Could whales and oil platforms be neighbours? Federal Resources Minister Martin Ferguson seems to think they can. He has just released new offshore oil leases, and some of them lie in areas that are flagged as potential marine sanctuaries. Pia Volk reports.

Oil leases compete with marine sanctuary proposals for Government approval. Image: Mike L. Baird.

Nearly 80 oil and gas approvals were made in Australian waters throughout the last 18 months, but not one marine reserve has been declared. Now federal Resources Minister Martin Ferguson has announced new drill and leases in South Australia and the area of Kangaroo Island – the same area that was flagged by Environment Minister Peter Garret for potential marine sanctuaries.

“What you’ve essentially seen is the Resources Minister Martin Ferguson jumping the gun and deliberately trying to get in before these marine sanctuaries have actually legally been declared,” says Peter Owen, campaign manager of the Wilderness Society in South Australia.

“They’ve been flagged and they’re currently being discussed, and now suddenly we’ve got oil acreage released right over the top of one of the more significant marine sanctuary propositions for the whole of southern Australia- the Kangaroo Island Canyons.”

The Kangaroo Island Canyons are very nutrient-rich areas and several species of whales feed there, a fact that has regional manager of the Whale and Dolphins Society Mike Bosseley concerned for their wellbeing.

“Whales and dolphins are vulnerable to being impacted by oil spills in several ways,” Bosseley says.

“One way is by eating the oil either directly in the water or if it gets onto fish. Another way is by absorbing it through their skins and another way is when the oil vaporises it just lies above the surface of the water and the whales and dolphins can breathe it in.”

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A similar case of conflicting interests between oil drilling and environmental protection occurred in Western Australia. There, a spokesperson of Mr Ferguson’s told The West Australian newspaper that the areas would continue to be evaluated as a marine reserve by the federal Environment Department, but within the framework of existing oil and gas leases.

“You can’t have a marine sanctuary with oil drilling in the middle of it… that completely defeats the purpose of having a marine sanctuary,” says Peter Owen. “What we’re basically calling on with the Rudd government is to make a decision here.”

Owen warns that the risk of accidents is very real.

“If you were to have an oil accident out where this is being proposed in the Kangaroo Islands Canyon area, you would decimate much of Kangaroo Island, which is South Australia’s tourism Mecca,” he says.

“You would then potentially also decimate much of the gulf areas and see oil washed up on some metropolitan beaches in Adelaide… We really can’t afford to take this type of risk.”

Pia Volk is a producer for The Wire .

According to a new report published in Nature magazine by a team of international scientists, the global ocean’s upper layer is definitely warming up. Sophie Perri talks to CSIRO Climate modeller Tony Hirst about climate change, and the state of our oceans.

An example of coral bleaching. Image: Matt Kieffer.

Tony: Over the periods of good instrumentation we are getting warming of about point four degrees near the surface, this is over about the past 18 years or so and about point one degree warming at about 500 metres or so, roughly speaking. This may not sound like a huge amount but it’s expected to be ongoing and is contributing as I say about one millimetre a year to see level rise.

Sophie: Why are the oceans so critical to our understanding of climate change?

Tony: They provide quite a bit of buffering, where they absorb a lot of the heat which is being trapped by the increased greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere and then they go and mix it down to a considerable depth away from the surface and that leaves the surface rather cooler than it otherwise would be. Unfortunately though the heat of the water at depths causes it to expand and as it expands that causes sea level rise to happen, and so sea level rise is occurring we measure at about two to three millimetres a year and about half of that is due to the warming of the sub-surface waters.

Sophie: What does ocean warming suggest about the pattern of climate change? What is this telling us exactly?

Tony: It’s providing us with more evidence that the pattern of climate change is progressing as expected. Which means warming currently, over the surface over-all, of about point two degrees or so per decade is increasing as greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere increase.

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Sophie: So Tony, what does this mean for the coral reef and fish stock?

Tony: For coral reefs, if you get temperatures above a certain level then there’s increased risk of bleaching of the coral reefs, in which case the coral may become damaged which may well result in damage to the reef. At exactly what temperatures that will occur is still a matter of scientific investigation. But we have had two severe bleaching events in the past decade and we expect more as the upper ocean waters warm up.

Sophie: What will be the impacts of the seas warming on the El Niño la Niña weather pattern?

Tony: That’s an area of very active research and currently the research suggests that we would be more inclined to have more El Niño like conditions going forward… So as to what’s likely to happen next, well that all depends on the future amount of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. If the greenhouse gasses stay in the atmosphere for a long time at about similar levels as they are today then we would expect the oceans to keep warming at similar rate and that warming will continue for centuries because the heat will gradually mix down into deeper and deeper ocean, and taker centuries to get down to the deepest oceans. If however, the level of greenhouse emissions continues to increase, that warming of the ocean will intensify and that will cause increased rates of sea level rise which will then be ongoing for centuries after that. Sea level rise is a very long term thing, and once you get it started its hard to stop it. Unless, the only thing that would stop it would be a major reduction in greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere and that’s going to be probably quite hard to achieve.

