Australia's exposure to climate change has worsened more rapidly than in any other major economy in the past two years, with stresses on water supplies increasing and the cost of natural disasters running second only to China, a report has found.

The study, compiled by HSBC, found that temperatures in Australia had risen faster than in any other G20 country over the past two years – up by 0.39C to 18.9C on a decade average basis. Deterioration in water resources is also a major issue, with Australia, along with Saudi Arabia, experiencing the worst increases.

HSBC concluded that India, China, Indonesia, South Africa and Brazil are the countries most vulnerable to climate change, based on the challenges posed by climate change and their ability to respond to them.

However, Australia's position appears to be worsening, with the country now placed as the fifth worst in the G20 for climate change exposure, down five places from HSBC's last climate report in 2011. This separate ranking is based on a country's exposure to temperature increases, water stresses and extreme events.

HSBC said that this downgrading was largely due to Australia's G20-leading temperature increase, although it is clear that water stresses and natural disasters have also taken their toll.

Australia's water resources per capita have dropped 6.8% in the past two years, according to the report. Meanwhile, Australia spends 0.24% of GDP on recovery from disasters caused by natural events such as floods and cyclones, second only to China (0.30%).

According to the report, damage caused by natural disasters hit $US260bn in the decade to 2012.

On Friday, the International Climate Change Partnership's authoritative climate change report revealed that Australia was on course for a 6C temperature increase on its warmest days by 2100.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/30/climate-change-study-australia-suffers

Australians have just lived through the warmest September since records began, according to the rebadged Climate Council.
The latest record also makes the past 12 months the warmest documented, while 2013 is set to go down as the hottest calendar year in Australia, surpassing 2005.
''We've got high sea surface temperatures around Australia and that usually leads to warmer than average weather conditions, so if I was a betting man I would say that we are going to get the calendar record this year,'' climate scientist Will Steffen said. September temperatures were almost three degrees above the long-term average, according to a Climate Council report released on Thursday.
''Although Australia has always had heatwaves, hot days and bushfires, climate change is increasing the risk of more frequent and longer heatwaves and more extreme hot days, as well as exacerbating bushfire conditions,'' he said.
Last summer more than 120 extreme weather-related records were broken, including the hottest January and the hottest day ever recorded in Australia since reliable record keeping began in 1910.
''Temperature records are broken from time to time in Australia, but it is the sheer number of records being broken that is really unusual,'' Professor Steffen said. The persistent heat has been recorded continent-wide over the past 18 months. The oceans surrounding Australia have also registered record warmth.
According to the American space agency NASA, globally the hottest 10 years have all occurred in the past 15 years.
In its latest report released last week, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that global temperatures are likely to rise by more than 2 degrees - and possibly up to 4.8 degrees - by 2100 if greenhouse gas emissions remained high. The panel's fifth major assessment of climate science also found that each of the past three decades was warmer than any preceding decade since 1850 and between 1901 and 2010 sea levels rose 19 centimetres, much faster than the average for the last 2000 years.
The Climate Commission, set up by the previous government to raise public awareness on climate science and economics, was axed by the new government. It was reborn as the Climate Council and is now a non-profit organisation funded by public donations. Almost $1 million has been raised from more than 20,000 donors.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/climate-council-reports-warmest-september-on-record-20131003-2uv76.html#ixzz2gh7kfEdz

Bold and links by Gus...

Ian Dunlop, formerly a senior executive in the oil, gas and coal industries, is attempting to gain shareholder support for his bid to challenge what he claims is “utter bullshit” from a resources industry that has stymied an urgent transition away from carbon-intensive fuels.

The board of BHP, which will hold an annual general meeting in London next week and another in Perth on 21 November, has called on shareholders to reject Dunlop, with the chairman, Jacques Nasser, describing him as a single-issue candidate who would add little to the board.

But Dunlop, who will fly to London for the meeting, told Guardian Australia that shareholders were “curious” about his bid and that BHP required a strong advocate for dealing with the challenge of climate change.

“This is an unusual situation, which has created a lot of interest among shareholders,” he said. “There needs to be a range of perspectives on boards or you get locked into the kind of groupthink that the fossil fuel industry has on climate change.”

Dunlop has turned to climate change activism after his career in the fossil fuel industry, chairing Safe Climate Australia and become a member of the Club of Rome, which has warned of the limits of sustainable living.

He told Guardian Australia that the resources industry had “completely ignored the catastrophic risk” posed to their business models by climate change.

“The industry hasn’t shown any leadership as it hadn’t been prepared to admit what’s happening,” he said. “If we want to keep below the limit of 2C warming, which is already far too high, we cannot continue ad infinitum in Australia talking about doubling our coal exports and tripling our gas exports.

“BHP, to be fair to them, is doing more than most but when I look around the boardrooms of Australia, the UK or US I see absolutely no recognition of the strategic implications of climate change.

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/oct/17/coal-executive-turned-climate-change-activist-fights-for-seat-on-bhp-board

felicità...

More than 100 companies – including News Corp Australia, Amcor, Golden Circle and Visy – may lose clean technology grants worth more than $53m as the Abbott government searches for budget savings.

