The Conversation

Gas infrastructure and exploration attracted the lion's share of new energy announcements in the 2017 federal budget Sean Heatley/Shutterstock.com

The budget contains several measures designed to boost energy security, including:

• A$90 million to expand gas supplies, partly through increased unconventional gas exploration

• a potential Commonwealth buyout of an expanded Snowy Hydro scheme

• up to A$110 million for a solar thermal plant at Port Augusta

• monitoring of gas and electricity prices by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.

Below, our experts react to the measures.

Gas price problem far from solved

Roger Dargaville, Deputy Director, Melbourne Energy Institute, University of Melbourne

The budget contains a broad range of funding in energy-related areas, with a significant focus on gas resources, making A$78 million available for onshore unconventional gas exploration and reform in the gas markets, and A$7 million for studies into new gas pipelines to South Australia, from both Western Australia and the Northern Territory.

Interestingly, there is A$110 million in equity available (but not guaranteed) for a solar thermal plant in Port Augusta. And most notably, the government has proposed purchasing the Snowy Hydro Scheme from the New South Wales and Victorian governments, ensuring that the scheme stays in public hands.

The budget also includes A$13 million for CSIRO to improve energy forecasting tools, and A$8 million for the ACCC to investigate consumer energy pricing issues.

Overall, the budget highlights the government’s desire to do something about gas prices, but offers little to make a significant difference to a very difficult problem. Gas market reform and new pipelines are unlikely to reduce the exposure of the domestic market to price rises driven by international exports.

Importantly, there is little new funding in the budget directly relating to reducing carbon emissions and meeting the pledges made in the Paris Agreement (a 26-28% emission reduction relative to 2005 levels by 2030). Also noteworthy is the removal of funding for research into carbon capture and storage.

‘On energy this budget is small fry’

Tony Wood, Energy Program Director, Grattan Institute

The budget does little more on energy than endorse the government’s deal with Senator Nick Xenophon on corporate tax cuts, complemented by modest commitments to energy security, more gas and better regulation.

Government facilitation of gas development and beefing up the energy capability of the Australian Energy Regulator and the ACCC are simple logic, and the one- off payment to pensioners to help with electricity bills will be welcomed by them.

Major public funding for further feasibility studies is a little more questionable. If the gas crisis can’t galvanise support from pipeline companies and gas consumers for pipelines, why would governments reach a different conclusion?

And finally, one can only speculate as to why the federal government is contemplating buying out the NSW and Victorian governments’ share of Snowy Hydro. Presumably it is because the feds are concerned about securing support for the proposed expansion.

In summary, on energy this budget is small fry ahead of major policy decisions that rest on the forthcoming Finkel Review of the National Electricity Market next month, and the climate change policy review later in the year.

A step towards radical energy reform?

Hugh Saddler, Honorary Associate Professor, Centre for Climate Economics and Policy, Australian National University

Few announcements in the budget speech are more emblematic of complete policy reversal than the announcement that the Commonwealth would buy the shareholdings in Snowy Hydro Limited of the governments of NSW (58%) and Victoria (29%), to add to the 13% currently owned by the Commonwealth. This comes almost exactly 11 years after Prime Minister John Howard, responding to vociferous public opposition, pulled the plug on plans by all three governments for a public float of their entire shareholdings. What is more, Treasurer Scott Morrison has now announced that, once owned by the Commonwealth, Snowy Hydro would remain in public ownership.

This announcement of course accompanies the government’s Snowy 2.0 proposal, for a fivefold increase in the Snowy scheme’s current 500 megawatt pumped storage capacity (at Talbingo). This was used, after commissioning in 1974, to allow inflexible coal fired power stations to operate with constant output levels day and night, but is now almost never used. This presumably reflects commercial decisions by Snowy Hydro, as it trades in the National Electricity Market.

The rationale for Snowy Hydro 2.0 is to facilitate operation of a grid with a high share of renewable generation, by smoothing out variations in wind and solar supply. Does this announcement mean that the government envisages moving away from a strictly commercial approach to using the assets of the Snowy scheme? Is this a first step towards radical restructuring, or even dismantling, of the National Electricity Market?

Stronger legislation needed

Alan Pears, Senior Industry Fellow, RMIT University

The detailed A$265 million energy package includes a number of useful measures to strengthen the weak regulatory culture of the energy sector that has allowed our energy crisis to evolve. But it is still limited: strong legislative reform and active support of emerging competitors will also be needed. It is a modest investment compared with recent multibillion-dollar energy cost increases. If it is successful, it will deliver vary large net benefits to the economy by limiting energy price increases. Unfortunately, past efforts to fix the energy situation have largely failed to deliver real outcomes: we need clear objectives for outcomes, and a mechanism to implement contingency strategies if they are not achieved.

In a context of increasing urgency for stronger action on climate, and the reality that the global “burnable carbon” budget is very limited, investment to encourage more gas development seems misplaced. More emphasis on energy efficiency, renewables and smart energy systems would make much more sense. Energy efficiency already saves billions on energy costs and could save much more, while renewable energy is becoming cheaper than fossil fuel alternatives. They also help to achieve our climate targets. And fossil fuels are responsible for almost three-quarters of Australian emissions, so we need strong action to meet our international obligations.

The extension of the A$20,000 tax write-off for small business spending on equipment is a measure that, at least for small businesses, offsets a significant barrier to investment in energy efficiency. Firms will also be able to continue to claim the write-off to improve the economics of investments in on-site renewable energy and storage. Of course, the problem still remains for spending over A$20,000 by small businesses, and for larger businesses.

The energy security plan, which includes funding for ACCC to police energy industry behaviour is only a small step towards fixing the disastrous failures of energy policy and a transition to a 21st century energy policy framework. Much more will need to be done.

Hugh Saddler is a member of the board of the Climate Institute

Alan Pears has worked for government, business, industry associations public interest groups and at universities on energy efficiency, climate response and sustainability issues since the late 1970s. He is now an honorary Senior Industry Fellow at RMIT University and a consultant, as well as an adviser to a range of industry associations and public interest groups. His investments in managed funds include firms that benefit from growth in clean energy. .

Roger Dargaville works with the consortium of EnergyAustralia and Arup that have been funded by ARENA to conduct the PHES feasibility study. He has previously received funding from ARENA to undertake energy system modelling studies.

Tony Wood holds shares in energy and resources companies through his superannuation fund.

The tropical Pacific has a large say in how fast the world warms. GTS Productions/Shutterstock.com

Global warming is rapidly approaching 1.5℃, but according to our new research, conditions in the Pacific Ocean over the coming decades will determine how fast we get there.

In a paper published today in Geophysical Research Letters, we use climate model simulations to quantify how fast global average temperatures will reach 1.5℃ above the pre-industrial average – one of the crucial benchmarks of the Paris Climate Agreement.

The Paris deal calls for governments to pursue the aim of keeping global warming below 1.5℃. But our results suggest that we could hit that level before the end of the next decade if the Pacific Ocean moves into a state we have nicknamed the “cranky uncle” for its effects on global temperatures.

Faster warming

Global temperature records have tumbled in recent years: 2016 was the world’s hottest year on record, the third record-breaking year in a row.

Although human emissions of greenhouse gases are the primary driver of these rising temperatures, there are other factors at play. The climate system is an unwieldy beast, containing a variety of erratic feedbacks and complex mechanisms.

One mechanism with which many people are familiar is El Niño and La Niña, a see-sawing of warm waters across the tropical Pacific every two to seven years. Climate scientists were not at all surprised to see record global temperatures in 2015 and 2016, because of the large El Niño that ended last year.

Another, lesser-known cycle in the Pacific Ocean is the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO). Since El Niño and La Niña are Spanish for the “the boy” and “the girl”, we have nicknamed their slower-moving relatives the “cranky uncle”, El Tío, and the “kind auntie”, La Tía.

Like El Niño, warm phases of the IPO provoke a temporary acceleration in global temperature, but over much longer periods, lasting between 10 and 30 years.

The cool La Tía phase of the IPO since around 2000, and its associated slowdown in the rate of global warming, may have lulled us into a false sense of security.

Scientists are now concerned that the next El Tío phase could be on its way, which might sustain the relatively rapid global warming seen over the past few years.

Our research

With this in mind, we decided to investigate how soon we are likely to surpass the 1.5℃ level, both with and without the influence of the IPO.

We used climate model simulations to project global temperatures. The models show temperatures varying significantly from year-to-year and decade-to-decade, as we see in the real world. The centre point of the model projections indicates that the 1.5℃ level would be reached just before 2030, with 75% of the model projections crossing 1.5℃ before 2032.

With the recent slowdown period in mind, we wondered how the next IPO phase, El Tío or La Tía, would influence global temperature. We found that the rate at which global average temperature approaches the 1.5℃ level is influenced significantly by the IPO.

The influence of the IPO on global temperatures towards 1.5°C. Author supplied

El Tío phases are responsible for an acceleration in global temperature. The centre point of the El Tío projections passes the 1.5℃ level in around 2027, and a quarter of our projections pass 1.5℃ as early as 2024.

For La Tía, the projected rate of warming is reduced, and the centre year is 2031 – the kind auntie gives us a little more breathing space.

So, is the Paris agreement a failure?

No. The Paris agreement is a critically important step in the right direction.

Although we will soon surpass the 1.5℃ warming benchmark, we still have a chance to turn around and head back down the hill. But to reduce global temperatures, we need not only to reduce our net emissions to zero, but to move swiftly into net negative carbon emissions territory. That means that overall we will need to take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, not add more.

But we are a very long way from that point. There is a lot of work to do.

The implications of swiftly rising global temperature are many and varied. Our group and other scientists have quantified the changing likelihood of extreme events such as heatwaves, coral bleaching, droughts and floods.

For the next few decades we have to accept that we are likely to see more extreme events as the effect of continued rising global temperatures takes its toll.

We can’t hide from our cranky uncle, but we can limit climate change and its impacts. Although the political will for evidence-based climate policy seems to be waning in some quarters, the message from climate scientists has not changed:

We need swift global cooperation to dramatically reduce atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations.

Ben Henley receives funding from an ARC Linkage Project and is an associate investigator with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science.

Andrew King receives funding from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science.

Malte Meinshausen receives funding from an ARC Future Fellowship.

Bees have been living with the mysterious Colony Collapse Disorder for a decade. Simon Klein, Author provided

Ten years ago, beekeepers in the United States raised the alarm that thousands of their hives were mysteriously empty of bees. What followed was global concern over a new phenomenon: Colony Collapse Disorder.

Since then we have realised that it was not just the US that was losing its honey bees; similar problems have manifested all over the world. To make things worse, we are also losing many of our populations of wild bees too.

Losing bees can have tragic consequences, for us as well as them. Bees are pollinators for about one-third of the plants we eat, a service that has been valued at €153 billion (US$168 billion) per year worldwide.

Ten years after the initial alarm, what is the current status of the world’s bee populations, and how far have we come towards understanding what has happened?

The current status of bees worldwide

Since the alarm was first raised, many countries have created new monitoring methods to judge the status of their bee stocks. As a result we have much more data on bee populations, although coverage is still patchy and differences in survey methods make it hard to compare between continents.

It is clear that bees in the United States are still struggling. Beekeepers can tolerate up to 15% losses of colonies over winter, but the US is massively above this threshold, having lost 28.1% of colonies over the 2015-16 winter.

