We cannot go on living like this

Age
Monday 15/6/2009 Page: 13

Humanity has pillaged the planet, but Australia can use its abundant natural resources to forge a new way.

LAST Thursday in Belfast: I'm off soon for a flight to Heathrow, then the 22:25 Qantas flight to Melbourne via Singapore. Hotel lobby packed with people, checking out or checking in and all speaking with some kind of Slavic accent. They flew here too. Many still have airline tags on their suitcases.

That's our expectation, tourist, scientist, business executive or whatever, that we can fly anywhere any time with no cost beyond the price of the ticket. But we know that's not true. There's a carbon cost. My personal carbon signature is awful! As I board the Boeing 747 at Heathrow, I might think: "What an extraordinary machine, how ingenious we are!" Perhaps, though, I could pause for an instant and consider: "This thing burns fossil fuel, are we so smart?"

Replacing Jet A with something that's clean and green is one of the more difficult challenges as we move to renewable energy. How expensive will that make air travel? What will happen to Australia's tourism industry if only a very few can afford to fly long distances, or choose not to because of the greenhouse gas issue? Will we take more time and go by boat? It's possible to put nuclear reactors on ships, and there's always wind and sail, the way some of our ancestors came to Australia.

Walking out the door of my Belfast hotel, I dodge the seeming millions of cars, buses and trucks - there's many fewer bikes here than in Melbourne, perhaps because it's always raining - and am soon in sight of the massive gantries of the old Harland and Wolff shipyard. Ships aren't built in Belfast any more, but they've left the gantries in place as giant, urban sculptures.

I could amble over to the Titanic dock: the Irish like to say, "She was in good shape when we gave her to the English!" According to some of the climate change literature, the whole of humanity is embarked on the Titanic. Surely that should make its act. But, as the Titanic story tells its, we are major risk-takers and too often in denial. The captain knew he had a coalbunker fire when the Titanic sailed from Southampton. Did the heat weaken some of her iron plates? The hull over that bunker apparently shows evidence of severe damage. Were they hurrying to get help from the New York fire boats?

To my way of thinking, the captain and the executives of the White Star Line did an unacceptable experiment. No matter what you believe about climate change, there can be absolutely no doubt that it's a totally unacceptable experiment to take 6.8 billion human beings living in a thin, fragile layer of atmosphere, then continually ramp up levels of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide.

The old denier/ geologists have no case when they claim all this has happened before. The human family numbered only about 5 million when the climate last changed dramatically at the beginning of the Holocene epoch, making the equation for us totally different. The professional denialists fail to emphasise that the Permian/Triassic period, when methane and carbon dioxide levels went sky-high way back in geological time, is also called the Great Dying.

Maybe atmospheric carbon wasn't the sole, or even the major cause of mass extinction, but can we take that risk? There's no doubt that the planet will survive. Will we? The greenhouse gas experiment we're doing with all humanity and every other large, complex life-form, would never be approved by any university ethics-of-experimentation committee, even if the experimental animals were only lab rats!

This Belfast trip was to give the keynote talk at an immunology conference, my field of expertise. The event was at Queen's University a fine institution named for Queen Victoria and founded a decade or so before our Wonderful University of Melbourne. The meeting went well, and the dynamic, young vice-chancellor invited me to stay on for a further day to attend a formal dinner and hear a lecture by the leading engineer/ scientist/poet and former president of India, the much-loved Abdul Kalam.

The livewire 77-year-old recited some of his poetry and talked about the tremendous importance of education at every level as we seek to counter climate change. We learned that India has loads of thorium and intends to develop a whole new series of thorium, rather than uranium, nuclear fission power plants. He spoke about Indian advances in nanotechnology that have already increased the efficiency of experimental solar cells to the 35-40% range. They're aiming for 60%.

Australia can be thought of as the biggest solar collector in the world. With our small, and relatively educated population, stable political system and massive resources of metals, we could and should lead the world when it comes to developing and exploiting renewable energy. There's also geothermal, wind, waves and tides. If we become a hub for cheap, renewable energy, then it will make sense to build refineries and new industries here.

Our universities will be central to this, as they bring together the tremendous breadth of science, technology, law, economics and, yes, the humanities, that will be necessary to develop real solutions and to convince people of the necessity for change. Who wants to be on the Titanic? Apart from anything else, it's old technology. The human reality has altered out of all recognition since it was completed in 1912. Now we must change again, and fast.

With change comes opportunity. Will Australia be the great experiment that brightens the future for everyone? What we can't afford is to be the ·world's ostrich: head in the sand, backside proudly in the air while other nations march on by.

Nobel laureate Professor Peter Doherty will give the introductory talk this evening at the University of Melbourne Festival of Ideas: www.ideas.unimelb.edu.au