phill Parsons
If we see a list of dated ideas presented as the steps taken we will know that the supposed conversion of Lennon to someone who cares about the impacts of human activity on the climate is simply a makeover, a verbal hairstyle. One has to think back only a little time in Tasmanian history for a parallel, the attempt at a makeover by the ‘whispering bulldozer’ Robin Gray. Converting from a wilderness dammer through a short dalliance with conservation to an old growth destroyer, Gray’s game didn’t change and he lost the following election. Who thinks up these strategies and who do they think they are fooling? So proving the pudding will be the measure; smoke, mirrors and new clothes count for naught where the impacts of climate instability continue to come day in and day out.
Another all talk makeover or is the Minister without portfolio about to reveal a new climate?
“Lennon push for green cars” the Mercury [Saturday 23FEB08] leads an article on the announcement of a Damascene conversion of the Premier without portfolio.
Surely, as the Premier, he leads and does not have to push. The oldest member of the cabinet, Llewellyn, claims climate instability is an issue that needs action, so one would expect the younger members to be up to speed on this matter.
What the Premier is reported as offering are all low grade actions, many of which government could have introduced decades ago and saved the taxpayer money, eg energy saving light globes or cheaper vehicle fuels. Even solar water heating would be giving us additional energy in the form of water in the dams and be meeting the goal of reducing costs to low income hoseholders. Some of the latest low income housing now has them following the many times such an addition has proved to be a cost saving.
Mike Rann’s lead in South Australia should be driving Lennon’s reaction to climate instability. Rann knows that the old ways are insufficient and has adopted non carbon stationary energy targets for SA.
Let’s see some targets for Tasmania, recycling including a container buy back scheme; home design and construction standards to reduce energy impacts and water demands; reduced energy use in old [retrofitting], but, especially in new government buildings where the costs over the life of the building need drive the design; sustainable low energy fuels produced in Tasmania, especially for the bus fleet; a compulsory buy back scheme for surplus electricity produced domestically or on farm; a change in traffic laws to protect cyclists as they have in the Netherlands.
All these, and no doubt more, are actions that can be taken within the Tasmanian jurisdiction to ensure that the best practices at a small economic cost can be phased in.
We can be sure that there will be a mandated reduction in CO2 output nationally and so preparing the state for those changes would be the action of a forward thinking government and this is what the Premier claimed is his new role now he is without portfolio.
If we see a list of dated ideas presented as the steps taken we will know that the supposed conversion of Lennon to someone who cares about the impacts of human activity on the climate is simply a makeover, a verbal hairstyle.
One has to think back only a little time in Tasmanian history for a parallel, the attempt at a makeover by the ‘whispering bulldozer’ Robin Gray. Converting from a wilderness dammer through a short dalliance with conservation to an old growth destroyer, Gray’s game didn’t change and he lost the following election.
Who thinks up these strategies and who do they think they are fooling?
Just as Howard hung on to a refusal to sign the symbolic Kyoto agreement so Lennon hung on to the refusal to allow hybrid cars for Green MP’s.
Then Rudd replaces Howard and has a commitment to a process, even after his election, that would inform the Federal and State Governments about how to react to the causes of climate instability, the Garnaut Climate Change Review. Garnaut has generated his first report defining the degree of the problem and therefore the parameters of the solution. Right up until the election Labor sycophants in the conservation movement lauded Rudd for his stance on signing Kyoto and setting GHG reduction targets.
At the first test Rudd abandons the formerly key Garnaut Review and now says it is only one of a number of inputs that will inform the governments view.
What put Rudd on the defensive?. Garnaut put reduction targets of 70 to 90%, the evidence pointing toward the higher end as more likely. This is above the election commitment target of 60% cuts on 2000 emissions by 2050. Garnaut has not come up with exactly the same targets or program as the Greens Reenergizing Australia but the evidence has led him close to the 85% reduction on 1990 levels target.
However, these are not targets that should be determined by some election promise. They should be determined by the outcome of a failure to meet them.
Garnaut takes into account such failures with the dire consequences for rural and coastal Australia, for example the collapse of the Great Barrier Reef tourism industry, extended droughts across the inland and for people living in coastal southern Queensland the incidence of cyclones increases.
And what are the reductions that Tasmanians have to make by 2050. The average of 22tonnes of GHG per head will have to fall to about 6t [80% reduction]. Australians will have to reduce by the average of Tasmanians total current per capita emissions to reach 6t.
Tasmanians have a lesser reduction because of an investment in hydro electric power, purely fortuitous coincidence in case some pollie wants to claim foresightedness. The government cannot claim the first wind power element either, they did not claim to do it to reduce GHG emissions.
Unlike Gray’s conversion to conservation, a pre-election lip service, Lennon, and subsequent Premiers, will not be able to change their minds or avoid taking action, the actual impacts of further climate destabilization will demand more action.
Reversing course once major investments in a low carbon economy starts will not be acceptable to business, although some in the community will long for the old ways just as some do now.
How interesting it was to see in the Mercury article a commitment to solar water heating. I know the Minister for Energy has been aware of the potential for electricity savings and cost savings for low income earners for 18 months now.
