Climate pioneer backs carbon tax - `Exporting coal akin to being drug dealer to world'

Age
Thursday 4/3/2010 Page: 4

THE scientist who first convinced the world that climate change was a problem has backed a Greens' proposal for a carbon tax as the only solution being offered in Canberra. James Hansen, the director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies and dubbed the "godfather of climate science", said the emissions trading model backed by the government was "a non-solution" while the opposition did not accept man-made climate change. He supported the Greens' plan of an interim carbon tax starting at $23 and rising with inflation - in line with his support of industries having to pay a carbon price without access to offsets through a carbon market.

"If we had a democracy where decisions were based on the public's best interest, then that would be taken up in a heartheat," Dr Hansen said in Melbourne yesterday. "Neither of the major parties gets it - or they don't want to get it." Where Dr Hansen - who brought global warming to the world's attention through testimony before the US Congress in 1988 and has become famously vocal in his disenchantment over its failure to act - diverges from the Greens on the issue that brought him to Melbourne: nuclear energy, he believes it is an inevitable part of the solution.

Dr Hansen said the answer to climate change must be a rising carbon tax and then letting the alternative technologies - nuclear, renewable energy sources and energy efficiency - compete. He said he had been swayed that nuclear was needed by experts and energy company chiefs in the US arguing. "They make a very strong case that renewables and efficiency cannot do the whole job - to their it becomes a choice between coal and nuclear for baseload power," he said.

He would welcome Australia making a commitment to move to 100% renewable energy - but said it would be a mistake "to make that gamble". "I think the chances of that working and being at a price that the public would be willing to pay is not very good," he said. "I don't intend to be telling Australia what they should do for their energy source except that they can't continue to burn coal without screwing everybody - including my grandchildren. "And exporting coal, and increasing exports of coal, is almost equivalent to being a drug dealer to the world."

Dr Hansen opposes emissions trading as it lets large emitters offset their carbon footprint rather than make cuts. He believes it will never be embraced internationally, especially not by China. He said claims that climate science had been undermined by recent criticisms were a "hoax" backed by vested interests. He said raw data showing rising temperatures was available on the NASA website, and glaciers were continuing to recede. The rate of land mass loss in Greenland and Antarctica had almost doubled since 2002.