Excess emissions can only fuel Australia's poor showing

Age
Friday 22/12/2006 Page: 14

The Federal Government must look further than resolving its own hardline stance on climate control. It is a global concern. JUST as a week is a long time in politics, any finite period must seem an epoch to Government politicians involved with environmental change: over recent months, weeks and even days, the environment has inconveniently refused to keep in line with political confidence.

In October, Environment Minister Ian Campbell told this newspaper that Australia was on track to meet the Kyoto target on greenhouse gas emissions. We have not ratified Kyoto, but the Government has consistently said it would, in principle, abide by its targets. On Wednesday came the startling - and, for the Government, humiliating - news that Australia is projected to exceed this target.

Figures in a report from Senator Campbell's own department, Environment and Heritage, reveal Australia was 1 per cent above its target of an 8 per cent increase in emissions on 1990 levels by 2008-12, and that projected emissions for 2020 could be 127 per cent of 1990 levels. Another nemesis for a Government trying to catch up with the relentless capriciousness of climate control has emerged more swiftly.

Last week Prime Minister John Howard established an emissions taskforce to find by the end of May a way in which Australia can reduce greenhouse gas emissions without sacrificing its trading advantages in traditional energy areas such as fossil fuels. This was criticised for various reasons, but, in particular, how a taskforce composed of bureaucrats, banking and energy representatives but not a single environmental expert, could have the depth of knowledge essential to dealing with climate change.

Lo! Just 10 days later, following the taskforce's first meeting that was attended by Mr Howard, he announced the group would issue a discussion paper in February, to which interested parties, including environmental groups, the renewable-energy sector and the states, would be invited to respond. Dare we suggest this was as it should have been in the first place?

In recent months The Age has expressed its increasing concern with the Federal Government's generally non-anticipatory reaction to climate change, which has become a bigger public issue than terrorism. The Prime Minister's turnaround, slower than a supertanker's, has, we suspect, been predicated more on voter concern than personal epiphany.

The awkward fact that Australia has not ratified Kyoto continues to place us in the outer reaches of international debate on environmental control: how can we be taken seriously in the climate-control debate by other developed nations (excluding, of course, the US, which also didn't ratify the protocol) when we have refused to endorse their common and binding treaty of agreement? The Government may say it intends to keep within the Kyoto target emission figures, but it should be remembered that while most countries under Kyoto were required to take emissions below 1990 levels by 2008-12, Australia negotiated an 8 per cent increase.

Without that increase, our excess would be far higher. Indeed, the departmental report forecasts that by 2020, when the benefits of reduced land-clearing start to fade, Australian emissions will be 17 per cent higher than its Kyoto target.

Whatever the figures, Australia is exceeding greenhouse gas emissions in a way that does little to salvage our reputation as one of the lesser players on a more globally responsible stage. We continue to have the highest per capita emissions in the Western world after F Luxembourg, and it has grown by 1.5 million tonnes a head since 1990. Mr Howard, despite the creation of the taskforce, is still doing little to show leadership or, indeed, to do much else other than react when it seems necessary.

There is at least some hope in that the taskforce will now make provision for the views of those with the knowledge, wisdom and vision necessary to find alternative ways to deal with something that is changing the world and the lives of all those who live in it with frightening speed and intensity. The environmentalist Tim Flannery summed it up when he said,"The fossil fuel industry is on global notice: business cannot long continue as usual." It is time for all voices to be heard.