The Parsons Report (4)

PHILL PARSONS

“It seemed that everybody had been expecting a climate related disaster for a long time and yet, at the last moment, it came like a bolt from the blue; it was apparently impossible to prepare oneself in advance for such an enormous misfortune.”

Will this be the reaction of the world’s populace to the onset of a climate disaster or will its incremental approach with conditions worsening slowly allow humans to fool themselves into thinking that further minor adjustments to the way business is conducted will be sufficient to avoid any really harsh impacts?

So far the weather and climate events that have been enhanced by the human activity seem to be minor changes to the pattern of experience. Cyclones still largely occur where they have historically, droughts are factors for low rainfall regions since the dawn of civilization, shifts in the climate of a region are not unknown.

Without the driver of experience people rarely change their habits unless there is an incentive, better health for those seeking that, sobriety for the alcoholic who has come to a realization that another life is more important than the short term pleasure of drink, or even increased pay following further education and qualification.

Currently the Federal government sees its Emissions Trading Scheme as the creator of incentives to change habits as the price of the old high carbon emission fuels, fibers and foods rises relative to the cost of the low emission equivalent.

How much of a difference is an unknown but I doubt that the start up price of $10 per tonne of carbon emitted from energy production will see many early habit changes especially as we have seen widespread resistance from certain business sectors to any cost for Australian manufacturers that is not reflected by an equal impost on the developing world as well.

Providing positive incentives has been shown to rapidly change personal habits benefiting industry as well as the environment. Germany’s feed in solar power tariff has driven changes in power production, providing home owning Germans with an income whilst the cost of carbon emissions trading filters through their economy. A cost redistributional measure that drives change.

Here, we are not to see such a direct incentive scheme but instead will be confronted with a range of compensation measures for industry and consumers that redistributes the cost of carbon to keep certain old high carbon industries alive.

We remain unsure whether they will invest in changes to practices beyond the posturing we have seen where although it is claimed carbon capture and sequestration [CCS] works we have not seen a new coal fires power plant built anywhere that actually does. Nor have we seen simple investments like coal gasification to reduce carbon output, surely a step on the way to CCS by reducing the volume to be caught and stored.

All we have had is stories about a flight of capital to countries without any emissions trading schemes or a strike of capital because of the claims that they will not get a return on new coal fired power plants.

Although lower fuel consumption would benefit motorists it is only when faced with bankruptcy that the Detroit based producers of gas guzzlers are considering increasing fuel efficienvy and mass producing hybrid vehicles.

Packaged partly a patriotic measure to reduce dependence on imported oil and partly as a response by the US to climate change what were the delays to measures that would save working families and small business costs and thus demands of higher wages and price inflation.

The US car industry could see no reason to change although they regularly retooled, whereas European and Asian car manufacturers were acutely aware of the market advantages of offering fuel efficient product and are now in a much better situation to take advantage of their investments where competition determines which technology wins as oil supply peaks against demand.

We can see this in the European cars of the departmental executives. The Tasmanian governments demand for a reduction in the carbon footprint of its departments did not see Hummers or Ford utes selected as the symbols of status because they failed the comparative test. Although nor did it see the Green Car fleets most fuel efficient vehicle recommendation, the Toyota Prius or the Honda taken up. The habits of demonstrating status and position prevailed stopping a maximum achievement.

We have seen the Rudd governments Carbon Pollution Emission Reduction Scheme altered already in demand for changes that counted the carbon emission reductions of home owner’s through their investments in low carbon technology.

Attached to this is a Carbon Trust, so that if you cannot afford to take direct action you can join with other in a government administered scheme to by up emission permits, making it more expensive for carbon polluters by reducing the carbon pool thus, supposedly forcing industry to change.

Now if such changes are possible then given Australia will adopt a CPRS at some time why isn’t it possible to use the market mechanism to stimulate the Australian solar industry through a feed in tariff.

Energy will still be demanded and if, as the coal and power industries claim the low 5% target will threaten investment in new power plants what better way then to accept the challenge and provide the means for home owners to meet the increasing need for energy than by becoming energy producers.

The only explanation, given that the Germans found the feed in tariff scheme worked, is a special deal for special mates at the Federal level, where a recalcitrant industry, that has opposed every move to affix a price to carbon by either old party, must be either using the incentive of financial support or the threat of greater electoral fear campaigning to maintain the status quo.

So instead of a Carbon Trust that simply buys up permits and pushes up the price of energy impacting on those least able to pay why not invest in a trust that retrofits homes with a sufficient useful life, and a reasonable chance of being efficient given their current design, making each one a power station.

Combined with a feed in tariff, such a trust would recoup its initial investment allowing it to work through all the old housing stock provided energy efficiency including solar was mandated for all new housing. After all with a feed in tariff an efficient solar energy collecting roof becomes an earner.

Already, Australians have adjusted to the simple shocks of flooding in Queensland and Northern NSW, of 13 years of below average rainfall and its impacts on eastern seaboard cities water supplies and cyclones striking northern Queensland and Tasmania.

Even the death many hundreds of people in the heat wave and subsequent fires in the now expanding Eyrian bioregion [originally eastern SA and Western Victoria] has not made a great impact on government in regard to providing incentives to change for home owners or legislating for more rapid changes to high carbon footprint behaviors, the silent driver of the climate instability we are seeing.

