Gippsland Climate News

Edited version from Baw Baw Sustainability Network Newsletter

In his book Super-Power, Ross Garnaut has electrification of the transport industry as a major plank in achieving reduced carbon emissions. Yet according to the motoring press, the general public regard electric cars as too expensive and their limited range and charging times means they are not practical. Without more Government incentives this makes them a harder sell. Our cancelled Electric car event was to get people thinking about EV’s for their next vehicle purchase which may be over the next 2 to 3 years.

Environmentally an ‘average’ household car uses about 2.5-3.0* tons of CO2 per year, with the average household running about 1.5 cars.  The average household emissions from gas and electricity use in Victoria is about 8.0 tons CO2.  So, an EV can significantly reduce emissions. If we are to achieve a 50% reduction in emissions in Victoria by 2030 I guess we could have a personal target of reducing our household emissions by 50%, and EV’s can help significantly. Of course there may be more cost efficient ways of reducing an individual household energy use and emission (draught proofing, insulation etc).

E V’s are more expensive but prices are coming down all the time. Various sources claim EV purchase price will be the same as petrol/diesel vehicles within the next 2 to 3 years. Also some organisations are planning to import second hand EV’s from Japan. ‘Normal’ electric/petrol hybrids certainly help through better petrol consumption, but if our aim is to reduce household consumption by 50% then arguably they don’t reduce emissions enough. Plug-in hybrids on the other hand reduce petrol consumption significantly and could have a place, particularly in rural areas where charging points in the short term may be less available.

We look forward to debating these points when we are able to get our events up and running again. In the meantime we have BBSN members who have purchased EV’s and plug in hybrids, and they will contribute their e experience at our next event. In the meantime our guest speaker Paul Paton suggests you google’ The Driven’ podcasts.  These include topics such as ‘Why your EV will be a virtual power plant’ and other EV topics.

*Petrol car emission = (litres per 100 km x 0.0238) x km per year /1000 = tons CO2 Example: 8 litres per 100 km x 0.0238 x 14000 km per year divided by 1000 = 2.66 tons CO2

 ** Average Household emissions assumption: 50,000 MJ gas and 14800 kWh electricity per year.

EG CAN Media Release*

Members of East Gippsland Climate Action Network (EG CAN) recently met with East Gippsland Shire Councillors at their regular Tuesday morning briefing session. Sally Kendall, Nick Blandford and Carina Turner presented a compelling case for the declaration of a Climate Emergency in East Gippsland. This was supported by more than 1,600 signatures on a petition calling for the council to declare a Climate Emergency.

Carina outlined the case for declaring a Climate Emergency ‘The declaration of the climate emergency, will encourage the councillors and the council employees to take the lead within our community to allow sustainability to be at the forefront of the council decisions.’

Sally discussed the excellent programs the shire has initiated and the positive affect these are having for the region and beyond. With a Climate Emergency declaration in place, we could ensure that all decisions are made in a framework where the best outcome for the region is achieved while reducing carbon emissions. The community then maximises the long term viability of agriculture, commerce and tourism with preservation of an intact natural environment.

Nick used his experience as a farmer to explain the impact of climate change on agriculture. Mentioning recent government research, Nick discussed the real world impact of the estimated 22% cut in farm income directly related to climate change over the past 20 years. With drought, fire and finally floods across our region Nick highlighted some of the positive work being done by farmers to imbed carbon in their soils as part of creating resilient climate change ready farms.

Nick said ‘by declaring a climate emergency a signal is sent to the community and further to investment capital and supply chains that the leaders of our community are looking beyond adaptation and exploring the opportunities that can benefit the economy, environment and society’.

The group highlighted to councillors that hundreds of governments at all levels across the world have already declared a climate emergency. After the unprecedented drought, capped by horrendous fires, few regions in Australia have a more compelling reason to adopt a Climate Emergency than East Gippsland. The petition has been presented to council, with a motion to follow at a future meeting.”

* This was reported in detail in the Bairnsdale Advertiser (3.4) admittedly on page 14 of a coronavirus slimmed down issue under the heading “Pushing a Case for Climate Emergency”.

