My Daily Advertiser Op Ed column for Tuesday 29 September 2020

We should learn from the parallels between bushfires and COVID 19

There are many similarities between the bushfires we experienced last summer and the COVID 19 pandemic.

Most importantly, both are airborne. The carbon dioxide molecule that accumulates invisibly as we burn fossil fuels causes an increase in average global temperature. This triggers the droughts, floods and fires that plagued Australia over the past year.

The coronavirus also travels unseen through the atmosphere, inserting itself in our lungs, killing person after person, until it threatens our health system, economy and society.

I’m indebted to Tim Flannery for pointing out these parallels. He also warned that “The megafires and pandemic expose the lies that frustrate action on climate change” (Guardian Australia).

Despite these similarities many of us have been disappointed by the contrast between the federal government’s responses to the pandemic and to the climate threat. Scotty from Marketing was missing in action for much of the climate-related megafire but in the face of a pandemic he acted swiftly.

Yet on climate change he is unresponsive. This may prove catastrophic, for the climate emergency is now entering a crucial phase. To delay even for a few years risks triggering Earth’s tipping points. From that point there is no way back.

So time is now so short that we cannot wait for the next Australian election for action. It is the Morrison government that must act decisively if Australia is to do its part in averting this looming disaster.

Exactly why the federal government is not treating the climate emergency as it did the health emergency is probably known only to ScoMo’s cabinet. But a few factors are evident to all.

That Australia is the world’s largest exporter of gas and coal, two of the three fossil fuels that are causing climate change, is clearly fundamental. Too many people, including some politicians, are doing far too well from the trade in fossil fuels to want to stymie it, regardless of the impact on the climate. With coal in decline gas is the healthiest sector of Australia’s fossil fuel industry. It is the gas sector that the Morrison government is focussing on to lead the post-COVID-19 recovery.

One thing holding back progress is the $80bn that corporations have invested in domestic gas infrastructure. Acting on the climate emergency will mean that they will face huge losses.

Crucial in our understanding of the Morrison government’s inaction on climate change is of course the huge donations these corporations make to the Liberal and Nationals parties.

Unfortunately there are likely to be more megafires in the future. Due to the levels greenhouse gases have now reached we are likely to see megafires every eight years, as Tim Flannery’s research shows.

Will the Morrison government act in time? For years the denialists have argued that action on climate change would be “economy wrecking”. But the pandemic has shown that the ScoMo government can and will intervene at a level of intervention not seen since wartime.

So we need to convince Scotty from Marketing & Co that the government’s future depends on it taking action now. One hope is that the denialists are not as secure in their seats as they would have us believe. Arch denialist-in-chief Tony Abbott’s defeat at the last federal election is a prime example of their vulnerability.

If the denialists are challenged everywhere by, for example, the Greens, their grasp of power within the Coalition would slip even before the next election.

As I wrote today’s column ScoMo announced the government’s new energy plans. A plan without a target, of course. Some of its proposals are praiseworthy, such as clean green hydrogen, as opposed to dirty coal fired hydrogen. Some are nothing more than con jobs, such as carbon capture and storage (CCS). It’s a con because it doesn’t exist. And gas is still top of the class. No surprises there.

Perhaps last week’s Essential poll showing that two-thirds of voters would prefer Coalition support renewables rather than new gas plants will provoke ScoMo into action.

Against such a hopeful picture, the news from the climate scientists is getting worse and worse. Increasingly, many experts are viewing 2021, and specifically the UN climate change conference to be held in Glasgow late that year, as our last chance to avoid an environmental apocalypse.

My Daily Advertiser Op Ed column for Tuesday 22 September 2020

Extremist conspiracy groups will tear down civil society

The violent protests in Melbourne continue. Though they may superficially be about coronavirus lockdowns, in reality they are the product of extremist conspiracy theory groups.

Such groups will be the focus of my column this week. It is not in any way to be read as being against protests. Indeed, I’m strongly in support of our democratic right to protest. I have a long history of participating myself.

These days protests should by COVID safe, of course. With masks and social distancing that is entirely possible. These precautions were ignored in the Melbourne protests. Though flouting the regulations was a key part of protests, they were in large part also the cause of them.

Which brings me to conspiracy theory groups, for “Misinformation and dangerous conspiracy theories thrive when people are stressed and alone” as the Guardian Australia noted.

That is, COVID-19 adds to the reasons why people join conspiracy theory groups.

We’ve had anti-vaxxers, libertarians, and sovereign citizens for some time. More lately came those who blame the virus on 5G. All have an exaggerated sense of individuality that ignores the mutual obligations of living in a society that depends of cooperation for good social health. Because of this the conspiracy theory groups are a danger to the rest of us. Those opposed to the COVID-19 restrictions a particularly guilty on this count.

The latest conspiracy group to join the fray is QAnon, and it is more bizarre in its beliefs than most others, but more significantly, even more dangerous.   

