My wife was involved with this, and was on country for some of the testimony to the land court. It's massive news in conservation circles here. She said the cases presented by traditional owners were both compelling and heartbreaking, showing first-hand the visible and culturally significant effects of climate change to e.g. the land (including sea level rises in the Torres Strait causing, among other things, grave sites to be lost to the ocean), and endemic and totemic species such as the flying fox / fruit bat around Cairns. The Environmental Defenders Office, who litigated the case, deserve serious kudos for their work, as do Youth Verdict and the first nations representatives who stepped up to tell their stories.
Yes the court's decision comes in the form of a recommendation, but it is a significant one and will be difficult to ignore. At the very least it should remove any question of a social license for these kind of activities in Australia (i.e. thermal coal extraction!) - which are often presented as beneficial to first nations groups, yet are environmentally and culturally blasé through and through.
I'm curious how they balanced the rights of potential future humans vs. the rights of currently existing humans whose lives would be improved by the coal potentially mined here. I'm assuming the coal miner's side tried this sort of argument?
Note that despite being a legal case, the final result here is only a recommendation, not a requirement.
> The Land Court of Queensland has a unique jurisdiction in these matters, because it makes a recommendation, rather than a final judgment. This recommendation must be taken into account by the final decision-makers – in this case, the Queensland resources minister, and the state Department of Environment and Science.
Seems like the main power it has is to compensate people, and recommend the state government do stuff.
Bashing Clive Palmer is a national sport in Australia and particularly in QLD so I imagine the government will take this advice relatively serious despite the quality of the legal argument.
Bashing Clive Palmer isn't a national sport, he's demonstrably deserving of it.
He has manipulated the Liberal/National Party coalition in Queensland to his own benefit, deliberately bankrupted Queensland Nickel to escape liabilities, including to the employees that were bailed out by the Federal Government.
He has spent millions in quixotic political activities primarily to harvest preferences to the Liberal/National Party coalition to his own benefit.
He, and Gina Rinehart, are both exploiters of workers and of Australia's natural resources without compensation to either First Nations or the people of Australia for the rights to those resources.
After a quick scan of the judgement, it doesn't seem to consider the impact of stopping the mine on the rights of workers, energy consumers or the economy.
I'm not suggesting the result is bad, but I'd prefer balance in these decisions. Of course we don't want to see coal being burnt, but if these mechanisms to stop fossil fuels are used indiscriminantly, the transition to renewables will cause needless suffering. We need to at least consider the downsides.
I think of the famines exacerbated by biofuel policies that did almost nothing to improve global warming. Or how Victoria de facto banned gas production without a good plan to replace consumption. Now we have a gas crisis in a country with massive gas reserves.
Sorry, the time for a pain-free decarbonization came and went, you can blame the oil and coal companies for that. They deserve this, and the pain of the people on the margins now is on their hands. Humanity will not survive 4 C of warming, it must be stopped.
I disagree, some decarbonization pain is unnecessary and unhelpful, like the biofuels example I gave.
What makes you think we won't survive 4C? I'm not saying you're wrong but the last IPCC report I read suggested global collapse was more on the order of 6 - 8 degrees.
> What makes you think we won't survive 4C? I'm not saying you're wrong but the last IPCC report I read suggested global collapse was more on the order of 6 - 8 degrees.
Could you cite that one please?
Every IPCC reference I can find just now is citing 1.5C as the maximum temperature jump we could expect to cope with and not be guaranteed to have a cascade of catastrophic events.
The sentiment of 'we can survive 4C' feels weirdly phrased. Some people will survive, but it certainly won't be pretty for most people.
https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/spm/
I looked at A.3.1 and figure Figure SPM.2 to try and find cutoffs for cascading effects.
As far as I can tell, the basis for 1.5C / 2.0C is local system collapse, like warm-water corals and arctic ecosystems. I can't find the reference for feedback mechanisms cutoffs right now, but for things like methane hydrate melting the limits are much higher.
I'm not saying 2.0C warming is desirable, but the existential "hard limits" on the globe are much higher. I think this distinction is important, because it changes how we look at framing this as an emergency. If we are near existential limits, we can consider more harmful policies (e.g. population reduction, energy rationing), but if not we can plan our response longer-term.
