(31 July 2010).
One of the more interesting statistics in the Australian Government’s 2010 Intergenerational report was the increased life expectancy of Australian men and women. For a male child born in 2010, average life expectancy is now 87.7 years and, for a female, 90.5 years. We have a grandchild, let’s call him James, born in Queensland two months ago, so, he has a reasonable chance of being around in the year 2090.
This makes us very interested in Julia Gillard’s use of the term ‘sustainability’ as a major element in her electoral platform. Even Tony Abbott has used the word. If this is not just a slogan and politicians actually know what it means, this is a very significant new political development.
The two core elements of sustainability are the integration of environmental, social and economic considerations, and the adoption of a long-term perspective.
The Achilles heel of democracy is short-termism. A new government effectively has one year to act on its beliefs and then two years to focus on getting re-elected and manage pressure groups. Similarly most business has to make a profit within twelve months. So the political adoption of a long-term view is a genuinely revolutionary step forward.
How long is “the long term”? The conservative demographer Peter McDonald, in defence of his recent Population Inquiry report for the Local Government Association of Queensland, poured scorn on attempts to predict anything beyond 15 years. At the other extreme, an idealist would, unrealistically, define sustainability as ‘for ever’. So perhaps the life expectancy of James, the child born in 2010, is a practical and realistic time frame.
We know quite a lot about the next 80 years. The end of oil will come by the time James is 40 years old, and the end of natural gas by the time he is 60 years old. We cross our fingers that the increasingly dangerous last years of the international scramble for fossil fuels will not have polluted our aquifers, destroyed our marine life or spoiled our croplands. Critically, when James is only 10, we will reach the turning point with coal. At this point the extensive burning of coal will either be terminated, or if it l continues, will commit us inexorably to the acidification of the oceans, the loss of coral reefs and eventually of fish, and the tipping of global warming to above 2oC, leading to such alarming possibilities as Adelaide having 180 days per year of over 35oC etc.
When some residents of Moreton Island demand the continuation of sand mining, they are offering to James a resource-depleting activity with an obviously finite life expectancy compared with the much longer life expectancy and the lower environmental cost of eco-tourism. When Tony Abbott tries to hook the recreational fishers of Mackay by implying no more fishery restrictions, this effectively means fish today but none for James tomorrow. Miners complain about the Resource Rent Tax, but, given that it is really a Resource Depletion Compensation tax, it is a fundamentally sound idea to compensate James for selling off some of the family silver. The proceeds should be invested, as in like Norway, in a sovereign futures fund and not used for recurrent expenditure. When Queensland miners lobby for access to uranium and shale oil, they expose James to toxic pollution and other risks for the sake of exploiting a finite resource. They divert their valuable energies and resources from the task of developing energy sources for James’ adult life.
If “Queensland businesses” fear sustainability, they ironically, and presumably unconsciously, are signaling to James that their modus operandi as unsustainable. They are certainly ignoring the worldwide stampede to increased sustainability by giant corporations like I.B.M., B.M.W., Virgin, A.N.Z. Bank and Westpac.
Sustainability sounds soft. Its close relation, “resilience” might be more effective. But it has teeth, which are often illustrated much more clearly by its antithesis, “unsustainability”. Good examples are the Global Financial Crisis Part 1 (2007-2011), the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the death of the Aral Sea, water contamination at Kingaroy, and the appalling situations of the peoples of Darfur, Haiti, Rwanda, Bangladesh and Somalia.
History is full of sustainability challenges like famines and plagues. What is famine? A famine is a failure of sustainability. It means either not enough food or too many people, too much consumption or inequitable food distribution, a failure of risk management or poor planning for long-term variations.
While today we tend to focus on the issues of energy sustainability, and the threats of pollution in its many forms, Julian’s Cribb’s new book, The Coming Famine, reminds us that many of the old horsemen of the Apocalypse are still with us. Having raged through Africa for many years, they now loom on the horizon for James and the people of the wealthy, developed world.
