New Arapiles plan means 98 per cent of climbs will stay open
Climbers are elated that a new government plan for the area will allow access to all but three of more than 150 climbing areas in the Mount Arapiles-Tooan State Park.
US states and cities sue over Trump EPA’s repeal of emissions rules
Democratic-led coalition says gutting key protections will set US back decades and worsen climate crisis
States and cities sued the Trump administration on Thursday for repealing rules that limit planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions from power plants fueled by coal and natural gas.
Twenty-one states, led by New York, are challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s power plant rule. The Democratic-led coalition also includes Pennsylvania’s governor, the District of Columbia, New York City, Chicago and the city and county of Denver. They argue that “gutting one of the country’s most significant climate protections” will set the nation back decades and worsen the climate crisis.
Ahead of the global climate summit, Pacific leaders call on nations to keep 1.5°C within reach
Pacific leaders are gathering in Fiji and Tuvalu for a meeting ahead of the annual global climate summit (COP31) to be held in Turkey (also known as Türkiye) in November.
The goal of the meeting is to amplify a Pacific voice to raise the urgency of keeping global warming as close to 1.5°C as possible.
This comes as a recent United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report confirmed the world is on track to cross 1.5°C within the next five years, but also identified pathways for returning to this temperature threshold as quickly as possible.
This matters for low-lying atoll nations whose very existence depends on it. As the UNEP report highlights, there are no safe futures above 1.5°C since every fraction of a degree changes sea-level rise, adaptation costs and locked-in future risks.
Elevating Pacific priorities is also one of four headline goals for the COP31 climate summit in Turkey. Australia will be leading negotiations and Pacific leaders will have an opportunity to bring their conclusions directly to the table.
Keeping 1.5°C within reach
The Pacific leaders’ meeting builds on conclusions from the 5th Pacific Oceans Pacific Climate Change Conference, which we attended in Honiara, Solomon Islands, last month.
The science presented there was unambiguous. Sea-level rise, ocean warming, intensifying cyclones and limits to adaptation are already reshaping life across the region.
The tone of the conference was serious, but not fatalistic. Pacific leadership was instrumental in getting 1.5°C written into the Paris Agreement. The meeting demonstrated that the same collective voice continues.
Delegates expressed frustration with existing climate-finance models, including the Green Climate Fund, which have complex access processes, minimum project sizes and co-financing requirements. This often means pledged money does not reliably reach communities on the front line.
The conference sought backing for regional, Pacific-led finance options such as the Pacific Resilience Facility. This fund already comprises pledges approaching US$173 million and Australia and Fiji have now ratified it.
Delegates were clear that climate finance should be accessible, directed by Pacific priorities, reach communities and build stronger institutions.
As one speaker put it:
Transformative climate finance is not defined by the size of the investment. It is defined by what remains after the funding cycle ends.
This principle also extends to people. Delegates called for capacity building that results in career pathways for Pacific scientists and knowledge holders.
Elevating ocean-climate connections
For Pacific peoples, climate change arrives via the ocean, which is also essential for food security, human health, resilience and attachment to place.
Many Pacific countries already have resilience plans and tools in place. The next step is to connect them across sectors and incorporate the ocean more strongly into regional and global policy.
This should include stronger links to global programmes to monitor and restore biodiversity so the ocean is not left in the gaps between international processes.
The evidence of climate change impacts in Pacific nations is already well established. Climate and sea-level modelling, coastal science, ecosystem monitoring and community-led planning are all underway to reduce disaster risk and build resilience.
This is alongside oral histories used to test hazard models and traditional knowledge informing adaptation.
Bringing these knowledge systems together is strengthening the evidence base needed to combat climate change, provided it is done with consent and protection for restricted knowledge.
It also elevates the work of Pacific-based researchers on non-economic impacts such as irreplaceable losses to language, culture and intergenerational memory.
Amplifying Pacific voices and leadership
Perhaps the strongest message from the Honiara conference was a rejection of the framing that has long dominated conversations about the Pacific and climate change.
