News values on rising water issue May 22, 2007

 (My main focus on rising sea levels on Pacific islands I have combined into one, so here I’ll talk about my three main blogs and their news values...) 

My focus on rising sea levels had a lot to do with proximity. I researched most of my information about local issues in the Pacific on PACNEWS and random articles with the target audience of student islanders and locals. Very rarely did I find Australian articles about a small island in the Pacific. Australian publications tended to focus on government policies, finanical aid and how it’s affecting Australians.
Currency was also a news value in all of the stories because climate change and global warming is an ongoing issue. Rising waters has also been an issue for islanders for a while.
Promience was evident when well-known people made announcements, such as Prince Charles and even Peter Garrett on climate change, green house gases, global warming etc. These announcements always prompted a story to be followed up.
Impact/consequence was evident, as climate change is affecting people in some way.
Timeliness wasn’t too evident seeing as global warming is an ongoing issue, and has been for years.
The novelty – think of the mouse delaying a plane for four hours. There are always novelty stories in the environment. For example, why is it that news programs always end with a feel good environmental story on animals etc.

In terms of opinion pieces, they focused more on politics. There weren’t too many features, just news stories and comment articles.

Some more news stories I thought would be to focus more on what is going to happen to Australia. We know this exists but it’s not focused on in the news as much as other things are.

One billion to leave their homes May 22, 2007

This article scared me a bit. The lead paragraph is very attention-grabbing and goes straight to the point, which is why I think it interested me so much. Although it is not entirely focused on the environmental impacts from deterioration, it mixes with development projects and conflict statistics. One of the mains points is how climate change will be the reason for the largest movement of people from their homes.

To summarise, the piece is basically about the effect climate change has on the world, especially in the Asian region, which is part of the reason for looking into it. It was published by Guardian News & Media on the Sydney Morning Herald as Climate may force 1 billion from their homes.

A BILLION people – one in seven people on Earth today – could be forced to leave their homes over the next 50 years as the effects of climate change worsen an already serious migration crisis, a new report from Christian Aid predicts.
The report, based on the latest United Nations population and climate-change figures, says conflict, large-scale development projects and widespread environmental deterioration will combine to make life unsupportable for hundreds of millions of people, mostly in the Sahara belt, South Asia and the Middle East.
The report, published yesterday, cited case studies in Sudan, Colombia, Mali and Burma as big causes for concern.
According to the development charity, the world faces its largest movement of people forced from their homes.
“Forced migration is now the most urgent threat facing poor nations,” said the report’s lead author, John Davison. “Climate change is the great, frightening unknown in this equation.”
About 155 million people are known to be displaced now by conflict, natural disaster and development projects. This figure could be augmented by as many as 850 million, as more people are expected to be affected by water shortages, sea level crises, deteriorating pasture land, conflicts and famine, the report says.

Here the story takes a tangent, and attributes the information may not necessarily be 100 per cent accurate (hopefully stopping panic half way through the story).

The authors admit that the figures are uncertain “because there are no recent, authoritative global figures on the number of people who could be displaced by climate change”.

“But the lack of knowledge must not lead to a neglect of what can be done now to prevent displacement and to help people who are affected,” says the report, which says the best way to reduce people’s vulnerability would be to reduce global poverty.It draws heavily on the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, which said that by 2080 1.1 billion to 3.2 billion people would be experiencing water scarcity, 200 million to 600 million hunger and 2 million to 7 million a year coastal flooding.The Christian Aid report says: “A staggering number of people are being pushed aside to make way for dams, roads and other large-scale development.”It says this includes 25 million displaced by conflict and human rights abuses, 25 million by natural disasters, such as earthquakes, and 105 million by large development projects.By 2050, it says, twice as many people could be displaced by conflict and natural disasters, but 250 million could be permanently displaced by climate change-related phenomena such as droughts, floods and hurricanes, and 645 million by dams and other development projects.

