Author: Peter Gardner

Reproduced from Just Community

Why would we focus on fossil fuels if there are alternatives? It turns out South Gippsland is the potential home to Australia’s first offshore wind farm, the Star of the South project. It aims to produce nearly 20% of Victoria’s energy needs. The project is currently undergoing environmental approvals and community consultation to determine if the trade-offs are acceptable to provide this resource. The Danish investment and leadership in the Star of the South project comes from their scientific expertise in wind energy. This emerged from the Riso Labs near Roskilde in Denmark, a former nuclear reactor site, which suddenly lost its social license in a democratic vote. The wind and dispersion scientists that worked to protect Danish citizens from nuclear hazards reinvented themselves as wind energy scientists and are now transforming the energy world.

In CSIRO we also had wind scientists who formed successful companies to map wind resources, and my group in Melbourne calibrated accurate anemometers commercially for local wind farms in our wind tunnels for many years. I spent a few weeks at Riso working with turbulent-wind-flow experts in my own research career and I have worked on air pollution hazards around Australia, including the Latrobe Valley.

The rest of the world is investing heavily in offshore wind farms, with French President Macron announcing an extra 3 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind generation (on top of a planned 5GW) as a COVID-19 recovery response. This French investment amounts to five Star-of-the-South projects, but importantly highlights that the cheapest form of new energy extraction is renewables, even for a country already heavily invested in nuclear energy and its associated regulatory infrastructure and supply chains. Now is not the time for Australia to consider nuclear energy start-up as a sensible post-COVID-19 change.

Our group’s interest in Just Transitions goes beyond the cheapest form of energy production for Melbourne’s consumption and Viking profits, but instead asks what useful work can be done and what social outcomes that energy could drive in South Gippsland. The past century has been one of mass urbanization with more than half the planet’s people now living and working in major cities. The social distancing, robotic factories and online work now required makes it unclear what role cities now play in efficient economic growth. The economic growth we have previously seen from mass immigration, tourism, and international education will be greatly diminished. It has never been more appropriate to think about how to develop non-urban regions and find value in greater decentralization and better tree-change living.

South Gippsland may end up as a major renewable energy hub, and while it has considerable potential for growth of regenerative agriculture with new jobs and economic benefits, local recovery from the pandemic will require more advanced activity, consumption and energy use in and by the people of South Gippsland itself.

This change all starts with ideas, like using energy locally to create bio-fertilizer from brown coal, or scaling up regenerative agriculture, or expanding creative industries, social housing, expanding local amenity for a larger population, social-distance safe eco-tourism, to name just a few. It seems to me that it is an important time to respond to the call for new ideas, not the least in South Gippsland. So please make your ideas known, none can be much sillier than a desperate ongoing fetish for polluting fossil fuels.

Get involved.

Reproduced from Just Community

A group of us in and around Fish Creek have been thinking about a future based on a fair society with a sustainable environmental footprint. Around the planet the climate-change issue has driven a lot of people to do this with the tag lines of ‘Just Transition’ or ‘Green New Deal’. It seeks hope in dark times, but things have gotten even darker.

Despite the urgency of the climate crisis, highlighted by the extreme bushfire season only months ago, nothing has primed our society for change as much as the COVID-19 pandemic has. The Prime Minister Scott Morrison has called for bold thought and new ideas to rebuild the collapsed economy, clearly indicating that it can’t recover without public intervention, a novel idea itself for the last 40 years.

Perhaps investing long term in CSIRO to use science and economics for green growth is the idea we need? Perhaps it is time for regional development and more balanced urban development? Perhaps we can get rid of open plan offices? Unfortunately, the usual noisy suspects and vested interests are promoting more of the same lame old thinking, particularly fossil fuel investment in gas extraction, perhaps with domestic reservation to create employment in plastics and fertilizers. Others suggest less green-tape environmental control on development for more pollution and degradation of the land, water, air and biosphere. At the same time, we are learning that increasing human exposure in the stressed wild world is where new pandemics will originate.