James faces the “perfect storm” of sustainability issues- food shortage, water shortage, climate change, ocean acidification, the end of the fossil fuel era, over-population, over consumption and gross and glaringly obvious social inequities. We know that the western lifestyle is unsustainable if everyone else adopts it. Our task is nothing less than to pioneer a new lifestyle and definition of prosperity. Never have there been so many challenges, and never have we had so much capacity and knowledge.
Some of it is easy: introducing energy efficiencies saves money instantly. Some is hard work, like ending pollution. Some of it is fiendishly difficult, like transitioning a growth-dependent society and economy to a sustainable mode. Sustainability requires geniuses. It is the supreme challenge and opportunity of James’ century.
There is something everyone can do for James in this election. Test every candidate’s commitment to the future of James by asking them to describe their understanding of sustainability, and their priorities for the next 80 years.
After Copenhagen. The case for resolve.
11 March 2010.
By Richard and Joan Cassels.
The Copenhagen Climate Conference has been widely portrayed as a “failure”. Accordingly the political landscape of environmental politics in Australia changed overnight. Before the conference, leaders spoke of great challenges for humanity. After the conference, Kevin Rudd hardly mentioned climate change. China, although unequivocally accepting the reality of global warming and its human causes, undid possible consensus by refusing to accept limits to its growth. It seemed to be back to square one, with everyone looking after themselves.
An article in the Queensland Courier Mail claimed jubilantly that, “once again, coal is king”. Some climate change deniers claimed vindication. It was a sign of the times when a labelling a well-respected scientist could be labelled “un-objective” because he was an ‘environmentalist’. Climate-fatigue set in among the media and the public. The zeitgeist had changed.
All this was despite the reality of what actually happened in Copenhagen. The case for human induced global warming was actually strengthened by the latest studies and never seriously questioned by any of the players. International agreement was obtained on the need to limit warming to no more than 2oC, with an ideal target of 1.5oC. More countries were involved than ever before. Good progress was made on R.E.D.D. (avoided deforestation) and a real cash commitment was made to help poor countries adapt. This was all achieved despite the unrealistic expectations and the cumbersome consensus formula of the conference; and despite the history and depth of the problems underlying human induced climate change- international inequity, over-population and over-consumption.
Copenhagen was not a failure to manage climate, it was a failure to manage change. ‘Green’ politicians and the green movement had got ahead of themselves and their communities. Global leaders failed to anticipate or cope with the complexity of the international change required. In Australia the Government failed to manage the required community change.
A lot is known about change management. Key principles are that people must be listened to and their fears addressed..They must be given some choices and some opportunities to control the impact of the change on them. Communications must be continuous and open. Different people react differently to change. Obstruction of change is often due to factors completely unrelated to the issue at hand. Change often involves a loss and this loss must be addressed openly. Expectations must be realistic. And, perhaps most critically, the champion of change must be resolute, and change management must be treated as a project, thought through and resourced.
In Australia, much of this did not happen. The Rudd government negotiated with the Opposition but ignored the voters. There was no comprehensive communication and change management program. The change management team seems now to have been taken off the project and diverted to other issues like health. The change champion, the Prime Minister, appears to be hesitating. These are all well known classic mistakes of an unsuccessful change management.
Communication must be much better. The concept of an emissions trading scheme is quite straightforward. “Cap, trade and transition” mean to set a limit on emissions and slowly reduce it; use, rather than fight, the profit motive; and give transition help to those most affected. We do not need to know every detail. We drive cars everyday without understanding the workings of the internal combustion engine.
The Abbott “Great Big Tax” campaign could be countered by a “Very Good Investment” campaign, with messages such as: someone will inevitably pay for climate disruption and the huge (as yet unbudgeted!) costs of adaptation, and it will be the taxpayer unless we act proactively; acting now will cost much less than acting later; the choice is not “no tax”, it is a little tax now or a lot of tax later. These messages could be reinforced by promoting real and practical solutions (like those featured in the ABC Carbon Express!).Because change is all about people, the best illustrations will always be personal stories.
