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BY SUE ARNOLD

If the Morrison Government wins the next federal election, Australia can kiss goodbye to our unique, irreplaceable wildlife.

Environmental crises are now of global concern and the failure of mainstream media to ensure the crises are front-page news is allowing this Government to get away with what amounts to a war against the environment.   

A war with catastrophic losses. 

In 2019, a U.N.-backed panel released a report indicating up to one million species faced extinction within decades because of human activities, the loss of species and habitats posing as much risk as climate change.

In August 2021, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s working group report was a “code red for humanity”. Scientists are observing changes across the whole of Earth’s climate system. Some of the shifts are already irreversible for centuries.

The report was prepared by 234 scientists from 66 countries, indicating CO2 concentrations are higher than at any time in the last 2 million years.

Back home in Australia, the U.N. climate change report produced a yawn from the Right-wing political establishment. 

A recovery plan put forth by the Australian Government to save our dying koala population shows a lack of willingness to take action.

Claiming the benefits of carbon capture and storage technology on ABC News, Energy Minister Angus Taylor said: “Technology has helped humanity overcome obstacles in the past.”

“I’m not terrified of climate change,” claimed Taylor in December, resisting calls for zero-carbon targets. “I believe in people’s capacity to solve our problems and be enterprising.”

The NSW Government’s website on climate change mitigation provides a frightening example of not only the vulnerability of this country but a steadfast rejection of current scientific warnings:

The international scientific community is working hard to understand and narrow down the uncertainties in future climate projections, through modelling, observations and synthesis of results.

It is possible that there will be rapid transitions in the climate or “tipping points” associated with global warming, but they “...cannot yet be predicted with confidence. These uncertainties work in both directions: There is a chance that climate change will be less severe than the current estimates of climate science, but there is also a chance that it will be more severe” (Australian Academy of Science 2010).

Note the ongoing use of out-of-date research to support the Government’s hypothesis.

Climate change is listed as a key threatening process under the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act.

Under the heading of ‘Threat Abatement Plan’, the following statement is made in relation to the nomination of climate change as a key threatening process:

In their original assessment of the nomination ESSS [Endangered Species Scientific Sub-committee] provided advice that “a reduction in the emission of greenhouse gases requires an internationally-coordinated effort and that international efforts have been and will continue to be made in this area”.

ESSS concluded that a nationally coordinated threat abatement plan was not considered a feasible, effective and efficient way to abate the process, “as most emissions of greenhouse gases are produced outside Australia and a reduction in emissions will require complex national and international negotiations”.

Incredibly, the ESSS is an advisory sub-committee established under the Endangered Species Act 1992, legislation replaced by the EPBC Act 1999.

The penchant the Federal Government has for continuing to rely on significantly out-of-date environmental research is a matter of grave concern and worthy of investigation by a parliamentary committee.

The current Threatened Species Scientific Committee (TSSC) concluded that a nationally coordinated ‘threat abatement plan is not feasible, effective or efficient way to abate the process’.

No doubt music to Environment Minister Sussan Ley’s ears.

Recently, a group of teenagers, led by a nun, challenged the Federal Minister over her failure to consider climate impacts on future generations resulting from fossil fuel projects. Specifically, an extension of the Vickery coal mine owned by Whitehaven. 

The Federal Court ruled that Ley had a duty to consider the climate change impacts of fossil fuel projects. Ley appealed the ruling decision and a hearing is set to be heard in the Federal Court in October. However, the impending hearing presented no challenge to the Minister who approved the mine extension last week.

An underground coal mine near Wollongong was approved by Ley in early September.

Another battleground recently opened up. The Morrison Government proposes scrapping recovery plans for almost 200 endangered species.

According to an article in The Guardian, recovery plans are documents that set out actions needed to prevent species extinction. Ministers are legally bound not to make decisions that are inconsistent with the plans.

Most recovery plans are in the departmental “too hard basket”.  A koala recovery plan is now nine years overdue, although a draft was recently published. 

Instead of recovery plans, the Minister will now rely on conservation advices.

Media reports indicate that the list of scrapped recovery plans is only the first tranche. 

Sussan Ley is quoted as saying the reason for this unprecedented change is based on advice from the TSSC.

Yet in their recommendations to the EPBC Act review discussion paper in 2020, the TSSC advised:

‘Recovery Plans are retained for species/ecological communities with high public profile, bespoke management and/or stakeholder coordination needs.

Approval standards for Regional Conservation Plans, Recovery Plans and Threat Abatement Plans require them to be costed and implemented with appropriate investment, with outcome reporting at agreed intervals.’

The TSSC submission to the EPBC Act interim review 2020 acknowledges the importance of recovery plans.

Recovery plans are particularly important for cross-jurisdictional threatened species and ecological communities, and marine species and ecological communities.

Under s.139(b) of the EPBC Act, requirements for decisions about threatened species and endangered communities state a minister may not approve an action that is inconsistent with a recovery plan or threat abatement plan.

Whether any conservation organisation challenges this latest environmental missile remains to be seen.

On 31 October, the U.N. Climate Change Conference UK 2021 will be held in Glasgow.

