Latest news with #fossilfuels
The Guardian
7 hours ago
- Business
- The Guardian
A guide to greener banking: I divested my personal finances and you can too – here's how
What if your money was quietly fuelling the climate crisis – and you had no idea? If you bank with one of the big four or have retirement savings in superannuation, there's a good chance it is. In Australia, many major banks and most default super funds continue to invest in fossil fuel companies and their coal, oil and gas projects, driving global warming. That's where the global divestment movement comes in. Divestment means shifting your money out of harmful industries and into more ethical, climate-positive alternatives. It's the opposite of investment – you simply pull your capital out of companies or funds that contribute to environmental or social harm. Over the past few years, I've delved into divesting my personal finances and learned some key ways this shift can make a real difference. If you only tackle one area of divestment, make it your super – it's often your largest pool of money beyond property, and too often it's channelled into fossil fuels. The climate lobby group Market Forces estimates $150bn of Australians' retirement savings – roughly $6,200 per member account on average – could be tied up in 190 global companies driving the most climate damage. And such investment is growing, meaning our retirement savings are increasingly being used to create a more polluted world to retire into. One way to find a better option is to use the Market Forces comparison tool. It profiles more than 70 fund options, pinpointing just seven that fully exclude fossil fuels and the so-called 'Climate Wreckers Index' of the world's worst polluters. Using this type of information, I divested from a large Australian super fund which has known investments in fossil fuels and moved to a fund that excludes major polluters such as Woodside, Whitehaven Coal, Santos, Origin and AGL. Justin Medcalf, co-founder of Ethical Advisers' Co-op and Unless Financial, says to beware the 'devil in the detail'. For example, some funds use a tiered threshold screening, which may allow investment in companies earning limited amounts of their revenue from coal mining. 'A lot of investors assume that having a screening process in place means zero exposure to fossil fuels. It can be a rude surprise to discover there is still exposure,' Medcalf says. 'Ultimately, there is no perfect portfolio. For now, it's 'how do we create the best version of something that isn't perfect?'' All four of Australia's big banks – ANZ, Commonwealth Bank, NAB and Westpac – pour billions into fossil fuel projects each year, as do many other major players. In 2021, when searching for my first mortgage, I saw the chance to divest from a big four bank and switch to a more ethical option. I told my broker I wanted a home loan that was both competitive and backed by a bank that doesn't fund fossil fuels. We landed on one of the few with a cleaner track record. To find out where your bank stands, use Market Forces' Compare Banks tool. It includes a 'tell them to stop' button, so you can quickly send a message and easily demand change. That's crucial, says Medcalf. 'A lot of people move their money but don't say anything, so the bank never knows why. A key part of the divestment movement is communicating,' he says. And it works. Just last year, Commonwealth Bank broke ranks and announced it would stop financing fossil fuel companies that don't comply with Paris climate goals. 'That was quite a considerable win and a lot of that is attributed to the divestment movement,' Medcalf says. If you're investing in shares, ETFs or managed funds, beware of greenwashing. Many mainstream investment products – even those labelled 'sustainable' or 'balanced' – still include major polluters. Tools like the Responsible Investment Association of Australasia's certification and the Ethical Advisers' Co-op's Leaf rating can help you find investment products and services that meet high standards of environmental, social and ethical performance. 'We need a mindset shift,' Medcalf says. 'Rather than thinking 'what can I avoid?', think 'what can I actively invest in?' Yes, we want to avoid industries that aren't creating a positive future, but we can also get behind the industries of the future.' And divesting doesn't have to mean missing out financially – it may even boost your returns. RIAA's 2024 Benchmarking Report shows responsible investment funds have outperformed mainstream ones by 3% over 10 years, and 1.5% over five years. For long-term investors, especially those in their 30s and 40s, Medcalf says it makes sense to start factoring in environmental risk. Fossil fuel assets are increasingly seen as vulnerable, with tightening regulations and the growing risk of becoming 'stranded' and unprofitable. If you want to go a step further, consider strategically buying into a polluting company along with fellow shareholder activists who then band together to demand change from the inside. You can get started with as little as $500 using the Sustainable Investment Exchange (SIX) platform. Whether you divest, reinvest or become an activist shareholder, the point is the same: your money is powerful and you can actively choose whether it props up harmful industries or helps build a better future.
