Beyond-terrible televised leaders' debate leaves no winners, only grinners

Extract from The Guardian

 

Australian election 2019

Studio audience correctly calls debate for Shorten for laying out a vision, but the unusual format made for awkward moments

Katharine Murphy Political editor

@murpharoo

Mon 29 Apr 2019 22.57 AEST Last modified on Tue 30 Apr 2019 15.49 AEST

A viewer watching Scott Morrison and Bill Shorten’s first leaders’ debate in Perth.

Photograph: Darren England/EPA

It seems a bit ludicrous, superfluous even, to pick a winner of the first televised debate of the 2019 campaign, because the over-engineered format mugged everything.
It was beyond terrible. Three hosts. Two party leaders, shown in split screen, never off camera. Scott Morrison and Bill Shorten didn’t know what to do with their faces when their opponent was speaking, so Morrison smirked and Shorten grinned.
The only thing more terrible than the “what the heck do I do with my face” dilemma was the very strange violin-type sound that denoted time’s up for the various segments – a strange scratching noise, like a wounded insect.
The experience would have been better in the room in Perth, but the three-or-so viewers tuning in live on Monday night on one of Seven’s multi-channels would have really struggled to focus on the content, given all the distractions.
But assuming people did manage to focus on the content despite the myriad barriers to doing that, the basic dynamic of the 2019 contest was there for all to see.
What you could see was this.
Morrison really has nothing to say beyond don’t vote for Shorten.
That is it.
Don’t vote for that (shifty) bloke. Over and over, in different formulations. It’s not time for a change. Don’t turn back now. You don’t know what Bill’s stuff costs. It’s scary. You’ll pay for it.
If you tuned in to Monday night’s debate hoping you might be given some idea what the Coalition will offer you in the event it wins the contest on 18 May – some glimmer of insight into why the government wants to remain in power, what it will do with power, why it deserves to remain in power after, well .. everything – Morrison had nothing for you, apart from the fact he’s not Bill Shorten.

What will Morrison do in his first 50 days in office if he wins?
What will he do for the next three years, apart from legislate the tax cuts, keep the boats stopped, and keep telling people not to vote Labor, because … Labor? I have no idea, honestly, and I watch politics for a living.
So election debate one underscored that simple but profound vacancy. It is so, so, thin, the whole, vote Liberal, we’re not those other bastards, pitch; a light breeze would blow it over – and there it was, on display, in the cluttered format on Monday night.
A whole lot of nothing.
The other main dynamic of Morrison’s campaign was also on display. He is trying to mask the vacancy of his offering with sharp attacking play, and the Liberal leader is relentless.
Morrison was a bit nervous at the start, but he settled in on his bar stool, and poked a stick in Shorten’s wheel spoke whenever an opportunity presented itself. He hovered, assiduous, solicitous, waiting for Shorten to fluff his answer, and picked up whenever there was anything loose, clambering on to his opponent’s deficiency.
Morrison is absolutely dogged with that objective. He’s trying to take down Shorten in a flurry of energy-sapping blows rather than going for a risky king hit that could also knock himself out of the ring.
One genuinely interesting component of Monday night’s debate was the exchanges on climate change. Shorten leaned in to the “we’ve got to take action” messaging – which he hasn’t for several days – which was his rebuttal to Morrison’s attack lines on Labor’s policy.
“We’re going to take on the government’s scare campaigns because if we don’t, we are selling out the future,” Shorten said, attempting to clamber out of the strangely aggressive nit-picking ditch the campaign has fallen into. “If we don’t take real action on climate change it will be a disaster for our economy.”
Morrison continued to tut-tut about international permits in the hope climate change will become the political weapon it was for Tony Abbott in 2013, except this Liberal leader can’t quite popularise the scare campaign. International permits are not tangible like $100 lamb roasts – and of course, those $100 roasts never eventuated.
When Shorten wasn’t grinning in his half of the split screen while Morrison lumbered on with his left-right combinations he was telling the voting audience Labor had a tangible agenda for them – not just a strategy to avoid an election loss.
He was selling a policy agenda. Ideas. A number of them.
The Labor leader was also telling his audience they had already made up their minds, a bit like a hypnotist, or Mick Dundee subduing a recalcitrant buffalo.
“There is a mood for change in Australia,” Shorten said, projecting tranquility, willing this be so.
The studio audience agreed. They gave the debate to Shorten.

On substance, this was the correct call. But we are only at the mid-point of the marathon. The gruelling finish is yet to come.

