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Australians are getting a clearer idea of the Albanese government’s approach to the environmental crisis and it amounts to the maintenance of its long-held environmental denialism.

Denialism is the rejection of strong evidence when it doesn’t suit your ideology or political agenda. Evidence has accumulated for at least 50 years that economic growth (GDP) and population growth are the main drivers of environmental decline. Neither are addressed in Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek’s recent announcements.

 

BY STEPHEN WILLIAMS

 

First the ‘good’ news

On 19 July 2022, Plibersek gave a speech at the National Press Club where she publicly released the five-yearly State of the Environment Report (dated 2021) and summarised her reading of it. Our natural environment is poor and getting dangerously worse. She correctly said that “what our environment really needs is a changed system” and “without structural reform, we’ll be resigning ourselves to another decade of failure”.

She said we need better laws, better technology, better planning, and a “circular economy … That means promoting recycling, reusing, and repairing as much as possible”. She omitted to highlight that the biodiversity section of the report said:

“Population growth contributes to all the pressures described in this report. Each person added to our population increases demand on natural resources to provide food, shelter and materials for living.”

“Direct threats to biodiversity associated with human activity include those related to accommodating a growing population in cities and regional areas, with associated urban development and infrastructure for transport, power and services. Pressures also include disturbances associated with recreation and tourism, hunting, fishing and collecting, which can impact biodiversity in even the most remote areas of Australia.”

On 4 October Plibersek released a “threatened species action plan”. The action plan “has ambitious targets, which include preventing any new extinctions of plants and animals”. Her government would spend $224.5 million to take action.

On 25 November, Plibersek announced the formation of a new Ministerial Advisory Group on the Circular Economy “that has been tasked with guiding Australia’s transition to a circular economy by 2030”. The new expert group will “look at how products are designed, manufactured and used across all sectors of the economy”. In fact all state and federal environment ministers will “work with the private sector to design out waste and pollution”. Wow. Is that even possible? Has it ever been done?

On 8 December 2022, Plibersek announced a Nature Positive Plan in response to the Samuels review of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (EPBC Act). The EPBC Act has long been considered unfit for purpose, and unsurprisingly that’s what Samuels found. ‘Nature positive’ apparently means both protecting and repairing nature. This will be done by stronger laws and a “new Environment Protection Agency to make development decisions and enforce them”. We are told this will be a win for both nature and business as there will be less red tape and business will have certainty. In fact business will be encouraged to “invest” in nature restoration projects, with a summit to “supercharge” private investment, because government “can’t do it alone”.

On 14 December the Minister told us we are on the road to a circular economy because a lot of recycled material could be used in making roads rather than using virgin materials. It becomes clear that Plibersek is going all in on this idea of a circular economy where we “design out waste and pollution”. This promised revolution is obviously a foundation for her “changed system”. Then why is it not featured on her department’s website? What are its strengths and weaknesses? What do its critics say? Does it conform to the laws governing the transformation of matter and energy (thermodynamics)?

On 16 December Plibersek announced that Australia and the US had signed a “ground-breaking agreement at COP 15 in Montreal, pledging to work together to better measure the economic value of nature”. Apparently nature is separate from humans and has an economic role to play, so some of it might be worth retaining, in proportion to its perceived monetary value to humans. What could possibly go wrong! Sounds like something mainstream economists might dream up, especially environmental economists – who are definitely not ecological economists, like the late Herman Daly.

On 19 December Plibersek congratulated everyone on the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP 15) agreement of planning to protect 30% of land and sea by 2030.

Now the not-so-good news

There are some good elements of Plibersek’s approach (stronger environmental laws; efforts to delay goods becoming waste) but she is unsurprisingly avoiding the underlying causes (drivers) of environmental harm, which are nothing less than mainstream growth economics and, indeed, the capitalist system. It is unsurprising because her party and its advisers can see no alternative to growth – such as degrowth or a steady-state economy. She clutches at ‘green growth’ (circular economy) as if we can have our cake and eat it too. Her overall plan will fail, as she herself predicted in her Press Club speech.

How do we know growth (economic and population) is the problem? Washington and Kopnina sum it up well in this recent paper: it is explicitly stated in the recent UN IPCC report (Working Group III); it is similarly stated in the UN’s Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (2019); and, as already mentioned, it is clearly stated in the State of the Environment Report 2021. In fact this knowledge has been available since 1972 through the Limits to Growth report (and its updates), and we dedicate a whole chapter to it in Sustainability and the New Economics (2022).

Perpetual growth is again being questioned in the mainstream media: Gareth Hutchens for the ABC; Larry Elliott in The Guardian; and John Vidal in The Guardian. While welcome, they seem rather slow getting the message from World Scientists’ Warnings to Humanity.

 

READ MORE:

https://johnmenadue.com/labors-environmental-denialism/

 

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good news.....

 

BY 

 

The generation of electricity by burning native forest wood waste will no longer be counted as renewable in Australia, as the Albanese government makes good on a deal made during negotiations on the passage of its Climate Bill.

In a statement issued on Friday, after being leaked to the Guardian on Thursday night, federal energy minister Chris Bowen said the government had acted to restore the exclusion of native forest wood waste as an eligible generation source under the Renewable Energy Target.

The changes mean that electricity generated by burning pulverised native forest wood cannot be used to create tradeable Large-scale Generation Certificates – a practice the Australian Greens describe as “ludicrous.”

As RenewEconomy reported in August, using native forest biomass as a source of energy in a carbon constrained world with access to abundant solar and wind power resources is highly controversial – and not just in Australia.

In the UK, climate think tank Ember has named the massive former coal powered Drax wood pellet fuelled power station as the UK’s single largest source of carbon dioxide.