Forbes
11 hours ago
- Business
- Forbes
Perils of 'The Precautionary Principle' in Environmental Law
Risk management prism - Getty Creative getty In a rare show of unity on May 29, 2025, The U.S. Supreme Court justices ruled 8-0 in favor of limiting the scope of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) The court recognized that despite many noble intentions, the law has been misapplied as an ideological stalling tool against not only resource extraction projects but also renewable energy projects. All court justices appeared to acknowledge that there is a big difference between responsible environmentalism and environmental obstructionism. This case is particularly notable since it involved a fossil fuels pipeline project in Utah and the three liberal justices could have used this as a way to make a statement on the salience of climate change. Yet, all justices rightly recognized that the law has been misapplied, albeit there was a less strident concurrence submitted by the three liberal justices in the case. While at its surface this decision may be about 'process' but there is an underlying realization by the justices that modern environmentalism has become risk averse beyond a 'broad zone of reasonableness.' The court has indirectly taken a swipe at the 'precautionary principle' which emphasizes taking proactive measures to protect the environment in the face of uncertainty. The origins of this principle can be found in the German concept of Vorsorgeprinzip, which by some measures is better translated as the 'foresight principle.' Such a translation suggests a positive anticipatory action rather than a negative status quo decision, but the essential element is social risk aversion in the context of environmental harm. Yet it is important to note that the absence of evidence of harm is not the same thing as evidence of the absence of harm. The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (Rio Summit), in 1992, put forward an 'Agenda for the 21st Century' (called Agenda 21) where 'Principle 15,' enshrined this precaution as follows: 'In order to protect the environment the Precautionary Approach shall be widely applied by States according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost- effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.' Although this principle has normative value as an ethical aspiration, operationalizing it in the context of maintaining social order in a complex environment of competing goals is next to impossible. For example, if we followed this principle to its core, there would be no process of clinical trials for drug development. Nevertheless, the precautionary principle provides an alternative to reactive decision-making, which might cause irreversible harm to Earth's ecosystems and the communities who rely on those natural resources. Ecological concerns such as climate change might also fall into this category. However, communicating risks to the public in such circumstances of fear and activism can lead to 'social amplification' as was argued by geographer Roger Kasperson in his seminal work on this topic. Uncertainty and doubt become a defining excuse for inaction or a 'precautionary pause,' as has been argued in cases for moratoria for various technologies (which I have argued elsewhere need to be considered on a case-by-case basis). Lack of 'enough' data, and hence the need for more research or expertise, has often been used as a stalling tool. Such interventions span the full spectrum of views around our ecological predicament. On the one hand, uncertainty arguments on impacts are used by the fossil fuel industry to perpetuate the status quo around carbon emissions. On the other hand, many environmentalists have used uncertainty about the safety of nuclear technology to call for its phase- out. If we keep unpacking arguments for and against a particular technology, the conversation spirals into a battle of uncertainties. Precaution operates on a spectrum, as with any human endeavor, and the 'precautionary principle' cannot be used as an excuse for indefinite inertia in a world with competing challenges. Caution is in order, but indeterminate precaution is an untenable postulate that can lead to 'paralysis by analysis.' In their landmark book the 1983, Risk and Culture, Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky alerted us to the deceptive objectification of risk. Ultimately, risk in a complex world of competing and intersecting phenomena is a socially constructed phenomenon. Going back to the Bible, they note that the dietary laws of Leviticus may have stemmed from some degree of medical materialism but were ultimately about a cultural delineation of boundaries and the social construction of risk. Another curious insight from Douglas and Wildavsky's work is how 'dirt' is a form of disruption to socially constructed order and, even when it is harmless— or perhaps even helpful in the case of nutrient transfer to arable land— it is deemed impure and repugnant. The