Earth Day 2021: 60 Minutes revisits climate change reporting archive
To mark this Earth Day, 60 Minutes looks back on our reporting on climate change and the environment over the years. Apr 22 By Mabel Kabani
This Earth Day, many around the world will spend a second consecutive year celebrating our planet from the relative safety of home, as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to test the world in unprecedented ways.
To mark this Earth Day, 60 Minutes looked back at some of the climate change stories we have reported over the years. We begin in February 2006, and a report we called, "Global Warning!"
01:15 An update on the Greenland Ice Shelf 13:13 Rewind: A global warning 11:35 From the Archives: The age of megafires 13:02 From the archives: Top of the world 13:51 60 Minutes, 2018: California's Camp Fire
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In 2006, Scott Pelley and a 60 Minutes team traveled to the Arctic to speak with scientists, including leading authority on climate change Robert Corell and glaciologist Carl Boggild, to unearth and explain the effects that man is having on the world's climate.
Rising seas, powerful hurricanes and the eventual extinction of polar bears are a few of the major consequences these scientists warned the world about on 60 Minutes over 15 years ago.
In 2007, 60 Minutes reported on a new consequence of global warming—living in an age of "megafires." These are "forest infernos," wildfires that are roughly 10 times larger than the world was used to seeing at the time.
Scott Pelley spoke with the then-chief of fire operations for the federal government, Tom Boater, who explained that "ten years ago, if you had a 10,000-acre fire, you were talking about a huge fire...now we talk about 200,000-acre fires like it's just another day at the office."
According to recent 60 Minutes reporting, the fires that ravaged parts of northern and central California have burned nearly 4 million acres and counting.
Pelley also spoke with Tom Swetnam, one of the world's leading fire ecologists, about how global warming has created these mega-fires, and is continuing to exacerbate them.
"As the spring is arriving earlier because of warming conditions, the snow on these high mountain areas is melting and running off," Swetnam said in 2007. "The log and the branches and the tree needles all can dry out more quickly and have a longer period to be dry."
This causes a longer time period for fires to start.
At Petermann Glacier in Greenland, one of the largest glaciers in the Arctic Circle that has been rapidly melting, the world's leading climate scientists, oceanographers and geologists go just one month a year to work.
In 2016, 60 Minutes correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi and her team traveled seven hundred miles above the Arctic Circle to the U.S.'s Thule Air Force Base in northern Greenland to join these scientists, and report on "one of the most significant efforts to study changes in the climate."
In December of 2018, 60 Minutes correspondent Bill Whitaker reported on "The Camp Fire," a massive wildfire that burned through Paradise, California in November 2018 and claimed 85 human lives. The fire that raged through this small town in Central California destroyed over 19,000 buildings and homes in just its first few hours.
The remains of many victims couldn't be identified with conventional methods such as fingerprints or dental records, and local authorities had to turn to a new rapid DNA approach for victim identification.
Ken Pimlot, the former chief of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, said that years of drought and dry vegetation stemming from rising temperatures were the reason for these blazing fires, and that it was only going to get worse.
"These fires are showing no sign of letting up," Pimlot said. "There's no reason for them to stop based on the conditions that we're seeing...we're now, every year, seeing fires...that are becoming more and more extreme."
Scott Morrison resists pressure for new emissions target at Joe Biden climate summit
"Marjorie Taylor Greene Is the Nihilist Present—and Future—of Right-Wing Politics"
With this i'm not in any way comparing Morrison to Greene, just that our conservatives are a bit slack on the global warming issue. Morrison on climate is not nearly as bad as Trump was with covid, not nearly, just slack.
By North America correspondent Barbara Miller in Washington DC
Posted 8 hours ago, updated 4 hours ago
VIDEO - 1:29 Technical glitches have affected world leaders' statements during a remotely-held climate summit.