Canada, by contrast, reported 16.8% losses. This is better, but still above the level of losses at which beekeepers can easily restock.

Only recently have we had data from central Europe. There, honey bees seem to be doing better: 11.9% losses in 2015-16. Meanwhile, in New Zealand surveys only began in the last year and have reported winter loss of 10.7%. Australia does not yet have a countrywide survey of the state of bee colonies.

Fortunes are mixed for bees around the world. Simon Klein, Author provided

Honey bees are not the only bees that we should care about: wild bees are vital pollinators too. Some plants are pollinated by only one wild bee species, such as the macropis bees that forage on the loosetrife plant.

Unsurprisingly, we have much less data on wild bees than honey bees, and those data we do have point to bigger concerns. For our wild bees we only really have good data for populations that are endangered or that have completely disappeared. Between 2008 and 2013, wild bee diversity in the US dropped by 23%, and a previously common bumblebee species was recently listed as endangered.

Do we understand why?

The good news is that the past decade has seen plenty of progress in understanding the mystery of Colony Collapse Disorder. The bad news is that we now recognise it as a complex problem with many causes, although that doesn’t mean it is unsolvable.

For all bees, foraging on flowers is a hard life. It is energetically and cognitively demanding; bees have to travel large distances to collect pollen and nectar from sometimes hard-to-find flowers, and return it all to the nest. To do this they need finely tuned senses, spatial awareness, learning and memory.

Anything that damages such skills can make bees struggle to find food, or even get lost while trying to forage. A bee that cannot find food and make it home again is as good as dead.

Because of this, bee populations are very vulnerable to what we call “sublethal stressors” – factors that don’t kill the bees directly but can hamper their behaviour.

For solitary species such as the blue-banded bee, native to New South Wales, difficulty foraging can be a very serious problem. Simon Klein, Author provided

In a recently published review, we argue that modern agriculture and industry have created a host of sublethal stressors that damage bees’ cognition. For example, diesel fumes and neonicotinoid pesticides both reduce bees’ foraging efficiency by disturbing chemical communications in their brains. Modern intensive agriculture disturbs bee nutrition, which impairs their brain. Climate change interferes with the relationship between bees and the plants on which they feed.

In addition, managed honey bees are afflicted by a range of pests, viruses and predators that have been spread around the world as a side-effect of international trade. The worst is the ominously named Varroa destructor mite, which causes brain development disorders.

What can we do?

At the global level, to preserve our bees we have to improve the environments in which they collect food. Every small action can make a difference. Planting flower borders with bee-friendly flowers in your garden can provide food for both wild and domestic bees. You can reduce or eliminate the use of herbicides or pesticides when gardening. Even mowing the lawn less often can help bees out.

You could install a native bee hive or insect hotel. Another tempting option is to buy local honey, which often has a more distinctive flavour than mass-produced versions.

In Australia, we are fortunate in that our bees seem to be doing better than many other parts of the world. The Varroa mite has not yet invaded our shores, and in many areas bees can access pesticide-free bushland (although unlike Europe, Australia has not yet banned use of neonicotinoids in agriculture).

Australia also has an incredibly rich diversity of wild native bees: up to 1,600 different species, including our emblematic stingless bees. Even so, to protect this diversity we need better surveys of how these species are doing.

Ten years on from the alarm over disappearing bees, it is fair to say we now know the nature of the problem and what can be done to fix it. It’s up to us to take the steps needed to sustain these precious pollinators of our food for the future.

Andrew Barron receives funding from a Special Cooperative Agreement with the US Department of Agriculture.

Simon Klein does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

With so many choices for coffee, it's hard to know which is the environmentally healthy option. Shutterstock

Shopping can be confusing at the best of times, and trying to find environmentally friendly options makes it even more difficult. Welcome to the first instalment of our Sustainable Shopping series, in which we ask experts to provide easy, eco-friendly guides to purchases big and small.

The morning coffee ritual is serious business; Australians drink roughly 16.3 million coffees a day. Plenty of news coverage has been devoted to its health benefits and cultural significance, but how much do you know about the environmental cost of your daily latte?

Coffee is grown in some of the most biologically diverse regions of the world, sometimes causing significant damage. But there are choices you can make to reduce the ecological impact of your caffeine fix.

The issue

Coffee mostly affects tropical forests, as they are cleared to make way for coffee farms. But with certain cultivation practices, these coffee farms can support an impressive range of forest biodiversity.

The world’s most popular coffee type, Coffea arabica, grows under the rainforest canopies of Ethiopia. A natural requirement for shade means coffee is often cultivated under shading plants, from a single tree species to a diverse range of plant life.

However, to improve productivity, traditional coffee farms have been increasingly replaced with sun-tolerant coffee varieties that produce higher yields. Compared with shaded coffee, these simplified plantations support fewer native species, store less carbon, experience higher levels of erosion, and leach more nutrients. They also require more resources such as water and fertilisers.

Coffee grows in the shade on a farm in Jinotega, Nicaragua. REUTERS/Oswaldo Rivas How can we increase sustainability?

The most important choice when it comes to sustainable coffee is the actual coffee and its cultivation. Cultivation can contribute as little as 1% or as much as 70% of the total environmental footprint of a cup of coffee. How the coffee is consumed (instant, fresh grounds or pods, for instance) has less influence.

The lowest-impact coffee is grown using traditional cultivation methods with minimal mechanisation. At the other extreme are large farms that are highly mechanised and require more fertiliser and pesticides.

A combination of traditional cultivation methods, maintaining shading plants, protecting local forests and buffering waterways (filtering farmland runoff with vegetation before it enters waterways), has the lowest environmental impact.

What can you do?

While searching for your daily dose of caffeine, you have probably come across several different sustainability certification logos. They are the easiest way to find out about how your coffee is cultivated, and have proved effective in protecting coffee landscapes from degradation.

The two most prominent certification programs are The Rainforest Alliance and Australian Certified Organic.

Coffee bean bag with Rainforest Alliance logo. Karen Christine Hibbard/Flickr, CC BY-NC

The Rainforest Alliance requires a level of native vegetation to be maintained within each coffee farm. There is some criticism that the alliance has watered down its criteria in recent years, at least in terms of maintaining diverse shading vegetation. However, their certification leads to positive outcomes such as protection of waterways and native vegetation.

Australian Certified Organic certifies coffee roasters such as Coffex, Coffico and Rio Coffee. Australian Certified Organic

Australian Certified Organic is focused on protecting natural habitats and biodiversity, efficient water use, and minimising the use of chemicals in fertilisers and pest and disease management. These practices are strongly aligned with traditional coffee cultivation.

While certification programs are not perfect, logos can certainly act as a guide to sustainable products.

That said, products without logos aren’t necessarily unsustainable. Some small landholders with highly sustainable, shade-grown coffee can’t afford the expense of certification.

In this situation you can talk to your local roaster (or a distant one via the internet). Roasters may have direct relationships with their coffee growers and can tell you about their cultivation practices. Good questions to ask are whether the cooperative has any certification, whether the cultivation is organic or shade-grown, and whether the cooperative has any associated environmental programs.

Ultimately, a little knowledge of coffee cultivation and its impacts can go a long way in making wise and environmentally sound purchases. There is a huge range of coffee choices available, and good evidence that the choices you make can influence significant and positive environmental outcomes.

Aaron is employed by Astron Environmental Services, an environmental consulting company based in Western Australia.

James Gleeson's Delenda est Carthago offers a striking visualisation of a collapsing civilisation.

What does climate change look like in Australia? Are we already seeing our landscapes shift before our eyes without even realising it?

Perhaps thought-provoking art can help us come to terms with our changing world, by finding new ways to engage, inform and hopefully inspire action. For hasn’t art always been the bridge between the head and the heart?

With that aim, the ART+CLIMATE=CHANGE 2017 festival, organised by CLIMARTE, features 30 specially curated exhibitions running from April 19 to May 14 in galleries across Melbourne and regional Victoria, following on from their previous award-winning festival in 2015.

Changing landscapes

One of the festival’s exhibitions is Land, Rain and Sun, featuring more than 100 landscapes dating from the 19th century to today, curated by gallery owner Charles Nodrum and captioned by us to offer a climate scientist’s perspective on the works. We also collaborated with CLIMARTE directors Guy Abrahams and Bronwyn Johnson to bring the idea to life.

The exhibition, featuring Australian artists including Sidney Nolan, James Gleeson, Eugene Von Guerard, Louis Buvelot, Russell Drysdale, Fred Williams, Michael Shannon and Ray Crooke, is designed to help start a conversation about what climate change might look like in Australia.

Curating an exhibition of artworks as seen through the eyes of a climate scientist poses a challenge: how can we help make the invisible visible, and the unimaginable real?

As we sifted through scores of artistic treasures, there were a few works that confronted us in unexpected ways. The first was Cross Country Skiers, painted in 1939 by renowned South Australian artist John S. Loxton. It depicts the Victorian High Country heavily blanketed in snow, as two skiers make their way through the beautiful wintery landscape.

John S. Loxton, Cross Country Skiers, Victorian High Country, c. 1935. Watercolour on paper. Charles Nodrum Gallery, Author provided

When we saw this image, we realised that in decades to come this work might be considered a historical record, serving as a terrible reminder of a landscape that vanished before our eyes.

Average snow depth and cover in Australia have declined since the 1950s as temperatures have risen rapidly. Under high greenhouse gas emissions scenarios, climate models show severe reductions, with snow becoming rare by late in the century except on the highest peaks.

The Australian ski season could shorten by up to 80 days a year by 2050 under worst-case predictions, with the biggest impacts likely to be felt at lower-elevation sites such as Mt Baw Baw and Lake Mountain in Victoria.

As temperatures continue to rise, our alpine plants and animal communities are in real danger of being pushed off mountain tops, having nowhere to migrate to and no way of moving from or between alpine “islands”.

James Gleeson’s surreal apocalyptic painting Delenda est Carthago is a provocative work that got us thinking about a future marred by unmitigated climate change. The title refers to Rome’s annihilation of Carthage in 149 BC. According to the ancient historian Polybius, the conquering Roman general, Scipio Aemilianus, famously wept as he likened the event to the mythical destruction of Troy and to the eventual end he could foresee for Rome.

James Gleeson, Delenda est Carthago, 1983. Oil on linen. Charles Nodrum Gallery, Author provided

As climate scientists, we are disturbingly aware of the threats to society not only here in Australia, but all over the world. Unmitigated human-induced climate change could potentially see the planet warm by more than 4℃ by the end of the century.

In Australia, inland regions of the country could warm by more than 5℃ on average by 2090. In Melbourne, the number of days over 40℃ could quadruple by the end of the century, causing extreme heat stress to humans, wildlife, plants and infrastructure, especially in urban areas.

Warming of this rate and magnitude is a genuine threat to our civilisation. Gleeson’s artwork made us consider that the unimaginable may happen, as it has in the past.

On a more optimistic note, Imants Tillers’ work New Litany highlights the importance of communities taking a stand for environmental protection. Over our history Australians have fought against logging of native forests, nuclear power, whaling, and for the restoration of dammed river systems like the Snowy.

Imants Tillers, New Litany, 1999. Synthetic polymer paint and gouche on canvas. Charles Nodrum Gallery, Author provided

Public concern in Australia about climate change reached a peak in 2006, largely in response to Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth and Tim Flannery’s book The Weather Makers. Yet the decade since then has brought political turmoil, and national greenhouse emissions continue to rise.