Others desperately attack workers, foreigners, trade unions, and ultimately the living standards of the broader community. The growing evidence from around the world is that the fossil fuel pathway is not wise even if it seems more palatable than unregulated environmental and job degradation. In the United States, gas from fracking has been a growth industry as capacity shifted from imports to domestic production with reservation for job creation in chemical industries.

Recent measurements show fugitive emissions make this gas as dirty as coal, and Australian clean coal is a fraudulent claim to boot! Now a massive wave of bankruptcies is washing over the fossil fuel sector as it becomes uneconomic in changed times with falling prices, so the jobs are vanishing too. The finance sector is divesting from fossil fuels globally, and governments are begged and badgered around the world to be investors of last resort in a dying industry. Not too much bold innovation or thinking there.

Jobs to produce chemical fertilizer and plastics are also not the hallmarks of progress they once were. We regularly hear about plastic pollution of the ocean and can see it for ourselves on many of the beautiful beaches in South Gippsland. Less well known is the growing and necessary trend towards regenerative agriculture drawing back from chemical fertilizer use, instead focusing on soils, land use and animals, often with better economic, environmental and job outcomes.

To be continued

EGCAN media release (edited).

The trifecta of drought, fire and pandemic is still having an impact on our region. Without doubt we have been the worst affected area in the state. The recent Advertiser editorial (27/5/20) and article on the need for a plan for East Gippsland (20/5/20) highlights the need to seize this moment and look to our future.

Reports show that East Gippsland farmers have experienced a 20% loss of income due to climate change, over the past 20 years (ABARES Dec 2019). This is now eclipsed by post fire research (SGS Economics and Planning) showing a decline in annual GDP of 22% for East Gippsland. It’s the greatest impact for all bushfire effected areas in Australia and three times the predicted national rate of decline in GDP post COVID-19.

Without serious action, rising temperatures across East Gippsland will result in increased drought frequency and intensity with more days of extreme heat. The Bushfire Royal Commission last week heard that we can expect another two severe fire events this decade. Our plan must focus on strategies to reduce carbon emissions and ensure our region’s prosperity. Keeping global temperatures below 1.5ºC is still possible.

Community consultation is essential. Embracing latest technologies and opportunities can make East Gippsland the most energy efficient and productive part of the state. Bold choices include providing incentives for major businesses to invest in renewable energy, powering green production and processing of our agricultural produce.

Support for regenerative farming practices will store carbon in the soil while improving soil fertility and productivity. Retraining and re-deploying timber workers and others will provide a workforce to manage our drought affected and stressed forests to encourage bio-diversity and create new forests and plantations.

Rapid implementation of Electric Vehicle (EV) charging stations in every town in East Gippsland will enable our region to meet the needs of locals and tourists. There are predictions that EVs will be competitive with internal combustion vehicles by the middle of this decade.

We need to ensure existing homes are more energy efficient and new developments subject to planning changes to ensure subdivisions have the best aspect for sun and shade and encourages efficient all-electric homes complete with solar. Community battery storage is as an affordable way to manage energy. Improved energy star ratings will save energy and increase comfort.

A major renewables project already in the advanced planning stage is the Perry Bridge Solar Farm. This will provide 44 MW of new power with battery storage of 40-50MWh. By developing renewables locally, we become less reliant on coal from the Valley and the local gas fired power station can be scaled back allowing for reduced greenhouse gas emissions.

Isolated towns are ideal for solar and wind powered micro-grids backed by batteries to ensure reliable power. This ensures stable electricity services to areas identified as having vulnerable power supplies, such as Omeo/Benambra, Mallacoota and Buchan/Gelantipy. There has been an enthusiastic response to the recently launched solar/battery micro-grid at Licola.

