tag:theconversation.com,2011:/columns/david-holmes-84799Changing climates – The Conversation2017-10-09T00:13:24Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/853722017-10-09T00:13:24Z2017-10-09T00:13:24ZAfter the storm: how political attacks on renewables elevates attention paid to climate change<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189303/original/file-20171008-25764-1l2bb7h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/David Mariuz</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>This time last year, Australia was getting over a media storm about renewables, energy policy and climate change. The media storm was caused by a physical storm: <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-28/south-australia-weather:-cyclone-and-flood-watch-expected/7883104">a mid-latitude cyclone</a> that hit South Australia on September 29 and set in train a series of events that is still <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-year-since-the-sa-blackout-whos-winning-the-high-wattage-power-play-84416">playing itself out</a>.</p>
<p>The events include:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>an extraordinary <a href="https://theconversation.com/we-must-keep-the-lights-on-how-a-cyclone-was-used-to-attack-renewables-66371">attack on renewables</a> by federal government ministers;</p></li>
<li><p>a steadfast pushback by the South Australian government to continue its renewables roll-out;</p></li>
<li><p>the offer of tech entrepreneur Elon Musk to build the <a href="https://theconversation.com/with-battery-storage-to-the-rescue-the-kodak-moment-for-renewables-has-finally-arrived-74819">largest battery storage facility</a> in the world in South Australia and;</p></li>
<li><p>the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-finkel-review-at-a-glance-79177">Finkel Review</a>. </p></li>
</ul>
<p>In one sense, the Finkel Review was a response to the government’s concerns about “energy security”. But it also managed to successfully respond to the way energy policy had become a political plaything, as exemplified by the attacks on South Australia.</p>
<p><a href="http://artsonline.monash.edu.au/climate-change-communication/files/2013/09/Newspaper-reporting-of-South-Australian-mid-latitude-cyclone-2016.pdf">New research on the media coverage</a> that framed the energy debate that has ensued over the past year reveals some interesting turning points in how Australia’s media report on climate change.</p>
<p>While extreme weather events <a href="https://theconversation.com/fake-news-and-gods-wrath-extreme-hurricane-politics-in-the-us-83811">are the best time</a> to communicate climate change – the additional energy humans are adding to the climate is on full display – the South Australian event was used to attack renewables rather than the carbonisation of the atmosphere. Federal MPs <a href="https://theconversation.com/we-must-keep-the-lights-on-how-a-cyclone-was-used-to-attack-renewables-66371">hijacked people’s need</a> to understand the reason for the blackout “by simply swapping climate change with renewables”.</p>
<p>However, the research shows that, ironically, MPs who invited us to “look over here” at the recalcitrant renewables – and not at climate-change-fuelled super-storms – managed to make climate change reappear.</p>
<p>The study searched for all Australian newspaper articles that mentioned either a storm or a cyclone in relation to South Australia that had been published in the ten days either side of the event. This returned 591 articles. Most of the relevant articles were published after the storm, with warnings of the cyclone beforehand.</p>
<p>Some of the standout findings include:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>51% of articles were about the power outage and 38% were about renewables, but 12% of all articles connected these two.</p></li>
<li><p>20% of articles focused on the event being politicised by politicians.</p></li>
<li><p>9% of articles raised climate change as a force in the event and the blackouts.</p></li>
<li><p>10% of articles blamed the blackouts on renewables.</p></li>
<li><p>Of all of the articles linking power outages to renewables 46% were published in News Corp and 14% were published in Fairfax.</p></li>
<li><p>Narratives that typically substituted any possibility of a link to climate change, included the “unstoppable power of nature” (18%), failure of planning (5.25%), and triumph of humanity (5.6%).</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Only 9% of articles discussed climate change. Of these, 73% presented climate change positively, 21% were neutral, and 6% negative. But, for the most part, climate change was linked to the conversation around renewables: there was a 74% overlap. 36% of articles discussing climate change linked it to the intensification of extreme weather events.</p>
<p>There was also a strong correlation between the positive and negative discussion of climate change and the ownership of newspapers. </p>
<p>The starkest contrast was between the two largest Australian newspaper groups. Of all the sampled articles that mentioned climate change, News Corp was the only group to has a negative stance on climate change (at 50% of articles), but still with 38% positive. Fairfax was 90% positive and 10% neutral about climate change.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189305/original/file-20171009-25792-1bv2q23.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189305/original/file-20171009-25792-1bv2q23.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=349&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189305/original/file-20171009-25792-1bv2q23.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=349&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189305/original/file-20171009-25792-1bv2q23.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=349&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189305/original/file-20171009-25792-1bv2q23.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189305/original/file-20171009-25792-1bv2q23.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189305/original/file-20171009-25792-1bv2q23.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Positive/negative stance of articles covering climate change by percentage.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Given that more than half of all articles discussed power outages, the cyclone in a sense competed with renewables as a news item. Both have a bearing on power supply and distribution. But, ironically, it was renewables that put climate change on the news agenda – not the cyclone.</p>
<p>Of the articles discussing renewables, 67% were positive about renewables with only 33% “negative” and blaming them for the power outages.</p>
<p>In this way, the negative frame that politicians put on renewable energy may have sparked debate that was used to highlight the positives of renewable energy and what’s driving it: reduced emissions.</p>
<p>But perhaps the most interesting finding is the backlash by news media against MPs’ attempts to politicise renewables. </p>
<p>19.63% of all articles in the sample had called out (mainly federal) MPs for politicising the issue and using South Australians’ misfortune as a political opportunity. This in turn was related to the fact that, of all the articles discussing renewables, 67% were positive about renewables with only 33% supporting MPs’ attempts to blame them for the power outages. </p>
<p>In this way, while many MPs had put renewables on the agenda by denigrating them, most journalists were eager to cover the positive side of renewables.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, the way MPs sought to dominate the news agenda over the storm did take away from discussion of climate science and the causes of the cyclone. Less than 4% of articles referred to extreme weather intensifying as a trend.</p>
<p>This is problematic. It means that, with a <a href="https://theconversation.com/climate-change-to-blame-for-australias-july-heat-81953">few exceptions</a>, Australia’s climate scientists are not able to engage with the public in key periods after extreme weather events. </p>
<p>When MPs, with co-ordinated media campaigns, enjoy monopoly holdings in the attention economy of news cycles, science communication and the <a href="http://artsonline.monash.edu.au/mfj/events/media-matters-seminar-series-2017-stories-of-climate-change/">stories of climate</a> that could be told are often relegated to other media.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>With thanks to Tahnee Burgess for research assistance on this article.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85372/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<h4 class="border">Disclosure</h4><p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Holmes received funding from Monash University to conduct this research.</span></em></p>This time last year, Australia was getting over a media storm about renewables, energy policy and climate change. The media storm was caused by a physical storm: a mid-latitude cyclone that hit South Australia…David Holmes, Director, Climate Change Communication Research Hub, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/845962017-09-26T01:38:43Z2017-09-26T01:38:43ZHow TV weather presenters can improve public understanding of climate change<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187461/original/file-20170925-21172-q4lddb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A <a href="http://artsonline.monash.edu.au/climate-change-communication/files/2017/06/Australian_Weather_Presenter_Survey_2017.pdf">recent Monash University study</a> of TV weather presenters has found a strong interest from free-to-air presenters in including climate change information in their bulletins.</p>
<p>The strongest trends in the survey, which had a 46% response rate, included:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>97% of respondents thought climate change is happening;</p></li>
<li><p>97% of respondents believed viewers had either “strong trust” or “moderate trust” in them as a reliable source of weather information;</p></li>
<li><p>91% of respondents were comfortable with presenting local historical climate statistics, and just under 70% were comfortable with future local climate projections; and</p></li>
<li><p>97% of respondents thought their audiences would be interested in learning about the impacts of climate change.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>According to several <a href="https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/Digital%20News%20Report%202017%20web_0.pdf">analyses</a> of where Australians get their news, in the age of ubiquitous social media TV is still the <a href="http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/research/files/Reuters%2520Institute%2520Digital%2520News%2520Report%25202015_Full%2520Report.pdf">single largest news source</a>. </p>
<p>And when one considers that social media and now apps are increasingly used as the <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-new-front-page-new-media-and-the-rise-of-the-audience-9781922070548">interface</a> for sharing professional content from news organisations – which includes TV news – the reach of TV content is not about to be challenged anytime soon.</p>
<p>The combined audience for primetime free-to-air TV in the five capital city markets alone is a weekly average of nearly 3 million viewers. This does not include those using catch-up on portable devices, and those watching the same news within the pay TV audience. And there are those who are getting many of the same news highlights and clips through their Facebook feeds and app-based push media.</p>
<p>Yet the <a href="http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2017/09/14/changes-media-ownership-laws">ever-more oligopolistic</a> TV industry in Australia is very small. And professional weather presenters are a rather exclusive group: there are only 75 such presenters in Australia. </p>
<p>It is because of this, rather than in spite of it, that weather presenters are able to command quite a large following. And they are highly promoted by the networks themselves – on freeway billboards and station advertising. This promotion makes weather presenters among the most trusted media personalities, while simultaneously presenting information that is regarded as apolitical. </p>
<p>At the same time, Australians have a <a href="https://www.mup.com.au/books/9780522868418-the-weather-obsession">keen interest</a> in talking about weather. It tends to unite us.</p>
<p>These three factors – trust, the impartial nature of weather, and Australian’s enthusiasm for the weather – puts TV presenters in an ideal position to present climate information. Such has been the experience in the US, where the <a href="https://www.climatechangecommunication.org/">Centre for Climate Change Communication</a> together with <a href="http://www.climatecentral.org/what-we-do/our-programs/climatematters">Climate Matters</a> have partnered with more than 350 TV weathercasters to present simple, easy-to-process factual climate information.</p>
