climate policy
29 Nov 2011
We've Got Climate Cred - Now What?
With clean energy laws passed, Australian reps can speak with credibility about international climate policy. Sophie Trevitt reports on expectations about the UN climate talks in Durban
This month, the Clean Energy Bills passed through the Senate and were enacted into law. Australia took its first step towards preventing dangerous climate change — joining almost 100 other major economies that have implemented accountable policies to reduce carbon pollution.
Now, Australia stands alongside nearly 200 countries in Durban, South Africa, for the United Nations Climate Conference 2011. Australian representatives can for the first time speak with some credibility in this international forum, having implemented a domestic policy that provides a framework for reducing carbon dioxide emissions.
The International Energy Commission has recently released research which suggests that if our consumption of fossil fuels is not drastically and immediately reduced, we will face runaway climate change within five years. That means more extreme weather events like Cyclone Yasi, bushfires and extreme heat waves for Australia — and it means many of the Pacific Islands will become uninhabitable.
With some progress made in Cancun last year, the question hanging above Durban is how much and how fast substantive progress can be made. Negotiations this year are expected to shift away from the symbolic rhetoric that has characterised previous conferences; and hopes remain high that strong cooperative action will be instigated.
A strong, binding treaty is an unlikely outcome of Durban but this year’s conference still offers a new opportunity to make the elusive treaty a very real possibility within the next five years. Two key goals for many civil society groups, small island nation states and some of the world’s least developed countries at the UN Climate Talks are the signing of a second commitment period to the Kyoto Protocol; and serious commitments by developed countries to help less developed countries adapt to, and mitigate the effects of, climate change.
In Cancun last year, the international community agreed to limit global temperature increases to two degrees or less. One of the most lauded successes of the conference was the lifeline thrown to the Kyoto Protocol in the context of the US’s highly hostile domestic political environment; and Japan’s refusal to, under any circumstances, agree to a second commitment period.
The Kyoto Protocol survived, but its fate is to be determined in the next 10 days. As the first and only legally binding treaty to reduce global emissions, Kyoto covers the countries that are historically responsible for most emissions and commits them to reductions. Australia’s domestic policy reforms now mean that Kyoto is an opportunity for developed nations like Australia to agree on emission reduction targets and link their carbon trading schemes.
The Durban Climate Talks, and a commitment to the continuation of the Kyoto Protocol will hopefully provide Australia with the incentive to increase its woefully low emissions reduction target of 5 per cent to something in keeping with the average reduction target of comparable economies, around 19 per cent. Australia’s domestic action, alongside the action of almost 100 other economies, may serve to shift the "treaty before action" attitude in favour of more cooperative efforts.
The second issue that is expected to dominate the talks at Durban is the commitment by developed nations to help less developed countries adapt and mitigate the effects of climate change. Historically, countries like Australia, the United States and Britain have consumed the most fossil fuels and contributed the most to climate change. It is smaller, poorer countries however that will suffer the brunt of the effects of climate change as food shortages increase and fresh water supplies become more scarce.
Earlier this year, during the Panama Climate Talks, Australia and Norway crafted a proposal that dealt with mitigation pledges. It was controversial but the talks during the year indicate a commitment to the process and a shared desire within the international community for action. It is of pivotal importance to most of the less-developed world, however, that strong action is coupled with fair and just decisions that allocate funding from the Green Climate Fund and distribute the $100 billion that developed countries have committed by 2020. Distribution of these funds is the only way many less developed countries will have any chance of transitioning to low carbon economies as they deal with the adverse effects of climate change.
Australia has good reason to celebrate enacting our first climate laws. The Climate Talks in Durban present an opportunity for Australia to catch up with the rest of the world before it is too late. We’ve taken the first step at home. Now we need to join with the international community and pledge to dramatically cut our emissions by at least 15 per cent; investing in the renewable alternatives available in Australia as one of the sunniest and windiest countries in the world.
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Posted Tuesday, 29 November 11 at 12:03PM
The IEC report said that there so much fossil fuel infrastructure planned worldwide over the next five years that, if built, it would mean we can no longer head of dangerous runaway climate change.
It really was a pretty shocking report, especially when you consider the IEC said the next five years will inexorably push us over 450 parts per million of carbon in the atmosphere … most climate scientists say 350 ppm or below is the safe zone.