The Friends of the Earth (FOE) have come up with a post Covid-19 Blueprint for Australia much of which is valid for Gippsland. The Blueprint for Climate Justice is in “response to the economic impacts of the outbreak of the Coronavirus” pandemic and noted “state and federal governments are now announcing rolling, large-scale stimulus packages to keep the economy afloat. These already total billions of dollars and are likely to be ongoing.  This is both a threat and an opportunity for the future of the economy, the climate and ecosystems at a time of overlapping crises.”

The threat is that “the Morrison government [will] attempt to force through subsidies for new coal mines and fossil fuel generators, bailouts of large corporations and guarantees for executive pay” whilst the opportunity is “to use the massive investment of public funds [required] to start to position our economy to be fit for purpose for the reality of climate change”. The latter is commonly referred to as a ‘just transition’ and is essential in creating lasting solutions for climate action. It requires that this “massive investment of public funds” (which the pandemic had already necessitated) be invested wisely.

The blueprint lists over 50 possible investments in rebuilding public infrastructure, energy, cities and transport, forests, rivers and the natural world, agriculture and food systems and waste. At the same time clearly asserts that a basic guarantee of jobs, housing and essential services is required for all. As I have pointed out previously there will be jobs for all when the climate emergency is tackled properly.

Of negative relevance to Gippsland in the blueprint is that the ‘waste to energy’ plant planned for in the Latrobe Valley is unsustainable and should therefore be shelved. Likewise are the plans and investments already made for the production of hydrogen using brown coal. On the positive side the blueprint promotes offshore wind – the only project of this kind on the drawing board being the Star of the South in south Gippsland.

The blueprint also noted that the selection of pumped hydro projects should be fast tracked of which there are a number of possibilities in Gippsland including Paul Treasure’s Baw Baw Thompson Dam pumped hydro proposal. In the energy area the blueprint also suggested “Directly fund[ing] the construction of mid-scale community owned renewable energy projects such as wind and solar farms, micro-hydro and energy storage in every local council area in regional Victoria.”

There are obvious and clear choices for governments to make on this. We are, more or less, following the directions of science on the threat posed by the coronavirus pandemic. Now is the time, and the opportunity, to follow the science on climate change. Thanks are due to the FOE for their pioneering efforts and their perseverance.

Bipartisanship is where the adversarial nature of our political system is put aside and where representatives of the various parties work together for the common good. Bipartisanship is necessary when we are faced with emergencies and is generally found during wartime situations when nations face an external threat. Now we are currently faced with two emergencies – the immediate one of the coronavirus pandemic and the enormous one of global warming. Because the warming is gradual on a human timescale it can be perceived as distant threat and repeatedly challenged in the adversarial system.  This has been the unfortunate outcome so far with the climate emergency.

Scott Hamilton writing on the coronavirus emergency noted “We are again in an era in which we must put the national interest first and draw fulsomely from the bipartisan peace-pipe. Every day and every hour, Australia’s leaders are making life and death decisions. In making those calls, they are shaping our future politics and our future society. In support of those decisions, it’s time for a genuine national cabinet — one based on capability not ideology.”

In the Conversation Michelle Grattan noted that it was not all plain sailing in the current ‘national cabinet’. “Victorian premier Daniel Andrews (Labor) and NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian (Liberal) are hardliners…The two premiers have given notice their states are set to move to lockdown (where people would be confined to their homes). Jacinda Ardern has already taken New Zealand there. With the divide crossing partisan lines, Andrews and Berejiklian are working closely together. Scott Morrison is the prime advocate of the gradual approach. Resisting a full lockdown, he argued strongly this week he didn’t want to throw people out of jobs where it was possible to avoid doing so, and that he feared the consequences of the stresses the economic crisis would put on families.”

It is a tragedy of our times that the Rudd-Turnbull attempt at bipartisanship on emissions trading in 2008 did not succeed but was stymied by a ‘fifth column’ led by Abbott and backed by the coal lobby. This was made much worse with the rejection of the Gillard ‘carbon tax’ – imperfect as it was. On climate the division has been – and is now – between the science and knowledge on one hand and power, money and ignorance on the other. Australia went from leading on climate to a pariah amongst nations.

Now is the time to plan a rapid recovery from the coronavirus pandemic that is aimed squarely at the climate emergency. Many of the actions are obvious. Most of them have been repeated ‘ad nauseum’ in this column and a number are labour intensive. If the Chinese can build a thousand bed hospital in days perhaps we can get the Sea Electric factory in Morwell operating in months, not years.

