Intellectual property and biofuels: The energy crisis, food security, and climate change

In light of larger public policy debates over intellectual property and climate change, this article considers patent practice, law, and policy in respect of biofuels. This debate has significant implications for public policy discussions in respect of energy independence, food security, and climate change. The first section of the paper provides a network analysis of patents in respect of biofuels across the three generations. It provides empirical research in respect of patent subject matter, ownership, and strategy in respect of biofuels. The second section provides a case study of significant patent litigation over biofuels. There is an examination of the biofuels patent litigation between the Danish company Novozymes, and Danisco and DuPont. The third section examines flexibilities in respect of patent law and clean technologies in the context of the case study of biofuels. In particular, it explores the debate over substantive doctrinal matters in respect of biofuels – such as patentable subject matter, technology transfer, patent pools, compulsory licensing, and disclosure requirements. The conclusion explores the relevance of the debate over patent law and biofuels to the larger public policy discussions over energy independence, food security, and climate change.

The culture wars of climate change

Of late, there has been a growth in cultural expression about climate change – with the rise of climate fiction (‘cli-fi’); art and photography responding to changes in nature; musical anthems about climate change; plays and dramas about climate change; and environmental documentaries, and climate cinema. Drawing comparisons to past controversies over cultural funding, this paper considers the cultural wars over climate change. This article considers a number of cultural fields. Margaret Atwood made an important creative and critical contribution to the debate over climate change. The work examines Ian McEwan's novel, Solar, a tragi-comedy about authorship, invention, intellectual property, and climate science. After writing a history of Merchants of Doubt, Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway have experimented with fiction – as well as history. This article focuses upon artistic works about climate change. It analyses James Balog’s work with the Extreme Ice Survey, which involved photography of glaciers under retreat in a warming world. The work was turned into a documentary called Chasing Ice. It also considers the artistic project of 350.org 'to transform the human rights and environmental issues connected to climate change into powerful art that gets people to stop, think and act.' The paper examines musical storytelling in respect of climate change. The paper explores dramatic works about climate change including Steve Waters' The Contingency Plan, Stephen Emmott's Ten Billion, and Andrew Bovell's When the Rain Stops Falling and Hannie Rayson’s Extinction. The paper also examines the role of documentary film-making. It also considers the cinematographic film, Beasts of the Southern Wild. Such a survey will enable a consideration of the larger question of whether creative art about climate change matters; and whether it is deserving of public funding.

Projecting excess emergency department visits and associated costs in Brisbane, Australia, under population growth and climate change scenarios

The direct and indirect health effects of increasingly warmer temperatures are likely to further burden the already overcrowded hospital emergency departments (EDs). Using current trends and estimates in conjunction with future population growth and climate change scenarios, we show that the increased number of hot days in the future can have a considerable impact on EDs, adding to their workload and costs. The excess number of visits in 2030 is projected to range between 98–336 and 42–127 for younger and older groups, respectively. The excess costs in 2012–13 prices are estimated to range between AU$51,000–184,000 (0–64) and AU$27,000–84,000 (65+). By 2060, these estimates will increase to 229–2300 and 145–1188 at a cost of between AU$120,000–1,200,000 and AU$96,000–786,000 for the respective age groups. Improvements in climate change mitigation and adaptation measures are likely to generate synergistic health co-benefits and reduce the impact on frontline health services.

Intellectual property and climate change: Inventing clean technologies

In the wake of the international summits in Copenhagen and Cancún, there is an urgent need to consider the role of intellectual property law in encouraging research, development, and diffusion of clean technologies to mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change. This book charts the patent landscapes and legal conflicts emerging in a range of fields of innovation – including renewable forms of energy, such as solar power, wind power, and geothermal energy; as well as biofuels, green chemistry, green vehicles, energy efficiency, and smart grids. As well as reviewing key international treaties, this book provides a detailed analysis of current trends in patent policy and administration in key nation states, and offers clear recommendations for law reform. It considers such options as technology transfer, compulsory licensing, public sector licensing, and patent pools; and analyses the development of Climate Innovation Centres, the Eco-Patent Commons, and environmental prizes, such as the L-Prize, the H-Prize, and the X-Prizes. This book will have particular appeal to policy-makers given its focus upon recent legislative developments and reform proposals, as well as legal practitioners by developing a better understanding of recent legal, scientific, and business developments, and how they affect their practice. Innovators, scientists and researchers will also benefit from reading this book.