Originating in the USA and once a fringe phenomenon, QAnon has made its way from the fringe into the mainstream. As well as “deep state” conspiracy theories, the movement has variously espoused anti-vaccine rhetoric, and the belief that wearing a mask in a public space won’t save you from infection with COVID-19 because “you can’t catch a virus that doesn’t exist”. Pushing this sort of argument is in part what makes QAnon so dangerous.

But there is more. QAnon followers also believe that nations are run by a ‘cabal’ through the ‘deep state’, and actively work for the overthrow of both through the ‘great awakening’. Deep state refers to the notion that influential members of government agencies or the military are involved in the secret manipulation or control of government policy.  

Whilst some aspects of our governing structures, such as America’s Homeland Security and our own Department of Home Affairs, are certainly reprehensible, QAnon’s ambitions would throw the baby out with the bath water.

In acknowledgement of its danger, in the United States the FBI has labelled QAnon “a potential domestic terror threat”. In contrast, but unsurprisingly, US President Donald Trump has described its followers as people who merely “love their country”.

Here a spokesperson for ASIO said it was aware of extremists seeking to exploit the circumstances and uncertainties of the COVID-19 environment.

When Melbourne’s stage four lockdown restrictions came into effect, QAnon followers in Australia flooded social media platforms with conspiracy theories, claiming variously that the pandemic was planned by the ‘deep state’.

The attraction of QAnon to its supporters is that it also offers a distinctive end goal.

It’s that end goal, the “fall of the cabal” or the defeat of the ‘deep state’ that differentiates QAnon from the conspiracies that precedes it. They don’t have an end date. QAnon does.

“Whereas this Q stuff offers a very satisfying, comforting framework. ‘The plan’ has been put into place. There are evil forces but they’re being dealt with. Don’t worry,” Dr Kaz Ross of the University of Tasmania told The Age.

According to data collected by Marc-Andre Argentino of Concordia University in Canada, Australia’s QAnon following is among the world’s largest. This is echoed in a recent report by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, which found Australia ranked fourth for discussion of QAnon on Twitter, behind the US, the UK and Canada.

“Since mid-March, we have seen an enormous explosion in conspiracy-related activity,” says Elise Thomas, a researcher of extremist dialogue and conspiracy extremism at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

So QAnon isn’t a major worry because of many of its crackpot theories, disturbing though they are, but because if its intention to tear down the fabric of civil society. That is their ‘end date’.

My Daily Advertiser Op Ed column for Tuesday 15 September 2020

New federal environment laws a recipe for extinction

The Morrison/McCormack government rammed its legislation to change Australia’s

environmental protection laws through the House of Representatives with indecent haste.

ScoMo & Co gagged debate to get it through at the last possible moment of the recent two week sitting of federal parliament.

Its passing prompted outrage from the Greens, Labor and the crossbench. The Greens have pushed to refer it to an inquiry. Labor resolved to oppose the changes.  Independent MP Zali Steggall attempted to amend the bill to require the states to conform with national environmental standards.

Critics rightly argued shifting approval powers to the states without an independent regulator would fail to protect the environment

Anger over proposed changes escalated, with legal, health and conservation groups urging that they not pass the Senate.

Many warned that they would increase the extinction rate, with WWF-Australia saying the bill in its current reform is a “recipe for extinction”. It also said that the bill lacks standards that would ensure strong protections for nature, as well as a commitment to an independent regulator to enforce the law.

“There is more than just wildlife at stake here,” Rachel Lowry, WWF-Australia’s chief conservation officer, said. ““Shifting approval powers to the states without an independent regulator to ensure enforcement would be the most damaging environmental decision to occur within Australia in recent decades.”

The bill will amend Australia’s environmental laws, clearing the way for the transfer of development approval powers to state and territory governments.

Scott Morrison, and his environment minister, Sussan Ley, argued the changes are necessary to aid Australia’s economic recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic. This is yet another example of using the coronavirus as cover for very bad legislation, which ScoMo had every intention of implementing anyway.

No member of the government spoke on the bill, which is shows how desperate Scotty from Marketing was to rush it through. It still has to pass the Senate. It will likely be debated during the October budget sittings.

Only the Senate crossbench can prevent the bill being passed. Given Pauline Hanson’s propensity to vote with the government it is going to be a tough call. Indeed, One Nation has blocked several attempts by the Greens to have a parliamentary committee examine the bill.

Rachel Walmsley, the policy and law reform director at the Environmental Defenders Office, said the bill has the potential to undermine the statutory review of the  Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 ( EPBC Act).

The EPBC review is not due to be tabled until the end of October. Pre-empting the review is yet another reprehensible aspect of the new bill.

The key finding of the review’s interim report was that Australia’s system of environmental protections had failed and the decline of wildlife and habitat was unsustainable.

The Climate and Health Alliance, which is a coalition of Australian health organisations, has also called on the Senate to block the amendments.