I apologise for the flippant and mediocre jokes I attempted in my recent blog on the coronavirus and climate emergencies. They were in bad taste for so serious a matter. The message though was clear – that the wartime action of rationing is the solution to panic buying by the public. My observations of the coronavirus crisis so far have been the fairly obvious ones – that government responses have been varied, sometimes reactionary and in many cases too late. 

The recorded virus fatalities now (26.3) number over 20,000 and this figure leaps every few days on an exponential path. The fatality numbers vary greatly from nation to nation and appear much higher when government actions are minimal and/or late. Relatively the ‘command economy’ of China has fared much better and wartime experience suggests that this eventually will be the way of the climate emergency.

Though hard to imagine the fatalities and disruption of the climate emergency will be much greater than we are experiencing now. The ‘warming’ fatalities are already quite high but are seemingly unrelated to climate change. Two recent examples include the 372 extra fatalities during the heatwave that preceded Black Saturday or the more than 400 extra smoke related deaths that occurred during our recent bushfires. As the planet warms these uncounted ‘climate fatalities’ will continue increasing as a wide range of extreme weather events – heatwaves, droughts, bushfires, storms – get worse.

 The media is yet to grasp the climate emergency like they have the coronavirus but the current treatment is surely indicative of what it will eventually look like. Whilst a vaccine for the coronavirus will be available within 18 months the climate emergency will dominate the lives of every living human being in one way or another for the foreseeable future. For one thing spreading harmful and misleading information on climate change, as some sections of our media have persisted with, will become a criminal offence.

But there is also some good news on the climate emergency front. When we start to tackle the climate emergency there will be no unemployment like the current crisis has engendered. The opposite will be the case with full employment and possibly even conscription to direct labor and resources to where they are most urgently required. In many cases there will be over full employment especially in the regions as our power systems become more decentralised. The dole office will be replaced by a labour co-ordinating office. And governments (mainly western) will move away from the ‘laisse faire’ of free enterprise towards that of a command economy.

When we moved from the bush to the town seven years ago there were two criteria for the best location for our new home. The first was a north facing roof for solar panels and the other was to be within easy walking distance of essential services. In my own case these ‘essentials’ were the library and the railway station both of which were eventually less than 10 minutes’ walk away. Until recently transport around town was walking, bike riding and lastly using our small 4 cylinder car. Our larger 4 wheel drive, now over 20 years old, was retained for longer trips. This is now much reduced as the train is used occasionally by my wife and I. Also my preference is to walk everywhere I can, and I have not used my bike for a year or two.

About 6 months ago I became the owner of a battery electric vehicle – a Nissan Leaf. The vehicle was imported from Japan and purchased by my wife, and is mainly used by her. Ideally I would prefer not to own a car but the semi-remote nature of our town has meant that at least one is required.  Our ‘new’ car is a 2015 model and has a range of about 150Ks which puts Melbourne out of reach especially as we are trying to run the battery between 20-80% of charge.

But it easily covers trips around town which is approximately 95% of our vehicle usage.* Purchasing a second hand vehicle means that there is no extra CO2 produced during manufacture, but on downside the seller will probably be buying a new car – hopefully electric. Buying second-hand also brings the price of the vehicle into a range we can afford. As an added bonus the car is charged from our rooftop solar system and when that is not available by renewable energy purchased through our electricity retailer.

The future will eventually see us as a one car (electric) family. In theory when the battery is no longer sufficient for the car it is still quite suitable for household use. 4R Energy and Relectrify in Melbourne are making these conversions although they are not available commercially yet. There is a New Zealand company doing likewise. Equally, and in theory at least, the Leaf is able to provide power to the home known as V2H or ‘vehicle to home’. The just released ‘Leaf’ model is advertised as V2H compatible but again I not aware of this being applied locally. It is currently being tested in Japan. But it is something to look forward to as part of the ‘all electric’ transport and home powered by renewable energy.

*average distance a car travels in Australia is 34.5k per day

We recently got ‘caught short’ with the panic buying of toilet paper in the current coronavirus emergency. Consequently our household is applying pre-abundance ‘outhouse’ solutions and using the Murdoch press. Seriously though I have not had a Murdoch rag in my house for more than 30 years, but I can clearly remember that the Sun (now the Herald Sun) was still being used in our family toilet in the early 1950s.