The recent March for Science is a reminder that the stakes are now higher than ever before, and that many people really do care about the future.

The science is telling us that our climate is changing, often faster than we imagined. The range of CSIRO’s latest climate change projections reminds us that the future is still in our hands. We can avoid the worst aspects of climate change by reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, but we need to act now.

Art has always been a powerful portal to understanding how we feel about our world. Let’s hope it helps safeguard our climatic future.

Joelle Gergis receives funding from the Australian Research Council

While at CSIRO (1989-2014) Penny Whetton's research team received federal government funding for climate projections research.

Australia, like many countries, is grappling with an energy market in transition. It’s a politically fraught topic, but two major policy developments create hope for a better approach.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced last week that he will restrict gas exports and reserve supplies for Australians. This comes on the heels of an ambitious plan to increase hydroelectricity capacity in Tasmania.

Following unproductive talks with gas producers to try to ensure a secure domestic supply, the government has said it will force companies to reserve gas for the local market if a shortage is forecast. This is designed to reduce domestic retail prices for gas and ensure energy security.

Just one week before that, Turnbull presented proposals to invest in pumped hydroelectricity in Tasmania, by redeveloping the old Tarraleah scheme, enhancing the Gordon Power Station and exploring several new schemes. This follows the announcement of a A$2 billion expansion of the Snowy Hydro scheme and a plan to build a pumped hydro plant at Spencer Gulf in South Australia.

Both announcements are a potent reminder that the energy security challenge exists on different scales. The gas plan highlights short-term energy security concerns, with the ability to respond quickly to sudden changes in supply and demand.

On the other hand, the hydro plan zeroes in on the challenge of long-term energy security. Tasmanian Premier Will Hodgman is optimistic that, if approved, the plans would set Tasmania up “for the next 100 years”; Turnbull said it would make the state “the renewable energy battery of the nation”.

Plans to develop the Gordon Dam in Tasmania will massively increase hydro power output. david_pointing/Flickr, CC BY-SA Will these plans work?

Investment in long-term development is essential, even when it’s difficult to assess future returns. A feasibility study is evaluating the Tasmanian plans, but it’s clear that with better connection to the mainland, more hydro would boost Australia’s capacity for energy storage. It could also ease export limitations on Australian gas companies.

Of course, it is also tricky to predict the success of short-term initiatives. Economists are split on whether gas export restrictions will lessen concerns about an east coast supply crisis.

Regardless of whether the restrictions work exactly as intended, the government has signalled that it will be a temporary measure. Australia needs sustained policy follow-through.

The only long-term solution is to increase national output, starting with Tasmanian hydro and other cheap, cleaner energy installations.

The Clean Energy Council has said that increasing Tasmanian hydro will be part of the solution to high gas prices:

Renewable energy is now the lowest-cost form of energy it is possible to build in Australia today. A balanced approach, incorporating hydro, renewable energy such as solar and wind and other forms of grid-scale storage, makes a lot of sense.

Consumers on Australia’s east coast could have their energy cheap and clean. Once built, hydro power has attractively low operating costs and, with better regional interconnection, the increased capacity for storage could make for a smarter, more resilient Australian grid. The low greenhouse gas emissions from hydropower are added value.

Australia has decades of hydro power experience under its belt, with 40% of its renewable electricity now generated by hydro. Hydro power contributes about 85% of renewable electricity worldwide. The question, therefore, is not “will it work?”, but “how quickly can we make it happen?”

The plans for gas export restrictions will first undergo consultations, with Turnbull expecting them to take effect as early as July 1. Plans for Tasmanian hydro will likely take longer, as funding has been secured only for the feasibility studies at this stage.

If Turnbull’s plans to restrict gas exports succeed and east coast energy security concerns continue, increasing Tasmanian hydro and other new energy installations could lead to a reduction in gas export restrictions and a gradually more self-reliant Australian market.

Cle-Anne Gabriel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

AAP/Paul Miller

The news last week that Australia’s oldest bank, Westpac, has withdrawn from any prospect of financing Adani’s Carmichael coal mine may well be the death knell for the controversial project.

Westpac is the last of the big four Australian banks to have ruled out investing in Adani. ANZ declared its move away from mining in December 2016. The Commonwealth Bank and NAB dissociated themselves from Adani in August and September 2015.

The move means that, even if the Northern Australia Infrastructure Fund proceeds with a A$1 billion subsidy for the mine in the form of a dedicated, “private” railroad for Adani to export the coal, the mine is unlikely to proceed. The timing of Westpac’s decision may be a response to the multiple campaigns being launched against Adani, including consumer activism targeting the bank itself.

Westpac may have perceived these campaigns could have an impact on its customer base, and the savings accounts that underwrite its lending revenue stream. It responded with an update to its position statement on climate change. The statement specifies terminating financing mines with coal quality of less than 6,300 calories per kilo – which rules out Adani’s lower-quality coal from funding.

This is significant beyond just ruling out Adani. Westpac is the first of the big four banks to put restrictions on new thermal coal mines. This signals the largest financial players in Australia are accelerating the transition away from coal, and – as the position statement outlines – toward increasing lending to renewables and energy efficiency projects by two-thirds.

Climate solutions finance group Market Forces’ executive director Julien Vincent said Westpac has “raised the bar” on climate change for the other banks. Whereas banks used to watch each other for who was going to pass on interest rate cuts, it seems now they are also mindful of who is doing the most for climate change.

But even without its new position statement, Westpac could not expose itself to the obvious risks of funding a project that will so rapidly devolve from a global climate pariah to a fossilised stranded asset.

According to a report from 2011 on climate-change issues for the Land Court of Queensland’s hearing of objections to the grant of Adani’s mining lease:

The cumulative emissions related to this mine … are amongst the highest in the world for any individual project, and – to the knowledge of the authors – the highest in the Southern Hemisphere.

Given our current atmospheric CO₂ is 407.5ppm, this gives us 43ppm left to keep warming under 1.5℃, according to IPCC trajectories. Even at Adani’s own conservative estimates that it will emit 4.7 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases, which is almost 11% of the remaining global carbon budget.

1.5℃ of committed warming presents an adaptation nightmare for coastal communities around the world. This level is almost approaching the Emian period of 120,000 years ago, when sea levels were six-to-nine metres higher than they are today.

So, while Westpac still has a way to go before it gets off the Market Forces watch-list of fossil-fuel-friendly banks, it has managed to avoid an investment and PR disaster.

Westpac would have studied India’s electricity plan, released in December, which abandoned building any new coal-fired power stations in the next decade in favour of 350 gigawatts of new solar and wind power. Over the weekend, Shadow Environment Minister Mark Butler pointed out that the Modi government has said it intends to phase out thermal coal imports entirely by 2020.

But this did not stop Barnaby Joyce, on Q&A on Monday night, wheeling out the much-discredited argument that Australia has a “moral obligation” to help India keep its lights on. This is actually morally bankrupt when you consider that India is planning to look after itself with renewables.

The turning tide has not stopped The Australian newspaper from doing all it can to support the mine. This has included giving plenty of airtime to Resources Minister Matt Canavan, who last week labelled Westpac “wimps” for abandoning the mine. The Australian reported over the weekend that Canavan met with Guatam Adani in Brisbane, and was “confident the project would get the finance it needed from other lenders”.

But The Australian has been doing the heavy lifting for Adani’s PR campaign for some time now. Post-Cyclone-Debbie articles in April talked up the mine’s declared “huge economic benefits”. One front page headline declared:

Shorten isolated over Adani mine opposition (Unions, mayors, ALP premier unite to back coal project) (April 12)

And there was a blatant editorial promotion of the mine on April 18, entitled:

Adani project offers fresh hope

The April 12 edition even included a front page comment by Simon Benson, that:

Bill Shorten’s repositioning on the Adani coalmine in north Queensland appears to be yet another political retreat into the inner-city streets of leftist fanaticism.

What such a campaign tells us is it seems to be crunch-time for the mine – and the future of the entire Galilee Basin, whose coal deposits will be made to look a little more viable if that railway gets built.

But opposition to the railway subsidy has surfaced in the most unlikely of quarters. Sydney shockjock Alan Jones has weighed in, denouncing the subsidy as a case of taxpayers funding a private venture that is not in the national interest.

Paradoxically, Jones ended his outrage by comparing funding Adani with subsidising windfarms, for which Australians – both present and future – are direct beneficiaries in so many ways. But both The Australian and Jones have ignored the the big story on investment into renewables.

Whereas a giant coal-mining company has taken seven long years to realise no-one is listening – except for major political parties, perhaps eager for political donations they are accustomed to from the mining industry – investors can’t get enough of renewables. Investment opportunities for community projects have been selling out within minutes.

Grassroots solar projects are in high demand for investors. Fifty such projects have been established across Australia and are backed by $24 million. But the ABC reports Australia lags behind Scotland, Denmark and Germany, which all have extensive energy co-operatives that are promoting wind more than solar.

With an average of 7% return on investment, the appetite for such projects in Australia is obviously strong. And it will only take local communities and small businesses to be better organised to take advantage of the renewables investment revolution. At the very least, the remarkable appetite for renewables investment will drive the large banks and lending institutions to service this growing market.

With thanks to Tahnee Burgess for research assistance on this article.

In a landmark case now before the High Court, former Australian Greens leader Bob Brown and fellow forestry protester Jessica Hoyt are arguing that Tasmania’s anti-protest laws unconstitutionally restrict freedom of speech.

The two-day hearing, which concludes today, focuses on Tasmanian legislation. But the case has implications for hardline laws introduced in New South Wales and Western Australia.

Standing outside the High Court, Brown summarised what is at stake:

Had these laws been in place a couple of decades ago the Franklin River would be dammed. The tropical rainforest of Queensland would be largely cut up… We’re here to defend the right of all Australians into the future to be able to show environmental destruction where it takes place.

Critics see these laws in Tasmania as part of a deliberate effort to stifle environmental protest as the government pursues its stated aim of “rebuilding Tasmania’s forestry industry”.

Laws that some scholars say put corporate interests ahead of democratic rights have been legislated internationally. However, the issue now before the High Court is narrow. Does the Tasmanian legislation breach the constitutional implied right to freedom of political communication?

Tasmania’s laws

Under the Act, a protest is defined as any activity that promotes “awareness of or support for … an opinion, or belief, in respect of a political, environmental, social, cultural or economic issue” taking place on business premises. Political expression is thus an explicit focus of the law. It creates numerous protest offences with serious penalties.

Protesters who do not leave a premises when directed by police face penalties of up to A$10,000 each. New offences of causing or threatening damage or risk to the safety of a business carry penalties of up to A$250,000 or 5 years’ imprisonment. The definition of “business premises” is very broad and includes land that may be publicly owned, such as “business access areas” and mining and forestry sites.

Tasmania’s former resources minister Paul Harriss, in a statement made when the bill was passed in 2014, said:

Tasmania will now have the strongest legislation in the country to protect the rights of workers to lawfully earn a living, while ensuring the right to free speech and legitimate protest have been protected… No longer will Tasmania tolerate the extremists; you may have your say but you may not stop workers from earning a living.

