Climate change risks finally grab Australia's attention

The category-4 tempest was the strongest to hit the Pacific nation in a couple of decades. For Samoan Brianna Fruean, one of the Pacific Climate Warriors, it was another sign - along with rising sea levels, and more intense floods and droughts - that action needed to be taken.

"Climate change is happening right in front of our eyes," Fruean said this week on the sidelines of a meeting in Fiji of Civicus, a global civil society group.

Helen Clark - the former New Zealand prime minister and an ex-senior United Nations official - was also at the Suva gathering. Clark says she is not surprised by its central topic.

"You can't come to a meeting in the Pacific and not have climate change as the focus," Clark tells Fairfax Media. "Everybody talks about it because it's an existential threat to the Pacific."

Samoa at least has high ground where people can seek refuge. Tuvalu, Kiribati and the Marshall Islands are nations barely three metres above sea level, making them particularly vulnerable to storm surges and rising seas.

Such vulnerabilities are not lost on Australian authorities.

Despite the often tortured debate stoked by some conservative politicians and commentators denying climate change is real, a range of agencies are quietly assessing abilities to cope with threats from a refugee influx, increased calls for aid, and impacts on the domestic economy.

And as 2017 draws towards a close, Environment and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg is putting the final touches to a review of Australia's climate policies due for release by month's end.

Frydenberg offers no hint of any major surprise, repeating familiar lines that Australia's pledge to the Paris climate accord - to cut 2005 level emissions 26-28 per cent by 2030 - "is one of the largest reductions on a per capita basis and is a commitment we plan on honouring".

Scrutiny

While festive seasonal distractions may dim the chance of an immediate and close scrutiny of his climate review, the challenges for the Turnbull government will still be waiting when politicians reconvene in the new year.

International attention will also remain, whether at this week's One Planet Summit in France to assess the progress on the Paris climate deal two years on, or late in 2018, when all nations will be pressed to increase their ambition to curb the greenhouse gas emissions driving global warming.

On the emissions front, Frydenberg has already had his options significantly reduced.

The government's signature National Energy Guarantee aimed at providing a more reliable, affordable and sustainable electricity supply locks the power sector into the same 26-28 per cent pollution reduction that the whole economy is supposed to track.

Even if Frydenberg can convince the states to sign up - a huge ask unless there is a major power outage over the summer - such an approach won't be the best.

"Electricity production in OECD countries is always part of the cheapest options to decarbonise the economy, and it's also a big source of emissions," said Yann Robiou du Pont, a researcher at Melbourne University's Australian-German Climate & Energy College.

"There are fewer assets to transform and they're usually closer related to governmental decision-making."

In Australia's case, the electricity sector is the largest source of emissions, accounting for about a third of the total, and home to many ageing and relatively dirty coal-fired power plants.

Another big source, land clearing, is again on the increase in states such as Queensland and NSW.

"Energy efficiency and productivity will play an important role as we transition to a lower emissions future," Frydenberg said. "We already have in place the National Energy Productivity Plan for a 40 per cent improvement by 2030 and we are always looking at ways to improve in this area while delivering an affordable and reliable energy system."

Mr Robiou du Pont notes the Climate Change Authority's own recommendation that Australia's fair contribution to emission cuts would be much higher than the Abbott-Turnbull government's offer, given the country's high per capita pollution and also relative wealth - if not political will - to transform its economy.

The authority - which the Coalition government tried but failed to abolish - called for a 25 per cent cut of 2005-level emissions by 2020, and 54 per cent by 2030. That's roughly double the government's ambition.

'Not serious'

Mark Butler, Labor's climate spokesman, said his party is sticking with a 45 per cent emissions reduction goal that "is consistent with the Paris Accord goal of limiting global warming to below two degrees".

"It is clear that the government's approach of a pro rata allocation of abatement between sectors will ensure the costs of meeting any emission reduction target will be higher than they need to be," Butler said.

"The electricity sector has a lower cost of abatement than most other sectors in the form of renewable energy, and renewable energy is already the cheapest option to replace ageing coal-fired power stations that will inevitably retire," he said.

