GLOBAL climate change is now obvious.

Augusta Margaret River Mail
Wednesday 7/2/2007 Page: 6

A special report by Dr Bill Castleden, Chair of "Doctors for the Environment, Australia" (DEA)

Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth" focuses on melting glaciers, collapsing icecaps, hurricanes, droughts, floods and ever-escalating insurance payouts for weather-related disasters; and yet the rate at which human-produced carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are entering the atmosphere is accelerating.

The Australian media awareness of the threat of climate change has increased markedly over the last few months and it is now likely that most of us would like Australia to fully become part of the global effort to solve the problem and to sign onto the Kyoto Protocol.

The effects of Australia's exclusiveness are being felt:

• On a per capita basis, Australians are very nearly the worst greenhouse polluters on earth; worse even than the much-vilified Americans.
• Member States of the European Union are required to submit targets for the proportion of power they propose to generate from renewable energy. Most are aiming for 20% by 2020, 30% by 2030 and on to 60% by 2060.
• When the Australian Mandatory Renewable Energy Target of 3% is achieved in 2010 Australia will have no renewable energy target.
• Wind power installation globally is expanding at about 25% a year.
• Siemens is setting up a turbine manufacturing plant in the US, meanwhile Vestas, the Danish wind turbine manufacturer, is closing its Tasmanian plant; hardly a ringing endorsement of Australia's commitment to wind power.
• California has legislated the Million Solar Roofs Bill mandating that a million Californian homes be equipped with solar panels over the next 10 years. This will have enormous `spin-off' in that a million Californian homes will have to be built to take advantage of 'passive-solar' orientation. Compare this to Margaret River's new developments with their curving roads and cul-de-sacs in which about one in five houses can be aligned to take advantage of the optimum solar orientation and everyone is very car-dependent.
• To a large extent Australian councils, developers, planners and builders have chosen to close their eyes and ears to what is going on elsewhere to create more climate-friendly housing. We seem actively to resist change, saying "it can't be done," "it will be too expensive", and yet these changes are occurring all over the rest of the world. Australia's poor beleaguered house-buyers have no choice; they have to become high-carbon emitters dependent upon air conditioned houses and high car-utilisation.
• SunTech Power, a Chinese company which manufactures solar panels and equipment, originally based on Australian solar hot water heating technology, is quoted on the New York Stock Exchange, tripled its 2006 revenue from $41.9 million to $128.2million (the year before it was about $15m) and none of this profit is coining to Australia.
• Australian renewable energy company Novera Energy has delisted from the Australian stock exchange and moved to London.
• Ceramic Fuel Cells Ltd is now substantially European based because it can more easily raise capital there.
• Solco Ltd, an Australian manufacturer of solar hot water systems, has been in financial difficulty; others have gone bankrupt. All this while the Federal and State Governments assure us they are pursuing robust investments in renewable energy.
• In July 2006 Tesla Motors Inc unveiled an all electric car with sports car acceleration and a range of 400kms per 2-hour charge.

Prompted by rising petrol prices, the Prime Minister promised Australian motorists $1.6 billion to help them install gas conversions to their cars.

Would a $1.6 billion fund to encourage the Australian car industry to improve on Tesla's emission free car have been more long-sighted? Focussing on renewable energy in Australia, the sunniest and one of the windiest continents on earth, would not be the end of our economic prosperity. Up to $US63 billion will be invested by Northern Hemisphere venture capitalists in 2007 in a whole suite of renewable energy initiatives.

Sadly, this investment opportunity continues to pass Australia by while we focus on further developing out-dated, eventually-exhaustible, ultimately polluting, extractive (coal, gas and uranium) energy sources. Meanwhile our renewable energy inventors cannot even raise enough capital to patent their inventions.

Individuals, businesses and politicians alike have to fully recognise the problems we face and to work together, as if facing a wartime reality, to reduce the carbon dioxide and other greenhouse pollutants we all emit.

With a change in awareness it can be done. This is the point of the Margaret River Community Forum on Climate Change in the Cultural Centre on Friday 9th February at 7pm. Be there to find out more!

Dr Bill Castleden is Chair of "Doctors for the Environment, Australia" (DEA), a medical organisation which seeks to educate the public and politicians about the health-damaging effects of global warming. Its Energy Policy and much more information about how we can reduce our carbon footprint is available on the website www.dea.org.au.

The material in this article is that of the author and not necessarily the views of DEA.