The rationale for the change is not just global warming. We need to move from fossil fuels to a low carbon economy for many other reasons, not least the short and finite life of oil, coal and gas reserves, the acidification of the oceans, air pollution and the diversion of human energies, resources and innovation away from creating the long-term energy sources of the future.
It is also clear that alarming people is unproductive. The “litany of disasters” has been too much to handle and people have reacted by psychological withdrawal. A 6- metre sea level rise or a 5oC temperature rise are realistic and serious risks, but are, right now, beyond people’s coping capacity. What they want is cool-headed and determined leaders, who show the way forward and solve practical problems.
The need for a practical approach is illustrated in a recent national survey by researchers at Yale and George Mason universities in the U.S.A. (see ABC of carbon newsletter 10-2-2010) which found that, despite a sharp drop in public concern over global warming, Americans—regardless of political affiliation—support the passage of practical federal climate and energy policies.
The survey found support for the following practical measures:
•Funding more research on renewable energy, such as solar and wind power (85 percent)
•Tax rebates for people buying fuel-efficient vehicles or solar panels (82 percent)
•Establishing programs to teach Americans how to save energy (72 percent)
•Regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant (71 percent)
•School curricula to teach children about the causes, consequences and potential solutions to global warming (70 percent)
•Signing an international treaty that requires the United States to cut emissions of carbon dioxide 90 percent by the year 2050 (61 percent)
•Establishing programs to teach Americans about global warming (60 percent).
It seems very likely that attitudes in Australia will be similar.
There is no going back on ‘clean and green’, let alone on climate. The green movement, including action on climate change, is now universal and unstoppable. Green buildings, green infrastructure, sustainable enterprise, sustainable development, carbon trading, wildlife conservation, marine conservation, sustainable cities, sustainable transport, sustainable agriculture, renewable energy, low-carbon technologies and environmental lawyers are all guided by the principle that we can and must act now to prevent and then reduce environmental degradation and climate disruption.
To retain credibility, the Government must see through what it started. If Kevin Rudd does not stick to his guns and become a serious change manager with a properly planned and resourced change management program for climate change, he will lose the voters’ respect and the next election. He will set back the movement for a safer, more sustainable and more equitable world by at least a decade- the decade when we actually still have time to make a real difference.
Queensland and the Population and Growth debate.
Over-population. (10 March 2010).
The current Growth Forums in S.E. Queensland consistently avoid the ‘O’ word- overpopulation.
If the world’s human population was 2 billion, as it was in 1927, instead of the current 6.8 billion, we would not have the scale of problems we have today- global warming, biodiversity loss, air, water and sea-pollution, over-fishing, water shortages, urban congestion and so on. As population keeps on growing, our targets get harder and harder to meet – whether it is reduction of emissions or of every other social and environmental impact.
We do not need either economic or population growth, and indeed cannot afford them. Current ‘solutions’ to growth are Ponzi schemes. For example arguing that we need more children and immigrants to support the aging population means in future we will have a bigger aging population that will require more children and immigrants.
Limiting the discussion to Queensland and ignoring our world-wide ecological impact seems like planning more deck chairs on the first class deck of the Titanic, while ignoring the 2nd and 3rd classes, the crew, the engines, the fuel, the smoke, the food supplies and what icebergs lie ahead.
As Queenslanders we love our resources boom-particularly coal - but we fail to identify and take responsibility for its true costs to us, which include unaffordable housing, social dislocation, and the diversion of key people and resources away from energy innovation.
Growth is the easy option for governments (so many hard hat photo opportunities) and business (no need to change the way we do things). It is time for our governments to take the time to model and let us discuss the real alternative, prosperity and a better quality of life without rampant growth.
Overpopulation and the growth mindset.
8 March 2010.
For 40 years I have been an archaeologist or a museum manager. I observe that throughout most of history, people have been reluctant to identify the phenomenon of overpopulation. Instead they usually chose to focus on its many dramatic consequences-ethnic conflict, genocide, migration, Invasion, famine, drought, civil war, religious war, plague, pestilence, overcrowding or the failure of governments.
So, like many others, I sat almost speechless in the first Growth Forum on 22nd February, as Anna Bligh and Campbell Newman trotted out the myths of growth, one by one. They congratulated each other on both being victims of “unavoidable” growth, and on their success in supplying more infrastructure to meet growing demand.
Conspicuously missing from the debate was the ‘O’ word- over-population. As a Rwandan politician said in the film Gorillas in the Mist, “Your problem is not enough gorillas. My problem is too many people. We are on the opposite sides of the same problem” (quoted in “Overloading Australia” by O’Connor and Lines).
So when Newman sees not enough buses, tunnels or bridges, I see too many car and their drivers. When Bligh sees a dry period and calls it a water crisis, I see too many people for a land of variable rainfall. When the mining industry sees a skills shortage, I see excessive corporate greed,unnecessary immigration and a failure to invest in training.
When the Rudd government sees a problem of an ageing population, I see the benefits of a reduction in the aged population in future. When more children and more immigration is sought to support the ageing population, I see a Ponzi scheme. When Australia complains of an ageing boom, I see countries Iraq and Afghanistan collapsing under the ‘youthing” problem- too many young people and testosterone-fuelled young males with no job prospects and nowhere to go to.
When Anna Bligh mentions the housing affordability problem and suggests a key solution is the release of new green field sites, I see a government ignoring one of the most obvious prices that the community pays for the resources boom. (Of course there are many other real costs- increased migration, boom-and-bust towns and communities demanding taxpayer support when the boom is over, environmental damage to the Great Barrier Reef and so on).
When Bligh says you can’t impose population caps, I am deeply puzzled. Is not that exactly what regional and neighbourhood plans do all the time? When Bligh and Newman become fellow victims, shrug their shoulders and say, of course we need a national population policy (to deal with the awkward issues they don’t want to mention), I am amazed. We do have a national population policy, it is to reward people for having more children and to maintain high immigration levels and to ignore water shortage, biodiversity loss, loss of agricultural land etc. When Bligh says you can’t tell Australians to limit the number of children they have, she ignores the reality that every night and day, millions of Australian women and men actively take steps to prevent conception: what is unusual in world history is a government policy (and the culture that comes with it) encouraging people to conceive.
When the State Government limits the discussion of growth to Queensland, I see deliberate avoidance of Queensland’s global ecological footprint – its over-the top- contribution to world greenhouse gases, its plundering of resources in Africa and Asia to make its cars, the pollution in Japan, Korea and China from making its cars, its destruction of gorilla habitat for minerals for mobile phones. I see a rich club debating whether there is room for more chairs on the first class deck of the Titanic.
So what is the solution to the growth trap? Like others I want to hear something new that will break us out of the growth trap. We need Government funded studies of real alternatives to growth. How about doing real, triple bottom line, accounting of the cost and benefits of closing the Galilee Basin coal fields for 3 decades? Of how we might have rich and rewarding lives without zero economic and population growth? Of creating a larger community of car-free people by a planning requirement that in all new inner city developments, car parking spaces be limited to one park per two dwellings, supported by legislation requiring banks to lend to buyers of homes without parking spaces?
Will we Australians ever elect a no-growth / low growth politician? As a history teacher said to me the other day,’ Australian history is working class history’. We like to dig and dam things, burn and build, fell and fix, mend and mow them. Bob Carr was the closest we got to a philosopher king. Anna Bligh might get re- elected by wearing a hard hat, but not by quoting philosophers. Currently Dick Smith is the only well-known leader in the over-population camp, although, in his senior phase, Bob Hawke seems to be joining him.
When Rudd and Abbott thank the heavens for economic growth, I read the report, Prosperity without Growth, released last December by the U.K. Sustainable Development Commission. Growth is a mind set we must always challenge. And let’s not avoid the ‘O’ word- at least for the sake of rational and balanced debate, if not for the sake of our health and humanity.
3 December 2009.
As the Australian Opposition defeated the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme on December 2nd. 2009, the C.E.O of the Climate Institute writes:
The Australian Parliament has stumbled on action to address climate change and create clean energy investment, jobs and industries as our economic competitors position themselves to cash in on the emerging global low-carbon economy, The Climate Institute said today after defeat of the amended CPRS in the Senate.
“The defeat of the CPRS is a not only a stumble for Australia doing its bit on climate change, it is an economic stumble, and a competitiveness stumble for Australia,” John Connor, Climate Institute CEO said.
“The low-carbon train is leaving the station around the world and Australia is haemorrhaging investments in clean energy industries and technology to competitors in developed and developing countries.
“It’s difficult to see what option there is to avoid another 12 months or more of political squabbling and scaremongering than to let the people decide action through a double dissolution election.”
In recent weeks, we have seen countries as diverse as Norway, South Korea, Brazil and Japan increase their level of ambition at global talks and through strong domestic policies and China and the US starting to battle over who will be the dominant power in the clean energy economy.
“It’s a sad irony that while the US and China are investing billions in renewable energy and battling over who will lead the clean energy economy, Australian politicians are squabbling in the “domestic playground” of party politics.
“More delay, denial and dragging out debate on the CPRS for a year or more creates uncertainty for business that would see them haemorrhaging money, jobs and investments.
The amended CPRS provided good architecture but needs to be backed by urgent domestic action in areas like energy efficiency and clean energy deployment.
Meanwhile, The Climate Institute acknowledged comments from the new Liberal Party leader Tony Abbot to support the target emissions reduction of 5% to 25% off 2000 levels by 2020 but said the party had to put forward a credible alternative mechanism.
“Mr Abbot’s recognition of the science of climate change and his support for the Government’s target range is welcome but without a detailed plan of how to achieve these outcomes it lacks credibility,” Mr Connor said.
“If the politicians can’t negotiate effective climate policy then it may need to be the public, who overwhelmingly want action on climate change, to decide whether Australia moves forwards or backwards.”
(Press release ends)
Government fiddles around the edges while Australia burns
DAVID KAROLY
The Age, November 27, 2009
In 1992, in response to the threat of global warming, the governments of the world agreed to "stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system".
Recently, the G8 nations agreed to an objective of limiting global warming to only two degrees above pre-industrial temperatures. The best estimate of what is needed to have a 50:50 chance of avoiding two degrees of global warming is to stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere below 450 parts per million of carbon dioxide and other long-lived greenhouse gases.
To do that, global emissions must peak before 2015 and fall by 50 per cent to 85 per cent by 2050.
How can global emission reductions be distributed between different countries? A fair way of distributing a limited resource among a group of people is to give everyone an equal share. Children understand that this is a fair approach, even if politicians don't.
All governments in the world agreed in 1992 to the underlying principle that "developed countries should take the lead in combating climate change". Per person emissions of greenhouse gases in developed countries are four times higher than in developing countries. Australia has the highest emissions of carbon dioxide per person in the world, six times higher than the average for developing countries and even higher than the US.
For Australia, a fair share of the global emissions reduction needed to stabilise long-lived greenhouse gas concentrations at about 450 ppm would be 25 per cent to 40 per cent emissions reductions by 2020 and 90 per cent to 97 per cent reductions by 2050.
The Federal Government's carbon pollution reduction scheme (CPRS) is an ambitious attempt to introduce an emissions trading scheme as a market-based approach.
Such a scheme has the potential to introduce short-term and long-term targets for emissions reductions, such as 25 per cent emissions reduction by 2020 and 90 per cent emissions reduction by 2050.
However, such a scheme can only be effective if it is comprehensive in including all emission sources, such as transport and agriculture, and if there is minimal compensation for the highest emitters. The principle of "the polluter pays" seems to have been reversed in the proposed CPRS, as the biggest emitters are likely to receive the largest financial hand-outs.
The recent negotiations between the Government and the Liberal Party have led to some improvements to the CPRS. The expansion of terrestrial carbon offsets is likely to drive profound improvements to the way we farm in Australia and how we manage our land. It will put a price on carbon and create new market opportunities to protect and restore degraded land at an almost unimaginable scale. Of course, the additional compensation to the worst emitters also puts more costs on to all taxpayers.
Australian governments' policies on population growth, encouraging immigration and an increasing birth rate, also make it more difficult to reduce emissions. This encouragement for increasing population in Australia is completely at odds with the claimed aims of tackling climate change. Every additional person in Australia is likely to emit greenhouse gases into the atmosphere at the highest per person rate in the world, making the problem much worse.
The Victorian Government's ambitious green paper on climate change includes discussion of many important actions to respond to climate change through both adaptation and emissions reduction.
But the Government appears unwilling or unable to accept that an urgent whole-of-government approach is needed, with limits on population growth, a strategy to phase out brown coal power stations, huge investment in low-carbon energy sources and public transport, and regulations requiring dramatic improvement in energy efficiency.
The CPRS and its market-based mechanisms need to be complemented by regulations that overcome the likely market failures over the coming decade. Victoria has benefited from cheap energy from Latrobe Valley brown coal, which is the worst energy source in the world in terms of greenhouse gas emissions per unit of energy produced. The sooner that electricity production from brown coal is phased out, the better off the world will be.
If government is to deal seriously with climate change, it should separate quality of life and economic growth from growth of greenhouse gas emissions by moving rapidly to zero-carbon energy sources. There are many opportunities for new green jobs and green industries.
Australia has tremendous resources of energy from a wide range of renewable sources, with more total solar energy input received by Australia than any other country in the world, and more potential sources of wind power, wave power and geothermal power per person than any other country.
Good government requires urgent and substantial action to rapidly transform to a low-carbon, sustainable society. Delaying a decision is to make climate change worse, and more difficult and more costly to combat. History will judge our governments' responses. So far, they have been inadequate.
David Karoly is a professor in the school of earth sciences at the University of Melbourne and played a key role in a report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Climate change accelerating beyond expectations, urgent emissions reductions required, say leading scientists
24 November 2009, International media release
http://www.copenhagendiagnosis.org/
Global ice-sheets are melting at an increased rate; Arctic sea-ice is disappearing much faster than recently projected, and future sea-level rise is now expected to be much higher than previously forecast, according to a new global scientific synthesis prepared by some of the world’s top climate scientists.
In a special report called ‘The Copenhagen Diagnosis’, the 26 researchers, most of whom are authors of published IPCC reports, conclude that several important aspects of climate change are occurring at the high end or even beyond the expectations of only a few years ago.
The report also notes that global warming continues to track early IPCC projections based on greenhouse gas increases. Without significant mitigation, the report says global mean warming could reach as high as 7 degrees Celsius by 2100.
The Copenhagen Diagnosis, which was a year in the making, documents the key findings in climate change science since the publication of the landmark Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report in 2007.
The new evidence to have emerged includes:
· Satellite and direct measurements now demonstrate that both the Greenland and Antarctic ice-sheets are losing mass and contributing to sea level rise at an increasing rate.
· Arctic sea-ice has melted far beyond the expectations of climate models. For example, the area of summer sea-ice melt during 2007-2009 was about 40% greater than the average projection from the 2007 IPCC Fourth Assessment Report.
· Sea level has risen more than 5 centimetres over the past 15 years, about 80% higher than IPCC projections from 2001. Accounting for ice-sheets and glaciers, global sea-level rise may exceed 1 meter by 2100, with a rise of up to 2 meters considered an upper limit by this time. This is much higher than previously projected by the IPCC. Furthermore, beyond 2100, sea level rise of several meters must be expected over the next few centuries.
· In 2008 carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels were ~40% higher than those in 1990. Even if emissions do not grow beyond today’s levels, within just 20 years the world will have used up the allowable emissions to have a reasonable chance of limiting warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius.
The report concludes that global emissions must peak then decline rapidly within the next five to ten years for the world to have a reasonable chance of avoiding the very worst impacts of climate change.
To stabilize climate, global emissions of carbon dioxide and other long-lived greenhouse gases need to reach near-zero well within this century, the report states.
The full report is available at http://www.ccrc.unsw.edu.au/Copenhagen/Copenhagen_Diagnosis_LOW.pdf
Statements by Authors
"Sea level is rising much faster and Arctic sea ice cover shrinking more rapidly than we previously expected. Unfortunately, the data now show us that we have underestimated the climate crisis in the past."
Professor Stefan Rahmstorf, Professor of Physics of the Oceans and a Department Head at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany.
"Carbon dioxide emissions cannot be allowed to continue to rise if humanity intends to limit the risk of unacceptable climate change. The task is urgent and the turning point must come soon. If we are to avoid more than 2 degrees Celsius warming, which many countries have already accepted as a goal, then emissions need to peak before 2020 and then decline rapidly."
Professor Richard Somerville, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, USA.
"We have already almost exceeded the safe level of emissions that would ensure a reasonably secure climate future. Within just a decade global emissions need to be declining rapidly. A binding treaty is needed urgently to ensure unilateral action among the high emitters."
Professor Matthew England, ARC Federation Fellow and joint Director of the Climate Change Research Centre of the University of NSW, Australia.
"This is a final scientific call for the climate negotiators from 192 countries who must embark on the climate protection train in Copenhagen. They need to know the stark truth about global warming and the unprecedented risks involved."
Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and Chair of the German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU).
"The adjustment of glaciers to present climate alone is expected to raise sea level by approximately 18 centimeters. Under warming conditions glaciers may contribute as much as more than half a meter by 2100.”
Dr. Georg Kaser, Glaciologist at the University of Innsbruck, Austria.
“Warming of the oceans and increased uptake of CO2 is of increasing concern for the marine environment. The loss of biodiversity due to upper ocean warming, ocean acidification and ocean de-oxygenation will add dramatically to the existing threads of overfishing and marine pollution".
Professor Martin Visbeck, Professor of Physical Oceanography and Deputy Director of IFM-GEOMAR.
"The climate system does not provide us with a silver bullet. There is no escape but to start reducing greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible."
Professor Nicolas Gruber, Professor for Environmental Physics, ETH Zürich.
"Climate change is coming out even clearer and more rapidly in the recent data. The human contribution is not in doubt."
Professor Corinne Le Quéré, University of East Anglia School of Environmental Sciences, UK
"Climate change is accelerating towards the tipping points for polar ice sheets. That's why we're now projecting future sea level rise in metres rather than centimeters."
Professor Tim Lenton, University of East Anglia School of Environmental Sciences, UK
"Reducing tropical deforestation could prevent up to a fifth of human CO2 emissions, slowing climate change and helping to maintain some of the planet's most important hotspots of biodiversity."
Professor Peter Cox, Climate System Dynamics at the University of Exeter, UK
"New ice-core records confirm the importance of greenhouse gasses for past temperatures on Earth, and show that CO2 levels are higher now than they have ever been during the last 800,000 years. The last time Earth experienced CO2 levels this high was millions of years ago."
Professor Jane Francis, University of Leeds, UK
"The reconstruction of past climate reveals that recent warming in the Arctic and in the Northern Hemisphere is highly inconsistent with natural climate variability over the last 2000 years."
Dr Alan Haywood, Reader in Paleoclimatology, the University of Leeds, UK
A sacrifice to keep the status quo
Tim Colebatch, November 24, 2009 The Age
No one likes this emissions trading scheme. If you're worried about global warming, it is inadequate, a compromise diluted by more compromises to blunt its impact. If you don't believe that burning carbon is heating up the planet, it's pointless: it's just a tax that will cost jobs.
Yet when Labor was elected two years ago, there was a bipartisan consensus on the need to act against climate change. The Howard government pledged to introduce its own scheme from 2011 or 2012—without any dissent from Nick Minchin, Barnaby Joyce or any other Coalition MPs or senators. Ross Garnaut, appointed by the Labor states, was working with his team on what would become a world-class blueprint on how to cut emissions at minimum cost.
Now, two years later, we are about to find out whether we will end up with an emissions trading scheme so watered-down that it would not reduce our emissions for another generation—or whether we end up with nothing, to start again after next year's election.
How did that bipartisan consensus dissipate, leaving us with a choice between doing nothing, or having an ineffective scheme—which, Brian Walters, SC, warns in legal advice to the Greens, could require taxpayers to pay ''up to several orders of magnitude greater than the compensation currently proposed'' if it has to be strengthened later.
There are many reasons why the consensus vanished. Let's take a few:
First, as Sir Isaac Newton observed, ''to every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction''. Every landmark step that has made us the country we are proud of has been opposed by people motivated by inertia, familiarity with the way things are, or by vested interest.
Two centuries ago, when William Wilberforce led the campaign to abolish the slave trade, the counterparts of Nick Minchin and Barnaby Joyce fought to defend it as an area of legitimate business in which governments should not interfere. Yet who thinks we should allow slavery today? In that argument, which side was right?
A century ago, the big issue in the Western world was whether women should have the right to vote. Those who oppose new ideas blocked it for years with all kinds of arguments as to why women should have no say. Yet who today would argue that only males should be allowed to vote? Who got it right?
It's been the same on issue after issue. Defenders of the status quo fought against working people having the right to vote: it was only in 1950 that all Victorians got the right to vote for the Legislative Council. Sir Winston Churchill in the 1930s was obsessed not only with combating Hitler but also with combating Gandhi, opposing any suggestion that India be given independence.
Under John Howard, the Coalition in the 1980s opposed the introduction of Medicare and compulsory superannuation with the same kind of wacky overstatement some of them now use on climate change (such as Joyce telling us we won't be able to buy steaks).
Or remember the fear campaign waged against the introduction of unleaded petrol? We were told cars would be way more expensive and engines wouldn't start. It was all rubbish, put out by vested interests and those who instinctively oppose change.
Tackling climate change is far bigger and tougher and more complex. It will increase the cost of energy, and while there are easy ways to reduce our energy use, they are paths we have not taken. Read between the lines of a new report by the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics, End use energy intensity in the Australian economy, and it shows that almost all gains in energy efficiency in the past 20 years have been wiped out by trends that use more energy: bigger houses, halogen lights, SUVs, video games, plasma TVs, and so on. Tackling climate change effectively will challenge what we now take for granted.
These changes will create losers. Some companies squealing for compensation are just trying to squeeze money out of a weak government. But if the emissions trading scheme has any teeth, Victoria's brown coal power stations gradually will close. Even so, compensation should be limited to shut-down costs, generating alternative employment, and grants or tax breaks for investors to build new, low-emission stations.
The second reason the issue is too hard for politicians to solve is that climate change is a global problem, yet we have no global government. Garnaut called it ''diabolical'' because no government can solve it, yet action by all countries of any size is needed.
In Australia, the campaign against the emissions trading scheme has highlighted the costs it would place on us today, yet, as Garnaut argued, the biggest costs of climate change are likely to be felt 100 years hence —and the people of the future have no say in our decisions now.
Third, it is clear that the world is warming, but there is uncertainty about how serious the consequences will be. How far will the seas rise? Will it melt the Arctic, and the Greenland and the West Antarctic ice shelves? Will food production be able to keep up in a dryer, hotter Australia?
In the real world, progress comes unevenly, in ugly, inadequate compromises that fail to meet their goals. That's where we are now.
Tim Colebatch is Age economics editor. This column is based on a speech he will give tonight at the Hamer Oration.
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