We are not climate change leaders, we are its first victims
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The most disturbing aspect of the Treasury ETS modelling — assuming you can handle the threat of a $5-7 a week rise in your energy costs — is the “reference scenario”, the ” business as usual” case of what happens if we do nothing about climate change. It’s not, as Treasury points out, a prediction of what the world will be like in 2050 and 2100, but a projection, one which doesn’t take into account any efforts to address climate change. It does, however, raise some troubling issues if as a planet we can’t get our act together sufficiently to reduce carbon emissions. Troubling, in particular, for Australia. The Treasury modelling and the Garnaut Review’s no-mitigation scenario suggested the atmosphere would reach 750ppm of greenhouse gases in 2050 and 1600ppm by 2100. This would lead to a temperature rise above 1990 levels by 2100 of 5.1 degrees, or a worst-case scenario of 6.6 degrees. This complements recent work by two Stockholm University economists who used a different model and a probability distribution to estimate a “business as usual” scenario for climate change and anticipated a median temperature rise (on 1900, not 1990, levels) of 4.5 degrees, with a worst-case scenario of 6.9 degrees, based on a median level of around 1200 ppm. Greenhouse gas levels don’t naturally level off, by the way — they go on building, as does the temperature, after a lag of some years. That’s the elegant thing about climate change — even if we reduced our carbon emissions right now, we’d still have quite a few years of climate change impacts to deal with. Garnaut discusses the likely impacts and costs of a “no-mitigation” scenario extensively. They are not confined to minor things like losing the Great Barrier Reef or Kakadu. They involve massive temperature-related deaths, coastal inundation, the destruction of much of the country’s agriculture, plus little problems like our major cities experiencing extreme threats to their water supply. The impact of a temperature rise of 7 degrees is probably getting into apocalyptic territory. You’d figure Australia, along with much of the world, wouldn’t be amenable to human life much above subsistence level, if that. At least people then wouldn’t be worried about where to put their investments. The point of this is not to indulge in disaster-movie speculation. Well, not entirely. The other significant point that Garnaut made about our situation is that Australia is the single most exposed country when it comes to climate change. We’re environmentally, economically and geographically right on the bleeding edge, and we’re only a small nation. In short, we’ll suffer more damage more quickly than everyone else, and we have less capacity to cope. Unfortunately, as conservatives like to point out when advocating doing nothing, we’re at best 2% of the world’s emissions. Think about that for a moment. Australia faces perhaps total disaster in the next 100 years, but we have no control over it. The rest of the world does. Americans. Europeans. Chinese. Indians. Russians. Our fate is in their hands. The issue is not whether we should be leading the world or whether we’re moving too fast. The issue is whether the rest of the world — including countries like Russia that might be altogether more relaxed about global warming and its consequences for countries bordering the Arctic — will do what is necessary to prevent massive damage to this country. Leading the world? You wish. We’re climate change mendicants. Our fate is in the hands of foreign governments. We can only beg them to consider their own future when they’re making up their minds about whether they want to take action quickly. Some of them, having watched Australia make a mozza from flogging its mineral wealth in recent years, might see the funny side of Australians suddenly deeply worried about climate change, and suggest we reduce our own per capita emissions significantly first before coming to them for help. Others might not see what the rush is, given the relative impact in their own countries is much less than in Australia. And they’re unlikely to be too fussed about losing the Great Barrier Reef or Kakadu, although our pleas might remind them they should pop down and check them out before they go. As with many other debates, there’s an irrational element of nationalism in our approach to handling climate change. It’s the fault of all them foreigners, seems to be the view — we’re only 2%. Why should we do anything? Why not the Chinese? But we’ve forgotten the corollary of that — if it’s someone else’s fault, we can only politely ask them to stop doing it and hope they see that it is in their own interests to take action as well. |
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15 Comments
Kevin Charles Herbert, I hope you are the Aust Rep of Daily Planet Media, not The Daily Planet, which is an adult site…I just visited it!
I have just finished attending the Carbon Market Expo on the Gold Coast - and it represented the coming of age of biosequestration in the Australian climate change debate. Australia has HUGE potential to provide the necessary biological solution to climate change - Tim Flannery has identified grassland carbon sequestration as one of his top 3 measures we need to adopt - and it helps deal with the real cause of the Murray Darling Basin situation which is bare soil and degrading eco-systems.
See http://www.soilcarbon.com.au for more information.
