Palau’s leader says the world needs to be working toward reducing emissions and “not dropping targets”, in response to New Zealand slashing its methane reduction goals.

Last month, the New Zealand government announced it would cut biogenic methane reduction targets to 14-24 percent below 2017 levels by 2050. The previous target was a reduction of 24-47 percent.

Palauan President Surangel Whipps Jr, who is in Brazil for the annual United Nations climate change conference, COP30, said more work needed to go into finding solutions.

“[It’s] unfortunate because we all need to be working toward reduction, not dropping targets,” Whipps said.

“Countries struggle because it’s about making sure that their people have their jobs and maintain their industry. I can see the reason why maybe those targets were dropped, but that means we just need to work harder.”

Whipps said it probably meant the government needed to “step up” and help farmers reduce emissions.

Tuvalu’s climate minister also told RNZ Pacific he was disheartened by the new goal.

New Zealand Climate Minister Simon Watts previously told RNZ Pacific in a statement that methane reduction was limited by technology and the only alternative would have been to cut agriculture production.

“New Zealand has some of the most emissions-efficient farmers in the world, and we export to meet global demand,” Watts said.

“If we cut production to meet targets, we risk shifting production to countries who are not as emissions-efficient, which would add to global warming and have a greater impact on the Pacific.”

NZ ‘doesn’t care about Pacific’ – campaigner
Pacific Islands Climate Action Network campaigner Sindra Sharma said she wanted to know what scientists Watts spoke with.

“I’d like to see what the data is behind New Zealand having the most emissions-efficient farmers. It blows my mind that that is something he would say.”

Sharma said it was especially disappointing given New Zealand was a member of the Pacific Islands Forum.

“I think the signal that sends is extremely harmful. It shows we don’t care about the Pacific.”

Speaking to RNZ Morning Report on Thursday, Watts said the country had not weakened its ambitions on climate change.

“We’ve actually delivered upon what has been asked of us. We’ve submitted our NDC (Nationally Determined Contributions) plan for 2035 on time,” he said.

“We’ve done what we believe is possible in the context of our unique circumstances.

“We’ve taken a position around ensuring that we are ambitious with balancing that with economic challenges.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Amnesty International is asking the New Zealand government to create a new humanitarian visa for Pacific people impacted by climate change.

Kiribati community leader Charles Kiata said life on Kiribati was becoming extremely hard as sea levels rose and the country was hit by more severe storms, higher temperatures and drought.

“Every part of life, food, shelter, health, is being affected and what hurts the most is that our people feel trapped. They love their home, but their home is slowly disappearing,” Kiata said.

Crops are dying and fresh drinking water is becoming increasingly scarce for the island nation.

Kiata said in New Zealand, overstayers were anxious they would be sent back home.

“Deporting them back to flooded lands or places with no clean water like Kiribati is not only cruel but it also goes against our shared Pacific values.”

Amnesty International is also asking the government to stop deporting overstayers from Kiribati and Tuvalu, who would be returning to harsh conditions.

Duty of care
The organisation’s executive director, Jacqui Dillon said she wanted New Zealand to acknowledge its duty of care to Pacific communities.

“We are asking the New Zealand government to create a new humanitarian visa, specifically for those impacted by climate change and disasters. Enabling people to migrate on their terms with dignity.”

She said current Pacific visas New Zealand offered, such as the Recognised Seasonal Employers (RSE) and the Pacific Access Category (PAC), were insufficient.

“Those pathways are in effect nothing short of a discriminatory lottery, so they don’t offer dignity, nor do they offer self-agency.”

Dillon said current visa schemes were also discriminatory because people could only migrate if they had an acceptable standard of health.

The organisation interviewed Alieta — not her real name — who has a visual impairment. She decided to remove her name from the family’s PAC application to enable her husband and six-year-old daughter to migrate to New Zealand in 2016.

It has meant Alieta has only seen her daughter once in the past 11 years.

“I would urge all of us to think about that and say, if our feet were in those shoes, would we think that that was right? I don’t think we would,” Dillon said.

Tuvalu comparison
Tuvaluan community leader Fala Haulangi, based in Aotearoa, wants the country to adopt something like the Falepili Union Treaty which the leaders of Tuvalu and Australia signed in 2023.

It creates a pathway for up to 280 Tuvalu citizens to go to Australia each year to work, live, and study.

This year over 80 percent of the population applied to move under the treaty.

Haulangi said the PAC had too many restrictions.

“PAC (Pacific Access Category Visa) still comes with conditions that are very, very strict on my people, so if [New Zealand has] the same terms and conditions that Australia has for the Falepili Treaty, to me that is really good.”

In the past, Pacific governments have been worried about the Recognised Seasonal Employer Scheme causing a brain drain.

Samoa paused scheme
In 2023, Samoa paused the scheme, partially because of the loss of skilled labour, including police officers leaving to go fruit picking.

Haulangi said it’s not up to her to tell people to stay if a new and more open visa is available to Pacific people.

“Who am I to tell my people back home ‘don’t come, stay there’ because we need people back home.”

Dillon said some people will stay.

“All we’re simply saying is give people the opportunity and the dignity to have self-agency and be able to choose.”

Charles Kiata from Kiribati said a visa established now would mean there would be a slow migration of people from the Pacific and not people being forced to leave as climate refugees.

He said people from Kiribati had strengths they could be proud of and could partner with New Zealand.

“It’s a win-win for both of us; our people come to New Zealand to contribute economically and to society.”

RNZ Pacific has approached New Zealand’s Minister of Immigration Erica Stanford for comment.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

In a fervent appeal to the global community, Prime Minister James Marape of Papua New Guinea has called on US President Donald Trump to “rethink” his decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement and current global climate initiatives.

Marape’s plea came during the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting held in Davos, Switzerland, on 23 January 2025.

Expressing deep concern for the impacts of climate change on Papua New Guinea and other vulnerable Pacific Island nations, Marape highlighted the dire consequences these nations face due to rising sea levels and increasingly severe weather patterns.

“The effects of climate change are not just theoretical for us; they have real, devastating impacts on our fragile economies and our way of life,” he said.

The Prime Minister emphasised that while it was within President Trump’s prerogative to prioritise American interests, withdrawing the United States — the second-largest emitter of carbon dioxide– from the Paris Agreement without implementing measures to curtail coal power production was “totally irresponsible”, Marape said.

“As a leader of a major forest and ocean nation in the Pacific region, I urge President Trump to reconsider his decision.”

He went on to point out the contradiction in the US stance.

US not closing coal plants
“The United States is not shutting down any of its coal power plants yet has chosen to withdraw from critical climate efforts. This is fundamentally irresponsible.

“The science regarding our warming planet is clear — it does not lie,” he said.

Marape further articulated that as the “Leader of the Free World,” Trump had a moral obligation to engage with global climate issues.

PNG Prime Minister James Marape’s plea to President Trump.  Video: PNGTV

“It is morally wrong for President Trump to disregard the pressing challenges of climate change.

He must articulate how he intends to address this critical issue,” he added, stressing that effective global leaders had a responsibility not only to their own nations but also to the planet as a whole.

In a bid to advocate for small island nations that are bearing the brunt of climate impacts, PM Marape announced plans to bring this issue to the upcoming Pacific Islands Forum (PIF).

