Why is it important to give all primary products a carbon value?

phill Parsons

The Greens will attempt to get the best outcome for Australians future. They will be subjected to all sorts of vilification as the government introduces it legislation on Australia’s action to avoid climate catastrophe. The fine balance that drives the old parties together to act in the national interest that their shortsighted and narrow views perceive could see Australia fail to set an important example to the world community.

IN THE proposed emissions trading scheme practices that emit carbon dioxide will be charged a cost for those emissions in the hope that in self interest those emitting will take measures to reduce their emissions.

The pressures of lobby groups to retain the status quo are exerting an influence throughout the national and international negotiations to limit if not stop the addition of a cost to the practices that emit carbon.

Similarly it is argued that giving a value to natural processes locking up carbon should be restricted to those first involving its emission. That is first you must cut down a forest, the most efficient and productive of carbon sinks with a wide range of other values before planting a carbon sink plantation.

Such is the madness of the greenhouse friendly version of sub prime lending, a crazed scheme to ensure that nothing stops the money go round of carbon rich fossil fuels so fossil fools may continue to consume the planet unsustainably.

Rudd is captive of this craziness unable to argue against the doom and gloom merchants of the coal, oil, aluminum, cement, steel, gas and mining corporations the government is preparing an emissions trading scheme that will be insufficient to avoid dangerous climate instability and put the risk of climate catastrophe higher than it could be.

Of course Rudd is not alone as a national leader, each being pressured by self interested lobbies [or arguing the need to lift their peoples standard of living to retain social cohesion as in the case of China] to not go faster than we can afford.

But what are those costs. How do we value sea level, simply in port infrastructure affected and limited coastal erosion caused by modest rises in sea level or by the cost of coastal inundation to the 10m contour. This is the scale of difference between under 450ppmv CO2e- as a 2050 target [+90% reduction in emissions] or the alternative 550 ppmv, the 60% reduction target.

Is it wrong to pay higher insurance premiums now so we may avoid the costs of damage later? Repair will be limited as each action taken later will come at further risk of climate catastrophe and thus be less able to be implemented without greater risk and so theoretically become much less possible to inflict on a populace.

If the masters of the universe think that simple planning appeals against coal mines are the worst they have to face consider the Tamar Valley pulpmill proposal applied to new coal fired power stations or coal exports.

Arguments that we all use paper or power, that jobs and the economy are dependent on such a project or that the issues facing us are bigger than the single issue of the climate will resonate less and less as the climate comes to drown the beach and perhaps your house; to make food so costly that Saturday’s in the backyard veggie patch become more important than shopping at the mall, the entire Murray Darling basin given over to desert National Park and Carbon Sink plantation of mallee.

The front lawn filled with carbon sinking plants that require no watering and no mowing although the free time thus generated cannot be spent at the ski fields because there aren’t any, the creation of artificial snow not greenhouse friendly.

With petrol rationed by price driving a low emission vehicle may be an option but for many the bicycle or public transport will become less an option and more a necessity.

And that transport will be crowded because government was too busy propping up carbon capture and storage retrofits to old power station because it failed to act to cause dirty coal to be replaced to afford such investments.

And the young mums and dads will look back on the time when they had little interest in tomorrow, instead focused on the day to day of family life [bread and milk on the table, petrol to take the kids to sport] and wonder why they and their elders failed to grasp the portent of the scientists modeled predictions for extinctions not just of species but of whole ecosystems, storm and tempest, sea level rise, drought, disease and for forests fire driven change to woodland, then savanna, then grassland finally desert.

Before us is a challenge about vision. Senator Milne of the Greens claims we have till 2015 to adopt the 90% by 2050 target for developed nations and begin to reduce our emissions with 40% of those emissions eliminated by 2020. Senators Abetz [Liberal] and Senator O’Brien [Labor] claim we need to run down the natural carbon store further, supporting their State counterparts in the desire to build a pulpmill fed by the carbon rich [but could be richer] natural forests instead of solely by plantations.

Happy are they to see farmland gobbled up by plantations but whilst free forests can be taken for a failed climate outcome will they speak out against forest destruction to feed a dangerous pulpmill, a proposal that assists in ensuring the climate outcome their forked tongues would claim they and their parties are working hard to avoid.

The old parties continue to play the same sad game of treating each issue as a re-election challenge, listening to the whispers of the lobbyists for industry whilst soft soaping the voting public with the view that the action they are taking is the max without actual sacrifice by industry or by voters.

This is the same crew who were advising the fundamentals of the economy were sound. Can they be trusted with their advice about the fundamentals of something much more complex?

The climate cannot be bailed out by a guarantee of deposits, a reduction in interest rates or a press conference to boost confidence in the market.

The laws governing the climate are not the mutable ones of economics where adjustments to the demand side can control the decline in the rate of change in the currencies buying power [inflation].

The chemistry of the air determines that of the ocean, additional carbon dioxide creates an acid bath that the planktonic life finds difficulty with and then fail completely. Increase ocean warming reduces the volume of life in the ocean and leads to the decline and eventual death of coral reefs if it continues unchecked, ice melt affects the thermohaline circulation and thus the climate as the longest recorded drought in SE Australian testifies.

150 years of record and it is Victoria’s driest September. The years of drought and higher temperature are coinciding in a group in the last decade.

The Greens will attempt to get the best outcome for Australians future. They will be subjected to all sorts of vilification as the government introduces it legislation on Australia’s action to avoid climate catastrophe.

The fine balance that drives the old parties together to act in the national interest that their shortsighted and narrow views perceive could see Australia fail to set an important example to the world community.

As the second last hold out on signing Kyoto what we do send important messages to the countries in the developed world setting high goals and transforming their economies and to the developing nations who face similar challenges to the developed as the climate that governs their primary economies loose it stability.

Whilst at the beach or taking some other form of summer recreation the proposals on climate action will be released and will come into the parliament at the same time as the proposed changes to the taxation system are to be debated.

The frenetic pace of change driven by the Rudd government is not simply addressing a backlog it is a form of control in that people have trouble taking it in and making their opinions known, if indeed they do anyway.

Be prepared for the return of environmental issues to the front page as the false centrality of the economy continues to be challenged by that which has been taken for granted for too long and also impacts on society.

Ensuring the third leg of the stool does not fail under the weight of 9 Billion people all demanding more and getting less as their environment is degraded in dumb attempts to supply more material will be a major and perhaps unachievable effort.

This is a test that the stupid monkey has never faced before, the dinosaurs failing the last one. Long may the arthropods reign.

phill Parsons