<p>In the US it is about mainstreaming climate information as factual content delivered by trusted sources. The Climate Matters program found TV audiences value climate information the more locally based it was.</p>
<p>Monash’s Climate Change Communication Research Hub is conducting research as a precondition to establishing such a program in Australia. The next step is to survey the audiences of the free-to-air TV markets in the capital city markets to evaluate Australians’ appetite for creating a short climate segment alongside the weather on at least a weekly basis. </p>
<p>As in the US, TV audiences are noticing more and more extreme weather and want to understand what is causing it, and what to expect in the future. </p>
<p>The Climate Change Communication Research Hub is also involved in creating “climate communications packages” that can be tested with audiences. These are largely based on calendar and anniversary dates, and show long-term trends using these dates as datapoints.</p>
<p>The calendar dates could be sporting dates, or how climate can be understood in relation to a collection of years based on a specific date, or the start of a season for fire or cyclones. There has been so much extreme weather in recent years that there are plenty of anniversaries.</p>
<p>Let’s take November 21, 2016 – the most severe <a href="https://theconversation.com/keeping-one-step-ahead-of-pollen-triggers-for-thunderstorm-asthma-69408">thunderstorm asthma</a> event ever to impact Melbourne. It saw 8,500 presentations to hospital emergency departments and nine tragic deaths.</p>
<p>There is no reason why this event can’t be covered this year in the context of climate as a community service message. As <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISLmyNn6iQE">explained</a> in the US program, just a small increase in higher average spring temperatures leads to the production of a higher count of more potent pollen. Also, as more energy is fed into the destructive power of storm systems, the prospect of breaking up pollen and distributing it efficiently throughout population centres is heightened. </p>
<p>The need to be better prepared for thunderstorms in spring is thus greater, even for those who have never had asthma before.</p>
<p>For its data, the Climate Change Communication Research Hub will be relying on the information from the Bureau of Meteorology and the CSIRO, but will call on the assistance of a wide range of organisations such as the SES, state fire services, and health authorities in conducting its research.</p>
<p>In February 2018, the hub will hold a <a href="https://www.amos-icshmo2018.com.au/extra-activities">workshop</a> with TV weather presenters as part of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society conference. At the conference the planning for the project will be introduced, with a pilot to be conducted on one media market to be rolled out to multiple markets in the second year.</p>
<p>The program is not intended to raise the level of concern about climate change, but public understanding of it. As <a href="https://theconversation.com/public-support-for-climate-action-on-the-up-after-dark-days-climate-institute-survey-65942">survey</a> after <a href="http://www.sustainability.vic.gov.au/publications-and-research/research/climate-change-social-research">survey</a> shows, Australians are already concerned about climate change. But more information is needed about local and regional impacts that will help people make informed choices about mitigation, adaptation and how to plan their lives – beyond tomorrow’s weather.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84596/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<h4 class="border">Disclosure</h4><p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Holmes received funding from Monash University to conduct research for the project described in this article. </span></em></p>A recent Monash University study of TV weather presenters has found a strong interest from free-to-air presenters in including climate change information in their bulletins. The strongest trends in the…David Holmes, Director, Climate Change Communication Research Hub, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/838112017-09-11T06:31:57Z2017-09-11T06:31:57ZFake news and god’s wrath: extreme hurricane politics in the US<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185446/original/file-20170911-28501-4j3wxs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Carlos Barria</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The devastating scenes of destruction and flooding in the Bahamas and the southern states of the US have captivated the world for many weeks now. Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, with Hurricane Jose soon to follow, have stolen headlines around the world, as they break records and provide a deluge of spectacle and image: the main ingredients for tabloid reporting.</p>
<p>As far as the fatalities they have caused – now into the hundreds – they have not been as dangerous as the under-reported <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/30/mumbai-paralysed-by-floods-as-india-and-region-hit-by-worst-monsoon-rains-in-years">monsoons</a> that devastated India, Nepal and Bangladesh a few weeks ago, with death tolls into the thousands.</p>
<p>But, in the oligopolised world of the news wires of AFP, Reuters and AP, threats to developed nations push well ahead of tragedy in the third world, an imperialist bias that reflects the global hierarchy of nation-states as defined by news services.</p>
<p>But is also true that hurricanes (typhoons and cyclones) command more attention because they have a strong visual identity. Unlike monsoonal rains, they are also endowed with a personality.</p>
<p>For a start, each hurricane is given a name, and often they are referred to as “monsters” that have some kind of personality. “Irma is unpredictable, ferocious, powerful”, and so on. Unlike monsoons, hurricanes are to be feared, almost like they are preying on humans.</p>
<p>But in the US, these same hurricanes have been the subject of ridicule and religious divinity.</p>
<p>In between all of the suffering in Texas and now in Florida, conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh, who broadcasts out of Palm Beach, Florida, had labelled Hurricane Irma a kind of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/09/06/rush-limbaughs-dangerous-suggestion-that-hurricane-irma-is-fake-news/?undefined=&utm_term=.03b1fcfce88d&wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1">fake news</a>. </p>
<p>Limbaugh, a strident Donald Trump supporter, has sought to <a href="https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2017/09/05/my-analysis-of-the-hurricane-irma-panic/">persuade</a> his listeners that these Hurricanes are wildly exaggerated, potentially endangering those who may not take seriously the official emergency weather warning. He said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There is a desire to advance this climate change agenda, and hurricanes are one of the fastest and best ways to do it … All you need is to create the fear and panic accompanied by talk that climate change is causing hurricanes to become more frequent and bigger and more dangerous, and you create the panic, and it’s mission accomplished, agenda advanced.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Limbaugh claims that hurricanes bring together three unlikely beneficiaries: climate change activists, TV broadcasters, and retailers – the latter two having a “symbiotic relationship”.</p>
<p>For Limbaugh, TV stations, which receive much advertising revenue from retailers, become fixated with the hurricane, causing panic and mass raids on retail supplies of food, water, batteries and fuel. For the radio shockjock this creates a vicious circle of interests more important than the hurricane itself.</p>
<p>Limbaugh is at least partly right. Tabloid TV is most at home in covering violent events – whether this is extreme weather, terrorism, or violent crime. The more images it has about these events, the more it will cover them.</p>
<p>However, that these same broadcasters will make any significant link to climate change has not been a trend in either the US or Australia. It may increase audience concern about climate change, but not really their understanding that the more energy you have in the oceans, the more potential there is for powerful storms. </p>
<p>Extreme weather is indeed the best time to communicate climate change, but it has to be done in a way that increases audience understanding of the causes, impacts and projections for the future.</p>
<p>It also has to be done in a way that demonstrates what is so different about today’s extreme weather. With Hurricane Irma, for example, what has <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-08/irma-katia-and-jose-hurricane-trio-baffles-scientists/8884834?WT.mc_id=newsmail&WT.tsrc=Newsmail">amazed climatologists</a> is that it was one of a trio of hurricanes that were threatening land at the same time. Irma itself matched the force of Katrina in terrajoules of energy. </p>
<p>Then there are the scenes of Irma <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2017/09/09/hurricane-irma-is-literally-sucking-the-water-away-from-shorelines/?undefined=&utm_term=.979808a36ebd&wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1">literally sucking up the ocean</a> around beaches and changing the shape of coastlines during that period. The forces involved are unprecedented in the modern record.</p>
<p>Yet it seems that the more extreme the nature of the hurricanes, the more extreme are the reactions of climate denialists. And here we can point to the growing number of TV evangelists who are also getting some attention out of the hurricane. </p>
<p>Both Harvey and Irma have been hailed as biblical events that have wrought retribution on those who have not followed the path of god. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/did-lesbians-cause-hurricanes-irma-and-harvey-god-knows/2017/09/08/638efbca-94bf-11e7-89fa-bb822a46da5b_story.html?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-e%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.d83e3509218f">Televangelist Jim Bakker and pastor Rick Joyner</a> observed last week that “storms don’t happen by accident”. The Houston flood was from God and if, according to <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/kevin-swanson-scotus-needs-to-immediately-reverse-roe-v-wade-and-obergefell-before-irma-strikes/">Pastor Kevin Swanson</a>, the Supreme Court would rule abortion and gay marriage to be illegal, Houston would have averted a disaster. </p>
<p>Conservative social commentator <a href="https://twitter.com/AnnCoulter/status/902373016818126849?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%2Fentry%2Fannise-parker-ann-coulter_us_59b153a5e4b0354e440fdb68">Anne Coulter</a> tweeted to her 1.7 million followers that Houston’s recent baptism was more likely to be payback for having elected a lesbian mayor in its recent past than it was related to climate change.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"902373016818126849"}"></div></p>
<p>Doubtless, the fact that Hurricane Irma has spared the southern White House, Mar-a-Lago, from a direct hit, will also be comfort to Trump’s evangelist supporters. The luxurious resort is again in the <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/trump-irma-hurricane-path-latest-palm-beach-florida-tampa-shelter-evacuees-a7938521.html">news</a>, but this time for not answering calls for Trump to open it as a shelter for displaced Hurricane victims.</p>
<p>Oh, and Rush Limbaugh <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com.au/rush-limbaugh-hurricane-irma-media-florida-2017-9?r=US&IR=T">fled from his home</a> in Palm Beach, two days before Irma hit.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/83811/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
As hurricanes terrorise large parts of the world, many are trying to make mileage out of their destruction.David Holmes, Senior Lecturer, Communications and Media Studies, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/770212017-05-03T02:04:51Z2017-05-03T02:04:51ZThe future of Australian coal: an unbankable deposit<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167609/original/file-20170502-17263-10ykrtv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Paul Miller</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The news last week that Australia’s oldest bank, Westpac, has withdrawn from any prospect of financing Adani’s Carmichael coal mine may well be the death knell for the controversial project.</p>
<p>Westpac is the last of the big four Australian banks to have ruled out investing in Adani. ANZ declared its move away from mining in December 2016. The Commonwealth Bank and NAB dissociated themselves from Adani in August and September 2015.</p>
