Grassroots hope in a climate of defeatism

It's good to see The Age focusing on climate change, analysing the gloom and doom big-picture of the defeatist Rudd Government and pathetic Opposition leavened with the small-scale hope of increasing grassroots responses.

Today's edition focuses on Garnaut's own critique of the Government's Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) White Paper. The professor is still sticking to his weak line on targets, but he does critcise the White Paper position that precludes Australia taking a stronger position than 15% cuts on 2000 levels by 2020 even if a better international deal is reached at Copenhagen next year.

Garnaut is also critical of the flaws in the emissions trading scheme (ETS), with its billions in compensation and free permits for energy generators and trade exposed emissions intensive industries. As well as criticising these ridiculous hand-outs to the (coal-fired) generators, Garnaut says the ETS threatens to over-compensate the trade exposed industries because it doesn't take into account the increasing carbon constraints on international industries in its proposed five-year cap on permit prices in Australia.

The basic point is that Australian prices should increase as overseas industries become more carbon-constrained and lose any claimed competitive advantage they may have previously enjoyed over Australian industries because of lower constraints on their emissions. Garnaut also points out that the White Paper approach to free permits and compensation for big emitters means that more ambitious targets would ultimately see industry relief eating into funds for research and development, as well as relief to households facing increasing carbon prices.

The capped permit prices and inappropriate compensation measures therefore reinforce Rudd's weak 2020 5% target by putting a brake on more ambitious goals. Shouldn't the ETS facilitate the targets indicated as necessary by the science (at least 40% reduction on 1990 levels by 2020), rather than having the targets constrained by the ETS?

My own view is that some industries simply need to go out of business, and in those cases compensation should be directed to the workers, not the owners of massive corporations with a history of contributing to the problem. A big part of this should be re-training for new jobs in the green economy.

Penny Wong's line, now echoed by the Australian Workers' Union - that the Government position is about jobs - can only mean it's about old jobs that will leave the workforce ultimately unprepared for the changes that must come if we are to save our climate. In effect, then, the Rudd Government is betraying workers' futures for the benefit of the owners of dinosaur polluting industries. The ETS will perpetuate these industries and any transition, however minimal, will take place according to timelines the climate simply cannot afford.

Friday's coverage was both depressing and hopeful. Tim Colebatch reported on another flaw of the ETS - that domestic reductions would in effect make room under the emissions limit for heavy-polluters to increase their own emissions. Together with Government inaction on solar panels, this threatens a big disincentive to personal emissions reductions, which may come to seem futile if they will merely be soaked up by the big emitters.

Yet Suzy Freeman-Greene pointed to another compelling motive to continue personal action: collectively, it sends a political message to Government that is currently being demonstrated by the proliferation of local climate action groups. Today, The Age published my letter on the Colebatch and Freeman-Greene articles:

With typical cogency, Tim Colebatch highlights a flawed emissions trading scheme that will in effect allow big polluters to increase their emissions by the amount saved through domestic reductions. While this may dissuade some from personal efforts to reduce their emissions, Suzy Freeman-Greene offers a compelling reason our efforts should continue even as we fight to have them properly recognised by the trading scheme: collectively, they send a strong signal for change at a political level.

It is heartening to read that in Victoria alone there are some 50 climate change groups, with Darebin Climate Action Now just one I am aware of in my own neighbourhood. Together they are sending the message that, while Rudd is set to hand out billions in free permits to big polluters, millions of us care about the climate and have a permit to vote.

The Victorian state and federal elections aren't far away, and electoral pressure may be the best way to put the heat on the politicians before they put it on us through their cynical neglect and pandering to industry on the climate change challenge.

Professor Karoly offers more than 'advice'

A report by Adam Morton in Saturday's edition of The Age shows Professor David Karoly beginning his appointment to the state's climate change reference group with an admirably plain-spoken stance against the compartmentalised thinking that continues to damage our climate.

Professor Karoly is right to propose that all state government policies be assessed through the lens of climate change, where now they too often dwell in disconnected silos. New road tunnels, a new coal-fired power proposal and poor public transport all sit strangely alongside government advertising campaigns depicting our household emissions as black balloons bubbling from our appliances.

Professor Karoly's influence may yet lead to a greater acknowledgment that large-scale activities have their own massive balloons looming darkly above us.

In Saturday's report, Professor Karoly asks, 'How can you tell people climate change is important and then say "we're going to have this new black-coal-equivalent power station and we're going to put lots of money into it"?'

The question has international relevance to the fight against climate change as China continues to build coal-fired power stations at a rapid rate, and concerned citizens in the UK protest over a proposal to build a new coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth, near Kent.

What governments, including the Victorian State Government, spin as projects necessary for the development of elusive clean coal technology, climate campaigners correctly see as the encouragement of further exploitation of emissions-intensive fossil fuels. Victoria will, for example, pump $50 million into the proposed new LaTrobe power station on top of $100 million of Federal funds committed last year.

Writing recently on the UK's Kingsnorth proposal, George Monbiot provides a telling analysis of the economics of carbon capture and storage, touted as the magic bullet solution to emissions from coal-fired power proposals such as that slated for the LaTrobe valley.

Returning to other suggested climate measures reported on Saturday, a key proposal put forward by Professor Karoly would see a 5:1 funding ratio to favour public transport over roads.

This is just one example of a large-scale measure to cut emissions that would encourage benefits from widespread personal change. Faster, affordable and more frequent public transport would only encourage us to make our own small, but cumulative savings in emissions by ditching our cars.

Conversely, each small step we take - each crowded train we board - should not be viewed as an isolated and futile contribution in the face of large-scale emissions, but as part of a collective signal to our leaders that we want the kind of broad, sustainable change that would see significant investment in public transport infrastructure.

The first, deserved victim of Professor Karoly's clear-sightedness should be the Eddington road tunnel proposal, which is a traffic and revenue growth strategy that fails to address identified transport needs, but promises to contribute massively to emissions.

Yet Victorian Premier, John Brumby, echoes Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's position on Garnaut in relegating Karoly to the level of mere 'advice' among a throng of competing lobbies vying for influence. What our state and national leaders are getting from the professors is better than that - it's a dose of reality.

Deakin climate debate at Online Opinion

Online Opinion has today kindly published a piece I wrote following the 14 June Deakin debate contesting the motion that 'climate change is the only issue'. The debate was part of the 2008 Deakin Lectures (full audio) and was also broadcast as an edition of ABC Radio National's The National Interest on Friday 20 June (includes edited audio).

In the piece I essentially agree with the motion, since the science is conclusive and false competition between the issues of climate change and, for example, global poverty cannot be sustained. In fact, climate change action, while a precondition of the survival of the planet, is also demonstrably a social justice project, calling on the world to fairly share global reductions in CO2 emissions and to avoid climate change impacts that will be felt disproportionately by the world's poor.

Speakers for the motion included Don Henry, Executive Director of the Australian Conservation Foundation, Larissa Brown, Executive Director of the Centre for Sustainability Leadership, and Chris Turner, Canadian writer and author of The Geography of Hope: A Tour of the World We Need.

Speakers against the motion were Austin Williams, Director of the Future Cities Program, Dr Leela Ghandi, Professor of English at the University of Chicago, and Dr Norman Lewis, Chief Strategy Officer of Wireless Grids Corporation (USA).