What is the Nature Positive Plan going to do about it?

David Suzuki stated in a 2017 blog post,  that "Environmentalism has failed.", and summarized major reasons for why.  Environmentalism is known to have been failing for a very long time, and you can search online for numerous opinions on this, including admissions of defeat.  This is asked particularly in the USA, where the political duopoly system excludes alternatives. Today, in 2023, their is still in every fossil-fuel powered national government an emphasis of economy over environment. State governments are officially styled as the principle law makers and regulation enforcers. But the political parties running them, regardless of election methods, and means of sustaining power, are subject to the powerful influence of the most pervasive and successful monetary-economic forces, namely the fossil fuel extraction and energy industries that make this Techno-Industrial Civilization - TIC,  possible. TIC is also failing, as this is now globally due, because our environment and resources are failing. Failing environmentalism appears to be built-in attribute of our TIC, and by extension our species.

All powerful state governments  are increasing their systems subsidies, often by means of money-inflation debt creation,  to keep up the supply from multiple industrial sub-systems of extraction and also increases the rates of environmental despoliation and pollution.  Failure to distribute necessities of the good life, would remove the popular mandate to govern, leading to civil unrest. Government policies are hostage to the growth of the corporate and national monsters of consumption they have helped to create.

No one in government seems to be working with systems analysis as a means of rational prediction and policy harmony.  In our complex systems, the major components are size of our TIC, increasing our global pollution and resources decline, and impacts on biosphere.   The one thing that governments refuse to select for is a plan to decrease their nations portion of TIC.

Most government reports assume the science experiment approach of just changing one significant thing, assuming everything else will be constant.  This can never happen in complex systems, as everything is connected, everything is changing everything else all the time. Therefore the impact on the whole system needs to always considered.

Our biggest ongoing system change is the burning of the last extractable fossil fuels from convenient places on our planet.  The systems impact is gradual and eventually cataclysmic global heating. Since the 2015 Paris talks, the yearly atmosphere dumping of global greenhouse gas emissions has increased.  Last year (2023) was the biggest leap yet in atmosphere carbon dioxide.  Embarrassed nations are today are either lying about their GHG emissions, or simply not reporting them. (Nations are Undercounting Emissions, Putting UN Goals at risk). Either way, disclosed CO2 national accounts add up to less than the total dumped into atmosphere.

"Governments also cheat on carbon offsets - they claim globally that forests are soaking up 6 billion tons more CO2 each year than scientists can account for, a study found"

Since the 1960s the yearly increase of  CO2 in the atmosphere has tripled. This is from more dumping. As our oceans get warmer, they also hold less CO2 per volume of water, and cannot absorb as much of our dumped excess.

As for keeping below 1.5° C limit, this has now been reached. It is soon to be breached. The average rate of additional global heating continues without pause.  Our oceans accumulate heat because of our atmospheres radiant energy imbalance, the warming blanket which has increased.

Warming rate was -0.18°C per decade averaged from 1970 to 2010, has increased recently, and is now 0.3°C per decade.  By the misleading magic of percentage calculation, this is 67% faster.  The graph below compares earlier and recent rates of warming, influenced by latitude. The variation is due to known but complex changes of insolation,  distribution of clouds,  aerosol effects, land and ocean responses. Its the physics of complex dynamic systems, and all IPCC global circulation models so far have struggled to model all features fully. In particular, aerosol effects are alleged to have been underestimated by most global circulation models used by IPCC.  The total average warming from our impacts has thus been underestimated according to the recent publication " Global warming in the pipeline - James Hansen et al.". The graph from this shows that the rates of middle Northern Hemisphere warming are especially high.

Zonal average rate of warming per decade, of last 13 years (red) compared to the previous years since 1970 (blue)

Everything we are doing messes with the climate in some way. Our production of aerosols has always been masking the full warming impacts of GHG. The evidence presented indicates that a new policy of sudden reduction in aerosols with cleaner fuel for ships, in the North Atlantic and North Pacific Oceans, is responsible for increased rate of heating of these parts of the oceans, and more warming of the Northern Hemisphere in general. The increased rate of warming is due to a darkening Earth. Not known is how much is due to climate feedbacks, with loss of reflective ice and snow, loss of cloud brightness. All these things helped to reflect incoming high intensity solar energy back into space.