Climate change poses a clear financial risk to Australia

Extract from The Guardian

Opinion

Climate change

With our world-class solar and wind energy resource base, Australia stands to benefit from a successful – and rapid – low-carbon transition

Chris Barrett and Anna Skarbek

Mon 29 Apr 2019 12.05 AEST Last modified on Mon 29 Apr 2019 18.42 AEST

Cars sit in flood waters outside in south-east Queensland. ‘How much financial risk are we exposed to from the effects of climate change, or from a delayed, bumpy transition to a low-carbon future?’ Photograph: Dave Hunt/AAP 

Climate policy has never been easy in Australia. But despite the debates of the past, Australians are pretty used to many of the policies that seek to regulate carbon emissions in our everyday lives. We know how to purchase green power for our homes; that our buildings are regulated for the energy they use; and that our household appliances come plastered with energy-efficiency star ratings.
But what about our bank accounts, our super, our insurance policies and investment funds? How does our money contribute to causing – or preventing – dangerous climate change? How much financial risk are we exposed to from the effects of climate change, or from a delayed, bumpy transition to a low-carbon future? What are policymakers and regulators doing about those risks? Climate Risk and the Financial System, a new report from the Monash Sustainable Development Institute, addresses these fundamental questions.
This second type of climate risk and opportunity – the massive implications of climate change for the financial system – is a fairly new frontier in climate policy. It has developed rapidly over the last three to four years internationally, and is now reaching Australia, where both the potential risks and opportunities raised by finance sector and regulatory reforms to address climate change are immense.

These reforms have their roots in the last financial crisis and a growing determination by international policymakers to avoid climate change being the cause of any future crisis. Two events pushed them to the top of the agenda: the landmark speech of highly respected Bank of England governor Mark Carney in September 2015 on the potentially grave risks to financial markets from climate change; and the Paris agreement in December of the same year, which firmly and for the first time placed a key responsibility upon the finance sector to shape the transition to a low-carbon economy.

Both raised the clear risk of trillions of dollars of high-emitting assets – including coalmines, power stations, oil rigs and gas plants – becoming “stranded” (ie devalued or worthless) assets in a world shifting rapidly out of high-carbon activities.

Australia is disproportionately exposed to such risks due to its highly carbon-intensive economy and its rebounding levels of emissions since 2013. Yet Australia also stands disproportionately to benefit from a successful low-carbon transition, with a world-class solar and wind energy resource base, mineral resources critical to battery production and a large and sophisticated funds management industry on hand to provide financial services to realise these opportunities.
This makes it all the more important for Australia to study the rapid progress made on the international sustainable finance policy agenda in recent years, and to draw on this experience for its own reform process.
For example, central bankers and financial supervisors have started to tackle the risks of climate change, establishing the Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS) in 2017. From an initial founding coalition of eight members, the network has grown within 18 months to number 35, including the Reserve Bank of Australia. Each has committed itself to “contribute to the development of environment and climate risk management in the financial sector, and to mobilise mainstream finance to support the transition toward a sustainable economy”. This is new terrain for traditionally conservative institutions, speaking to a growing urgency behind this agenda.
Further, Europe has embarked on a comprehensive sustainable finance policy reform agenda. Initiated in late 2016, and moving to policy design and implementation from early 2018, it includes important down payments in reforming sustainability benchmarks, disclosure regulations, investor duties and in defining a “taxonomy” of sustainable activities. These will have a large impact also beyond Europe’s shores, both since they apply to businesses operating in the vast European Union capital market, but also because of the best practice example they offer for others to copy.
The United Kingdom ran its own related policy reform process, reporting in March 2018. Government has yet to respond, but the process signals an interesting pro-green finance direction at odds with fears that the UK would turn in a deregulatory direction once freed from European frameworks. Both Canada and New Zealand have convened similar expert panels to push sustainable finance reform.

Intriguingly for Australia, our largest trading partner China has moved with speed on the same agenda, mandating liability insurance for environmental pollution and disclosures of environmental information. The potential size of China’s green finance sector gives these reforms an international resonance beyond their domestic impacts.
In conclusion, Australia has numerous positive reform examples to draw on. The recently announced Australian Sustainable Finance Initiative brings together finance sector leaders to develop a roadmap for the sector to address climate risk. Key industry players are aligned, domestic regulators have done solid groundwork, and there is a well-defined set of international best practices and international fora within which best practice can rapidly be transmitted. All the ingredients are there for Australia to catch up with the rest of the world, and quickly.