authors of this classic collaboration between an anthropologist (Douglas) and a political scientist (Wildavsky) maintained that, strategically, keeping a balance between anticipating harm and trusting resilience is the essence of managing risk. The law of diminishing returns can be applied to this process, whereby each marginal risk prevention effort does not reap concomitant rewards. Douglas and Wildavsky showed that excessive safety targeted at a particular technology like nuclear power implementation could undermine overall systems' safety because alternatives can appear more attractive than they actually are when considering the full scale and scope of return on investment. The economic marginalization of nuclear power is an intriguing case in point. Massive safety upgrade requirements to existing nuclear power plants have rendered them uneconomical, thereby making the climate mitigation targets more challenging to reach in the short- term as other low carbon sources are up- scaled. For functional purposes, a systems science approach is needed to consider the way forward for evaluating risks. For a certain narrow class of outcomes that could lead to system-wide 'ruin,' even in low probabilities, risk analyst Nassem Taleb (author of the bestselling Incerto series of books including The Black Swan) has argued that the precautionary principle can be applied for decisions. However, defining 'ruin' remains subjective as apocalyptic narratives can too easily be used in environmental activism for this purpose in areas like GMOs or nuclear energy. Instead of such subjectivity which would again take us down the paralysis path, what is more appropriate is to have an incrementalist approach to adaptive decision-making that can quickly act on specific contingencies emerging. The Australian researcher Jayden Hayman has suggested such an adaptive management approach to environmental regulatory decisions on controversial developments such as deep-sea mining. Coming back to the implications of the Supreme Court verdict, regulatory agencies will now be able to have more effective rulemaking without the constant shadow of cascading lawsuits that are predicated on a misapplication of the precautionary principle. One of my mentors from graduate school days, law professor Daniel Esty argued for such 'optimal environmental governance' approach to improving regulatory performance in a seminal paper many years back. Indeed, even environmental organizations recognized the challenge of operationalizing precaution, particularly around biodiversity conservation. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) recognized that inevitably there would be a 'value-based balancing' of tradeoffs involved in operationalizing the precautionary principle. Paradoxically, precaution when applied with specious slippery slope arguments, itself can lead to perilous outcomes for societal innovation and sustainability.
ABC News
13 hours ago
- Business
- ABC News
Australia just approved Woodside's gas project until 2070. How could it happen?
Some weeks more than others, climate change really bears down on Australians. This week, the news carried images of eerie orange skies as dust storms whipped across landscapes dried from record-breaking droughts. Further north, homes were submerged in floods exacerbated by heavier rain from a warmer climate. And also this week, the Australian government approved the extension of one of the world's largest gas facilities until 2070. But this decision isn't about climate change. At least not under Australia's current laws, where the climate harm from fossil fuel projects doesn't have to be considered. How can Australia approve a fossil fuel mega-project that will run until 20 years after the world is meant to reach net zero emissions? "I think the average punter out there is basically saying, 'Hang on, this is about climate change and 2070, what are we doing? What in the hell are we doing?'" lamented Greg Bourne from the Climate Council. Environment Minister Murray Watt's first major decision in the new role was to give the green light for Woodside's North West Shelf gas plant to continue operating until 2070. The North West Shelf is already Australia's third-highest emitting facility in the country, producing about 6 million tonnes of greenhouse gas each year. That's just the direct emissions from extracting and processing the gas and doesn't count emissions after the gas is sold, shipped, and burnt at its final destination. Some estimates put the total lifetime emissions from this project at the equivalent of a decade of Australia's current emissions. A decade. Think of it as pushing out Australia's climate goals by another 10 years. When asked about the decision this week, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese claimed the gas was needed to boost Western Australia's renewables, with 15 per cent of the gas earmarked for the local market. Without the extension, the North West Shelf was due to close in 2030. "In order to get that