"We are well on the way to meet our Paris commitments," Mr Morrison told the summit, which laid bare the gulf between Australia and many of its key allies in how best to tackle the climate crisis.
"We'll update our long-term emissions reduction strategy for Glasgow", he said, referring to the COP26 climate action conference to be held in Scotland in November.
Scott Morrison addressed the climate summit from Australia.(Reuters)
That leaves Australia aiming for a reduction of between 26 to 28 per cent on 2005 levels of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, an ambition about half the size of the revised US goal.
Mr Biden announced the US would aim to increase its Paris target to a reduction in emissions of between 50 to 52 per cent by 2030 on 2005 levels.
He told the 40 countries invited to the virtual gathering that there was a "moral imperative" to take action.
"The signs are unmistakable. The science is undeniable. But the cost of inaction keeps mounting," Mr Biden said.
"The United States isn't waiting."
VIDEO - 2:26 Joe Biden urges climate action, committing the US to halving emissions by the end of the decade.
Ahead of the meeting, US officials had said they expected all countries, including Australia, to come to the table with increased ambitions on reducing emissions if there was to be a chance of limiting global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius and ideally closer to 1.5 degrees on pre-industrial levels.
"It's insufficient to follow the existing trajectory and hope that they [Australia] will be on a course to deep decarbonization and getting to net zero emissions by mid-century," a senior official told reporters on condition of anonymity.
The official said Australia now "recognises that there's going to have to be a shift".
If the running order at the summit was anything to go by no-one was truly expecting that shift to be announced anytime soon.
Morrison's speech plagued by technical difficulties
Mr Morrison was called on as 21st of 27 speakers, well behind China, Russia, Japan, the UK, South Korea and Canada.
Despite the late hour in Canberra, Bangladesh, Brazil and Bhutan were all afforded the opportunity to speak ahead of Australia.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in joins in from the presidential Blue House in Seoul.(AP via Yonhap: Lee Jin-wook)
State Department spokesman Ned Price later told the ABC the he "wouldn't read more into the order or the sequence than is necessary".
"I do not think order was indicative of anything other than temporal sequencing," he said.
By the time Mr Morrison's turn came, Mr Biden had already excused himself from the session.
When Mr Morrison did begin speaking some of his words were lost due to technical difficulties that plagued a number of segments in the summit.
"Mr Prime Minister I'm not sure we are hearing you," US Secretary of State Antony Blinken ventured, before another long pause as Mr Morrison was seen but not heard.
Mr Morrison outlined his stated belief that technology trumps climate action targets.
He did not commit Australia to achieving net zero emissions by 2050, as more than 100 nations have now done, including the US, UK, Canada, New Zealand, Japan and Korea.
China has said it hopes to reach net zero emissions by 2060, an aspiration President Xi Jinping repeated at the summit, telling world leaders that "to protect the environment is to protect productivity, and to improve the environment is to boost productivity".
"The truth is as simple as that", Mr Xi stated, saying China was looking forward to working with the US and the international community, "to jointly advance global environmental governance".
Beeps, echoes and leaders on mute
French President Emmanuel Macron's speech was replayed after technical difficulties arose. (AP: Ian Langsdon, pool)
Technical glitches arose from the beginning of the summit. US Vice-President Kamala Harris's voice echoed as she kicked off the two-day summit by introducing Mr Biden.
That set a tone for the event, which also featured random beeps, still more echoes and the accidental disclosure that French President Emmanuel Macron's speech seemed to be taped.
Mr Macron was just minutes into a speech about the urgency of climate action when Mr Blinken cut in, saying: "Thank you very much Mr President, I now turn the floor to the President of the Russian Federation, his Excellency Vladimir Putin."
Mr Macron's voice continued, however, while the camera switched to the Washington meeting room where Mr Biden, climate envoy John Kerry and Mr Blinken were looking at Mr Putin on a big screen.
The sound then cut as a puzzled-looking Mr Putin could be seen consulting with an aide as he waited for his microphone to be opened.