Two months earlier, the United Nations urged Tasmania to withdraw the legislation. UN Special Rapporteur David Kaye described the law and its penalties as “disproportionate and unnecessary”. His colleague Maina Kiai argued that the law impedes the basic democratic function of protest: to hold government and corporations accountable.

The High Court

In January 2016, Brown was arrested and charged at an anti-forestry protest in Tasmania’s northwest, for refusing a police order to vacate the Lapoinya Forest exclusion zone, a “business access area”. He faced a maximum fine of A$10,000.

Brown announced in March 2016 that he intended to challenge the laws in the High Court. Two months later the charges were dropped, although a statement by Tasmanian Police Commissioner Darren Hine suggested that this was due to a technical error in the charges rather than an issue with the law’s constitutional validity.

Brown opted to continue his challenge to the laws. To broaden the case and secure legal standing, Hoyt joined as a co-plaintiff. She had been arrested at Lapoinya for returning to the area (rather than refusing to leave), thereby triggering a different section of the legislation.

Crucial question

In the High Court, the key question is whether the Tasmanian legislation is consistent with freedom of political communication. Because Australia lacks a bill of rights, this freedom has been implied from the constitutional principle of representative government. The reasoning is that it would be illogical to empower a citizenry to elect members of parliament but fail to protect public discussion about politics.

The court will be required to decide whether the Tasmanian law burdens communication about government or political matters.

The second, and more interesting, question is whether the Tasmanian law is “reasonably appropriate and adapted” to fulfil its claimed purpose of protecting workers and business while remaining consistent with our system of representative and responsible government.

Peter Gutwein, formerly Tasmanian forestry minister and now Tasmanian treasurer, has expressed confidence that the legislation will stand up to a constitutional challenge. However, this is far from certain.

In late 2016, UN Special Rapporteur Michel Forst reported that Tasmania’s laws:

would contravene Australia’s … obligations under international human rights law, including the rights to freedom of expression as well as peaceful assembly.

The Human Rights Law Centre has criticised the law as placing business interests over democratic values. Spokesperson Emily Howie argued:

Governments can’t just sell off our democratic rights in order to appease vested business interests. This Tasmanian law is completely unbalanced; it puts business interests way ahead of our rights as individuals to engage in political communication or indeed protest.

Other governments, both in Australia and internationally, will be watching the outcome of the case with interest. Australian citizens, especially those who feel that successive governments have shown more interest in protecting the fossil fuel industry than in effectively responding to climate change, will be looking for a sign about the values that underpin our Constitution.

Peter Burdon is affiliated with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

Mary Heath is affiliated with The Wilderness Society (SA).

A new roadmap for Australia’s electricity networks outlines a national plan to keep the lights on, make sure bills are affordable, and decarbonise our electricity industry by mid-century.

The plan, by CSIRO and Energy Networks Australia, sets out measures that could save households A$414 a year on average, by generating their own electricity through “distributed” technologies such as solar panels and batteries. It envisages that Australia could save a total of A$101 billion by 2050, while also bringing net greenhouse emissions to zero.

As described in an earlier draft report last December, Australia’s electricity networks can be transformed to give millions of customers more choice and control over their energy, while also meeting Australia’s international climate change commitments.

The roadmap calls for a coordinated approach, but how will that play out in practice?

Regional analysis

While it is a national plan, each state and territory will play its own distinct role.

Each faces different circumstances in terms of electricity demand growth, renewable resources, state renewable energy policies, and the age and fuel mix of their existing electricity infrastructure.

The full report outlines what each state and territory can expect.

Regional analysis snapshot. CSIRO/ENA

New South Wales

The renewable electricity generation share in NSW is expected increase steadily to 28% by 2030. Thereafter, new generation capacity building is expected to accelerate to fill the gap left by more rapid coal capacity retirement.

NSW’s rooftop solar panel capacity will increase by more than 400% by 2030, with more than 6,000 megawatt hours in small-scale battery storage. These changes will be driven largely by falling costs, which will encourage wider customer adoption and the use of larger system sizes.

NSW customers will become a significant player in Australia’s overall energy system, with the capacity of the state’s rooftop solar panels projected to exceed 11,000MW by 2030 - more than the state’s coal-fired capacity today.

Queensland

Similarly to NSW, were the lack of coal plant retirement to be the main driver, Queensland’s renewable electricity share would lag other states at only 12% by 2030, with more rapid transformation occurring in the period between 2030 and 2050. However, state government renewable energy schemes could modify this outcome.

Queensland will see a huge increase in rooftop solar panels, of more than 500% by 2030. By then, it is also forecast to have more than 10,000MWh of small-scale battery storage capacity – the equivalent of 760,000 residential battery storage systems. That will rise to the equivalent of more than 2 million household battery systems by 2050.

High levels of rooftop solar and other distributed generation will create challenges for Queensland’s electricity network. There is the potential for “reverse flow” (where local generation exceeds consumption) in many parts of the Queensland power system within 15 years.

Victoria

Victoria is assumed to meet its target of 40% renewable share of generation by 2025 and maintain that share for next 15 years before investment accelerates again in the 2040s.

Victoria is also set for a 500% increase in rooftop solar panels by 2030, and more than 6,000MWh in small-scale battery storage. These batteries would represent the equivalent of 440,000 residential battery storage systems installed by 2030, and more than 1 million by 2050.

South Australia

South Australia has the second highest share of renewables of all states at around 40% and is expected to steadily improve that position until other states accelerate their own building programs in the 2030s.

South Australia’s rooftop solar panels will increase by more than 300% by 2030, with 4,000MWh of small-scale battery storage.

While South Australia already leads the nation in the installation of new large-scale renewable generation and is set to become a leading installer of large-scale battery capacity, small-scale renewables and batteries will also play an important part in its future energy mix, as in other states.

Western Australia

WA’s rooftop solar power capacity will triple by 2030, combined with a forecast 2,000MWh of small-scale battery storage.

More than 40% of the states’s electricity is projected to come from renewable sources by 2030, as is the case in South Australia today.

Tasmania

Tasmania is the leading renewable generation state and its hydro generation and storage capacity could support grid stability in the broader National Energy Market into the future.

Residential battery storage would play a small but significant role in supporting the energy transformation in Tasmania. More than 1,000MWh in onsite battery capacity could be installed in Tasmania by 2030, and more than 2,000MWh by 2050.

Paul Graham has received funding throughout his career from electricity generators, electricity networks, federal and state government departments, non-government non-profit organisations and energy consulting and engineering companies.

A feral dog chasing a wild boar, Banni grasslands, India Chetan Misher/Facebook

Humans and their canine companions share many close bonds. Wolves (Canis lupus) were the first animal domesticated by people, some time between 15,000 and 50,000 years ago.

There are now an estimated 1 billion domestic dogs across their near-global distribution.

Domestic dogs include feral and free-ranging animals (such as village and camp dogs), as well as those that are owned by and completely dependent on humans (pet dogs).

Our latest research reveals that the ecological “pawprint” of domestic dogs is much greater than previously realised.

Using the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, we counted how many species are negatively affected by dogs, assessed the prevalence of different types of impacts, and identified regions with the greatest number of affected species.

A dog with a black-naped hare, Maharashtra, India. Hari Somashekhar/Facebook Dogs are third-most-damaging mammal

We found that dogs are implicated in the extinction of at least 11 species, including the Hawaiian Rail and the Tonga Ground Skink. Dogs are also a known or potential threat to 188 threatened species worldwide: 96 mammal, 78 bird, 22 reptile and three amphibian species. This includes 30 critically endangered species, two of which are classed as “possibly extinct”.

These numbers place dogs in the number three spot after cats and rodents as the world’s most damaging invasive mammalian predators.

Even though dogs have an almost global distribution, the threatened species they are known to affect are concentrated in certain parts of the globe. South-East Asia, South America, Central America and the Caribbean each contain 28 to 30 threatened species impacted by dogs. Other hotspots include Australia, Micro/Mela/Polynesia and the remainder of Asia.

Lethal and non-lethal impacts

Predation was the most commonly reported impact of dogs on wildlife. The typically omnivorous diet of dogs means they have strong potential to affect a diversity of species. For instance, dogs killed at least 19 endangered Kagu (a ground-dwelling bird) in New Caledonia in 14 weeks. Threatened species with small population sizes are particularly vulnerable to such intense bouts of predation.

The frequency of different types of dog impact on threatened species. https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1Uxs~1R~e71Xl

Aside from simply killing animals, dogs can harm wildlife in other ways, such as by spreading disease, interbreeding with other canids, competing for resources such as food or shelter, and causing disturbances by chasing or harassment. For example, contact with domestic dogs increases disease risk for endangered African Wild Dogs in Kenya.

Part of the problem is that when wild animals perceive dogs as a threat, they may change their behaviour to avoid them. One study near Sydney found that dog walking in parklands and national parks reduced the abundance and species richness of birds, even when dogs were restrained on leads.

None of the Red List assessments mentioned such indirect risk effects, which suggests that their frequency is likely to be much higher than reported.

Feral dogs chasing Indian wild ass at Little Rann of Kutch, India. Kalyan Varma/Facebook Friend and foe

Despite their widespread and sometimes severe impacts on biodiversity, dogs can also benefit some species and ecosystems.

For example, in Australia, the closely related dingo (Canis dingo) can suppress populations of introduced predators such as red foxes (Vulpes vulpes), and in doing so can benefit smaller native prey. It is possible that domestic dogs could perform similar ecological roles in some situations.

In some regions, dogs and their keen noses have been trained to help scientists find threatened species such as Tiger Quolls. Elsewhere they are helping to flush out and control feral cats.

An emerging and exciting conservation role for dogs is their growing use as “guardian animals” for wildlife, with the remarkable story of Oddball being the most well known.

Managing the problem

Dogs not only interact with wildlife, but can also attack and spread disease to humans, livestock and other domestic animals. As such, managing the problem requires looking at ecological, cultural and social perspectives.

Some of the regions with high numbers of species threatened by dogs are also hotspots for urbanisation and road building, which make it easier for dogs to access the habitats of threatened species. Urban development increases food waste, which feeds higher numbers of dogs. As dogs expand into new areas, the number of species they impact is likely to grow.

Street dogs scavenging food waste in India. Achat1234/wikimedia

We can protect wildlife by integrating human health and animal welfare objectives into dog management. Vaccination and desexing campaigns can reduce disease risk and overpopulation problems. We should also focus on responsible dog ownership, removing dogs without owners, and reducing access to food waste.

Given the close relationship between humans and dogs, community engagement should form the basis of any management program. More research is needed to get a better picture of the scale of the problem, and of how dogs interact with other threats such as habitat loss. Such actions are critically important for ensuring the conservation of wildlife threatened by dogs around the world.

This article was co-authored by Dr Al Glen from Landcare Research, New Zealand and Dr Abi Vanak from the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment, India. These institutions had no role in the design or funding of this research.

Tim Doherty receives funding from the Australian Academy of Sciences, Ecological Society of Australia and Deakin University. Tim is on the board of the Society for Conservation Biology (Oceania) and is a member of the Ecological Society of Australia, and the Australian and American Mammal Societies.

Chris Dickman receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the Long Term Ecological Research Network, the Threatened Species Recovery Hub of the National Environmental Science Programme, and The University of Sydney. He is a member of the Ecological Society of Australia, the Australian and American Mammal Societies, the Royal Zoological Society of NSW, and a Director of WWF-Australia.

