navy on patrol around the hotly contested islands, I asked the commander when he had a moment of respite on Sydney Harbour recently?

Was the Chinese navy a constant presence as it asserted Beijing’s ownership of the desolate islands, which Japanese call the Senkaku islands and the Chinese call the Daioyu, or was it a more relaxed affair? Captain Yoshihiro Goka, commander of the group of Japanese destroyers known as escort division three, suddenly grew very serious. “It is difficult,” he replied.

And then, without any further prompting from me, he added, with considerable emphasis: “But, if it is necessary, we will do it.”

The “it”, of course, is to go to war with China. That is the logical outcome of the continuous escalation that the two greatest Asian powers have been locked in for 15 months. Frontline commanders like Goka are braced for the real possibility that the dispute over the tiny group of islands will escalate all the way to conflict. There is no obvious circuit-breaker in view.

Since his remark in October, the struggle for primacy over the islands has escalated dramatically. Two weeks ago, China made its dramatic claim to airspace rights over the contested islands.

Its unilateral declaration of an Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ) over the disputed islands overlapped with the existing zones of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. These three, plus the US and Australia, have refused to recognise China’s claim.

Since then, three further events have ratcheted the tension further. First, the air forces of the US, Japan and South Korea have all flouted China’s authority by flying through its newly declared ADIZ without giving the prior notice that Beijing demands.

Second, Japan’s parliament passed a resolution on Friday demanding Beijing cancel its declaration. Third, on the weekend South Korea expanded its ADIZ to further push into China’s claimed zone.

“The most pressing problem is the increased risk of accidents, or even the deliberate use of force, between military aircraft in the ADIZ,” says the International Crisis Group.

But what about the protocols for any incidents or accidents? The US and the Soviet Union had systems in place to prevent an accidental friction or moment of hotheadedness from escalating into unintended war. Wouldn’t they kick in?

In China’s case, there are no such protocols. The US has spent years trying to persuade China to agree to such “rules of the road,” but Beijing is not interested. This implies that China, as a matter of policy, wants to keep the risk of war in play.

A former US official, with experience of dealing with Beijing on this issue, confirms that China uses the risk of accident as an implicit threat: “They are saying to us, in effect, you are speeding and we don’t want to give you seat belts.”

Nobody wants a full-scale war, but nobody is stepping back from the brink either. The national pride and prestige of the two principal disputants here, China and Japan, has been engaged. Both countries are led by strong nationalists. And there are no seat belts.

In one sense, this is a dreadful prospect. A war between the second- and third-biggest economies in the world, even a limited war, is a shocking prospect. The pair are not only economically strong; both boast fearsome military might, too.

A war between China and Japan would likely draw Australia in, too. The US has repeatedly stressed that the islands, administered by Japan since the 1970s, are covered by the terms of its treaty with Tokyo. If the islands were attacked, the US would be bound to come to Tokyo’s aid. Australia, America’s uniquely reliable ally, would probably join, too.

But in another sense, this is a very routine prospect. In the last three centuries, the rise of a great power has always led to war. The thrusting new power demands more rights, a bigger say, the satisfaction of historical grudges. It challenges the status quo. The existing powers resist. War ensues.

China has been pressing steadily outwards on its borders for years, intimidating countries including the Philippines, Vietnam and now Japan. It’s a relentless incremental expansion that Brahma Chellaney, of the Centre for Policy Research in Delhi, describes as “creeping, covert warfare”.

In these circumstances, what should responsible neighbours and partners do?

Britain’s David Cameron, who was in China last week as the Sino-Japanese crisis escalated, showed exactly what not to do. “David Cameron could scarcely have crouched any lower during this week’s visit to China,” wrote a Financial Times columnist, Philip Stephens.

Cameron thought this might help him sell more British exports to China. China’s state-owned media laughed at him; the nationalist Global Times sent Cameron off with the dismissal that Britain was “an old European country” that is only a destination for Chinese people to study and travel. Britain, it said, was “not a big power in the eyes of the Chinese”.

Australia’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Julie Bishop, on the other hand, was forthright in criticising China’s destabilising recklessness. Her Chinese counterpart dressed her down publicly on the weekend.

Bishop has not retreated, nor should she. Australia has a vital interest in regional peace and stability. China and Japan are on the brink of armed conflict. Captain Goka and his Chinese counterparts are braced for it.

Responsible governments everywhere should recognise the stakes, counsel restraint and seek ways to prevent escalation.