“Australia’s natural environment is declining on every possible measure. We lead the world in animal extinctions,” says the alliance’s executive director, Fiona Armstrong. “There is no economy without a healthy environment.”

The Law Council of Australia has called for the bill to be put before a parliamentary committee for inquiry and not rushed through the Senate.

The Council says this is particularly important for ensuring Australia still meets its obligations under some 33 international treaties and protocols to which it is signatory, including for world heritage sites.

“The point we make is that it is the commonwealth that is party to international treaties and it is the commonwealth government that has to meet the obligations in those treaties,” says Robyn Glindemann, the chair of the council’s environment and planning law group.

Australian conservation groups have written to the UN’s peak environmental heritage body urging it to oppose the Coalition’s bill, reported the Guardian Australia. In a letter to the director general of UNESCO, the 13 groups warn of the “alarming moves … to weaken legal protection for Australia’s 20 world heritage listed properties” through changes to the EPBC Act.

It is, sadly, no surprise that the Morrison government should snub UNESCO, given its tendency to echo the anti-UN stance of US President Trump.

My Daily Advertiser Op Ed column for Tuesday 8 September 2020

Gas is a dangerous fossil fuel

Gas is a fossil fuel that contributes significantly to our carbon footprint, and therefore global warming and climate change. Yet, despite all the evidence, the Morrison/McCormack government continues to push for a gas-led recovery from the coronavirus-induced recession.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison and his minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction, Angus Taylor, have been using the phrase “gas-fired recovery” ad nauseam for many months now. If only saying something over and over again could make it true the Australian economy would by now be well on its way to recovery.

Ditto Neville Power, the mining executive hand-picked by Morrison in March to head the mysterious National Covid-19 Coordination Commission, subsequently renamed the National Covid-19 Commission (NCC). Power and his fellow NCC members, many of them business leaders, were tasked with mapping Australia’s way out of the virus-induced recession.

‘We have not yet seen much in the way of a plan from the NCC’ reported the Saturday Paper. However, early indications, including a leaked interim report from one of the commission’s taskforces, suggest that gas is being positioned as our economy’s saviour.

Indeed, gas companies have touted their lobbying efforts to get pipeline and infrastructure projects on the radar of the commission advising the federal government on coronavirus recovery.

“The National Covid-19 Coordination Commission’s manufacturing taskforce discussions were reportedly “completely dominated by the gas sector, and the body ultimately recommended the government should underwrite investment in new pipelines” noted the Guardian Australia as recently as last week.

One of the justifications for all this hype is that gas is a ‘safe’ transition fuel from our coal-based energy system.

Yet environmentalists and scientists have long dismissed gas as a ‘transition fuel’ as we move to renewables.

Two weeks ago a group of leading Australian scientists took the unusual step of writing to the Chief Scientist, Dr Alan Finkel, saying his support for gas as an energy source “is not consistent with a safe climate” (Sydney Morning Herald).

And yet the Morrison government continues to press for more gas mining.

Which brings us to the proposal by Santos to mine coal seam gas near Narrabri, in northern NSW. The project, now in the final stages of the assessment process by the NSW Independent Planning Commission (IPC), would involve drilling up to 850 wells over 20 years.

To call the Narrabri project controversial would be an understatement.

Conservationists oppose it because 60 per cent of the project is located in the Pilliga forest, the largest remnant woodland in the state. It is home to various threatened species, including koalas. Many local farmers also are fiercely opposed. They cite scientific assessments of potential chemical contamination of aquifers.

Since the then state Department of Planning and Environment invited submissions on the project in 2017, it has received a record number of more than 23,000 responses. 97 per cent were opposed to the development.

Among the submissions was one from Australia’s former chief scientist Professor Penny Sackett, now with the Australian National University’s Climate Change Institute. Dr Sackett argued that the development would undermine Australia’s greenhouse gas reduction commitments.

The Narrabri project, Professor Sackett wrote, would add about five million tonnes of greenhouse gases to Australia’s emissions at a time when the country needs to be cutting at least 7.5 million tonnes a year to meet its 2030 emissions reduction targets.

In order to keep warming below two degrees Celsius, “about 50 per cent of Australian gas reserves must remain in the ground”, Sackett wrote. “Thus, approval of new fossil fuel development or expansion is incompatible with keeping global warming to 2°C and will ‘lock in’ emissions and warming far beyond the end of mining operations.”

The former chief scientist warned that the Narrabri Gas Project alone would eat up 11 per cent of NSW’s carbon budget if Australia is to meet Paris climate targets.

The IPC was due to deliver its decision on the Narrabri project last Friday. That has now been shifted to September 30, following a demand from the progressive think tank The Australia Institute, prompted by a last-minute submission from Santos. This radically alters its economic forecasts for the project.

Let’s hope that the IPC’s report reflects the views of the climate experts and not those of the cronies of Scotty from Marketing.