Vai Tibi: all things considered, it’s in your interests never to know who Andrew Bolt is. Rest assured, you definitely won’t be missing anything
FYI, Andrew himself is no closer to answering the question after many years spent in contrarian limbo.
Bernard Keane: Yes, it’s an excellent article; only thing is how do you reconcile this article with your previous article ringing the joys of an expanded immigration policy? How can more people equal a better environment?
In this most fragile, etc, etc.
Please Victor Kevin Charles Herbert; don’t answer this question. I know what the policy of the Catholic Church is. “Breed like flies and God will help you.”
Good article, Bernard, but please stop repeating the constantly heard argument that our emissions are minuscule. They are not. We are, per person, one of the biggest emitters in the world, and we can do a lot about that. But importantly, we are arguably the biggest coal exporter in the world. We cannot blame other countries for burning the coal when we have revelled in the income that comes from being the source of it. Unfortunately, it appears the Rudd Government is just as much captive of the coal industry as was the Howard government. Until we can face that, and do something about it, we deserve all the scorn the world wants to direct at us.
Such scare-mongering!
As Andrew Bolt often takes unsustainable positions, so do you Bernard Keane. Vai Tibi says it all when she refers to so many misleading statements coming from such otherwise credible organistaions as the UN. The waters are muddy no doubt, but hype from Journos on missions does nothing for sensible discussion and debate.
Do nothing. If you don’t yet have grandchildren, it is likely they would be alive to see and suffer for our folly. Can we look them in the eye?
Rachel: I practically fell off my chair with laughter when I read your comment. I had failed to notice it. Poor old Kevin Charles Herbert; it will take him days to get over it.
Cheers
V.
The Treasury? The Treasury is making predictions about climatic conditions in 2100? Exactly when did a department full of accountants develop meteorological prognostic skills? What are these absurd predictions based on? And where do bald statements like “Greenhouse gas levels don’t naturally level off, by the way — they go on building, as does the temperature, after a lag of some years ” come from. Previous experience? How many times have we been in this situation? This is junk science at its best. And you have the nerve to call the skeptics an “idiot fringe.” At least skeptics don’t claim hypotheses are confirmed before they’ve even been tested.
Apologies for disrupting the debate. But is Kevin Charles Herbert the guy who had a Mitsubishi Scorpion?
Graeme, which statements in this article are scaremongering? You can’t sit on your hands and do nothing because you don’t trust the predictions because they’re ‘too scarey’. The nuke industry went on and on about how safe their technology was, and how the left were scaremongering about the possibility of a reactor letting go. Then Chernobyl blew up and the Left were right, and yet no one was happy…
The waters are muddy because those with a vested interest in doing nothing are intentionally muddying them. If I was in power all the denialists would get a yellow star on their clothing and get shipped to the first island that gets inundated when the Greenland icesheet collapses.
Exchuge me, global warming ( now called climate change because the world is actually getting colder ) is not globally accepted; there are thousand of reputable scientists out there who beg to differ. We are not moving slowly towards catastrophic reality. The clincher for me? the United Nations lied in their fear mongering statements when they casually took the ‘medaeval warm period’ out of their modelling and scientists who pointed this out were threatened with loss of tenure. When the United Nations lies I want to know what their agenda is.
Yes the world has a real problem with pollution and nobody should object to that being dealt with but that is a separate issue and should be dealt with as such. Don’t muddy the waters with your faux religion.
And who is Andrew Bolt?
Good article … great final observation.
(would be great if this article were to be visible, unchanged, in say the oz)
Right, it’s all the dengue fever and increased probability of weather-related catastrophe that gets me, not the loss of crappy skifields. Although losing all the coral is a bit sad. I wonder what all these do-nothing types will be saying when half the population of the Pacific Islands is seeking refuge in Australia because of climate-change induced uninhabitability? Doesn’t SEEM like the kind of scenario the right is likely to welcome…
Vai, the climate change denialist argument du jour is denying its anthropogenic nature, not denying the warming altogether. You might need an updated version of the climate change denial talking points. A copy can be procured via the editorial department of the Australian.
Bruce Hogben: your point re comparative per person output is very well made, and is not as widely understood in Oz as it needs to be.
For more on what individual Aussies can do to lessen their carbon footprint, may suggest they visit The Daily Planet Media website, and go from there ot the Earthwatch site. I’m Daily Planet’s Australian rep.