For more than a minute, the Russian leader was silent on screen, staring forward and not talking except to turn his head toward aides.
"The floor is now to the President of the Russian Federation, Mr Vladimir Putin. Mr President," Mr Blinken continued, inviting Mr Putin to speak.
Russian President Vladimir Putin sat silently for more than a minute before beginning his address. (AP: Alexei Druzhinin, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo)
Mr Putin kept waiting as Mr Blinken could be heard saying off-screen: "We may be getting a tape, because that was a tape of Macron."
Moments later, Mr Putin delivered his speech, after which Mr Macron's speech started again from the beginning.
"We had some technical difficulties," Mr Blinken said.
Mr Macron's office confirmed that his speech had been pre-recorded, as he would be travelling to Chad to attend the funeral of late President Idriss Deby.
During several leaders' talks, phone-dialling beeps intruded and there were several times when stray voices talked over leaders.
Australia creating 'hydrogen valley'
On net zero emissions Mr Morrison said the goal was "to get there as soon as we possibly can, through technology that enables and transforms our industries.
"Not taxes that eliminate them and the jobs and livelihoods they support and create, especially in our regions.
"For Australia, it is not a question of if or even by when for net zero, but importantly, how."
In the run-up to the summit Mr Morrison announced investments of $275 million in regional hydrogen hubs and $263.7 million for carbon capture and storage projects and hubs.
He told the meeting Australia aspired "to produce the cheapest green hydrogen in the world".
"Mr President in United States, you have the Silicon Valley. Here in Australia, we are creating our own hydrogen valley," Mr Morrison said.
Mr Morrison said future generations would "thank us not for what we have promised, but what we deliver. And on that score, Australia can always be relied upon."
Earlier this week the Prime Minister suggested the desire for climate targets was strongest among urban elites, when he said Australia would "not achieve net zero in the cafes, dinner parties and wine bars of our inner cities."
'Nothing wrong with bunny hugging'
UK leader Boris Johnson indirectly addressed this vein of thought when he told the summit: "This is not all about some expensive, politically correct, green act of bunny hugging."
"There's nothing wrong with bunny hugging but you know what I'm driving at friends and colleagues. This is about growth and jobs," Mr Johnson said, after this week announcing his country would aim to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 78 per cent on 1990 levels by 2035.
"'Cake have eat' is my message to you", Mr Johnson said.
Jobs, jobs, jobs was also the mantra Mr Biden was attempting to drive home as he addressed the summit, outlining a vision where workers were gainfully employed building a cleaner energy grid, capping abandoned oil and gas wells and building the next generation of electric vehicles.
CSPAN @cspan President Biden: "The United States sets out on the road to cut greenhouse gases in half, in half, by the end of this decade...these steps will set America on a path of net zero emissions economy by no later than 2050." VIDEO 11:58 PM · Apr 22, 2021 121 21 Tweet
The summit was an attempt within his first 100 days in office for the US to re-assert itself as a leader and reliable partner in action on climate change, following a disastrous four years on that front under former US president Donald Trump, who walked away from the Paris agreement.
"It is so good to have the US back on our side in the fight against climate change", said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
Samantha Gross, director of the Energy Security and Climate Initiative at the Brookings Institution, said the summit had been a success for the US.
"I think the most important thing that this summit did was that it happened, it's a coming-out party in a sense for the US," she said.
"[It's] saying that we're back."
A number of countries did come to the table with increased targets, including Japan which announced that it aimed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 46 per cent by 2030 compared with 2013 levels, up from 26 per cent; and Canada, which was aiming for a 40 to 45 per cent reduction by 2030 on 2005 levels, up from 30 per cent.
Ms Gross said "there's time" for other countries including Australia to follow suit ahead of the much-anticipated COP26 in Glasgow.
If Australia doesn't, it may find itself slipping even further down the speaking order.
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