He hopes to unify the voices of PIF member countries in a collective statement regarding the US withdrawal from climate negotiations.

US revived Pacific relations
“The United States has recently revitalised its relations with the Pacific. It is discouraging to see it retreating from climate discussions that significantly affect our region’s efforts to mitigate climate change,” he said.

Prime Minister Marape reminded the international community that while larger nations might have the capacity to withstand extreme weather events such as typhoons, wildfires, and tornadoes, smaller nations like Papua New Guinea could not endure such impacts.

“For us, every storm and rising tide represents a potential crisis. Big nations can afford to navigate these challenges, but for us, the stakes are incredibly high,” he said.

Marape’s appeal underscores the urgent need for collaborative and sustained global action to combat climate change, particularly for nations like Papua New Guinea, which are disproportionately affected by environmental change.

Republished with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Vanuatu’s top lawyer has called out the United States for “bad behavior” after newly inaugurated President Donald Trump withdrew the world’s biggest historic emitter of greenhouse gasses from the Paris Agreement for a second time.

The Pacific nation’s Attorney-General Arnold Loughman, who led Vanuatu’s landmark International Court of Justice climate case at The Hague last month, said the withdrawal represented an “undeniable setback” for international action on global warming.

“The Paris Agreement remains key to the world’s efforts to combat climate change and respond to its effects, and the participation of major economies like the US is crucial,” he told BenarNews in a statement.

The withdrawal could also set a “troubling precedent” regarding the accountability of rich nations that are disproportionately responsible for global warming, said Loughman.

“At the same time, the US’ bad behavior could inspire resolve on behalf of developed countries to act more responsibly to try and safeguard the international rule of law,” he said.

“Ultimately, the whole world stands to lose if the international legal framework is allowed to erode.”

Trump’s announcement on Monday came less than two weeks after scientists confirmed that 2024 was the hottest year on record and the first in which average temperatures exceeded 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

Agreed to ‘pursue efforts’
Under the Paris Agreement adopted in 2015, leaders agreed to “pursue efforts” to limit warming under the 1.5°C threshold or, failing that, keep rises “well below” 2°C  by the end of the century.

Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka said on Wednesday in a brief comment that Trump’s action would “force us to rethink our position” but the US president must do “what is in the best interest of the United States of America”.

Other Pacific leaders and the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) regional intergovernmental body have not responded to BenarNews requests for comment.

The forum — comprising 18 Pacific states and territories — in its 2018 Boe Declaration said: “Climate change remains the single greatest threat to the livelihoods, security and wellbeing of the peoples of the Pacific and [we reaffirm] our commitment to progress the implementation of the Paris Agreement.”

Trump’s executive order sparked dismay and criticism in the Pacific, where the impacts of a warming planet are already being felt in the form of more intense storms and rising seas.

Jacynta Fa’amau, regional Pacific campaigner with environmental group 350 Pacific, said the withdrawal would be a diplomatic setback for the US.

“The climate crisis has for a long time now been our greatest security threat, especially to the Pacific,” she told BenarNews.

A clear signal
“This withdrawal from the agreement is a clear signal about how much the US values the survival of Pacific nations and all communities on the front lines.”

New Zealand’s former Minister for Pacific Peoples, Aupito William Sio, said that if the US withdrew from its traditional leadership roles in multilateral organisations China would fill the gap.

“Some people may not like how China plays its role,” wrote the former Labour MP on Facebook. “But when the great USA withdraws from these global organisations . . . it just means China can now go about providing global leadership.”

Analysts and former White House advisers told BenarNews last year that climate change could be a potential “flashpoint” between Pacific nations and a second Trump administration at a time of heightened geopolitical competition with China.

Trump’s announcement was not unexpected. During his first term he withdrew the US from the Paris Agreement, only for former President Joe Biden to promptly rejoin in 2021.

The latest withdrawal puts the US, the world’s largest historic emitter of greenhouse gases, alongside only Iran, Libya and Yemen outside the climate pact.

In his executive order, Trump said the US would immediately begin withdrawing from the Paris Agreement and from any other commitments made under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

US also ending climate finance
The US would also end its international climate finance programme to developing countries — a blow to small Pacific island states that already struggle to obtain funding for resilience and mitigation.

A fact sheet published by the Biden administration on November 17, which has now been removed from the White House website, said that US international climate finance reached more than US$11 billion in 2024.

Loughman said the cessation of climate finance payments was particularly concerning for the Pacific region.

“These funds are essential for building resilience and supporting adaptation strategies,” he said. “Losing this support could severely hinder ongoing and future projects aimed at protecting our vulnerable ecosystems and communities.”

George Carter, deputy head of the Department of Pacific Affairs at the Australian National University and member of the COP29 Scientific Council, said at the centre of the Biden administration’s re-engagement with the South Pacific was a regional programme on climate adaptation.

“While the majority of climate finance that flows through the Pacific comes from Australia, Japan, European Union, New Zealand — then the United States — the climate networks and knowledge production from the US to the Pacific are substantial,” he said.

Climate actions plans
Pacific island states, like all other signatories to the Paris Agreement, will this year be submitting Nationally Determined Contributions, or NDCs, outlining their climate action plans for the next five years.

“All climate actions, policies and activities are conditional on international climate finance,” Carter said.

Pacific island nations are being disproportionately affected by climate change despite contributing just 0.02 percent of global emissions, according to a UN report released last year.

Low-lying islands are particularly vulnerable to rising sea levels and extreme weather events like cyclones, floods and marine heatwaves, which are projected to occur more frequently this century as a result of higher average global temperatures.

On January 10, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) confirmed that last year for the first time the global mean temperature tipped over 1.5°C above the 1850-1900 average.

WMO experts emphasised that a single year of more than 1.5°C does not mean that the world has failed to meet long-term temperature goals, which are measured over decades, but added that “leaders must act — now” to avert negative impacts.

Harry Pearl is a BenarNews journalist. This article was first published by BenarNews and is republished at Asia Pacific Report with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Palau’s President Surangel Whipps Jr is inviting US President-elect Donald Trump to “visit the Pacific” to see firsthand the impacts of the climate crisis.

Palau is set to host the largest annual Pacific leaders meeting in 2026, and the country’s leader Whipps told RNZ Pacific he would “love” Trump to be there.

He said he might even take the American leader, who is often criticised as a climate change denier, snorkelling in Palau’s pristine waters.

Whipps said he had seen the damage to the marine ecosystem.

“I was out snorkelling on Sunday, and once again, it’s unfortunate, but we had another heat, very warm, warming of the oceans, so I saw a lot of bleached coral,” he said.

“It’s sad to see that it’s happening more frequently and these are just impacts of what is happening around the world because of our addiction to fossil fuel.”

“I would very much like to bring [Trump] to Palau if he can. That would be a fantastic opportunity to take him snorkelling and see the impacts. See the islands that are disappearing because of sea level rise, see the taro swamps that are being invaded.”

Americans experiencing the impacts
Whipps said Americans were experiencing the impacts in states such as Florida and North Carolina.

“I mean, that’s something that you need to experience. I mean, they’re experiencing [it] in Florida and North Carolina.