Dale Nimmo is a member of the Ecological Society of Australia and receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the Hermon Slade Foundation, the Australian Academy of Science, and the Department of Land, Water and Planning, the Department of Parks and Wildlife.

Euan Ritchie receives funding from the Australian Research Council. Euan Ritchie is a Director (Media Working Group) of the Ecological Society of Australia, and a member of the Australian Mammal Society.

Thomas Newsome receives funding from Deakin University, The University of Sydney, the National Geographic Society for Research and Exploration, Seattle City Lights, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, and Newmont Tanami Operations. He is Treasurer of the Australasian Wildlife Management Society and a member of the Australian Mammal Society and the Ecological Society of Australia.

Aaron J. Wirsing does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

Coastal marine food webs could be in danger of collapse as a result of rising carbon dioxide levels, according to our new research. The study shows that although species such as algae will receive a boost, the positive effects are likely to be cancelled out by the increased stress to species further up the food chain such as predatory fish.

Food webs are essentially networks of species that interact with each other. The connection between them can stabilise systems, for instance by preventing particular species from becoming too common, thereby encouraging the presence of a wide range of species.

These pathways can be quite stable, but they are vulnerable to ocean warming and acidification. Such food webs are therefore sensitive to changing climates, through potential changes both to plant growth (bottom-up effects) and to predator abundance and behaviour (top-down effects).

Because of the sheer complexity of species interactions within these food webs, we struggle to understand what future food webs might look like and how humans will be affected through changes in the services provided by the ocean, such as food, materials and energy.

Test tank

We used a self-contained ecosystem in a 2,000-litre tank to study the effects of warming and ocean acidification on a coastal food web. This approach can give us a good idea of what might happen to genuine coastal food webs, because the tank (called a “mesocosm”) contains natural habitats and a range of species that interact with one another, just as they do in the wild.

Our food web had three levels: primary producers (algae), herbivores (invertebrates), and predators (fish).

The results show that carbon dioxide enrichment can actually boost food webs from the bottom up through increased algal growth. This benefited herbivores because of the higher abundance of food, and in turn boosted the very top of the food web, where fish grew faster.

But while this effect of ocean acidification may be seen as positive for marine ecosystems, it mainly benefits “weedy” species – a definition that can be applied to some species of algae, invertebrates, and even fish.

In contrast, habitat-forming species such as kelp forests and coral reefs are more likely to disappear with rising CO₂ emissions, and with them many associated species that are deprived of their habitats and food.

Detrimental effect

Our results therefore showed that warming had a detrimental overall effect on the coastal food web we studied. Although higher temperatures boosted algal growth, herbivorous populations did not expand. Because herbivore abundances remained similar and elevated temperatures result in a higher metabolic demand, predatory fish consumed more herbivorous prey, resulting in a collapse of these prey populations.

These results show how the benefits of one human-induced effect (increased ocean CO₂) are cancelled out by the negative effects of a co-occuring stressor (ocean warming). More importantly, it also shows how interactions between species (predator and prey, in this case) can alter the outcome of climate stressors on individual species.

Such indirect effects within the web of life have remained largely unstudied, despite the fact that they may in many cases be more important than direct effects in terms of their future impacts.

For example, habitat loss and loss of predator species are key indirect effects that can alter species populations within food webs. However, these effects also offer the opportunity for some conservation wins.

First, humans are altering marine ecosystems in many other ways than just climate change, such as through pollution, habitat destruction, and eutrophication (an excess of nutrients, often caused by runoff from land). By reducing these effects we could reduce the overall burden on marine species, potentially buying them time to adapt to climate change across generations.

Second, by reducing habitat loss from other human impacts – by implementing well-designed sanctuary zones – we can also maintain the habitats, prey and other organisms on which species depend for their growth and survival.

Finally, studies suggest that the top of food webs will be disproportionately affected by climate change, and research has shown that predators play important roles in maintaining diversity and general ecosystem health. By reducing the ongoing global overfishing of predatory species worldwide, we might relieve some of the direct effects of climate change on food webs and ecosystems.

Ivan Nagelkerken receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Sean Connell receives funding from The Australian Research Council.

Silvan Goldenberg does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

The federal government has pledged to bring in legislation that would allow it to restrict gas exports and force Australian producers to reserve supplies for domestic consumers, amid continuing fears of an east coast supply crisis.

The move comes after the apparent failure of crisis talks earlier this month, aimed at easing the forecast price squeeze.

But experts are split on whether domestic gas reservations are a wise move. In a survey of 32 economists by Monash Business School and the Economic Society of Australia, 38% agreed with the following statement, whereas 47% disagreed.

In response to energy shortages around Australia, government policies requiring gas producers to reserve some production for domestic consumption are a good way to ensure that Australian consumers have access to sufficient gas supplies while still allowing for gas exports.

Weighting the scores by confidence pushed the balance even further towards a negative verdict, as shown below.

David Prentice, principal economic adviser at Infrastructure Victoria, who summarised the results, said the forthcoming gas supply problems had “raised a lot of concern” as Australia heads into winter.

Lucrative export contracts have sent huge amounts of Australian gas overseas, meaning it is now cheaper to buy Australian gas in Japan than in Australia.

Western Australia already has a domestic gas reservation policy aimed at holding local prices in check amid a boom in liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports. But Prentice said many of the economists arguing against a similar policy for the eastern states feared that it would distort the market, pushing gas prices artificially low.

“A common theme in many of the arguments of those that disagree with the policy is that the appropriate response to rising gas prices overseas is to let the domestic price rise and firms and households work out the best way to adjust to higher prices – that is, let the ‘invisible hand’ work,” he said.

In contrast, several of those who favoured the policy argued that higher prices could pose a risk for many consumers, such as businesses that may struggle to compete internationally if their gas bills are too high.

Read the panel’s full responses below.

The ESA Monash Forum is a joint initiative between Monash Business School and the Economic Society of Australia.

Still from the French documentary Tomorrow. MOVE MOVIE, FRANCE 2 CINÉMA, MARS FILMS, MELY PRODUCTIONS

The Conversation and the Australian French Embassy presented a panel between French and Australian experts at the University of New South Wales in March, opened by the French Minister for Foreign Affairs and International Development Jean-Marc Ayrault.

In his opening remarks, Ayrault celebrated the signing and coming into force of the 2015 Paris Agreement, under which countries agreed to limit warming to well-below 2℃, however he highlighted that more action needs to be taken around the world.

“Some are tempted to slow it down, or worse, to take a step backwards. We can currently see this in the United States.

"Tackling climate change is a democratic fight. Individual actions are like votes: on their own, they seem powerless, but together, they give new meaning to our societies,” he said.

The panel discussion included screenings of clips from the French documentary Tomorrow. View the complete discussion below.

The Conversation asked French and Australian experts what they consider to be the major challenges to overcome in transitioning to a more sustainable world.

Better valuing sustainable development in transport

François Raulin, Researcher, The Territory Development Institute, Normandy Business School

Since the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, sustainable development has gradually become a key issue for public policy in many countries. Despite many global efforts - for example - to reduce carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere, most small initiatives are being taken at the local level.

Take the example of sustainable mobility in cities. The majority of urban agglomerations have been designed or redeveloped for cars. In order to limit the use of cars, various devices have been put in place, such as the introduction of urban road tolls (for example in Singapore, London and Stockholm), the removal of parking lots in inner city centres, or more recently the installation of eco stickers (road tax) for polluting vehicles in Paris.

In parallel, many French cities have seen a reduction in car use in favour of more sustainable forms of transport. As well as public transport such as trains, buses or trams, bikes and walking are alternative solutions to cars. However, depending on the urban environment, bicycling or walking is not always possible, or is dangerous.

How can these modes of active transport be promoted? Here are three possible solutions:

• First, by promoting their health benefits, including the fight against obesity, the decline in cardiovascular diseases or the preservation of mental health.

• Second, by encouraging their intermodality with other transport system, which would reduce the use of cars over short distances. The development of bike-sharing systems or improved walkability are various solutions proposed to encourage their use in the city.

• Third, by increasing the ground area dedicated to cycling (bike paths) and walking (footpaths) while decreasing that of cars.

Beyond environmental issues, the development of sustainable mobility in cities also improves the quality of life of the inhabitants (less pollution, less noise, and so on) and make it more attractive, especially among young people.

Overcoming inertia in the energy system

Dani Alexander, Research principal, Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney

Overcoming inertia, both culturally and technologically, will be the key to unlocking our clean energy transition.

Power has been shifting to the energy consumers with the rapid rise of rooftop solar and falling costs of battery storage. However, with this has come discontent with the large electricity businesses that were built in the traditional model of “big energy” to “small consumer”.

As Belgian historian David Van Reybrouck argues in the film Tomorrow, there is an “increasing sense of theft” among consumers, which can drive action against the system such as “going off-grid”. The majority of Australians are ready to move to a renewable energy system despite the political inertia.

Our researchers at the Institute for Sustainable Futures have investigated the risk of a “death spiral” where, as more people leave the grid, the shared cost of our electricity infrastructure becomes more concentrated among fewer people, leading in turn to yet more people leaving the grid.

Unfortunately, it is often those who are more vulnerable (such as those who cannot afford a personal energy system) that pay the highest price. There are options to improve the way that our energy market works to provide a fairer deal for everyone, but regulatory inertia seems to be strong as well.

But what about technically? Can we move to a renewable energy system without risking the system or soaring electricity bills? Or is a rapid transition irresponsible, as some in our federal government would have us believe? Can renewables provide the same reliable services?

Moving towards more local generation, such as more rooftop solar, does make managing electricity more complex, for example in keeping network voltage in check. Luckily, renewable technologies have already advanced and have the capability to provide the network support services we need. Solar panels with storage will be able to moderate voltage at the source of the problem. Wind turbines already have the ability to provide the “synthetic” inertia to keep the grid stable – if the market allows and promotes it.

So what we need now is a new momentum. Strong enough to overcome the inertia and fast enough to divert our path away from irreversible climate change.

Working from the ground up

Joachim Claudet, Researcher, CNRS/PSL University

Global change is a major challenge for human societies. It is modifying ecosystems all over the world, hence threatening our wellbeing through alterations to the flow of ecosystem services. However, global change is not affecting societies everywhere in the same way. Global drivers interact with local drivers.

They can combine with local stresses, such as overfishing or land clearing, creating additive or even multiplicative impacts. Understanding and predicting global change impacts thus requires strong knowledge of local social-ecological systems, of human-nature interactions (such as human use of the environment, natural disturbance history).

Global drivers also emerge from local processes. Hence, attempts to minimise the magnitude of global drivers or strategies to mitigate their impacts require local interventions. These can include incentives to modify human uses or adaptive management to foster resilience of social-ecological systems.

The latter requires a deep understanding of local world views as effective strategies in a place can be culturally inappropriate in another. This is particularly true in some Pacific Island countries – those countries being some of the most vulnerable to climate change – where wellbeing is strongly tied to the connectedness of people and places and where there is no distinction between nature and culture.

Dani Alexander is a member of the Institute for Sustainable Futures (ISF), which undertakes paid sustainability research for a wide range of government, NGO and corporate clients, including energy businesses.

François Raulin and Joachim Claudet do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

It’s an interesting time to be involved in energy policy. Thanks to the east coast energy crisis, the closure of Hazelwood power station and South Australia’s blackouts, the broadsheet-reading public suddenly finds itself conversant with all sorts of esoteric concepts, from gas peaking to five-minute price settlements.