• Chris Barrett is executive director, finance strategy, at the European Climate Foundation and former Australian Ambassador to the OECD. Anna Skarbek is CEO of ClimateWorks Australia. They are the authors of Climate Risk and the Financial System

Finding a place to rent is still an impossible dream for many low-income Australians

Extract from The Guardian

Grogonomics

Housing

Greg Jericho

In other public policy areas it might be difficult to find a solution, but here one seems obvious

@GrogsGamut

Tue 30 Apr 2019 04.00 AEST Last modified on Tue 30 Apr 2019 04.02 AEST

‘Just two properties out of the 69,485 throughout all of Australia that were surveyed by Anglicare in April were affordable for a single person on Newstart’ Photograph: Scott Barbour/Getty Images 

The 10th Anglicare rental affordability snapshot released on Monday shows that yet again the hope of finding a place to rent for many on government payments and minimum wage is an impossible dream – and will continue to be so without an urgent increase in social housing.
Next week there is an almost a 50% chance that the Reserve Bank will cut the cash rate from 1.5% to 1.25%. The flat inflation growth figures released last week greatly increased the likelihood that a cut would occur. The market is now actually fully pricing in two rate cuts to occur by the end of the year:

What that means in real terms is a lot less money needed to be spent repaying a mortgage than in the past. Seven years ago the average “managers special” mortgage rate was 7.01%; if the full 0.25% pts rate cut is passed on, the new average managers special rate would be around 5.58%. That comes to around $1,100 less each month in repayments on a $500,000 loan.
That $1,100 figure is good to use because that is also roughly the amount of a single month of a Newstart payment, and it highlights the difference between the worlds of the homeowner – who looks with eagerness at interest rate news – and the renter on a meagre income, for whom worrying about interest rates is but a dream.

Anglicare’s snapshot highlights that being able to afford a place to rent, let alone one to buy, is a struggle for many.
This year’s snapshot once again highlights how those living on Newstart are very much left on the economy’s slag heap. Just two properties out of the 69,485 throughout all of Australia that were surveyed by Anglicare in April were affordable for a single person on Newstart.

The picture for those on the aged pension was not much better – just 0.8% of all properties were affordable and fit for the purpose of a retiree on the pension.

As with last year, the chances of affordability are better if you are in a relationship – 3.8% of properties were affordable and suitable for a couple on the aged pension:

But even these meagre numbers hide the calamity. Yes, there were two properties affordable for a single person on Newstart, but unless you were willing to live in a share house in Orange or Howlong in NSW, you were out of luck.
Not one place was affordable for someone on Newstart in any of the capital cities, and only 144 were affordable for a single person on the age pension (and 63 of those were in Perth).

The survey also found a decline in affordability for aged-pensioner households and those on single-parenting payments over the past two years:

Life, as you would expect, is better for those households existing with at least one adult on the mining wage. But even here we are not talking a wide range of choice.
In Sydney a mere 7% of properties were affordable and suitable for households on the minimum wage:

This was well down on the 25% availability of properties in Melbourne and reflects the massive expense of renting in Sydney compared with other cities.

Over the past decade average rental prices in Sydney have risen by 40% well above the 29% in Melbourne, and the 23% increase in overall inflation:

There has been a sharp slowing in the growth of rental prices over the past couple years, but the damage has already been done. Whereas rental prices used to rise in line with inflation, in 2008-09 rental prices soared in Sydney well above inflation:

It is why even though there has been a slight improvement in the proposition of houses in Sydney that are affordable for those on minimum wage they remain scarce pickings:

Anglicare notes that “governments in Australia used to strongly invest in social housing to meet need. It was valued as a public asset for reducing poverty and inequality. But in recent years governments have withdrawn from this responsibility. Social housing stock has simply not kept pace with the growth in population.”
Certainly the data supports this. The 1970s and 1980s the non-private sector accounted for around 10% of all residential housing construction; now it is just over 1%:

This is now the 10th rental affordability snapshot by Anglicare, and it is fair to say the authors cannot hide their frustration, concluding that “after ten years of producing the Rental Affordability Snapshot, it is clear that housing in Australia is broken.”
But whereas other public policy lacks a clear solution, here one is obvious. The report argues, “the solution is simple, but has proven to be stubbornly difficult – government must reclaim responsibility for housing”.
Next week and through to the election, interest rates and housing affordability will get a big run as debate on negative gearing and capital gains tax comes to the fore. But the latest Anglicare rental snapshot show that for far too many the real issue of housing affordability is one that rarely gets put on centre stage and is much more urgent.

