Tuesday, November 14, 2006
The bottom line is... Why Howard wants sequestration to work
November 2006 may go down in history as the month when the last tattered renegade band of global warming sceptics retreated to the hills in strategic defeat. One hundred and ten years after it was first mooted by Swedish scientist, Svante Arrhenious, and nineteen years after NASA scientist James Hansen testified before the US House of Representatives that there was a strong "cause and effect relationship" between global temperatures and anthropogenic CO2 emissions.

Al Gore has managed to convince audiences yet exposed to the unfolding crisis. Worrying evidence continues to be collated from the Artic to the Australia. And it appears Stern gave such a – well – stern economic review to the UK administration that people are demanding that business and their government proxies deliver more than rhetoric.

Even our own Prime Minister, John Howard appears belatedly convinced that anthropogenic global warming is a serious issue; though he remains sceptical that the ‘ordinary Australian’ would be willing to forfeit even a single dollar of GDP growth to do anything about it.

As a result, domestically, Howard continues to be politically timid on the issue. Worse, on the internationally stage he remains belligerently non-committal; unwilling to break ranks with the other Kyoto refusenik, George W. Bush on any policy of significance, from Israel to the so-called "War on Terror”.

Instead, Howard demands a techno-fix and is banking on carbon sequestration to deliver emissions reductions. His government is lavishing subsidies on the coal industry to help them find a fix. $500m of federal government cash (and half as much again from State Labor governments) will be pumped into developing cleaner energy, most going to help the coal industry.

Howard has also come down firmly in support of developing nuclear energy, despite Australia’s reluctance to see other nations – Iran in particular – develop nuclear projects.

In short, Howard’s model Australian economy is one that will only function with a continuously growing input of energy. He is not about to start challenging this paradigm.

So why isn’t solar, geothermal, tidal or wind power attracting such vast sums of government pork? The bottom line is: you can’t export them.

Australia is desperate to develop ‘clean’ coal technology simply to keep export dollars rolling in. If the engineers can pull this sequestration rabbit out the hat, not only can Australia sell the technology to Chinese, more lucratively, we can keep flogging our coal too.

And with the Chinese building one new coal fired power station every five days, it doesn’t appear that they are in much of a hurry to invest in renewable energy sources.

With Kyoto in its twilight years, and a new emissions regime beckoning, the Chinese will be keen to increase their energy consumption and per capita emissions to near developed world levels, before negotiations begin and we all forced to make cuts.

Australia’s export bonanza should be further boosted by John Howard’s revitalised support for nuclear energy. When Australia starts producing nuclear energy, it will seem all the more acceptable to sell it to the Chinese and Indians, to fuel their production of both nuclear energy and nuclear weapons.

At face value, this export driven strategy seems like a good one for Australian consumers, at least in the short term. The resources sector (especially exports) currently drives around 80% of Australia’s GDP expansion each year. This international demand for dollars works to reduce the massive trade imbalance resulting from our insatiable demand for imported plasma screen TVs.

Conversely, if Australia invested in developing cutting edge wind or solar power, the export dollars would quickly blow away. China does not need to import wind and sunshine. And they could definitely manufacture carbon-fibre wind turbines cheaper than Australia.

But this strategy is built on short-term political expediency. There is no grand vision to ween the human race off burning the planet’s natural capital. It’s simply another fix to see us through the next few years, to keep the plasma TVs rolling out the retailers’ doors and the votes coming in for political incumbents.

Meanwhile, the Navarra regional government in Spain has commitment itself to generating 100% of its stationary energy from renewable sources by 2010.

Australia – as result of its addiction to coal export revenue – is going to be left behind, burdened with outdated modes of generating and consuming energy. And with a mucked-up climate to boot.

So when Spaniards are paying virtually nothing for their domestic energy needs, - and producing zero emissions – Australians will still be using energy to dig up energy and then using even more energy to pump and retain the energy emissions.

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