5-05-09, 9:28 am

Original source: The Guardian (Australia)

The Council of Australian Governments (COAG) meeting in Hobart on April 30 signed on to the federal government’s paltry National Renewable Energy Target (RET) and agreed to exemptions of up to 90 percent for the most intensive emitters of green house gases where these are export-related.

The target is for 20 percent of Australia’s electricity to come from renewable sources by 2020 through to 2030, after which there would be no target.

In the same week the Senate Select Committee on Climate Policy was hearing alarming submissions from scientists that its planned emissions trading scheme (ETS) and greenhouse gas reduction targets fell far short of what is required. The Rudd government has its head in the sand (or is it coal?), preferring to protect the profits of the coal mining industry and major polluters instead of taking the urgent action to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations.

CSIRO scientists Drs. Michael Raupach, John Church and Pep Canadell, speaking in a personal capacity, provided new scientific findings showing that the situation is far more serious than indicated in the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC AR4). These dealt changes with:

* Rapid observed temperature and sea level rise * Loss of land-based ice * Loss of sea ice * Antarctic warming * Accelerating CO2 emissions * CO2 sinks are “losing the race” with emissions (The natural uptake of CO2 to land and ocean reservoirs currently removes more than half of all CO2 emissions from the atmosphere, thereby reducing the climate impact of emissions, but these land and ocean CO2 sinks have not increased as rapidly as emissions over the last 50 years.) * Methane release from melting permafrost * Ocean acidification * Stability of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet * Irreversibility of climate change.

“The Australian targets will not achieve climate protection,” Drs. Raupach, Church, and Canadell told the Senate Committee. If Australia does not set higher targets it “is at high risk of permanent, major damage from climate change.”

“A benchmark for avoiding major risks from climate change is a long-term global rise of 2?C above pre-industrial temperatures. This needs to be treated not as an ‘ambit claim’ for climate protection but rather a firm goal. Above this level, the risks of dangerous climate change increase rapidly.”

In their submission, the scientists said that “Stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations at 450 ppm CO2eq (CO2 equivalents) gives only a 50 percent chance of staying below the 2?C benchmark. Therefore the target must be lower.

“Global emissions trajectories to achieve stabilization at 450 ppm CO2eq require emissions reductions below 2000 levels of approximately 5–10% by 2020, and 70–80% by 2050.” The Australian targets are 5% by 2020 (up to 15% if other nations make significant commitments), and 60% by 2050.”

But, they pointed out, “Stronger reductions are highly desirable to reduce the danger from crossing climate tipping points.

“Present Australian targets will not achieve even the limited degree of climate protection conferred by 450 ppm CO2eq stabilization, because they are weaker than the global average requirement, and much weaker than reductions required of developed nations given the need for differentiation between developed and developing nations.

“Equal emissions reduction targets across both developed and developing nations cannot be applied, for sheer practical reasons as well as reasons of equity,” the scientists noted. This point is recognized in international agreements, but not by the Australian government towards China and India, in particular. It means that Australia, along with other highly developed nations such as the US, Canada and Britain, must make a contribution far above the global average.

In a separate, also personal submission, CSIRO scientist Dr James Risbey said that if the Australian government’s ETS target were applied across all nations, there would be a 50-90 percent chance of exceeding the dangerous threshold of a 2?C global warming. “In other words this is Russian roulette with the climate system with most of the chambers loaded.” Australia, he pointed out, as a developed nation needed a stronger response. Dr Risbey advocated the lower risk target of 350 ppm CO2eq – not so many chambers would be loaded.

Irreversible and rapid change

The CSIRO scientists drew attention to another serious aspect of climate change: “Climate change can be accelerated beyond current predictions by increased positive climate feedbacks”, meaning processes which both contribute to climate change and are accelerated as climate change occurs, thus causing climate change to feed on itself. When these feedbacks are sufficiently strong they become “climate tipping points” which can flip the climate “into a new state with essentially no way to recover.”

“Business-as-usual emissions scenarios carry a high risk of crossing temperature levels which would lead to an essentially irreversible melting of the sheet. A global average warming (relative to pre-industrial values) in excess of 1.9 to 4.6°C is estimated to lead to virtually complete elimination of the Greenland Ice Sheet and a resulting contribution to sea level rise of about 7 meters from Greenland alone.”

And it is business-as-usual for the fossil fuel industry and major polluters. The government’s emissions trading scheme shields the largest greenhouse gas emitters from much of the costs of their pollution. The government in effect subsidizes them to pollute, giving them free permits for between 60-90 percent of their carbon emissions. These include the aluminum, steel, zinc, lead, cement, paper and LNG industries and coal fired electricity generators. The coal industry receives a similar subsidy to pollute.

“The subsidy shifts the unmet costs to other lower carbon producing sources such as families, small businesses, rural and regional Australia, grocery businesses and lower carbon emitting key industries such as tourism,” the Mackay Conservation Group said in their submission to the Senate inquiry.

“This logic leads to a system that lowers emission targets and places the major costs of those cuts on that sector of the economy that did not produce most of the emissions …” the Mackay Group said. They also said that in 2008, “for every dollar spent on greenhouse programs the government was spending $16.00 on subsidizing fossil-energy use.”

The coal companies hypocritically argued before the Senate Committee that the ETS was unfair and would cost jobs. These are the same companies that have been sacking thousands of workers to boost profits during the economic crisis! They have only one concern – profits.

The Greens correctly point out that the government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme “is not designed to drive the transition to a zero carbon economy, but rather is intended to maintain the profitability of existing fossil fuel based industries. As it stands, the legislation would actively prevent the kind of emissions reductions Australia needs to achieve in order to play an equitable role in the global effort to prevent climate change.”

Greens deputy leader Christine Milne pointed out: “If you’re interested in jobs, then the best way of securing them in the long term is not just to go back to business as usual and propping up the old fossil fuel sectors, but rather moving rapidly on the innovation, education, new manufacturing front that delivers better energy options, more efficient options, more longer-term jobs.”

Government funds thrown into research and development of yet unproven methods of capturing and storing CO2 emissions divert valuable resources from the development of renewable, zero-greenhouse, alternative energy and other measures to conserve energy. At the very earliest, which Resources Minister Martin Ferguson himself admits, these new commercially unproven technologies will not be available before the 2020s at the earliest. We cannot wait that long, and it makes no sense to pour billions of dollars into an area which has finite resources and no long-term future.

The ETS is a central plank of the government’s policy on climate change which it is pushing to have taken up globally. In effect it is a system that allows the markets to determine who can pollute, and favors the richer nations. There is nothing to stop the big corporations buying pollution permits overseas. It avoids concrete, planned action to determine set reductions in emissions and also diverts resources from and delays the development of renewable, zero emission energy production.

“The scientifically unjustifiable plan to do little or nothing to reduce Australia’s emissions before 2020 is based on the vain hope that it might be possible to clean up coal instead of embracing renewable energy and energy efficiency and creating many more jobs in protecting the climate than there are currently in destroying it,” Senator Milne said.