<p>The move means that, even if the Northern Australia Infrastructure Fund proceeds with a A$1 billion subsidy for the mine in the form of a dedicated, “private” railroad for Adani to export the coal, the mine is unlikely to proceed. The timing of Westpac’s decision may be a response to the multiple campaigns being launched against Adani, including consumer activism targeting the bank itself.</p>
<p>Westpac may have perceived these campaigns could have an impact on its customer base, and the savings accounts that underwrite its lending revenue stream. It responded with an update to its <a href="https://www.westpac.com.au/content/dam/public/wbc/documents/pdf/aw/sustainability/WestpacCCEActionPlan.pdf">position statement on climate change</a>. The statement specifies terminating financing mines with coal quality of less than 6,300 calories per kilo – which rules out Adani’s lower-quality coal from funding.</p>
<p>This is significant beyond just ruling out Adani. Westpac is the first of the big four banks to put restrictions on new thermal coal mines. This signals the largest financial players in Australia are accelerating the transition away from coal, and – as the position statement outlines – toward increasing lending to renewables and energy efficiency projects by two-thirds. </p>
<p>Climate solutions finance group Market Forces’ executive director <a href="https://www.investordaily.com.au/markets/41178-westpac-rules-out-funding-adani-coal-mine">Julien Vincent</a> said Westpac has “raised the bar” on climate change for the other banks. Whereas banks used to watch each other for who was going to pass on interest rate cuts, it seems now they are also mindful of who is doing the most for climate change.</p>
<p>But even without its new position statement, Westpac could not expose itself to the obvious risks of funding a project that will so rapidly devolve from a global climate pariah to a fossilised stranded asset.</p>
<p>According to a <a href="http://envlaw.com.au/wp-content/uploads/carmichael14.pdf">report</a> from 2011 on climate-change issues for the Land Court of Queensland’s hearing of objections to the grant of Adani’s mining lease:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The cumulative emissions related to this mine … are amongst the highest in the world for any individual project, and – to the knowledge of the authors – the highest in the Southern Hemisphere.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Given our current atmospheric CO₂ is 407.5ppm, this gives us 43ppm left to keep warming under 1.5°C, according to IPCC trajectories. Even at Adani’s <a href="http://envlaw.com.au/carmichael-coal-mine-case/">own conservative estimates</a> that it will emit 4.7 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases, which is almost 11% of the remaining global carbon budget.</p>
<p>1.5°C of committed warming presents an adaptation nightmare for coastal communities around the world. This level is almost approaching the Emian period of 120,000 years ago, when sea levels were <a href="https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v462/n7275/full/nature08686.html%20OR%20full%20article%20at">six-to-nine metres higher</a> than they are today.</p>
<p>So, while Westpac still has a way to go before it gets off the <a href="https://www.marketforces.org.au/banks/compare">Market Forces</a> watch-list of fossil-fuel-friendly banks, it has managed to avoid an investment and PR disaster.</p>
<p>Westpac would have studied India’s electricity plan, released in December, which abandoned building any new coal-fired power stations in the next decade in favour of 350 gigawatts of new solar and wind power. Over the weekend, Shadow Environment Minister Mark Butler <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/climate/resources-minister-matthew-canavan-says-westpacs-decision-on-coal-is-illogical/news-story/8069414de846ed7725a343e7b20abcac">pointed out</a> that the Modi government has said it intends to phase out thermal coal imports entirely by 2020.</p>
<p>But this did not stop Barnaby Joyce, on Q&A on Monday night, wheeling out the much-discredited argument that Australia has a “moral obligation” to help India keep its lights on. This is actually morally bankrupt when you consider that India is planning to look after itself with renewables.</p>
<p>The turning tide has not stopped The Australian newspaper from doing all it can to support the mine. This has included giving plenty of airtime to Resources Minister Matt Canavan, who last week labelled Westpac <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/westpac-wimps-lashed-for-adani-coal-mine-loan-ban/news-story/e6bee3dcebb9c9b0b3f4cba523f4370d">“wimps”</a> for abandoning the mine. The Australian <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/climate/resources-minister-matthew-canavan-says-westpacs-decision-on-coal-is-illogical/news-story/8069414de846ed7725a343e7b20abcac">reported</a> over the weekend that Canavan met with Guatam Adani in Brisbane, and was “confident the project would get the finance it needed from other lenders”.</p>
<p>But The Australian has been doing the heavy lifting for Adani’s PR campaign for some time now. Post-Cyclone-Debbie articles in April talked up the mine’s declared “huge economic benefits”. One front page headline declared:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/ukpapers/status/852066475846377472">Shorten isolated over Adani mine opposition</a> (Unions, mayors, ALP premier unite to back coal project) (April 12)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And there was a blatant editorial promotion of the mine on April 18, entitled: </p>
<blockquote>
<p><a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/editorials/adani-project-offers-fresh-hope/news-story/0ab7f4fd5eac23dce5b70346291c41d2">Adani project offers fresh hope</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>The April 12 edition even included a <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/bill-shortens-retreat-into-leftist-fanaticism/news-story/9874767399d0a30fd846151e562e29b9">front page comment</a> by Simon Benson, that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Bill Shorten’s repositioning on the Adani coalmine in north Queensland appears to be yet another political retreat into the inner-city streets of leftist fanaticism.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>What such a campaign tells us is it seems to be crunch-time for the mine – and the future of the entire Galilee Basin, whose coal deposits will be made to look a little more viable if that railway gets built.</p>
<p>But opposition to the railway subsidy has surfaced in the most unlikely of quarters. Sydney shockjock Alan Jones has <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/video/video-news/video-national-news/government-should-get-smashed-jones-20170417-4t0bc">weighed in</a>, denouncing the subsidy as a case of taxpayers funding a private venture that is not in the national interest.</p>
<p>Paradoxically, Jones ended his outrage by comparing funding Adani with subsidising windfarms, for which Australians – both present and future – are direct beneficiaries in so many ways. But both The Australian and Jones have ignored the the big story on investment into renewables.</p>
<p>Whereas a giant coal-mining company has taken seven long years to realise no-one is listening – except for major political parties, perhaps <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-fossil-fuelled-political-economy-of-australian-elections-61394">eager for political donations</a> they are accustomed to from the mining industry – investors <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-04-30/community-energy-projects-selling-out-within-minutes/8476794?WT.mc_id=newsmail&WT.tsrc=Newsmail">can’t get enough of renewables</a>. Investment opportunities for community projects have been selling out within minutes.</p>
<p>Grassroots solar projects are in high demand for investors. Fifty such projects have been established across Australia and are backed by $24 million. But the ABC reports Australia lags behind Scotland, Denmark and Germany, which all have extensive energy co-operatives that are promoting wind more than solar. </p>
<p>With an average of 7% return on investment, the appetite for such projects in Australia is obviously strong. And it will only take local communities and small businesses to be better organised to take advantage of the renewables investment revolution. At the very least, the remarkable appetite for renewables investment will drive the large banks and lending institutions to service this growing market.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>With thanks to Tahnee Burgess for research assistance on this article.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/77021/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
The news last week that Australia’s oldest bank, Westpac, has withdrawn from any prospect of financing Adani’s Carmichael coal mine may well be the death knell for the controversial project. Westpac is…David Holmes, Senior Lecturer, Communications and Media Studies, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/761552017-04-12T07:26:59Z2017-04-12T07:26:59ZAustralia’s climate bomb: the senselessness of Adani’s Carmichael coal mine<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165030/original/image-20170412-25901-1dwfgjv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Lukas Coch</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Veteran environmental campaigner and former Greens senator <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/24/the-adani-mine-is-this-generations-franklin-river-people-power-can-stop-it">Bob Brown</a> has previously pointed to Adani’s proposed Carmichael coal mine as the new Franklin River of <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2016/s4640679.htm">environmental protest</a> in Australia. Yet the future of this “climate bomb” hangs in the balance.</p>
<p>The ongoing <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/business/banking-and-finance/antiadani-mine-protesters-disrupt-westpacs-200th-birthday-celebrations-20170409-gvgz5q.html">contest</a> over the mine’s approval is about to get <a href="http://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/is-this-the-worst-mistake-australia-could-make/news-story/f461955f66050fb32f0c1717571399fa">very heated</a>. Some of the final decisions are to be made very soon. </p>
<p>On Wednesday, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/apr/11/malcolm-turnbull-tells-indian-billionaire-native-title-will-not-stop-adani-coalmine?CMP=share_btn_tw">declared</a> that native title claims would not impede the approval process, and that Adani would press ahead with its plans to seek A$1 billion in funding for the rail line needed to transport coal to Abbot Point for export.</p>
<p>The consequences of going ahead with the mine are almost incalculable. This is not simply because of the emissions it will produce, but from the fact it promotes and normalises the insanity that coal can still be “good for humanity”.</p>
<p>Here’s my list of the ten most-absurd things about the Adani mine.</p>
<p><strong>1)</strong> As the largest coal mine in the Australia when completed, Adani will legitimise the idea of mining all of the coal in the Galilee Basin. If extracted and burnt, this will get the world <a href="https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2013/june/1370181600/bill-mckibben/how-australian-coal-causing-global-damage">one-third</a> of the way toward 2°C of global warming. </p>
<p>The Adani mine alone will see up to <a href="https://sputniknews.com/asia/201704041052259467-environmentalists-alarmed-by-coal-mine/">2.3 billion tonnes of coal</a> extracted from an area five times the size of Sydney Harbour over 60 years. This is equivalent to putting out 7.7 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases. The global budget is now less than 500 billion tonnes in order to have an 80% chance of keeping global average temperature rise to less than 2°C.</p>
<p><strong>2)</strong> The mine lies adjacent to the Great Barrier Reef. The <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/mar/15/stopping-global-warming-is-only-way-to-save-great-barrier-reef-scientists-warn">heaviest risk</a> to the reef’s future is a continued increase in greenhouse gases. </p>
<p>You couldn’t invent a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/apr/07/its-either-adani-or-the-great-barrier-reef-are-we-willing-to-fight-for-a-wonder-of-the-world">greater insult</a> to the beloved reef than begin mining operations that amount to an affront to those who have begun to mourn for its imminent death.</p>
<p><strong>3)</strong> After years of bashing renewables as unviable without government subsidy, contemplating a $1 billion subsidy to the mine by the Turnbull government is quite perverse. </p>
<p>Fossil-fuel companies <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/feb/17/fossil-fuel-industry-gives-37m-to-major-parties-and-gets-big-subsidy-in-return">already receive</a> $2,000 in rebates and subsidies for every $1 they donate to Australia’s major political parties. So, this additional subsidy makes a mockery of any serious attempt to tackle climate change.</p>
