Political tears will not quell fires in a warming globe

With their toll set to exceed 200 lives, Victoria's tragic bushfires challenge politicians not only to mitigate the dangerous global warming that is already locked in, but also to prevent it worsening and making fires and other extreme events ever more likely.

Yet the Royal Commission recently announced by Victorian State Premier, John Brumby, to investigate the fires appears set to focus solely on mitigation, with an admittedly necessary review of fire response strategies and planning laws. This narrow approach fails to acknowledge what could be done to prevent further global temperature increases that will otherwise stoke even more devastating infernos.

Commenting before the fires, Australia's federal climate change minister Penny Wong acknowledged that recent record temperatures reflected climate change. Now Premier Brumby has invoked it as a factor in the disaster. On Monday night, the head of Victoria's climate change reference group, Professor David Karoly, told ABC Lateline that climate change is 'loading the dice' in favour of more frequent extreme conditions. Yet the inadequate climate policies of our leaders are loading the dice in favour of climate change itself.

When Australian governments value cars over public transport, approve new coal mines and coal-fired power stations, when they refuse to harness renewables, and especially when our nation takes to the international bargaining table emissions targets that undermine international action, this undeniably creates the policy conditions for the extreme weather that leads to such monstrous fires.

Without effective climate policy, our leaders may as well cry their political tears on the flames for all the good they will do. We need climate action.

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.