One of my main questions is whether Australia is safe from this. Is it a proximity concern? This story wasn’t in the breaking news section of the website, and took effort to find. The story is focused mainly on Asia, and it is a common thought of Australians to go “it’s OK, we’re safe”. If you think about it, we very very rarely have to worry about natural disasters, such as tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, tidal waves. We do get cyclones however, only in the Northern parts of the country.

This article also prompts  me to think on what Australians think of the rising water and climate change issue. Is it well-known to people, especially the figures that this article provides? This would be a story to look at.

In regards to news values, the main ones for this piece include:

-impact/consequence. As the article indicates, 1 billion people will be affected. If that isn’t newsworthy, I don’t know what is.

-proximity. This may be a limitation to some areas, for example, an Australian newspaper doesn’t cover stories about the effect global warming is having on Madagascar. But when it affects Australians we do hear about it.

-currency is a big one here. Climate change has been an ongoing issue for years. We all knew at one point years and years ago that eventually, as earth approaches the sun, ice will melt to cause rising sea levels and change natures course. Or we know how quickly humans are using up natural resources.

-human interest is present, when it comes to revealing the impact global warming is having on the billions of people.

-the unsual is a possibility, global warming would have had to be a new idea at some point in history. And it’s also unusual when sea levels rise suddenly, over an extreme.

Climate change a national security issue? May 22, 2007

One interesting aspect of climate change is how it affects people and their everyday lives. Sure, to do with the rising waters, people might not have a home to go to and might have to flee to other countries. But how will it affect nations? You might have this picture in your head (like me) where water might suddenly pour into rooms at any time, much like The Day After Tomorrow or even Titanic.

An interesting take on climate change was a piece by David Cameron, published in the London business publication, the Financial Times. Cameron is leader of the UK Conservative Party which questions his intentions to this comment piece. Is it what he believes? Nevertheless, he takes an interesting view how we can see now, countries fleeing over boarders because of rising sea levels, and therefore becoming a national security issue. In Cameron’s editorial piece A warmer world is ripe for conflict and danger he states:

“Picture Japan, suffering from flooding along its coastal cities and contamination of its fresh water supply, eyeing Russia’s Sakhalin Island oil and gas reserves as an energy source . . . Envision Pakistan, India and China – all armed with nuclear weapons – skirmishing at their borders over refugees, access to shared river and arable land.

“This might look like the minutes from a meeting of Hollywood executives. In fact, it is from a Pentagon memo on the possible consequences of global warming. Climate change is not just an environmental question, it could have a massive impact on international security.”

He points out that people in developing countries will be most affected because of the impact climate change will have on the already scarce resources. He said environmental deterioration already displaces 10 million people a year, which he expects will move to 50 million by 2010.

“Climate change will have a profound effect on developed and emerging economies alike. China’s economy is dependent on Himalayan glaciers to feed its southern rivers. But rising temperatures are now causing these glaciers to melt at an alarming rate.

“In America, Hurricane Katrina turned New Orleans from a stable, wealthy and vibrant city into a wasteland in the space of a few days. In the UK, the Thames barrier, designed to be raised once every six years, is now being raised six times a year. Just one big flood would cost Pounds 30bn, or 2 per cent of UK gross domestic product.”

He says that things need to be done to prevent the impact of climate change, not just change our lives to live with the effects then they come. This raises an interesting question – can we stop climate change? Is it inevitable? How can we prevent it? There are small things people are constantly doing to help the environment, such as the ‘Go Green’ bag campaign and Clean-Up Australia Day, but do these things contribute to climate change and global warming? Cameron has an idea:

“Using more renewable energy sources will also make our energy supplies more secure. By 2020, 90 per cent of UK energy will be supplied from abroad, leaving us vulnerable to political pressure. Reducing our reliance on oil and gas will help fight climate change and reinforce our security…

“Preparing for the consequences of climate change means we must re-evaluate our policies. We need a sharper focus on preventing and addressing climate change in the developing world. We must also examine potential areas of conflict caused by climate changes in planning defence policies.

