Age
Friday 19/12/2008 Page: 19
FEW days ago, I sat at a pizzeria with a group of green-minded citizens and tossed around ideas for a local climate change group. We talked of many things: from encouraging our council to harvest rainwater and buy bulk green power to finding a way to communally recycle organic waste. Several weeks earlier, an acquaintance at my gyro had described how people in her street had formed an environmental group. Council elections were being held at the time and four out five local candidates were running with policies tinged either a deep or a paler shade of green.
Meanwhile, three people I knew had just installed solar panels on their roofs, buying in bulk at a discounted price. Bizarrely, the Federal Government might have hampered such schemes by replacing its household solar panel rebate with a lesser subsidy. The Government's dismal effort on greenhouse gas reduction targets ignores not only the scientific evidence but another striking fact: the community has largely moved on.
People know global warming must be tackled immediately and are grouping in surprising ways to do so. There are said to be about 50 climate change groups in Victoria alone. Most people I have spoken to about climate change have young children and I wasn't surprised to see a photo in The Age this week of kids at a protest in Health and Ageing Minister Nicola Roxon's office.
Parents spend years nurturing fragile, dependent beings, in the hope of building healthy, resilient adults. But what world will these children inhabit when they grow up? One possible answer is given by Tim Flannery in his quarterly essay Now or Never: A Sustainable Future For Australia? After assessing the latest scientific evidence, Flannery concludes: "I think there is now a better than even chance that, despite our best efforts, in the coming two or three decades Earth's climate system will pass the point of no return.
This is most emphatically not a counsel of despair, simply a statement of my assessment of probability." Thankfully, he devotes much of his essay to exploring ways we might head off this scenario if act now. They include embracing geothermal energy; changing farming methods to sequester carbon and build up soil quality; a surcharge on coal exports to expand clean coal research and using electric cars charged by wind energy.
Given that the Government's chief priority seems to be compensating polluters rather than encouraging research and development or changing farming practices, I believe it's up to the community to show Kevin Rudd and Penny Wong that they have misread the mood of the electorate.
Why, for example, did the Government's $4.7 billion "nation-building" package not direct more money to sustainable industries to help revive the economy? And how did it not anticipate a surge in demand for solar panels? Its decision to replace the $8000 rebate with an inferior subsidy to be paid by electricity retailers is another example of how it has misread the community's desire to act.
The rebate appears to have been axed because it was too popular! Less than two months ago, Barack Obama was elected US President amid a wave of hope. I'm sure I was not alone in shedding a tear as I listened to his acceptance speech on November 5. His message was one of sacrifice as well as hope; he spoke of the need for people to overcome their disagreements and work together for the common good. Even in Australia, Obama tapped into a wellspring of passion and idealism. I received phone calls and emails from friends thrilled by his success.
Many seemed to feel newly inspired to stand up for their beliefs and to take a role, however small, in the public life of our nation. Climate change is the issue of our lifetime. Surely, then, we should harness all that idealism and desire for change and tell our Government that we, too, are prepared to make sacrifices if it will show greater leadership on cutting greenhouse emissions. If it falters now, it will leave the next generation a terrible legacy.
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