We need to develop a coherent plan for our future. This will include projects that can start immediately and will reduce carbon emissions rapidly for a safe and sustainable future…

Letter in the Gippsland Times 28.5 (Edited)

It may have passed unnoticed by some that our neighbouring municipality, the East Gippsland Shire, put to vote on April 21 whether or not their governing council would concede to declare a climate emergency. If they’d had the initiative to vote in affirmation, then the East Gippsland Shire Council would have been the 32nd local council in Victoria to do so…

I personally expected no other outcome, as I am acutely aware of popular conservative and regressive trends which can be observed all throughout eastern Victoria. Yet it still grieves me to witness that, even in the aftermath of the devastation wrought by the Black Summer bushfires, we are still seeing a wilful refusal by our current leadership to accept that life as we know it is already changing horribly, and with indiscriminate consequences.

It is recognised that 33 people died in the space of four months – a number that does not include the estimated 417 people who died from poor air quality attributed to the alarming amount of bushfire smoke. Of the recognised 33 people who we lost, four were fellow Gippslanders. I would like to remind everyone now who they were -firefighter David Moresi from Johnsonville, Fred Becker from Maramingo Creek, Mick Roberts from Buchan, and firefighter Bill Slade from Wonthaggi. I never had the opportunity to meet any of these men, and now my chance is lost forever. I mourn them regardless.

There is no argument that can scientifically dispute that the unprecedented Black Summer bushfires were so severe because of climate change. Ask a scientist and they’ll tell you exactly this. Ask a firefighter and they’ll tell you how unnatural the Black Summer was. The scale and scope of the destruction we have just lived through should have been completely manageable.

If the East Gippsland Shire cannot accept the science and declare a climate emergency in the wake of the destruction which it has suffered, where can we possibly go from here? How do we save ourselves? It was my personal hero, Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, who famously said, “Our house is on fire.” Our house is not just on fire. Our house has already burned down around us. The ashes may have cooled, but the threat of climate change remains.

The councillors on the East Gippsland Shire Council should feel ashamed of themselves. They have just told the people of their municipality that they are satisfied with their current suffering and will tolerate more deaths in the future. Because unless we treat climate change like a crisis, a disaster like the Black Summer will happen again…We need to act now.

(edited)

The risk with the multiple enquiries into these catastrophic fires is that they will focus on the small picture: mitigation by changed controlled burning, land management practices, fire services staffing issues, equipment etc. These are all, of course important and with the increases in fires as the planet warms, we will need to invest significant capital into these on-ground measures. Unfortunately, wildfires are going to become more frequent and widespread with increased global warming, and once started will be, like the fires we had this summer, unstoppable. We will often have to hunker down and protect as much as we can till they burn themselves out.

The only way that we can manage the fires in future is to attempt to halt climate change at less than 1.5ºC warming. As the slogan used by climate change activists in Bairnsdale, Sale and Melbourne says ‘If this is 1ºC warming what will 3 degrees look like?’ We may have missed the boat to stop global temperatures at less than 1.5°C. We are rapidly running out of time to stay below 2°C. This state of affairs means that the type of fire season we have just experienced will happen more often. With the further drying of the driest continent, more areas will burn repeatedly… The cost of ongoing inaction will be more than can be imagined – environment destruction, economic collapse, social upheaval, fear, and incredible personal loss.

We cannot afford to countenance any more developments that will release carbon into the atmosphere. New coal mines such as in the Galilee basin must not go ahead. The Victorian State governments opening up of land based gas exploration is the last thing we need. New research shows that rather than being less environmentally destructive than coal, gas exploration and production is at least as bad. In fact, fossil fuels will be a bad investment in any case and new fossil fuel start-ups are almost certain to become stranded assets with negative impacts on our economy as it recovers from the dual hit of immense fires and COVID19.