I'll correct my claim:
"the last IPCC report I read suggested that the 1.5C limit is based on local tipping points. From other papers I have read, tipping points for global collapse are more on the order of 6 - 8 degrees."
Do you know any references to global tipping points? When I first went looking for them it blew my mind that they were not easier to find in IPCC materials.
Agreed that it's hard to find definitive numbers, but given it's all projections and extrapolations, that's not hugely unexpected.
As a sibling commenter suggested, 'the science' is not saying the world ends once we get past 1.5 -- and to be fair to myself, that's not what I intimated - my language was unnecessarily cumbersome, but I was trying to point out that the consensus is we have some confidence of not having a cascade up to about that figure.
On that note, taking comfort from those higher thresholds & projections feels like hurtling past a 'Bridge Closed' sign at 100km/hr and taking instant but likely ephemeral comfort from the fact that sign wasn't so bad after all. If we hit 2-3 increase over the next few decades, even with moderate rises in climate-related casualties and costs, I expect there'll be even less appetite to address the problem.
Anyway, the two articles you've linked just now say much the same message:
" ... climate tipping point risks emerge above 1°C, become high around 2°C, and reach very high around 2.5-4°C. That means many tipping points are probably closer than we thought, and could start to be an issue even at today’s warming of 1.1-1.2°C."
Arguing about where the global collapse is guaranteed to happen does feel a bit deck-chair-ish.
I agree with everything you say, except for the part about discussing global collapse limits being deck-chair-ish. We are on a path to a lot of warming, where many of these local tipping points have and will become a reality. Having an estimate on when these effects combine to form a global tipping point is essential. It is essential because it informs how hard our policy response is. It is all well and good to try and aim for <2C warming but if we are obviously overshooting that mark, we need to know how far we can overshoot without passing a point of no return. If the consensus became that the trigger point for global collapse was imminent(say less than 10 years), we could plan a response that guarantees emissions reductions in 10 years regardless of the suffering caused (e.g. austerity to reduce energy use without consideration to poverty, banning ICE vehicles for non-essential purposes, sanctions for fossil fuel use). If we are incorrect and the trigger actually occurs in 100 years, we have just caused additional suffering by not planning our response longer. If humanity has an imminent existential risk, doing horrible things becomes morally justifiable (e.g. putting 4 billion people back in poverty). If we are 100 years off collapse, putting 4 billion people back in poverty is immoral without considering longer term solutions. Which path you choose is determined by our predictions for the future. Optimistically planning for <2C warming is good but unrealistic based on current trends. Unfortunately cheap energy is the basis of the world economy. Thus all solutions cause suffering for someone, whether by increased food prices, medicine prices, loss of jobs. Of course this has to be compared to the harms from climate change, but how can we make this comparison if we are ignoring the worst case outcomes (which I would argue are the more realistic cases)?
The fact that neither of us can find information on global tipping points in IPCC documents is to me a sign that the political aspect of the solution is not being done well. The IPCC essentially says "keeping warming <1.5C is essential" and "we are expecting more than 1.5C warming based on current trends" but then they make no estimates of the existential limits for the trajectory we are expecting. It mirrors my experience with environmental regulation. Policies where you can pollute, as long as the pollutant is kept at < X% concentration. But why X? What happens at X-1 or X+1? That is how engineering problems are tackled, but political solutions aren't as systematic. X is likely choosen not because that is the best outcome for society, but because a committee arbitrarily agreed that it is achievable. As we've both seen, the current IPCC limits are based on local collapse of systems such as coral reefs. But these systems are already being affected and are not expected to recover (based on the status quo). If that is the case, I think we should shift our focus from estimating the most warming we can have without _any_ negative effects (unrealistic) towards policies based on cost-benefit (pragmatic). Decarbonization in 10 years looks very different to decarbonization over 100 years. I'd prefer 10 years, but I don't want to ignore the people we will harm in doing so and I want to know what happens if we can't get our shit together in 10. We cannot make an informed decision unless we have limits which are not arbitrary and are realistic.