Priority threat management of invasive animals to protect biodiversity under climate change

Climate change is a major threat to global biodiversity, and its impacts can act synergistically to heighten the severity of other threats. Most research on projecting species range shifts under climate change has not been translated to informing priority management strategies on the ground. We develop a prioritization framework to assess strategies for managing threats to biodiversity under climate change and apply it to the management of invasive animal species across one-sixth of the Australian continent, the Lake Eyre Basin. We collected information from key stakeholders and experts on the impacts of invasive animals on 148 of the region's most threatened species and 11 potential strategies. Assisted by models of current distributions of threatened species and their projected distributions, experts estimated the cost, feasibility, and potential benefits of each strategy for improving the persistence of threatened species with and without climate change. We discover that the relative cost-effectiveness of invasive animal control strategies is robust to climate change, with the management of feral pigs being the highest priority for conserving threatened species overall. Complementary sets of strategies to protect as many threatened species as possible under limited budgets change when climate change is considered, with additional strategies required to avoid impending extinctions from the region. Overall, we find that the ranking of strategies by cost-effectiveness was relatively unaffected by including climate change into decision-making, even though the benefits of the strategies were lower. Future climate conditions and impacts on range shifts become most important to consider when designing comprehensive management plans for the control of invasive animals under limited budgets to maximize the number of threatened species that can be protected.

The road to Copenhagen: Intellectual property and climate change

In the lead-up to the discussions over IP and climate change in Copenhagen in 2009, the US House of Representatives passed a resolution that it should be the policy of US government officials in discussions over the long-term action under the United Nations Framework on Climate Change to ‘prevent any weakening of, and ensure robust compliance with and enforcement of, existing international legal requirements as of the date of the enactment of this Act for the protection of IP rights related to energy or environmental technology’.

The Doha deadlock: Intellectual property and climate change

In November 2001, Doha hosted trade talks over intellectual property and public health. The discussions resulted in the landmark Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health. The Doha Declaration recognised “that the TRIPS Agreement does not and should not prevent members from taking measures to protect public health” - particularly in relation to HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and other epidemics.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership, the environment, and climate change

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a sweeping, plurilateral free-trade agreement spanning the Pacific Rim.The ongoing, secretive treaty negotiations involve Australia and New Zealand; countries from South East Asia such as Brunei Darussalam, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam; the South American nations of Peru and Chile; and the members of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, Canada, Mexico and the United States. There has also been some discussion as to whether Japan should be included in the negotiations.

Doctors for divestment: Climate change and public health

On the Global Divestment Day on the 13–14 February 2015, doctors and health professionals were at the forefront of the campaign for fossil fuel divestment. In Australia, medical professionals have pushed for fossil fuel divestment, climate action, and re-investment in renewable energy. Professor Fiona Stanley has been a key leader in the debate over public health and climate change, delivering a Monster Climate Petition to the Australian Parliament. In the United Kingdom, the British Medical Association has led the way, with its decision to divest itself of investments in coal, oil, and gas. The landmark report Unhealthy Investments has provided further impetus for the United Kingdom health and medical community to engage in fossil fuel divestment. In the United States and Canada, there is a burgeoning fossil fuel divestment movement. At an international level, there has been a growing impetus for climate action in order to address public health risks associated with global warming.

Think global, act local: The role for councils in climate change

State and local governments are going it alone on climate change. Australian councils are starting to follow, write ANU researcher Dr Matthew Rimmer and climate campaigner Charlotte Wood.

