Keep it Clean - Energy for Eternity

Fusion not Fission?

2006-11-22T07:45:00.001+11:00

■ The President of France, Jacques Chirac, was to lead a signing ceremony yesterday to develop a new breed of experimental nuclear fusion reactor that mimics the energy-producing process powering the sun, Agence France-Presse reports.

The event in Paris was to see representatives from China, the European Union, India, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the US formally set up the structure of the €10 billion ($16.7 billion) reactor.

The big issue: location, location, location

2006-11-22T07:43:00.000+11:00

SMH

The big issue: location, location, location

Wendy Frew Environment Reporter
November 22, 2006
Other related coverage

* Taskforce plots nuclear path
* Nuclear is green power: report
* Waste site a long way down the track
* Editorial: Beyond Strangelove
* Nuclear costs understated: report's critics

THE energy future envisaged by the seven-member taskforce would involve as many as 25 nuclear power plants strung out along the east coast, near water supplies, transport and urban populations.

The report did not specify any exact locations for the plants, which would be constructed over 40 years.

However, the head of the taskforce, Ziggy Switkowski, told reporters it would make most sense to build them close to coal-fired power stations because they needed access to electricity transmission lines and water to cool the plants.

"Obviously you want to have the generation of power reasonably close to where the market is," he said.

"Reasonably close means tens of kilometres. It does not mean hundreds of metres nor does it mean hundreds of kilometres. It's tens of kilometres. It needs to be close to the national electricity transmission grid, similarly tens of kilometres."

In NSW, coal-fired plants are at Lake Macquarie, south of Newcastle, the Hunter Valley, and Lithgow.

Earlier this year, the Australia Institute said research showed the most suitable sites would have to be on the east coast because nuclear reactors need large amounts of water for cooling. They also needed to be near main electricity transmission lines to keep infrastructure costs down, have good rail and port access for transport of imported fuel rods, and be built close to a big load centre such as Melbourne, Sydney or Newcastle.

The prolonged drought and the unreliability of inland water sources meant it was impossible to build reactors away from main urban centres.

However, finding a suitable and acceptable site for the first reactor would be controversial.

At a time when cities are facing water shortages because of population growth and changing rain patterns, a nuclear power plant would be an added drain on water supplies.

Reactors could not be built in Western Australia or the Northern Territory because they are not part of the National Electricity Grid.

State governments are strongly opposed to nuclear energy because of public anxiety and their support for the coal industry. The Premier, Morris Iemma, has categorically ruled out building a plant in NSW, where it would be against the law.

■ The President of France, Jacques Chirac, was to lead a signing ceremony yesterday to develop a new breed of experimental nuclear fusion reactor that mimics the energy-producing process powering the sun, Agence France-Presse reports.

The event in Paris was to see representatives from China, the European Union, India, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the US formally set up the structure of the €10 billion ($16.7 billion) reactor.

Climate shocks: more to come

2006-11-21T08:07:00.000+11:00

By Julian Cribb - posted Thursday, 16 November 2006

Climate change may occur more rapidly and with far greater impact than even its chief exponents have so far been prepared to concede.

The warning comes from Australian atmospheric researcher Dr Barrie Pittock, who argues in a recent article (R&D Review, October 2006) there are firm scientific grounds for suspecting the pace of climate change may be faster and its manifestations more extreme than presently thought.

Pittock is a scientist one listens to with respect. Twenty-five years ago he was an influential figure in a group that persuaded the superpowers - the US and USSR - there would be no survivors of an atomic war, because of the nuclear winter it would unleash. Thus one of the first uses of climate modelling was to save the human race.

Pittock lists the following reasons for believing the present consensus on climate change may be understating its impact:

1. Global dimming is decreasing, reducing the braking effect it applies to global warming.
2. Permafrost is melting across huge areas, reducing the albedo - or reflectance - of the earth’s heat into space.
3. There are signs that forests, soils and algae are becoming sources rather than sinks for atmospheric carbon as climate change stresses them.
4. Arctic sea ice is retreating rapidly, also reducing the amount of heat being returned to space.
5. Ocean circulation changes are occurring in the in mid- to high latitudes in ways which may have unpredictable effects on the climate.
6. The ice cover of Antarctica and Greenland is shrinking, raising sea levels and reducing heat loss.
7. Tropical cyclones appear to be becoming more intense.
8. The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, one of the earth’s major heat transport systems, has slowed. This was not expected to occur for a century or more.