As early as 1971, Richard Falk argued that environmental change was a security issue and outlined his “first law of ecological politics”: the faster the rate of change, the less time to adapt, the more dangerous the impact will be. The planet has already waited 36 years; it cannot afford to wait much longer.”

Perhaps one way to stop climate change is to “Ban the Bulb” as protesters claimed in India. Masses of people dresses up as penguins (who are greatly affected by climate change due to melting ice caps) held a Midnight Marathon at the India Gate in New Delhi because India is reported to be one of the worst affecteed areas in climate change. The Hindu reported the story `Penguins’ run for a cause.

According to the article, the journalist spoke to one of the protesters, and the penguin said, “We are here to support Greenpeace’s initiative to ban the incandescent light bulb to fight climate change.”  The youngest member of the penguin family added, “It’s not nice to melt our ice.”

Indonesia’s huge waves May 21, 2007

NEWSFLASH! I thought I would look into this seeing as it happened on Sunday in Indonesia, which is in the Pacific, which is an area I’ve been focusing on. The site I got the story from, News.com.au is actually really useful. The article, Huge waves still pound Indonesia effected fisherman and totally destoryed lots of boats.

MASSIVE waves that have damaged hundreds of homes and displaced thousands of people pounded Indonesia’s coastlines for a third day today, forcing fishermen to stay on land and keeping tourists from the beaches.

One person was killed by the huge waves that began hitting coasts across the sprawling archipelago on Thursday and dozens of fishing boats were destroyed by the rushing waters that rose as high as 7m in some areas.

Weather officials say the waves are a result of the accumulation of winds in one spot and are not linked with annual weather patterns.

This paragraph really interested me. I mean, they aren’t linked to annual weather patterns, so what caused them? An earthquake? I thought the story could have a bit more investigation into this would have made a good story. Although I do realise perhaps the information wasn’t released when this article was published, but just stating it’s not linked to “annual weather patterns” is very obvious. Could it be linked to climate change? If I was covering this story, I would have contacted a weather expert to find out more about the incident…Is global warming a factor to consider?

The waves receded to 1.5-2m in some parts today, but weather officials still warned fishermen against sailing in the Java Sea and forbade people from surfing on the popular Kuta beach in the tourist island of Bali.

“Today they (the waves) have decreased relatively. Our forecast for tomorrow is below 1.5m,” Kukuh Ribudiyanto, an official at the national meteorology and geophysics agency, said.

However, the waves could rise up to 3m in the Indian Ocean near the western part of Java, the country’s most densely populated island, he said.

The crashing waves that have struck all the way from Aceh on the northern tip of Sumatra, which was hit by a monster tsunami in December 2004, to the resort island of Bali have triggered panic among residents in some parts.

Among the worst hit was Sukabumi regency in West Java where more than 600 people have fled from their homes.

Memories of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that killed some 170,000 people in Aceh alone are still fresh in the minds of many Indonesians.

This statement could have been backed up by comments from the locals. What is there to prove that the other tsunami is still in minds of Indonesians? I bet it would have been a scare, that is why it would have had more of an impact if a local gave their comments. The story was written by a (unnamed) correspondant in Jakata, so it’s not like the information couldn’t have been gathered.

Climate change a political debate May 18, 2007

A lot of comment pieces on climate change tend to focus a lot on politics and what the government is doing about it.
Here is an interesting comment piece I found by Clive Hamilton, published on the Sydney Morning Herald.

“Individual carbon rationing is one of the most radical ideas to emerge in the climate change arena. In Britain, both the Government and the Tory Opposition are considering a future in which citizens would need a carbon currency to pay for the greenhouse gas pollution that comes with the electricity and petrol they use.

“However, despite a flood of scientific evidence, John Howard is only now accepting that climate change represents any kind of threat to Australia and believes nothing should be done at the expense of the economy. The Federal Opposition is tiptoeing around the subject, wary of being labelled economically irresponsible.”