Amid all the disruption, it’s perhaps not surprising that a long-term, coherent national energy policy remains as elusive as ever. Instead we see piecemeal announcements like pumped hydro and battery storage, none of which is itself a panacea. Some innovations can hinge on a single tweet which, while exciting, hardly gives the impression of joined-up policymaking.

Despite its name, the much-maligned National Electricity Market doesn’t extend to Western Australia, which means that federal energy policy discussions don’t always reach across the Nullarbor.

But we suggest looking west for inspiration. In our view, WA is well placed to research, develop and deploy the energy solutions that the whole country could ultimately use. Here are five reasons why.

1. An appetite for change

WA electricity customers have long recognised the advantages that energy innovations provide. More than 200,000 homes have solar panels (rapidly closing in on the penetration levels of Queensland and South Australia), and the appetite for residential battery storage is steadily growing.

This is due to a combination of factors. First, there’s the consistently sunny weather. Then there’s the fact that WA customers cannot yet choose their electricity retailer, meaning that households are more motivated to shop for solar panels to gain independence from government owned monopoly utilities, and can’t simply rely on the innovative price deals of the more nimble retailers found over east.

The vast distance and separation from the rest of Australia’s network means the WA grid won’t be joined to the NEM any time soon, meaning it will need to address the issues for itself, hopefully aided by a newly elected state government with the political capital to reform energy markets.

2. Micro grids, maximum resilience

To move successfully away from the traditional, centralised model of electricity generation, you need to maintain one of its cornerstone qualities: resilience. Being so far from literally everywhere else on the planet has embedded these traits into WA’s energy network, but has also reinforced the need to incorporate “microgrids” into network planning.

Microgrids are best thought of as small electricity sub-grids, able to function in concert with the main grid or in isolation if necessary. This increases the entire network’s resilience – you can’t have a state-wide blackout if you have plenty of microgrids.

WA currently has over 30 isolated microgrids, and is in prime position to be a test bed for more complex systems of network control, which will become necessary as these grids attempt to incorporate ever higher levels of distributed renewable energy from solar panels and other sources.

3. Trials and tests beat reviews and reports

The forthcoming Finkel Review of the National Electricity Market is clearly necessary and welcome. But while the media and political circus focuses on it, the utilities in WA are already out there testing the solutions.

The government-owned retailer Synergy and network operators Western Powerhave helped to investigate a range of innovations, such as strata peer-to-peer electricity trading, microgrids, utility-scale battery storage, demand-management, and standalone power systems for fringe-of-grid areas.

Meanwhile, the state-owned regional provider Horizon Power provides several valuable test case opportunities to understand how future grids and networks will need to operate in more remote areas. For example, it has successfully installed advanced metering infrastructure (‘smart meters’) for every one of its 47,000 customers, spread over 2.3 million square kilometres, no less.

4. Skilled labour is plentiful

During WA’s decade-long mining boom, technical skills were in high demand and short supply. It’s fair to say the opposite is now the case. Meanwhile, the state government has committed to removing 380 megawatts of fossil-fuel generation capacity from the WA energy market, most of which is situated around Collie, south of Perth.

If this pledge leads to greater opportunities for new renewable energy infrastructure it would provide welcome relief for a job market awash with underemployed technical experts, still reeling from the mining downturn.

WA’s world-leading reserves of lithium ore also offer a significance chance to join in the burgeoning battery storage industry.

With the recent closure of Hazelwood’s ancient coal-fired power station, Victoria’s Latrobe valley will no doubt be investigating similar opportunities, and the coal regions of Queensland and New South Wales should not be too far behind.

5. Strong links between government and experts

For WA, the disruptive transition in the energy sector is more acute, partly because its market is dominated by government-owned monopoly utilities that rely heavily on subsidies to ensure consistent power prices. But mostly because in WA there is a very direct link between power prices and politics, and electricity is always a hot topic at state elections.

Because of its physical isolation, WA’s energy policies are also largely independent from the rest of the COAG Energy Council.

As described in point 3 above, utilities will need to be prepared to spend significantly on research and development if they want to survive. WA’s utilities already rely heavily on state government support for technology innovation, but also have strong networks of local experts that are able to bridge the silos across academia, industry and government and keep the momentum going in WA’s smaller markets and grids.

So that was five reasons, among many more, why we think WA has a chance for not just Australian, but global leadership in the renewable power transition. As the rest of the country grapples with its energy headaches, it should consider looking west once in a while.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

With the right power policies, gas can have a brighter future. Steven Bradley, CC BY-SA

Australia’s gas industry is under scrutiny from the competition watchdog after apparently failing to deliver on its pledge to bring down domestic prices and ease the east coast gas supply crisis.

The current domestic supply squeeze will be over soon enough. But other, longer-term factors threaten the role of gas in Australia’s energy mix.

Gas producers claim that gas is a vital fuel in the transition to a low-carbon economy (although not everyone agrees). But to achieve this they need to ensure that coal is replaced by gas in the generation of electricity. It is increasingly unlikely that this will happen in Australia, unless the industry can persuade the government to reinstate a price on carbon.

At the moment, the idea of gas as a transition fuel seems academic anyway. Gas is now in such short supply on the east coast that any policy aimed at increasing demand seems ludicrous. The shortage has driven gas prices to unprecedented levels, which has in turn has driven up electricity prices. In the gas industry, the talk is mainly about finding new supplies, not new customers.

But the present east coast gas shortage may well be shortlived, because there is currently an oversupply of gas on the international market. With prodding from government, this could bring about a drop in domestic prices in various ways.

For example, the liquid natural gas (LNG) exporters in Queensland who are sucking up so much of Australia’s gas might find it profitable to meet some of their international contract commitments by buying LNG on the international market and shipping it direct to their customers. This would release gas they have contracted to buy in Australia into the local market, thereby saving the (not inconsiderable) cost of liquefaction. This is the strategy of the gas swaps currently being touted as a solution to the domestic supply squeeze.

Alternatively, shiploads of LNG bought on the open market could be brought to southeast Australia, re-gasified, and then fed into the gas transmission system relatively close to the point of consumption, thus reducing transmission costs. This idea has been floated by gas producer AGL.

The government has not yet prodded hard enough to make these things happen, but a worsening gas crisis may stiffen its resolve.

Finally, extra supplies of Northern Territory gas will become available on the east coast when the Northern Gas Pipeline is completed next year.

None of these strategies depends on increasing the production of unconventional gas on the east coast, although that too, if it happened, might ease the domestic supply problem.

Crisis over?

In summary, there are grounds for thinking that in the reasonably short term we will see a significant increase in gas supply on the east coast, and a corresponding drop in price. As soon as that happens, the gas industry will again be interested in stimulating demand, particularly in the electricity sector. But by then it may be too late. Here’s why.

Without a national strategy that puts a price on carbon, the states will continue to go it alone with renewable energy targets. As the new renewable energy generators come online, they will push the most expensive generators out of business. Unfortunately for gas, even with more reasonable gas prices, coal-fired electricity will remain cheaper.

So, to the extent that the market can rely on renewables and coal alone, gas will be out of business. As large-scale battery storage becomes a reality, gas may not even be needed to cope with spikes in demand. Meanwhile, the current high price of power means the quiet revolution in rooftop solar panels is set to continue. The most recent data shows new installations are up 43% on a year ago.

There is, however, hope for gas in the medium term if the government legislates to impose a price on carbon in the electricity sector. One way to do this has already been widely proposed: an emissions intensity scheme.

Such a scheme would impose penalty payments on the most carbon-intensive emitters, such as coal-fired power stations and pay subsidies to lower-emitting industries such as renewables and gas.

This would put gas in a much better position to compete with coal, especially if the penalties were ratcheted up over time. Under modelling done for the Climate Change Authority, this would see brown coal power stations disappear within three years, while black coal would follow suit in little more than a decade.

Coal’s place would be taken mainly by wind and by new, efficient, gas-fired power stations. If by that time gas-fired power stations are able to capture and store their carbon dioxide emissions, then we would truly have arrived in a golden age for gas. If not, the gas industry will at least have had some profitable years before going into decline.

A price on carbon would let gas win the battle with coal and step in to take its place. Eventually, however, renewables will sweep away all fossil fuel power generation, so of course the long-term future for gas in this sector is bleak (as befits a transition fuel). But without a price on carbon, coal will be around for longer, undermining whatever market there may be for gas.

It is therefore in the gas industry’s interest to lobby hard for a price on carbon in the electricity sector, as part of the upcoming government review of climate policy. Other industry groups are virtually unanimous in their support for carbon pricing, but the oil and gas industry’s peak body, the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association, has been rather more equivocal. While in theory it supports a carbon price, it qualifies this support so extensively that in practice it opposes every pricing proposal that is placed on the table.

If the peak oil and gas body could be persuaded to join with the rest of industry on this matter, it might just make the difference. Pricing carbon is not only good for the environment, in the medium term it is good for gas too.

Andrew Hopkins is affiliated with the Climate Council and the Citizens' Climate Lobby.

In 2012 scientists succeeded in filming for the first time ever a giant squid in its natural habitat. EPA/NHK/NEP/DISCOVERY CHANNEL/AAP

It’s remarkable how little we know about Earth. How many species do we share this planet with? We don’t know, but estimates vary from millions to a trillion. In some respects we know more about the Moon, Mars and Venus than we do about the ocean’s depths and the vast sea floors.

But humans are inquisitive creatures, and we’re driven to explore. Chasing mythical or mysterious animals grabs media headlines and spurs debates, but it can also lead to remarkable discoveries.

The recent photographing of a live night parrot in Western Australia brought much joy. These enigmatic nocturnal birds have been only sporadically sighted over decades.

Another Australian species that inspires dedicated searchers is the Tasmanian tiger, or thylacine. A new hunt is under way, not in Tasmania but in Queensland’s vast wilderness region of Cape York.

This is the first photograph of a live night parrot, taken in Western Australia in March 2017. Bruce Greatwitch

Other plans are afoot to search for the long-beaked echidna in Western Australia’s Kimberley region.

In the case of the thylacine, old accounts from the region that sound very much like descriptions of the species raise the prospect that perhaps Cape York isn’t such a bad place to look after all.

But in reality, and tragically, it’s very unlikely that either of these species still survives in Australia. For some species there is scientific research that estimates just how improbable such an event would be; in the case of thylacines, one model suggests the odds are 1 in 1.6 trillion.

Chasing myths

The study and pursuit of “hidden” animals, thought to be extinct or fictitious, is often called cryptozoology. The word itself invites scorn – notorious examples include the search for Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster or Victoria’s legendary black panthers.

The search for Bigfoot is an extreme case of cryptozoology.

Granted, it’s probably apt to describe those searches as wild goose chases, but we must also acknowledge that genuine species – often quite sizeable ones – have been discovered.

Remarkable discoveries of animals thought to be fantasies or long extinct include giant squid, mountain gorillas, okapi, Komodo dragons and coelacanths.

In some cases, like the giant squid, these animals have been dismissed as legends. The reclusive oarfish, for example, are thought to be the inspiration for centuries of stories about sea serpents.

