A personal view of Australian and International Politics : December 2021

Friday, 31 December 2021

OzSage experts warn ‘let it rip’ Covid strategy will condemn vulnerable Australians to death.

Sheer scale of cases means the impact on an already fatigued health system ‘could be enormous’, report says.

People queue at a Covid testing site in Melbourne. The independent expert group OzSage has criticised the ‘defeatist narrative that “we are all going to get it”’

In a report released on Thursday, OzSage said the trajectory of Covid data suggested hospital admission and intensive care unit occupancy numbers were “on a steeply rising trend and anticipated to exceed earlier peaks quite soon. In other words, optimistic assumptions about the impact of the Omicron variant on hospital admissions are unrealistic.”

The report said “a fatalistic approach will be fatal for some people”, with NSW in the frontline.

“The ‘let it rip’ strategy and defeatist narrative that ‘we are all going to get it’ ignores the stark lived reality of the vulnerable of our society,” the report said. “Despite three doses of vaccine, some patients with cancer and other immunosuppressed people, have substantially reduced protection against Omicron,” it said, noting that about half of the adult population had co-existing health conditions.

A COVID-19 Test sign is seen on Elgar Road as members of the public are seen queuing in their cars at a drive-through COVID-19 testing site at Deakin University Burwood Campus, Burwood in Melbourne

Australia’s daily Covid cases could rise to 100,000 within weeks, expert predicts

On Wednesday the NSW health minister, Brad Hazzard, repeated his statement initially made on Boxing Day that “we’re all going to get” Covid as a result of the Omicron variant.

The OzSage authors, who include the University of NSW’s Prof Raina MacIntyre, criticised the rhetoric from leaders such as the NSW premier, Dominic Perrottet, who have argued that the media and others should no longer focus on the raw daily case numbers, because hospitalisation rates are so much lower than during the Delta wave when many fewer people were vaccinated.

“Daily case numbers are now 10 times higher than during the Delta wave and may be 100 times higher in January” the OzSage report notes.

“Even if hospitalisation rates are lower with Omicron compared to Delta, a halving of hospitalisation rates with a 10-fold or 100-fold increase in cases will still translate to a high burden on the health system,” it said. “This is likely to overwhelm the health system, with regional services at particular risk.”

The report also blasted “quick-fix adjustments” such as discouraging people from seeking Covid tests if they don’t feel symptoms, to reduce pressure on what remains of the test and trace system.

The result would be an increased burden on the health system, the report said, “because it will result in chains of transmission that could otherwise have been stopped”.

“We are disturbed by the repeated messaging that only symptomatic people should get tested, when 40-45% of transmissions are asymptomatic, and even in people who develop symptoms, the peak of infectiousness is in the two days before symptoms begin,” OzSage said.

“The false reassurance of the messaging will result in more cases of viral transmission that otherwise would have been prevented.”

On Thursday NSW reported a fresh record number of daily cases of 12,226, or about one in eight of the 97,201 tested. Hospitalisation numbers also jumped by about one-fifth to 746 in the state, although those in ICU edged up only marginally.

Victoria also reported a sizeable jump in new cases, rising about one-third in a day to 5,137. The state also registered 13 deaths.

Australia could reach 100,000 daily cases within weeks, Michael Lydeamore, a Monash University modeller, said on Wednesday.

A pop-up Covid vaccination clinic in Melbourne

Up to three Covid jabs a year could be needed for protection, data suggests

While Omicron infections appear to be 40-45% less likely to result in hospitalisations of those inflected, the sheer scale of the cases along with a health system already fatigued from almost two years of battling Covid meant the impact of the current wave “could be enormous”, the OzSage report said.

“The rapid rise in Omicron cases may mean we are only days away from seeing higher hospitalisation and ICU admissions than during the peak of Delta,” the group said.

As wards reached capacity and more people contracted Covid without getting access to hospital care, more people might die in their homes, OzSage said.

“One week ago, NSW Health advised people under 50 years to care for themselves at home, without access to Hospital in The Home,” it said. “This week, they have revised the age cut off to anyone under 65 years. This is the ultimate in ‘personal responsibility’.