By Ryneisha Bollard

A skyline polluted with carbon emissions. Image: Ian Britton

Following the Australian government’s decision to delay an Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) till 2012, the U.S. government has released their own ETS draft along with other plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions under a new climate bill.

Stephen Howes, Director of International and Development Economics at the ANU’s Crawford School of Economics and Government, spoke to the Wire about what this means for Australia.

Stephen Howes: There is a strong emphasis in this bill on providing rebates to consumers. So consumers will be compensated for those price increases just as they would have been under the Australian scheme. So it’s similar to the Australian scheme it just has even a stronger focus on compensating consumers and that makes a lot of sense

So the idea is you’re not compensated on the amount you individually use because if that was the basis then you would have no incentive to be more efficient with your energy use.

But you’re given compensation on the basis of, you know, how much the average household or a household of your type would be using. So the consumer is shielded from that price impact, but again the incentive is there for all consumers to use electricity more efficiently, and for producers to switch from high emissions to low emissions technology.

Ryneisha Bollard: The climate legislation, apart from the ETS, does include things like renewable energy?

Stephen Howes: It has a lot of provisions relating to different technologies and most of them relate to government investments, so governments will invest in carbon capture and sequestration, you know so-called clean coal, there are financial incentives to support the nuclear industry and I assume there are financial incentives for the renewable energy sector. There isn’t a separate renewable energy standard as we have in Australia now.

Ryneisha Bollard: Kevin Rudd has put part of the blame on the delay for and ETS here on the lack of progress on climate change internationally. Do you think he can still make this argument given that the US is developing an ETS of its own?

Stephen Howes: The Australian position has always been that we are going to cut our emissions by at least five percent, no matter what other countries do, that has been our position. And then envision we would do more if other countries do more.

The government has always said that five percent sounds like a small number, but its actually not going to be easy to achieve.

So the real question about the Australian Government position I think goes beyond what’s happening in the US, its about how we’re going to achieve that five percent and we really don’t have policies in place to achieve that. In terms of the significance of this piece of legislation, its certainly a step forward for the US, I think it’s a big step forward, but it is only a step, so its not at all guaranteed that the senate will pass this bill.

There has been attempts in the past, and while the numbers have gone up they haven’t gone close to passing it yet. If it were passed, then if the senate and the house were able to reconcile their two bills and you actually got an act to the president, I mean that would transform not just the outlook for action in Australia but the whole global outlook.

So it’s a very significant voyage America’s engaged on, this Bill takes them forward, but does it take them all the way?

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Ryneisha Bollard: How effective do you think an emissions trading scheme is on reducing carbon emissions?

Stephen Howes: Well I think everyone would agree that unless you have a price on carbon, you wont get an emissions reduction and an emissions trading scheme is just one way to get a price on carbon. So I think a price on carbon is essential to get any reduction on emissions.

It’s not the only instrument you need, but it is an essential part of the policy mix and where it’s been tried, which is in the European Union.

You know, for all the problems that the European Union’s had, they have seen that the emissions trading scheme and the carbon prices its introduced has seen a reduction in emissions.

It’s not just a theoretical proposition it has a track record as well.

Ryneisha Bollard: You did mention that, if they do get it past it would have a significant impact on progress on a global climate deal, could you just elaborate with that? I mean what kind of immediate actions after that do you think we’d see. Do you think we’d see? Do you think we’d see more countries taking on climate legislation including an emissions trading scheme?

Stephen Howes: Yeah, you know you can look at it historically and the fact that we had the Kyoto protocol which the US signed, but then never ratified, and that failure weakened that protocol. And so right from then, I think the absence of US leadership more than anything else has hurt the global climate change efforts.

So just symbolically for the US to move forward in this would have a galvanizing effect. First of all in other developed countries such as Australia and Japan who are considering carbon price.

But then, equally importantly, or more importantly, in the developing countries, you know now as a result of Copenhagen countries like China have got quite ambitious targets to contain their emissions. And they’re now thinking about, “Well what policies do I put in place to contain those?” But you can hard expect China to put in place a price on carbon, you know unless the United States does.

China might end up doing that anyway but there’s certainly a high probability of China doing it, and it would be a higher carbon price if the US goes and does it.

So I think as well as a much better atmosphere for the international negotiations you’d see an effect on developing policies in both the developed and the industrialising countries.

Ryneisha Bollard is a reporter from the Wire.