Most of the comments relate to politics, especially in Australia. It compares to my other focus on the Pacific, where most of the climate change stories were on rising sea levels, because that is the what is affecting the people in the proximity. In Australia and other major nations (including US, UK, Japan and China) the focus tended to be on government policies, plans for the future and campaigns.

How it came to be that a country as wealthy and educated as Australia is so far behind other nations when it comes to the challenge of climate change is now explained in a new book by Clive Hamilton, director of the Australia Institute.

As Hamilton himself sums it up, Scorcher: the dirty politics of climate change is about greedy corporations, craven politicians and public disengagement.

Hamilton, a long-term critic of the Federal Government, argues that it is partly Howard’s heavy reliance on bureaucrats closely aligned to fossil fuel industries and his close personal relationships with coal, oil and aluminium smelting chief executives that has led him to protect them.

That protection, Hamilton says, has come at the expense of renewable industries, the gagging of government scientists, and confusion in the public mind about the seriousness of the threat posed by climate change.

“In the tight little world of greenhouse lobbying, the Prime Minister saw nothing improper in going to the country’s biggest greenhouse polluters to ask them what the Government should do about greenhouse policy, without extending the same opportunity to other industries, not to mention environment groups and independent experts,” he writes.

His criticism of the media’s failure, until recently, to cover climate change seriously (and some media organisations’ decision to support unfounded claims by climate change deniers) is well-founded.

He is critical, too, of the environment movement for taking too long to make climate change a priority ahead of more narrowly based campaigns such as saving forests or whales. These are likely to be painful barbs for green groups which have been pushed to the sidelines as the debate gathers pace.

When assessing the Howard Government’s comments today on greenhouse gas emissions trading as a partial solution it is salient to be reminded not only that Australia refused to ratify the agreement on global warming known as the Kyoto Protocol but that it tried to undermine the negotiations while, at the same time, pleading a special case to allow Australia to pollute more heavily than other countries.

What about Tassie? May 18, 2007

I know I mentioned in another blog about how Australians believe they will be OK against the rising sea level fiasco, because, lets face it, we’re the largest island in the Pacific. But then I thought of Tasmania, they’re technically a small island and I found some articles on how rising waters might affect the small Australian island. Lucky I didn’t forget them right?

In the Sunday Tasmanian, Tim Martain writes Tassie vulnerable to rising sea levels, focusing on a small coastal town in Tassie and how, it might one day, be flooded. It’s a good little local piece and takes the angle I was looking for when thinking about Tasmania.

MANAGED retreat is one option on the table for coastal Tasmanian residents in danger of being flooded because of rising sea levels.

At a packed public forum at Lauderdale in Tasmania’s south earlier this month about 200 residents heard their town was under threat of being flooded as water levels rise.

Clarence City Council has formed a group to study the predicted impact of rising sea levels on its coastal areas and possible responses. “We’re looking at all possible scenarios, trying to get as much info and research as possible,” Clarence Mayor Jock Campbell said.

Clarence Council has received $200,000 in State and Federal Government funding to form plans to deal with the imminent threats.

The Lauderdale meeting was organised by Greens Senator Christine Milne. Speaking at the meeting was geoscientist Chris Sharples, presenting research on coastal vulnerability to climate change in Clarence.

In a 2006 report, Mr Sharples found the open sandy shore of Roches Beach backed by the low sandy plain of Ralphs Bay made the area particularly vulnerable to erosion and recession.

“Roches Beach is one place that is eroding quite significantly.

“Based on my analysis of photos, the beach has receded typically between 5m-10m in the last 50 years,” he said.

An old 1840s tidal gauge at Port Arthur has documented a 14cm rise in the sea level along Tasmania’s East Coast in the last 100 years. The rising sea level is not only leading to accelerated erosion, but bigger and more damaging storm surges.

Senator Milne said when people thought of the impact of climate change they tended to think of Pacific islands being inundated.

“Something people don’t seem to be aware of is that the insurance industry has started inserting into most policies that they won’t be liable for damage caused by sea level rises,” she said.

Senator Milne said so far responses from local governments had generally been patchy.