Even if the impossible step of stopping all excess GHG emissions now was somehow managed,  the 2° C warming  will be reached before 2050.  The average rate of warming is almost linear. Pipelined warming will continue for a long time, even after cessation of human GHG emissions. The tolerance limits of biodiversity, habitat zones and human agriculture zones, to rising heat and climate change are fixed, and the impacts will be severe.

Average Sea Surface Temperatures are rising. March 27, 2024. From https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/

Consumption and changing technology, which supply all our needs and wants, are deemed necessary for continuing growth patterns of TIC.  In particular the anointed ones - economists - have been telling us that our always increasing prosperity can offset the negative impacts of global heating.    This is not a linear function. The industrial arts, and global trades of TIC are subject to diminishing returns of increasing complexity. TIC has already turned into wicked problem.  TIC is running out of fossil fuel energy sources. In particular there are already shortages of the diesel fuels derived from oil. Diesel fuel powers most of the heavy machinery that TIC depends on to supply everything.

Modern food systems from Big Agriculture down, depend greatly on fossil fuel energy, ammonia as fertilizer nitrogen, phosphorous and potash supplies to keep up food production. This also entails unnatural rates of soils mineral depletion. While new sources are yet to be found, the global mining and distribution systems also prefer cheap oil energy and hydrocarbon sources. All of these are becoming depleted, more expensive, uneconomic to continue extraction.  TIC has reached its limits of growth. Now follows the serious state of stagflation, to be continued with the down-slide in financial debt systems, inflation, and scarcity of just about everything TIC supplies using fossil fuels.

The great unmasking

It will be hard to generate protective aerosols without fossil fuel powered energy. Loss of aerosols, and their "cloud brightening" increases the capture of heat energy by GHG.  Raised global temperatures will continue for generations. Our once convenient and comfortable temperate zones, become zones of  tropical heat and humidity,  zones of tropical diseases,  zones of diminished agriculture production, ongoing loss of arable soil.  The fast warming sub-polar regions develop a tropical climate. Withing a few generations, human population is going to crash down from 8 billion to less than 1 billion people. Aiding that crash will be losses from numerous killing conflicts brought on by inequality, resource conflicts, climate and war refugees, starvation, high infant mortality, and stress induced loss of human fertility. Without energy sources fueling all our  needs, all the miseries of the struggle for existence are unmasked.

Australia will  suffer a population crash, as Northern Australia is in the sub-tropics. Heat waves and humidity will kill. The energy and wealth needed to maintain sheltered air-conditioning will become scarce.  Australians will go hungry, as its native arable soils are thin, poor quality in general, will respond poorly to hotter climate. Agriculture practices will need to do without cheap intense inputs of fossil fuel energy and artificial chemical fertility.

It would be best to prepare for this monumental "Limits to Growth" clash, and our overshoot of ecological footprint, and loss of biodiversity, by

1. Reduce Australian domestic consumption and dependence on fossil fuels faster than our dubious offsets aided 43% by 2030 policy.
   
2. Reduce Australian exported quantities of coal and gas.
3. Allow the size of the Australia population decrease, by allowing diminished fertility and not overcompensating with immigration.
4. In this the lifestyle energy adaptions by whatever amounts of renewable electricity production are achieved are almost irrelevant to the future predicaments of TIC to come.

5. Invest in Agro-Ecology for systems of food production without using fossil fuels. Unable to afford the imports, Sri Lanka tried this, and its food production fell.

On the Nature Positive Plan - NPP

This is by continuing human nature, a most likely repeat failure to protect nature, but maybe it will be the best dressed repackage of getting approvals for environment destruction, that taxpayer PR money can buy. It would be nice to believe that Australia is an exception to the general rule for developed nations of TIC, but we are humans after all. It would be best to start with total disbelief regarding government intentions, and then not be disappointed.

Only in recent history have dedicated government departments for the environment been developed, and we made them another special interest, like education, health, and agriculture. Still secondary to primary interests like business, resources, trade and defense (or war). Judging by the NPP,  we have this PR document which implies that anything better for business is going to be worse for nature (the environment). Better for the environment is not going to be good enough, by present standards. Excellent for the environment, and harder for business is the kind of re-balance that our species requires for survival. That is the kind of positive required by our destruction of biosphere balance.