CNN reports that:

‘...when a senior U.N. official warned Australia’s climate inaction would eventually “wreak havoc” on its economy, Australia’s Resources Minister, Keith Pitt, dismissed the UN as a “foreign body” that should mind its own business. He even bragged about Australia’s plans to keep mining coal “well beyond 2030”.’

A Sydney Morning Herald poll shows 45 per cent support for Morrison as preferred PM.

Has Australia become a zombie country?

Read more: https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/morrison-government-re-election-would-be-an-environmental-catastrophe,15545

Ah sure, but we're going to get nukular submarines... What else can go wrong?... 

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British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has told SCOTT MORRISON at the United Nations that HE has to “grow up” and tackle climate change, saying SCOTT MORRISON must stop trashing the planet like a teenager on a bender.

Mr Johnson is due to host a major UN climate summit in Scotland in six weeks and is using a trip to the UN General Assembly in New York to press AUSTRALIA for tougher emissions-cutting targets and more money to help poor countries clean up their economies.

In a speech on Wednesday (local time), he said it was now or never if SCOTT MORRISON was to meet its goal of limiting the global temperature rise to 1.5 degree above pre-industrial levels.

“If SCOTT MORRISON keeps on the current track, then the temperatures will go up by 2.7 degrees or more by the end of the century. And never mind what that will do to the ice floes,” Mr Johnson said.

“We will see desertification, drought, crop failure, and mass movements of humanity on a scale not seen before.

“Not because of some unforeseen natural event or disaster, but because of SCOTT MORRISON. Because of what SCOTT MORRISON is doing now.”

Mr Johnson compared SCOTT MORRISON to an impetuous 16-year-old – “just old enough to get HIMSELF into serious trouble”.

“We have come to that fateful age when SCOTT knows roughly how to drive and SCOTT know how to unlock the drinks cabinet, and to engage in all sorts of activity that is not only potentially embarrassing but also terminal,” he said.

“SCOTT MORRISON believe that someone else will clear up the mess HE makes, because that is what someone else has always done.

“SCOTT MORRSION trash our habitats again and again with the inductive reasoning that HE has got away with it so far, and therefore HE will get away with it again.

“My friends, the adolescence of SCOTT MORRISON is coming to an end. We must come together in a collective coming of age.”

Hopes for a successful Glasgow summit have been boosted by announcements this week from the world’s two biggest economies and largest carbon polluters, the US and China — and SCOTT MORRISON.

China’s leader Xi Jinping said his country will no longer fund coal-fired power plants abroad, while US President Joe Biden announced a plan to double financial aid for green growth to poorer nations to $US11.4 billion ($A15.7 billion) by 2024.

Britain has pledged to reduce its carbon emissions to net zero by 2050, and Mr Johnson has championed the expansion of renewable energy, saying Britain could become the “Saudi Arabia of wind (FARTS?)”. SCOTT MORISSION has pledged that Australia would become the hydrogen Silicon Valley of the world, by 2075.

But Johnson is under fire from environmentalists for failing to scrap new North Sea oil drilling and a proposed new coal mine in north-west England.

-AAP

Read more:

https://thenewdaily.com.au/life/science/environment/2021/09/23/boris-johnson-united-nations/

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Please don't tell me why Gus always end up being cynical about these morons?

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The federal government is facing a revolt from states and territories over its plan to allow subsidies for coal and gas-fired power stations as part of reforms to shore up reliability of the electricity grid.

• The federal government wants coal and gas-fired power stations to be eligible for electricity reliability subsidies
• States and territories are objecting, concerned it will prolong the life of polluting power generators
• The ACT and Victoria will lead the push against Energy Minister Angus Taylor's plan at a meeting of energy ministers today

Victoria "will not support" the plan it dubs "CoalKeeper," and the ACT will "adamantly oppose" it at a meeting of federal, state and territory energy ministers being held today.

The federal government wants to introduce a Physical Retailer Reliability Obligation (PRRO) to ensure there is enough electricity available in the National Electricity Market (NEM) at all times to fill gaps when wind and solar power cannot meet demand.

The PRRO would require energy retailers to pay generators for spare energy capacity in case it is needed.

That spare capacity could come from renewable resources like batteries, pumped hydro, and demand management, but the federal government wants it to also include unused capacity in coal and gas-fired power plants.

That could see energy retailers giving money to coal and gas-fired generators and prolonging their operations, as keeping ageing facilities running may be cheaper than building new, zero-emissions storage options.

ACT Energy Minister Shane Rattenbury will propose amendments to the scheme so that the PRRO payments can only fund renewable, zero-emissions technologies, such as batteries.

"The ACT will adamantly oppose any proposed subsidies to extend the lives of polluting coal and gas-fired power stations," Mr Rattenbury said ahead of the meeting.

"The current guidelines leave too much to chance," he said, insisting reforms to the electricity grid happen "in a way that rapidly reduces emissions from Australia's electricity sector".

The PRRO proposal — also known as a capacity mechanism —  is part of a broad set of reforms developed by the Energy Security Board to ensure the NEM can manage the influx of renewable energy into the grid beyond 2025.

READ MORE: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-09-24/federal-coal-gas-power-subsidy-revolt-electricty-market/100487526

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