Conversation tends to focus on vulnerability, smallness, isolation and limited resources. But as Emma Dunlop-Bennett, Pasifika assistant vice chancellor at Victoria University of Wellington Te Herenga Waka, told delegates:
We are not powerless in the face of it. We are peoples of extraordinary knowledge.
Agency is visible in Pacific political leadership, communities, institutions and researchers. But Pacific evidence must also travel into the systems that shape global decisions – such as having Pacific scientists contributing to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessments and evidence flowing into investment pipelines.
Solomon Islands Prime Minister Matthew Wale put the challenge bluntly:
To the scientists and academics here, I say produce knowledge that can travel beyond the journals and conference halls. To policymakers, I say, create pathways through which evidence changes laws, budgets and public investment.
The greatest opportunity identified in Honiara was the level of agreement already present.
Political leaders, donors, governments, scientists, communities and young people converged on the same messages of keeping 1.5°C alive, strengthening Pacific leadership, bringing communities into decisions, fixing access to finance and turning knowledge into implementation.
Last year, the International Court of Justice reaffirmed the 1.5°C aspirational target of the Paris Agreement and issued an advisory opinion that countries have a legal duty to adopt and maintain ambitious climate measures.
The initiative was led by Pacific Island law students. For small island states, which contribute a fraction of global emissions yet face the gravest threats from rising seas, the opinion offers both vindication and leverage.
But the window to hold warming close to 1.5°C is closing rapidly. The rest of the world needs to listen, act on reducing emissions with urgency and back Pacific leadership with finance that fits regional realities.
The authors acknowledge the contributions of Tracey Vanugi at the Solomon Islands National University, Vanda Faasoa-Chan Ting and Yvette Kerslake at the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environmental Programme in Samoa, Noora Yukich at Haskoning New Zealand, and the participants of the 5th Pacific Oceans Pacific Climate Change Conference.
Richard Levy receives funding from the New Zealand Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment.
Tim Naish receives funding from the New Zealand Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. He is chair of the joint scientific (governance) committee of the World Climate Research Programme.
Vaeno Wayne Vigulu 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 their academic appointment.
The green light for the largest coalmine in NSW history is shocking proof that our governance systems are betraying Australians | Georgina Woods
There is no greater treachery than this failure to face up to the climate crisis. How can we now fend off despair?
The Independent Planning Commission’s published reasons for approving the largest coalmine in New South Wales history in the context of mounting death, disaster and despair brought on by global heating reads like a hostage statement.
In its decision, the commission accepts that the extension of the Hunter Valley Operations’ mine for a further 19 years – resulting 809m tonnes of greenhouse gas pollution – will materially worsen global warming. The panel members cite CSIRO’s finding that climate change is having a growing effect on the lives and livelihoods of all Australians and that the severity of that impact “will depend on the speed at which global greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced”. They reject the idea that keeping HVO’s coal in the ground would make no difference to global warming.
NSW’s largest coal mine project is set to expand. Here’s what authorities got wrong about the trade-offs
The New South Wales Independent Planning Commission has just greenlit an expansion of the largest coal mine project in the state’s history.
The decision to expand Yancoal and Glencore’s Hunter Valley Operations coal mine, which will now operate until 2045, is controversial. The planning commission received more than 10,000 public submissions across its hearing cycle.
Proponents of the expansion, including NSW Premier Chris Minns, argued it would save 1,500 jobs and inject A$1 billion into the economy each year, according to Hunter Valley Operations’ own figures.
Opponents objected to the roughly 794 megatonnes of greenhouse gases the coal will emit when transported and burned and raised concerns for local health, agriculture and First Nations communities.
The project was approved after an important NSW Court of Appeal decision last year, which ruled the planning commission must take into account the impact of emissions from burning the product overseas on the local environment. This decision is currently being appealed in the High Court, with an outcome expected next week.
So why is this expansion so controversial? And why does it matter?
Why was the expansion approved?
In NSW, mining projects, including proposals to expand them, must first be assessed by the Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure.