Government, whilst it claims awareness of the importance of avoiding a climate disaster appears unable to grasp the warning signs of the “enormous misfortune” to come.

It is a Strangelovian world where the economy takes precedence over the life support systems upon which we humans depend.

What sort of lunacy is it that drives a defense of carbon emissions, a refusal to use the recall code that we already know. Does industry and government believe that they will be able to survive down a mine shaft somewhere to emerge at a later date into a brand new world.

Of course, unless we can convince the worlds community to join in arresting the growth of greenhouse gases then the likelihood of a positive outcome diminishes rapidly and survival tactics will emerge as wars over water and resources increase and trade barriers become the mechanism for enforcing a reduction in carbon emissions among the recalcitrant.

Without an aware public demanding action why should government go out on a limb and risk a voter reaction.

After all, the old party supporters could swap from one party to another and still avoid changing the habits of a lifetime as both agree to do as little as possible and take as long as they can get away with doing it. People are used to government following such a course of delay.

The unfortunate thing for those creatures of habit is the inevitability of the immutable laws of physics and chemistry.

A slowly dying sea or coral reef is less of a shock than a suddenly dead one, even the animals will be able to adjust retreating to refuges, moving south or simply by becoming extinct.

A slowly drying forest or flood plain, like we have in the Murray Darling Basin [MDB], is less of a shock than one burnt up in a day. One can buy back water, encourage changes to irrigation practice and invest in seawater desalinization for Adelaide rather than face up to the drivers of the drying and dying.

Stages of water restriction are much more acceptable than 10 liters per person per day. You can pipe water from afar, dam the last river, put in a water grid or even recycle. In Queensland that huge investment now awaits a return to low rainfall when it is predicted that cyclones will travel further south to include Brisbane.

Incremental loss of the shoreline sure beats a storm surge washing the coast away over several days, ask those on the Gold Coast.

Imagining realities that are based on the available science may not be thought by industry to reach out to Australians, although polls indicate a high level of awareness about the threat of climate instability and are represented in a desire by individuals to take action.

Not mobilizing this desire is a failure of government to gain the support of people to deal with the climate instability and its associated disasters to come. One only has to look at the tensions in the areas where the Black Saturday fires created a disaster for the community to see how people react to a government that whilst it tried its best was found wanting on the day.

For all the preparation for bushfires, the survivors were unprepared for the disaster that befell them and the recovery of those communities continues to show the deep scars left behind as they search for reasons when we have only ourselves to blame for the habits of the industrial age.

To leave the old parties fighting over how a select elite, the high carbon fossil fuel industries, are propped up whilst the Australian community is put on the line is a very dangerous strategy for them and in the longer term the voter.

Defending industries that have to change rapidly or loose their social acceptance leaves their defenders in the old parties exposed to blame as climate disasters ramp up.

They will not disappear and only so much hand wringing sympathy from the nation’s leaders will be acceptable before blame starts to be sheeted home to the assorted environmental lunatics in government and industry.

It is much better to lead. Rudd knew this when he, along with the states [then all Labor], engaged Garnaut to review and report. Rudd knew this when he offered leadership into the 2007 election and again in Bali.

But now he has stepped back, is hedging and could well claim the world, of which Australia is part, did not do enough in Copenhagen and thus excuse a low carbon pollution reduction target.

Turnbull appears trapped in a parallel universe where he can see the need to match the government’s targets but cannot guarantee the support of his coalition partner or indeed his entire party, let alone explain the process that reduces emissions. Until they address this confusion of messages they will, if the government doesn’t badly mishandles the economy, remain the opposition.

The Greens are painted as economic lunatics but, when reality catches up with the science, their plans will be seen as timely and moderate if strong action is not taken to reduce carbon pollution now.

Having moved from economic lunatics to potential wedge the Greens are in a position to force changes in the reduction targets if the government are serious about passing legislation.

Of course Michael Field’s legacy, the loose Fielding cannon from Family First, will need to stop listening to the denier right and join with the Greens to negotiate for families long term interests to ensure the economic costs do not join with the environmental and social costs to rob children of a future.

As another World Environment Day passes there is a worrying expectation of a climate disaster at some time in the future. Government and industry need to lead us on a path to its avoidance, not avoid responsibility and attempt to explain away yet another enormous misfortune.

Acknowledgement to Simonov. K, The Living and the Dead.

Note; the bioregions of Australia will change their boundaries under the impact of increased temperature and decreased rainfall, impacting on all life therein.

Initially residents will experience the pulses of change, like long droughts and heatwaves with their concomitant fires, but as these become the norm so the runoff, the vegetation and thus the animals will alter as their old habitat requirements disappear completely or retreat into the small remaining wetter areas.

Among the first Australian animals to go extinct will be the mountain pygmy possum [Burramys parvus], following the retreat of snow from its range changing its hinbernating temperature regime without providing the sustenance needed to maintain them.

Among the plants, changes to the lower orders are unlikely to be noticed by the community, but they will be there. As the density of trees changes around the tree changers then perhaps notice will be taken because the water will have left the landscape, just like in the MDB now.