Friday, January 13, 2006
Burning coal answer to global warming, apparently
My generally optimistic outlook on life has taken something of a battering of late, particularly following this week’s AP6 climate meeting.

We’re screwed.

Thinking selfishly, the best course of action for any individual is now to throw your lot in with the polluters and spend your time travelling to exotic places to see habitats that will soon be destroyed.

In their vision statement, the AP6 expressly declares that economic growth is fundamentally grounded on the continued utilisation of fossil fuels (ie theft from our children). The unambiguous message from this week’s meeting in Sydney is that use of fossil fuels to drive economic growth will not be curbed to alleviate something as trivial as anthropogenic global warming. Alternative routes to prosperity will not be entertained. They are too hard, I guess.

This is a fairly frank admission; essentially indicating the Howard government’s vision for Australia is long term unsustainablity. Presumably, therefore, it will be scrubbing all references to sustainabilty ambitions from its literature…..

The outcomes of the meeting have hardly been astounding. Our PM, Honest John, has pledged just an extra $20m per year (on top of the subsidies already lavished on the coal industry) to fund research into burning coal more efficiently and then burying the evidence in geosequestration.

(Last year John Howard spent more than twice that amount ($55m) on political advertising campaign to break the workforce’s will, prior to legislating WorkChoices industrial relations reforms.)

The AP6 have agreed to no cuts, no ‘arbitrary’ targets and no sanctions for not achieving any emissions reductions. Instead, somehow the government will foster technological innovation and transfer. It will work with industry to find emissions reductions.

The regime will be so unambitious that it will undermine progress made by other nations through the Kyoto process. Australian Environment minister, Ian Campbell stated it would reduce emissions by 30% by 2050. But that is 30% below the ‘business as usual’ model, not in fact a reduction at all. Indeed for Australia this may represent a 35-40% increase on 1990 levels. This should be contrasted with climate scientists’ assertions that to avoid damaging climate change we should reduce emissions to 40% of our current rate by 2050.

And the mechanism for achieving reductions (increases, actually) in industry? Err…. Goodwill? Altruism? Quiet word down at the club?

Businesses are ‘expected to accept much of the responsibility and cost of cleaning up emissions’ the reports say. How exactly will this be done, without a regulatory framework, is not explained. Are we going to leave it to industry – and then when they choose to protect shareholder value (like they are legally obliged to do) – we just shrug our shoulders and say “oh well, we asked…”

While the public sector buckles under the weight of federal target setting, Howard assumes emissions reductions, perhaps the most important environmental issue facing the planet, will be achieved with a nod and wink and whopping great big refund to his mining industry political benefactors.

The AP6 has signed away any prospect of global CO2 emissions reductions. It is now a case of battening down the hatches and paying the cost in other ways.

(Although I am not in immediate danger of inundation, my home lies just a few metres above sea level. I should keep it longer than those poor sods in the Maldives, but there is still trouble ahead.)

The Kyoto Protocol is far from perfect (and much of this has to do with the involvement of Australia and USA in the negotiations (see footnote) and their non-involvement in its operation), and will not achieve significant reductions in CO2 before 2012. However, I believe it is the first and best step towards establishing a globally acceptable strategy to cut emissions.

Quite simply, Howard must be stopped. He is putting many people’s lives, and the environment as we know it, in imminent danger. The man is dangerous.

Footnote

Actually, both the USA and Australia pushed heavily for the inclusion of land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF) in carbon accounting at Kyoto. This effectively made it possible for Australia to meet its Kyoto target of an 8% increase (see post here).

But now it seems that the concept of forestry sinks, which Australia is banking on, and was controversial at Kyoto anyway, is being undermined, as forests are thought to be huge contributors to atmospheric methane – a far more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. It could therefore mean that the only solution to prevent excess anthropogenic global warming is real CO2 emissions reductions from reducing fossil fuel combustion and economic growth (if you are using AP6 logic).

Back to the stone age then……

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