“The consequence of this policy is that people may die at home when their lives could have been saved by proper timely healthcare,” it said, noting that during the Delta wave, the mean age of those dying at home from Covid was about 40.

“During any other time, this would have been a national scandal, but it passed without comment or scrutiny from policy makers and health authorities,” it said.

The report does not directly criticise the federal government, but Scott Morrison has repeatedly stressed management of the pandemic in the latest phase is becoming a matter of “personal responsibility” rather than restrictions imposed by governments.

‘Complete collapse of leadership’: Australia’s recent Covid response amounts to world-class bungling.

Extract from The Guardian

Opinion

Australia news

Stephen Duckett

As Omicron poses growing challenges, our governments need to put aside political games and prioritise the national interest.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison taking off his mask as he arrives at a press conference at Kirribilli House

‘The commonwealth needs to abandon its hectoring from the sidelines with its eye on what would make a politically positive headline and what might appeal to its base.’

This time last year was a time of hope – we had survived 2020, vaccinations were just around the corner and with that, the promise of no more lockdowns and a return to open borders. We would live safely with Covid.

How wrong we were.

The mess we are in is the result of three factors.

The first factor was an external one. As expected, the virus mutated and we learned the Greek alphabet. Delta was worse than the original strain, and then along came Omicron, with its impact exacerbated by the two other factors.

The second factor was world-class bungling. The commonwealth government completely mishandled every aspect of the vaccination program. Its narrow procurement strategy was wrong. Its prioritisation strategy – with the most at-risk to be vaccinated first – was ignored from the start. Its rollout was a shemozzle, so bad that “strollout” was designated Australian word of the year. Its communication of vaccine advice and eligibility was confusing and inconsistent. The commonwealth learned nothing from this litany of errors and proceeded to bungle the testing approach as well.

Australians are at risk as too many of our leaders abdicate responsibility for Covid to pander to their political base

Malcolm Farr

The third factor was also one of our own making: the complete collapse of national leadership. The federal government went missing in action. Each state went its own way, imposing border controls at short notice and inventing its own idiosyncratic definitions about when a zone was red or green. Most unfortunately, each state decided whether or not to attempt to control the spread seriously. There were clear differences among states and over time. New South Wales followed a less interventionist approach than Victoria, and the NSW premier, Dominic Perrottet, is more laissez-faire than his predecessor.

The two problems of our own making need to be addressed, and this requires national leadership.

The commonwealth needs to abandon its hectoring from the sidelines with its eye on what would make a politically positive headline and what might appeal to its base. The states need to start recognising they are part of a single nation – and that, for example, Queensland’s border rules impact on NSW, and uncontrolled spread in one state affects all of us.

National cabinet needs to become a place where, just this once, ideology, political games and cost shifting are put second and the national interest is put first. A new era of national leadership would revisit current policy settings about testing, vaccination, and public health measures.

Testing has been overwhelmed. The states need to agree to use rapid antigen tests more. The commonwealth needs to fund antigen tests fully and distribute them for free as the UK has done for the last eight months.

Omicron is an unstoppable force, but when it comes to health advice, Morrison is an immoveable object

The federal government needs to speed up the rollout of third doses and kids’ doses.

And we need to stop pretending that the only way we can “live with Covid” is to adopt a “let it rip” strategy with potentially fatal consequences for those most at risk. National leadership about the importance of public health measures, including mask mandates and testing yourself before mixing with others, is essential.

State action in 2020 meant that the first wave of Covid was essentially managed well – albeit with a few failures, most notably hotel quarantine in Victoria. Australia therefore has one of the lowest death rates in the world, and the economy has rebounded well too.

A cooperative national strategy is needed – and needed quickly – to respond to the immediate risks we are all facing. It is time for our national leaders to do their job, putting the national interest first.

‘Carbon bomb’: Queensland reveals big jump in land clearing.

Extract from The Guardian

Deforestation

Landholders in the state cleared 680,688 hectares of woody vegetation in 2018-19, primarily for beef.

Landowners in Queensland cleared 680,688 hectares of vegetation in 2018-19, including in the important Brigalow Belt.

