Climate inertia and politics

Over the next 20-30 years, maybe sooner, Saibai and Boigu in the Torres Straits will almost certainly be the first of the permanently inhabited islands to be drowned by rising sea levels.

At the same time, Australia will experience increasingly frequent and severe climate incidents. These will include:

• heat, sapping water from the ground, increasing evaporation of surface water and killing the old, the infirm and agricultural crops;
• drought, causing bush fires, crop and stock losses, loss of fertile top soil and destruction of property;
• high winds, including damaging cyclones and storm surges causing higher tides, coastal erosion and property losses;
• rising sea levels, threatening the destruction of 700,000 buildings, thousands of kilometres of road and rail, coastal erosion and pollution of fresh water sources; and
• ocean acidification, resulting in destruction of the Great Barrier Reef, marine ecological imbalance and the loss of fish species as a food source.

There is a touch of irony that Queensland, where government and opposition are both committed to fostering greenhouse gas (CO2-e) emissions through their policies, should face a more severe risk of property and economic damage from rising sea levels than any other part of Australia. On page 36 of its report (PDF 750KB), the House of Representatives Committee on Climate Change summarises the ravages expected from rising sea levels. It deserves careful consideration when it comes to formulating public policy and private voting intentions.

Don’t expect other countries to express a shred of sympathy for the growing effects of climate change or its threats to Australia.

On the one hand we have an Opposition led by Tony Abbott, better known as the “Mad Monk”, and an even madder Nick Minchin, who assert that global warming and the need to reduce CO2-e emissions are a left wing international conspiracy and an abomination. Neither has put forward a cogent policy to effectively deal with climate change, though both are agreed we should defer action for as long as possible and oppose any measures put forward by government which do not permit business as usual.

We have a government which, allegedly, accepts the scientific explanation of global warming and is fully briefed on the dire consequences of doing too little. Yet it refuses to reduce our emissions by more than a totally ineffective 5 per cent below 1990 levels until the rest of the world agrees on a higher target. Prime Minister Rudd even assures us he will not sign any agreement unless it is in the “national interest” while studiously ignoring the interests of the planet and the ability of our species to survive on it.

With breathtaking nonchalance (or is it wilful irresponsibility?) both government and opposition ignore the immense damage which climate change is likely to inflict on Australia and its economy in the future. To be fair, this view is voiced as an excuse or justification for doing too little or nothing to reduce CO2-e emissions by the largest emitters, China, USA, India, Japan and Russia. Between them, they are responsible for 57 per cent of global emissions.

All assert that reducing emissions would jeopardise their economic growth. In other words, economic growth in the short (next 10 years) to medium (next 30 years) term is deemed more important than catastrophic economic damage and uncontrollable climate change resulting from refusal to start curbing CO2-e emissions now. None of them, Australia included, are prepared to accept that economic growth can be achieved, while reducing emissions.

None of them are prepared to accept that base load electricity can be generated in the quantities required for economic growth without significantly reducing the burning of fossil fuels. Yet France has been doing so for decades by generating nearly all its electricity needs from nuclear, tidal and hydro sources. Moreover, it has done so without suffering any of the economic disadvantages such as massive unemployment, loss of industries through so-called “carbon leakage” or irreparable damage to competitiveness in the market place.

Our political leaders continue to use the threat of these outcomes as an excuse for refusing to take effective action to reduce CO2-e emissions to a level which limits global warming to less than 2C above pre-industrial levels by 2100. If global temperature rises above this - and at present CO2-e emission levels, they will certainly exceed 5C - the consequences will be very serious. Climate change will become uncontrollable and have catastrophic effects.

The result will be rapid speed-up in melting of land based snow and ice, particularly the polar ice caps, causing a destructive rise in sea levels. The more rapidly global warming occurs and the more it exceeds 2C by 2100, the sooner these affects will be evident and increase in severity. Then it will be too late. We will be faced with the dire socio-economic consequences of our current inertia.

That inertia is evidenced by massive protection of the worst emitters and insistence that Australia will not commit to more than a purely tokenistic 5 per cent reduction in CO2-e emissions below 1990 levels by 2020 unless the rest of the world goes higher. Then, in the middle of the Copenhagen Conference, it was revealed that Australia had under-reported its emissions. While reporting its emissions were on target to meet its Kyoto obligations, they were in fact 82 per cent above them.

One can not argue that just because CO2-e emissions were due to drought, heat and bushfires, they have no effect on our level of emissions or global warming. Yet this is the position taken by the Rudd Government. Dr Peter Cosier of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists has long questioned the accuracy of emissions measurement and veracity of reporting by Australia and his concerns appear to be justified.

Under reporting and the paltry 5 per cent reduction effectively silenced Prime Minsiter Kevin Rudd and his Minister Penny Wong. They were in no position to criticise the intransigent position adopted by China and did not do so. China rejected independent, external measurement and verification of its emissions (surprise!) committing itself to “reduce” the intensity of its future emissions by 45 per cent below 2005 levels. In plain language this means that China, presently the worlds worst polluter, proposes to continue increasing its emissions but do so more slowly.

Nor is it a surprise that China and India co-operated to undermine the Copenhagen Conference by working to ensure that it produced no national reduction targets limiting global warming to 2C or less. And what has been the reaction of our politicians? A predictable silence from government and applause from an Opposition who see the limited outcomes of Copenhagen as vindication for their position of denial and scepticism so ably voiced by those protégées of Ian Plimer, Senators Fielding, Minchin and Joyce.

So where does this leave the Australian government? Its efforts to portray itself as an honest broker on the international stage are in tatters. Government rejection of advice that it and the rest of the world needs to reduce CO2-e emissions by 25-45 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020 has not inspired confidence among its scientists - nor have government efforts to censor them. Only the Greens accept scientific advice on the magnitude of emissions reduction needed and they are in no position to undertake the planning needed for its orderly (and profitable) achievement. Only government is and so far, it has refused to act.

Once we thought we had a stark choice. A responsible government determined to protect Australia and the world from the worst of climate change or an Opposition led by those who deny or are sceptical of climate change or its causes and who are determined to protect and foster on-going production and use of fossil fuels? Well, the differences seem less clear now and without such clarity, the certainty of a double dissolution election becomes less predictable. What more could Opposition Leader Tony Abbott hope for?

Rudd needs to restore the clear difference between government and opposition on climate change and how to deal with it. He needs to explain what his ETS proposals will do to reduce CO2-e emissions, how it will affect our hip pockets - allegedly less than the GST did - and why his proposals are better than those yet to be offered by the Opposition.

For its part, the Opposition has to offer a clear, persuasive and comprehensive policy for effectively dealing with global warming and climate change, a task well beyond its ability if our reduction target is increased from 5 to 25 per cent. This is a likely development if we are to meet our responsibilities for limiting temperature increase to 2C, a decision which Rudd must take by February 2010.

The problem is that an election fought on climate change and ways of minimising its effects is likely to benefit the Greens in the Senate, probably to the cost of the Opposition. For government, having to deal with the Greens has always been regarded as a fate worse than death! That, like everything else, is just an attitudinal problem.