The Greens oppose the CPRS not because it is too weak, but because it will point Australia in the wrong direction with little prospect of turning it around in the timeframe within which emissions must peak, says Senator Christine Milne.
Climate report biased against Australia
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“Australia coming last on climate” was one headline, in Fairfax. “Australia ‘not ready’ for climate deal” another, in The Oz. In case you were under any illusions, a heavily coal-reliant economy with no effective carbon abatement policy to speak of and none likely for another decade, was well-positioned to make the transition to a low-carbon economy, British consultants Vivid Economics have found Australia ranks pretty much at the bottom of the world in terms of our capacity to adapt, assessed in relation to the G20. Here’s the interesting thing, though, and it points to an issue that will complicate how we handle climate change and effective carbon emissions abatement: the report is biased against Australia. I don’t doubt Australia is seriously ill-prepared to shift to a low-carbon economy. We’re one of the planet’s biggest carbon dealers, sending CO2 abroad by the megatonne and generating plenty of it here ourselves; we power our lifestyles and industry with coal, and the government’s CPRS is so generous to polluters it will have negligible effect on our carbon dependence. I don’t even mind a British consultant telling us that — there are far too many Australian economics consultants happy to say whatever a polluter pays them to say. But a closer reading of the report shows that it is correct, but for the wrong reasons. It proposes a “low carbon competitiveness index” that is based on GDP per tonne of emissions, but re-weighted to take into a range of factors including deforestation, clean energy use, ease with which new businesses can be started, education levels and so on. Australia comes 15th out of 19 countries on the index. We come last if the index is weighted purely by the composition of our economy. Where it is biased against Australia is in the emphasis the index places on road transport and air transport, population growth and electricity generation loss, as negative factors. Australia is, it may come as a shock to discover, a very big country and we have a relatively small population. We have the third-lowest population density in the world, with only global titans Namibia and Mongolia below us. And low population density is the enemy of infrastructure and energy efficiency. You use a lot more fuel simply moving things around. Transport infrastructure must service small, widespread communities and there are no economies of scale. Rail networks are uneconomic due to the lack of populations and markets to use them. Road and air freight, therefore, become dominant (although decades of state underinvestment in non-urban rail networks hasn’t helped). And you lose a lot of electricity transmitting it over long distances — more than 5%. And Australia continues to be a high-immigration country to feed its high-growth economy. The Vivid study, therefore, is weighted in favour of European economies — large but stable populations, small geographic areas, serviced by highly-efficient infrastructure. As a major contributor to carbon emissions, transport would normally be a key area for greater efficiency. Getting people out of cars and into mass transit, moving more of the freight task onto rail, getting passengers out of the air and onto an efficient inter-city rail system. Australia’s relatively small populations, even in our cities, make that far more expensive than in European countries with high population densities. We have to build a lot more infrastructure, to be used much less. In fact, it’s so expensive that the public sector here can’t afford it without a greater (and, again, European-style) tax take, which is why there has been a retreat of public investment in infrastructure in recent decades. The only viable solution is to charge infrastructure users — motorists, airlines, trucks — much more for their infrastructure use. When it comes to “low carbon competitiveness” one size does not fit all, especially outside Europe. |
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14 Comments
Never mind those excuses. What are your solutions?
While there’s no doubt the Europeans have pursued carbon agreements for the right reasons, something about the reference year 1990 does suggest an additional reason why it was easy to convince them to push the rest of the world so hard.
In 1990 the EU inherited a lot of inefficient, unsafe, and highly pollutive power stations from the disintegrating USSR and Warsaw Pact bloc. They had to embark on an immense power upgrade program, using the latest technologies.
As a side-effect, this caused an immense reduction of carbon pollution in the EU. The push for carbon trading is mainly driven by the wish to save the world, but the opportunity to make the rest of the world pay for Europe’s power-station refresh program certainly sweetens it for them.
Assuming all this is true where is the global re-insurance industry based that Australia depends on for most if not all economic dealings (just think HIH but for everything, and everyone)?
Yep, it’s Europe. And what the re-insurance industry says is a pre-requisite to manage risk in a climate change impacted world, will apply here. They will say jump and we will say how high.
Ah, so what? Australia keeps digging the graves of the future with its coal and oil dependence.
Because Europe already invested in its low-emission infrastructure at great cost while Australia laid down highways and built airports (instead of high-speed railways) it is to their credit, not unfair against Australia.
We need to stop making excuses to be treated as an exception, it is far to easy to talk ourselves into being a special case. If everyone in the world dug as deep into their excuse bag as Australia’s businesses, politicians and media commentators then we will never get anyway.
Enough!!!
Bernard, I think that there is a missing “not” in the third para.
That aside, what point are you trying to make? I think that we all know that Europe is denser than Auastralia. Is ther a message for Australian readers anywhare in the article?
Bernard, I think that there is a missing “not” in the third para.
Sorry about the double post, but I should correct my own two typos.
That aside, what point are you trying to make? I think that we all know that Europe is denser than Australia. Is there a message for Australian readers anywhare in the article?
Solutions? You want solutions? Build nuke power plants.
Ah no tom it’s the US one of the early financial rescues was the world’s largest reinsurerAmerican International a US company.
John I think it’s not a “not” that’s missing but a “that” in place of the first comma in para 3.
“In case you were under any illusions [that] a heavily coal-reliant economy, with no effective carbon abatement policy to speak of and none likely for another decade, was well-positioned to make the transition to a low-carbon economy …”
“We have the third-lowest population density in the world, with only global titans Namibia and Mongolia below us.”
Yes, if you simply divide population by total administrative area. But that calculation is essentially meaningless. Though our total area does influence a variety of policy outcomes (rural and remote health being the most striking), we are by and large an urban country - more urban than the great bulk of the world: http://is.gd/3fjQA
Australia with around 20 million people is one of the most urbanised countries in the world and all of its major cities, Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Pert have large ports. In contrast the US has an estmated 304 million people, but only three or four are bigger than Sydney or Melbourne. The argument that this gives us a “disadvantage” compared to the Euro’s seem a little thin. Especially when most of our emmissions are due to electricity generation not transport.
It’s more than our electricity generation. Including industry, Australians each release about 7 kW of heat into the environment. Roughly half of this is due to burning gas and oil products, the other half due to coal. However only 2 kW of that thermal energy went into creating our 1 kW of electricity. We release a lot of energy in transport and the creation of goods, particularly in smelting steel.
If we really are to remove hydrocarbons from our sources of energy, we must look much further than our power stations. What is to power our trains, buses, trucks and cars? How are we to create aluminium, copper and steel?
These are exciting questions, not excuses for depression. “Meski” offered a solution earlier today. It is time for every reader to think about solutions.
Gee - the light bulbs come on.
Why were the Europeans so quick to sign Kyoto - it suited them.
All you have to do is ponder why cotton growers do not get the carbon credits for the carbon absorbed but the spinners do and you will get the answer.
But there again, the Europeans have had to diversify their energy requirements for decades and nuclear power is not a dirty word.
Meski’s suggestion, while it should be considered, is by no means a solution - our problem here is that we are over populating the planet, far beyond what it can support. Switching to nuclear energy may lessen the strain on current non-renewables, but simply moves the reliance onto another non-renewable.
Some people believe technology can save us, but that is as useful as putting faith in the rapture coming to save the souls of the believers. Using something which doesn’t exist as an excuse for current practices will get us no where.
Population & density was mentioned, this is the key issue here - global overpopulation. We should be discussing solutions to address this, rather than looking to make token efforts with emissions tradings, nuclear energy and the like.