During the election campaign the Coalition pledged to save $400m by discontinuing the Labor government’s clean technology program, part of $42bn in savings it outlined to pay for its election pledges. The clean technology fund was paid for by the carbon price, which the Coalition will also seek to repeal as its first legislative act.

Ministers have now been asked to look for further savings – including reconsidering discretionary grants across all portfolios – as economic growth remains subdued and the new government prepares a mid-year budget review for release before Christmas.

Guardian Australia has learned there is not $400m of uncommitted money left in the clean technology fund the Coalition has promised to cut, forcing it to consider withdrawing formal offers of funding already made to leading companies for detailed projects to reduce their carbon emissions, if legally binding contracts have not yet been signed.

A spokeswoman for the industry minister, Ian Macfarlane, said the government would find the $400m.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/18/coalition-may-take-back-clean-technology-grant-offers-of-53m

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Meanwhile, the increase in global warming will cost this country $$$$$BILLIONS.... The Liberals (conservatives) are IDIOTS!!!!!

Tackling the world’s most powerful corporations, whose interest it is to continue consuming fossil fuels, is a formidable but essential task

• • Antony Loewenstein

The viability of a fossil fuel future is rarely connected to the human rights abuses required to sustain it. How often do we think about where oil and gas is obtained? Are the Europeans or Americans any more aware? This deliberate depoliticisation of our energy present, by the vast majority of politicians, journalists and self-described public intellectuals, is leading to an environment that is both unsustainable and dangerous for the planet.

But don’t worry, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott says climate change has nothing to do with bush fires. Move along. Remain relaxed, comfortable and consume skewers of chewy coal and grisly yellow cake with a touch of BBQ sauce.

One might question why there is such resistance to transitioning to renewable energy and which entrenched interests are at stake.

Buried in the heart of New York Times best-selling author Steve Coll’s 2012 book, Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power, are fascinating insights into one of the most powerful companies on the planet.

 Scientists working for the corporation examined ways that climate change could affect ocean and surface trends and allow the firm to source new oil and gas. “Don’t believe for a minute that ExxonMobil doesn’t think climate change is real,” a former manager tells the author. “They were using climate change as a source of insight into exploration.”

By 2004 ExxonMobil, both internally and externally, were forecasting that there was little to no chance of a global response to warming temperatures in the coming decades. Former CEO Lee Raymondpublicly dismissed the seriousness of the problem.

ExxonMobil and Walmart trade spots year to year as America’s biggest company and this explains why both of them are so reluctant to do anything that they perceive to affect their bottom line. Acting on climate change was not a priority while continuing business as usual was so profitable.

But Exxon wasn’t blind to the changing agenda. Coll succinctly outlines the dilemma faced by the company’s forecasters: “The issue here was not whether the world had the technologies to forswear oil; it was whether governments, panicked by climate change, would intervene to change price incentives to favour clean energy, knowing that such an intervention might curtail overall economic growth, at least for a time.”

 The truth remains that the free market will not solve the climate change problem. Hoping and presuming that a carbon tax or emissions trading scheme will ameliorate steadily worsening pollution, as too many Australians who should know better have claimed for years, is missing the point. With global energy markets currently in flux – witness the possible end to the domination of Arab hegemony and subsequent shift in Middle East geopolitics, thanks in part to America’s pushing of shale gas deposits – old assumptions are ripe for ditching.

A new book, The Oil Road: Journeys from the Caspian Sea to the City of London, details the brutal realities of how comfortable Europeans consume without thought as to how the their cars are fueled. The multinational BP operates the main pipeline that goes through Georgia, Turkey and despotic Azerbaijan. This has become a key geostrategic struggle between Russia, China, Iran and America for domination of the energy market. A growing rift between Washington and Saudi Arabia, affectively known as a “protection racket” relationship, remains unpredictable.

One of the master illusions of the modern age is how governments and the media so rarely discuss the ways in which our energy needs are sourced. It’s a problem that understandably angers the voiceless, including Indonesians in Aceh, suing Exxon for allegedly supporting Indonesian troops committing human rights abuses while protecting the highly lucrative natural gas pipeline and processing facility at Arun, a claim that Exxon denies.

The debate in Australia over fossil fuels is staid and separated from a global debate. What happens here does affect the world, as environmentalist Bill McKibben correctly said on his recently sold-out tour of Australia in reference to mooted expanded coal plans in Queensland. Such plans literally threaten global temperatures.

 Queensland Premier Campbell Newman, when demanding Abbott approve massive coal expansion, simply said that he must be allowed to “take the state forward economically”. The miners’ lobbyists have done their work effectively. What should be discussed is the need not to burn fossil fuels and leave carbon in the ground forever.

Research released in April by the Carbon Tracker Initiative and the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics found that, “despite fossil fuel reserves already far exceeding the carbon budget to avoid global warming of more than 2°C, $674bn was spent last year finding and developing new potentially stranded assets. If this continues for the next decade, economies will see over $6tr in wasted capital.” Convincing companies such as Exxon not to exploit the resources under their control will take economic and political pressure.