Scientists have been warning a largely-deaf Australia about climate change for more than 30 years. Indeed, CSIRO published a little book on it for the general public in 1976 or 77.

And, as if to confirm the scientific view about phase-shifts - sudden, irreversible changes from one state to another - there have been two more big developments. In the UK, the Stern Report is finally shifting economists’ attitudes to greenhouse economics - a very important development (though why cutting-edge economics should be 30 years behind cutting-edge science is worth considering).

More importantly research conducted by CSIRO for Coal21, the coal industry lobby which is committed to low-CO2 solutions for Australia, reveals a seismic shift in Australian public opinion on this issue. The survey, in New South Wales and Queensland, found 90-93 per cent of respondents now rate climate change as an important issue.

When was the last time 90 per cent of Australians agreed on anything? If this view pertains nationally, then climate change action is now a political no-brainer and the politician who ignores it merits whatever fate awaits them at the polls. Sudden moves on solar, nuclear and oxyfuels suggest the Federal Government’s pollsters may be telling it something similar.

So much for the three new climate shocks - social, economic and scientific. What can be done about it? Government policy and research activity to date has focused on mitigating CO2 emissions, but in reality these may take 10-30 years to cut in and 100-300 years to have a tangible effect on the global climate.

The real policy and research challenge for Australia, which remains broadly unaddressed, is how we will live day-to-day under a hotter, drier, more volatile climate. In other words, how we will cope in every walk of life with the inevitable.

Are we prepared, for example, for the migration of the wheatbelt into the racehorse belt in pursuit of reliable rainfall? Are we ready for the surge in insect-born disease, the higher rates of death and sudden illness among the elderly from heat stroke? Are our fashionable eave-less villas and tall apartment blocks due for a real estate crash as their unsuitability to the new Australian climate emerges?

Will our demand for light cotton garments and rice accelerate the destruction of inland river systems? Will air-conditioned offices with unopenable windows need fundamental redesign? Can our infrastructure withstand fiercer cyclones, bigger storm surges, heavier monsoons and longer droughts? Will we protect our coastal cities with levees, like New Orleans, or abandon the low lying suburbs to the waves?

It has already dawned on governments that greenhouse prevention is both urgent and costly. But the science necessary to adapt the whole of society to unavoidable climate change conditions is vastly greater - and has barely begun.

Australia urgently needs a national plan for coping with inevitable climate change in all sectors of industry, the community and daily life. And that requires the national scientific effort delivering the solutions to be placed on the equivalent of a wartime footing.

First published in The Australian on November 15, 2006 as 'The climate's right for science to go to war'.

Professor Julian Cribb is a science communicator and Adjunct Professor of Science Communication at the University of Technology Sydney. He is a member of On Line Opinion's Editorial Advisory Board.

Source: On-Line Opinion

Adapting our energy policy to climate change

2006-11-21T07:56:00.000+11:00

By Cliff Hooker - posted Monday, 20 November 2006

Australia needs an insurance policy against being caught out by the massive changes to energy systems heading our way. That policy is acquiring adaptive resilience. But, while government action has recently improved, it is not yet thinking in these terms, and likely doesn’t have adequate coverage.

Adaptive resilience is the capacity to sustain core functioning while coping with change, through making adaptable adjustments. It is the primary form of insurance against being surprised and damaged by change.

In the energy context, resilience means sustaining the provision of energy services through the coming massive changes, changes induced principally by global constraints on oil supply and on carbon dioxide emissions (plus declining fresh water) yet with rapidly rising energy demands.
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The principal government approach before 2006 was inaction and denial that we needed to face change, while the world signed the Kyoto Agreement and introduced carbon emissions trading.