The Statewide Landcover and Trees Study (Slats) for 2018-19 showed landholders cleared 680,688 hectares of woody vegetation, or about 0.7% of Queensland’s total.

Improved accuracy of remote sensing make precise comparisons with earlier years difficult. The government had said the 2017-18 clearing rate was 392,000 hectares.

The report said 3% was in ecosystems “identified as of concern”, while less than 1% of the clearing involved endangered ecological communities.

Stuart Blanch, a WWF Australia conservation scientist, said the figures were “a real shocker”, deliberately released ahead of New Year’s Eve to stir up the least attention. The data also suggests Australia’s carbon emissions are worse than reported, he said.

“It’s a carbon bomb for the Queensland and federal governments because it shows we are vastly underestimating carbon emissions from land clearing,” Blanch said. “That’s going to really jeopardise our net zero commitments and any 2030 abatement targets.

“We’re a massive land-clearing nation. Queensland has got the vast majority of it, and the vast majority of that is for beef.”

Guardian Australia sought comment from the Palaszczuk and Morrison governments.

In its 2021 projections update, the federal government predicted Australia’s carbon emissions in 2030 would be 30% below 2005 levels, beating the 26-28% reduction pledged at the 2015 Paris climate summit.

Land clearing in northern New South Wales

Australia’s emissions from land clearing likely far higher than claimed, analysis indicates

That estimate, though, included recent years when the land sector was deemed to have absorbed more carbon dioxide than it released. In 2019, for instance, the sector contributed a net negative 25m tonnes of CO2 equivalent, that report said.

Blanch, though, said Queensland’s new dataset, which assessed changes in vegetation down to 10 sq metre satellite imagery, were three times more accurate than that used to compile the National Greenhouse Gas Inventory figures.

In 2018, for instance, the federal government estimated 2018 national land clearing to be just under 370,000 hectares, well shy of the 680,000-plus hectares reported by Queensland alone in 2018-19.

As Guardian Australia reported last month, an analysis by Queensland researcher Martin Taylor showed earlier technology used to compile Slats was already detecting large areas of land clearing that was not picked up by the federal survey.

Glenn Walker, a senior campaigner for Greenpeace, said the Slats data was “extraordinary, horrifying figures” that showed Australia remained one of the world’s fastest deforesting nations.

“Behind these figures are millions of killed and maimed native animals like koalas and huge amounts of carbon emissions from burning and rotting trees,” Walker said.

“Clearly the current laws aren’t working and the beef sector isn’t taking this issue seriously. This should be a huge wake-up call to act fast before we lose more precious bushland and wildlife.”

The new data also indicate changes by Queensland Labor to tighten land-clearing regulations eased by the former Liberal National government under Campbell Newman were failing, Blanch said.

Areas deemed to be so-called “category X” that remain excluded from the 1999 Vegetation Management Act accounted for just over 70% of the total cleared area, the government said.

Costly efforts to reduce the amount of silt washing into the Great Barrier Reef region also appear to be undermined by the land clearing.

Langidoon and Metford station has been added to the New South Wales national parks estate

‘Boots on the ground’ needed to make the most of NSW national park land purchases

About one-third of the 2018-19 deforestation, or 217,419 hectares, occurred in catchments flowing into the reef region. About 85% of that clearing remains exempt from the law changes introduced by Labor in 2018 as category X, Blanch said.

The report also showed remnant clearing increased by 58% in the important Brigalow Belt in 2018-19 from the previous year to 35,550 hectares.

“The Brigalow Belt supports the highest bird diversity of any bioregion in Australia and is home to at least three species of reptiles that do not occur anywhere else in the world,” Blanch said. “So the spike in clearing here is particularly heartbreaking.

“It’s very disappointing the Queensland government sat on this data. They knew it was bad news and they buried it.”

The deputy premier, Steven Miles, said on Thursday a group of scientific experts would be assembled in early 2022 to better understand the study results and find ways to help avoid clearing or whether other measures were needed.

Thursday, 30 December 2021

Alaska sets record high December temperature of 19.4C.

Extract from The Guardian

The island community of Kodiak set the record on Sunday and scientists fear the population will be deluged with rain as climate warms.