<p><strong>4)</strong> With climate-change-induced extreme weather events exacting billions of dollars of damage across Australia, and especially in Queensland, the idea that public money would be used to increase these damage bills by injecting even more energy into the world’s climate system by accelerating greenhouse gas emissions is absurd. </p>
<p>Cyclone Debbie – a category-four cyclone – actually impacted on the areas of the mine itself, and delivered more peak rainfall than Cyclone Yasi, which was a category-five cyclone only six years ago. Since 2006, <a href="http://www.insurancecouncil.com.au/assets/media_release/2017/28032017_Insurance%20Council%20declares%20a%20catastrophe%20for%20Severe%20Tropical%20Cy....pdf">insurers have paid</a> more than $6.8 billion in cyclone- and flood-related claims in Queensland alone. Debbie is expected to add another $1 billion.</p>
<p><strong>5)</strong> That the Northern Australia Infrastructure Fund could be used to subsidise the mine is in contempt of any claim to responsible climate – and <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-04-12/warnings-to-directors-of-naif-to-not-fund-adanis/8438762">financial</a> – policy. That such a fund could be so directly controlled by so few people and have such enormous impact on greenhouse concentrations is a travesty.</p>
<p><strong>6)</strong> The argument that the royalties from the mine would benefit Australia are not supported by the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-21/adani-corporate-web-spreads-to-tax-havens/8135700">recent revelations</a> that Adani has set up an elaborate network of subsidiaries and trusts which are ultimately owned and controlled from the tax haven of the Cayman Islands.</p>
<p><strong>7)</strong> That the Queensland Labor government could buy into a jobs campaign around the mine when renewable technologies can carry the promise of even more jobs, and without risk to the Great Barrier Reef that is threatened by the dredging associated with the mine, and therefore is a danger to the tourism industry, is outrageous. </p>
<p>Adani’s own consultants have suggested the mine would produce <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/business-spectator/fact-check-will-adanis-coal-mine-really-boost-employment-by-10000-jobs/news-story/903c1932738b1d1a1763c74e45f4d7c7">fewer than 1,500 full-time jobs</a>. This amounts to a public subsidy of $683,000 per job.</p>
<p><strong>8)</strong> Adani’s argument that somehow the mine will be lifting Indians out of poverty is a PR disguise for a company that has been accused of <a href="https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/opinion/topic/2017/04/08/exposing-adanis-environmental-and-labour-abuses/14915736004470">blatant human rights abuses</a>.</p>
<p>This argument, invented by the now-failed <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jun/13/peabody-energy-coal-mining-climate-change-denial-funding">Peabody Energy</a> and most famously popularised by <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-coalitions-19th-century-colonial-time-warp-on-climate-33543">Bjorn Lomborg</a>, has also been a favourite of Coalition MPs. This argument is <a href="http://theconversation.com/from-the-reef-to-the-ret-the-politicisation-of-environmental-science-in-australia-30669">thoroughly patronising</a> – not simply because India itself has declared renewables to be <a href="http://reneweconomy.com.au/worse-news-for-australia-as-india-taps-solar-beijing-bans-coal-66423/">more important than coal</a>, but because it is the oppressive legacy of colonialism that under-developed third-world countries in the first place.</p>
<p><strong>9)</strong> The desperate plea by Resources Minister Matt Canavan, mounted in the face of a greater lunacy, that the coal Adani would export is “clean coal” that would actually cut emissions, has been <a href="http://www.climatechangenews.com/2017/04/05/adani-coal-not-cut-emissions-iea-expert/">dismissed by analysts</a> at the International Energy Agency.</p>
<p><strong>10)</strong> To commit to a mine that it supposed to run for 60 years as the price of coal continues to be devalued in the face of investment moving to renewables is <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/business/mining-and-resources/adanis-carmichael-coal-mine-is-environmentally-reckless-and-contrary-to-todays-energy-markets-20170404-gvdkgh.html">business suicide</a>. </p>
<p>It does not even take account of what the world’s climate will be like in 35 years. With the equator in a permanent heatwave and so much more storm-feeding energy in the system, coal won’t just be the new tobacco. It will become the grim reaper we see in our rear-view mirror.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>With thanks to Tahnee Burgess for research assistance on this article.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/76155/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Veteran environmental campaigner and former Greens senator Bob Brown has previously pointed to Adani’s proposed Carmichael coal mine as the new Franklin River of environmental protest in Australia. Yet…David Holmes, Senior Lecturer, Communications and Media Studies, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/748192017-03-20T00:32:47Z2017-03-20T00:32:47ZWith battery storage to the rescue, the Kodak moment for renewables has finally arrived<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/161443/original/image-20170319-6133-1xq9awd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Lukas Coch</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Who would have thought that, scarcely five weeks after Treasurer Scott Morrison, paraded a <a href="https://theconversation.com/that-lump-of-coal-73046">chunk of coal</a> in parliament, planning for Australia’s energy needs would be dominated by renewables, batteries and hydro?</p>
<p>For months now, the Coalition has been <a href="https://theconversation.com/playing-politics-with-renewables-how-the-right-is-losing-its-way-73351">talking down renewables</a>, blaming them for power failures, blackouts, and an unreliable energy network.</p>
<p>South Australia was <a href="http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2017/02/09/renewables-v-coal-blame-game-over-sa-blackouts-continues">bearing the brunt</a> of this campaign. The state that couldn’t keep its lights on had Coalition politicians and mainstream journalists vexatiously attributing the blame to its high density of renewables.</p>
<p>But this sustained campaign, which would eventually hail “clean coal” as Australia’s salvation, all came unstuck when tech entrepreneur Elon Musk came out with a brilliant stunt: to install a massive <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-14/musk-offer-to-halve-tesla-battery-price-game-changer/8352792?WT.mc_id=newsmail&WT.tsrc=Newsmail">battery storage system in South Australia</a> “in 100 days, or it’s free”. </p>
<p>The genius of the stunt was not to win an instant contract to follow up on such a commitment, but to put an end to decades of dithering over energy policy that major political parties are so famous for in Australia and around the world, and which have intensified the climate crisis to dangerous levels. </p>
<p>Musk’s stunt was not without self-interest. It also aimed to position Tesla as a can-do company for future contracts. But where it was lethal was in completely neutering the campaign against renewables.</p>
<p>Anti-renewable politicians around the country, regardless of whether they are captive to the fossil-fuel lobby, could no longer argue for a dubious “clean-coal” powered station that would take between five and seven years to build when Tesla could fix a state’s energy crisis in 100 days – and not emit one gram of carbon at the end of the process.</p>
<p>Both the South Australian and Victorian governments have responded to Musk’s proposal by bidding for 100 megawatts of battery storage in their states. In South Australia’s case, a state-owned 250MW backup gas-fired fast-start aeroderivative power plant is also to be commissioned. </p>
<p>The state-owned gas power plant is, however, only a support to plans for a renewable-fed grid to be the main source of emergency dispatchable power. It is a plant that anticipates the way extreme weather can impact on energy infrastructure in much the same way desalination plants do for water infrastructure. </p>
<p>This is one reason it must be state-owned. But another is that a private operator would insist on full-time generation to maximise investment and profits. Thus, the South Australian gas plant is actually a critique of the privatisation of energy provision in Australia, which is the single greatest cause of why electricity prices have gone up.</p>
<p>As Giles Parkinson from <a href="http://reneweconomy.com.au/sa-power-plan-much-gas-storage-cheap-60973/?utm_source=RE+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=33c7d5716d-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_03_15&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_46a1943223-33c7d5716d-40422329">RenewEconomy</a> points out, within a framework in which privatisation dominates, the current market rules actually disadvantage the merits of non-domestic battery storage for consumers – because private power retailers can exploit arbitrage between low and high prices. </p>
<p>They can load up the batteries when excess wind and solar are cheap and sell it at peak demand for inflated prices. So, storage can actually enhance profits for power suppliers and create a bad deal for consumers. </p>
<p>However, the intrinsic value of storage is that the more you add, the less volatility there will be in a market. This creates a stable price for consumers and less profits for the corporations.</p>
<p>An example <a href="http://reneweconomy.com.au/sa-power-plan-much-gas-storage-cheap-60973/?utm_source=RE+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=33c7d5716d-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_03_15&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_46a1943223-33c7d5716d-40422329">Parkinson</a> uses is the <a href="http://reneweconomy.com.au/wivenhoe-pumped-hydro-big-little-plant-didnt-30606/">Wivenhoe pumped storage facility in Queensland</a>. This is:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… rarely used, because it would dampen the profits of its owners, which also own coal and gas generation.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Nevertheless, as a concept, the battery storage solution proposed by Musk, followed by South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill’s <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/south-australia-energy-plan-360m-gasfired-power-plant-to-be-built/news-story/1ada5e2f160c87202a676170a62df009">decisive action</a>, really had constricted Malcolm Turnbull’s options. For a start, it makes redundant the longstanding fiction of “baseload power”, which was <a href="http://reneweconomy.com.au/head-of-uks-national-grid-says-idea-of-large-power-stations-for-baseload-is-outdated-53893/">coined by the fossil-fuel industry</a> to justify coal.</p>
<p>By last week, Turnbull would have already had the results of focus groups telling him that “clean” coal doesn’t wash with voters at all.</p>
<p>So, after reeling for most of last week over the humiliation that the Tesla and Weatherill challenge presented, and after scrambling for a counterpunch, Turnbull came up with <a href="https://theconversation.com/turnbull-unveils-snowy-plan-for-pumped-hydro-costing-billions-74686">Snowy Hydro 2.0</a>. Here Musk’s stunt could only be really met with another stunt, but one in which Turnbull is only trying to salvage a very bad hand that he has played against battery-friendly renewables.</p>
<p>It is true that pumped hydro is currently cheaper than battery storage, but cannot be implemented nearly as quickly, and is not infinitely scalable as battery farms are. </p>
<p>Also, whereas the cost of battery storage continues to fall, the cost of the engineering needed for pumped hydro is not. And there are limited locations suitable for its operation.</p>
<p>But more important than all these considerations is that it while Snowy 2.0 will stabilise the national grid no matter whether clean or dirty energy is powering its pumps, it will only assist decarbonisation if the pumps are powered by wind and solar, which has all been <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/mar/18/its-great-news-but-sadly-turnbulls-hiding-the-greens-under-the-mash">glossed over</a> in its PR sell. </p>
<p>With current energy market rules, there is still some incentive for dirty generators to feed the Snowy pumps. This helps energy security but does nothing for the climate crisis.</p>
<p>Yet, with his PR campaign, Turnbull thinks he is on a winner. The Snowy is also an icon of Australian nation-building and fable. And there is probably some political capital to be scored there. But the Snowy is a once-off, and not a part of the future as battery storage is. </p>