But if these next five years are so important, I cannot share Sophie’s enthusiasm for the Durban talks, when “A strong, binding treaty is an unlikely outcome of Durban but this year’s conference still offers a new opportunity to make the elusive treaty a very real possibility within the next five years.”.
In those terms, the “opportunity” offered at Durban is pretty darn bleak. Maybe a binding treaty in 5 years time locks in a climate disaster. That’s nothing to be cheerful about and certainly nothing to celebrate, not when Australia has played a consistent wrecking operation with the Kyoto protocol, as has been well documented.
My hope for something positive coming out of Durban does not rest on what happens inside the UN summit. George Monbiot is write to say the UN climate process is dead. The hope lies outside, including the climate justice groups organising to Occupy the Durban climate summt. (see: http://occupycop17.org/ )
Posted Tuesday, 29 November 11 at 5:18PM
Sophie
Please come back to the real world because the very last thing that the Labor/Greens “clean energy” bills are about is the climate. As for the regime giving us any ” credibility” Oh please don’t believe that nonsense.
Are any of the big players going to follow Australia into taxing carbon?
No way!!!
Its all just pointless posturing from Gillard and co and anyone who thnks otherwise is either on the drugs or naive
Posted Tuesday, 29 November 11 at 6:44PM
I must agree completely with Iain Hall’s comments.
Sophie Trevitt , the Australian Youth Climate Coalition and many other undoubtedly sincere climate activists have been duped by a cynical, pro-coal, pro-gas, neocon Labor Government that clearly has absolutely NO intention of “tackling climate change” as set out below.
Success in “tackling climate change” is surely measured in terms of GHG pollution reduction but Australia’s Domestic plus Exported GHG pollution increased from 1,077 Mt CO2-e (CO2 equivalent) in 2000 to 1,415 million tonnes CO2-e in 2009 and is expected to reach about 1,799 Mt CO2-e by 2020 and 4,490b Mt CO2-e in 2050.
However Treasury ABARE and US EIA data show the following Australian Domestic and Exported GHG pollution (in millions of tonnes of CO2-equivalent, Mt CO2-e) for Australia under the proposed Carbon Price plan:
2000: 555 (Domestic) + 505 (coal exports) + 17 (LNG exports) = 1,077.
2009: 600 (Domestic) + 784 (coal exports) + 31 (LNG exports) = 1,415.
2010: 578 (Domestic) + 803 (coal exports) + 34 (LNG exports) = 1,415.
2020: 621 (Domestic) + 1,039 (black coal exports) + 80 (LNG exports) + 59 (brown coal exports) = 1,799.
2050: 527 (Domestic) + 2902 (coal exports) + 1,061 (LNG exports) = 4,490.
Treasury analysis in its key July 2011 report “Strong Growth, Low Pollution - Modelling a Carbon Price” (see: http://cache.treasury.gov.au/treasury/carbonpricemodelling/content/repor… ) shows (above) that Australia’s Domestic GHG pollution was 578 Mt CO2-e in 2010 but INCREASES to 621 MT CO2-e by 2020, an INCREASE of +11.9% over the 2000 value i.e. NOT a “5% decrease of 2000 Domestic GHG pollution by 2020” as promised by Labor .
Further, unless you believe that there is a Dr Who-style SciFi Wall 12 miles off the coast through which our fossil fuel exports vanish without any trace of effect on atmospheric GHG pollution, one must consider Exported as ell as Domestic GHG pollution. The above data show that Australia’s Domestic plus Exported GHG pollution will be 1799 x 100/1077 = 167% (roughly double) of that in 2000 by 2020 and will be 4490 x 100/1077 = 417% (roughly quadruple) of that in 2000 by 2050 (NB ABARE estimates that Australian coal exports are increasing at about 2.4% pa and LNG exports at 9% pa).
For further details see “2011 Climate Change Course” (given to final year La Trobe University science students: https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/2011-climate-change-course ) and Gideon Polya, “Oz Labor’s Carbon Tax-ETS & gas for coal plan means INCREASED GHG pollution”, Bellaciao, 27 August 2011: http://bellaciao.org/en/spip.php?article21140 .
