Last week Anthony Albanese PM co-hosted and attended the Pacific Pre-COP31 climate summit in Fiji and Tuvalu. It was a consolation prize after losing out to Turkey for the main event and turned into a PR exercise to tell our drowning neighbours that we love them more than China does. And Chris Bowen (remember him, architect of the 2019 election defeat) gets second prize for organising the main program.

In that same week the NSW Premier announced the approval of Glencore and Yancoal's Hunter Valley Operations Continuation Project, the largest coal mine expansion ever proposed in NSW. 429m tonnes of coal to be mined for up to 20 years, estimated to result in up to 809m tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions locally and overseas.

Fossil fuels won. Climate lost/zero. Drill baby drill. Burn baby burn. The disconnect, nay, hypocrisy, was breathtaking. Trumpian even. The world’s second-largest CO₂ emitter has a climate denier as leader. We are no better in effect.

The COP (Conference of the Parties) is a yearly meeting of nations to advance their commitments to the war on climate change. The aim from previous meetings in Kyoto and Paris was to reduce greenhouse gases to limit global warming to 1.5°C. Scientists now declare that we’ve reached 1.54oC. Put a fork in it, we’re cooked.

It’s time to rethink our entire approach to climate design.

The reasons are many. Not least, when many OECD nations are struggling to meet their targets and are being assailed by newly-empowered right-wing governments to water down or walk away from commitments altogether. And China, now making (and installing) more sustainable technology than the rest of the world combined, holds to its earlier leave pass to go slow.

Not just governments, the market favours the big emitters and polluters. One of the largest oil and gas producers, Dutch Shell has won a court case against a judgement brought on by left-wing climate campaigners. The case rejected the requirement that the company adopt stringent emissions limits. The tap was opened.

But it gets worse, triple-fold.

Estimates are that Trump’s actions as denier-in-chief could create 2,700 million extra tonnes of CO₂equivalent (Mt CO₂-e) by 2030.
Wars are huge producers of CO₂._.The first two years of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has created an additional 175 Mt CO₂-e.
At the same time Israel’s fights in the Middle East has added 60 Mt CO₂-e.

By comparison, Australia, the world’s 14^th biggest greenhouse gas polluter, releases about 466 Mt CO₂-e per year.

The white flag has been raised, and we’re about to “COP this young ‘Arry” as Roy Rene was want to say.

It’s clear the climate war is lost. We cannot limit global warming to safe levels, no matter how many wind turbines and solar panels we promote. We need to pivot away from trying to tame the climate to dealing with its worst excesses.

We must design for a changed climate if we can’t prevent that change.

Just as we seemed to have mastered sustainable technologies for energy production and storage, with a rise in electric vehicles and net-zero buildings, violent weather may sweep it all away. One cruel irony.

Sustainability is now survival. How to design our infrastructure, cities, towns and buildings to survive the modern version of ‘the four horsemen of the apocalypse’: hotter temperatures; rising sea levels; rain, storms, floods, tornadoes and cyclones; and bush and wildfires. This will lead to the original apocalyptic warnings of pestilence, war, famine and death.

We should not shift from seeking to reduce fossil fuels and outgassing to zero, but for all our protests, policies, and projects, it’s just not happening fast enough. This is the sustainability pivot we need: from resistance to resilience. Next week I’ll summarise how we can make this fundamental design change for climate.

Cross-Sections are Friday musings from Tone Wheeler, formerly of Tone on Tuesday. Amateurs draw plans; professionals draw sections – never at cross purposes.

Tone Wheeler

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