“They just had major disasters recently and I think that’s the rallying call that we all need to take responsibility.”

However, Trump is not necessarily known for his support of climate action. Instead, he has promised to “drill baby drill” to expand oil and gas production in the US.

Palau International Coral Reef Center researcher Christina Muller-Karanasos said surveying of corals in Palau was underway after multiple reports of bleaching.

She said the main cause of coral bleaching was climate change.

“It’s upsetting. There were areas where there were quite a lot of bleaching.

Most beautiful, pristine reef
“The most beautiful and pristine reef and amount of fish and species of fish that I’ve ever seen. It’s so important for the health of the reef. The healthy reef also supports healthy fish populations, and that’s really important for Palau.”

University of Hawai’i Manoa’s Dr Tarcisius Tara Kabutaulaka suspects Trump will focus on the Pacific, but for geopolitical gains.

“It will be about the militarisation of the climate change issue that you are using climate change to build relationships so that you can ensure you do the counter China issue as well.”

He believed Trump has made his position clear on the climate front.

“He said, and I quote, ‘that it is one of the great scams of all time’. And so he is a climate crisis denier.”

It is exactly the kind of comment President Whipps does not want to hear, especially from a leader of a country which Palau is close to — or from any nation.

“We need the United States, we need China, and we need India and Russia to be the leaders to make sure that we put things on track,” he said.

For the Pacific, the climate crisis is the biggest existential and security threat.

Leaders like Whipps are considering drastic measures, including the nuclear energy option.

“We’ve got to look at alternatives, and one of those is nuclear energy. It’s clean, it’s carbon free,” he told RNZ Pacific.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Vanuatu Prime Minister Ishmael Kalsakau says Pacific security is about the security of the Pacific peoples and their way of life as identified by Forum leaders in the Boe Declaration.

Kalsakau said this reaffirmed climate change as the single greatest threat to regional security.

The PM was speaking at the opening of the Pacific Fusion headquarters in Port Vila on Tuesday, alongside Australian Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles.

He said Vanuatu, with the world’s first climate change refugees with the relocation in 2005 of 100 villagers in Torba Province, “will always consider climate change its top priority”.

He said climate change is real, an existential threat, impinging on the security and stability of all nations.

“We do not have to look too far to see how the increased intensity of climate change-induced tropical cyclones wreak havoc on the daily lives and livelihoods of our people and set us back years in our development,” said Kalsakau.

He said Vanuatu’s Pacific brothers also faced human security challenges caused by the nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands (by the US), Mororoa Atoll (France) and Australia (United Kingdom).

‘Our reefs are dying’
“With the effects of global warming and nuclear testing, our ocean is getting warmer, our reefs are dying and fishes are now very scarce.

“Our children and grandchildren are bound to never experience what we’ve enjoyed in our childhood.

“The maintenance and sustenance of our marine resources must be the top priority of our Pacific leaders.”

Kalsakau said there were other pressing issues such as the Fukushima nuclear waste water discharge and AUKUS.

“I say again that Pacific security is about the security of our Pacific peoples and way of life.

“This is why Vanuatu stood alongside our Pacific brothers and sisters to produce the Rarotonga Treaty. Which brings me to today’s very special occasion.

“The Pacific Fusion Centre is guided by the regional security priorities identified by the Boe Declaration and supports regional decision-making on these shared security priorities,” he said.

The centre, which is funded by Australia and to be run in collaboration with Pacific Forum member states, will aim to provide training and analysis on regional security issues.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The Pacific nation of Tuvalu is planning to create a version of itself in the metaverse, as a response to the existential threat of rising sea levels.

Tuvalu’s Minister for Justice, Communication and Foreign Affairs, Simon Kofe, made the announcement via a chilling digital address to leaders at COP27.

He said the plan, which accounts for the “worst case scenario”, involves creating a digital twin of Tuvalu in the metaverse in order to replicate its beautiful islands and preserve its rich culture:

The tragedy of this outcome cannot be overstated […] Tuvalu could be the first country in the world to exist solely in cyberspace – but if global warming continues unchecked, it won’t be the last.

Tuvalu’s “digital twin” message. Video: Reuters

The idea is that the metaverse might allow Tuvalu to “fully function as a sovereign state” as its people are forced to live somewhere else.

There are two stories here. One is of a small island nation in the Pacific facing an existential threat and looking to preserve its nationhood through technology.

The other is that by far the preferred future for Tuvalu would be to avoid the worst effects of climate change and preserve itself as a terrestrial nation. In which case, this may be its way of getting the world’s attention.

What is a metaverse nation?
The metaverse represents a burgeoning future in which augmented and virtual reality become part of everyday living. There are many visions of what the metaverse might look like, with the most well-known coming from Meta (previously Facebook) CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

What most of these visions have in common is the idea that the metaverse is about interoperable and immersive 3D worlds. A persistent avatar moves from one virtual world to another, as easily as moving from one room to another in the physical world.

The aim is to obscure the human ability to distinguish between the real and the virtual, for better or for worse.

Kofe implies three aspects of Tuvalu’s nationhood could be recreated in the metaverse:

• territory — the recreation of the natural beauty of Tuvalu, which could be interacted with in different ways
• culture — the ability for Tuvaluan people to interact with one another in ways that preserve their shared language, norms and customs, wherever they may be
• sovereignty — if there were to be a loss of terrestrial land over which the government of Tuvalu has sovereignty (a tragedy beyond imagining, but which they have begun to imagine) then could they have sovereignty over virtual land instead?

Could it be done?
In the case that Tuvalu’s proposal is, in fact, a literal one and not just symbolic of the dangers of climate change, what might it look like?

Technologically, it’s already easy enough to create beautiful, immersive and richly rendered recreations of Tuvalu’s territory. Moreover, thousands of different online communities and 3D worlds (such as Second Life) demonstrate it’s possible to have entirely virtual interactive spaces that can maintain their own culture.

The idea of combining these technological capabilities with features of governance for a “digital twin” of Tuvalu is feasible.

There have been prior experiments of governments taking location-based functions and creating virtual analogues of them.

For example, Estonia’s e-residency is an online-only form of residency non-Estonians can obtain to access services such as company registration. Another example is countries setting up virtual embassies on the online platform Second Life.

Yet there are significant technological and social challenges in bringing together and digitising the elements that define an entire nation.

Tuvalu has only about 12,000 citizens, but having even this many people interact in real time in an immersive virtual world is a technical challenge. There are issues of bandwidth, computing power, and the fact that many users have an aversion to headsets or suffer nausea.

Nobody has yet demonstrated that nation-states can be successfully translated to the virtual world. Even if they could be, others argue the digital world makes nation-states redundant.

Tuvalu’s proposal to create its digital twin in the metaverse is a message in a bottle — a desperate response to a tragic situation. Yet there is a coded message here too, for others who might consider retreat to the virtual as a response to loss from climate change.

The metaverse is no refuge
The metaverse is built on the physical infrastructure of servers, data centres, network routers, devices and head-mounted displays. All of this tech has a hidden carbon footprint and requires physical maintenance and energy. Research published in Nature predicts the internet will consume about 20 percent of the world’s electricity by 2025.

