The Westerner
Thursday 9/11/2006 Page: 31
By Mal McClure
The Federal Government has at long last become interested in what is happening to our environment. One could be cynical and suggest that global warming will be the major issue in the next election but let us be charitable and assume higher motives for the moment.
A couple of weeks ago the government announced plans to fund projects to clean up the horrendous CO2 emissions from the coal-fuelled power generators in Victoria's Latrobe Valley, plus a large-scale solar energy project in the same state. Last week they announced more funding for a whole raft of further initiatives.
And not before time. Anyone who has driven past the huge smoke stacks near Morwell in Victoria could not help but be aghast at the dense pollution belching forth to the heavens. We may not be the world's heaviest polluters overall - USA has that distinction with China rapidly catching up to them - but Australia's per capita contribution to the current global warming disaster is higher than any other western country.
As I write this column, the positive talk now is mainly centred around a carboncatching technique, being developed by CSIRO, whereby CO2 emissions are trapped at the source before they have a chance of entering the atmosphere.
The Victorian solar-powered project is to be welcomed and the sooner it is in production the better for all of us. More mystifying is the Prime Minister's reluctance to embrace wind-powered electricity generation on a large scale. There are wind farms in Victoria that have been operating successfully for many years now and, in Europe, for many decades.
There is still some debate about wind farms and the main objection is primarily on aesthetic grounds. Personally, when driving around Europe almost 10 years ago, I found the sight of wind farms, particularly in Denmark where they were already in abundance, to be rather comforting when compared with the coal-fired turbines to be seen spewing out their pollution elsewhere.
Meanwhile, the drought continues here. Our south-east Queensland dam levels have dropped from 40 per cent of capacity, when Level 1 water restrictions were introduced just 17 months ago, to around 26 per cent today, where we are now under Level 4 restrictions. The odd shower still comes our way but I wouldn't count on seeing the reliable rainfall patterns that we enjoyed until recently. Nowadays we don't hear many pundits expounding the opinion that the drought is cyclic and good times will return.
But this is small discomfort compared with the news last week that, because of rising sea levels, the inhabitants of a small group of six low-lying islands just north of Papua New Guinea are to become the world's first environmental refugees. They are to be relocated next year to Bougainville and, predictably, are none too happy about it. A spokesman for the group complained bitterly that they had enjoyed none of the benefits of civilisation but were suffering the consequences of it.
Last week's report to the British government by the eminent economist Sir Nicholas Stern spelled out, in the most dire terms, that the ultimate cost of global warming would affect the economies of every country to a much greater extent than any previous disaster if we didn't get our collective act together now and plan to avert it.
The Kyoto Protocol, supported by 165 countries, introduced the concept of carbon- trading as a first step, but we need to go much further than that to save our planetary home in the long term. Two western countries, USA and Australia, did not sign up to Kyoto and it is to their everlasting shame that our governments still do not choose to see global warming as the greatest crisis in the world's history.
Only last week, I heard Peter Costello on radio saying there was no point in Australia trying to meet Kyoto targets when major developing countries, particularly China and India, were polluting to a far greater extent than us.
There is a point, Mr Costello. Be positive. Join the 165 countries already Kyoto committed and work with them to save the planet. Be the leader you aspire to be, not a follower, by setting this example. And note last-week's News poll finding that 86 per cent of Australians think the government is not doing enough about climate change.
Mal McClure is the editor/publisher of Being Now, a non-profit magazine which explores and offers innovative, non-doctrinal solutions to problems of humanity.
To subscribe phone: 3289 9392 or email: beingnow@acenet.net.au
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