• Greg Jericho is a Guardian Australia columnist

Black hole sends swinging jets of plasma through space as it rips star apart

Extract from ABC News

ABC Science

By Genelle Weule

Posted about an hour ago

A black hole sucks gas from a nearby star sending out powerful jets from the inner disc.

(Supplied: ICRAR)

Astronomers have witnessed a black hole spraying jets of plasma into space like a rotating sprinkler as it ripped apart a star in a feeding frenzy.

Key points

• Astronomers trained a network of 10 telescopes onto a black hole for four hours, as it pulled gas from a nearby star and ejected some of that gas into space
• Instead of sending out jets in a single direction, it spewed rapidly rotating jets that changed direction
• The phenomenon seen in this black hole could happen in much bigger systems that affect the universe on really large scales

The dramatic display is the first time such wild, rapid motion has been detected in black hole jets, said James Miller-Jones of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) at Curtin University.
Often, as the immense gravity of a black hole pulls gas from a nearby star, some of that material is shot back into space at nearly the speed of light. Usually those jets blaze straight "up" and "down", along the axis on which the black hole spins.
But the jets from black hole V404-Cygni were swinging around, shooting out plasma in different directions, Professor Miller-James and colleagues report today in the journal Nature.
"Our best explanation is that this is actually caused by an effect of Einstein's general relativity, whereby the black hole is spinning and it's pulling space and time around with it," he said.
The movement appears to be triggered by a misalignment between the rotation of the black hole and the disc of material swirling around it. This causes the inner part of the disc to wobble like a spinning top, pulling the jets around with it.
"We think the jets are rotating around the surface of a cone, essentially drawing out a corkscrew-shaped pattern in space as they move outwards," Professor Miller-Jones said.

Vimeo: The V404-Cygni system and its swirling jets of plasma explained Source: ICRAR

Different approach captures black hole in action

An outburst from V404-Cygni, which is 8,000 light years from Earth and nine times the mass of our sun, was first captured in 1989.
Historic records also show the system was active in 1938 and 1956.
In 2015, Professor Miller-Jones led a 21-strong team from around the world using the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) to observe the feeding frenzy.
With its network of 10 radio telescopes spread across the US, the VLBA was able to home in on V404-Cygni to the scale of our solar system — in a very similar way to how astronomers recently captured the first image of a black hole's event horizon.
However, because this black hole was evolving so fast, the team had to use a special technique to capture it in action.
"Usually when you have one observation you take all the data and use all that data to make a single image, but because we actually saw the jets changing and moving over timescales as short as a few minutes, we had to chop up the observation," Professor Miller-Jones said.
Across a four-hour period, the team ended up with more than 100 snapshots which they then stitched together to make a movie.

Vimeo: Swirling jets seen from black hole in real-time Source: ICRAR

"That allowed us to see exactly what was going on," Professor Miller-Jones said.

"If we just made a single image we would have never caught the behaviour.

"It would be like trying to take a picture of a waterfall with a one-second shutter speed. You just couldn't do it."

Phenomenon could affect universe on large scales

V404-Cygni is a lightweight on the scale of black holes, but Professor Miller-Jones said effects seen in this system could happen with any black hole system, including supermassive black holes that lie at the heart of galaxies.
"The new insights we learn from systems [like V404-Cygni] can be applied to the bigger systems that affect the universe on really large scales," he said.
"The physics occurring on very small scales near the black hole dictates how its energy is channelled outwards into the surrounding galaxy. For supermassive black holes in the centres of galaxies, this can impact regions of space far larger than the host galaxy itself."
Tamara Davis, an astrophysicist at the University of Queensland who was not involved in the discovery, said the resolution telescopes could now achieve — and the new ways they are testing how gravity works — are "truly impressive".
"Hot on the heels of our first image of a black hole, this study observes how the gas around a particularly hungry black hole varies with time," Professor Davis said.
"This lets astrophysicists examine new details of how black holes spin. It's a very exciting time to be in this field."

In fighting all oversight, Trump has made his most dictatorial move

Extract from The Guardian

Donald Trump

Robert Reich

The president is treating Congress with contempt. This cannot stand – and Congress must fight back

Sun 28 Apr 2019 15.00 AEST Last modified on Sun 28 Apr 2019 15.01 AEST

‘Congress has a constitutional duty to respond forcefully, using its own inherent power of contempt.’ Photograph: Leah Millis/Reuters

“We’re fighting all the subpoenas,” says the person who is supposed to be chief executive of the United States government.