Edit: I thought I'd add a response to your bridge analogy. I think our current situation is like speeding towards a failed bridge where we can either ditch off the road down a cliff _now_, or go around the corner where maybe we can ditch into a bush. We need to know what is around the corner before we decide to go off the cliff. A real-world example for this: biofuels were pushed as an alternative to fossil fuels via subsidies, which caused minimal benefits to global warming but caused the worsening of starvation in the third world. If we had waited until better solutions were available or bad solutions were 100% necessary, we would have avoided suffering through starvation. Reflexively saying "we are in an emergency, quickly try solution <Z>" isn't useful unless we are sure that we are in an emergency (read: existential risk) AND we have confidence in solution Z improving the emergency. Doomerism breeds bad solutions and unnecessary suffering. Doomerism might be the right response, but the IPCC reports do not convince me of that.
Well, to all hand-wringing around seeking precision on threshold estimates - I'd throw back three points.
1) the precautionary principle,
2) empirical evidence abounds that budget projections are notoriously woeful - the '18% of GDP in 30y' relies on so much faith in multiple systems we already know are consistently out by factors of 2 or more, and
3) starting to fix this now would be lower overall cost, would incur near-immediate benefits, and would definitely court lower long-term risk.
Charles Stross's most recent blog post - the first three paragraphs - is not a unique analysis, but I feel describes the situation succinctly and accurately. Our (civilisational) resistance to addressing these issues are intentional and orchestrated, and 'a bit more data', or a more precise temperature rise we could cope with, are not the problem.
I like this dialogue because you seem to be arguing in good faith, so I'll keep it going.
1) Precautionary principle needs to be _qualified_ by what you are cautious of. E.g. "I am being cautious about increasing global warming" or "I am being cautious about increasing human suffering" result in very different policy approaches. If we actually used the precautionary principle we wouldn't have burnt fossil fuels to begin with!
3) That is an assumption, it is _probably_ true, but I would prefer to see explicit reasoning (e.g. in an IPCC report), but as I mentioned before, IPCC ignores worst case scenarios in the delusional hope that we won't need to worry about them.
Charles blog post is a good example of articles discussing global warming that aren't very helpful. It is high-level, makes a lot of assumptions and seems disconnected from any actual solution. For example, PV is cheaper? That's very location-specific and depends on storage costs. Petrochemical exporters are Authoritarian?!? I don't think Australia, Canada, Norway or the USA fit this category. He doesn't seem to identify a problem besides propaganda, and he doesn't offer much in the way of a solution for this. He is a writer, so he sees the issue as a communication problem. That is just one facet, and he can't even suggest a solution in passing.
I don't agree that the precautionary principle needs to be qualified, or at least not constrained to a single axis - we want to exercise precaution about any changes (or any resistance to change) - with effectively a 'do no harm' focus.
Human suffering ... I don't know how you're measuring this, or projecting it from current state, but 2/3 of the planet are going to be in unimaginably dire straits once regular rainfall patterns change.
I think when we started burning coal in anger, say late 1600's, early 1700's - literally no one contemplated the potential for planet-scale effects, so I don't think that application of the PP applies. I think we're still pretty dumb and full of hubris, but we can contemplate these potential outcomes, and we know of many unintended outcome scenarios, so the PP is much more compelling now.
Charlie's not trying to solve climate change - just drawing attention to why it's not being addressed. Petrochemical exporters are rarely countries, but rather the oligarchs that own the materials. Here in AU we have a tiny handful, f.e. and I expect a similar situation elsewhere - so while the current political administration is nominally democratic, that's effectively irrelevant.
EDIT oh, regarding (3) that you responded to - I'd point out the myriad stats around fossil fuel vs renewables 'jobs', especially graphed over the past decade, and especially in the USA. I think we're now at a time where anyone claiming renewables aren't a better economic option for a society are the ones that need to provide citations.
I think a PP without qualification becomes so nebulous that it can't be used in anger. Like what is wrong with saying that the most precautious we can be is to turn off all fossil fuels immediately? Lets stop cement and fertilizer production while we're at it. Starvation concerns? Irrelevant because we're being Precautious(TM).
When are 2/3 going to be in dire straits? 10 years, 50 years, 100 years? It matters to our policy response, that is my whole point. Repeating "global warming bad" isn't wrong but it doesn't inform policy.
More jobs = better?! That simply means it takes more resources to produce the same output. That is efficiency going down and is not good for the economy. But that doesn't matter because using the PP means that economic health isn't important. THIS is why it is important that institutions like IPCC need to consider all possibilities. We can't tell if using more labour is a good thing unless we can compare it to the downside! If we limit our imagination to 1.5C warming, we are deluding ourselves.