Some caution was justified: the nature of climate change and our role in it was unclear; Kyoto was flawed; development of clean coal technology (aka carbon sequestration) was in its infancy; early European experience with emissions trading did not sufficiently benefit needed innovation; and Australia’s extreme coal intensiveness and smaller economy made it more vulnerable than most to prematurely committing to impractical technologies.

But the immediate risks of this policy were also clear: we denied ourselves the opportunity to both innovate and export in the emerging raft of clean energy technologies and to join global emissions offset trading. Both of these are huge potential costs: global trading doubled to $22 billion last year, and overseas competitors developed commercialisable technologies while Australia lost many of its own innovations to them.

Sectors of the business community, including some in the energy sector, increasingly chafed that they did not have a clear policy and incentives framework within which to pursue innovation and trading. The less immediate, but larger, risk was that Australia would be unprepared to adapt, technically and institutionally, when the time of local climate change and global shove arrived.

2006 saw a policy shift driven by increasing world conviction about energy imperatives, the upshot being some modest research and development funding initiatives in the context of a bias toward first, coal and second, nuclear energy, with solar relegated to a minor role.

Again, some coal bias is understandable: Australia has large coal reserves and a developed industrial coal infrastructure; if carbon sequestration can be made to work at a reasonable cost, it offers obvious advantages, plus the option to provide hydrogen to replace oil for transport energy. There is a similar uranium resource advantage for nuclear power. However, while coal supports a wide range of skills and mid-sized technical businesses that suit our mid-sized economy - generating employment, innovation and exports - it is likely that specialist nuclear technology would not perform so well (though we don’t have the research to know for sure).

But again the risks are clear: we forego the opportunity to innovate and export in the suite of new clean radiant solar technologies, where the energy resource is far larger than either coal or uranium (notwithstanding the PM’s conflation of it with limited wind); we may find that the present process of choosing technologies to support leaves gaps that turn out to be important (for instance, energy storage, concentrating solar thermal?); we may be caught out if carbon sequestration proves to be too limited or too expensive, and similarly for the promised new nuclear technologies; we may be caught out on the wider issue of supporting skills and businesses (on which renewable technologies also likely perform well). Again, these are all potentially large costs. For instance, if some of the many radiant solar technologies become commercially competitive, as they currently promise to do, then at shove time Australia would suffer a costly and disruptive energy transition.

As noted earlier, the proper way to protect against these risks, even while pursuing coal prospects, is to acquire suitable adaptive resilience. In the energy case this is achieved by systematically acquiring a level of technological capacity in each of a full suite of the relevant technologies, according to their promise, so that we are ready to utilise them. Plus we should introduce a clear supporting framework concerned with transport, energy conservation, and so on, including helping to introduce an improved emissions trading scheme, in Australia and globally.

I suggest that to ensure resilience is achieved and remove the danger of gaps and undue biases risked by the present approach, it may be necessary to create a public national capacity to systematically evaluate potential technologies, including their wider societal impacts, together with the level of Australia’s technological capacity appropriate to each, and propose share-able national projects.

Cliff Hooker is addressing “New Technology for Infrastructure: The World of Tomorrow” the national symposium of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering on November 20, 2006.

Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Newcastle, Cliff Hooker is Director of the Complex Adaptive Systems Research Group, researching foundations of self-organisation, bio-cognitive organisation and sustainable development. He is Director of Assessing Sustainability Dimensions and Impacts, The CRC for Coal in Sustainable Development, aiming to re-focus sustainable development around resiliency. The Centre supervises Sustainability Options for Australia’s Future for the Joint Academies’ Committee on Sustainability, Australian National Academies Forum.

Source: On-Line Opinion

Call to resist nuclear path

2006-11-21T07:51:00.000+11:00

SMH

Stephanie Peatling, Wendy Frew and Mark Metherell
November 21, 2006
Latest related coverage

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AUSTRALIA will take a step closer to a nuclear future today, but the former US vice-president, Al Gore, has some advice: don't.

A task force led by the former Telstra boss Ziggy Switkowski will release a report that is expected to be broadly in favour of a domestic nuclear power industry.