Boys cross a flooded walkway in Newtok, Alaska, a village which is sinking as a result of warming weather.

At the island community of Kodiak, the air temperature at a tidal gauge hit 19.4C (67F) degrees on Sunday, the highest December reading ever recorded in Alaska, said scientist Rick Thoman of the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy. He called it “absurd.”

Winter Storm Hits Western U.S., Seattle, Washington, USA - 26 Dec 2021<br>Mandatory Credit: Photo by Paul Christian Gordon/ZUMA Press Wire/REX/Shutterstock (12660715b)
Many residential streets in West Seattle are closed to traffic as a winter storm hits Seattle on Sunday.
Winter Storm Hits Western U.S., Seattle, Washington, USA - 26 Dec 2021

Western US states hit by record freeze and heavy snow

The new benchmark high came amid a spate of balmy December extremes, Thoman said, including 18.3C (65F) at the Kodiak airport, a record 16.6C (62F) at the Alaska Peninsula community of Cold Bay and at least eight December days of temperatures above 10C (50F) at the Aleutian town of Unalaska, including a reading of 13.3C (56F) that was Alaska’s warmest Christmas Day on record.

The most serious immediate implication for humans is likely from the massive amounts of precipitation dumped on interior Alaska, where the Fairbanks area was hit by its fiercest mid-winter storm since 1937, Thoman said.

Normally, December is a dry month in interior Alaska because the usually frigid air cannot hold much moisture. Whatever moisture does flow in tends to be “the more fluffy powder because the air is nice and cold”, said Thoman, who lives in Fairbanks.

But so much snow fell that on Sunday it caved in the roof of the sole grocery store in Delta Junction, a town 95 miles (153km) south-east of Fairbanks.

Possibly worse, the heavy snows were followed by torrents of rain that coated communities in the region with ice, triggering widespread power outages and prompting closures of major roads and offices, as well as a nickname: Icemageddon.

The Alaska Department for Transportation warned that roads will remain treacherous for a long time because of the cement-like ice coating that has formed on them.

“Ice is extremely difficult to remove once it has binded to the road surface. Even though air temps were warm during ‘icemageddon2021’, roads were at sub-zero temps, which caused ice to bind to the surface,” the department said on Twitter.

A photo from Barrow, Alaska. By Oliver Milman for the Guardian. 2018

What happened to winter? Vanishing ice convulses Alaskans' way of life

The blasts of warm and wet mid-winter weather have become more frequent in Alaska over the past two decades than in years prior, a sign of climate change, Thoman said. “This is exactly what we expect in a warming world,” he said.

A study published last month in the journal Nature Communications projected an Arctic climate with more winter rain than snow starting around 2060 or 2070.

Alaska will still have its winter cold – Fairbanks temperatures were forecast to plunge below minus -29C (-20F) this weekend – but warm, soggy episodes are expected to be more numerous in the future, Thoman said.

“A warming, moistening world has put our thumbs on the scale to make this more likely,” he added.

The Guardian view on climate activism: between obedience and resistance.

Extract from The Guardian

Editorial

Non-violent civil disobedience remains a vital tool for protest, but its form is shifting.

Insulate Britain protesters in November

Insulate Britain protesters – who ‘barged into the public’s consciousness’ – glued their hands to the road near London’s Parliament Square in November.

Last month, nine activists were sent to prison, where one of them, a scientist called Emma Smart, went on hunger strike for 26 days. Marches and rallies have been linked to protest since the middle ages. The Extinction Rebellion (XR) network, of which Insulate Britain is an offshoot, revived the tradition of getting arrested on purpose, a tactic employed by suffragettes. The idea is that by peacefully inundating the forces of law and order while attracting strong public support for a just cause, pressure can be put on the state to force change.

Two and a half years ago, the first wave of occupations of London landmarks by XR resulted in parliament voting to declare a climate emergency – meeting one of the rebels’ key demands. This coincided with a groundswell of support for the school strike movement, launched the previous year by Greta Thunberg in Stockholm.