The Libs and Labs have the same policy of a derisory “5% off 2000 Domestic GHG pollution by 2020” coupled with unlimited expansion of coal and LNG exports. The Coalition’s Direct Action policy is vastly too little but Labor’s Carbon Tax-ETS is simply fraudulent. Indeed the ETS approach is empirically unsuccessful, disastrously counterproductive and is fundamentally fraudulent (it involves dishonestly selling licences to pollute the one common atmosphere of all countries).
Labor’s Carbon Tax-ETS is a spin-driven recipe for climate change inaction - Labor’s “clean energy future” is a fraud.
Greens Senator Christine Milne (a terrific climate activist) uttered the understatement of the century when she said of the passing of Labor’s “Clean Energy Bill”: “It doesn’t go far enough”.
Sensible people who care about Humanity and the Biosphere and don’t like being lied to by pro-coal, pro-gas, anti-environment, neocon Labor will vote 1 Green and put Labor last.
Peace is the only way but Silence kills and Silence is complicity.
Posted Tuesday, 29 November 11 at 9:00PM
“…if our consumption of fossil fuels is not drastically and immediately reduced, we will face runaway climate change within five years. That means more extreme weather events like Cyclone Yasi, bushfires and extreme heat waves for Australia — and it means many of the Pacific Islands will become uninhabitable. ”
Five years before unstoppable Armageddon?
Classic millenarian hyperbole. “Extreme weather” in the near future is the least scientifically plausible element of the global warming hypothesis. Note that until the drought broke, we were told that much of Australia would be parched forever. The Lord Monckton of climate hysteria, Tim Flannery, predicted permadrought catastrophe for Adelaide, Brisbane etc. This frenzy drove bad policy: the monster $20 billion Vic desal plant, north-south pipe…Brisbane came with an ace of another huge desal plant…Then there were the disgraceful lies about Black Saturday: “unprecedented”, “caused by global warming” …as if there had not been so many Black Saturdays in Australia’s short recorded history that we’ve run out of days of the week to tage them. The biggest was in 1851.
So the story had to be changed. Now it’s “extreme weather”. Too much rain. Too much drought. The infinite elasticity of climate millenarians has undermined any intelligent action on climate change. Do you think people didn’t notice? Do you think the evangelical, authoritarian and absolutist tone of climate millenarianism doesn’t put everyone off? Do you think we aren’t aware that my party, the Greens, has been distracted from fighting the daily rape of the environment? Or that the Left has been cowed into silence (at best) by the zealotry of climate fanaticism? Don’t you realise that people realise that the raft of “climate” policies implemented so far have been class-biased- anti-working class and fall heaviest on the rural poor? Are you aware that these policies are indulgent, urban middle-class gestures- which can have no possible effect on global climate?
Take the core of the “carbon tax” legislation: it’s entirely based on current renewable technology. Yet wind is a proven fraud. The biggest rort of all. Domestic solar, now being slashed, is finally exposed as a transfer of wealth to a fragment of the middle class. Geothermal has wasted a billion dollars of scarce capital: read Flannery’s hype (2008, “Now of Never”) about geothermal- then read the company and analysts reports. It’s a disaster- for purely technical, geological reasons.
The bulk of “carbon tax” revenue will be thrown at the wind scam. With all the consequent misery and regional economic loss for infested regions. Meanwhile the rest of the cash is given to “polluters” and taxpayers.
A scandal.
But the crowning hypocrisy is that, as Gillard said, “coal has a fantastic future”. Forget Saudi, Australia is the new carbon.
So posturing in Durban with “carbon tax” credibility will fool no one.
Posted Tuesday, 29 November 11 at 10:15PM
I don’t share the optimism of this article, though if it were written as satire-tongue-in-cheek I’d be laughing and probably crying at the same time. Perhaps Sophie is being sarcastic? It would be a more understandable article if she were!
The thing I don’t understand about our fancy, new fandangled carbon tax and climate change “ideas” is, if I were a cigarette smoker…wouldn’t it be a little like me selling my cigarettes to someone else, having them smoke the cigarettes and then me just sitting by and having a passive smoke? I’m still at risk of lung cancer and other cigarette smoke health risks aren’t I?….But I never smoked, so I won’t get cancer…is that a little like our coal exports or what? Why don’t we sell them ALL our coal, buy electricity off them and then our nation can be REALLY pro-environment and have a COMPLETELY free conscience?
Cos that would save our planet…
Oh…
On paper of course… Reality???