investment in renewables, you do need firming capacity, whether it be batteries, hydro, or gas, and that is what will encourage that investment and the transition to occur," Mr Albanese said. "In Western Australia, they are closing their last coal-fired power station at Collie in 2027. They are moving to renewables backed by gas, and that will be a really important part of the transition that will occur." But Mr Bourne said the decision would "haunt" the government. Before working at the Climate Council, he worked for decades in the gas industry in Western Australia and internationally, including at the North West Shelf. "We've been talking about net zero by 2050, that number is in people's heads," he said. It's not just climate experts warning that the world needs to stop expanding fossil fuels: the International Energy Agency says there is enough existing coal, oil, and gas projects to supply the world and stay the course to net zero. "The world is awash in gas, primarily coming out from the Middle East, but lots coming out from America and so on like that. I think our Australian companies fool themselves into thinking that they're going to be the last company standing, pushing gas out there," Mr Bourne said. The Albanese government is focused on driving renewable investments to bring down emissions, but at the same time, the country's climate plans don't include emissions from our fossil fuel exports. Woodside Energy welcomed the news this week, emphasising the important role gas played in Western Australia and its heavy industry. "This proposed approval will secure the ongoing operation of the North West Shelf and the thousands of direct and indirect jobs that it supports," Woodside's statement read. Currently, the environment minister has veto power over major projects if they would impact "matters of national environmental significance", such as protected plants, animals, and ecosystems. In the case of the North West Shelf, the minister considered the impact on cultural heritage relating to the ancient rock art of Murujuga. But under these laws, in the Environment Protection Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act, climate change is not a deciding factor. "The fact that our environment laws do not address the harms caused by climate change from coal and gas extraction is a really dangerous loophole," said Julia Dehm, an associate professor in the law school at La Trobe University and climate law expert. "There's long been calls for reform of the EPBC act to include a climate trigger." This concept was actually proposed back in 2005 by Mr Albanese, who, as shadow environment minister, wanted to fix this "glaring gap" in the laws. "The climate change trigger will enable major new projects to be assessed for their climate change impact," he told parliament in 2005. "Climate change is one of the most significant challenges facing the global community and one of the greatest threats to Australia's way of life. "It is time to act. It is time for procrastination to end … We cannot any longer afford to be complacent on this issue." Twenty years later, Australia has not closed that gap and the Albanese government just approved the type of project that he was targeting back in 2005. The minister isn't completely hamstrung and under the current laws, could still opt to consider the climate consequences from the project. According to Liz Hicks, a lecturer at the Melbourne Law School and former Greens candidate, the EPBC gives the minister significant leeway when making decisions. "It was enacted during the Howard era," Dr Hicks explained, "the act was designed to make these considerations very political and confer enormous discretion on the minister". Under the act, Mr Watt is required to consider economic and social matters of projects, which could include the well-documented evidence of how climate change is affecting Australian society. An explicit climate trigger, however, would mean the minister was required to weigh up the climate impacts. "The climate trigger would have a lot of advantages … they would have to think about those climate factors, which we know are probably going to be some of the biggest factors," Dr Hicks said. The federal government proposed changes to these laws in its last term in office, but the proposals were shelved after pushback from the industry and the West Australian government. Those changes did not include a climate trigger. Instead, environmental groups have been trying in the courts to force the environment minister to consider climate impacts associated with major-polluting projects. Last year, the Environmental Council of Central Queensland argued in the Federal Court that all of the important environmental sites under the minister's protection are affected by climate change, and coal and gas projects will add to that damage. The court ultimately rejected the appeal, but in its decision, the justices noted the "ill-suitedness" of the current scheme when assessing climate change. Another flaw that