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Warning about conflicts, wars and mass migration is the wrong way to approach things
The Australian Senate’s declaration last month that climate change is a “current and existential national security risk” was clearly intended to inject much-needed urgency into the country’s climate policy stalemate. Bringing together the unusual bedfellows of military generals and environmentalists to warn about the dangers of climate change, it has the possibility to break though Australia’s culture wars on the issue. However, by framing climate change as a security matter, it also has significant consequences in shaping how we respond to a warming planet. As the climate crisis unfolds, is the military the institution we want to turn to for solutions?
The question rarely asked is whose security are we talking about - security of what, for whom and from whom?
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Continue reading...One fundamental point has been overlooked by Kevin Rushby in his article about the plight of the countryside due to agriculture (The killing fields, G2, 31 May). There has been no intensification of agriculture in the UK for 25 years.
Government statistics show pesticide and fertiliser use has been significantly reduced. There are fewer crops grown and the numbers of pigs, sheep and cattle have fallen. So to point the finger at farming as the cause of environmental degradation through intensification makes no sense, especially when you consider the other changes that have taken place in that time – increased housebuilding, more roads, and more cars on those roads – and the impact they have had on the country’s landscape.
Continue reading...Sumburgh Head lies at the southern tip of mainland Shetland. This dramatic 100-metre-high rocky spur, crowned with a lighthouse built by Robert Louis Stevenson’s grandfather, has a reputation for being one of the biggest and most accessible seabird colonies in Britain.
Thousands of puffins, guillemots, razorbills, kittiwakes and fulmars gather there every spring to breed, covering almost every square inch of rock or grass with teeming, screeching birds and their young.
Continue reading...Before the latest auction figures, Adam Morton investigates the plan Turnbull once called ‘a recipe for fiscal recklessness’
At some point in June, the Australian government will announce it has spent up to $2.3bn over three years on a scheme that the prime minister believes is a reckless waste of public money.
Related: Land-clearing wipes out $1bn taxpayer-funded emissions gains
It would have been cheaper if the government negotiated to buy the land rather than pay landowners to protect it.
Related: Emissions scheme wastes millions on projects that would have gone ahead anyway
Related: Greg Hunt hasn't a lot to show for $660m spent on reducing greenhouse emissions
As Turnbull has pointed out, in Australia the offsets scheme is the policy. And it is barely making a dent.
Related: Emissions increases approved by regulator may wipe out $260m of Direct Action cuts
Related: China’s emissions trading scheme puts Australian companies on notice
Continue reading...‘Common sense’ policies such as free water and reflective roof paint save lives as temperatures near 50C
One morning last week, Mohammad Javed wheeled an air conditioner on to the pavement outside his catering business in Delhi, placed his chair a metre away, sat down and did not move all day. When the machine ran out of water, he asked passing boys to fetch a bucket. When he had to give directions to workers in the building across the lane, he shouted. Every few minutes, he took a long swig from his water bottle and spat the contents on to the ground without swallowing. “Ramadan,” he explained.
Northern India, like neighbouring Pakistan, is in the grip of a heatwave, with temperatures reaching 47C. A blanket of hot air has settled on Delhi clearing pavements across the usually busy capital. India is particularly vulnerable to temperature increases associated with climate change. Since 1992, about 25,000 Indians are estimated to have died because of heatwaves. Yet the country is quietly optimistic that it can prevent at least some of those deaths.
Related: Tourists told to stay away from Indian city of Shimla due to water crisis
Continue reading...Christiana Figueres was also scathing of those who say it is inevitable that the global warming limit set out in the Paris agreement will be broken
Businesses are moving forward faster than ever on climate change despite the intransigence of US president Donald Trump, the former climate chief of the UN has said.
“There is a big difference between the economics of climate change and the politics of climate change,” said Christiana Figueres, the former executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention of Climate Change, who oversaw the landmark Paris agreement on climate change.
Related: Paris deal: a year after Trump announced US exit, a coalition fights to fill the gap
Continue reading...On 21 May you published my letter about Owais Raja, one of the numerous cases of immigrants who have been deprived of their indefinite leave to remain under paragraph 322(5) of the immigration rules, because of errors in their tax returns, even though the HMRC found them not to be deliberate. The Home Office has now announced a welcome review. But what happens while the review takes place? Under para 322(5) the victims may no longer face the threat of immediate deportation, but they are barred from earning a living or access to the NHS. They cannot pay for food, their rent or any urgent medical treatment. Are they and their families to beg and sleep on the streets? Surely there must be an immediate, at the very least temporary, restoration of their leave to remain while their cases are reconsidered?Dick TaverneLiberal Democrat, House of Lords
• Timothy Garton Ash (1 June) is not the only one to fear for the future of the European project. However, I find fighting talk about reclaiming “European sovereignty” as depressing and shortsighted as Brexit. Mass migration is not a “threat” to Europe; it is a complex human struggle driven by war, poverty and climate breakdown, issues in which we are globally complicit. The approval in April of a new immigration law cuts asylum application deadlines, doubles detention times and will introduce a one-year prison term for entering France illegally. In northern France, police are confiscating tents and removing shoes from refugees. This does not make Macron “impressive” and “compelling”, it makes him cruel and miserly – the same as all other European leaders who are overwhelmed by their obligations and so retreat to identity politics. We might feel reassured pretending this emperor is the one wearing shiny new clothes, but we have a greater responsibility to our neighbours – people, not “juggernauts” about to “trample us”. Less “courage”, fellow Europeans, perhaps, and more compassion.Libby RuffleWoodbridge, Suffolk
Continue reading...The Turnbull government’s plan to save the reef is so crazy, it might just work! (It will not)
Sign up here to get an email whenever First Dog cartoons are publishedGet all your needs met at the First Dog shop if what you need is First Dog merchandise and printsContinue reading...Cities, states and companies are taking their own steps on behalf of the planet. But their power to minimize Trump’s damage is limited
Donald Trump barely had time to leave a sun-drenched Rose Garden after announcing the US exit from the historic Paris climate change agreement before the backlash began.
The voluntary deal, aimed at curbing global temperature rise to under 2C, was “draconian” and would cause a “very diminished quality of life” for Americans, Trump said on 1 June last year. “I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris,” the president added.
Related: Hitting toughest climate target will save world $30tn in damages, analysis shows
Related: Nasa full of 'fear and anxiety' since Trump took office, ex-employee says
Continue reading...Booker prize-winning author predicts climate reality will not be far from scenarios imagined in her post-apocalyptic fiction
Climate change will bring a dystopian future reminiscent of one of her “speculative fictions”, with women bearing the brunt of brutal repression, hunger and war, the Booker prize-winning author Margaret Atwood is to warn.
“This isn’t climate change – it’s everything change,” she will tell an audience at the British Library this week. “Women will be directly and adversely affected by climate change.”
Related: Global climate action must be gender equal | Hilda Heine
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