<p>But in having to play the part of the Man from Snowy River, Turnbull may have forestalled the inevitable onset of batteries, the price of which was that he was snookered into committing to an alternative substantial renewable-energy-friendly project. </p>
<p>So significant was the original stunt by Musk that set off a train of events cornering Turnbull into offering counter-storage that Giles Parkinson <a href="http://reneweconomy.com.au/turnbull-drives-stake-through-heart-of-fossil-fuel-industry-48916/">declared</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Turnbull drives stake through heart of fossil fuel industry.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But then, just when you thought coal had been cremated for the last time, it is revived over the weekend with the work of Chris Uhlmann, the ABC’s political editor, who gained notoriety for his <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/david-holmes-84799/dashboard">anti-renewable stance on South Australia last year</a>. </p>
<p>In his <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-19/manufacturers-will-quit-australia-if-reliable-energy-in-doubt/8366528?WT.mc_id=newsmail&WT.tsrc=Newsmail">latest piece</a> on the ABC, Uhlmann forewarns that the closure of the Hazlewood power station (5% of the nation’s energy output) will lead to east coast blackouts and crises in the manufacturing sector.</p>
<p>Uhlmann salutes the language of the coal companies in predicting that an energy crisis will result from no new investment in “baseload” power, even though this is precisely what renewables plus storage actually amounts to. He then quotes a Hazelwood unit controller as his source to raise the bogie of intermitancy once again:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Intermittent renewable energy could not be relied on during days of peak demand. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>But the most misleading part of his piece was to point to the Australian Energy Market Operator’s prediction that shortfalls in supply next summer can be attributed to the closure of coal power stations, rather than the fact that climate-change-induced hotter temperatures are driving up demand during this period – as they did in the summer just gone, when Hazelwood was operating.</p>
<p>Perhaps Uhlmann’s piece would not look like such an advertorial for the coal industry had it not appeared on the same day as Resources Minister Matt Canavan’s speculation that a new coal-fired plant could be built in Queensland that will be subsidised by the A$5 billion Northern Australia Infrastructure fund.</p>
<p>On the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/insiders/content/2016/s4638612.htm">ABC’s Insiders</a>, Canavan lamented that Queensland did not have a:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… baseload power station north of Rockhampton … We’ve got a lot of coal up here, the new clean-coal technologies are at an affordable price, reliable power and lower emission.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It seems that while South Australia is leading the progress on a renewables Kodak moment, Queensland, with plans to build a coal-fired power stations and the Queensland Labor government going to <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-18/adani-mine-support-shown-by-qld-premier-mayors-in-india/8366126">great lengths</a> to support the gigantic Adani coal mine, at least two states are moving in completely opposite directions.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/74819/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Who would have thought that, scarcely five weeks after Treasurer Scott Morrison, paraded a chunk of coal in parliament, planning for Australia’s energy needs would be dominated by renewables, batteries…David Holmes, Senior Lecturer, Communications and Media Studies, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/733512017-02-21T22:45:47Z2017-02-21T22:45:47ZPlaying politics with renewables: how the right is losing its way<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/157659/original/image-20170221-18633-1hntzv4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Rocking the boat: Scott Morrison and his infamous lump of carbon.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Mick Tsikas</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>This summer has seen a concerted attack on renewable energy coming out of Canberra, featuring everyone from One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts to Coalition ministers channelling the far right of their party. So absurd and illogical has the broadside been, it is tempting to conclude that conservative politics is at risk of losing its way entirely.</p>
<p>In 2017, talking down renewables while advocating “clean coal” smacks of desperation and political recklessness in the face of the wider forces that are now lighting up the path to a renewable future.</p>
<p>Here are my picks for the top four most absurd attempts at gaming the politics of energy from right-of-centre politicians.</p>
<p><strong>1. The poll that backfired</strong></p>
<p>In the top spot is Malcolm Roberts – former coal executive, current senator and full-time climate denier – who held a poll on Twitter to see how much voters hate “green energy”.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/157647/original/image-20170221-18640-od864u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/157647/original/image-20170221-18640-od864u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157647/original/image-20170221-18640-od864u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157647/original/image-20170221-18640-od864u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157647/original/image-20170221-18640-od864u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157647/original/image-20170221-18640-od864u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157647/original/image-20170221-18640-od864u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Source: Twitter.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The only problem was that his poll (as unscientific as these things are), ended up showing overwhelming support for renewables, at 87%.</p>
<p>Of course the premise in his question is disingenuous, as the Coalition government has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/feb/19/coalition-says-it-may-change-clean-energy-finance-corporation-rules-to-fund-coal-plants">recently attempted</a> to divert some of the money originally set aside for renewables into some decidedly non-renewable projects. Which brings us to…</p>
<p><strong>2. ‘Clean’ coal</strong></p>
<p>Funding “clean coal” – a term invented by a <a href="http://www.thefifthestate.com.au/business/government/what-clive-hamilton-told-frydenberg-when-he-quit-climate-change-authority/88672">coal industry PR firm</a>, would be a spectacularly brazen repurposing of green energy funding. It hinges on the idea that techniques like carbon capture and storage can help coal become clean enough to compete with zero-carbon energy sources like wind and solar. Under this <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/nikola-casule/claiming-coal-can-be-clean-is-like-saying-smoking-can-be-healthy/">perverse reasoning</a>, coal would thus qualify for subsidies from the very funding bodies that were set up to end our reliance on coal. </p>
<p>The campaign, which kicked off with Prime Minister Malcolm <a href="http://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/australian-economy/malcolm-turnbull-warns-against-protectionism-during-national-press-club-speech/news-story/7246a8894c12a21ac11b91ebf65184ef">Turnbull’s National Press Club Speech on Feb 1</a>, reached its apex when Treasurer Scott Morrison brandished a <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/brandishing-coal-in-a-heatwave-scott-morrison-might-as-well-fiddle-as-australia-suffers-an-energy-crisis-20170212-gubasj.html">lump of coal</a> in parliament. But as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/feb/18/deep-pocketed-miners-dont-like-it-when-those-with-different-views-wield-clout?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GU+Today+AUS+v1+-+AUS+morning+mail+callout&utm_term=213859&subid=10132943&CMP=ema_632">Lenore Taylor</a> pointed out last week, the argument for clean coal, which the Minerals Council of Australia (MCA) has been pushing for many years, has the government looking like the adman. </p>
<p><strong>3. Attacks on ‘ideology’</strong></p>
<p>While pushing clean coal at the behest of the fossil fuel industry, the Coalition has ironically also been <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/malcolm-turnbull-sharpens-attack-on-labors-renewable-policies-20170213-gubx6h.html">warning us of Labor’s “ideological” campaign</a> for renewable energy.</p>
<p>In a <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/opinion/alan-kohler/the-great-coal-hoax/news-story/e147d348f24852838ff73bc5940b0e58#itm=taus%7Cnews%7Caus_authors_index%7C4%7Cauthors_storyBlock_headline%7CAlan_Kohler%7Cindex%7Cauthor&itmt=1487573362023">scalding attack last week</a>, business analyst Alan Kohler accused the government of being “evangelists” for coal, and wondered what has happened to the Malcolm Turnbull who once sacrificed his leadership to his progressive personal convictions on climate. He wrote:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>…one suspects that Morrison and Turnbull know too – we all know, really – that the only reason coal is “cheap” is that the cost of dealing with the carbon dioxide that comes from burning it is not included in the price.</p>
<p>Coal is by far the most expensive fuel for generating electricity, full stop — if the cost of dealing with climate change is taken into account.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The MCA and the Turnbull government are among the few groups still resisting the inevitable.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/157648/original/image-20170221-18657-1gc52k8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/157648/original/image-20170221-18657-1gc52k8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=762&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157648/original/image-20170221-18657-1gc52k8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=762&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157648/original/image-20170221-18657-1gc52k8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=762&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157648/original/image-20170221-18657-1gc52k8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=958&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157648/original/image-20170221-18657-1gc52k8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=958&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157648/original/image-20170221-18657-1gc52k8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=958&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Source: Twitter.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>4. Using the weather as a weapon</strong></p>
<p>Despite the Coalition looking increasingly isolated on energy policy, the rearguard action against renewables continues. For weeks now we have been hearing about the need for an energy mix that is secure, reliable and affordable, as energy minister Josh Frydenberg <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2016/s4622768.htm">told us on ABC radio on Monday</a>.</p>
<p>This platform of energy security has been used to launch a disingenuous attack on renewables, based on their alleged unreliability (which is allegedly even worse during climate-induced bouts of extreme weather).</p>
<p>The first such attack came in the wake of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/we-must-keep-the-lights-on-how-a-cyclone-was-used-to-attack-renewables-66371">cyclone in South Australia</a> that triggered a <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-caused-south-australias-state-wide-blackout-66268">statewide blackout</a> last September. South Australia’s wind energy industry was again singled out for criticism after a heatwave <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-did-energy-regulators-deliberately-turn-out-the-lights-in-south-australia-72729">prompted more outages this month</a>.</p>
<p>Turnbull took the opportunity to <a href="http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/blame-game-over-rolling-blackouts-as-south-australia-promised-dramatic-overhaul-of-energy-grid/news-story/6f659cfefcead66d2599f3449f1cb2d6">draw a link</a> between the blackouts and SA’s high penetration of renewable energy:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If you want to have a larger and larger share of intermittent renewables in your energy system then you need to have the backup … when the wind isn’t blowing.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The day after the blackout (and with the heatwave bearing down on Sydney), Morrison <a href="https://theconversation.com/that-lump-of-coal-73046">held up his coal in parliament</a> and pledged not to let business “fizzle out in the dark” as he claimed Labor would.</p>
