COP26 Glasgow - ongoing optimism but what's the reality ?

The 26th Meeting of the UN Climate Change Council of the Parties (COP) Conference will be held in Glasgow, Scotland between the 31st October to the 12 November 2021. Co-hosted with Italy, this COP was delayed due to COVID-19. The Conference brings together world leaders and negotiators to monitor progress against the existing Paris Agreement and seek a common way forward with reducing the threat caused by climate change. But how effective will COP26 be, compared to the previous conferences ?

COP26 has 4 stated primary objectives -

1. Secure global net zero by mid-century and keep 1.5 degrees within reach
2. Adapt to protect communities and natural habitats
3. Mobilise finance
4. Work together to deliver

Participating countries have been asked to bring forward ambitious 2030 emission targets that align with reaching net zero by around 2050. To reach this outcome, countries are being asked to accelerate the phase out of coal, curtail deforestation, speed up the switch to electric vehicles and encourage investment in renewables. While these are all essential steps to take, several countries will still need time to manage the transition particularly ending reliance on coal and  switching to electric vehicles.

Australia regretably lags well behind on almost all of these actions with the exception of investment in renewable energy generation that has increased over the past few years. Electric vehicle promotion has been largely managed by private organisations rather than government and remains woefully inadequate.

The Conference is also seeking to take steps to enable the protection and restoration of ecosystems affected by climate change; build defences, warning systems; and resilient infrastructure and agriculture. These are tall orders for mitigating the effects of the very drastic weather events now taking place across many parts of the planet. Agriculture, for example, may need to adapt with new food crops such as ancient grains in order to be sustainable.

Developed countries are expected to make good on their promise to mobilise at least $100bn in climate finance per year by 2020. It will be interesting to see if this has occured with the impact of COVID-19 still affecting many parts of the world including the developed countries. COP26 is also seeking to finalise the Paris Rulebook that provides the detailed requirements to make the Paris Agreement operational.

Lofty ideals and good intentions. COP26 has the right messages but with the evidence building that a 1.5C increase in temperature is now inevitable, the actions will need to be faster than the rhetoric.

Link to the website: COP26 Glasgow

The Archibald Prize for portrait painting - 100 years and still going strong

2021 Winner: Guy Warren at 100 painted by Peter Wegner

The perennial public favourite in the visual arts, the Archibald Prize for portrait painting has opened at the Art Gallery Of NSW with the prize itself reaching its 100 year milestone. This year some 52 paintings were selected as finalists from the 938 entries. The 'Árchies' as they are affectionately known, are always perceived as a bit of entertainment as much from seeing which artists are selected to be exhibited as to whom they chose to be the sitters and subjects of their work.

The somewhat sentimental winner is a portrait by Peter Wegner of Guy Warren who turned 100 this year in a coincidental symmetry with the anniversary of the prize. Warren won the 1985 Archibald prize for his portrait of artist/sculptor Bert Flugelman and has been featured seven times in the Archibald exhibition.

This year there are a number of first time finalists as well as many established names such as Kate Beynon, Natasha Bieniek, Jun Chen, Lucy Culliton, Tsering Hannaford, Richard Lewer, Fiona Lowry, Mathew Lynn, Euan Macleod, Thom Roberts, William Mackinnon and Nick Stathopoulos.

The subjects chosen are varied with portraits of artists such as Gareth Sansom, Joe Furlonger and Del Kathryn Barton; art dealers and collectors such as Stuart Purves and Liz Laverty and a smattering of public figures such as COVID public health professional, Professor Raina Macintyre, NSW Governor Her Excellency the Honourable Margaret Beazley AC QC, journalist Kerrie O'Brien, Australian of the Year Grace Tame, actor Rachel Griffiths to name a few. Portraits of politicians are largely absent.

Along with the Archibald Prize there is also the Wynne Prize for landscape painting or figurative sculpture. This year the finalists include a strong presence of indigenous artists reflecting their increasing engagement for this prize in particular, which resonates with their connection to the Australian landscape.  This year's entries maintain their use of large canvasses with vivid colours capturing either a mix of myths from country or direct representation of fauna or features of the land.

The Archibald, Wynne and Sulman prize exhibitions run from 5 June to 26 September 2021 at the Art Gallery of NSW

Chocolate - a short history

                                                                                            Shutterstock

Chocolate, a vice for some, a special treat for others. Described by Swedish botanist, Carolus Linnaeus as the "food of the Gods" (Linneaus gave the cacao tree its  formal botanical name 'Theobroma Cacao'), chocolate has travelled across the world in many forms since the 16th Century. A short history is summarised -

• In 1502 Columbus returned to Spain from the Americas with the cocoa bean. Unfortunately Ferdinand of Spain was unimpressed (and Columbus had been something of a nuisance to Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain in any case so there was even less interest)

• Years later in 1517 Conquistador Hernan Cortes and his expedition come into contact with the cocoa bean with the Aztecs and their Emperor, Montezuma. Cortes establishes cocoa bean crops in Spanish territories in Africa and the West Indies with the bean arriving in Austria and Italy.

• Anne of Austria and Louis XIII of France are married in 1615 and Anne brings her love of chocolate to France.

• Chocolate drinking is promoted  in London through public advertisements in 1657 with special Chocolate Houses becoming preferred places instead of the then popular Tea Houses. Chocolate continues to gain popularity throughout Europe.

• In England, Dr Joseph Fry establishes the first large-scale manufacturing enterprise using steam engines that grind beans in 1795. The Industrial Revolution enables larger production volumes to be achieved.   

• C J Van Houten in Amsterdam in 1828 discovers how to extract cocoa butter from the cocoa bean producing a smooth dry powder. He also invents a machine which chemically adjusts the natural acid of the bean through alkalines.