How is the Australian Government going to repackage its ineffective Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999, the legislation of the current politically impotent "environment department", to match "Nature Positive" ambitions, as by the public that perceives impending ecological doom from our overshoot?

The real magnitude of our existential survival challenge, is the current size of TIC. Specifically its size is proportional to consequences of over-production of wastes, and destruction of biosphere ecosystems, TIC needs to greatly reduced in size for our own survival on this biological life raft of a planet.   A reset of TIC has to be soon, as its growth and maintenance requires  wasteful consumption non-renewable resources for energy and materials.

There are strong political elements of our nation that refuse to accept that we are subject to strong ultimate limitations from system workings of our biological, ecological connected world. Integrated science and a large dose of caution should be telling us now that our species is subject to ultimate "systems laws". Future generations already face long-term, cumulative, dire and even still unforeseen consequences for our present breaches. Short term legal penalties, or "wrist slaps" for offenders, need to be replaced with arrest of all offending activities.

Otherwise our current business as usual escape plans appear to be economic, population and civilization collapse from ecocide, global wars, and starvation, This knowledge and awareness is prevalent everywhere except in the upper managements business as usual policies of governments of developed nations.

Our species livelihoods and long term survival, depend absolutely on the biosphere, for air, water, soil, sunlight and teeming biodiversity.

Government appears to support only quick-rich business schemes, and are afraid of handling political power to the urgent and future needs of the biosphere. Instead we still act as if if the entire world is filled with unlimited resources provided for our use, and unlimited capacity to absorb our industrial waste products.

Pollution is part of our indispensable dependence on fossil fuels for at least 80% of the energy supplying all economic processes. Only 20% of total final energy demand, globally averaged, is supplied by electricity. (IEA) In Australia fossil fuels contributed 68% of total electricity generation in 2022 (energy.gov.au). So for all the wonderful increase in solar and wind energy supply, for intermittent daily and seasonal variation of harvested environmental energy, it most certainly cannot support the current production and consumption rates of TIC.

Any doubters as to the nearness of human causation of impending total biodiversity and climate systems collapse, should refer to numerous studies of extinction rates, and breached planetary boundaries, and the recent acceleration in rates of increase of atmosphere greenhouse gases of carbon and methane, faster rising global temperatures, and climate change impacts.

On the bright side of this, Australian Energy Statistics say 32% of of total generation of electricity was from renewable sources, solar being the largest contributor at 14%. All renewable energy infrastructure is a product of TIC and dependent on fossil-fueled mining.

As for our standard of living, Australia is said to be currently world beating. Its politicians are paid well above average salaries, are often owners of multiple real estate with rentals, and incomes of its major political party are well supplied with donations from foreign mining corporations.  They get to blame environmental bureaucracy as "red tape", for holding up mining, forestry and urban development projects.

Unfortunately, making environmental bureaucracy "more efficient" with "faster project approvals", is only going to add more acceleration to the decline of our biosphere, and local biodiversity.

 . . . Better guidance and support to proponents on the use of environmental offsets will facilitate improved environmental outcomes and faster project approvals. . .
NPP p 18.

Well, that is just the typical expansionist human's excuse for always ripping up more of natures systems. Humans have been doing this since before the first city states, before agriculture, perhaps down to the original human offshoots that 70,000 or so years ago, multiplied themselves out of Africa to fill all the worlds continents, and left extinctions of mega-fauna in their hunting wakes. The first expansion of our species offsets. We take what we want, and expect that nature will recover "somehow, somewhere else". Or not, who cares? Environmental offsets are the major operating style of humans cutting out and throwing away more bits of nature.

Australia's balance of payments are helped by large quantity exports of gas and coal quantities that far exceed our domestic energy consumption.

Figures are from 2021-22 energy supply and consumption, in energy units of Petajoules (PJ).    Common energy units do not imply any significant convertibility for final use. Form of energy is important.  Australia does not extract significant amounts of oil, so specialized Diesel fuel and Petrol products, which imported transport energy energy requirements, the main one being road transport requiring 1115 PJ. Exported energy products are nearly three times the quantity of domestic consumption.