<p>However, a week later the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) <a href="http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/technology/aemo-report-on-heatwave-rolling-blackouts-reveals-low-wind-power-inability-to-turn-on-gasfired-pelican-point-led-to-power-cuts/news-story/2c4d4257f53ab94e98a30b9937329f70">apologised to the 90,000 households and businesses affected by the blackouts</a>, attributing them to load-shedding and pointing out that a software error cut off 60,000 extra consumers unnecessarily. AEMO added that because heatwaves have grown more extreme under the warming climate, it was unable to forecast accurately how much extra supply would be needed.</p>
<p>The anti-renewables message finally came unstuck last weekend, when it was revealed that Turnbull and his ministers had <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/pm-and-ministers-were-told-wind-not-to-blame-for-sa-blackout-20170212-guaxf0.html">already been advised</a> that renewables were not to blame for last September’s incident.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, as the heatwave moved across New South Wales, there is evidence that renewables such as rooftop solar <a href="http://reneweconomy.com.au/record-solar-wind-save-nsw-consumers-as-coal-gas-went-missing-79390/">dramatically reduced</a> the need for load-shedding.</p>
<p>But one of the biggest ironies of the Coalition’s decision to pick on SA’s wind farms is that many of them were <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-02-16/danny-price-federal-government-relying-on-states-to-reach-target/8275774">put there by federal government policy</a>.</p>
<p>As Ben Eltham <a href="https://newmatilda.com/2017/02/16/power-politics-too-much-energy-in-all-the-wrong-places/">wrote</a> last week:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>After eight years of treating energy policy as a plaything for political gain, the federal Liberal Party is now so wedded to climate denialism and fossil fuel loyalty signalling that it knows no other way. In the process, Malcolm Turnbull has abandoned nearly everything he once stood for … except perhaps the only real thing he ever stood for, the gaining and holding of power.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In attempting to distance the Commonwealth from projects that are actually making progress on climate, Turnbull has executed a complete reversal of his own personal convictions on climate change. Perhaps party-political expedience really is the only explanation for the ongoing war of words on renewable energy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/73351/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
This summer has seen a concerted attack on renewable energy coming out of Canberra, featuring everyone from One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts to Coalition ministers channelling the far right of their…David Holmes, Senior Lecturer, Communications and Media Studies, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/683232016-11-07T22:04:32Z2016-11-07T22:04:32ZGrowing inequality in the US is bad news for climate change<p>This week’s US Presidential election will likely be more important for climate change action than the <a href="http://cop22.ma/en#">United Nations (UN) Climate Change Conference</a> which started in Marrakech yesterday. Whichever candidate makes it to the White House, progressive action on climate change in America, and therefore globally, is going to take a hit.</p>
<p>We have already seen stagnation on climate change action in the lead up to the US election. The mudslinging and controversy of the campaign has taken climate change off the front pages. Climate change has had even less visibility in the US election campaign than it did in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-has-climate-change-disappeared-from-the-australian-election-radar-59809">Australian election</a> in July.</p>
<p>It was telling that Hillary Clinton, who had talked up climate policy in the primaries when competing against Bernie Sanders, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/sep/20/hillary-clinton-dropped-climate-change-from-speeches-after-bernie-sanders-endorsement">dropped the climate ball</a> as soon as she had the Democratic party’s nomination.</p>
<p>It wasn’t simply that there was no longer any point taking on climate change in order to win more Sanders supporters, but that climate change was so far down the list of ways Clinton could differentiate herself from the Republican candidate Donald Trump that it seemed pointless to insert it into the election campaign at all.</p>
<p>Trump’s worldview projects a complete <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-18/trump-says-he-will-renegotiate-us-role-in-climate-north-korea/7424412">abnegation of climate change</a>, as shown by his <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-36401174">intention to undo</a> America’s commitment to the <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-trump-presidency-would-spell-disaster-for-the-paris-climate-agreement-59737">Paris climate agreement</a> should he get to the White House.</p>
<p>Trump’s <a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jun/03/hillary-clinton/yes-donald-trump-did-call-climate-change-chinese-h/">negative attitude</a> towards climate change is another example of his belief in <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-the-us-electoral-system-really-rigged-63798">conspiracy theories</a>. But his neglect of climate change is not to be found in deploying <a href="http://www.news.com.au/world/breaking-news/trump-climate-denial-at-odds-with-leaders/news-story/561898b4176fec917d38d866d44b4649">denier myths</a>, but his abandonment of a policy stance about anything in favour of filling the airwaves with insults more suited to a bar room brawl.</p>
<p>For many Americans, its 240 year old system of democracy is in great danger. Because so many unemployed and dispossessed Americans feel that neither capitalism nor the two great parties can meet their needs, they are rejecting the political elites and the establishment politics that keep the <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/pikettys-inequality-story-in-six-charts">unequal distribution of wealth</a> in check.</p>
<p>Of course, such a system has always been part of American life. It’s just that it is now at breaking point. It is of no consequence that Trump is himself part of the US economic elite. It is enough that he has himself been a “loser” many times over, and that he speaks the reality-TV language of those who want America to be “great again” both at rallies and on <a href="https://theconversation.com/trump-the-media-and-the-populist-politics-of-the-pogrom-66364">social media</a>. </p>
<p>Ironically, America is a greater power now than it has been in the past. But due to the automation of the increased manufacturing output in heavy industries and the reliance on China for consumer goods, unemployment and income inequality have risen to unacceptable levels. It’s now the turn of working class Americans to be the “losers of globalisation”. </p>
<p>This has given rise to a loss of faith in American institutions, and the celebration of Trump as a bad boy who should be able to do whatever he wants to rail against the establishment.</p>
<p>Many analysts have <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/this-is-how-fascism-comes-to-america/2016/05/17/c4e32c58-1c47-11e6-8c7b-6931e66333e7_story.html?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-b%3Ahomepage%2Fstory">drawn the comparison</a> between Trump’s version of America and fascism — military isolationism, the ridiculing of “others” (including Muslims, Hispanics, women, Chinese and Mexicans), high levels of paranoia (the media is “<a href="http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/10/17/13304574/donald-trump-twitter-tirade-rigged-election">rigged</a>”, the election is “<a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-37682947">rigged</a>”), and the fairy tale conviction that one person alone can save America.</p>
<p>But the real danger for the US is in <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-new-breed-of-post-trump-populist-leaders-could-put-the-us-on-the-path-to-fascism-67645?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20October%2027%202016%20-%205894&utm_content=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20October%2027%202016%20-%205894+CID_368ae9e626455f9d93cd9b9496498b0b&utm_source=campaign_monitor&utm_term=A%20new%20breed%20of%20post-Trump%20populist%20leaders%20could%20put%20the%20US%20on%20the%20path%20to%20fascism">four years from now</a>. If Trump doesn’t win the presidency, a smarter Republican candidate – one who is actually supported by the floor of the Grand Old Party, actually has policies and appeals to the disaffected – will take US politics to a climate inactive isolationist extreme.</p>
<p>However, a moderating force for climate change is the success of the Paris agreement, which is <a href="https://theconversation.com/paris-climate-agreement-enters-into-force-international-experts-respond-68124">now in full force</a>. The Paris agreement, which replaces the Kyoto framework, has been ratified extremely quickly by UN standards. It now has almost 100 countries signed up – needing only the 55 countries that account for 55% of global emissions.</p>
<p>This is impressive progress given the scale and complexity of the UN’s framework convention on climate change. The momentum of the Paris agreement provides a kind of political guardrail for achieving stronger action on climate change, leaving no country with an excuse not to join in.</p>
<p>The only counter-force that could reverse this momentum would be the rise of populist support for isolationism within the states signed up to the treaty. And a Trumpist America, whether it eventuates this week or in the future, offers an archetypal case.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/68323/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Whether it’s Clinton on Trump in the White House, progressive action on climate change in America - and therefore globally - is going to take a hit.David Holmes, Senior Lecturer, Communications and Media Studies, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/663712016-10-03T02:37:54Z2016-10-03T02:37:54Z‘We must keep the lights on’: how a cyclone was used to attack renewables<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/140018/original/image-20161003-23434-1wbqjoq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/David Mariuz</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The mid-latitude <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-28/south-australia-weather:-cyclone-and-flood-watch-expected/7883104">cyclone with no name</a> that hit South Australia last week, spawning two tornadoes and 80,000 electricity strikes, destroyed 22 massive transmission towers carrying electricity across the state.</p>
<p>The consequences of the superstorm could have been dire – both from the direct effects of the wind and floods but also for the life support systems that depend on electricity. 1.7 million residents lost power as winds reached 120km/hour. </p>
<p>Yet in the midst of South Australia being in a state of emergency, federal Coalition ministers launched what seemed to be a co-ordinated and, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/climatecouncil/videos/880407128762548/">for many</a>, outrageous campaign against renewable energy.</p>
<p>It was co-ordinated in that Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce and Environment and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg all spoke from the same script: that “energy security” is Australia’s number-one priority. Or, as Frydenberg also put it:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We must keep the lights on.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Turnbull spoke of the extremely “aggressive” renewable energy targets the states have put in, which ironically are helping the federal government meet its own targets as part of UN framework agreements. And this in an environment where both major parties have just agreed to <a href="http://reneweconomy.com.au/2016/coalition-labor-agree-to-slash-500m-from-arena-budget-83469">cut A$500 million</a> from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency.</p>
<p>Along with Turnbull, Frydenberg was able to concede that severe weather was the source of the blackout. But the cyclone became a mere footnote to a full-frontal assault against renewables, which was taken up by mainstream media around the country. It sometimes became a bigger story than the storm itself. </p>