Oarfish can grow up to 8 metres long and swim vertically through the water. Commonly inhabiting the deep ocean, they occasionally come to shallow water for unknown reasons. AAP Image/ Coastal Otago District Office Technology to the rescue

Finding rare and cryptic species is self-evidently challenging, but rapid advances in technology open up amazing possibilities. Camera traps now provide us with regular selfies of once highly elusive snow leopards, and could equally be used with other difficult-to-find animals.

Candid camera, snow leopards in the Himalayas.

Environmental DNA is allowing us to detect species otherwise difficult to observe. Animal DNA found in the blood of leeches has uncovered rare and endangered mammals, meaning these and other much maligned blood-sucking parasites could be powerful biodiversity survey tools.

Acoustic recording devices can be left in areas for extended time periods, allowing us to eavesdrop on ecosystems and look out for sounds that might indicate otherwise hidden biological treasures. And coupling drones with thermal sensors and high resolution cameras means we can now take an eagle eye to remote and challenging environments.

Drones are opening up amazing possibilities for biological survey and wildlife conservation. The benefits of exploration and lessons learned

It’s easy to criticise the pursuit of the unlikely, but “miracles” can and do occur, sometimes on our doorstep. The discovery of the ancient Wollemi pine is a case in point. Even if we don’t find what we’re after, we may still benefit from what we learn along the way.

I’ve often wondered how many more species might be revealed to us if scientists invested more time in carefully listening to, recording and following up on the knowledge of Indigenous, farming, and other communities who have long and intimate associations with the land and sea.

Such an approach, combined with the deployment of new technologies, could create a boom of biological discovery.

Euan Ritchie receives funding from the Australian Research Council. Euan Ritchie is a Director (Media Working Group) of the Ecological Society of Australia, and a member of the Australian Mammal Society.

Farmers are turning to natural bacteria to improve crops like cane – but they might be getting rubbish. Gavin Fordham/Flickr

Australian farmers are at risk of missing out on a global boom in “crop probiotics”, because lax regulations make it less likely the supplements they buy to boost their crops will actually work.

Similar to the probiotics that offer health benefits for humans, certain natural bacteria can make crops healthier, hardier and more productive, by increasing their resilience to pests, pathogens and environmental stresses and improving access to soil nutrients.

But our research has found that the quality of products sold as “biostimulants” in Australia (which includes crop probiotics) varies wildly, with many available that do not deliver the promised benefits.

This potentially deprives our farmers of genuine products developed and tested with scientific principles. It muddies the waters, as companies selling effective products compete with those peddling “snake oil”. It also raises concerns about biosafety: importers can simply tick a few boxes and claim there aren’t pathogens in the bottle, without hard proof.

How do crop probiotics work?

Bacterial biostimulants naturally form a mutually beneficial bond with plants. One of the better known examples involves legumes, like clover and soybeans, which have rhizobia bacteria living in their roots. Rhizobia absorb nitrogen from air and deliver it as a natural fertiliser to their plant host in a symbiotic exchange.

As well as helping the plants thrive, farmers can use legumes to replenish nitrogen in soil, reducing the use of man-made nitrogen fertiliser. This symbiosis has been researched for over a century, and is well understood.

While we know less about other crop-beneficial bacteria, our understanding is growing. Microbes have been found that make crops more resistant to heat, waterlogging, drought and certain diseases.

But although the effects have been studied extensively in laboratories, it’s a big step to translate fundamental science to farm-relevant application.

Many factors, including the particular crop, soil and climate, influence the effectiveness of crop probiotics. The bacteria must survive transport and storage, and have to associate effectively with crops in the presence of many potentially competing microbes.

The communication between beneficial bacteria and crops is finicky as both partners have to produce mutually understandable chemical signals. We listened in on the conversation between beneficial Burkholderia bacteria and sugarcane, confirming that both undergo complex change to accommodate the partnership.

Finding the right microbes and making them work with crops in field settings remains difficult. Each group of useful microbes has many species and subtypes, and only few generally convey benefits, and often only in certain situations. Scientists are working to address these constraints.

Bold claims, inconsistent results

While crop probiotics offer an ecologically friendly option for farmers looking to improve and protect their harvests, the Australian market is far from reliable.

Our research group was asked to evaluate commercial crop probiotics. Over a year of experimentation on a sugarcane farm, we tracked the supposedly beneficial bacteria and fungi of two Australian probiotics products from soil to crop.

DNA analysis didn’t detect changes in root-associated bacteria, but the composition of root-associated fungi changed. Whether these changes are meaningful is unclear, as the manufacturers didn’t specify how the products work and which changes are to be expected. Clearly, studies over multiple years and sites are needed to confirm if and when products are beneficial.

The problem isn’t that biostimulants don’t work in principle. Many laboratory experiments have shown bacteria can help plants grow faster, stronger and bigger. But the real world is messy, with plenty of variables. Manufacturers who aren’t pushed by legislation can take shortcuts, and nebulous marketing is common.

Soybean root nodules, containing billions of nitrogen-fixing rhizobia. via Wikimedia commons

Our second investigation involved a commercial seedling nursery. The international manufacturer of the probiotic didn’t provide instructions for dosage, leaving us to guess at the correct application rate. In the first round of experimentation, the seedlings died. Feedback from the manufacturer was quick: we had used the wrong dose.

The next round of research used a lower dosage, per the manufacturer’s advice, that did not improve seedling growth. In its absurdity, this example highlights the need for tighter market regulation.

Since the benefits of currently available biostimulants are imprecise, many people are divided on their use. Better regulations would promote certainty, and prevent farmers wasting money on unreliable products.

The future of crop probiotics

Currently Australian regulations emphasise flexibility, offering multiple options for manufacturers to prove their crop probiotics work. But this leaves the door open for ineffective products.

Crop probiotics are currently regulated under the umbrella of pesticides (although they’re often marketed as providing other benefits). The Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority guidelines say “up to 10 field trials may be required depending on the crop’s economic importance”, making it difficult to tell how many trials are expected. One industry partner we spoke to said that, while he has chosen to do field trials, he didn’t have to supply that data to the APVMA to get his product registered.

Companies have to prove their products are “effective as per the label claims”. But as we found in our research, this doesn’t help when manufacturers exclude crucial information from their labels.

Manufacturers can sell probiotics that have been tested overseas, although studies “should be done under conditions that are typical of Australian climatic conditions”. However, because they’re not automatically required to retest in Australia, different soils, climates and crop types can render them essentially useless.

Consequently, many products exist on the Australian market which don’t have clear label instructions for effective use, claim to work on an outlandish number of crops and don’t even touch on the topic of which soils they work effectively in.

Australia contrasts with the European Union, which demands multi-step scientific testing of products. For a product to be permitted for use in agriculture, EU legislation requires 10 or more field trials, conducted over two growing seasons in different climates and soil types. Delivery methods and dosage must be evaluated and effects confirmed. Crop trials have to ensure statistical validity. The EU has created an online database of detailed reports and standards that can be easily searched by the public.

These regulations have an impact on which biostimulants reach the market. European products often contain only one type of active microbe, as it’s otherwise difficult to meet the strict criteria. On the other hand, many biostimulants sold in Australia contain multiple microbes that are not clearly classified on labels.

This makes it more difficult to tell what’s actually in a product, how useful it will be under different conditions, or if it contains bacteria that are beneficial for certain crops but harmful for others.

We recommend that Australia adopts the EU model of a regulated biostimulant market to encourage investment. Scientifically rigorous, multi-year studies are also needed, to test and develop effective products.

There is much research expertise in Australia, but currently farmers must rely on marketing rather than science.

Susanne Schmidt receives funding from industry and government including Sugar Research Australia and Queensland Department of Agriculture and Fisheries.

Shelby Berg receives funding from Sugar Research Australia.

Paul G. Dennis and Richard Brackin do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

Will you be marching on Saturday? Michele Paccione/Shutterstock.com

This Saturday, the March for Science will be held in cities around the world – coincidentally enough, ten years to the day since John Howard urged Australians to pray for rain.

While such marches are not the answer to everything, their very existence tells us that science is under attack, not merely from defunding of research bodies, but also via attacks on the inconvenient truths of climate science.

While scientists weep over the Great Barrier Reef, some politicians respond by laughing and joking.

Two years ago, Joss Whedon (he of Firefly and Buffy fame) captured the frustration when he fired off a tweet that went viral:

Policy makers who deny basic scientific truth should also be denied penicillin, horseless carriages, [and] air time on the magic box of shadows.

Many marchers will doubtless agree, not least because various forms of denial have been going on for decades, in Australia and elsewhere.

In the early 1970s there was much international concern about the prolonged drought and crop failures in the Sahel region of Africa. US national security adviser Henry Kissinger spoke of the issue and the CIA produced assessments of the geopolitical implications.

Against this backdrop, the legendary Australian public servant Nugget Coombs persuaded the Whitlam government to request a report on the possible impacts of climate change for Australia.

The report, delivered to the new Fraser government in March 1976, declared that there was “no convincing evidence of an imminent climatic change on a global scale, or in Australia” but that nonetheless “climatic variability must be incorporated into economic and land-use planning”.

On the evidence available at the time, it was a reasonable conclusion. But while the US National Academy of Sciences was investigating thoroughly, Australia’s climate investigations were muted. A 1978 conference organised by CSIRO and ATSE investigated climate impacts, but had little impact itself.

Someone, however, was paying attention to international research – in 1981 the Office of National Assessment produced a report called Fossil Fuels and the Greenhouse Effect, which forecast temperature rises of 4-6℃ by 2100 if action was not taken. Malcolm Fraser’s response is not recorded.

In the 1980s CSIRO scientists like Barrie Pittock and Graeme Pearman, together with the then science minister Barry Jones, worked hard to get the issue of climate change onto the political agenda. In 1987 Jones’s “Commission for the Future” launched an educative “Greenhouse Project”, and the following year the issue exploded onto the international stage. It was not to last.

From indifference to attack

When Paul Keating took charge in 1991, Australia found itself with a prime minister who was far less interested in green issues. His government did not attack the science directly but did seek to emphasise the costs of climate action, and only grudgingly accepted the “Berlin Mandate” which called on developed countries to set emissions targets.

Next came John Howard, who was actively hostile to the need for action. Under domestic pressure in the runup to the Kyoto negotiations in December 1997, Howard announced a renewable energy target and the creation of an “Australian Greenhouse Office.” But its head, Gwen Andrews, resigned in 2002, saying she had never once been asked to brief Howard.

Howard listened to other voices - in 1999 the Howard government appointed Rio Tinto’s head of research Robin Batterham as its chief scientific adviser. Batterham stepped down after a 2004 Senate inquiry found a “clear conflict of interest” between his two jobs.

CSIRO scientists, meanwhile, were feeling the heat. Graeme Pearman, head of the atmospheric research division, described how he was reprimanded for daring to join the WWF-affiliated Australian Climate Group.

He told the Age that he had been admonished by his Canberra superiors for “making public expressions of what I believed were scientific views, on the basis that they were deemed to be political views”.

The meddling continued. Barney Foran, a 30-year CSIRO veteran, said his managers told him they had fielded a call from the Prime Minister’s Department suggesting he should say nothing critical about ethanol as an alternative fuel.

While there was a change in mood under Kevin Rudd, CSIRO economist Clive Spash nevertheless found himself attacked in parliament for his doubts about emissions trading.

