Emerging evidence of abrupt changes in the Antarctic environment - Nature Abrupt changes are developing across Antarctica’s ice, ocean and biological systems; some of these changes are intensifying faster than equivalent Arctic changes, potentially irreversibly, and their i...

The research was published in Nature www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Emperor penguins and three-metre sea level rises: the cost of Antarctica’s warming The West Antarctic Ice Shelf contains enough ice to raise sea levels by three metres, and the tipping point for its collapse could be exceeded even under “best-case” carbon emission reduction pathways...

“Sea levels could rise by three metres and Emperor penguins could be extinct in 75 years as large and abrupt changes unfolding in Antarctica pose profound implications for Australia and the Pacific.”

www.smh.com.au/national/emp...

At 40-whatever-the-fuck, I am now a home owner.This is a thing I never thought I would be.

I’m currently losing my mind grappling with the privilege and luck that got me to this point when so many can’t, and simultaneously how cooked our systems are that so many never will.

Anyway.

My kid rearranged where I keep all the different apps on my phone.

I am now essentially no longer able to function in the world.

Thanks for sharing Tim. Fascinating research and great piece. I keep thinking there must be a good whale and climate legal pathway for influence - but I haven’t sat and thought about it for long enough to find it. Perhaps the ICJ opinion today will help :)

Whale watchers advised to start early as climate change hastens migration As ocean temperatures rise, whales are setting off earlier on their arduous breeding migrations along the east coast.

Great piece on oceans and climate research here. As my colleague mentions, the Australian Government must urgently commit to stronger emissions reduction targets to protect oceans and avoid further devastating events like the algal bloom in South Australia.

🌊🌊📉📉🚨🚨

www.smh.com.au/politics/fed...

Whale watchers advised to start early as climate change hastens migration As ocean temperatures rise, whales are setting off earlier on their arduous breeding migrations along the east coast.

“The iconic procession of humpback whales down Australia’s eastern seaboard is peaking earlier and earlier, likely because their epic migration cycle has been sped up by rising sea temperatures.”

www.smh.com.au/politics/fed...

Thank you Audrey 🙏🏼

You haven’t that I can remember. However, I’m a big believer in having a trusted friend to pull me up if I traverse too far into self serving territory on the positionality arguments. You’re the lucky winner! 💛

Context from Tim, a legal academic, in this thread:

/4

Justice Wigney, said it would parliament (or the High Court) to change things. Otherwise, he said the applicants and others only had recourse to advocacy, protest and the ballot box.

The irony, of course, being that governments ignore the first and are making the second illegal.

/2

If I can sum up what just happened as neatly as possible: a Federal Court judge found the Australian government had ignored climate science when setting emissions targets, appeared to want to find for the applicants, but said his hands were tied by the law of negligence in Australia.

/1

😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

... has been clear and rational principles upon which decisions should be made.

Today, if this judgment stands Torres Strait Islanders - who must bear the consequences of government decision-making no matter how negligent - have become another.

As I said elsewhere, the state of the law is a disaster, partly because judges have been fighting so hard to pull back from the powers they unquestionably have.

This is good. We want judges to do this to some degree. No-one wants a society ruled by judges.

But the first victim in that battle ...

... of this new status quo were drawn - by the Court itself - in a completely different place to where they were before.

I had hoped that today's decision might do the same. The law relating to the equality of the Government before the law has been in crisis for decades. Truly, it is woeful.

... another state of crisis.

The High Court forced the collapse of that well-established system of precedent when it made its decision in Mabo and a flurry of action occurred as the legal fraternity and the legislature sought to rebuild a new status quo. Under this new status quo, the boundaries...

We see exactly the same stages in evolutions to the law. Pre-Mabo, the standing injustice was the question of land rights for Australia's First Peoples. Outside of the NT, there was essentially no such thing, as the Courts defined and refined and shored up the concept of terra nullius through ...

"What are they for?"

This may seem extraordinary, but it is exactly how the jurisdiction of the courts evolves.

The second analogy to natural systems in my thesis was the idea of panarchy. Panarchy is a simplified framework for understanding how natural systems collapse, change and consolidate.

... almost entirely without outside influence. Where that influence has occurred, it has generally attempted (largely failed) to push them to be ambitious.

In a common law world - as with a cell - those boundaries are no less real for being self-made.

But we are in a state of crisis. ...

Like a cell building its own cell walls out of what it consumes, judges originally made their boundaries for what they will and won't do for themselves, often with very little to limit where they should place that boundary.

When it comes to the equality of governments before the law, they do so ...

... relevant legislation up until the widespread tort law reforms in the early 2010s pushed the courts to take that equality more seriously, and yet the courts always withdraw from that power.

Even the 2010s reforms were ambiguous at times, though that largely stems from incompetent drafting.

But even in the first judgment ever to test that legislation, the Court immediately played down how equal that equality should be.

"Of course, when the legislature said governments should be 'equal', they didn't mean *equal*!"

There was no evidence for this claim even back then.

Every piece of...

... the government onto equal footing with private citizens in Australia since the first.

Did you know equality before the law in tort (the type of law that includes negligence) was an Australian innovation? The first time this was legislated was in South Australia way back in the day!

... private citizens.

In the common law world, Courts create much of their jurisdiction autopoetically. They define and refine and shore up the borders of what they can and can't do themselves over generations.

Through my thesis, I mapped every piece of legislation that attempted to put...

... be willing and able to do.

The outcome in today's judgment is devastating. The result is that the Uncles go entirely without remedy simply because the defendant is a government. This sits uneasily with the clear intent of legislatures that governments should be treated equally with...

Back when I was drafting my never-completed thesis, I frequently came back to this question:

If Courts are entirely unable or unwilling to grapple with an issue of injustice at the scale of the climate crisis, then what are they for?

Back then, I was more optimistic about what courts might...

I happened upon my back catalogue of twit hot takes. I still think this is a reasonable take.

We’re slowed down by the ‘splain, when there’s no time to lose. Taylor Swift should write a song about it.

(People like @timinclimate.bsky.social will tell me if it’s wrong, in a non-mansplainey way)

Thanks! It didn’t go too badly :)

Chomp is an objectively correct answer