That’s very much not “the science.” 1.5C is the target. Bad stuff happens after that, but it’s not a “cascade of catastrophic events.” The expected GDP impact of a “do nothing” scenario is about 18% by 2050 (which will be 3.2C).
We are definitely headed to a 3C world because developing nations have zero incentive to risk economic growth rates over the next 30 years on a 18% economic hit 30 years from now. They’ll still be better off using fossil fuels to grow as cheaply as possible.
If any of the sensible variants of a carbon tax or tariff were implemented, developing nations would have a strong incentive to reduce emissions: all of their exports would be taxed to penalize their emissions at the same rate as everyone else’s.
In my opinion, having well meaning politicians and activists target specific climate-improving projects for funding and climate-harming projects for penalties or cancellation is the wrong approach: it’s expensive, it often chooses the wrong winners and losers, and it’s ineffectual. Putting monetary incentives in place that apply to everyone as equally as practical lets the free market choose winners and losers, and the free market is pretty good at that.
(Also, the free market decouples the industries “responsible” for the problem from the often unrelated technologies that can help solve it. If a cement factory must pay $15/ton for its CO2 emissions, a startup selling carbon-free process heat that is only $5/ton more expensive than whatever a plant currently uses has a decent case to make a sale.)
I'm in the same camp with wanting a better carbon tax but I've become skeptical that it is politically possible. For example, what happens if a bloc of countries refuse to pay their share? You can try and punish them with sanctions, but energy is so critical to national security that they are likely to be ignored. Then the only solution becomes war?
They continue to pollute and treat the sanctions as a cost of doing business. Ignore was probably the wrong word, but it is essentially how North Korea, Russia and Iran currently treat US sanctions.
It is true that technically a 4C world is survivable, but it will be an immensely hot world (land warms faster than oceans. So that 4C is the average of the two) and we won’t be able to sustain our current population. Vast swathes of the planet will be not fit for farming. Especially already arid regions today. So entertaining this world means entertaining the death and suffering of billions.
We are long past the need for “balance”. We need to decarbonize yesterday and it is unfortunate that workers in fossil fuel industries might lose their job along the way. We could do what most climate policy think tanks suggest and provide compensated job training & a guaranteed position for fossil fuel workers transitioning to a cleaner energy field.
lol, “don’t worry, I hear people survive just fine without their arms or legs. We can endure a little more frostbite just fine”
This shouldn’t be the bar. The bar is avoiding a “global catastrophe” ie mass migration and the start of resource scarcity. All of which will occur significantly sooner than “global collapse”. It definitely requires more aggressive action early.
Obviously keep using oil and gas so we don’t shut off anyone’s heat or food supply tho. Otherwise, everything else including higher costs (ie total shit for many many people) should be utilized to avoid catastrophe.
I think a better analogy for my view is: "the world has frostbite on its toes. If we make rash policy changes we can stop the frostbite now, but we need to cut our legs off. If we relax the constraint of stopping the frostbite immediately, it will continue to get worse in the short term but we will only lose a foot."
This ignores the fact that we cannot stop climate change immediately even if we had perfect global coordination.
It's not about redefining the bar, it's about avoiding rash policies like biofuel subsisies which cause large harm for minimal gain.
> After a quick scan of the judgement, it doesn't seem to consider the impact of stopping the mine on the rights of workers, energy consumers or the economy.
The rights of the economy (who?) are often at odds with the rights of workers - who in mining communities are often shafted when mine companies decide to shut down mines due to lower than optimal commodity prices. The landscape of Australia is strewn with abandoned mining communities, which once thrived, and who's wealth has been sent offshore due to a friendly tax regime which exists in service of the mythically important personage of the "economy".
Mines are not worker's friends, and mining companies certainly aren't.
I grew up in a mining community, I've lived in communities around Mackay and Moranbah. I salute this judgement.
I'm interested in the tax regime you mentioned, how does local wealth get sent offshore?
In my experience mines opening tend to be good for local economies and provide good jobs. Unfortunately state governments don't have much incentive to care about rural communities, so FIFO has replaced many mining towns. If it was easier to make new towns, mining companies would do it, since FIFO is so expensive.