Things did not improve under Julia Gillard, who presided over further budget cuts and the unexplained departure of Chief Scientist Penny Sackett. Commentators lamented that Australia – unlike the UK and US – does not have a truly independent research council.

The record of the Abbott government is too vivid to need – or bear – repeating. It seems that the relentless disparagement and defunding of science has gained a momentum that the current Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, perhaps captive to his backbenchers, cannot halt.

Global patterns

The problem is that while we claim to love science, what we often mean is the kind of science that leads to new production techniques and capacities. But as the US environmental sociologist Alvin Schnaiberg has pointed out, there is another kind of science – one that speaks of the impacts of those production techniques.

The dilemma - captured in the very name of the Commonwealth Science and Industrial Research Organisation - is not one that we have solved, or look like solving any decade soon.

Although the Australian government’s response to climate advice is woeful, it is not inexplicable or unusual. US climate scientists such as James Hansen, the late Stephen Schneider and Michael Mann have been under sustained attack for more than 20 years (see Mann’s “The Serengeti Strategy” for a brief summary).

Some American scientists have decided to leave and conduct their research elsewhere. Neither have Canadian scientists been immune to attack.

Scientists understandably worry about losing credibility if they enter the public arena.

The Nobel prizewinning chemist Sherwin Rowland poignantly asked:

What’s the use of having developed a science well enough to make predictions if, in the end, all we’re willing to do is stand around and wait for them to come true?

Carl Sagan concurred:

Anything else you’re interested in is not going to happen if you can’t breathe the air and drink the water. Don’t sit this one out. Do something.

So yes, we need to march for science, and more besides. This is an “all hands on deck, every single day” situation, which calls on us to act locally and creating pressure for some real action at last from our political leaders.

Humans have burned 420 billion tonnes of carbon since the start of the industrial revolution. Half of it is still in the atmosphere. Reuters/Stringer

Getting climate change under control is a formidable, multifaceted challenge. Analysis by my colleagues and me suggests that staying within safe warming levels now requires removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, as well as reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The technology to do this is in its infancy and will take years, even decades, to develop, but our analysis suggests that this must be a priority. If pushed, operational large-scale systems should be available by 2050.

We created a simple climate model and looked at the implications of different levels of carbon in the ocean and the atmosphere. This lets us make projections about greenhouse warming, and see what we need to do to limit global warming to within 1.5℃ of pre-industrial temperatures – one of the ambitions of the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

To put the problem in perspective, here are some of the key numbers.

Humans have emitted 1,540 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide gas since the industrial revolution. To put it another way, that’s equivalent to burning enough coal to form a square tower 22 metres wide that reaches from Earth to the Moon.

Half of these emissions have remained in the atmosphere, causing a rise of CO₂ levels that is at least 10 times faster than any known natural increase during Earth’s long history. Most of the other half has dissolved into the ocean, causing acidification with its own detrimental impacts.

Although nature does remove CO₂, for example through growth and burial of plants and algae, we emit it at least 100 times faster than it’s eliminated. We can’t rely on natural mechanisms to handle this problem: people will need to help as well.

What’s the goal?

The Paris climate agreement aims to limit global warming to well below 2℃, and ideally no higher than 1.5℃. (Others say that 1℃ is what we should be really aiming for, although the world is already reaching and breaching this milestone.)

In our research, we considered 1℃ a better safe warming limit because any more would take us into the territory of the Eemian period, 125,000 years ago. For natural reasons, during this era the Earth warmed by a little more than 1℃. Looking back, we can see the catastrophic consequences of global temperatures staying this high over an extended period.

Sea levels during the Eemian period were up to 10 metres higher than present levels. Today, the zone within 10m of sea level is home to 10% of the world’s population, and even a 2m sea-level rise today would displace almost 200 million people.

Clearly, pushing towards an Eemian-like climate is not safe. In fact, with 2016 having been 1.2℃ warmer than the pre-industrial average, and extra warming locked in thanks to heat storage in the oceans, we may already have crossed the 1℃ average threshold. To keep warming below the 1.5℃ goal of the Paris agreement, it’s vital that we remove CO₂ from the atmosphere as well as limiting the amount we put in.

So how much CO₂ do we need to remove to prevent global disaster?

Are you a pessimist or an optimist?

Currently, humanity’s net emissions amount to roughly 37 gigatonnes of CO₂ per year, which represents 10 gigatonnes of carbon burned (a gigatonne is a billion tonnes). We need to reduce this drastically. But even with strong emissions reductions, enough carbon will remain in the atmosphere to cause unsafe warming.

Using these facts, we identified two rough scenarios for the future.

The first scenario is pessimistic. It has CO₂ emissions remaining stable after 2020. To keep warming within safe limits, we then need to remove almost 700 gigatonnes of carbon from the atmosphere and ocean, which freely exchange CO₂. To start, reforestation and improved land use can lock up to 100 gigatonnes away into trees and soils. This leaves a further 600 gigatonnes to be extracted via technological means by 2100.

Technological extraction currently costs at least US$150 per tonne. At this price, over the rest of the century, the cost would add up to US$90 trillion. This is similar in scale to current global military spending, which – if it holds steady at around US$1.6 trillion a year – will add up to roughly US$132 trillion over the same period.

The second scenario is optimistic. It assumes that we reduce emissions by 6% each year starting in 2020. We then still need to remove about 150 gigatonnes of carbon.

As before, reforestation and improved land use can account for 100 gigatonnes, leaving 50 gigatonnes to be technologically extracted by 2100. The cost for that would be US$7.5 trillion by 2100 – only 6% of the global military spend.

Of course, these numbers are a rough guide. But they do illustrate the crossroads at which we find ourselves.

The job to be done

Right now is the time to choose: without action, we’ll be locked into the pessimistic scenario within a decade. Nothing can justify burdening future generations with this enormous cost.

For success in either scenario, we need to do more than develop new technology. We also need new international legal, policy, and ethical frameworks to deal with its widespread use, including the inevitable environmental impacts.

Releasing large amounts of iron or mineral dust into the oceans could remove CO₂ by changing environmental chemistry and ecology. But doing so requires revision of international legal structures that currently forbid such activities.

Similarly, certain minerals can help remove CO₂ by increasing the weathering of rocks and enriching soils. But large-scale mining for such minerals will impact on landscapes and communities, which also requires legal and regulatory revisions.

And finally, direct CO₂ capture from the air relies on industrial-scale installations, with their own environmental and social repercussions.

Without new legal, policy, and ethical frameworks, no significant advances will be possible, no matter how great the technological developments. Progressive nations may forge ahead toward delivering the combined package.

The costs of this are high. But countries that take the lead stand to gain technology, jobs, energy independence, better health, and international gravitas.

Eelco Rohling receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the UK Natural Environment Research Council. Eelco Rohling is also affiliated with the University of Southampton, UK.

Giant sloths: killed by rainy weather? Kamraman/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

Wet weather at the end of the last ice age appears to have helped drive the ecosystems of large grazing animals, such as mammoths and giant sloths, extinct across vast swathes of Eurasia and the Americas, according to our new research.

The study, published in Nature Ecology and Evolution today, shows that landscapes in many regions became suddenly wetter between 11,000 and 15,000 years ago, turning grasslands into peat bogs and forest, and ushering in the demise of many megafaunal species.

By examining the bone chemistry of megafauna fossils from Eurasia, North America and South America over the time leading up to the extinction, we found that all three continents experienced the same dramatic increase in moisture. This would have rapidly altered the grassland ecosystems that once covered a third of the globe.

The period after the world thawed from the most recent ice age is already very well studied, thanks largely to the tonnes of animal bones preserved in permafrost. The period is a goldmine for researchers – literally, given that many fossils were first found during gold prospecting operations.

Our work at the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA usually concerns genetic material from long-dead organisms. As a result, we have accrued a vast collection of bones from around the world during this period.

But we made our latest discovery by shifting our attention away from DNA and towards the nitrogen atoms preserved the fossils’ bone collagen.

Lead Author Tim Rabanus-Wallace hunts for megafaunal fossils in the Canadian permafrost in 2015. Julien Soubrier Chemical signatures

Nitrogen has two stable isotopes (atoms with the same number of protons but differing number of neutrons), called nitrogen-14 and nitrogen-15. Changes in environmental conditions can alter the ratio of these two isotopes in the soil. That, in turn, is reflected in the tissues of growing plants, and ultimately in the bones of the animals that eat those plants. In arid conditions, processes like evaporation preferentially remove the lighter nitrogen-14 from the soil. This contributes to a useful correlation seen in many grassland mammals: less nitrogen-14 in the bones means more moisture in the environment.

We studied 511 accurately dated bones, from species including bison, horses and llamas, and found that a pronounced spike in moisture occurred between 11,000 and 15,000 years ago, affecting grasslands in Europe, Siberia, North America, and South America.

Alan Cooper inspects ice age bones from the Yukon Palaeontology Program’s collection, Canada, 2015. Julien Soubrier

At the time of this moisture spike, dramatic changes were occurring on the landscapes. Giant, continent-sized ice sheets were collapsing and retreating, leaving lakes and rivers in their wake. Sea levels were rising, and altered wind and water currents were bringing rains to once-dry continental interiors.

The study shows that a peak in moisture occurred between the time of the ice sheets melting, and the invasion of new vegetation types such as peatlands (data shown from Canada and northern United States). http://nature.com/articles/doi:10.1038/s41559-017-0125

As a result, forests and peatlands were forming where grass, which specialises in dry environments, once dominated. Grasses are also specially adapted to tolerate grazing – in fact, they depend upon grazers to distribute nutrients and clear dead litter from the ground each season. Forest plants, on the other hand, produce toxic compounds specifically to deter herbivores. For decades, researchers have discussed the idea that the invading forests drove the grassland communities into collapse.

Our new study provides the crime scene’s smoking gun. Not only was moisture affecting the grassland mammals during the forest invasion and the subsequent extinctions, but this was happening right around the globe.

Extinction rethink

This discovery prompts a rethink on some of the key mysteries in the extinction event, such as the curious case of Africa. Many of Africa’s megafauna — elephants, wildebeest, hippopotamus, and so on — escaped the extinction events, and unlike their counterparts on other continents have survived to this day.

It has been argued that this is because African megafauna evolved alongside humans, and were naturally wary of human hunters. However, this argument cannot explain the pronounced phase of extinctions in Europe. Neanderthals have existed there for at least 200,000 years, while anatomically modern humans arrive around 43,000 years ago.

We suggest instead that the moisture-driven extinction hypothesis provides a much better explanation. Africa’s position astride the Equator means that its central forested monsoon belt has always been surrounded by continuous stretches of grassland, which graded into the deserts of the north and south. It was the persistence of these grasslands that allowed the local megafauna to survive relatively intact.

Our study may also offers insights into the question of how the current climate change might affect today’s ecosystems.

Understanding how climate changes affected ecosystems in the past is imperative to making informed predictions about how climate changes may influence ecosystems in the future. The consequences of human-induced global warming are often depicted using images of droughts and famines. But our discovery is a reminder that all rapid environmental changes — wet as well as dry — can cause dramatic changes in biological communities and ecosystems.

In this case, warming expressed itself not through parched drought but through centuries of persistent English drizzle, with rain, slush and grey skies. It seems like a rather unpleasant way to go.

Alan Cooper receives funding from the Australian Research Council

Matthew Wooller receives funding from US National Science Foundation

Tim Rabanus-Wallace does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.