• The 1870s see Daniel Peter of Nestle creating milk chocolate bu adding condensed milk into the production process. Randolph Lindt develops a process of heating chocolate dough and then using rolling through the chocolate creating a liquid form still in use today.

Chocolate has been with us for over 500 years with a world-wide following crossing borders and cultures.

Sydney's temperatures and increased heat from climate change

                                                                                                  Shutterstock

Extreme weather events have focussed attention on the effect of temperature in large urban centres. None more so than for cities that have large built-up precincts and are subject to urban overheating.

Urban overheating can be caused by multiple factors including building materials (which absorb rather than diffuse solar radiation), human activity and air pollution, dense closed-in areas with little vegetation and few open areas to name a few.  

Research from the University of NSW has found that the mean daily maximum temperature was between 8 and 10.5 degrees Celsius hotter in Western Sydney than the Central Business District (CBD) of the city. Western Sydney was measured as being 20 to 50 kilometres inland.

For the inner suburbs of Sydney, located 8 to 12 kilometres inland from the CBD, the temperature variation was 5 to 6.5 degrees Celsius.  

One reason that has been proposed for this significant heat variation is the proximity of the Sydney CBD to the ocean with coastal breezes cooling the  inner city but unable to penetrate further inland.

Global warming - the other Greenhouse gases

                                                                                                 Shutterstock

Most of the public discussion and policy focus is rightly concentrated on carbon dioxide emissions however sight should not be lost on the other Greenhouse Gases (GHG) that are also being emitted in smaller quantities and which do pack a sizeable environmental punch.

ANZAC Day - 25 April 2021

                                                                                                    Shutterstock

ANZAC Day and the sacrifice of the servicemen and women in time of war and conflict becomes momentarily, centre-stage. According to the Australian War Memorial, a total of 102,911 Australians have lost their lives as a result of service with Australian units since 1885. The range of wars, police actions, regional conflicts and disaster recovery is diverse in scale and duration as demonstrated below. The dates of the conflicts and actions are adjusted as many service personal died later as a result of their injuries or as a result of post war reconstruction activities such as occupation forces or mine and ordinance clearance.

Conflict	Dates	Mortalities
Sudan	1885	9
South Africa	1899-1902	589
China	1900-1901	6
First World War	1914-1921	61,605
Second World War	1939-1947	39,654
Australia: bomb removal Japan – Occupation force	1947-1950 1947-1952	4 3
Papua and New Guinea	1947-1975	13
Middle East (UNSTO)	1948	1
Berlin Airlift	1948-1949	1
Malayan Emergency	1948-1960	39
Kashmir – UN observer	1948-1985	1
Korean War	1950-1953	340
Malta	1952-1955	3
Korean War – Armistice	1953-1957	16
Southeast Asia (SEATO)	1955-1975	10
Indonesian Confrontation	1962-1966	22
Malayan Peninsula	1964-1966	2
Vietnam War	1962-1975	521
Thailand	1965-1968	2
Irian Jaya	1976-1981	1
Western Sahara (MINURSO)	1991-1994	1
Somalia	1992-1994	1
Bougainville	1997-2003	1
East Timor	1997-2003	4
Afghanistan	2001 - present	43
Iraq	2003-2013	4
Solomon Island (RAMSI)	2003-2013	1
Indonesia (Sumatra Assist)	2005	9
Fiji	2006	2

Lest we forget

Climate change - the challenge of not exceeding a 1.5 degree Celsius increase

                                                                                         Shutterstock

Global management consulting firm, McKinsey & Co, has provided a simple summary of the impact of a 1.5 degrees Celsius increase in temperature and the solutions to prevent crossing this critical threshold. These can be listed as -

Impacts

• weather events become more extreme and frequent. These include wildfires, hurricanes, severe storms, drought, flooding and very high temperatures.
• climate feedbacks occur such that climate change triggers changes on the planet which lead to further changes in the climate and an ongoing cycle occurs becoming self-reinforcing. The higher the temperature, the greater the effect.
• climate feedback include higher temperatures contributing to the loss of forests which in turn lead to the loss of carbon capture, increased carbon release and correspnding higher climate change levels.
• loss of ice cover warms the Earth with less reflective cover from the sun and hence contributes to further temperature increase.
• the current situation where climate change can already been felt is the result of an increase of 1.1 degrees Celsius.

Solutions

• 75% of emissions of CO2 relate to energy production and use so this is a primary focus.
• power companies have been moving away from traditional coal and gas burning and moving to renewables such as solar and wind power. Clean hydrogen or green hydrogen is the new growth opportunity.
• Carbon capture and storage is essential to get CO2 out of the atmosphere. This is best achieved through reforestation since plants absorb carbon. However each year an area the size of Greece is being deforested. McKinsey & Co believe that by 2030, reforestation would need to be the size of Turkey.
• food production is a major source of the greenhouse gas, methane. Cows are the major source of methane although rice production also contributes to this gas. All the cows on the planet currently generate emissions "roughtly on a par with the United States". This can be addressed though various measure such as less beef consumption, changes to certain breeding and genetic selection, methane inhibitors, feed-mix additive changes.
• road transport accounts for around 15 per cent of CO2 with electrification of vehicles seen as a viable solution using green generation source and battery storage being the pathway aways from emissions.
• heating (such as space and water heating associated with buildings) accounts for 5 to 8 per cent of global emissions. The solution is adaption to using green energy sources for power.
• increased efficiency in production and process optimisation in heavy indsutry is a critical related step. Recycling of steel has been identified as a key influence on reducing emissions.

While various initiatives have been taken to commence applying many of these solutions, including most notably in the private sector, concerted support from National Governments is still needed worldwide in order to effect the transition in multiple industries. To do less will lead to unthinkable failure.