"Nature Positive Plan" - NPP, is promising better environment heritage outcomes. Better than what? Nothing? It omits that the Australia government has no intention at all, of reducing Australia exports of fossil fuels, in the form of coal and gas. If NPP was honest about having a better environment, the primary goal would be to reduce our global contribution to rapid global heating. This, plus our domestic emissions, however counted, are also major cause of environmental degradation in Australia. There are also many direct harmful impacts of gas and coal mining projects on local ecosystems, water systems, from many new proposed mining projects and ongoing project expansions.

The much touted economic growth that foreign extraction projects are supposed to benefit us with, increases our population and consumption overshoot, to hurry forwards the consequence stage of overshoot, being the collapse in general health and population size of Australia. Already Australian cannot provide affordable housing and rent to everyone, nor give adequate childcare and nutrition to large numbers of our children, who will form a increasing sub-class of itinerants.

Pious of words are found in Box 1, of page 15 in the "NPP" document, say "Australia Government is taking strong action on climate change". Cough, cough, choke.  If only we could believe that lie from a single currently dependent on fossil fuels government. The political trick in Australia is to make a special department, that is limited in scope and power, so that politicians can brush their hands clean and say "mischief duty  done". Another silo department, rather than all of government policy addressing systems predicaments.

We also have siloed and handicapped institutes of Climate Change Authority, and Clean Energy Finance Corporation, survivors of better government efforts now a decade old and now thoroughly chastised by experience. All of this government departments are powerless to limit exported sources of GHG, powerless to limit plans economic growth and more consumption. Powerless to stop for growth of economic impacts on environment. Powerless to reduce our imports of products which required GHG emissions for their production, powerless to stop people throwing away obsoleted stuff on rubbish tips.  We buy most our manufactured goods directly from those other nations, made with the global surcharge of 80% fossil fuels GHG on average.

The NPP is from the outset, misleading and dishonest on climate change policy, isn't positive enough, and allows government to increase our contributions to global heating. This "puts paid" to all valiant efforts to conserve save Australia biodiversity from the consequences of our continued efforts to feed and grow TIC.

I smell that the NPP document has a similar public relations spin. The more it promises change, the more things seem to stay the same.

It is not enough to reduce domestic fossil fuel emissions by 43%. Then claim it was done with help of dubious carbon offsets. And keep importing all the stuff we cannot make here with domestic fossil fuels. The only effective way to reduce global GHG, is to reduce the size and impacts of TIC, to reduce Australia's energy contributions to global TIC. As a consequence Australia must, by biosphere system needs, reduce its GDP, economy, and total energy consumption. This is what will come anyway, with already triggered global biosphere systems collapse, including climate change, and global economic-energy systems collapse - GEEC.

Of course Australian governments have strongly tied commitments to investments from foreign banks, contracts to foreign governments and corporations, military arrangements made to get nuclear submarines. We supposedly placate our energy hungry neighbors with our exports.  To save them the trouble of invasion we allow our resources to be taken by foreign corporations for their profits at global market prices.

Australia is locked into a corrupt AUKUS "global rules-based system", designed to feed the mega-machine economies of developed TIC nations with non-renewable energy and resources, at cheapest prices from subjugated nations, and to hell with the biosphere.

This is the predicament of having evolved from the expansionist and self-domesticated species of homo-sapiens that has perfected its means of death denial. Just follow the money. What a shame!

People ask ‘why don’t we do something?’ and the answer is simple. ‘We’ are not in charge. We already live in the age of machines and have for yonks. Cyborgs made of laws and human collaborators, with computers as mere accessories on their already incorporated bodies. Artificial life has been ruling us for hundreds of years, unseen and unseeing. Of course they don’t give a fuck about the killing. How much do you care about bacteria you nuke in your toilet?

 
- Indi.ca - https://medium.com/@indica/the-only-thing-that-will-stop-america-5bf10ec772ed

“If society does not succeed in changing attitudes and institutions for a harmonious descent, the alternative is to prepare information packages for the contingency of restart after crashing.” — H.T. Odum

“What is the general answer? Eject economic expansionism, stop growth, use available energies for cultural conversion to steady state, seek out the condition now that will come anyway, but by our service be our biosphere’s handmaiden anew.”
— Howard T. Odum, Energy, Ecology, & Economics, 1973

Reality doesn't go away because the intelligentsia agree to dismiss it.
- Eric Lee - Modern Human Extinction Is the Condition That Will Come Anyway, So seek it out now