Indeed, the whole program that guided Lennon’s conversion, the one recommended by the Tasmanian University study, has been put to them time and again by Tasmanians aware of the impacts of climate instability, all to fall on deaf ears.
The proof Lennon’s actual interest will not be so much in the initial symbols of decarbonization, the technology has not yet come of age let alone the restructuring of work and play that will be required to reduce GHG output by 16 tonne per head by 2050 to avoid the catastrophe that the continued growth of GHG will ensure.
The land ice of Greenland and West Antarctica is melting at the current temperature. Further temperatures rises are set in place because the GHG driving them have already been emitted. These GHG, and those to be emitted as the world’s economy changes [if it does] will not cease to be causes of warming for centuries. What, will stop the ice from continuing to melt and thus sea level to rise?
Leading glaciologists studying ice at the end of both hemispheres consider the findings of the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment outdated. Garnaut agrees that changes are running ahead of modeling making higher sea level changes more likely.
We cannot be sure that the actions we take to reduce GHG’s will be timely enough to avoid causing further feedbacks as the temperature increases, generating changes in climate regulating mechanisms such as the polar ice albedo or the moderating influence of the Amazon impacting on temperature and rainfall. Hadley puts the impact of this change about 30 years from now if we do not reign in GHG growth severly.
Some will have seen the Bengal Tiger that was returned to the Sundabarans on the news. Those coastal forests are going underwater as sea level rises, making the survival of this species in a major habitat remnant less likely.
The proof of Lennon’s intent will be in his treatment of Garnaut’s recommendations on land use, land use change and forestry. It already has an acronym as this issue has been under consideration for some time. [LULUCF].
The winning of the 2004 Federal election and the change of seats was a result of Howard declaring the Tarkine, till then non existent to the Tasmanian government, a reserve. Lennon cannot claim this as a new carbon sink, claiming hero status twice.
He cannot claim the RFA CAR Reserves twice, they were put away for conservation.
They, along with the National Parks and the Private Forest Reserves and other areas where natural vegetation systems are conserved already lock up carbon now, but the emissions per Tasmanian are too high.
A reduction of 16t per head per annum by 2050 needs to occur to meet the median of Garnaut’s recommendation in his first report [80%].
Even under Rudd’s reduction target of 60%, that he promised us in the election, each and every Tasmanian will need to reduce by an average of 0.27 tonnes each year to 2050,. totaling 10.8 tonnes.
No gains to be made by changing the sources of stationary energy, local production is already decarbonized in that area in Tasmania. The only gains for energy here is to reduce local consumption to address the 77% shortfall in potential energy stored in the hydro dams and so assist the Bass Strait cable to be climate positive. Of course this requires the ever less likely return of high winter rains rain and snow.
Wind farms will proliferate and they could assist in allowing dam storage to grow. Councils should commence planning to address landscape and community issues. The State government will have to act to reduce the impact on birds and bats.
Australia’s forest carbon sinks are limited in extent. Their rates of sinking are all being affected by current climate instability – prolonged drought and megafires being the agents impacting of forest type distribution.
Temperature and rainfall may move beyond the existing distributional parameters killing many species in situ, as is happening now in the northern Flinders Ranges. Such a major change may see humans admitting defeat as a climate catastrophe races to its end because they did too little too late. This will be fed by a breakdown in the capacity of carbon sinks to take up carbon from the atmosphere feeding the growth of GHG’s
Tasmania has a large forest estate.
In value terms the price of carbon will have to exceed $34 a tonne to be make the native forests more valuable as carbon sinks than the contract price for the Gunns pulpmill. [$17 per tonne of wood at 0.5t of C per ha]
A$34 is in the current range of prices offered for CO2 and experts in the field state a A$35 per tonne carbon price is a minimum to stimulate action to change. Any wood supply contract needs to be negotiated to allow for that price and for it to increase.
Lennon has, as a director of the GBE Forestry Tasmania allowed 20 years of loss from the contract signed with Gunns if the pulpmill construction commences before 30 June 2008.
The alternative that Garrett spoke of prior to the last election, importing plantation pulp from the mainland makes more sense as plantations are not long term carbon stores. At best they can be carbon neutral, taking up the carbon as they regrow that was released by their harvest.
One important change in demands on forest carbon is to generate a high level of paper recycling. There’s a challenge for Lennon to take up, government being a large user of printing and writing papers.
Would it matter if the next letter from the Tasmanian government [indeed any government] came in a brown paper envelope made in Tasmania from recycled paper?
So proving the pudding will be the measure; smoke, mirrors and new clothes count for naught where the impacts of climate instability continue to come day in and day out.
phill Parsons was hopeful about Rudd until he and Minister Wong began to qualify the Garnaut Climate Change Review. Let’s hope Ross Garnaut is not swayed by political signals and delivers the report the evidence demands.
Having written this I was heartened by the proposed uptake of solar power for government buildings and a commitment to being carbon neutral.
As I have said the issue could not be ignored forever, regardless of the government in power although I am not yet convinced by the new spots.
The question we will have to wait for is will the Second Round of the UN Framwork Convention on Climate Change get the nations of the world to commit to big enough targets to stabilize the climate, albeit somewhere hotter and drier, the world with more climate driven turmoil and disasters.