Key opportunities for the future of roads to contribute to Australia's climate change response

Road agencies face growing pressure to respond to a range of issues associated with climate change and the reliance on fossil fuels. A key part of this response will be to reduce the dependency on fossil fuel based energy (and the associated greenhouse gas emissions) of transport, both vehicles and infrastructure. This paper presents findings of investigations into three key areas of innovative technologies and processes, namely the inclusion of onsite renewable energy generation technologies as part of road and transport infrastructure, the potential for automated motorways to reduce traffic fuel consumption (referred to as 'Smart Roads'), and the reduction of energy demand from route and signal lighting. The paper then concludes with the recommendation for the engineering profession to embrace sustainability performance assessment and rating tools as the basis for enhancing and communicating the contribution to Australia's response to climate change. Such tools provide a rigorous structure that can standardise approaches to key issues across entire sectors and provide clarity on the evidence required to demonstrate leading performance. The paper has been developed with funding and support provided by Australia's Sustainable Built Environment National Research Centre (SBEnrc), working with partners including Main Roads Western Australia, NSW Roads and Maritime Services, Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads, John Holland Group, the Infrastructure Sustainability Council of Australia, Roads Australia, and the CRC for Low Carbon Living.

Emerging Powerful Southern Voices: Role of BASIC Nations in Shaping Climate Change Mitigation Commitments

This book chapter explores the role of Brazil, China, India and South Africa (BASIC) in shaping mitigation commitments within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)

Co-benefits of addressing climate change can motivate action around the world

Personal and political action on climate change is traditionally thought to be motivated by people accepting its reality and importance. However, convincing the public that climate change is real faces powerful ideological obstacles1, 2, 3, 4, and climate change is slipping in public importance in many countries5, 6. Here we investigate a different approach, identifying whether potential co-benefits of addressing climate change7 could motivate pro-environmental behaviour around the world for both those convinced and unconvinced that climate change is real. We describe an integrated framework for assessing beliefs about co-benefits8, distinguishing social conditions (for example, economic development, reduced pollution or disease) and community character (for example, benevolence, competence). Data from all inhabited continents (24 countries; 6,196 participants) showed that two co-benefit types, Development (economic and scientific advancement) and Benevolence (a more moral and caring community), motivated public, private and financial actions to address climate change to a similar degree as believing climate change is important. Critically, relationships were similar for both convinced and unconvinced participants, showing that co-benefits can motivate action across ideological divides. These relationships were also independent of perceived climate change importance, and could not be explained by political ideology, age, or gender. Communicating co-benefits could motivate action on climate change where traditional approaches have stalled.

Climate change and forests in India

Forests play a critical role in addressing climate change concerns in the broader context of global change and sustainable development. Forests are linked to climate change in three ways. i) Forests are a source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions: ii) Forests offer mitigation opportunities to stabilise GHG concentrations: iii) Forests are impacted by climate change. This paper reviews studies related to climate change and forests in India: first, the studies estimating carbon inventory for the Indian land use change and forestry sector (LUCF), then the different models and mitigation potential estimates for the LUCF sector in India. Finally it reviews the studies on the impact of climate change on forest ecosystems in India, identifying the implications for net primary productivity and bio-diversity. The paper highlights data, modelling and research gaps relevant to the GHG inventory, mitigation potential and vulnerability and impact assessments for the forest sector in India.

Problems with geoengineering schemes to combat climate change

The accelerated rate of increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration in recent years has revived the idea of stabilizing the global climate through geoengineering schemes. Majority of the proposed geoengineering schemes will attempt to reduce the amount of solar radiation absorbed by our planet. Climate modelling studies of these so called 'sunshade geoengineering schemes' show that global warming from increasing concentrations of CO2 can be mitigated by intentionally manipulating the amount of sunlight absorbed by the climate system. These studies also suggest that the residual changes could be large on regional scales, so that climate change may not be mitigated on a local basis. More recent modelling studies have shown that these schemes could lead to a slow-down in the global hydrological cycle. Other problems such as changes in the terrestrial carbon cycle and ocean acidification remain unsolved by sunshade geoengineering schemes. In this article, I review the proposed geoengineering schemes, results from climate models and discuss why geoengineering is not the best option to deal with climate change.