<p>Frydenberg <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/frydneberg-warning-over-pursuit-of-unrealistically-high-renewable-energy-targets/news-story/497043a21d73e06a64231017aaa3043d?login=1">continued the crusade</a> over the weekend. He declared:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We’ve got the states pursuing these ridiculously high and unrealistic state-based renewable energy targets.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Joyce’s appearances on radio put the panic over renewables well ahead of the storm’s potential dangers. He <a href="http://radio.abc.net.au/programitem/pea3JgYBXQ?play=true">compared</a> the one-day blackout to the dark ages and put it down to bad planning, of which wind power was seen to be public enemy number one. </p>
<p>Joyce pointedly refused to acknowledge the storm as the cause of the blackout, and <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/barnaby-joyce-ignorant-for-blaming-blackout-on-wind-energy/news-story/8846b63ad10c7f3c4ed2bdfa43624ceb">instead regressed</a> to his well-known anti-wind rhetoric:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Of course in the middle of a storm, there are certain areas where wind power works – it works when wind is at a milder style, it doesn’t work when there’s no wind and it doesn’t work when there’s excessive wind – and it obviously wasn’t working too well last night because they had a blackout.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>For these ministers, putting out a message that renewables were to blame because, they argued, they could not deliver a stable power system to South Australia, was an urgent priority that could both kill any climate message while denigrating renewables. </p>
<p>In a way what they did was very clever. As I have argued <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-the-abbott-government-fiddling-while-nsw-burns-19339">elsewhere</a>, extreme weather presents the best opportunity for communicating climate stories.</p>
<p>That is, people are looking for an explanation as to why catastrophic weather is affecting them, and pointing to the link with between extreme weather and climate change is very persuasive at these times. But the Coalition’s campaign hijacked such messaging by simply swapping climate change with renewables.</p>
<p>The anti-renewable campaign was also outrageous. It was an affront to those who were confronting the storm’s immediate dangers and discomfort. But far more outrageous than this was the hypocrisy of drawing a link between the outage and renewables, rather than to climate change. The latter connection has been so vehemently rebuked by the Coalition during past extreme weather events.</p>
<p>During the <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-the-abbott-government-fiddling-while-nsw-burns-19339">NSW bushfires</a> in October 2013, Abbott government ministers declared that talking about climate change during a “natural”/unnatural disaster to be taboo. This was in response to Greens MP Adam Bandt, who had linked the fires to climate change.</p>
<p>At the time, Environment Minister Greg Hunt declared:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There has been a terrible tragedy in NSW and no-one anywhere should seek to politicise any human tragedy, let alone a bushfire of this scale.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Given how progressive Turnbull himself has been on climate change in the past, this co-ordinated attack on renewables only demonstrates how captive he is to the right wing of the party and to the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-fossil-fuelled-political-economy-of-australian-elections-61394">fossil-fuel industry</a>. </p>
<p>Turnbull’s declaration on the day after the blackout was to “end the ideology” of the states pursuing renewables too aggressively. Ironically, what all of the polls around climate change show in the last five years is that enthusiasm for renewables is consistently high across Australia. </p>
<p>Perhaps Turnbull believes that if something is popular it must be ideological by definition. This departs from the idea that ideology is actually a worldview in the service of power – for example, the corporate power of fossil-fuel companies, which stand to lose much by the aggressive pursuit of renewables.</p>
<p>But the Coalition campaign got a huge lift from the ABC in the form of an <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-29/rushing-to-renewables-risks-sector's-reputation:-uhlmann/7888290?WT.mc_id=newsmail">opinion piece</a> by political editor Chris Uhlmann. He says:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Renewables are the future but, today, they present serious engineering problems. To deny that is to deny the science.</p>
<p>Those problems can be sorted in time, but rushing to a target to parade green credentials exposes the electricity network to a serious security risk and, in the long run, risks permanent reputational damage to the renewable energy cause.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Uhlmann took his piece to national TV with a PowerPoint presentation during the ABC’s evening bulletin the day after the blackout. He claimed that only coal and gas could provide continuous energy or “synchronous supply”, and that renewables fail to do this. </p>
<p>The story really made it look like renewables were to blame. Yet his story in no way reconciled his teacherly diagrams with a soundbite from the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) in an earlier story – that: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Energy generation mix was not a factor in the power blackout.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Uhlmann’s story mentioned that the main interconnector with Victoria had failed, but then focused on renewables as a problem, while claiming the AEMO advised him that the causes of the blackout were yet to be identified. He failed to mention what he had in his online article, which was that AEMO also advised:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Initial investigations have identified the root cause of the event is likely to be the multiple loss of 275 kilovolt (kV) power lines during severe storm activity in the state.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Anyone who saw the images of the toppled and mangled transmission towers could easily figure out that if electricity has no way of being transmitted, it really does not matter where it comes from.</p>
<p>This is the point Labor politicians were trying to make. But they did not get a very good run, because the Coalition’s media blitz had been much more planned.</p>
<p>But neither did Labor politicians, including Bill Shorten, make the alternative link to climate change. South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill was a little more effective, saying:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This was a weather event, not a renewable energy event.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But he also did not go further.</p>
<p>Uhlmann’s report was preceded by a pre-cyclone story posted on the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-25/sa's-power-price-spike-sounds-national-electricity-alarm/7875970">ABC website</a> last week which claimed renewables had caused an astronomical spike in energy prices in South Australia on a July day when the wind was not blowing. But the headline belies the reality that a privatised system of energy supply enables the kind of price gouging that was seen on that day, especially as the interconnector with Victoria was also down.</p>
<p>The interconnectors across Australia are very important, as Australia actually has one of the <a href="https://www.aemo.com.au/Electricity/-/media/CFE8057F1A304D7DBFDD8882D8089357.ashx">largest continuous grids</a> in the world. This means that as long as we manage the grid itself, with “better planning” we will be able to avoid blackouts.</p>
<p>The importance of managing grids, and “distributed energy” that may use home storage as well, is the key to continuity. Otherwise, it is very easy to see outages, as was the case in the US in 2003. Then, long before renewables were significant, a <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/south-australian-blackout-nothing-to-do-with-renewable-energy-experts-20160929-grr6dz.html">single tree branch</a> touching an overloaded power line turned off the lights for 50 million people in the US and Canada.</p>
<p>Managing a reliable grid is important, but it never seems to have occurred to federal Coaltition politicians that “good planning” is to aggressively cut emissions – which is exactly what many states are trying to do. This reduces the amount of energy in the climate system that ends up as increased water vapour and flooding, increased storm intensity, and many other forms of extreme weather.</p>
<p>Shorten, like Turnbull, knows that recent polls are showing climate change is returning a high level of concern, and has missed an opportunity to link the storm to climate – something the Abbott government had always considered must be avoided at all costs.</p>
<p>Turnbull’s team has managed to divert attention away from climate and go one better than the Abbott government by attacking renewables all in one campaign. For the fossil-fuel industry and the Coalition’s climate deniers alike, this was one perfect storm.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/66371/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
The mid-latitude cyclone with no name that hit South Australia last week, spawning two tornadoes and 80,000 electricity strikes, destroyed 22 massive transmission towers carrying electricity across the…David Holmes, Senior Lecturer, Communications and Media Studies, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/613942016-06-22T03:44:01Z2016-06-22T03:44:01ZThe fossil-fuelled political economy of Australian elections<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/127649/original/image-20160622-19754-1tcnq5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Lukas Coch</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The endorsement for coal mining from the Labor-Coalition duopoly that the election campaign has seen in the last week makes the token appeals that have been made about tackling climate change even more disingenuous.</p>
<p>In this election campaign, the major parties have only brought up climate change when they have been pressed to do so at public forums, like leaders’ debates, the ABC’s Q&A, or when they treat social media as something that <a href="https://theconversation.com/climate-change-makes-a-comeback-with-the-help-of-social-media-61004">needs to be quelled</a>.</p>
<p>The Coalition’s response is simply to say that Australia participated in the Paris agreement, and that is good enough. Labor, on the other hand, points to having outbid the Coalition on targets. Yet neither party is planning to deliver the cuts needed for Australia to play its part in keeping global warming below the 2°C threshold.</p>
<p>Which leads us back to a question I will deal with at the end of this article: if polls are consistently showing that Australian voters want climate change on the election agenda, why are the leaders keeping so quiet about it?</p>
<p>Neither party is shy of talking up coal, however. Bill Shorten <a href="https://theconversation.com/climate-change-makes-a-comeback-with-the-help-of-social-media-61004">declared last week</a> that a Labor government would not ban coal mining – and that it would be part of Australia’s energy needs for the foreseeable future.</p>
<p>But then on Tuesday, <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2016/s4485777.htm">Attorney-General George Brandis</a>, campaigning for Queensland’s most marginal seat of Capricornia, put in one of the pluckiest coal-selling performances of the campaign. He cited the gigantic Adani mine in central Queensland a saviour for the electorate.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We know that Adani, the massive Indian coal company, wants to develop the Carmichael mine, which according to some estimates could generate up to 10,000 jobs. And people in Rockhampton know that and they know that the Greens are doing everything they possibly can to prevent the development of the Adani mine. </p>
<p>They see their future prosperity as being bound up in the development of the Adani mine, and they know that if there were to be a Labor-Greens government, that would be the end of the Adani mine, that would be the end of coal mining in central Queensland, and that would be the end of their best shot at economic prosperity in the future.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But what doesn’t add up here is that around the world, <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-13/we-ve-almost-reached-peak-fossil-fuels-for-electricity">coal</a> is in <a href="http://reneweconomy.com.au/2016/coal-dying-time-put-us-misery-54633">terminal decline</a>, while the future for renewables is looking <a href="http://reneweconomy.com.au/2016/solar-and-wind-energys-stunning-cost-falls-to-continue-25263">very bright and secure</a>. </p>
<p>Just to the north, the federal government has <a href="http://reneweconomy.com.au/2016/coalition-turns-clean-energy-finance-corp-election-slush-fund-85583">quarantined A$1 billion</a> from the Clean Energy Finance Corporation for projects to “save” the Great Barrier Reef. But this money is demonstrably not going to create any jobs that are relevant to Capricornia. Apparently pork-barrelling is not needed in Capricornia, as the promise of coal is a ready replacement.</p>
<p>But the largest contradiction of all is the complete illogicality of claiming (even if without foundation) to save the reef and solve climate change in one Queensland electorate, while proposing to unleash one of the largest deposits of CO₂ to the world’s atmosphere from the electorate next door.</p>
<p>It is worth heeding 350.org’s Bill McKibben’s <a href="https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2013/june/1370181600/bill-mckibben/how-australian-coal-causing-global-damage">warning</a> that if all the coal in the Galilee Basin, of which the Adani mine holds one of the largest deposits, is exported for burning, it would use up 30% of the world’s carbon budget. 100% of the budget gets you 2°C. </p>
<p>And new climate research looking at the difference between 1.5°C and 2°C, suggests the latter will make what we experience at the upper limits of present-day climate variability the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jun/16/what-would-a-global-warming-increase-of-15c-be-like?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Green+Light+2016&utm_term=177895&subid=10132943&CMP=EMCENVEML1631">new normal</a> around the globe, and worse closer to the equator.</p>
<h2>The influence of the mining and energy industry on election campaigns</h2>
<p>This leads us to ask serious questions about the influence that mining and energy companies have on major political parties during election campaigns. </p>
<p>There is some variation in which particular mining companies are favoured by particular parties. Labor is certainly not as keen on Adani as the Coalition is. But, in general, the support for fossil-fuel industries is part of the DNA of the major parties today.</p>
<p>It is <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/csg-industry-hires-wellconnected-staffers-20150515-gh2rg3.html">well known</a> there is a perpetually revolving door between mining/energy companies and politicians/staffers from the major parties. </p>
<p>Take the Labor Party. When Labor lost the last election, Martin Ferguson, <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/csg-industry-hires-wellconnected-staffers-20150515-gh2rg3.html">Craig Emerson</a> and Greg Combet either took up management jobs with mining and energy companies and associations or worked as consultants for them. </p>
<p>Combet, a former climate change minister, <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/csg-industry-hires-wellconnected-staffers-20150515-gh2rg3.html">took up consultancies</a> for coal seam gas companies AGL and Santos. Ferguson, resources minister during Labor’s last term of office, <a href="http://www.appea.com.au/media_release/martin-ferguson-appointed-chair-appea-advisory-board/">landed the position</a> as chairman of the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association’s advisory committee only six months after leaving politics.</p>
<p>With the Coalition, former National Party leader Mark Vaile is <a href="http://www.whitehavencoal.com.au/about_us/board_of_directors.cfm">chairman of Whitehaven Coal</a>, the company at the centre of protest and controversy at the Maules Creek mine. Another former National Party leader, John Anderson, <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/csg-industry-hires-wellconnected-staffers-20150515-gh2rg3.html">became chairman of Eastern Star Gas</a> only two years after quitting Canberra.</p>
<p>The Sydney Morning Herald’s Anne Davies last year found a <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/csg-industry-hires-wellconnected-staffers-20150515-gh2rg3.html">complex web</a> of interlocking networks of influence that tied together NSW Premier Mike Baird’s office, then-prime minister Tony Abbott’s office, and energy and mining companies including AGL and Santos.</p>
<p>At times, these companies brought together high-profile Liberal and Labor politicians. Santos engaged a lobbying company, Bespoke Approach, which listed former Labor senator Nick Bolkus and former Liberal South Australian premier John Olson as directors. </p>
<p>AGL lays claim to the same cross-party alliance between former Labor minister John Dawkins and former Liberal senator Helen Coonan, who co-chair lobbying firm GRA Cosway.</p>
<p>But what is less-well-known is the degree to which mining and energy companies have enticed media advisors from the major parties to walk through that revolving door. Davies included an interactive graphic <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/csg-industry-hires-wellconnected-staffers-20150515-gh2rg3.html">in her report</a> that shows the rotation of media people between Canberra, mining and energy companies, and state politics. </p>
<p>Understanding the rotation of media advisors does not just open up the question of lobbying – it also explains how governments may feel obliged to legitimate their support for fossil fuel.</p>
<p>Such staffers are a real prize for the companies. They give them access to the media strategies of government departments, which may translate into real influence about the kind of messages that might be most favourable to their company’s operations.</p>
<h2>Carbon-laced political donations</h2>
<p>It is now a matter of public record that fossil-fuel interests have bankrolled climate denialism around the world for decades. The case of the collapsing edifice of Peabody Energy, once the world’s largest coal company, is a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jun/13/peabody-energy-coal-mining-climate-change-denial-funding">paradigm example</a> of this. Fossil-fuel companies even <a href="https://theconversation.com/meet-the-fossil-fuel-firms-sponsoring-the-worlds-biggest-climate-conference-51876">sponsored</a> the Paris climate summit.</p>
<p>But can the donations of fossil-fuel companies also influence election campaigns? Well, yes they can, but we won’t find out who and how this might be happening until after the election. </p>
<p>A recent <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/2016/05/23/4465448.htm">Four Corners</a> program delved into the lack of transparency of Australia’s donation process. For example, knowledge of who is funding the parties in this election campaign won’t be revealed until the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) releases its data in February next year.</p>
<p>But we do know from the last election campaign that mining and energy companies loomed large as donors for both Labor and Liberal parties. The AEC’s data release from February 2014 showed the Liberal Party received more than <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/political-donations-mining-hits-back-at-labor-20150205-1372gf">$1.8 million</a> directly from energy companies that supported the repeal of an emissions trading scheme (ETS). </p>
<p>Even more was donated via the Liberal-linked Cormack Foundation. Two of the biggest “receipts” to the Cormack Foundation were <a href="http://periodicdisclosures.aec.gov.au/Returns/56/TOPZ0.pdf">BHP and Rio Tinto</a>.</p>
<p>Labor received only <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/political-donations-mining-hits-back-at-labor-20150205-1372gf">$453,000</a> from mining and energy companies in the context of the immense industry opposition to an emissions trading scheme.</p>
<h2>Speculating on 2016 party donations</h2>
<p>The 2013 election was all about mining and energy companies donating in return for killing the carbon tax. This has now been completed. Job done, time to move on.</p>
<p>With the carbon tax gone, and millions in <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-global-warming-subsidy-the-truth-about-australian-corporate-welfare-23281">corporate welfare</a> flowing directly to the mining and energy companies from taxpayers, all that the PR departments of these companies would be worried about is that climate change is kept off the election agenda.</p>
<p>Such an environment would suit the fossil-fuel industries as they fight for a few more years of viability in a world that is abandoning them. As constitutional lawyer George Williams has <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/2016/05/23/4465448.htm">observed</a>of all forms of corporate donations: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>These companies are hoping that giving money will lead to outcomes. That’s why they’re doing it, and that’s one of the key problems of the current system.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So, here is a hypothetical PR strategy that would make perfect sense for the mining and energy sectors in this election, in eight easy steps.</p>
<p><strong>Step One:</strong> Mining and Energy companies donate to major political parties with a request to drop climate change from their campaigns.</p>
<p><strong>Step Two:</strong> Major political parties agree not to run on a climate platform and continue to <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-global-warming-subsidy-the-truth-about-australian-corporate-welfare-23281">heavily subsidise</a> the operations of mining companies.</p>
<p><strong>Step Three:</strong> Parties use money for broadcast and newspaper campaign budgets.</p>
<p><strong>Step Four:</strong> Newspapers and TV and radio outlets sell the attention spans of audiences to the advertisers of political parties for <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-24/election-campaign-advertising/7400826">large sums</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Step Five:</strong> Major parties expect that audiences will be persuaded to vote for one of them, while fossil-fuel company donations are justified by backing both possible winners who will look after their interests. The investment would only fail if one of the parties had to share power with minor parties or independents.</p>
<p><strong>Step Six:</strong> Major parties continue to support coal and energy companies, offering them mining exploration licences, mining leases and export licences.</p>
<p><strong>Step Seven:</strong> A part of the donations that energy companies give to parties is paid by consumers of increased electricity prices as well as taxpayers who are subsidising the corporate welfare that goes to these companies.</p>
<p><strong>Step Eight:</strong> With favourable regulatory conditions for mining and electricity generation, mining and energy companies have greater certainty with which to expand their investments, operations and profits – some of which can be injected back into the political process at election time.</p>
<p>To the extent that this hypothesis is proven to be correct, and repeats the processes at play in the 2013 election, what emerges is that although Australia enjoys the free speech of a multi-party democracy, discussion of climate change is not free from the influence of capital in the election process. </p>
<p>To the extent that the major donors to Labor and Coalition are dominated by mining and energy, it is in the interests of this industry to finance a political duopoly that encourages the closure of public debates that do not conform to its interests.</p>
<p>The winners in this process can be identified as a media-political-industrial complex. This complex is a kind of three-way protectorate, where each group looks after itself by looking after the other two.</p>
<p>Broadcasters and newspapers are winners as they generate large revenues at election time that is channelled to them by political parties from the donors.</p>
<p>Mining and energy companies are winners, as they are able to distract voters from climate change and reduce pressure on parties to decarbonise the economy and regulate against their activities.</p>
<p>The parties are winners as they only need to neglect climate change in return for millions of dollars in donations to their election campaigns.</p>
<p>The losers are the voters, who are not only forced to subsidise the political conditions that make their per-capita emissions <a href="https://theconversation.com/visualising-australias-carbon-emissions-23816">four times higher than the global average</a>, but also subsidise the conditions in which climate is taken off the public agenda.</p>
<p>The biggest losers are our grandchildren, who are going to inherit the climate mess created by the manipulative, influence-peddling mediocrity that plays out over three-year election cycles – and not just in Australia.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/61394/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
If polls are consistently showing that Australian voters want climate change on the election agenda, why are the leaders keeping so quiet about it?David Holmes, Senior Lecturer, Communications and Media Studies, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.