DEFERRING action, and thus the benefits of action, the State of Tasmania has aligned with the Federal Government’s head in the sand approach to the climate crisis.
Currently the carbon dioxide equivalents of all the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is just over 400 parts per million by volume. [Yes, there is more than 1 heat trapping gas].
The point where impacts move from single event costs that are small in comparison to the total gross domestic product of a developed country has been passed, with Hurricanes Katrina and Rita placing costs onto the US economy of several hundred billion to repair direct damage along with additional costs to the global economy through increases in liquid hydrocarbon fuels.
These impacts will spread throughout the economies of many countries as the increased fuel costs drain the spending power of consumption into the fuel tank and so down a narrow pipe of distribution back to the oil companies.
Perhaps the climate-change-denying loonies who hold sway over the US will see the potential that a climate crisis has to impact on their sacred mammon. Perhaps we will see programs of action from the biggest contributor to the growth in greenhouse gases as domestic reality forces a move away from the current position of actions that are proclaimed loudly but empty of impact.
That, at least, would match the position of Honest John, who has remade his image to cease denying the climate is changing to showing concern but deferring action.
For Tasmania, the tourism sector could decline as family holidays involving a driving element are curtailed or abandoned, that discretionary spending drained into the fuel tank to meet daily costs.
Such a change to tourist numbers may be gradual and therefore the sector not grow in line with the government’ projections or it could be rapid, related to impacts through the economy as the relatively cheap fuels of Australia disappear.
Howard’s announcement on biofuels has been timely but half-hearted, ignoring the calls from his junior coalition partners, the Nationals, to make ethanol a mandatory component of petrol, he is leaving the changes up to the market.
Australia’s total ethanol production will only allow 10% of all the petrol sold to be l0% ethanol, it hardly matters in terms of price or greenhouse gas impact. However, with a mandated component, this sector could grow domestically with the resultant growth in jobs, additional fuel security and limitations on the impact of fuel costs on the economy.
Short-term political advantage
Imports could be used to expand the volumes immediately or targets set for the expansion of content, thus giving a firm base for investment in ethanol and biodiesel production.
Good government goes beyond dealing on a day to day basis with issues or taking short term political advantage of the particular. It involves planning, and for a world where energy prices have increased and are predicted to continue to do so, and where a reduction of the production of carbon dioxide equivalents [cde] in the order of 60 to 80% by 2030 on the current cde growth trends is needed to avoid impacts whose costs will drain economies of their wealth and make life more difficult for billions, Howard has failed.
Action is needed now to allow industry the lead times to change products and production techniques. To argue that rapid technological change makes choice of the most effective technology difficult, is to argue that new technological change should never be adopted as there will always be a better model, denying the reality of human development.
Delays in adopting low carbon technologies will only mean that the amounts that have to be diverted into restructuring economies so that they become low carbon in a much shorter times frame will be greater, some predict as much as seven times if delays are held up until the crisis point. That is an avoidance strategy that will saddle the children and grandchildren with avoidable costs, a strange position for those who laud family values. Surely it isn’t entirely rhetoric.
Howard’s geosequestration plan for CO2 from coal could be seen as far sighted were it part of a complex of actions that Australia adopts. Otherwise it is simply foolish, putting all of Australia’s effort into one project and leaving the economic benefits from immediate adoption of low carbon technologies to other economies. The lead time for carbon geosequestration is estimated at 20 years, leaving a short period for global adoption of this technology at about the crisis point on current trends.
If the geosequestration technology cannot be retrofitted to existing power plants then considerable new investment in coal fired power stations will be required, adding more years to wide scale adoption and thus real impacts on the growth of greenhouse gases and their impacts.
Such a plan is premised on the unknowable, what will be the impact of global warming during this period. It will have moved on from a series of weather phenomenon causing emergencies to a series of events looking more like a single crisis with a common cause. Is this to be the legacy of an octogenarian Howard.
And what is the impact of spending the estimated hundreds of trillions of dollars addressing the damage caused by more intensive floods, by more frequent high intensity storms, by changes in sea level impacting on the coastal zones [with their high population concentrations], by desertification spreading [including across Southern Europe, another highly populated area], by the 5 great glacial fed rivers that drive the agricultural sectors of India, China and Indo-China drying up due to reduced snowfall and shrinking glacial ice and long term droughts becoming the norm for Australia.
Is it the view of the conservative economists that, like the costs associated with car accidents, all of this will add to the GDP, benefit from misery.
What happens if the level that climate change impacts ramp up exponentially is significantly breached. [Currently it is put at 450ppmv of carbon dioxide equivalents, or 25 years at the current rate of cde growth].
Computers used in climate research centres that model the range of climate changes possible can only deal with a limited range of possibilities, the demand on data processing being immense. By linking many desktop pc’s to process data the range of maximum changes possible from more models has been extended from a warming by 5.8dC to 11.9.
Minimum rise would be scary enough
We have seen what the limited increase of 0.66dC [0.5dC at the sea surface] globally has meant for people living on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. Brazil has also had its first hurricane like storm. [Cyclone for Australians, typhoon for Eastern Asia.]. Australia is at 0.86dc warmer.
The 1.4dC increase as the minimum possible should be scary enough, almost 20 times the current increase would be catastrophic in terms of storms let alone other factors such as the impact on food and fibre production, water availability, public health and the impact on social cohesion within and between countries.
And where is the erudite plan issuing forth from the Tasmanian government, a draft for public input, discussion papers, forums to educate the community, so it can participate in an informed way.
Minister Jackson is in charge of this program. To develop it in virtual secrecy and attempt to foist it on an ill informed community of short sighted sectoral interests is a recipe for it falling short, it needing to be reviewed as the evidence for its failure appears again and again and the opportunities for Tasmania fritted away.
The uncertainty of outcome generated in the community, including within business, is a recipe for the low cost investments in technological change being deferred, the higher costs of the changes that will become unavoidably obvious impacting on the whole economy as greenhouse emergency drifts inevitably to climate crisis.
France, for example, has set a target of 75% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, a modest 1.5% change per year to avoid the negative impacts of a drier south and a more flood prone north. One result is that Peugot holds 4 out of the 5 most fuel efficient cars [ www.greenvehicleguide.gov.au] giving it an advantage in any market conscious about fuel prices and reducing each vehicles contribution to greenhouse gases.
The argument that mandating emission reduction targets will somehow cost the economy unacceptably is a nonsense when put against the costs of inaction or diversion of effort into political gambits that end up with too little too late.
Tasmania has its head in the sand, perhaps looking for several extinct emus, and not noticing the lengthening list of extinctions to come. Time to bring the strategy process into the light Minister, get the community involved, and see an affordable program of change for Tasmania adopted by that community.
phill Parsons’ interest in this may appear to be bordering on the obsessive. However phill may be a septuagenarian when the 450 point is reached and he wishes that the worst impacts of that time are avoided through appropriate action now.
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