The idea of the metaverse nation as a response to climate change is exactly the kind of thinking that got us here. The language that gets adopted around new technologies — such as “cloud computing”, “virtual reality” and “metaverse” — comes across as both clean and green.

Such terms are laden with “technological solutionism” and “greenwashing”. They hide the fact that technological responses to climate change often exacerbate the problem due to how energy and resource intensive they are.

So where does that leave Tuvalu?
Kofe is well aware the metaverse is not an answer to Tuvalu’s problems. He explicitly states we need to focus on reducing the impacts of climate change through initiatives such as a fossil-fuel non-proliferation treaty.

His video about Tuvalu moving to the metaverse is hugely successful as a provocation. It got worldwide press — just like his moving plea during COP26 while standing knee-deep in rising water.

Yet Kofe suggests:

Without a global conscience and a global commitment to our shared wellbeing we may find the rest of the world joining us online as their lands disappear.

It is dangerous to believe, even implicitly, that moving to the metaverse is a viable response to climate change. The metaverse can certainly assist in keeping heritage and culture alive as a virtual museum and digital community. But it seems unlikely to work as an ersatz nation-state.

And, either way, it certainly won’t work without all of the land, infrastructure and energy that keeps the internet functioning.

It would be far better for us to direct international attention towards Tuvalu’s other initiatives described in the same report:

The project’s first initiative promotes diplomacy based on Tuvaluan values of olaga fakafenua (communal living systems), kaitasi (shared responsibility) and fale-pili (being a good neighbour), in the hope that these values will motivate other nations to understand their shared responsibility to address climate change and sea level rise to achieve global wellbeing.

The message in a bottle being sent out by Tuvalu is not really about the possibilities of metaverse nations at all. The message is clear: to support communal living systems, to take shared responsibility and to be a good neighbour.

The first of these can’t translate into the virtual world. The second requires us to consume less, and the third requires us to care.

Dr Nick Kelly, senior lecturer in interaction design, Queensland University of Technology and Dr Marcus Foth, professor of urban informatics, Queensland University of Technology. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The natural world is close to the heart of Britain’s new King Charles III. For decades, he has campaigned on environmental issues such as sustainability, climate change and conservation – often championing causes well before they were mainstream concerns.

In fact, Charles was this week hailed as “possibly most significant environmentalist in history”.

Upon his elevation to the throne, the new king is expected to be less outspoken on environmental issues. But his advocacy work have helped create a momentum that will continue regardless.

As Prince of Wales, Charles regularly met scientists and other experts to learn more about environmental research in Britain and abroad. Here, two Australian researchers recall encounters with the new monarch that left an indelible impression.

🐑🌾The Duke of Cornwall, Patron of the Soil Association, marked the 10th anniversary of the Innovative Farmers programme and learned more about how it’s helping farmers adopt more sustainable practices. pic.twitter.com/vvBrse5MRg

— Clarence House (@ClarenceHouse) July 19, 2022

Nerilie Abram, Australian National University
In 2008, I was a climate scientist working on ice cores at the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge. On one memorable day, Prince Charles visited the facility — and I was tasked with giving him a tour.

At the time, I had just returned from James Ross Island, near the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. There, at one of the fastest warming regions on Earth, I had helped collect a 364-metre-long ice core.

Ice cores are cylinders of ice drilled out of an ice sheet or glacier. They’re an exceptional record of past climate. In particular, they contain small bubbles of air trapped in the ice over thousands of years, telling us the past concentration of atmospheric gases.

We started the tour by showing Prince Charles a video of how we collect ice cores. We then ventured into the -20℃ freezer and held a slice of ice core up to the lights to see the tiny, trapped bubbles of ancient atmosphere.

Outside the freezer, we listened to the popping noises as the ice melted and the bubbles of ancient air were released into the atmosphere of the lab.

Holding a piece of Antarctic ice is a profound experience. With a bit of imagination, you can cast your mind back to what was happening in human history when the air inside was last circulating.

Prince Charles embraced this idea during the tour, making a connection back to the British monarch that would have been on the throne at the time.

All this led into a discussion about climate change. Ice cores show us the natural rhythm of Earth’s climate, and the unprecedented magnitude and speed of the changes humans are now causing.

At the time of the 2008 visit, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere had reached 385 parts per million — around 100 parts per million higher than before the Industrial Revolution. Today we are at 417 parts per million, and still rising each year.

In 2017, Prince Charles co-authored a book on climate change. It includes a section on ice cores, featuring the same carbon dioxide data I showed him a decade earlier.

Last year, the royal urged Australia’s then Prime Minister Scott Morrison to attend the COP26 climate summit at Glasgow, warning of a “catastrophic” impact to the planet if the talks did not lead to rapid action.

And in March this year, the prince sent a message of support to people devastated by floods in Queensland and New South Wales, and said:

“Climate change is not just about rising temperatures. It is also about the increased frequency and intensity of dangerous weather events, once considered rare.”

As prince, Charles used his position to highlight the urgency of climate change action. His efforts have helped to bring those messages to many: from young children to business people and world leaders.

He may no longer speak as loudly on these issues as king. But his legacy will continue to drive the climate action our planet needs.

Peter Newman, Curtin University
In the 1970s, being an environmentalist was lonely work. It meant years of standing up for something that people thought was a bit marginal. But even back then Prince Charles — now King Charles III — was an environmental hero, advocating on what we needed to do.

I met the Prince of Wales in 2015. He and Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, visited Perth on the last leg of their Australia tour. I was among a group of Order of Australia recipients asked to meet the prince at Government House. I spoke to him about my lifelong passion – sustainability, including regenerative agriculture.

I knew earlier in their trip, Charles had toured the orchard at Oranje Tractor Wine, an organic and sustainable wine producer on Western Australia’s south coast. The vineyard is run by my friend Murray Gomm and his partner, Pam Lincoln, and I had encouraged them over the years. They had started winning awards, and it became even more special when the prince came down and blessed it!

The Oranje Tractor is now a net-zero-emissions venture: the carbon dioxide it sucks up from the atmosphere and into the soil is well above that emitted from its operations.

Charles’ eyes really lit up when I mentioned the Oranje Tractor. He was trying to do similar things in his gardening and at his farms – avoiding pesticides and sucking carbon from the atmosphere back into the soil.

Charles has that same knack the Queen had — an extraordinary ability to really listen and engage. To meet him, and see he’s been involved in sustainability as long as I have, it was validating and inspirational.

Now he is king, Charles will be a little more constrained in his comments about environment issues. But I don’t think you can change who you are. He will just be more subtle about how he goes about it.

Climate change is now at the forefront of the global agenda. But the world needs to accelerate its emissions reduction commitments. If we don’t move fast enough, King Charles will no doubt raise a royal eyebrow — and that’s enough.

Nicole Hasham, energy + environment editor, The Conversation. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Explosive new data shows the sea level is rising twice as fast as previously thought in some parts of Aotearoa, massively reducing the amount of time authorities have to respond.

The major new projections show infrastructure and homes in Auckland and Wellington — as well as many other places — risk inundation decades earlier than expected.

For example, in just 18 years parts of the capital will see 30cm of sea level rise, causing once-in-a-century flood damage every year.

Previously, councils and other authorities had not expected to reach this threshold until 2060 — halving the time to plan for mitigation or retreat.