So I guess at least some Australians have something to think about. Going through articles about rising sea levels, I noticed the main places at risk of sinking are the places very close to sea level. It made me wonder if Australia will lose all of its beaches one day, and will small coastal towns be threatened? Will the Gold Coast eventually be underwater? It’s something not often mentioned.

News Values:

-Proximity for the local area. It was published in a local publication.

-Currency as mentioned before, as climate change is an ongoing global and local issue, no matter where you are in the world, whether it be Asia, Tasmania or even the middle of the desert.

-Impact/conseqence a lot of people are affected one way or another because of climate change or/and global warming. 

For future stories, further investigation into expectations on what plces in Australia will sink first would be an interesting angle.

China in drought May 17, 2007

Australia is in the middle of a drought crisis, but little do we think about others around the world who may be having the same problem. Although here the problem is affecting farmland in the country, the situation in China is affecting 13.4 million people’s drinking supplies.

Reuters News had an interesting short wind-up on China’s problem.

A prolonged drought over a wide swathe of China is threatening drinking water supplies for 13.4 million people and 12 million cattle, the official Xinhua news agency said on Wednesday.

…

Water shortages had also affected 13 million hectares of farmland, it added.

Inner Mongolia, covered by desert in large parts, and the frigid northeastern province of Heilongjiang were seeing similar water shortages and were in increased danger of being struck by dust storms, the report said.

“The China Meteorological Station is forecasting little rain in Sichuan, Chongqing and Yunnan in the next 10 days and floating dust in northern China,” it said.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao warned at March’s annual meeting of parliament that abnormal weather conditions, a warm winter and drought, could reduce the country’s grain production this year after three years of bumper harvests.

There’s another aspect here of global warming and climate change, with expected natural disasters to occur. Reuters News also had an article about this during May.

A spring drought is intensifying across north China thanks to scarce rainfall and high temperatures, drying up reservoirs and farmland and threatening drinking water supplies for millions, state media said on Tuesday.

A top meteorological official warned last week thatChina was likely to be hit by more extreme weather, including typhoons, floods and drought, this year than at any time in the past decade because of global warming. 

In March, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said his country would issue a plan to address climate change.

“Although we’re a developing country, we have nonetheless formulated a response plan for Chinese climate change based on international treaties concerning greenhouse gas emissions,” Wen Jiabao said.
Reuters said “China is the world’s second biggest emitter of human-generated greenhouse gases, which scientists warn are behinf riing average global tempreatures, that in coming decades could wreck havoc through drought, unstable rain patterns, increasinglt intense hurricanes and rising sea levels.”

Let’s face it, climate change is everywhere and has been covered by heaps of publications. I’m sure all general news publications would have had a story about climate change somewhere in their archives over the lat few years, or more recently (even if it is just about how it’s affecting a life or a town, or a natural disaster somewhere in the world).
There were many stories about the drought in China, and how this is connected to climate change but most of them are based on annoucements or reports release. Here the news values include proximity, currency, prominence (most of the stories about China’s drought is based on annoucements from prominent people), impact.

Kiribati: Action on global warming good, but late May 1, 2007

Kiribati is a small island in the Pacific, and the President is aware of the effects rising waters will have on their atoll. Takanori Isshiki wrote Kiribati: Action on global warming good, but late. Kiribati President Anote Tong said he appreciates the efforts of the world in warning the country about rising sea levels, but it is too late to do anything about.

TOKYO (Reuters) – World efforts to stem global warming are welcome but may be too late for nations such as tiny Kiribati, whose people could be forced from their homes by rising seas within decades, Kiribati President Anote Tong said.

A United Nations climate panel is due to formally issue a report in Paris later on Friday that will blame human activities for heating the planet over the past 50 years.

“We’re very happy that now at last there is agreement, that all the countries are in agreement that we have a problem with global warming,” Tong told Reuters on Thursday during a visit to Tokyo in which he met Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

“The question is, what can we now do? There’s very little we can do about arresting the process,” he said.