In an interview with the Herald yesterday, Mr Gore said it would be too expensive and would threaten the world's safety through possible weapons proliferation. "Early in my career I was enthusiastic about nuclear power. I'm not now," the climate campaigner said in Sydney.

"I'm not an automatic opponent to any nuclear power plants [but] I think that a realistic view is that they will play only a small and limited role. The reason why they're likely to play only a limited role is mainly economic."

The Switkowski task force is believed to argue that nuclear power could be economically viable in Australia in about 15 years, but it is not expected to make a specific recommendation to go ahead.

The Prime Minister, John Howard, has advocated nuclear power as cleaner fuel in the fight against global warming. Mr Gore said the long-term problems of storing nuclear waste, potential accidents and securing reactors could possibly be overcome.

"But that leaves the proliferation issue," he said.

In the case of Iran and North Korea, he said nuclear scientists worked by day on energy issues and then "you make them work at night on weapons". "What will you do? Spread thousands and thousands of reactors in Papua New Guinea and

Libya and Sudan? If this were the option of choice the world would become more dangerous."

The Switkowski taskforce has been commissioned by Mr Howard to investigate whether nuclear power would become economically viable in the long term. It was also asked to consider the potential for enrichment, uranium dumps and proliferation risks.

Labor's environment spokesman, Anthony Albanese, said it would not be surprising if a task force made up of nuclear advocates came out in favour. But he said it should answer the hard questions: where nuclear reactors and dumps would go.

A recent Herald poll found only 17 per cent of Australians nominated nuclear power as a solution for global warming. Energy experts have warned it could be viable only if heavily subsidised by the Government, so it could compete with coal. They say it would rely on what price was set on carbon pollution, and on the Federal Government overcoming state and public opposition. And still, construction could take 10 years.

And according to the research principal at the Institute for Sustainable Futures, Chris Riedy, it could take seven years for the reactor to break even on its energy consumption - that is, to produce enough electricity free of greenhouse gas to make up for the coal-fired power expended to dig up the uranium for fuel and to build the reactor.

"So you would not make any dent in carbon emissions for at least 17 years," he said.

Warming could 'devastate' Australian economy: IMF

2006-11-19T10:15:00.000+11:00

SMH

November 18, 2006 - 4:08PM

* Little urgency as climate conference fizzles out

Climate change could have a devastating effect on the Australian economy, if the projections of the Stern report on global warming were true, the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned today.

IMF managing director Rodrigo de Rato said the report on the economic impact of climate change, by former World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern released in the UK recently, was alarming.

"The link between greenhouse gas emissions and changes in global temperature is now well-established," Mr de Rato said as a two-day meeting of finance ministers and central bankers from the world's 20 largest economies (G20) got underway in Melbourne today.

"It is a matter of fact rather than of faith.

"The consequences of global warming are less certain, but they are expected to be serious."

The Stern report said climate change could cut gross domestic product growth by five to 20 per cent in many countries.

"If these numbers are borne out even broadly by further analysts, they are alarming indeed," Mr de Rato said.

"In terms of the effect on people's quality of life, here in Australia and worldwide, the effects could be devastating."

But Mr de Rato said the present outlook for global economic growth was positive, although there were inflationary risks and called on the world's central bankers to remain vigilant.

Many central banks around the world are lifting interest rates to head off inflationary pressures driven by booming energy and commodities prices and capacity constraints, including the Reserve Bank of Australia which has raised rates three times this year.

"In such circumstances, central banks should remain vigilant and act to preserve the hard-won credibility gains of recent years," Mr de Rato said.

"And on fiscal policy, governments should take advantage of the strength of the current global economy to push ahead with the necessary fiscal adjustment."

The IMF has projected a global growth rate of 5.1 per cent this year and 4.9 per cent in 2007.

"So our central forecast remains broadly unchanged for another year of robust and more balanced global growth," he said.

However, there were downside risks to growth, including any further slowdown in the US economy driven by a correction in the housing market.

"The outlook for inflation also remains uncertain," Mr de Rato said.