The new information comes from a programme comprising dozens of local and international scientists called NZ SeaRise, which also includes GNS Science and Niwa.

It combines data about where land is sinking with the latest international sea-level rise projections.

The new information is a game changer, and will likely have serious consequences for climate adaptation planning, and could impact property prices.

Globally the sea level is expected to rise about half a metre by 2100 — but for large parts of New Zealand it could more than double that because of land subsidence.

Victoria University of Wellington professor and SeaRise programme co-leader Dr Tim Naish said: “We have less time to act than we thought.”

Wellington: Just 18 years or less before serious effects
Dr Naish said he was surprised how soon impacts would be felt in parts of Auckland and Wellington.

Some areas are sinking 3mm or 4mm a year — about the annual rate at which the sea is rising.

“[This] doubles the amount of sea level rise and it halves the time … you thought you had to deal with the sea-level rise that was in the original guidance documents that councils were using.”

Dr Naish described a case study of the road connecting Petone and Eastbourne in Lower Hutt, which would see 30cm of sea level rise by 2040.

This threshold is important because at that level a one-in-100 year storm which closes the roads and damages infrastructure could happen every year.

He said local and regional councils have been making plans for this threshold to be reached in 2060, giving 20 fewer years to plan and adapt accordingly.

Other places on Wellington’s south coast such as Ōwhiro Bay, Lyall Bay, Seatoun among others are also subsiding.

“You are going to see the impacts of quite damaging sea level rise much sooner than we thought …. roads and properties inundated.”

He said road and rail infrastructure on State Highway 2 at the Korokoro interchange in Petone is another highly vulnerable area.

The largest overall increases in the whole country are on the southeast North Island along the Wairarapa Coast.

Here, the sea level could be be up well over one and a half metres by 2100.

About 30cm of sea level rise is unavoidable because of the amount of climate gases already in the atmosphere.

Homes and crucial infrastructure in Auckland in the firing line
Dr Naish said vulnerable places in Auckland included the waterfront around the bays, Tamaki Drive, the Viaduct, areas around the Northwestern Motorway at Point Chevalier, St Heliers and Mission Bay.

He said many of these places already have issues during king tides, are close to sea level, and are sinking.

At the Viaduct the land is sinking about about 2.5mm a year.

“That almost doubles the rate of expected sea-level rise and halves the time you have.

“The city council, [and] the port authority are all going to have to start looking closely in terms of their future activities at this new information.”

He said in many parts of Auckland the sea-level would rise 30 to 50 percent faster than what was previously thought.

Meanwhile, he said parts of Thames township is also very vulnerable, and the sinking happening in the Hauraki plains means the stopbanks there have a shorter lifespan than previously thought.

Richmond in Nelson a hotspot
A major worry is the suburb of Richmond and nearby parts in the Nelson area which is subsiding at about 5mm a year.

“That whole area there has been a lot of development, new subdivisions, housing … the airport is very exposed, and that road around [the coast to Richmond] is vulnerable,” Naish said.

He said local and regional councils in the region have known for a long time there could be issues there with sea-level rise.

“There is going to be some really big challenges for that region.”

Online tool lets residents, authorities check
New Zealanders will soon be able to see for the first time how much and how fast sea-level will rise along their own stretch of coast.

The entire coastline has been mapped down to a 2km spacing.

The new advice combines data about where land is sinking with the latest international sea-level rise projections.

It will be an major new tool for councils, businesses and homeowners to assess risk from erosion and floods.

New data shows that sea levels are rising twice as fast as expected in New Zealand https://t.co/TUj5Vdr4nk

— RNZ News (@rnz_news) May 1, 2022

‘Information is power’
Dr Naish said the new data was important information and people should try not to be too overwhelmed.

“Information is power, so don’t be afraid of it.

“We still have time … but we don’t have time to sit on our hands anymore.

“If you’re a [council representative] or you’re a developer, or you’re a decisions maker in the coastal areas of New Zealand you need to start thinking right now what the plan is for adapting to that sea-level rise.

“Yes, it is a bit terrifying but there is still time and I think that is the way to look at it.”

The information is timely, coming hot on the heels of the climate change draft adaptation plan released last week.

It asks for public input on the plans, and on so-called ”managed retreat’” – abandoning areas where it is not possible or financially viable to live any longer.

Uncertainty about predictions laid out in tool
Dr Naish said uncertainty about the predictions were clearly laid out in the tool — but he said there was no question that there would be a response from property owners, the insurance and banking sectors to the new information.

GNS Science Environment and Climate Theme Leader Dr Richard Levy said until now, the risk from sea-level rise has been quite poorly defined for New Zealand.

“Current sea-level projections in the Ministry for the Environment coastal hazards guidance do not take into account local vertical land movements.”

Most of the information about sea-level rise was more or less extrapolated out from the global average.

NZ SeaRise is a five-year research programme comprising local and international experts from Te Herenga Waka-Victoria University of Wellington, GNS Science, NIWA, University of Otago and the Antarctic Science Platform.

It is funded by the Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment.

Climate change and warming temperatures are causing sea levels to rise, on average, by 3.5 mm per year.

This sea level rise is caused by thermal expansion of the ocean, by melting land based glaciers, and by melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Deeper and and more rapid cuts in greenhouse gas emissions are needed to limit the worst effects of global warming, a climate scientist has warned.

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in a report that global emissions of CO2 would need to peak within three years to stave off the worst impacts.

Without shrinking energy demand, reducing emissions rapidly by the end of this decade to keep warming below 1.5C will be almost impossible, the key UN body’s report said.

Even if all the policies to cut carbon that governments had put in place by the end of 2020 were fully implemented, the world will still warm by 3.2C this century.

At this point, only severe emissions cuts in this decade across all sectors, from agriculture and transport to energy and buildings, can turn things around, the report said.

IPCC vice-chair Dr Andy Reisinger told RNZ Morning Report the world was “pretty much out of time” to limit warming to 1.5C as agreed in Paris in 2015 and subsequently.

“What our report shows is that the emissions over the last decade were at the highest level ever in human history.

“But on the positive side, that level of emissions growth has slowed and globally we’ve seen a revolution in prices for some renewable energy technologies.” That had led to a rapid uptake of solar and wind energy technologies, he said.

“Also policies have grown. About half of global greenhouse gas emissions that we looked at in our report are now covered by some sort of laws that address climate change.”

The report said the world would need “carbon dioxide removal” (CDR) technologies – ranging from planting trees that soak up carbon to grow, to costly and energy-intensive technologies to suck carbon dioxide directly from the air.

Governments had historically seen these technologies as a “cop out” but they were needed alongside reducing emissions,” Reisinger said.

“The time has now run out. If we don’t achieve deep and rapid reductions during this decade, much more so than we’re currently planning to collectively, then limiting warming to 1.5 degrees is out of reach.

“And the world collectively has the tools to reduce emissions by about a half by 2030.”

NZ has ‘squandered 30 years’, says Shaw
Climate Change Minister James Shaw says Aotearoa New Zealand has the political will to tackle climate change but it would have been a lot easier if it had begun decades ago.

“We are one of the highest emitting countries in the world on a per-capita basis and what that means is we’re now in a situation where having essentially fluffed around for three decades the cuts that we need to make over are now far steeper than they would have been.”