Wandering around the supermarket today I noticed that the panic buying had spread to the staples – flour, rice, pasta and sugar – which at least made a bit more sense than stockpiling dunny rolls. I joked at the check-out that they should be selling the paper in single rolls. Clearly some form of rationing is required. Climate activist Philip Sutton has been studying war time governments to find what actions will be necessary during the climate emergency. He commented on the current panic buying and the rationing solution in some detail:

“During WW1 many governments stuffed around with no effective rationing and there was massive panic buying and terrible price gouging and dangerous shortages.  Finally they figured out how to run an effective rationing system.  When WW2 started governments knew what to do on rationing* so the system was put in place quickly and early on as the need arose.

To make rationing work people had to be given a right to a fair quantity of supplies.  In the old days before electronic transaction systems/EFTPOS and websites etc. they gave people printed coupons that allowed people to buy a certain quantity of necessities.  When people went to buy stuff that was the subject of rationing they had to hand over the relevant paper coupons or the shop keepers would not sell to them.  When the coupons ran out you had to wait till you were issued with a new ration book (as was done at regular intervals) so there was no need to build up crazy stock levels at home.  These days we could manage the system electronically for most people.

As the retail industry has been saying over and over there is no curtailment currently on production capacity in Australia so there is no objective need to stockpile.  The only reason it is happening is that a small handful of people have been either selfish and/or spooked and then when normal people see the shortages and no effective rationing in place then they very understandably try to create their own stockpile.  Panic buying can only be stopped if effective rationing is put in place – and when it is the craziness will stop.”**

The need for rationing gives us a brief hint of what life will be like in the climate emergency. Our consumer economy will be replaced by a ‘command’ economy where the role of governments will assume a much greater importance.

* I remember finding some WW2 petrol ration coupons in my father’s papers

**group email from Victorian Climate Action Network

 

The coronavirus emergency currently being played out across the globe is a forerunner to the climate emergency. Both emergencies are everywhere and they affect us all now in some way, although the effects of global warming are not so apparent to many. On the other hand the coronavirus threat is immediate whereas the threat of warming – and the necessary action to combat it – has been postponed to some future, indeterminate date by our governments. The latter, of course, is a fallacy and a failure by most of the populous – especially the media and our politicians – to understand climate inertia, self-reinforcing feedback systems and tipping points.

But many things will be the same. Science and evidence will direct the response to the climate emergency too. Although, as with the coronavirus, there will be multiple actions and implementation will vary over time from country to country. And over time the more successful actions will become obvious. Though it is hard to imagine now the political response to the climate emergency will be bipartisan and evidence based decisions will replace misinformation, propaganda and special interests at the heart of adversarial politics.

Likewise in the media the climate emergency will eventually dominate and anti-science statements will come close to approximating treason in a war time situation. Currently with the coronavirus there is some confusion with only a few ‘idiotic’ deniers floating around – predictably Alan Jones and his ilk. Others have changed. The President of the USA has done a 180 degree turn from the coronavirus being a ‘hoax’ to an ‘emergency’ in a matter of weeks. Regrettably this delay will probably be a death sentence for some of his citizens.

But as a result of the delay on action in the climate emergency the death and disruption will be much worse. Unlike the immediacy of action that the coronavirus forces upon us our governments have seen fit to deny, delay or ignore what the science has been saying for more than thirty years. Climate inertia means we have probably already condemned the earth to more than two degrees of warming. The deaths from global warming boosted extreme weather events continue to mount unnoticed and uncounted, and are certainly substantial*. The advice from various experts on tackling the coronavirus has been “go early and go hard”.  With the climate emergency the first option has been lost so we must double down on the second. The global response to the coronavirus shows, and continues to show, that this can be done.

*As an example the extra deaths during the heatwave that preceded the Black Saturday bushfires in SE Australia was 372.

There are no figures on cancellations caused by our recent unprecedented bushfires but there can be little doubt that local businesses have suffered severely. Anecdotally there are numerous accounts of holidays cancelled or deferred including that of my daughter, currently overseas, who postponed her visit in February because of smoke problems. In the 2003 fires my tourist dependant business in Swifts Creek took a big hit, as it also did in the 2006/7 fires. Tourists are easily discouraged by severe fire danger days or even in some cases fires in some remote part of the region, let alone monster fires, emergencies, major road closures and evacuation notices.

Now the coronavirus threatens to overwhelm us completely. Whilst it is yet to come to Gippsland a chemist acquaintance assures me it will eventually affect 60-70% of the population.  It is already dampening down economic activity across the country. Its arrival here depends on how effectively the various actions of the authorities slow down the process. But it may well turn the local suffering into a complete disaster.

Locally we have various media organisations calling for a return of tourists to boost our bushfire damaged economy whilst a local medico – Dr Rob Phair – is calling for Gippsland to remain isolated as a means of slowing the spread of the virus (see graph above of how delay is important). As in countries like Italy the population age of Gippsland is skewed towards the elderly – those most vulnerable to the virus.

To further complicate matters there are other factors that may make our economic situation dire. The current collapse of oil prices is ominous but well beyond our control. But the ‘elephant in the room’ may well be economic collapse brought about by climate change factors as outlined recently by Paul Gilding. With pump-priming already commenced by the Morrison government the place to build infrastructure is in the new economy with renewables – in power production, transport, industry and agriculture. 

Which brings us back to the bushfires. It is becoming increasingly obvious that the earth’s climate has been warming all our lives and the current decade is the warmest on record. It follows that extreme weather events including droughts and bushfires are being increasingly influenced by the warming (see the latest Climate Council Bushfire Report here). Perhaps the coronavirus emergency will eventually be replaced by an enduring climate emergency. It is ironic that in this instance the governments (correctly if sometimes belatedly) are following the directions of science, whilst the science of climate change, after 30 years, is still ignored.

Excerpts from an article in the Bass Coast Post

Workshop sessions at the Climate Emergency Summit in Melbourne last weekend filled up quickly so I didn’t get to all of the sessions I would have liked. Inevitably such large gatherings become more of a spectator event than a working strategic session.

In this climate change journey we find ourselves frustrated at the lack of government action, incredibly concerned for our children and grandchildren and jaded with the overload of tragedies that are occurring globally. Many of the speakers at the Summit reflected this frustration, speaking at length of the dark future if we don’t take strong action. But not enough was said about what a strong approach looks like and the benefits it would bring humanity and the creatures we share the planet with…

I tend to think of it along the lines of the Third Industrial Revolution espoused by Jeremy Rivkin. Rivkin describes the change as the equivalent of the change from steam to the internal combustion engine. A radical transition that will leave many current industries – such as coal and fossil fuel extraction – as stranded assets. The economic role for discovered coal and fossil fuel in the new economy will be as carbon credits for foregone exploitation rights…The World Economic Forum has identified the failure to respond to climate change as the biggest threat to the global economy.

We must respond, but how will the business future in Bass Coast look? We are a prime area for carbon farming with some local farmers leading the way. Carbon farmers of the year Bob and Anne Davie on Phillip Island and Bass Coast Landcare are exploring new ways to farm and join the carbon market. Economist Ross Garnaut predicts that in the near future farmers will make more money from marketing carbon than selling livestock.

Cleaner waste and landfill is already being delivered through the Bass Coast Council’s food and garden organics (FOGO) initiative, achieving a 76 per cent diversion from waste with just 1 per cent contamination. In the future we should regard FOGO as a resource and process it here in Bass Coast for Bass Coast farms and to assist in carbon sequestration. Jobs will come from processing as they will from the marketing of carbon. Some farmers in South Gippsland already differentiate their product on quality as carbon free and grown by regenerative farming techniques…

A couple of cafés on Phillip Island already have zero waste… Totally Renewable Phillip Island (TRPI) is working on a community energy project that will give them clean energy and control over energy prices as well as projects to deliver food security and clean transport.

Council’s new Climate Emergency Community Reference Group commenced on Friday and will help prepare a living Action Plan. If we are positive and change the debate from the doom and get going on the new clean sharing economy we will not only be healthier but a thriving business area as well.

*Cr Geoff Ellis and Cr Michael Whelan attended the 2020 National Climate Emergency Summit as representatives of Bass Coast Shire Council. Cr. Ellis article was posted last week under the title “Bass Coast Councillors at the Climate Emergency Summit “.