The current federal government response to climate change with 25-28% emissions reduction by 2030 is actually a plan for global warming of 3-4 degrees. Climate change has been significantly affecting the length of the fire season, the severity of the fires and their range. This last fire season has been uniquely destructive and unmanageable. Unfortunately the science is showing us that this is only going to get worse. The only action that will stop this worsening by many orders of magnitude will be urgent action on reducing global CO2 emissions.

Numerous recommendations will be made by impacted stakeholders; individuals, communities, various vested interests, emergency services, scientists, in fact all parts of the communities affected. Many of these will make a difference and may increase our preparedness to deal with increasingly worse fires in future.

For all the words that will be written to the Royal Commission, there is however, only one recommendation that can prevent the risk and intensity of fire increasing year after year. The only measure that will matter will be for every level of government and society to take urgent, effective action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. If this is not done we will be pouring more and more money and resources, lives and infrastructure into a losing battle.

Footnotes and full submission.

(edited)

East Gippsland Climate Action Network (EGCAN) is a community group promoting urgent action on climate change. We focus on our region of East Gippsland, but we see that national and indeed global solutions are required…our members have been affected by the fires; loss of property, loss of income, long term smoke inhalation, and had their lives disrupted for weeks and months as they were forced from their homes and communities by the fire threat. Many are living amongst a blackened landscape, still waiting for permanent housing and property restoration. Now all are in social isolation due to the COVID19 pandemic. The bushfires that impacted much of East coast Australia over many months have caused immense damage to individuals, whole communities, regions and the precious remaining forests in the burnt areas. The British Met office has estimated that global CO2 will rise by 10% in 2020 with 1/5th of the rise solely attributable to our bushfires.

The only way to mitigate fires such as those in 2019-20 is to treat global warming as an international emergency, as we have with the COVID19 pandemic. With ‘all stops pulled out’ we may be able to hold warming at 1.5ºC. While we will still have an increase in severity of weather events, the risk will not get exponentially worse, as it will with the Federal Government’s plan of only 25-28% cuts to CO2 by 2030.

In 2008 Ross Garnaut made the prediction that global warming would result in extreme fire weather with resultant bush fires by 2020. While he may seem to have been prescient, he based his predictions on research from multiple organizations including the CSIRO. The CSIRO report Climate change impacts on fire weather in South-East Australia (2005) predicted extreme fire weather by 2020. They also identified that this would become even worse by 2050. Astonishingly little effective action has been taken on this and myriad research that has predicted similar dire outcomes.

Indeed, as it is well publicised, more than 97% of climate scientists agree with the evidence showing that burning fossil fuels and releasing long stored carbon into the atmosphere is causing dramatic increases in global temperatures. The consensus is clear. There are also many alarming studies showing that if we do not act decisively in the next decade we may trigger a series of tipping points that will lead to a cascade of dramatic, irreversible changes in our planet.

There is a great deal of research outlining solutions to this global issue. The key however is to urgently cut greenhouse gases. The ‘unprecedented’ fires of the 2019-20 fire season, which burnt from September to March, have been somewhat overwhelmed by the equally unprecedented COVID19 pandemic.

However, unlike COVID19, to which we will hopefully develop a vaccine, global temperatures will continue to rise until effective action is taken. There is no vaccine for climate change. Governments and communities at all levels have listened and acted with a sense of urgency following clear scientific advice in relation to COVID-19. Early decisive action has been central in reducing the scale of future devastation. The same must happen in relation to the clear scientific advice regarding climate change.

(to be continued).

Footnotes and full article here.

First published in the Bairnsdale Advertiser 21 May

As we start to hear promising news about emerging from stage three restrictions, it is a great time to get some inspiration. I had the good fortune to participate along with around 100 other people in the first of six webinars from the Gippsland Smart Futures series. Three large-scale renewable energy companies were show cased, all awaiting final approvals and all promising significant job opportunities. The development of these three inspiring projects will occur from Perry Bridge and westward. It set me to thinking about possibilities for East Gippsland.