Anti-protest amendments

The extent to which environmental activism becomes more difficult in 2022 will depend in part on the law, the courts and public opinion. Labour has yet to announce whether it will vote against a raft of anti-protest amendments added to the government’s police bill in the House of Lords. This repressive piece of legislation is the strongest anti-activist statement yet from a government whose leader once said that he would lie down in front of the bulldozers himself to stop a third runway at Heathrow airport being built.

It is for the judges to determine what the law is. In June, the supreme court quashed the conviction of four anti-arms trade activists, in a ruling with wider ramifications that said some “disruption of ordinary life” is acceptable if caused by people exercising their right to free expression. The public mood creates the context in which all sorts of decisions (by politicians, prosecutors, businesses) are made. Evidence shows that the British public is increasingly alarmed about the climate: in October, Ipsos Mori found that 80% believe it is a global emergency caused by humans. But activists are divided about how best to harness such attitudes in order to drive the kinds of emissions reductions that are so desperately needed.

There have always been differences in an environmental movement that spans a huge range of interests and priorities. Previously, the most obvious dividing line was between those engaged in the kinds of civil disobedience pioneered by Greenpeace (whose first action took place 50 years ago) and those focused solely on constitutionalist methods. But as agitations have become more aggressive, divisions in the green movement have become sharper. XR deserves credit for having boosted the climate crisis to the top of the political agenda – before the pandemic interrupted. But the theory of change it adopted, that if 3.5% of a population becomes engaged in non-violent direct action then a campaign will succeed, has been criticised as simplistic. An angry, physical confrontation with rush-hour passengers in east London is widely seen as a serious mistake, and suggestive of a worrying blindness to the social injustice and inequality that are an essential dimension of progressive climate politics, domestically and internationally. Similarly, Insulate Britain has faced criticism from those who think that the tactic of deliberately creating traffic jams is counterproductive – potentially making it easier for the government to pass laws restricting the right to protest.

Feasible tactics

Another argument concerns who or what should be the target of protests. Given the failure of governments to rise to the challenge, both individually and collectively via the UN, some activists now believe that their efforts should be focused elsewhere. The US environmental writer and activist Bill McKibben thinks campaigners should ramp up pressure on the banks that finance fossil fuels. The question of how much emphasis to put on behaviour change in the rich western countries with the highest per capita emissions also remains contentious. The British philosopher Rupert Read, who has acted as a spokesperson for XR, argues that greater efforts within communities are a constructive way to make emissions reductions happen.

Politics in the traditional sense remains vital, particularly in countries where 2022 will see important elections. Brazil’s citizens would do the world a favour by rejecting its climate-denying president. Non-violent civil disobedience erases the line between compliance and resistance to the state. In countries that abide by democratic principles, it remains a feasible tactic to challenge policies while accepting a system’s fundamentals. However, the existential nature of climate change leads to questions about the latter.

Louise Lancaster, a former teacher and Insulate Britain protester, told the Guardian in November that she would be “willing to die” for the cause if she thought that it might save her three children from climate-related deaths. In his provocatively titled book How To Blow Up a Pipeline, the Swedish activist Andreas Malm makes a case for sabotaging fossil fuel infrastructure. Yet eco-sabotage could harden rather than soften climate-sceptic attitudes, making it easier for states to respond harshly. Non-violence does not seek to undermine the rule of law, only the repeal of unjust laws. Ultimately, it’s difficult to see how a just transition to net zero could be achieved by unjust means.

I’m a climate scientist. Don’t Look Up captures the madness I see every day.

Extract from The Guardian

Opinion

Climate crisis

Peter Kalmus

A film about a comet hurtling towards Earth and no one is doing anything about it? Sounds exactly like the climate crisis.

‘The Earth system is breaking down now with breathtaking speed.’

The film, from director Adam McKay and writer David Sirota, tells the story of astronomy grad student Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) and her PhD adviser, Dr Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio), who discover a comet – a “planet killer” – that will impact the Earth in just over six months. The certainty of impact is 99.7%, as certain as just about anything in science.

The scientists are essentially alone with this knowledge, ignored and gaslighted by society. The panic and desperation they feel mirror the panic and desperation that many climate scientists feel. In one scene, Mindy hyperventilates in a bathroom; in another, Diabasky, on national TV, screams “Are we not being clear? We’re all 100% for sure gonna fucking die!” I can relate. This is what it feels like to be a climate scientist today.