The planning commission reviews the Department’s assessment alongside any public submissions. It must then consider the environmental impacts of the project, as well as the social and economic impacts on the area.
It must also take into account NSW’s emissions targets and environmental policy instruments, including the federal Safeguard Mechanism. The Safeguard Mechanism is the main federal tool for cutting emissions from big polluters. But given the mechanism doesn’t cover emissions from products burned overseas, it would deal with less than 2% of Hunter Valley Operations’ total emissions.
Read more: A landmark UN report says the world will overshoot the 1.5°C climate target. What happens now?
On Wednesday, the planning commission handed down its decision to approve the expansion of the Hunter Valley Operations coal mine. That’s despite acknowledging roughly 98% of the emissions from the Hunter Valley project are “scope 3” emissions generated by burning coal in importing countries. The planning commission’s decision also goes against the NSW Net Zero Commission, which has advised continued extensions or expansions to coal mining in NSW are not consistent with emissions targets in the NSW Climate Change Act or the Paris Agreement.
A key part of the planning commission’s reasoning was the mine’s emissions would be accounted for elsewhere. Ultimately, it decided any other risks were outweighed by the benefits for the Hunter region and NSW more broadly, including for an average of 1,311 jobs over the life of the project, government royalties and a “more orderly transition” away from fossil fuels.
However, it imposed a condition that Hunter Valley Operations take reasonable measures to export coal only to countries that are party to the Paris Agreement – under which states cooperate to limit warming to well below 2°C – or have equivalent policies in place, such as Taiwan.
A question of trade-offs
The Independent Planning Commission’s decision highlights problems with how trade-offs and impacts on local communities are framed in the climate transition. This is a major reason why democracies are failing to tackle climate change.
Climate change is a process that forces governments, industries and everyday people to make trade-offs. The costs of abandoning fossil fuels are often local, immediate and easy to spot when planning decisions are made. The planning commission highlighted the loss of local jobs as one such cost.
However, the environmental damage of expanding oil, gas and coal projects is increasingly obvious. This week, for example, researchers at ANU and UNSW released a publicly available tool that quantifies the environmental harms of specific projects. The Carbon Impacts Tracer draws on peer-reviewed research to track temperature rise and then estimate climate-related impacts, such as how much glacial ice will melt or how many people could die due to heatwaves.
Read more: We can finally measure the damage each new coal, gas or oil project will do to people and nature
Running Hunter Valley Operations’ numbers through this tool, the coal mine expansion will result in an estimated 462,000 more people being exposed to dangerously high temperatures and 435 additional heat-related deaths in Europe.
It’s a philosophical question whether saving 1,311 jobs can be weighed against 435 preventable deaths. But these are the conundrums we must increasingly confront in the climate transition. The greatest risk, however, arises when clever carbon accounting stops us asking important questions.
Consider the planning commission’s reliance on the Paris Agreement, for example. Given the Paris Agreement counts emissions where fuel is burned, not where it’s extracted, Hunter Valley Operations’ exported coal never appears on Australia’s books. What’s more, governments already plan to produce far more coal than a Paris-compliant world can burn. Every extra tonne mined adds to that global oversupply, pushing prices down and keeping coal cheaper for longer. That’s regardless of which specific country is burning Hunter Valley coal.
The role of law
Law forms the foundation of our modern world. When it comes to the climate transition, it exists to make the trade-offs clear.
Without it, decision-makers — and democracies — can’t properly weigh the costs of abandoning fossil fuels or doubling down on their use. The issue is many existing legal frameworks push carbon out of sight, with the Independent Planning Commission’s latest decision being a case in point.
Worryingly, the NSW Minerals Council wants to go further. It is urging the state to legislate to limit legal challenges to coal approvals. This would effectively invert the role of law. Rather than reveal the trade-offs, it would hide them altogether.
Liz Hicks currently receives funding from the Manchester-Melbourne-Toronto Research Fund for a project on constitutional accountability and the environment. She is also a member of the Australian Greens Victoria.