(Energy giant AGL is expected to announce details within days of what its plans are post-2022, when it closes the ailing Liddell coal-fired power station in the Hunter Valley.)

Sectors like manufacturing and livestock agriculture have a much larger cost of abatement and few ready-to-deploy abatement technologies.

"The government's insistence each sector meets targets based on a pro rata division of the national emission reduction target just confirms they do not take climate change seriously," Butler said.

Business shift

Companies, meanwhile, are beginning to look beyond the political cycle.

Sarah Barker, a special counsel for Minter Ellison Lawyers, said there had been "a noticeable shift in the approach of the business community to climate risk in the past 18 months".

"Historically, the issue was largely viewed as a singularly 'environmental', ethical, non-financial issue - perhaps relevant to corporate social responsibility, but nothing more," she said.

"Increasingly, Australian businesses are realising that climate change presents significant financial risks - and opportunities - and that they need to strategise around this issue in the same way as they would any other industry trend or economic risk factor."

"Business has far less tolerance for climate change denialism than it did even a few years ago," Barker added. "Their investors are concerned about it. Their insurers are concerned about it. Their customers are concerned about it."

'New denialism'

Submissions to recent and ongoing Senate inquiries also indicate that whichever parties take government at the next election, many agencies already have preparations underway to adapt to climate change.

Peter Whish-Wilson - the Greens' spokesperson for Healthy Oceans who led a Senate inquiry into the impact of climate change on the marine environment that last week released its report - said policy delay was "the new form of climate denialism".

"Whether you stick your head under the water up on the Great Barrier Reef and see the devastation first-hand or you talk to the defence force personnel involved in planning for natural disasters in the Pacific, you know that the effects of global warming are upon us and that without action the future is looking grim," Whish-Wilson said.

"We now need to think about the increase of marine heatwaves as part of the range of climate impacts we need to prepare for, like we do with bushfires and droughts," he said.

'Threat-multiplier'

For its part, the Defence Department's report to a separate Senate inquiry into the implications of climate change for Australia's national security detailed how it expects the "threat-multiplier" effect will hinder its "warfighting role".

"The national security threats that may emerge include inter-group rivalries, water, food and resource shortages and irregular migration," it said. "Many of the states in Australia's region face some or all of these challenges, in addition to being vulnerable to climate change impacts such as temperature and sea level rise."

Defence noted how it deployed 1000 staff to help Fiji recover from its $2.5 billion hit from Cyclone Winston, a category-5 storm in 2016. The HMAS Canberra was part of the deployment, along with planes that delivered 520 tonnes of humanitarian aid.

In its submission, the Department of Immigration and Border Protection said "climate change effects could permanently alter normal business, including the accessibility of assets and capability".

Interestingly, it noted that "there is no internationally agreed position on expanding the current definition of a refugee or impetus to create a new international protection obligation to encompass people displaced by climate change".

Organisations such as the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law at the Univerity of NSW downplay the threat of a flood of refugees crossing borders because of climate change, saying in its submission to the Senate that "there is scant evidence" so far.

"Internal displacement may, however, generate low-level social tensions and potential conflict over key resources such as land, housing, food, water and employment, and increase the human insecurity of the poor," said Jane McAdam, the centre's director.

'Climate debt'

Such a view of local disruption dovetails with those of both Helen Clark and Brianna Fruean.

Clark said climate displacement is already affecting African subsistence farmers forced off their land by rainfall patterns that are becoming harder to predict: "If you plant and the rain doesn't come, you've blown your credit and you're poverty stricken."

"We don't want our people to move," Fruean said. "We want to put that as the very, very last resort."

That said, Pacific nations are watching with concern the Australian and Queensland governments' efforts to promote the huge Adani-owned Carmichael mine, which threatens to open up a massive new coal province.

"The execution of the Adani project will be a huge carbon bomb for us in the Pacific," Fruean said.

She dismissed the characterisation of funds from rich nations to help her people cope with worse weather extremes and rising sea levels.

"I see it as climate debt," she said. "We wouldn't need that aid if it weren't for these countries investing in fossil fuels, and really creating the damage that we're seeing in our islands today."