“We believe it’s already reached a stage where it is irreversible for most countries.”

A draft of the U.N. report projects a big rise in temperatures this century and warns of more sea rises.

Among the nations considered to be at greatest risk is Kiribati, a group of 33 Pacific coral atolls straddling the equator.

Tong said his nation was already suffering, with land and houses washed away and even some public buildings threatened.

But the worst effect was the human toll on Kiribati’s 105,000 citizens, he said.

“It’s about the lives of the people, the homes, the source of livelihood. A lot of our people survive on taro, and the seawater has gone into that, so it’s affecting their lives directly,” he said.

Although islanders have tried to move farther away from the water, the narrowness of the low-lying atolls that are their home means that in the end, their only choice may be to leave, perhaps in as little as 50 years, Tong added.

 Here the article takes an interesting turn, going into the economic side of things and the relationship with other nations. Obivously the journalist has done their homework and seeing where the international aid comes from. 

Despite having little to offer economically, Pacific island states such as Kiribati are courted for their support as a bloc in international forums, including by Japan.

At a meeting in the southern Japanese island of Okinawa last year, Japan promised fresh aid of 45 billion yen ($375 million) to the region over the next three years.

Tong said he was grateful for international support such as this and other efforts to tackle global warming, but feared it was too little and far too late.

“We should have acted a long time ago, and I think that any action that takes place now is dealing with the damage, not stopping the disaster,” he said.

“It’s just like any disaster, like a tsunami in Aceh, but it takes longer to happen. And because it takes longer, it doesn’t seem to attract the same degree of attention.”

What is Australia doing to help the sinking crisis? April 30, 2007

Because this is a world-wide issue, one of many aspects of climate change that need to be considered. UN reports and politicians around the world are combating the issue. UK Conservative Party leader David Cameron is updating reports about the global issue, as is Australian Shadow Minister for Climate Change, Environment and Heritage, and Midnight Oil band member Peter Garrett.

News Values come into play here. Because climate change is current, or an ongoing issue, are politicians seriously interested in the issues or are they trying to win votes? Why is it that not muc is being done to prevent climate change, but are waiting for things to happen before something is done about it. Research has been done, and expectations are laid for what will happen in 50 years time because of climate change, but little is happening to prevent it, as James Cameron pointed out in his opinion piece A warmer world is ripe for conflict and danger (Financial Times).

Another Angle: 

Some Australian publications have looked into ways to help the islands that are suffering. Many reports in Australia stated Labor was contributing aid in the budget for islands threatened by global warming and climate change. Australia Associated Press has a report.

Another story Fed: Govt must focus on helping climate refugees: Labor took an interesting angle, saying how rising waters will affect people on small islands, who will have to flee to other countries, there prompting “climate refugees” as Opposition international development assistance spokesman Bob McMullan said.

Australia’s overseas aid budget must focus on helping Pacific nations threatened by rising sea levels, Labor says.

Several low-lying countries in the region, including Tuvalu and Kiribati, fear they could be inundated as the effects of climate change worsen and residents are forced to flee.

Opposition international development assistance spokesman Bob McMullan said today the federal government should work more closely with Australia’s neighbours to prevent a crisis of “climate refugees”.

“The aid program must … address the impact of climate change in the Pacific and our other neighbouring countries,” Mr McMullan said in a statement.

“Through the aid program, the government should work with partner countries to develop country and regional adaptation plans to climate change.”

The the article really starts to get interesting and went into the funding for detention centres. I think the structure is excellent here and is well-written. News stories hope to create an impact on people, and this one certainly affected me.

Mr McMullan criticised the government for including the funding of offshore detention centres in Australia’s overseas aid budget.

Australia operates detention centres on Nauru and on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea, to hold asylum seekers while their refugee claims are assessed.

The federal government meets all costs associated with the centres.

“By any commonsense reading, overseas aid is about clean drinking water and sanitation, community development and poverty reduction. It should not be about detention centres,” Mr McMullan said.

