9 May 2007
Kyoto emissions targetsLast week, in an attempt to discredit new information which showed that our emissions of greenhouse gases have increased significantly, the Government stated that it had virtually met its Kyoto Protocol requirements for cutting greenhouse gas emissions. The Australian Greenhouse Office (AGO) has released figures which showed that Australia has increased its net emissions of greenhouse gases since 1990. Ten years ago at the Kyoto international conference on climate change, Australia forced the UN to accept the proposition that it could actually increase its emissions, even though other developed nations committed themselves to substantially reducing their emission levels. Australia also signed the Kyoto Protocol, but refused to ratify it, because to do so would have obliged the government to try to reach emission targets indicated as appropriate for signatories. Since then, as the AGO figures show, our rate of emissions has soared, and we now produce nine percent more than we did in 1990, the datum year. However, not only did we exceed our formal emissions target, which allowed for an increase rather than a reduction, but our real emission level is due to increase even more dramatically. The estimate for "carbon equivalent" emissions makes a deduction for increased forestation, and an increase for land clearing. A few years ago the NSW and Queensland governments began to restrict the rate of land clearance in their states, and this improved our estimated post-1990 emission level. However, this improvement in performance will dissipate over the next few years. Tony Moore, a spokesman for the Australian Conservation Foundation, commented: "Europe is committed to a 20 percent reduction in greenhouse gases by 2020. Our national emissions remain forecast by the government to increase by 27 percent by 2020. That’s the real deal."Despite this, the Howard Government’s Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull has simply declared smugly that our emission rate was only one percent higher than our allocated level. The real pollutersLast year the UN released figures also confirmed that Australia is now the highest per capita emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, apart from tiny Luxembourg. Per capita emissions have a significant impact in determining a nation’s emission reduction target.Howard often asserts that Australia should not set emission reduction targets because nations such as India and China have not done so. It is true that these nations emit large amounts of greenhouse gases. However, determining a nation’s emission reductions on an absolute level is essentially unjust. For example, the amount of emissions from the US and China are approximately equal. However, China’s population is over four times that of the US, so the average Chinese citizen is responsible for a much smaller amount of emissions (less than one quarter) than the average US citizen. It could therefore be argued that in order to achieve an equitable level of emission reductions, nations which have a high per capita level of emissions should accept correspondingly high targets for emission reductions. According to these criteria, since Australia has the second highest emission rate, it should have most stringent emission rate.However, under the Howard Government, which has striven to defend the interests of the big coal mining corporations, we have achieved the exact opposite. With the second highest per capita emission rate, we now have the least ambitious targets for emission reductions; in fact we are rapidly increasing our level of emissions. A base untruthLast week a magnificent new 47-megawatt solar power station opened in Seville in Spain. It operates by using the sun’s rays to produce super-heated water, which can be stored to drive steam turbines 24 hours per day, thereby achieving "base load" operation.Similar engineering principles are being used in another solar power station, which is under construction in the Mohave Desert in the US, and which uses the Australian-designed technology being applied at Newcastle’s Liddel power station. A small power station being built in Mildura, South Australia, will utilise ammonia to achieve base load operation.Despite these very exciting new developments, the Howard Government continues to declare that renewable energy technology cannot and will never achieve base load operation, and that the only technologies that are capable of doing so are those associated with coal fired and nuclear power generation.And that in a nutshell defines their allegiances. "Clean coal" technology advocated by Howard is at least fifteen years away from practical use, if it can be achieved at all. Apart from the totally unresolved issues of safety and storage of hideously radioactive waste, the new "pebble" nuclear power plants proposed by Howard have not been built anywhere in the world, and the construction of 25 of them to meet our current requirements would probably take at least 30 years.Despite these inconvenient truths, Howard and his ministers are clinging doggedly to their policies. And who benefits? Without a doubt, it’s the big coal and uranium mining interests.The NSW Government has taken steps which set a precedent for building development occurring in National Parks, even in World Heritage listed areas.