In Australia, energy generation from native forest biomass was ruled out of the Renewable Energy Act 2000 under the Labor Gillard government, until an amendment to legislation by the Abbott government in 2015 ruled it back in.

 

READ MORE:

https://reneweconomy.com.au/greens-hail-blow-to-ludicrous-practice-of-burning-native-forests-for-energy/

 

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bad news.....

At 4:55 pm yesterday afternoon, Tanya Plibersek approved another Santos fracking project to go ahead in Queensland’s Surat Basin. No announcement or fanfare, and only a single researcher keeping a close eye picked it up, reports Callum Foote.

Roderick Campbell, The Australia Institute’s (TIA) research director, just so happened to be taking a look at the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act’s notices website late yesterday afternoon, when he saw the announcement that the Federal Minister for the Environment and Water had issued Santos a 54-year approval to develop a 116-well coal seam gas project in Queensland’s Surat Basin.

“Having been a long-time researcher of fossil fuel projects, and having a background as an economist in major project assessments I do sometimes just happen to look as the EPBC notices” Campbell said.

This time, Campbell found an approval for a project that he had never heard of before “It’s not that big, but it’s a discrete new approval that would feed into Santos’ LNG export terminal at Gladstone”

The project is located within the Surat Basin, approximately 50km north of Injune and 350m southwest of Gladstone. It will be located within the Comet River catchment which forms part of the larger Fitzroy Basin.

The development is operated by Santos and has been undertaken through a joint venture with Australia Pacific LNG, PAPL (Upstream) Pty Ltd, Total E&P Australia III and KGLNG E&P Pty Ltd.

The development of the 116 wells, each requiring up to 2.5 hectares of land cleared, will be in a 8,678 hectare area and have an operational life of approximately 30 years.

While almost everyone was in the dark, someone has clearly been interested in the project, filing an FOI request showing the federal Department of Agriculture, water and the environment’s July 2021 assessment of the project.

Environmental concerns

The assessment details significant environmental concerns by the department:

The department considers that the proposed action is likely to have significant impacts on listed threatened species and communities and water resources”

It was recommended that the project be subject to environmental assessment before approval by the minister.

Public comments as part of the assessment noted impacts on water resources, threatened listed species and communities, and underestimated risk to migratory species. The department noted further that “without appropriate management the proposed action is likely to result in significant impact to water resources. The department notes that there are existing management frameworks that may be suitable to apply to the proposed action.”

While the environmental assessment opened the project up to public submissions, Plibersek has appeared to let Santos change the wording of their assessment after submissions were closed. According to Campbell:

What I noticed was that they’ve let Santos change the wording from just vertical wells to just wells.

For people who are interested in ground water quality, vertical drilling is less of a problem from a disturbance perspective. However “after public submissions had closed, the department was happy for them to change it from we’re drilling vertical wells to we’re drilling wells and we might do a whole lot of horizontal drillings as well,” said Campbell.

This recent federal approval comes as grassroots activists in Queensland are petitioning the state government to halt further fracking near vital water habitats.

And a coal mine approval too

Lock the Gate Alliance, Western Rivers Alliance, The Wilderness Society, and their supporters will present a petition with more than 10,000 signatures to the Palaszczuk Government soon, demanding it ban new gas projects on the fragile and pristine floodplains of the Lake Eyre Basin, east of Surat Basin.

Lock the Gate says that despite repeated election promises to protect Lake Eyre Basin floodplains, the Palaszczuk Government has instead given petroleum companies authority to survey for gas across hundreds of thousands of hectares in the region, while Tanya Plibersek have also given approval out to 2063 for the new Lake Vernon Coal Mine owned by Bowen Basic Coal.

 

 

READ MORE:

https://michaelwest.com.au/santos-wins-fracking-approval-for-towrie-gas-development-from-environment-minister-tanya-plibersek/

 

 

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greener-ish.....

Plibersek’s first year of being Minister for Environment and Water has seen three coal and gas-related projects approved, still less than the last year of the Coalition government. There are probably approvals to come, but transparency is sorely lacking. Callum Foote reports.

 

Have they got something to hide? Yes, there are not many votes to be had in approving new coal and gas projects at a time when public unrest over climate and global temperatures are on the rise. There was a flurry of fossil approvals in the final year of the Scott Morrison government. Labor tightened up the system in its first year in office but has since taken its foot off the brake.

Experts believe that public accountability and oversight over the approval of new fossil fuel projects leaves much to be desired. Such approvals are difficult to keep track of, with a complex web of state and federal approvals requiring expert understanding. There is no public database to simply click open on the web. This story by Michael West Media is apparently the first attempt to track approvals, and it has been a complex process.

According to Rod Campbell, research director at the Australia Institute “After coming to power at the ‘climate election’, the Australian Government is failing the public on climate policy in general, and on transparency in particular.

Despite government promises to overhaul environmental laws, fossil fuel approvals are difficult to keep track of and get made with very little fanfare.

Rod Campbell, TAI.

 

“There was the late afternoon approval of coal mines, the sly Woodside gas tax carve out ($) and now the ‘Favour for Santos’ Bill.

“It looks like the Labor Government is trying to put lipstick onto the Coalition’s climate policy pig.”

 Plibersek’s Pitt-stop now over

Tanya Plibersek’s three fossil fuel approvals, two coal and one gas, ranks ahead of the six coal mines that Keith Pitt approved as environment minister in the last 12 months of the Morrison government.

 

https://michaelwest.com.au/transparency-net-zero-new-fossil-fuel-approvals-by-environment-minister-tanya-plibersek-on-the-up/

 

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