It didn’t take long to come up with ideas that would enhance East Gippsland and address the need for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. We enjoy a place of great natural beauty that provides endless opportunities to develop tourism. Eco-adventure recreation and heritage restoration projects such as the Omeo mountain bikes trails, the Emerald Link walk and Orbost railway bridge are some examples.

We could extend and improve our public housing stock to address a desperate need. Just last week The Advertiser featured a story on the plight of homeless people in Bairnsdale. We could build 10 star houses for low-income people to live economically, comfortably and with dignity. We could introduce mechanisms to improve the efficiency of existing housing through incentives for improved insulation, glazing, heat pumps and domestic solar generation.

These are small-scale projects that have the added benefit of saving money, greenhouse gas emissions and improving peoples’ lives. Projects of this nature provide much needed employment; boosting demand for our local electricians, plumbers, glaziers- indeed all trades and local businesses. The opportunities are endless but we need government support and money. That’s where the influence of local politicians Tim Bull and Darren Chester is critical.

Post COVID -19, let’s go for a clean green future; one which is more sustainable, stimulates our economy and brings long term gains for this wonderful part of Victoria.

First Published in the Bairnsdale Advertiser 21May

During the devastating fires this summer, the firies were our heroes… universally recognised and applauded, rightly so! During COVID-19 our health workers and medical scientists have been and still are our heroes, universally recognised and applauded, rightly so! Now we urgently need to do the same for our climate scientists, often ignored or downplayed in the past by our governments.

People are saying let’s get back to normal, but what’s normal? For us in East Gippsland pre-virus meant a three-year drought and a devastating bushfire that burnt more than 18 million hectares of south east Australia and sent smoke plumes around the planet. A bushfire predicted by scientists and firefighters alike. A bushfire, that research has shown, was significantly more likely because of human-induced climate change.

With COVID-19 our government took heed of the scientists and acted quickly and decisively and in doing so they significantly reduced the potential pandemic deaths for us here in Australia. They have shown us that they can put aside their differences and work together for the good of us all. COVID19 has also shown us that the Australian people, when presented with the facts, respond enthusiastically and responsibly. There has been a tremendous sense of community support and good will. Most people want to do what is right for society as a whole.

So, this is a plea to our Government; follow the science and take the actions needed to make a difference on climate change. This is a plea not to go back to party politics and simplistic one-liners. This issue is too important for that. People need to know what is at stake and what are the possibilities. We need the facts laid out truthfully and clearly, not the fear mongering, political spin and actual misinformation we have had in the past.

We need to honour our climate scientists* just like we did with our firies and medical professionals. We need to listen to and act on climate research and modelling just like we have with the pandemic. Flattening the curve is a concept well understood now and is equally important for minimising the worst of climate change. We have the resources and the know how to build a healthy sustainable environment as well as a thriving economy.

So, let’s do it.

The Author if from Nicholson and one of the founders of EGCAN

* See similar blog on our science heroes here.

Scientific advice to governments and communities is one important thing scientists do. There are many scientific voices in the media, so it can be confusing. These voices can also often lobby politicians for vested private interests rather than for broad community benefit. That is why CSIRO is important – it is largely funded by the public for public benefit in Australia. It is regularly scrutinised in open senate estimates committee hearings to test its integrity and it is an independent statutory agency, not a government department controlled by a Minister.

I worked as an Atmospheric scientist in CSIRO* for 30 years and represented scientists as President of the staff association for 15 years. When I began my career at CSIRO, I was directly involved in the Latrobe Valley Air shed looking into pollution from coal-fired power stations.

Over time issues have changed: climate change, wind energy, bushfire smoke, atmospheric particulate matter, even airborne viruses, all of which have recently impacted on South Gippsland, where I am now living.

