Warming puts heat on political leaders

Age
Tuesday 20/11/2007 Page: 12

There is a false sense that the short-term costs of climate change will be small, writes Barrie Pittock.

A HOST of recent observations indicate that climate change is happening now, faster than expected by most scientists, and indeed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) since its fourth assessment report was finalised this year.

Greenhouse gas emissions, global warming and sea level rise are all running at the very top of the range of uncertainty in IPCC estimates. Most spectacularly, Arctic sea ice reached a record low area in September some 1 million square kilometres less than the previous record. This is an area the size of NSW and Victoria combined, with less ice to reflect sunlight back into space, so more is being absorbed on Earth, leading to greater warming. These observation are not theory, but fact.

The IPCC estimates were low, largely due to a tendency to focus on the middle or "most likely" estimates of possibilities rather than on the more extreme possibilities that would have far worse effects. Moreover, the rapid economic growth in China and India has increased greenhouse gas emissions faster than most economists thought possible.

As a result we are suffering from a lack of a necessary sense of urgency regarding the needed reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Long-term solutions such as carbon capture and sequestration or nuclear energy are being promoted, to deal with a short term problem. By the time we implement such long-term "solutions", it will be too late. We will be committed to large sea-level rises that will cause great economic and social damage, and our water supplies will have gone from bad to worse, with huge impacts on food prices, rural populations and city water supplies.

Given this disconnect between the reality and political perceptions, I see several key obstacles and pointers to solving the problem of climate change: Obstacles include:

1. Gross underestimates of the cost of no action. There is a false sense that the short-term costs of climate change and sea-level rise will be small. They are not. We are not merely in a "drought" but in the start of a drying trend that will get worse. Farmers are going broke, getting depressed and leaving the land. Failing appropriate action, food will get dearer and the countryside will be depopulated. Coastal areas are extremely vulnerable to quite small rises in sea level, and there are many examples of this. Coastal development in many areas is about to stop because of lack of insurance, falling property values and the need to retreat from the shoreline as it moves inland. Coastal and estuarine flooding and erosion are still too often seen as temporary, isolated storm events, not part of an accelerating trend. By 2100, sea-level rise could be as much as several metres (that is, an average of several centimetres each year), and shoreline retreat 100 times that.
2. A lack of a sense of urgency. Most people now concede that climate change is a real issue, but still think we have decades to do something about it. They see those urging immediate drastic action as alarmist. There may well have been good reasons for the earlier scientific reluctance to emphasise the top of the range of uncertainty, but now that the evidence for rapid change is in, we need to take the risk management view and focus on what must be avoided, even at some cost. Policy must provide us with risk minimisation and insurance.
3. There are major financial disincentives to individual action. Existing urban structures and widespread subsidies for energy-intensive industries are major obstacles to individuals doing the right thing. We need to level the playing field by providing tax incentives, start-up subsidies, and a price on carbon pollution. The polluter-pays principle must be applied to climate change, not in 2012 or even 2009, but now.

The awful reality is that to stabilise climate we need global emissions reductions of at least 60-80% by 2050, that is an average of 2-3% a year, starting now. Yet global and Australian emissions are in fact increasing at about 2-3% a year, and have been accelerating over the past decade.

Pointers to sensible action are:

1. Urgent action. This means going first with already proven and feasible technology that can be installed in years, not decades. That does not apply in Australia to carbon capture and sequestration nor to nuclear energy, which are decades away on any large scale. Sure, argue about them for the distant future, but let's get on with large-scale renewables that we know can work now. Major and immediate expenditure initiatives are needed for renewable energy and energy efficiency, measured not in millions but billions of dollars. Both major parties evidently see this sort of expenditure as reasonable for tax cuts and road building, so why not for renewable energy?
2. Renewable base-load power is realistic. The lie, repeated ad nauseam by certain politicians and their advisers, that renewables cannot provide base-load power must be dismissed. This can be demonstrated by building large baseload renewable power stations. Solar thermal with hot rock, molten salt or other energy storage systems is not only possible but proven in California and elsewhere. These could be on-line in five years, and backed up by wind farms, geothermal and tidal power stations.
3. The not-in-my-backyard syndrome must be broken. The best way is probably to build major renewable power stations in remote areas where there are no "NIMBY" people but rather communities wanting development and jobs. It is ideal for many rural communities faced with water shortages that threaten their livelihoods. And it is perfectly possible and economic thanks to high-voltage direct-current cables that are economic over thousands of kilometres, with only small losses (10 or 15%). Basslink is the prime Australian example. You don't need a weatherman. See TREC at www.TRECEUMENA.net, for a major European version. Self-styled "coastal guardians" who oppose wind farms need to realise that the coastal environment they claim to value will be destroyed if we do not stop rapid sea-level rise and climate change.
4. World agreement is necessary, but it starts with us, now. Developed countries have contributed most to climate change, but developing countries are rapidly catching up. Both will suffer the impacts of sea-level rise and climatic disasters such as floods and droughts. It is up to the rich countries that built their prosperity on burning fossil fuelss to lead the way by committing to urgent action.

It is time our politicians, backed by business and community groups, took serious action. For starters I suggest a price be put on greenhouse gas pollution within the next year or two, and that state and federal governments commit to an investment in major renewable energy installations at the rate of, say, a billion dollars a year per state, for the next five years. Then we may begin to see real results. Which of our politicians will make such commitments?

Dr Barrie Pittock is author of Climate Change: Turning Up the Heat, and former leader, CSIRO climate impact group.