Kyoto, Australia and honesty

But how valid is this claim and what does it all really mean?

That No4 ranking is based on outdated, pre-1996 data and calculated on a per capita basis.

When it comes to greenhouse gas emissions, Australia produces less than 1 per cent of the global total. Since the 1996 report was tabled, total global emissions have blown out and Australia's contribution in proportion to the total has plummeted.

Based on total emissions, Australia is ranked 16, producing around 1 per cent. How important and what effect is this ranking on a per capita basis? Australia is ranked 53 in the world with just 3.2 per cent of the world's total population. India and China on the other hand combine to account for about 40 per cent of global population. If Australia complied with the Garnaut recommendation and cut emissions by 90 per cent, the overall effect would be a reduction in global carbon emissions of less than 0.9 per cent. Even if Australia cut emissions by 100 per cent, the overall impact on global warming would be negligible if acting unilaterally and without a global mitigation co-operation agreement.

Considering the foregoing begs the question of just why is Australia being publicly promoted as being so vitally important in the global warming issue?

Signing Kyoto does not place Australia on an equal footing with OECD and our other trading nations. Australia is now committed to playing uphill on an uneven field. Because so much was deliberately made of Australia's now defunct No4 ranking, it got many of the OECD governments off the hook with their own policies and commitments to Kyoto. It is more likely that the OECD strategy was to exploit Rudd's inexperience and commitment to Kyoto policies to isolate Australia from the US and hopefully force the US to sign Kyoto.

Much has been said about the strategies used to cut emissions by many OECD and other nations and held out as a model for Australia to follow even when the majority of developed nations in Kyoto failed miserably to meet their targets. But what are these strategies and just what has been achieved? Can Australia successfully implement these same strategies?

When it comes to emissions, the difference between Australia and many of the OECD countries comes down to two basic strategies.

To reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, the OECD nations have:

• outsourced energy intensive industries to other countries; and
• a sizable nuclear component in its energy base loads.

India, China and the former Soviet bloc countries provide low cost manufacturing bases. Australia's remoteness seemed a logical reason to keep its energy intensive industries at home to provide jobs, utilise infrastructure and expand export earnings.

On the nuclear side, OECD nations alone account for 77 per cent of the world's nuclear power generation. Thirty-three per cent of Europe's overall energy demand is met by nuclear. Increasing numbers of reactors are in the design and construction stage. Thirty-one nations worldwide operate 439 nuclear reactors for power generation.