In other words, there is to be no congressional oversight of this administration: no questioning officials who played a role in putting a citizenship question on the 2020 census. No questioning a former White House counsel about the Mueller report.
No questioning a Trump adviser about immigration policy. No questioning a former White House security director about issuances of security clearances.
No presidential tax returns to the ways and means committee, even though a 1920s law specifically authorizes the committee to get them.
Such a blanket edict fits a dictator of a banana republic, not the president of a constitutional republic founded on separation of powers.
If Congress cannot question the people who are making policy, or obtain critical documents, Congress cannot function as a coequal branch of government.
If Congress cannot get information about the executive branch, there is no longer any separation of powers, as sanctified in the US constitution.
There is only one power – the power of the president to rule as he wishes.
Which is what Donald Trump has sought all along.
The only relevant question is how stop this dictatorial move. And let’s be clear: this is a dictatorial move.
The man whose aides cooperated, shall we say, with Russia – the man who still refuses to do anything at all about Russia’s continued interference in the American political system – refuses to cooperate with a branch of the United States government that the Constitution requires him to cooperate with in order that the government function.
Presidents before Trump occasionally have argued that complying with a particular subpoena for a particular person or document would infringe upon confidential deliberations within the executive branch. But no president before Trump has used “executive privilege” as a blanket refusal to cooperate.
How should Congress respond to this dictatorial move?
Trump is treating Congress with contempt – just as he has treated other democratic institutions that have sought to block him.
Congress should invoke its inherent power under the constitution to hold any official who refuses a congressional subpoena in contempt. This would include departmental officials who refuse to appear, as well as Trump aides. (Let’s hold off on the question of whether Congress can literally hold Trump in contempt, which could become a true constitutional crisis.)
“Contempt” of Congress is an old idea based on the inherent power of Congress to get the information it needs to carry out its constitutional duties. Congress cannot function without this power.
How to enforce it? Under its inherent power, the House can order its own sergeant-at-arms to arrest the offender, subject him to a trial before the full House, and, if judged to be in contempt, jail that person until he appears before the House and brings whatever documentation the House has subpoenaed.
When President Richard Nixon tried to stop key aides from testifying in the Senate Watergate hearings, in 1973, Senator Sam Ervin, chairman of the Watergate select committee, threatened to jail anyone who refused to appear.

"Trump’s contempt for the inherent power of Congress cannot stand. It is the most dictatorial move he has initiated"

Congress hasn’t actually carried through on the threat since 1935 – but it could.

Would America really be subject to the spectacle of the sergeant-at-arms of the House arresting a Trump official, and possibly placing him in jail?
Probably not. Before that ever occurred, the Trump administration would take the matter to the supreme court on an expedited basis.
Sadly, there seems no other way to get Trump to move. Putting the onus on the Trump administration to get the issue to the court as soon as possible is the only way to force Trump into action, and not simply seek to run out the clock before the next election.
What would the court decide? With two Trump appointees now filling nine of the seats, it’s hardly a certainty.
But in a case that grew out of the Teapot Dome scandal in 1927, the court held that the investigative power of Congress is at its peak when lawmakers look into fraud or maladministration in another government department.
Decades later, when Richard Nixon tried to block the release of incriminating recordings of his discussions with aides, the supreme court decided that a claim of executive privilege did not protect information pertinent to the investigation of potential crimes.
Trump’s contempt for the inherent power of Congress cannot stand. It is the most dictatorial move he has initiated since becoming president.
Congress has a constitutional duty to respond forcefully, using its own inherent power of contempt.

If we care about plastic waste, why won’t we stop drinking bottled water?

Extract from The Guardian

Plastics

We have all seen the damage plastic waste is doing around the world – but sales of bottled water have continued to grow

Simon Usborne

Sun 28 Apr 2019 23.00 AEST

Losing our bottle? Plastic waste on an Egyptian beach. Photograph: Jan-Otto/Getty Images

For all the innovation and choice that define the food and drink industries, if you want to make money, you could do a lot worse than bung some water in a bottle and flog it. A litre of tap water, the stuff we have ingeniously piped into our homes, costs less than half a penny. A litre of bottled water can cost well over a pound, especially for something fancy that has been sucked through a mountain.
Yet the bottled water market is more buoyant than ever, defying the plastics backlash inspired by stricken albatrosses on the BBC’s Blue Planet, and a broader, growing sense that something has to change.
Sales in the UK were worth a record £558.4m in the year to last November, an increase of 7%, according to the latest figures from the market analyst Kantar. Separate data from the analysts Nielsen show that last year we guzzled more than 2.2bn litres of bottled water, including “take-home” and “on-the-go” products. That’s an annual rise in volume of 8.5%.
Imagine laying out half-litre bottles on the pitch at Wembley Stadium. You could fit 1.7m bottles on the grass, packed into a tight grid. Now imagine building up layers of bottles, covering the same area, to build a tower. To contain all the bottled water we buy each year, you would end up with a 514-metre skyscraper – 200 metres taller than the Shard.
Environmental campaigners are struggling to fathom why nations blessed with clean tap water grow only fonder of the bottle. “It’s very surprising to me,” says Sam Chetan-Walsh, a political adviser at Greenpeace and campaigner against ocean plastic. “Public awareness has never been higher, but the message is not quite reaching all the people it needs to.”

Where it is heard, the message is stark. As well as requiring oceans of fossil fuels to make and ship, single-use plastics of all types are polluting our cities and seas. Blue Planet II, broadcast in 2017, showed how albatrosses unwittingly feed plastic fragments to their chicks, ultimately killing them, and how even dolphin milk can become contaminated.
Campaigners cite the show as a watershed moment, and moves against various plastics have gathered pace, from shopping bags to straws and plastic-lined coffee cups. Chetan-Walsh argues that bottled water is different because the alternatives are so obvious. “If a product that is so nakedly unnecessary can exist, then the whole system is failing,” he says.
Hope is not entirely out of reach. That plastic skyscraper conceals attempts in the bottled water industry to change. If nothing else, the rate of growth has begun to ease (sales were up 7% in the year to November 2018, compared with 8% the previous year).
But even if large numbers of us are quitting bottled water because of care for the environment, others are taking it up. The introduction of the “sugar tax” on juices and fizzy drinks has pushed more people to bottled water, while health awareness has boosted its desirability. Kantar says tap water consumption is growing at roughly the same pace (we still drink almost three times as much tap water as bottled water).
So the plastic tide only creeps higher. The industry is quick to point out that all its bottles are recyclable. “But collection rates are, at the most generous estimates, 56%, so the actual recycling rate will be lower than that,” Chetan-Walsh says. And while bottles may be recyclable, very few are made of recycled plastic. Highland Spring launched recycled half-litre “eco” bottles alongside its standard bottles in January; Evian has vowed to use only recycled plastic across its range by 2025.
Chetan-Walsh believes in a ban on single-use bottles. Bans exist in some places. Glastonbury festival organisers announced that water bottles will not be sold this summer. San Francisco has banned them from city property and events. Last year, the UK parliament set out plans to ban single-use plastic from its estate.
Water bottlers, unsurprisingly, don’t support bans. But they raise concerns about health rather than bottom lines. Last month, the chief executive of Harrogate Water, James Cain, said that bans would “result in greater consumption of sugary drinks, adding to all the health dangers of obesity, diabetes and tooth decay”.

Kinvara Carey, general manager of the Natural Hydration Council, an association of the biggest bottled water manufacturers, cites a survey in which people were asked what they would do if bottled water were not available. “Forty-four per cent would buy another drink, which is not great, 14% would go without and 4.5% said they would find a fountain,” she says. “The choice is important.”
What if fountains were more numerous, and tap water more clearly available in cafes, restaurants and elsewhere? The London mayor, Sadiq Khan, is installing dozens of fountains in partnership with Thames Water. There are similar initiatives elsewhere. Before plastic and the marketing that made us think we needed bottled water in the first place, fountains were an urban fixture.
Greenpeace, among others, is also pushing for a “deposit return” scheme in which a levy on bottled water would be refunded to customers who returned the plastic for recycling.
Even if bottled water sales are growing slightly more slowly, the industry is racing to adapt to changing concerns and tastes. Flavoured water is booming: sales of the sparkling variety shot up by 20%, according to the latest Kantar data. Meanwhile, brands including Evian, as well as a range of startups, are selling high-end reusable bottles. And if you must fill them with tap water, why not add flavouring?
As the owner of multiple sugary drink brands – and Aquafina bottled water – PepsiCo is facing challenges on health and environmental fronts. Last year, the company bought SodaStream for $3.2bn (the drinks machines make tap water fizzy; you add flavours). It also launched Drinkfinity, a range of fancy bottles that work with tap water and flavour pods (think more lemongrass and spirulina than 7 Up). The bottle is reusable. The pods? Not so much, and, yes, they are made of plastic, although Pepsi invites users to post them back for recycling.