comes with the system is that projects are assessed individually; even in the case of the North West Shelf, the proposal for the drilling of the gas to supply the plant into the future is considered separately. "Because it's the product of cumulative impacts of all projects in multiple jurisdictions around the world, everyone's trying to hide behind that abrogation of responsibility. "We can no longer hide behind the impact that each project is small because we know that each project has a significant impact and it's a cumulative impact of all these projects that have led to what is a really dangerous climate situation." Australia does have a way to regulate emissions from projects once they're up and running. Some emissions from the North West Shelf will continue to be monitored under Australia's national climate policy, the safeguard mechanism, which sets an annual limit for each facility's emissions that gradually decreases over time. Currently, the gas plant is the third-largest emitter in the country and last year relied on buying offsets to reach its targets set under the scheme. But the safeguard mechanism doesn't deal with the majority of emissions from fossil fuel projects, which come after the gas is sold and consumed at its endpoint, known as scope 3 emissions. "Australia's biggest impact is our scope 3 emissions, and they're completely left out of that framework for reduction, and that's really the big gap in Australian environmental law," Dr Hicks said. "Our export footprint is significantly larger than our domestic emissions. And this really needs to be recognised as part of our sphere of responsibility." This decision has not gone unnoticed internationally, especially with Australia vying to host next year's UN climate conference. Already, the news was lamented by Pacific leaders, who are on the existential frontlines of a hotter world. The Climate Council's Mr Bourne believes it will hurt Australia's standing internationally. "It immediately brought back the image to me of, I think it's the minister of [Tuvalu], who's standing in water up to his waist, pleading with the world's nations to tackle climate change. Our standing, I think it's going to go down in a very big way. "We are going to have to stop the opening up of new oil and gas fields …They're going to have to take those powers if they want to have any credibility at all." Monash University's Dr Dehm said this is exactly the opposite direction of where we should be going. "Approving more coal and gas projects, such as the North West Shelf, really undercuts Australia's climate credentials and presents Australia internationally as not just a climate laggard, but really as a destructive player on climate change."
The Guardian
16 hours ago
- Business
- The Guardian
Australia's emissions up slightly in 2024 as Labor faces heat over ‘climate-wrecking' gas project
Australia's climate-heating emissions increased fractionally last year as pollution from fossil fuel power plants rose for the first time in a decade, and domestic air travel and use of diesel-powered cars and trucks hit record highs. The jump in emissions was small – just 0.05% – due to falls in pollution from other sectors. But the direction was at odds with the Albanese government's pledge to cut pollution to reach targets for 2030 and 2050. The data was released on Friday, two days after the environment minister, Murray Watt, announced he planned to approve a 40-year life extension for one of Australia's biggest fossil fuel developments – Woodside Energy's North West Shelf liquified natural gas (LNG) processing facility in the Pilbara. Based on the Burrup peninsula, in Murujuga country, the North West Shelf is Australia's third biggest industrial polluter, responsible for about 1.4% of the country's annual climate pollution. The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has rejected concerns about the facility's emissions continuing for decades after 2050, saying the national goal was 'net zero, not zero', implying ongoing fossil fuel use could be justified by using a contentious carbon offset scheme. His comments echoed language used in 2021 by the Coalition's then emissions reduction minister, Angus Taylor, when defending climate policies under Scott Morrison. The quarterly greenhouse gas inventory said the increase in national emissions last year may be short-lived, with preliminary data suggesting they fell in the first quarter this year. Sign up to get climate and environment editor Adam Morton's Clear Air column as a free newsletter Emissions last year were estimated to be 446.4m tonnes of carbon dioxide, 0.2m tonnes higher than in 2023. The increase is largely due to pollution from electricity generation rising by 2.2%, reversing a 10-year trend. Australians used more electricity overall, and there was less hydro power available than usual during winter. Solar use was up, but the extra demand was otherwise met by more coal and gas. Initial data for the March quarter suggest the long-term trend