“Our country has squandered the past 30 years,” Shaw told Morning Report.

He said the Emissions Reduction Plan to be published next month would set out how the country would reduce emissions across every sector of the economy.

“I think what’s different about the plan that we’re putting out in May is that it’s a statutory instrument”, he said, and was required under the Zero Carbon Act. It would have targets to reduce emissions to the year 2025, 2030 and 2035.

Shaw said measures like the clean car discount scheme were working.

New Zealand’s agricultural emissions had not reduced, he said. This was the year when final decisions would be made on whether agriculture was brought into the Emissions Trading Scheme, and the whole sector was involved in the process.

There were farms up and down the country doing a terrific job on emissions but like every sector there was a “noisy group” which was dragging the chain.

“I think the charge that Groundswell are laying that we are not listening to farmers is ‘total bollocks’, he said.

Shaw noted the IPCC report said 83 percent of net growth in greenhouse gases since 2010 had occurred in Asia and the Pacific — and that New Zealand, Australia and Japan, as a group, had some of the highest rates of greenhouse gas emissions per capita in 2019.

Cut consumer demand
While past IPCC reports on mitigating carbon emissions tended to focus on the promise of sustainable fuel alternatives, the new report highlights a need to cut consumer demand.

Massey University emeritus professor Ralph Sims, a review editor of the IPCC report, said one of the overarching messages is that people needed to change behaviours.

Despite New Zealanders having an attitude that our impact was small, in fact the country had some of the highest carbon emissions per capita, he said.

“We need people to look at their lifestyles, look at their carbon footprints and consider how they may reduce them.”

One of the easiest for the individual was to avoid food waste, he said.

Sims was involved in the transport chapter and said it was a key area for New Zealand.

“It’s the highest growing sector, and makes up for 20 percent of the country’s emissions.”

Faster electric vehicles change
He did not believe the country was transitioning fast enough to electric vehicles, and government assistance needed to be ramped up.

Electric vehicle prices would also reduce over time and a second hand market would make them more affordable, he said.

Sims said New Zealand needed to “get out of coal” and some companies were already reducing their coal demand.

Though New Zealand’s coal industry was small, exploration was still on the table and just last year the Southland District Council granted exploration at Ohai, he said.

Methane emissions need to reduce by a third by 2030, which Sims said is “a major challenge, and highly unlikely” to be achieved in New Zealand.

Victoria University of Wellington professor of physical geography James Renwick said curbing greenhouse gas emissions was still possible, with immediate action.

“The advice from the Climate Change Commission does show that we can peak emissions in the next few years and reduce and get down to zero carbon dioxide hopefully well in advance of 2050,” he said.

“It’s impossible to overstate the dangerous threat we face from climate change and yet politicians and policy makers and businesses still don’t act when everything’s at stake. I haven’t really seen the political will yet but we really need to see action.”

Technologies available at present to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere were not able to operate at the scale needed to make a difference to the climate system, he said.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Police stopped a climate change march in Suva today and forced activists to remove their banners.

They also warned demonstrators against making social media posts about the event.

Priests, church workers and youth had gathered at My Suva Park to march as part of worldwide Day of Climate Action protests against governments failing to act more urgently at the global COP26 conference in Glasgow, Scotland.

Organised by the Columban Society of the Roman Catholic church, the march also coincided with the church’s Season of Creation.

Marchers carried banners calling for reduced carbon emissions and an end to global warming.

The same message was delivered at COP26 by Fiji Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama.

Police allowed the crowd about 100 to walk to the nearby Pacific Regional Seminary, where an event was held.

However, they refused permission for a public gathering at My Suva Park and forced activists to remove their banners.

Social media criticism of police
Social media postings criticised the police action.

One poster from Auckland on the Pacific Conference of Churches Facebook page asked why the protest was stopped in Fiji, “a democratic country known for its democracy”.

“Every weekend [a] protest takes place here in Auckland by the anti-vaccine people, not in numbers but in thousands. Police are present there but [none] are arrested or told to stop and leave. It is their right and freedom to express and voice out.

“What is the danger in there. Why so much of dictatorship rule. It was a peaceful march. Marches were also staged in Glasgow during the summit, nobody were turned away.

It is [a] way for the people to express their views.”

Another poster said: “Fijian officials need to realise that Fiji will be one of the few countries in the world that will be swallowed up by the ocean due to climate change.

“Fiji needs to do these marches to show the large countries [which] are guilty of polluting our atmosphere that Fijian Lives Matter.”

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

As the Glasgow climate summits gets underway, New Zealand’s government has announced a revised pledge, with a headline figure of a 50 percent reduction on gross 2005 emissions by the end of this decade.

This looks good on the surface, but the substance of this new commitment, known as a Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), is best assessed in emissions across decades.

New Zealand’s actual emissions in the 2010s were 701 million tonnes (Mt) of carbon dioxide equivalent. The carbon budget for the 2020s is 675Mt. The old pledge for the 2020s was 623Mt.

The Climate Change Commission’s advice was for “much less than” 593Mt, and the new NDC is 571Mt. So yes, the new pledge meets the commission’s advice and is a step up on the old, but it does not meet our fair share under the Paris Agreement.

It is also a stretch to call the new NDC consistent with the goal of keeping global temperature rise under 1.5℃.

True 1.5℃ compliance would require halving fossil fuel burning over the next decade, while the current plan is for cuts of a quarter.

Emissions need to halve this decade
Countries’ climate pledges are at the heart of the Paris Agreement. The initial round of pledges in 2016 added up to global warming of 3.5℃, but it was always intended they would be ratcheted up over time.

In the run-up to COP26, a flurry of new announcements brought that figure down to 2.7℃ — better, but still a significant miss on 1.5℃.

As this graph from the UN’s Emissions Gap Report 2021 shows, the world will need to halve emissions this decade to keep on track for 1.5℃.

New Zealand’s first NDC, for net 2030 emissions to be 30 percent below gross 2005 emissions, was widely seen as inadequate. An update, reflecting the ambition of the 2019 Zero Carbon Act to keep warming below 1.5℃, has been awaited eagerly.

But several factors have combined to make a truly ambitious NDC particularly difficult.

First, New Zealand’s old climate strategy was based on tree planting and the purchase of offshore carbon credits. The tree planting came to and end in the early 2010s and is only now resuming, while the Emissions Trading Scheme was closed to international markets in 2015. The Paris Agreement was intended to allow a restart of international carbon trading, but this has not yet been possible.

Second, New Zealand has a terrible record in cutting emissions so far. Burning of fossil fuels actually increased by 9 percent from 2016 to 2019. It’s a challenge to turn around our high-emissions economy.

Third, our new climate strategy, involving carbon budgets and pathways under advice from the Climate Change Commission, is only just kicking in. The government has made an in-principle agreement on carbon budgets out to 2030, and has begun consultation on how to meet them. The full emissions-reduction plan will not be ready until May 2022.

Regarding a revised NDC, the government passed the buck and asked the commission for advice. The commission declined to give specific recommendations, but advised:

We recommend that to make the NDC more likely to be compatible with contributing to global efforts under the Paris Agreement to limit warming to 1.5℃ above pre-industrial levels, the contribution Aotearoa makes over the NDC period should reflect a reduction to net emissions of much more than 36 percent below 2005 gross levels by 2030, with the likelihood of compatibility increasing as the NDC is strengthened further.