As is so often the case, ingenious marketing can trump reason; awareness is rarely enough. “There is always this kind of slip between concern, intent and changed behaviour,” says Giles Quick, an analyst at Kantar. “The best example is five a day. Almost everyone is aware of it, but something like 15% of us achieve it.” Unless a far-reaching bottle ban does come into force, it will be up to consumers to not only demand change – but to act themselves.

Anti-Adani protester hit by man on horseback in central Queensland

Extract from The Guardian

Adani Group

Alleged incident in Clermont comes day after activists say women in the Bob Brown-led convoy were ‘abused and threatened’ by locals

Staff and agencies

Sun 28 Apr 2019 18.23 AEST First published on Sun 28 Apr 2019 12.00 AEST

A coalmining supporter wears a ‘Pro Coal’ sign on her shirt on Saturday in Clermont, central Queensland, as the Stop Adani Convoy rolls through town. Photograph: Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images

The former Greens leader Bob Brown has condemned the actions of a man who allegedly rode a horse into an anti-Adani mining protest in central Queensland on Sunday afternoon, injuring a woman in her 60s.
ABC reported that the woman, from northern New South Wales, was in hospital in a stable condition and that the man had been taken into police custody.
Witnesses told media the man allegedly galloped into the Clermont Showgrounds where the anti-coalmining protesters were gathered before charging out the gates, knocking over the woman.
Brown, who is the Stop Adani Convoy organiser, told media after the incident: “There is no place for that behaviour … no place for out-of-control yahoo-ism and the actuality of violence which has come on to this field because we’re simply discussing the future.

“It is an assault on this lady who is in her 60s and it could have been worse.”
Liz Cameron, a witness and member of the convoy, told the Brisbane Times the incident was “confronting”, especially given there were children among the protesting crowd.
On Saturday the protesters received a hostile reception from local pro-mining supporters in Clermont, where rocks were hurled at cars taking part in the convoy and women were “abused and threatened”, according to anti-Adani protesters.
Fears that shots had been fired in Clermont prompted emergency calls overnight. Police said it was suspected the noise could have been a firecracker and no one had reported seeing the source of the noise.
On Saturday, politicians spent the early afternoon rallying the “start Adani” group, with Matt Canavan, Clive Palmer, Pauline Hanson and Malcolm Roberts turning out to support the coal industry.
Clermont’s three pubs refused to serve Stop Adani Convoy participants and a sign was hung from a hotel which read, “go home and turn off your power and walk”.
Another read, “Mr Brown and ‘Stop Adani’ protesters, you may have travelled far and wide but you won’t get food inside.”

Pro-Adani supporters gather outside the Commercial hotel in Clermont, central Queensland, to protest against the arrival of anti-Adani environmental activists on Saturday. Photograph: Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images

The publican of Clermont’s Grand hotel, Kel Appleton, said: “We’re just normal people, we don’t go pushing our rhetoric on anyone else like they do to us.”
Appleton said he understood locals would leave the anti-Adani protesters alone in the town’s showgrounds on Sunday.
“We still get treated we’re like a bunch of hooligans but we’re not, like I’m half proud of being called a redneck, we probably are, we live out west, there’s graziers, there’s cotton farmers,” he said.
“People have driven up from Toowoomba [nine hours away] to stand on our side. That’s what brought everyone together, just being all good people, you know.”
On Sunday morning a statement from organisers of the convoy aimed at stopping Adani’s Galilee Basin coalmine said about 350 people would gather in town on Sunday.
Brown said the convoy was “about every Australian child’s future security in a rapidly heating planet”.
“You can back your children or you can back Gautam Adani’s mine but you can’t have both.”

Brown said Queenslanders were worried about the mine, contrary to perception. “It’s a complete fabrication that people in central Queensland aren’t worried about this mine,” he said.
Brown’s convoy has travelled some 5,000km from Tasmania to protest against the proposed Carmichael coalmine.
Brown, who rose to prominence because of his opposition to the Franklin Dam project in the 1980s, was asked why the Carmichael mine, and not other proposals, have become the focus of environmental and climate activism.
“I got asked that very often about the Franklin Dam. Why this dam and why not other dams?” Brown said. “This has become a litmus test for coalmining around the world. Bloomberg indeed describes it as the most contentious coalmine in the world.”