A campaign this month sees dozens of global investors, managing over $3tr of assets, writing to the world’s biggest fossil fuel companies asking them to assess, before annual shareholders meetings in 2014, how the real cost of changes in price and demand could affect their business plans. Craig Mackenzie, head of sustainability at Scottish Widows, one of Europe’s largest asset management firms, says that, “companies must plan properly for the risk of falling demand by stress-testing new investments to minimise the risk our clients’ capital is wasted on non-performing projects.”

Embracing a fully renewable future isn’t a technological problem; it’s a political fix that will only come with a massive fight. Scandinavia isleading the world in examples of divesting from fossil fuel companies. Oxford University recently found that these campaigns are growing in strength globally. It must be considered in Australia, with the worst polluters facing financial pain – the only message they’ll understand – for continuing with business as usual. Rio Tinto, I’m looking at you (amongst others).

Vast research has been undertaken in the last years that reveals the possibility of moving to a sustainable and cost-effective energy future.Clean energy reports are being issued constantly and the Greens partyhave provided a realistic roadmap.

Even the World Bank, that bastion of neo-liberal “reform”, is warning about the dangers of a four-degrees warmer world, causing increased risk of natural disasters and sea-level rises. The latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change rationally explains the dangers without immediate action. The United Nations Environment Program released a 2012 report that outlined the required cuts to global emissions to avoid catastrophic climate change in both the developed and developing world. Australia’s Beyond Zero Emissions have a zero carbon plan.

Tackling the world’s most powerful corporations, whose interest it is to continue consuming and burning fossil fuels, will take nothing short of a soft revolution. I’ve long argued against climate activists who use cataclysmic language when discussing climate change; this alienates the vast bulk of a population that needs to believe in the importance of changing habits and mindsets. But this doesn’t mean that hoping and praying for polluting companies to realise they need to reform or die won’t take massive public pressure, divestment and new opportunities.

Uncontrolled capitalism is sold as the best system to ensure global prosperity. In reality its strongest advocates, with help from its political and media mates, is ruining the chances of a healthy globe for all its citizens, not just the wealthy in the London, New York and Sydney bubble. Climate justice, for the silenced in our corporate media, is just the beginning.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/25/climate-change-exxon-fossil-fuel

This article was posted here in full. It's too important for the future of this small planet to ignore...

Thank you Anthony. Read Gus' views at top...

From Counter Currents

Concerns Over Role Of Corporations At Climate Crisis Talks

By Mantoe Phakathi

17 November 2013
Inter Press Service

As deliberations continue in earnest at the 19th United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Warsaw, negotiators from the Global South welcome a focus on financing adaptation – but reject a new emphasis on a role for the private sector.

Climate negotiations have now dragged on for almost 20 years. Talk of “fair, ambitious and binding” agreements to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases that cause global warming appears to be fading, to be replaced by proposals to turn to the private sector for loans and investment to support adaptation to climate change at what has been dubbed the “Corporate COP (Conference of Parties)”.

Tosi Mpamu-Mpamu, a negotiator for the Democratic Republic of Congo and a former chair of the African Group of negotiators, sees an alarming change emerging in the approach to funding the response to climate change.

At the Copenhagen climate conference in 2009, developed states pledged 30 billion dollars of new aid for climate finance for the developing world between 2010 and 2012, and a further 100 billion by 2020.

“Developed countries are now shifting the responsibility to provide funding to the private sector, a dangerous trend to these negotiations,” said Mpamu-Mpamu.
Other negotiators share Mpamu-Mpamu’s concerns over the role transnational corporations are assuming at the conference.

“At a three-day conference prior to this COP, businesses spent two days explaining how they could make money out of climate change,” said Rene Orellana, head of Bolivia’s delegation.

read more: http://www.countercurrents.org/phakathi171113.htm

Bold by Gus... See story at top...

Australia has become an "anti-climate" influence on international efforts to slow global warming after dropping close to the bottom of a ranking of the world's largest greenhouse gas emitters.

Australia's ranking on the climate change performance index fell from 51 to 57 out of 61, as the United Kingdom became the second highest ranked country behind Denmark.

The index, developed by thinktank Germanwatch and Climate Action Network Europe, was released on Monday at the start of the second week of the United Nations climate change negotiations in Warsaw, Poland.

The ranking combines five different areas covering the types and levels of emissions, renewable energy supply, trends in energy efficiency and climate policy.

The UK moved to second highest after emissions fell 15% and improvements were made in energy efficiency. Denmark led the ranking thanks to low levels of emissions and "exceptional" policies to keep emissions down.

Launching the report, Wendel Trio, director of CAN Europe, said: "We have now an Australian government that is more looking at the anti-climate policy development than in furthering the climate policy development of the previous government."

He cited Australia's attempts to repeal carbon price legislation and the change of government as the reason for its falling status.

"There are many signs where the Australian government shows it's not very keen on developing climate policy. I think it is evident at these talks. They are not sending any ministers so they're not giving it any importance."

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/nov/18/australia-climate-change-un-warsaw