The government then received advice on what would be a fair target for New Zealand. However, any consideration of historic or economic responsibility points to vastly increased cuts, essentially leading to net-zero emissions by 2030.

Announcing the new NDC, Climate Change Minister James Shaw admitted it wasn’t enough, saying:

I think we should be doing a whole lot more. But, the alternative is committing to something that we can’t deliver on.

What proper climate action could look like
Only about a third of New Zealand’s pledged emissions cuts will come from within the country. The rest will have to be purchased as carbon credits from offshore mitigation.

That’s the same amount (100Mt) that Japan, with an economy 25 times larger than New Zealand’s, is planning to include in its NDC. There is no system for doing this yet, or for ensuring these cuts are genuine. And there’s a price tag, possibly running into many billions of dollars.

New Zealand has an impressive climate framework in place. Unfortunately, just as its institutions are beginning to bite, they are starting to falter against the scale of the challenge.

The commission’s advice to the minister was disappointing. It’s being challenged in court by Lawyers For Climate Action New Zealand, whose judicial review in relation to both the NDC and the domestic emissions budgets will be heard in February 2022.

With only two months to go until 2022 and the official start of the carbon budgets, there is no plan how to meet them. The suggestions in the consultation document add up to only half the cuts needed for the first budget period.

Thinking in the transport area is the furthest advanced, with a solid approach to fuel efficiency already approved, and an acknowledgement total driving must decrease, active and public transport must increase, and new roads may not be compatible with climate targets.

But industry needs to step up massively. The proposed 2037 end date for coal burning is far too late, while the milk cooperative Fonterra — poised to announce a record payout to farmers — intends to begin phasing out natural gas for milk drying only after that date.

The potentially most far-reaching suggestion is to set a renewable energy target. A clear path to 100 percent renewable energy would provide a significant counterweight to the endless debates about trees and agricultural emissions, but it is still barely on the radar.

Perhaps one outcome of the new NDC will be that, faced with the prospect of a NZ$5 billion bill for offshore mitigation, we might decide to spend the money on emissions cuts in Aotearoa instead.

Dr Robert McLachlan is professor in applied mathematics at Massey University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

By Denis Muller in Melbourne

In September 2019, the editor of The Conversation, Misha Ketchell, declared The Conversation’s editorial team in Australia was henceforth taking what he called a “zero-tolerance” approach to climate change deniers and sceptics. Their comments would be blocked and their accounts locked.

His reasons were succinct:

Climate change deniers and those shamelessly peddling pseudoscience and misinformation are perpetuating ideas that will ultimately destroy the planet.

READ MORE: Bushfires, bots and arson claims: Australia flung in the global disinformation spotlight

From the standpoint of conventional media ethics, it was a dramatic, even shocking, decision. It seemed to violate journalism’s principle of impartiality – that all sides of a story should be told so audiences could make up their own minds.

But in the era of climate change, this conventional approach is out of date. A more analytical approach is called for.

The ABC’s editorial policy on impartiality offers the best analytical approach so far developed in Australia. It states that impartiality requires:

• a balance that follows the weight of evidence
• fair treatment
• open-mindedness
• opportunities over time for principal relevant perspectives on matters of contention to be expressed.

Weight of evidence
It stops short of saying material contradicting the weight of evidence should not be published, which is the position adopted explicitly by The Conversation and implicitly by Guardian Australia.

Guardian Australia’s position is to concentrate on presenting the evidence that human-induced climate change is real and is having a detrimental effect on global heating, wildlife extinction and pollution. It states that this is the defining issue of our times and fundamental societal change is needed in response.

The position of Australia’s other big media organisations is far less clear and rests on generalities applicable to all issues.

The former Fairfax (now Nine) newspapers, The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, have separate codes. The Age code does not mention impartiality but requires its journalists to report in a way that is fair, accurate and balanced. The Herald’s does mention impartiality but confines it to an instruction to avoid promoting an individual staff member’s personal interests or preferences.

Both say, however, that comment should be kept separate from news.

News Corp Australia’s editorial professional conduct policy is quite different from all these. It states that comment, conjecture and opinion are acceptable in [news] reports to provide perspective on an issue, or explain the significance of an issue, or to allow readers to recognise what the publication’s standpoint is on the matter being reported.

Its journalists are told to try always to tell all sides of the story when reporting on disputes.

Misleading publication
However, the policy also states that none of this allows the publication of information known to be inaccurate or misleading.

Markedly different as these positions are, they have one element in common: freedom of the press does not mean freedom to publish false or misleading material.

From an ethical perspective, this is a bare minimum. The ABC requires that its journalists follow the weight of evidence, which is a substantially more exacting standard of truthfulness than anything required by the Fairfax or News Corp newspapers. The Guardian Australia and The Conversation have imposed what it is in effect a ban on climate-change denialism, on the ground that it is harmful.

Harm is a long-established criterion for abridging free speech. John Stuart Mill, in his seminal work, On Liberty, published in 1859, was a robust advocate for free speech but he drew the line at harm:

[…] the only purpose for which power can be exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.

It follows that editors may exercise the power of refusing to publish climate-denialist material if doing so prevents harm to others, without violating fundamental free-speech principles.

Other harms too provide established grounds for limiting free speech. Some of these are enforceable at law – defamation, contempt of court, national security – but speech about climate change falls outside the law and so becomes a question of ethics.

Climate change harm
The harms done by climate change, both at a planetary level and at the level of human health, are well-documented and supported by overwhelming scientific evidence.

At a planetary level, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published a report last year on the impacts of global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels.

It stated that human activities are estimated to have already caused approximately 1.0°C of global warming above pre-industrial levels, and that 1.5°C was likely to be reached between 2030 and 2052 if it continues to increase at the current rate.

At the level of human health, in June 2019 the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners published its Position Statement on Climate Change and Human Health.

It stated that climate change resulting from human activity “presents an urgent, significant and growing threat to health worldwide”.

Projected changes in Australia’s climate would result in more frequent and widespread heatwaves and extreme heat. This would increase the risks of heat stress, heat stroke, dehydration and mortality, contribute to acute cerebrovascular accidents, and aggravate chronic respiratory, cardiac and kidney conditions and psychiatric illness.

At both the planetary and human-health levels, then, the harms are serious and grounded in credible scientific evidence. It follows that they provide a strong ethical justification for the stands taken by The Conversation and Guardian Australia in prioritising Mill’s harm principle over free speech.

Limited internal guidance
Aside from these two platforms and the ABC, journalists are offered very limited internal guidance about how to approach the balancing of free-speech interests with the harm principle in the context of climate change.

External guidance is nonexistent. The ethical codes promulgated by the media accountability bodies – the Australian Press Council and the Australian Communications and Media Authority – make no mention of how impartiality should be achieved in the context of climate change. The Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance’s code of ethics is similarly silent.

These bodies would serve the profession and the public interest by developing specific standards to deal with the issue of climate change, and guidance about how to meet them. It is not an issue like any other. It is existential on a scale surpassing even nuclear war.