The two astronomers are given a 20-minute audience with the president (Meryl Streep), who is glad to hear that impact isn’t technically 100% certain. Weighing election strategy above the fate of the planet, she decides to “sit tight and assess”. Desperate, the scientists then go on a national morning show, but the TV hosts make light of their warning (which is also overshadowed by a celebrity breakup story).

By now, the imminent collision with comet Diabasky is confirmed by scientists around the world. After political winds shift, the president initiates a mission to divert the comet, but changes her mind at the last moment when urged to do so by a billionaire donor (Mark Rylance) with his own plan to guide it to a safe landing, using unproven technology, in order to claim its precious metals. A sports magazine’s cover asks, “The end is near. Will there be a Super Bowl?”

But this isn’t a film about how humanity would respond to a planet-killing comet; it’s a film about how humanity is responding to planet-killing climate breakdown. We live in a society in which, despite extraordinarily clear, present, and worsening climate danger, more than half of Republican members of Congress still say climate change is a hoax and many more wish to block action, and in which the official Democratic party platform still enshrines massive subsidies to the fossil fuel industry; in which the current president ran on a promise that “nothing will fundamentally change”, and the speaker of the House dismissed even a modest climate plan as “the green dream or whatever”; in which the largest delegation to Cop26 was the fossil fuel industry, and the White House sold drilling rights to a huge tract of the Gulf of Mexico after the summit; in which world leaders say that climate is an “existential threat to humanity” while simultaneously expanding fossil fuel production; in which major newspapers still run fossil fuel ads, and climate news is routinely overshadowed by sports; in which entrepreneurs push incredibly risky tech solutions and billionaires sell the absurdist fantasy that humanity can just move to Mars.

World leaders underestimate how rapid, serious and permanent ecological breakdown will be if humanity fails to mobilize

After 15 years of working to raise climate urgency, I’ve concluded that the public in general, and world leaders in particular, underestimate how rapid, serious and permanent climate and ecological breakdown will be if humanity fails to mobilize. There may only be five years left before humanity expends the remaining “carbon budget” to stay under 1.5C of global heating at today’s emissions rates – a level of heating I am not confident will be compatible with civilization as we know it. And there may only be five years before the Amazon rainforest and a large Antarctic ice sheet pass irreversible tipping points.

The Earth system is breaking down now with breathtaking speed. And climate scientists have faced an even more insurmountable public communication task than the astronomers in Don’t Look Up, since climate destruction unfolds over decades – lightning fast as far as the planet is concerned, but glacially slow as far as the news cycle is concerned – and isn’t as immediate and visible as a comet in the sky.

Given all this, dismissing Don’t Look Up as too obvious might say more about the critic than the film. It’s funny and terrifying because it conveys a certain cold truth that climate scientists and others who understand the full depth of the climate emergency are living every day. I hope that this movie, which comically depicts how hard it is to break through prevailing norms, actually helps break through those norms in real life.

We need stories that highlight the many absurdities that arise from knowing what’s coming while failing to act.

I also hope Hollywood is learning how to tell climate stories that matter. Instead of stories that create comforting distance from the grave danger we are in via unrealistic techno fixes for unrealistic disaster scenarios, humanity needs stories that highlight the many absurdities that arise from collectively knowing what’s coming while collectively failing to act.

We also need stories that show humanity responding rationally to the crisis. A lack of technology isn’t what’s blocking action. Instead, humanity needs to confront the fossil fuel industry head on, accept that we need to consume less energy, and switch into full-on emergency mode. The sense of solidarity and relief we’d feel once this happens – if it happens – would be gamechanging for our species. More and better facts will not catalyze this sociocultural tipping point, but more and better stories might.

Peter Kalmus is a climate scientist and author of Being the Change: Live Well and Spark a Climate Revolution

In Australia’s climate wars, delay and deception are the new denial.

Extract from The Guardian

Opinion

Climate crisis

Ketan Joshi

Now that they can no longer pretend the climate crisis isn’t real, big emitters and their enablers are making all of the right noises – and taking none of the right actions.