Companies do make new towns - a series of demountables that's moved offsite when the mine starts to wrap up. If companies cared enough they'd build sustainable towns in those areas - but they don't care about communities, they care about profit.
Australia's mining is 86% overseas owned. The rights over the mining "economy" are by vast majority held by overseas companies.
> In my experience mines opening tend to be good for local economies and provide good jobs
I have never heard anyone describe mining as a "good job". It's a terrible, physically intensive, extremely unhealthy and highly risky job. What's the life expectancy for coal miners like?
Not sure about coal miners, but I'm sure it's not good. But most mines where I live are open-pit, pay well and have solid OHS systems. Have you ever been to a mining region? I've almost always heard positive things from mining workers.
Cancelling a proposed project causes lower employment in that region, thus affecting workers. Economic prosperity might not be an explicit human right, but lower employment causes suffering regardless.
As I stated before, in this case eliminating coal is more important than these considerations, but that doesn't mean we should ignore them entirely.
These are just fossil fuel industry talking points. None of these things really matter in the end if we end up with a climate that kills us. The human race needs to grow a backbone and fix this problem instead of chickening out because it might hurt rich people.
What is the alternative and the end game here? China buys Australian coal and lithium and uses it to make batteries. What they can’t import from AU, they will import from Indonesia or Russia, which is probably partially stolen from Ukraine’s Donbas. At least in Australia there are more chances to levy a fair carbon tax and dependency is mutual. Everyone wants to have batteries and solars for renewables, but no one wants to make them.
> What they can’t import from AU, they will import from Indonesia or Russia ...
This particular court rejected the “market substitution assumption”
From the article:
[Quote]
From a legal perspective, I believe there are four reasons in particular this case is so significant.
1. Rejecting an entrenched assumption
A major barrier to climate change litigation in Queensland has been the “market substitution assumption”, also known as the “perfect substitution argument”. This is the assertion that a particular mine’s contribution to climate change is net zero, because if that mine doesn’t supply coal, then another will.
Kingham rejected this argument. She noted that the economic benefits of the proposed project are uncertain with long-term global demand for thermal coal set to decline. She observed that there’s a real prospect the mine might not be viable for its projected life, rebutting the market substitution assumption.
I don't get the argument since when it's no longer economic it will presumably be shut down.
Personally I don't think the "perfect substitution" argument is that great in the first place (since it fails to take into account what it means for more supply to be on the market).
"if that mine doesn’t supply coal, then another will." smells of assuming that demand is fixed, use is insensitive to price and that substitution can't happen.
... BUT I also don't follow the logic behind this ruling.
> I don't get the argument since when it's no longer economic it will presumably be shut down.
You should read the (excellently named) No Country for Coal Gen report, which argued in detail that closing coal power plants was the economicly efficient thing to do but that various regulations meant they'd stay open long after they became net negatives costing tens of billions.
In minerals and energy the assumnption is rarely that "demand is fixed" ..
Population and per capita consumption have both increased for more than a century so the long term data is hard on the side of "demand relentlessly increases" (for major mineral demands and for energy supplies).
The logic here behind this ruling is that within the global thermal coal market it appears that demand is levelling and peaking, coal is on the nose, and thermal coal demand will start to fall within the decade.
That's based up such things as (say) the Standard & Poor (of SP100 fame) 2022 global coal forecast report.
Given the majority of major players in US stock market dicked about and inflated ratings of mortgage-backed securities the answer is yes, them and a host of others.
What they do as finnancial players in the stock market, though, is largely orthogonal to the market reports from independent experts that they commission or purchase.
The entire S&P global mineral intelligence wing was aquired from a third party and was built up to reflect the ground truth of lease acquisition, exploration, capital development, etc in the mineral resources domain.
The market substitution assumption was not ignored (do please make intelligent comments in HN).
The assumption was (rightly or wrongly) rejected on the basis that long term thermal coal demand (over the lifetime of this particular project) is projected to decline.
eg: Standard and Poor Mineral intelligence report (2022)
Ignored or rejected is a technicality that does not matter in this case. Assuming that investors did not take into account the forecasted demand is stupid.