Australian Associated Press contributed to this report

Coalition gets a miserable 4% on climate change policy scorecard

Extract from The Guardian

The Australian Conservation Foundation gives Labor a better 56% and rates the Greens a near perfect 99%

Paul Karp

@Paul_Karp

Mon 29 Apr 2019 04.00 AEST Last modified on Mon 29 Apr 2019 04.01 AEST

School students at the #ClimateStrike rally. The Australian Conservation Foundation’s climate change policy score card rates the Coalition 4/100. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP

The Coalition has rated a miserable 4/100 on the Australian Conservation Foundation’s climate change policy scorecard.
The scorecard, released on Monday ahead of the 18 May election, finds that Labor rates better on 56% but is held back by “fairly weak” policies on stopping the burning of coal and an “unclear” position on the Adani Carmichael coalmine.
The Greens rated a near perfect 99%, with “very good” policies in all areas including ramping up renewables and protecting natural habitats including reefs, rivers and forests. The ratings are based on a comparison across 50 policy measures.
The ACF chief executive, Kelly O’Shanassy, said stopping climate change and protecting nature “are top issues for Australians at this election, according to numerous opinion polls and the ABC’s vote compass”.

“Australians are already being hurt by climate damage and they want to be represented by politicians who take the issue seriously and will act with urgency.”
The ACF rated the Liberal-National Coalition “very poor” on renewable energy, noting it has made “piecemeal promises for pumped hydro storage” but has no plan to lift renewable energy above 23%.
The Coalition started 2019 by trying to bolster its climate change credentials with a $2bn cash injection to the emissions reduction fund but has resorted to scare campaigns against Labor’s policy, labelling it a Trojan horse for a carbon tax and falsely claiming the opposition would tax petrol cars.
The ACF labelled the renamed climate solutions fund “grossly inadequate” and said the Coalition “actually support burning more coal, making climate change even worse”.
O’Shanassy said the emissions reduction fund “has not curbed Australia’s climate pollution”.
“For the Coalition to again offer this ineffective policy as its main plan to tackle climate change shows a disregard for farmers, survivors of natural disasters fuelled by global warming and the next generation of Australians.”
The ACF concluded Labor has “fairly good” policies on renewables, including a 50% renewable target, but the Greens were “very good” with a 100% renewables pledge and plan to reach net zero climate pollution by 2040.

The ACF also rated the Greens higher on stopping coal, noting the minor party has pledged to stop the Adani mine but Labor has “made no commitment as to what they will do about Adani’s mine if elected”.
Last week Bill Shorten was questioned repeatedly about whether Labor will review Adani’s approvals if it wins government. Shorten replied Labor has “no plans” to do so, but has not definitively ruled it out.
Labor has promised to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 45% using the framework of Malcolm Turnbull’s national energy guarantee and a revamped safeguards mechanism to limit pollution from heavy industry.
The Greens have promised stronger environmental regulators and demanded greater emissions reduction ambition from Labor, but been rebuffed by Bill Shorten who has ruled out negotiating a new policy with the Greens.
The ACF concluded the Greens policies to protect nature were “very good” because it wants to end deforestation, create an independent science-based watchdog and significantly increase funding for habitat and species protection.
While Labor has promised a federal Environment Protection Agency, the ACF said its plan for new nature laws “lacks detail” and the party has not set aside sufficient funding for nature restoration or wildlife recovery.
Many minor parties snubbed the survey, with One Nation, the United Australia Party, Katter’s Australia Party, the Liberal Democrats, Centre Alliance, Derryn Hinch’s Justice Party and the independent for Wentworth Kerryn Phelps not responding.

Independents Zali Steggall and Oliver Yates – who are taking on Tony Abbott in Warringah and the treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, in Kooyong – both provided responses supporting strong climate policies, including opposing the Adani mine.
Yates called for coal-fired power stations to be “rapidly” phased out to keep global warming to 2C or less, while Steggall called for an orderly transition.
In addition to the scorecard, the ACF is campaigning in marginal seats in “middle-Australia” including Chisholm and McNamara in Melbourne and Bonner in Queensland.

O’Shanassy said as a result of campaign activities 91,000 voters have pledged to make climate change a key priority when they vote, although the ACF campaign does not directly advocate a vote for any particular party.