Red skies over the outskirts of Cooma during the 2019 bushfire crisis

‘I know that Australia’s politicians and fossil fuel executives watched the bushfire crisis … Maybe their hearts dropped when they briefly came face to face with the consequences of unbridled emissions and a heating planet.’

The first tactic deployed to protect the fossil fuel industry, organised denial of the science proving the link between greenhouse gas emissions and global heating, was terribly impactful. Though we’ve stamped that out, the space has been filled by a more effective and insidious problem: climate delay. This refers to a suite of spurious arguments used to justify not reducing emissions at all, or reducing them at as slow a rate as possible. You’ve heard these before – they include pleas to wait for better technology, redirecting responsibility to others or emphasising the downsides of action.

In Australia, in 2021, governments, corporations, lobbyists, media companies and marketing firms engaged in a weird kind of convergent rhyme. They each realised that a deeply concerned citizenry must be distracted, and the people power that emerged in the 2019 climate marches defused. So, they poured their efforts into figuring out how to best lie about acting on climate (instead of the easier and cheaper option of actually acting on climate).

‘Do you accept the science?’ Talking points show how Angus Taylor prepared for IPCC report’s release

The most obvious example is the conservative Coalition government in Australia. They’ve used the old approach of hollow techno-optimism to mask the total absence of real-world emissions reductions, repackaged this year within the loophole-ridden “net zero” marketing framework. The target of a 26% reduction by 2030 is an international embarrassment. Official government projections show that without any effort at all, emissions will fall by around 30%, due mostly to the growth of renewables (in a grim moment, this was rebranded as an escalation in ambition, and tricks were used to tweak the figure to 35%).

The federal government has explicitly incentivised new fossil fuel projects – funding gas power plants, and helping coal and gas mines get off the ground. But in parallel, Australia’s diplomatic forces overseas ran an organised campaign of greenwashing, twisting emissions data to falsely present the country’s past performance and future targets as ambitious, culminating in the Cop26 conference in Glasgow.

The government’s insincerity isn’t well obscured. Scott Morrison danced with literal joy when a gas field with unlocked emissions equivalent to 15 coal plants cleared a major hurdle. Less obvious and far less acknowledged is how pervasive the tactics of climate delay have sunk within other players in Australia’s climate debate.

The Labor party announced that they were revising down their previous 2030 target of 45% (which they took to the 2019 election) to 43%. That prior target was itself sourced from a report published in 2015, which recommended between 40% and 60%.

While the renewable energy parts of Labor’s plan are respectable, the industry sector elements leave a wide range of questions open enough for high emitters to exploit to their advantage. Their trajectory to 2030 relies just as heavily as the Coalition’s 2050 net zero plan on the purchase of offsets instead of emissions reductions. Both major parties fail to include any controls to ensure that companies aren’t just buying up cheap, dodgy offsets instead of reducing their greenhouse gas emissions. Labor also plans to adopt and reform the Coalition’s loophole-ridden “safeguard mechanism” policy, with little clarity on exactly how that reform will take place. Major emitters and fossil lobby groups cautiously welcomed Labor’s plan while laying down the language to frame any real emissions reductions as dangerous or destructive.

Labor’s policy was sold as a bottom-up, realist approach. In reality, it leaned heavily on the Business Council of Australia’s policy suggestions, leaving gaps and loopholes that could easily be widened into major climate failure by motivated high-emitters.

Running defence for the political delayers and Australia’s worst corporate emitters was News Corp, who wrapped their verifiably awful record on climate in a veil of revisionist greenwashing. Mirroring both major parties, articles like “What polluters are doing to help” serve as the public relations engine of this wider narrative of fabricated action. Rarely acknowledged is the group of marketing and public relations firms getting paid eye-watering sums to churn out climate delay, exposed jointly by CommsDeclare and Clean Creatives.

I know we were broken down by an exhausting decade of climate denial. But that exhaustion has created a hopeful credulity. A vulnerability to under-interrogating these glossy stories of reformation.

Stop fighting, we asked. Please, end the “climate wars”. Well, they did. Both major parties and industry are in peaceful agreement to fail badly on domestic emissions while extracting planet-wrecking quantities of carbon so it can be burned overseas.

