Ignoring the climate won't leave much change

CLIMATE CONTROL

A new report by Deloitte Access Economics has found that Australia would lose more than $3 trillion and 880,000 jobs over the next 50 years if global warming remains on track to exceed 3 degrees Celsius, while a new COVID-19 recovery based on a net zero 2050 target could grow the economy by $680 billion.

As the ABC and — shock horror — The Australian ($) report, the modelling finds that Queensland, the Northern Territory, and Western Australia would feel the worst economic impacts under the “do nothing” scenario, with trade, tourism and mining some of the most-exposed industries. Australia as a whole would also experience “economic losses on par with COVID, getting worse every single year due to unchecked climate change” by 2055.

The news comes after last Friday’s National Bushfire Royal Commission’s final report emphasised that Australian governments must prepare for worsening, climate change-driven natural disasters by, as The Sydney Morning Herald reports, creating stronger peak agencies, better warning systems, and faster military deployments.

PS: For context, the November 2019 UN emissions report found the world is on track for a 3.2 degree increase even if countries meet their 2030 Paris commitments — which, as the Academy of Technology and Engineering found in June, Australia is on track to miss (at least without cheating with 2020 “carryover credits”).

LABOR'S QUEENSLANDSLIDE VICTORY

Following Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s third electoral win on Saturday and — according to ABC’s latest figures — a state-wide swing to Labor of 4.8%, The Courier-Mail ($) reports that LNP MP and almost-challenger in June David Crisafulli has told a told a private roomful of supporters “I burn to win” and that “from the ruins of tonight must come change”.

With Deb Frecklington pledging to stay on as leader just months after seeing off an attempt to replace her with Crisafulli, The Guardian reports that LNP members have begun agitating for a post-election state council meeting to resolve conflicts between the party’s membership, its office bearers and its state leader.

Elsewhere, the Brisbane Times reports that One Nation and Clive Palmer are licking their wounds, while The Guardian notes that the Greens have taken the only seat lost by Labor — from former deputy premier Jackie Trad — and saw a large swing in the inner-city seat of Cooper.

ONLY A SMALL JUMP

According to the ABC, NSW health authorities will include a COVID-19 case linked to south-west Sydney’s Hoxton Park cluster in today’s case count, after the new case — a child who visited the Flip Out Trampoline Park in Prestons — was identified at 8pm on Saturday.

The news comes after Australia yesterday recorded our first day of no new cases due to community transmission since June. In light of this, according to The West Australian ($), WA will not require travelling Victorians — including Melbournians — to get permission before entering the state from November 14.

Elsewhere, The Age reports that Melbourne retailers enjoyed a stellar first weekend of trading in 15 weeks, but banks and economists are nonetheless bracing for a flurry of small business insolvencies ahead of the withdrawal of JobKeeper.

PS: On the international front, CNN reports that Boris Johnson has announced a second national lockdown following weeks of expert warnings, and has since been accused of “giving in to scientific advisers” by former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith.

FAUCI SLAMS THE WHITE HOUSE

Three days before the US election, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease Dr Anthony Fauci has slammed the White House in an interview with The Washington Post for allowing the national COVID-19 strategy to be shaped in part by a neuroradiologist with no training in the field of infectious disease.

Fauci is generally trusted throughout America and has generally bitten his tongue over Donald Trump’s handling of the pandemic, but, following the interview, CNN reports that White House deputy press secretary Judd Deere has accused the expert of “breaking with all norms … to choose three days before an election to play politics”.

Speaking of, The Guardian’s poll tracker puts Joe Biden ahead of Trump in at least six of eight swing states, while The New Daily reports that America has recorded 90 million early ballots despite a series of attempts by Trump’s campaign to suppress absentee voting. For example, The New York Times’ reports that Minnesota Republicans won an appeal to a Republican-controlled court on Thursday to block any mail-in ballots that arrive after 8pm on election day, a reversal of the state’s seven-day grace period.

PS: In depressing but not at all surprising news, Politico reports that a working paper by Stanford University economists has found that Trump rallies between June and September may have caused some 30,000 COVID-19 infections and more than 700 deaths.