For the last 10 years, coal consumption has been roughly the same. Within last couple of years relationship between China and Australia reached low points, at least on surface, as low as vague of threats of military force. Yet, China still buys coal from Australia. Even if it peaks in couple of years, there is still a long way to go and this mine can remain profitable for a while. I don’t know if you read your own links, but right at the top ot says:
Demand for thermal coal is set to decline after peaking in 2024 as coal-fueled power is increasingly replaced with renewables in Europe and the U.S.
However, transitioning away from coal is complex and slow for countries like China and India, which account for 70% of global coal demand and are facing a steep rise in power demand, with a fairly new coal fleet ensuring affordable power.
The success of meeting net zero goals for countries like China, India, and Indonesia hinges significantly on the future economic and technical feasibility of carbon capture, usage, and storage (CCUS) technology.
So yeah, basically the link you posted says that China is gonna be one of the biggest consumers of coal and it won’t change dramatically, unless some fundamental advances in energy tech.
> Ignored or rejected is a technicality that does not matter in this case.
Nonsense.
Ignored is "did not address at all, behaved as if unaware of, etc."
Rejected is "was aware of, investigated, addressed, used documented reasoning".
You're commenting in English so do please take this onboard - there is a difference and it matters.
I'm aware of the link I posted, it shows that the major global mining companies expect a decline in thermal coal demand during the lifetime of this coal project.
Whether correct or incorrect it's an informed opinion based on data by those with skin (artual billions) in the game.
Oh boy, here we go, my English isn’t good enough, well this definitely means you have nothing of essence to say.
> an informed opinion based on data by those with skin in the game.
This is hilarious. Those with skin in the game actually decided to try to build a mine in Australia. S&P is analytics, they don’t take immediate risks on their analysis. Looks like you don’t understand what “skin in the game” means, I guess this English expression is actually foreign to you.
Let's consider a simplified example. When China cannot buy Australian coal, it must instead buy, let's say, Indonesian coal, which is more expensive. (Otherwise there would have been no need to consider Australian coal at all.) So that makes coal less attractive to China, reducing consumption and giving China more economic incentive to seek out alternative fuels.
Sounds like the policy would work exactly as intended. Anything missing?
China and everyone else is already seeking out alternative sources of energy, not fuel though. But the only viable alternative to fossil fuel available at this point is nuclear. The others are still theoretical. Or you can find some cleaner fossil fuel, like gas from Russia. But it is arguably better. So in near term it is mostly going to be one of the existing producer of coal increasing production and offsetting the deficient and most likely doing it with even worse impact on environment and people. As Russia was preparing its assault on Ukraine, it also made some deals to supply more coal to China and India. And long term it won’t go away. A form of ever increasing carbon and environment tax applied across trade partners will put a long term pressure to move away from coal entirely, because it will force to switch to a different energy source, not just switching suppliers.
Did I miss something from the article? Why are you talking about lithium batteries when the lawsuit was clearly about a coal mine? Also, cutting off coal production sounds like the most direct way to promote alternative power sources?
Australia mines lithium, sells to China to make batteries. China uses coal in process as it is energy intensive. It might be one of the reasons, why China still needs so much coal.
Alternative power source is only part of the equation, to use it when you need it, you need a way to store it. This is why gas, oil and coal are so convenient - it is a source and a storage and you can dial production output up and down.
'The link between human rights and climate change is being increasingly recognised overseas. In September this year, for example, a United Nations committee decided that by failing to adequately address the climate crisis, Australia’s Coalition government violated the human rights of Torres Strait Islanders.'
Whose 'human rights' are we talking about here? In virtually all of these emotion driven decisions there is little thought for the enormous numbers of people who depend on the energy created by the coal internationally. It would be far more useful to focus on effective alternatives, such as small modular nuclear reactors, rather than creating devastating energy austerity in the name of what is essentially virtue signaling posturing based on very sketchy scientific claims.
(Bracing for immediate down votes from the climate insecure...)
You shouldn't be allowing grandchildren if you are being 'responsible'. Overpopulation is out of control and a major reason for the pollution that causes such anxieties.
Yes the court's decision comes in the form of a recommendation, but it is a significant one and will be difficult to ignore. At the very least it should remove any question of a social license for these kind of activities in Australia (i.e. thermal coal extraction!) - which are often presented as beneficial to first nations groups, yet are environmentally and culturally blasé through and through.