As I write in my study at Central Tilba on the far south coast of New South Wales, the entire landscape of farmland, bush and coastline is shrouded in smoke. It has been like that since before Christmas.

Twice we have been evacuated from our home. Twice we have been among the lucky ones to return unhurt and find our home intact.

The front of the Badja Forest Road fire (292,630 ha) is 3.6 km to the north, creeping towards us in the leaf litter. A northerly wind would turn it into an immediate threat.

From this perspective, media acquiescence in climate change denial, failure to follow the weight of evidence, or continued adherence to an out-of-date standard of impartiality looks like culpable irresponsibility.

Dr Denis Muller, Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Advancing Journalism, University of Melbourne. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

By Michael Andrew

Older generations are failing to address climate change and they need the world’s youth to lead the way, says United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres.

Speaking at Auckland University of Technology’s southern campus in Manukau today as part of a two-day tour of New Zealand and the Pacific, Guterres said governments have not been showing the political will to address climate change.

He described this as the defining issue of our time – “It is the biggest threat to our lives and the life of the planet and we are not winning the battle.”

READ MORE: UK declares climate change emergency 

He added: “Things will start to change very quickly.

“It is absolutely crucial to have the leadership of the youth.”

The youth were well represented at the talk, with groups from three local high schools and many AUT students in attendance.

Introduced by the university’s Office for Pacific Advancement (OPA) strategic director Veronica Ng Lam, who welcomed him to South Auckland – “the centre of the universe”, Guterres also said fossil fuels were being subsidised by governments and that needed to stop.

Direct subsidies
“The IMF has calculated 7.2 trillion dollars spent in direct subsidies to fossil fuels or indirect negative consequences of those subsidies,” he said.

“It is totally unacceptable that taxpayer’s money is used to spread drought, to spread heat waves, to bleach corals and to make glaciers recede.

“Taxpayer’s money must be spent in what is good for humankind, not in what is threatening humankind.”

He also spoke about the role of the internet and its capacity to both help and harm society.

“It is essential to make sure that we transform the internet into an instrument for good and not an instrument to subvert the wellbeing of society.”

RNZ’s Indira Stewart then conducted an onstage interview in which she asked what needed to change for the voices of the Pacific to be heard in the climate change debate.

While Guterres could not provide a direct answer, he acknowledged that regions like the Pacific and Africa were experiencing the most adverse effects from climate change.

Common responsibility
He said there was a common responsibility, especially of wealthy countries to reverse the destructive trends and that achieving carbon neutrality by 2050 was top priority.

Students were then invited to come forward and ask questions.

A student from Papatoetoe High School cited a recent IPCC climate report, which found that millions of species could be facing extinction as a result of climate change.

The student said that it might be too late to simply wait for the younger generations to come into power in order address climate change and save threatened species.

Guterres replied: “I’m not waiting for you to be in power, I’m waiting you to be as noisy as possible now. To mobilise your societies, your parents, your families, your friends and to put governments under pressure.”

AUT business student and Oceania Leadership Network member Christopher Tenisio then asked how the UN would deal with countries that were not fulfilling their commitment to the 2016 Paris Climate Change Accord.

“Name and shame. We don’t have instruments to punish, so name and shame.”

‘Rehearsed’ answers
After the session, Tenisio told Asia Pacific Report he was impressed with what the Secretary-General had said, but felt that the answers seemed rehearsed.

“It’s like he already knew the questions, like he’d practised the answers.”

Executive director of OPA and pro-vice chancellor of AUT South Walter Fraser said the Secretary-General had naturally come prepared with refined responses.

“He is a career politician after all. Just about every question was deflected back to the audience.”

However, he said it was a positive experience for the students to see how the United Nations operates.

“It’s good in a sense that they get to see how the system works.”

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Pacific Media Centre Newsdesk

Amnesty International today warned that the failure of governments to tackle climate change could amount to the greatest inter-generational human rights violation in history. a

The London-based rights organisation welcomed a global day of school strikes against climate change planned for tomorrow by young people.

“Amnesty International stands with all children and young people who are organising and taking part in school strikes for climate action,” said Amnesty International’s secretary-general Kumi Naidoo.

READ MORE: Students striking from school for a safe climate future

This is an important social justice movement that is mobilising thousands of people to peacefully call on governments to stop climate change.

“It is unfortunate that children have to sacrifice days of learning in school to demand that adults do the right thing.

-Partners-

“However, they know the consequences of the current shameful inaction both for themselves and future generations. This should be a moment for stark self-reflection by our political class.

“Instead of criticising young people for taking part in these protests, like some misguided politicians have done, we should be asking why governments are getting away with playing truant on climate action.”

Devastating impacts
Amnesty International warned that climate change was having and would have even more devastating impacts on human rights unless governments acted now to change course.

Climate change especially affects people who are already vulnerable, disadvantaged or subject to discrimination, the organisation said.

“Children especially are more vulnerable to climate-related impacts, due to their specific metabolism, physiology and developmental needs,” Amnesty said in a statement.

“Climate change also poses a risk to their mental health; children exposed to traumatic events such as natural disasters, exacerbated by climate change, can suffer from post-traumatic stress disorders.”

Naidoo said: “Climate change is a human rights issue precisely because of the impact it is having on people. It compounds and magnifies existing inequalities, and it is children who will grow up to see its increasingly frightening effects.

“The fact that most governments have barely lifted a finger in response to our mutually assured destruction amounts to one of the greatest inter-generational human rights violations in history.”

Millions of people are already suffering from its catastrophic effects – from prolonged drought in sub-Saharan Africa to devastating tropical storms sweeping across South-east Asia and the Caribbean.

Devastating heatwaves
During the summer months for the northern hemisphere in 2018, communities from the Arctic Circle to Greece, Japan, Pakistan and the USA experienced devastating heatwaves and wildfires that killed and injured hundreds of people.

“Children are often told they are ‘tomorrow’s leaders’. But if they wait until ‘tomorrow’ there may not be a future in which to lead. Young people are putting their leaders to shame with the passion and determination they are showing to fight this crucial battle now,”  Naidoo said.

The latest pledges made by governments to mitigate climate change— which are yet to be implemented—are completely inadequate as they would lead to a catastrophic 3°C increase in average global temperatures over pre-industrial levels by 2100.

Amnesty International calls on states to scale up climate action substantially and to do so in a manner consistent with human rights.

One of the crucial ways this can happen is if people most affected by climate change, such as children and young people, are engaged in efforts to address and mitigate climate change, while being provided with the necessary information and education to participate meaningfully in such discussions, and included in decision-making that directly affects them.

“Every day that we allow climate change to get worse ultimately makes it harder to stop and reverse its catastrophic effects. There is nothing stopping governments from doing everything in their power to reduce greenhouse gas emissions within the shortest possible time-frame.

“There is nothing stopping them from finding ways to halve emissions from their 2010 levels by 2030, and to net-zero by 2050, as climate scientists have called for,” said Naidoo.

“The only thing standing in the way of protecting humanity from climate change is the fact that our leaders lack the political will and have barely tried. Politicians can keep making excuses for their inaction, but nature does not negotiate. They must listen to young people and take steps today to stop climate change, because the alternative is unthinkable.”

#Strike4Climate

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz