It's Time To Come Clean  

The Age's economics editor, Tim Colebatch, takes a look at the Australian government's inaction on global warming. Strangely enough, like most other educated followers of the issue, he thinks carbon taxes are a good idea too.

If the scientists are right, global warming will become the most important issue facing us this century. So far, the trends suggest they are right. The world's weather is getting hotter, more volatile. What is the world doing about it?

The responses vary. But by and large, governments and companies are going about business as usual, with some low-cost amelioration measures at the fringe. There are exceptions, but on the whole, there is little sense that we are facing a long-term crisis requiring radical changes.

Last week saw a stunning example. To back up the Government's Asia Pacific summit on climate change in Sydney, the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics produced a report estimating that, based on heroic assumptions about new technology being invented and implemented, its projected level of global greenhouse gas emissions in 2050 could be reduced by 23 per cent. Good news!

But ABARE did not feel it necessary to tell us what those projected levels are. Only one graph let the secret out: even with this best-case scenario it projects, global emissions of greenhouse gases would more than double by 2050. Instead of heating up the planet by emitting about 8 billion tonnes a year of carbon dioxide equivalent, mankind would fry it by emitting 17 to 18 billion tonnes a year.

Bear in mind that Environment Minister Ian Campbell, backed by leading scientists, has warned that the world needs to reduce emissions by 50 to 60 per cent to stabilise the climate. ABARE is projecting that by 2050 global emissions will be four to five times higher than the level Senator Campbell says is needed. That is simply alarming.

The same day in Washington, the Worldwatch Institute released its annual State of the World report for 2006. It estimated that if China and India were to match even Japanese and European levels of resource use, they would consume the world's entire annual supply of oil and mineral resources. The soaring oil and resource prices of 2004 and 2005, are "a preview of the future".

"It is clear that the current Western development model is not sustainable," the institute's director, Christopher Flavin, concludes. "We therefore face a choice: rethink almost everything, or risk a downward spiral of political competition and economic collapse."

I vote for rethinking almost everything. But governments and businesses, with some exceptions, do not work that way.

What do we need to do? Let's move beyond the argument over whether we should sign the Kyoto Protocol, or merely comply with it. What we need is a realistic policy within Australia that is commensurate with a problem that, as Campbell says, threatens to become a disaster.

First, dump the complacency and self-congratulation. The Australian Greenhouse Office estimates that even with all the measures taken to reduce them, greenhouse emissions from energy use will rise 70 per cent between 1990 and 2020, while industrial emissions will rise 75 per cent. Total emission growth would be held to 23 per cent only by one-off changes in land use, which are now behind us. Admit the problem, and come up with policies appropriate to the scale of it.

Second, we need a policy structure that gives markets and households a strong incentive to reduce their use of energy, both by changing their behaviour and by investing in energy-saving technology. There is a simple, logical way to do it - tax carbon emissions.

A tax on carbon could be offset by cuts in other taxes. Or the funds raised could be used to subsidise research, development and installation of energy-efficient technology, from a solar water heater to a pilot plant of new technology for generating electricity. Or we could do both. It need not make us poorer, and it will make our children richer...

Crikey today led in with some speculation about the impact of the unfolding Iraq oil-for-food scandal here in Australia, which seems to have the government in a spot of bother - unless this is just some sophisticated propaganda campaign run by the American wheat industry to try and grab Australia's wheat exports to Iraq (anything is possible of course but I'd rate that unlikely).

Although it's highly premature to suggest that Wheatgate is about to become the Howard government's Watergate, the signs are beginning to look ominous. As Hugo Kelly writes in Crikey today, "it's clear the Government is facing major – major – trouble," with reliable sources suggesting the existence of a number of "smoking cables and emails" floating around DFAT which, we understand, have found their way into the hands of the federal Opposition.

Apart from the duplicity, illegality, immorality and stupidity of an Australian government organisation paying the biggest bribe of all the bribes paid to Saddam Hussein's regime, if it all turns out to be true then what on earth would it say about the stated reasons for Australia's participation in the invasion of Iraq?

Reasons that were articulately outlined in John Howard's Address to the Nation on 20 March, 2003 – which included assertions that Iraq possessed "weapons of mass destruction ... which even in minute quantities are capable of causing death and destruction on a mammoth scale"; that Iraq is run by an "appalling regime"; that Iraq "has long supported international terrorism"; that "Saddam Hussein pays $25,000 to each family of Palestinian suicide bombers who wreak ... murderous havoc"; that "I passionately believe that action must be taken to disarm Iraq"; that while "there are many dictatorships in the world ... this is a dictatorship of a particularly horrific kind"; and that "our argument is with Saddam Hussein's regime."

That's the same regime, it now appears, that was enriched by the Australian Wheat Board to the tune of some $300 million between 2000 and 2003. Which raises this rather tricky question for the government: did it know one of its instrumentalities was paying large bribes to a "dictatorship of a particularly horrific kind" at the same time as it was attacking the very same "appalling regime"?

This is how the Prime Minister ended his Address to the Nation in March 2003: "This has been a very difficult decision for the Government but a decision which is good for Australia's long term security and the cause of a safer world. Good night."

Good night, and good luck.

Crikey also has a piece saying that "Lovelock's doomsday prediction is counterproductive".

Jim Green, national nuclear campaigner for Friends of the Earth, writes:

I must admit to considerable scepticism when I hear James Lovelock's name (yesterday, editorial & item 9). His work on the Gaia Theory – and the interdependence of ecological systems – is important and interesting. But it's not particularly original. His fame owes more to his simplistic conception and presentation of complex phenomena.

The anthropomorphism of his 'Mother Earth' theory has probably also helped to popularise it. And he has a poetic turn of phrase – "Through us, Gaia has seen herself from space, and begins to know her place in the universe" – which attracts mystics and repels his academic colleagues in equal measure.

In his latest book, The Revenge of Gaia, Lovelock is almost, but not quite, so pessimistic as to have lost interest in efforts to reduce greenhouse emissions and thereby to reduce the impacts of climate change. We can hope that climate sceptics such as Mark Steyn are right, pray that Lovelock's doomsday scenario is wrong, but public policy must be guided by the weight of scientific opinion which holds that climate change is happening and that its adverse effects will become more apparent in the coming decades.

Few if any scientists would argue that the situation is hopeless and that climate change abatement measures are pointless. Therefore, we should assume that concerted efforts to reduce greenhouse emissions will be worthwhile and must be pursued.

Stripped of its extreme pessimism and the mystical language, Lovelock is saying this: the adverse effects of climate change are already apparent and will only get worse, so we need to adapt to climate change in addition to making ongoing efforts to reduce emissions. There's nothing new there.

Recently, the ALP released a policy recognising the need to address the problem of climate refugees. The Howard government has also put more emphasis on climate change adaptation in recent years, but it's no more than a cynical manoeuvre to distract attention from its failure to get serious about reducing greenhouse emissions. The government refuses to recognise or resettle climate refugees.

In reality, the government is doing little to avoid climate change or adapt to it. Last week's Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate conference was typical. The government promised $25 million for renewable energy – enough to build one wind farm. The government's record on renewable energy is disgraceful – abolishing the Energy Research and Development Corporation in 1997-98, withdrawing funding from the Co-operative Research Centre for Renewable Energy in 2002, and refusing to extend the Mandatory Renewable Energy Target, to name but a few examples.

As for Lovelock, my main problem with him is that his proposal for a nuclear 'solution' to climate change, which has attracted mountains of publicity, is so intellectually vacuous. For example, he claims that less than 50 people were killed by the Chernobyl disaster, but all the scientific estimates put the death toll in the thousands or tens of thousands. Lovelock wants high-level nuclear waste in the basement of his home to provide heating and for food irradiation, and he insists it is a serious proposal. Suffice to say that he is a self-declared eccentric.

The BBC reports that the Iran situation is posing a dilemma for China given its dependency on Iranian energy exports. The war drums seem to be beating louder and louder to me - and the oil and gold markets both seem to be predicting trouble ahead. I can't imagine Russia or China supporting any sort of formal UN action against Iran at this stage - but I can imagine another oil shock if Iranian exports are halted - either by them or because sanctions are applied. Only 2 months until the oil bourse is due to open...

Beijing's initial reaction to news that Iran was breaking its deal with the EU3 was to express its concern, but immediately reaffirm its commitment to multilateral negotiations. Since then, the diplomatic temperature has increased dramatically but China has refused to change its position.

Officials have repeated the Chinese government's view that the best way forward is to restart the EU3 diplomacy with Iran, despite the fact many in the West are now dismissing it as exhausted. China's work behind the scenes seems to be focussed on trying to keep the diplomacy alive.

China's most obvious interest is energy. Three years ago, when Iran was already supplying 13 per cent of China's oil needs, the two governments signed a major deal which included Chinese development of Iranian oil fields. It is a source of supply of growing importance for China - one it doesn't want disrupted by politics.

China also has a deeply-engrained reluctance to takes sides with the US against a fellow non-Western nation. Much of its current energy-driven diplomacy is on forging political alliances which exclude the West and are faithful to Chinese principles of non-interference in each other's internal affairs.

Apparently the Corsi-Ruppert abiotic oil vs peak oil talk radio mud wrestle has now been staged, with the radio audience apparently feeling Corsi had the better of the matchup. One listener comments:

Corsi's main argument - "we'll never run out of oil because we never have" - was and is inherently flawed. At the same time, I'm surprised Ruppert didn't go after him about it when given the opportunity. Corsi talked his way around the issue and the fact that the audience deemed his side the winning one showed that this was the case.

I have more supporting arguments, but I'll explain those in my book. You should buy it.

Al Gore has delivered another good speech, this one looking at the need to restore the American constitution and the rule of law in the US - one more casualty of our shared fossil fuel dependency.

Congressman Barr and I have disagreed many times over the years, but we have joined together today with thousands of our fellow citizens-Democrats and Republicans alike-to express our shared concern that America's Constitution is in grave danger.

In spite of our differences over ideology and politics, we are in strong agreement that the American values we hold most dear have been placed at serious risk by the unprecedented claims of the Administration to a truly breathtaking expansion of executive power.

As we begin this new year, the Executive Branch of our government has been caught eavesdropping on huge numbers of American citizens and has brazenly declared that it has the unilateral right to continue without regard to the established law enacted by Congress to prevent such abuses.

It is imperative that respect for the rule of law be restored.

So, many of us have come here to Constitution Hall to sound an alarm and call upon our fellow citizens to put aside partisan differences and join with us in demanding that our Constitution be defended and preserved.

It is appropriate that we make this appeal on the day our nation has set aside to honor the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who challenged America to breathe new life into our oldest values by extending its promise to all our people.

On this particular Martin Luther King Day, it is especially important to recall that for the last several years of his life, Dr. King was illegally wiretapped-one of hundreds of thousands of Americans whose private communications were intercepted by the U.S. government during this period.

The FBI privately called King the "most dangerous and effective negro leader in the country" and vowed to "take him off his pedestal." The government even attempted to destroy his marriage and blackmail him into committing suicide.

This campaign continued until Dr. King's murder. The discovery that the FBI conducted a long-running and extensive campaign of secret electronic surveillance designed to infiltrate the inner workings of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and to learn the most intimate details of Dr. King's life, helped to convince Congress to enact restrictions on wiretapping.

The result was the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act (FISA), which was enacted expressly to ensure that foreign intelligence surveillance would be presented to an impartial judge to verify that there is a sufficient cause for the surveillance. I voted for that law during my first term in Congress and for almost thirty years the system has proven a workable and valued means of according a level of protection for private citizens, while permitting foreign surveillance to continue.

Yet, just one month ago, Americans awoke to the shocking news that in spite of this long settled law, the Executive Branch has been secretly spying on large numbers of Americans for the last four years and eavesdropping on "large volumes of telephone calls, e-mail messages, and other Internet traffic inside the United States." The New York Times reported that the President decided to launch this massive eavesdropping program "without search warrants or any new laws that would permit such domestic intelligence collection."