Oz backdown on Greenhouse?
p. 41 · Read in the full issue
AUSTRAFIA looks set to back away from promises to reduce its emissions of Greenhouse gases the gases put out by industry and agriculture which are believed to be
contributing to global warming.
In the lead-up to a major review of goals set by the International Climate Convention, Foreign Minister Senator Gareth Evans has warned Australia may refuse to take on Greenhouse gas reduction commitments if the economic impact on Australia is too high.
In an interview with The Financial Review Evans said cabinet had endorsed the option of Australia not accepting climate change commitments. Senator Evans said Australia had a “very big problem” on the climate change issue.
“We are going to have a huge job meeting even the present set of targets, quite apart from more rigorous formal commitments that can basically be argued for by others.”
The present targets in the Climate Change Convention call for a reduction of emissions of Greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide to 1990 levels by the year 2000.
At the time those targets were set they were recognised internationally as very weak. Certainly they are nowhere near the 60 per cent cut in emissions scientists say are necessary if overall carbon dioxide levels are to be stabilised and global warming controlled before it has a chance to become a run away process. For the Pacific Island nations action to force the industrialised world (which produces 80 per cent of Greenhouse gases) to agree to binding commitments to reduce emissions has been a top priority since the South Pacific Forum in Kiribati five years ago.
Back then it had become clear that as many as five island states could become uninhabitable if predicted sea level rises associated with Greenhouse-induced global warming eventu ate. Since that time predictions have only become more gloomy. The international review of Climate Convention emission targets begins in earnest later this month in Geneva at a meeting of the 177 nations which have signed the Climate Convention. With the United States under President Bill Clinton now pushing for strong action to control emissions, Australia could find itself out on a limb with some of the worst Greenhouse offenders, such as Japan.
Senator Evans’ comments indicate the thinking coming out of Canberra at the moment is a far cry from the target the Hawke government set back in 1990 of reducing Greenhouse emissions to 20 per cent less than the 1988 level by 2005. At that stage Australia was in the forefront of Greenhouse action.
The turnaround was initiated by Prime Minister Paul Keating who wrote to key industry and environment ministers seeking a review of Australia’s negotiating position in time for the Geneva meeting.
His change of tack coincided with an increasingly vocal campaign by business and energy sector organisations (the main Greenhouse gas producers) to minimise Australia’s promises on emissions. Speaking at Keating’s National Greenhouse Roundtable in June, industry representative Paul Barratt claimed Australia had a particular problem with binding commitments because its circumstances were unique
amongst the developed world.
“We are fossil fuel dependent, have key fossil fuel and energy intensive export industries, and have growing energy demand due to high economic
and population growth. Compared
with other OECD countries we trade and compete more with developing countries (which are not being asked to make emission reductions).
“These factors make it much more costly for Australia to stabilise emission levels than any other developed country,” Barratt said. The claim that meeting Greenhouse commitments is going to be a very costly exercise is
rejected by environment organisations.
The Australian Conservation Foun dation (ACF) says “It is extremely disappointing to note the slow progress or failure by governments (State and
Federal) to implement key aspects of
the National Greenhouse Response
Strategy.” The ACF blames State governments, in particular, which “continue to push ahead with major policies and programmes, such as new coal fired power stations, which,
although having substantial Greenhouse implications, are
being developed and implemented without regard to those implications”. According to Greenpeace 46 per cent of Australia’s carbon dioxide production comes from coal and gas fired power stations. One smoke stack alone at a big power station, such as Bayswater in New South Wales, can put out six per cent of Australia’s total emissions. In the past year four new coal or gas fired power stations have been opened and two more approved. In Victoria, the State government has scrapped its wind farm in Gippsland while at the same time pouring SIOO million into developing the next generation of notoriously polluting browm coal power stations.
As Greenpeace says not only does “each new coal fired power station commit Australia to another 40 years of dirty coal fired power ... (but) the danger is that they will not be able to be repaid because they will be made redundant well within their working life, by world action to prevent a climate catastrophe”. In Geneva, it now looks as if most countries will be pushing for a new protocol to be added to the Glimate Convention requiring binding commitments to cut Greenhouse emissions from industrialised countries.
Various ways of minimising the domestic effect of either new stronger targets or binding commitments are being discussed. One such method known as “burden sharing” or “joint implementation” involves western nations, such as Australia, joining with another country which does not make a significant contribution to the world’s Greenhouse gas emissions (such as the Pacific Island nations) to meet a joint commitment. By paying for some form of environmental action which acts to ameliorate the Greenhouse effect, such as forest protection, in the developing nation the western nation would then earn the right to put out more Greenhouse gases. It’s a tack Senator Evans says Australia will be pursuing. “We will be working like hell to try and get that sort of burden-sharing concept to be accepted and some recognition of the difficulty that we, and a handful of other almost totally fossil fuel dependent countries, have,” Evans said. D