“This raises real concerns about the effectiveness of our aid spending.”

When I first read this article my initial thought was “the islanders can’t help that their homes are sinking, so why should they be locked up in detention centres for it?” Having the two thoughts together in this article, about the refugees and then suddenly moving onto detention centres, the writer was hoping to create this effect on people. Does this mean people fleeing from their sinking island will have to go into a detention centre? It’s like the government is saying they have a choice – to stand back and watch their homes sink, gradually moving inland until there is nothing left (and then what??) or going into a detention centre for an unknown time. Hmmmm.

Before the ALP conference in April, which is where the matter was discussed, stories leading up to the event indicated climate refugees is a political issue. PACNEWS article Labor push to rescue climate refugees in the Pacific was published March 14 in the lead up to the ALP conference where it was expected they would discuss climate change and fleeing islanders.

Australian Labor Party will be pushed to take an international role in accepting climate refugees from Pacific nations threatened with submersion under rising seas at next month’s ALP conference.

The splinter group Labor for Refugees would lobby for a future Labour government to develop an Australian legal framework to process environmental refugees as islands such as Tuvalu and Kiribati face becoming uninhabitable within decades, due to climate change.

The group also wants the party to agree to work with Pacific countries to fairly accept environmental refugees and lead debate within the United Nations to update conventions to recognise environmental refugees.

Despite influential former World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern last year warning that millions of people in the Asia Pacific region could be displaced by global warming, the Howard Government has refused to acknowledge the prospect of climate refugees.

…

Quite frankly, the existing Government has failed to properly plan for the inevitable consequence of climate change and it’s about time we have a Labor government that will, Labor for Refugees spokesman Daniel Mookhey told The Age.

Mr Mookhey said there was no legal framework for processing climate refugees under Australian or international law because the 1951 international refugee convention defined a refugee as a person who had a well-founded fear of persecution.

What we are saying is that there is a need for protection, which arises as a consequence of climate change, he said.

Mr Mookhey said Australia was the largest country in the South Pacific and should take the world lead in developing a legal framework defining who classified as a climate refugee, which could then be adopted by other countries. However, The Age believes the push is unlikely to be successful because of fears that Australia could be swamped by climate refugees if it developed a unilateral policy without worldwide backing.

Opposition immigration spokesman Tony Burke said it was essential that an international coalition was established as climate refugees would be a problem that affected the world. A formal legal framework is something we would only look at after an international coalition has been built, he said.

However, he said Australia could already assist its Pacific neighbours through the use of a special humanitarian visa.

He makes an interesting point here:

If your home is underwater it doesn’t give you a well-founded fear of persecution but it certainly gives you a good reason to move, he said.

While New Zealand began accepting 75 Tuvaluans a year in 2001, the Australian Immigration Department last month admitted during Senate hearings that it had done no analysis on the impact of climate change on people movements.

Ok, so it’s fair enough what these politicians are saying, but I’ll go into what happened in the conference itself. A group promoting just policies and programs for refugees and asylum seekers Australians for Just Refugee Programs Inc have campaign, A Just Australia, and published a press release on their thoughts of the conference and the decisions made.

National refugee campaign group, A Just Australia, welcomes the policy
direction taken at the first day of the Australian Labor Party National
Conference. Delegates voted to abolish the use of Temporary Protection
Visas, as well as recognising the need to develop guidelines to abolish
the arbitrary time limits that restrict work rights for asylum seekers.

Mouse delays plane April 23, 2007

Ok, this article is awesome. I know it has nothing to do with climate change but it’s so cute! A mouse forced a plane to be delayed for four hours. Take a look at Mouse forces plane delay. We’ve decided my region is the Asia/Pacific for the climate change thing and this fits in (yay!!) because it was a Japanese-bound Vietnam Airlines. I think it does tie in to global warming though, and the whole transportation admitting bad chemicals into the air, causing gas emissions. Maybe the mice know this is happening and are trying to stop flights and stop global warming. Go the mices!