of pollution from electricity falling should restart this year. This has been backed by a separate report by the Australian Energy Market Operator. At the end of last year emissions from power generation was 23.7% lower than in 2005. Experts expect it to continue to fall as a government underwriting program announced in November 2023 supports an influx of new large-scale solar, wind and batteries. But emissions from transport continue to surge as Australians fly more and burn more diesel in bigger cars and trucks. Pollution from the transport sector was up 1.9% last year. It has skyrocketed 20.8% since 2005. Vehicle efficiency standards introduced last year require auto companies to reduce the average pollution from new cars each year, but they are expected to only gradually affect total transport emissions. Government officials estimated national pollution was 27% below 2005 levels, largely due to a change in the amount of carbon dioxide that is absorbed by the land and forests. The Albanese government has a legislated target of a 43% cut by 2030 and has promised a 2035 target later this year. The climate change and energy minister, Chris Bowen, said Labor was on track to reach the 2030 target but there was 'more to do' to get there. Sign up to Clear Air Australia Adam Morton brings you incisive analysis about the politics and impact of the climate crisis after newsletter promotion 'Industrial emissions are now lower than they were during Covid-19, even as the economy has recovered,' he said. 'We need to keep going, and ensuring we're delivering downward pressure on emissions across the economy.' The Greens leader, Larissa Waters, said Labor had failed two climate tests: pollution was going up, and it had approved the 'climate-wrecking North West Shelf dirty gas extension'. 'During the last term of parliament Labor approved over 30 new coal and gas projects and it doesn't look like they're slowing down any time soon,' she said. Albanese this week defended the North West Shelf extension by saying gas was needed along with batteries and pumped hydro storage to 'firm' renewable energy generation in the electricity grid. The government's target is that 82% of electricity will come from renewable energy by 2030. 'You can't have renewables unless you have firming capacity. Simple as that,' Albanese said. 'You don't change a transition through warm thoughts.' Asked about the WA development, Albanese said the Tomago aluminium smelter in New South Wales' Hunter Valley relied on gas to firm renewable energy, and WA's main electricity grid would become more reliant on gas as the state closed its remaining coal-fired power plants. The prime minister did not say how much gas from the facility was destined to be used in Australia. According to analysis of recent data, the overwhelming bulk of the gas produced on the North West Shelf and elsewhere in WA – 81% – was exported. Another 7% was used by the gas industry as part of the production process. About 8% was used for gas-fired electricity generation in WA. None was used at Tomago. Critics have challenged the economic and climate basis for a decades-long extension of the processing facility's life. Alex Hillman, from the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility and a former Woodside Energy climate change adviser, said analysts from the International Energy Agency had projected the world was heading for an 'LNG glut' later this decade. 'There is no commercial justification to add further LNG supply, and there is certainly no climate justification,' he said. 'Whilst there is major flooding in New South Wales and a major drought in South Australia, these are emissions that are going to cause Australians and investment portfolios further harm as the physical impacts of climate change increase.'
E&E News
17 hours ago
- Health
- E&E News
Woman sues oil companies after her mother's death in a heat wave
The daughter of an Oregon woman who died during the 2021 Pacific Northwest heat dome is suing seven oil and gas companies for wrongful death. Misti Leon alleges that the death of her mother, Juliana, was the 'direct and foreseeable consequence' of the companies' promotion of fossil fuels and their failure to warn the public that burning them could increase global temperatures. 'Defendants knew that continued fossil fuel consumption would lead to a climate crisis and spur deadly events like the 2021 heat dome,' the lawsuit says, adding that the 'deception campaign furthermore limited understanding of the causes and consequences of climate change' and stunted measures to adapt that could have saved lives. Advertisement Juliana 'Julie' Leon, 65, died of heatstroke in June 2021 on what was the hottest day ever recorded in Seattle, Washington. That morning, she had driven 100 miles from her home to a doctor's appointment for a follow-up visit related to a voluntary bariatric surgery she had undergone a few weeks before. Leon's doctors cleared her to eat solid foods and took her vitals, finding no issue.