The future can only lie in kicking big, destructive holes in the wall of false reassurances and disinformation used to delay climate action. It was easy to spot wide-eyed climate deniers. Can you spot a net zero target packed with backloading and offsets? You need to.

I know that Australia’s politicians and fossil fuel executives watched the gut-wrenching black summer bushfire crisis, the same as I and much of the world did. They watched the deep-red skies in the shaky smartphone footage, and the exhausted firefighters collapsing on the streets. Maybe their hearts dropped in their chests when they briefly came face to face with the consequences of unbridled emissions and a heating planet.

Two years on, we know for sure that their only real, lingering response was to scramble to figure out new ways to lie about the damage they’re doing. In 2022, we need to reignite the climate wars and fight back against the deadly cult of delay.

Adani's first Carmichael Mine coal export shipment imminent after years of campaigns against it.

Extract from ABC News

ABC Capricornia

By Katrina Beavan

Posted 6 hours ago

Photo of a truck driving along a mining shelf in a coal pit

Adani's Australian mine operator Bravus is celebrating its first export shipment from the Carmichael Mine in central Queensland.(Supplied: Facebook: Bravus Mining and Resources)

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The first coal shipment from central Queensland Carmichael Mine is about to leave Australian shores after years of controversy, international media coverage and environmental campaigning against the facility.

Bravus Mining and Resources, the Australian arm of Adani, on Wednesday confirmed the shipment had been assembled at the North Queensland Export Terminal in Bowen.

Bravus CEO David Boshoff celebrated the milestone, calling it a "big moment".

"From day one, the objectives of the Carmichael Project were to supply high-quality Queensland coal to nations determined to lift millions of their citizens out of energy poverty and to create local jobs and economic prosperity in Queensland communities in the process," Mr Boshoff said.

"With the support of the people of regional Queensland, we have delivered on that promise."

Bravus CEO David Boshoff with Abbot Point Operations HSEC Manager Kate Mee

Bravus CEO David Boshoff and Abbot Point operations manager Kate Mee with the overseas-bound coal.(Supplied: Bravus Mining and Resources)

Milestone met with anger

The shipment comes amid continuing protests against the mine and follows years of fierce campaigning from environmental activists.

The Australian Conservation Foundation said the mine made "a mockery" of Australia's emissions targets.

And, locally, scuba diving guide and Whitsunday Conservation Council spokesperson Tony Fontes said he felt "despair and anger".

"Both state and federal governments supported Adani in opening the mine and ensuring that the Great Barrier Reef is not going to survive this century," Mr Fontes said.

"[But] one would hope that in the very near future, there will not be a market for thermal coal.

However, Bravus insisted Australian coal would have a role alongside renewables for decades "as part of an energy mix that delivers reliable and affordable power with reduced emissions intensity".

three men with ingidenous body paint look at the camera while sitting cross legged with a mine in the background

Though the mine is now exporting, traditional owners camped next to the operation have no intention of moving. (Supplied: Coedie McAvoy)

Adrian Burragubba, a Nagan Yarrbayn senior elder and spokesperson for the Wangan and Jagalingou cultural custodians, said the development was "very disappointing".

In 2016, the Wangan and Jagalingou people voted 294 to one in favour of an Indigenous Land Use Agreement (ILUA) with Adani. Subsequent challenges against the ILUA were dismissed in court.

Mine opponents now represent a small portion of traditional owners who, since signing the agreement, have been working with Bravus.

"Because our voices [have] never been heard, we feel that we've been segregated not only by the court system, by the judicial system, [but] by the other people from that native title claim," Mr Burragubba said.

The elder said he would continue fighting against the mine and a group of traditional owners camped next to the mine would stay.

"And while that continues, we're still a constant reminder that, you know, we are the original people from there."

Bravus said the first shipment of coal would be loaded and dispatched, subject to the port's shipping schedule.

It did not say when the shipment would leave or where it was going.

"The first export shipment is of a commercial scale and is going to a customer, with further details remaining commercial in confidence," it said.

The company plans to produce 10 million tonnes of coal a year from the mine, to be sold to customers in the Asia-Pacific region at 'index adjusted pricing'.