Public research activity and science always changes as new issues impact on our lives. Often, and today, our work as scientists goes beyond narrow economic benefits, for concern about our shared health and well-being affects us all. The decisions that governments make need to be informed by the best science, but politicians don’t always respond well to experts. CSIRO is important for advice on climate, energy, water resource management, agricultural and human biosecurity, all critically important current issues. For example, CSIRO biosecurity scientists warned in December 2019 against international travel because of the coronavirus.

On the other hand, CSIRO advice on climate science has famously been ignored in Canberra and many State capitals — repeatedly, year after year, it seems. For all of Australia, what we need is leadership from our elected representatives, leadership which relies on the best scientific advice. We also need responsibility from all citizens to assess, and to learn to assess, the scientific advice that impacts on how we are going to live our lives: from lockdowns, hygiene, energy use, climate adaptation, pollution mitigation; this advice is crucial to the future economy and the creation of jobs.

Clearly, our lives are changing dramatically right now, and we need to demand wise and compassionate leadership to build a future containing the broadest community benefits. We are fortunate to have active institutions like CSIRO (among other public agencies) to help advise on the path forward. It is up to us as citizens to demand that our politicians work more closely with scientists and with communities, in open, consultative ways, if we are to rebuild our lives, and society in safer, cleaner, prosperous and sustainable ways. Simply asking your elected officials to do this is a way to start – you can always write an email in a lockdown.

Yanakie

Republished from Just Community No.2 April 2020

*For more on CSIRO scientists see here.

It has been obvious for many years that the climate emergency will only be solved by active government planning, direction and finance in what I have loosely called a ‘command economy’. The question of how our economy recovers after the coronavirus lockdown is paramount – business as usual (and climate catastrophe) or working towards Australia as a renewable energy superpower.

Writing in an irregular newsletter Peter Cook* President of the Dandenong Ranges Renewable Energy Association under the heading ‘Corona Conversations 3’ noted the following: “Last night on ‘The Drum’ and again on ‘Q&A’ some people were posing the question of what sort of society Australia wants to become post pandemic? A related and similar question is what sort of economy will we need and want? Outspoken climate activist from Gippsland Peter Gardner recently suggested that western governments “will move away from the ‘laisse faire’ of free enterprise towards that of a command economy”.

Cook added that “About the same time over 80 Landcare, environmental, farming and conservation groups suggesting a ‘hands on’ interventionist approach wrote to state and federal governments proposing the creation of 24,000 jobs in land rehabilitation as part of a post-pandemic stimulus package. Under the proposal, landscapes and infrastructure damaged by the recent drought and bushfires would be rehabilitated in part by people who had lost jobs as a result of COVID-19”.

Cook continued: “I hope this is a conversation that keeps going and that politicians realise that we should not go back to what was because community expectations of governments have changed permanently. In some ways, it is up to us to drive this conversation to where we want it to go. It may not become a command economy like Peter Gardner is suggesting…but it will need to be a much more proactive system of government.”

Another reader also questioned the meaning of ‘command economy’. She was worried in particular that the term meant an authoritarian government like that of China. In the blog that interested Cook I suggested that some form of conscription may be needed to direct labour to where it is most needed. Perhaps what I had in mind is a ‘mixed economy’ where capital and business has a role to play, albeit with them subservient to government and not the opposite (which is currently the case).

One historical example of an economic revolution of the sort that is needed is Germany in the 1930s when Nazi government direction, planning and coercion, saw the economy grow from the depths of depression in 1932 to one of substance and full employment by 1939. Business and capital played a significant role in this. This growth unfortunately involved the re-militarisation of Germany – achieved for all the wrong reasons and with eventually disastrous results.

This shows however, that governments have a major role to play and that it is possible to achieve the required changes. With noble and humanitarian aims and democratic and co-operative tools, the positive outcomes will benefit us all. Command economies and democracies are not mutually exclusive. The jobs suggested above by Cook, for instance, should involve far less government interference than is currently the case in the coronavirus pandemic. All that is missing is the will to act.

*Peter Cook can be contacted here.