"The fall in energy prices since September helps, but we do not know whether this will be sustained."

Mr de Rato said thus far the US economy had cooled faster than expected, after a series of rate hikes, but that had been offset by more rapid growth in Europe and continued strength in major emerging economies.

"The outlook for the global economy remains good, but there are significant downside risks," Mr de Rato said.

He said another risk to world growth was any instability in the financial system.

"While financial crises appear a remote possibility in today's benign economic environment, it would be complacent to assume they have disappeared forever," he said.

AAP

Beach action praised

2006-11-17T10:30:00.000+11:00

The Bega District News

Friday, 17 November 2006

The founder ofClean Energy for Eternity, Matthew Nott accepts the Community Action award from bega valley Shire mayor Tony Allen.
The founder ofClean Energy for Eternity, Matthew Nott accepts the Community Action award from bega valley Shire mayor Tony Allen.

Bega Valley Shire Council nominated the CEFE group for their organisation of the successful community day on Tathra Beach earlier this year and for their ongoing efforts in promoting community action in tackling climate change through the use of renewable energy sources.

The Community Action award recognises outstanding community organisation and pride - expressed through civic, cultural and environmental activities.

A key factor in CEFE's success was the strong partnerships they have developed between the local beach community (including clubs and organised groups), local business and the local council.

Little Jiguma Beach at Pambula Beach received a highly commended award

in the Friendly Beach category.

The State awards will be announced on November 30.

The truth? 'Nuclear is not the answer'

2006-11-17T10:26:00.000+11:00

The Age

Leon Gettler
November 17, 2006
The climate change campaigner and former US vice-president Al Gore preaches his gospel in Melbourne yesterday.

The climate change campaigner and former US vice-president Al Gore preaches his gospel in Melbourne yesterday.

NUCLEAR energy is not the panacea for tackling global warming, says one of the world's most celebrated climate change campaigners, former US vice-president Al Gore.

Mr Gore also shrugged off Prime Minister John Howard's recent claim that his film An Inconvenient Truth showed "a degree of the peeved politician".

"It may be one of those elements that's in the eyes of the beholder," he told The Age yesterday.#

Mr Gore said nuclear power was unlikely to play a significantly bigger role in the climate change battle. "Even if you set aside the problem of long-term waste storage and the danger of operator accident and the vulnerability to terrorist attack, you still have two others that are more difficult," he said.

The first problem was one of economics.

"Nuclear power plants are the costliest to build and they take the longest time and at present they come in only one size — extra large."

The second was nuclear weapons proliferation. "For eight years when I was in the White House, every problem of weapons proliferation was connected to a reactor program," he said.

The Prime Minister has recently talked up the prospects of nuclear power plants being built in Australia, arguing the country could not afford to "sacrifice rational discussion on the altar of anti-nuclear theology and political opportunism".

Next week an inquiry into nuclear power headed by former Telstra chief executive Ziggy Switkowski is due to deliver its findings.

Mr Gore said it was extremely important that Mr Howard had now acknowledged the damage from carbon dioxide emissions.

"Let me say I want to be respectful of the Prime Minister's change in rhetoric.

"It's not easy to do something like that and … this position might be a way station for him on the real road to Damascus where he actually joins the world community," he said.

"And he may. I don't know, I can't look into his heart."

Mr Gore said that Australia and the US should sign the Kyoto Protocol but he acknowledged that this presented Mr Howard and US President George Bush with big political problems given that they had previously "demonised" it.

Of Australia's promotion of a new global climate change pact he said: "Obviously neither Australia nor the United States can write its own little treaty and be separate from the rest of the world."

But there was, he said, a third path: "To join the world discussion now in Nairobi on how to strengthen Kyoto and how to make whatever changes Prime Minister Howard wants to advocate and join the rest of the world community. That's the test."

Mr Gore, now chairman of investment firm Generation Investment Management, yesterday met with Premier Steve Bracks and his deputy John Thwaites. He described Victoria as forward thinking on climate change and said he would take a number of local initiatives back to the United States.

He was particularly impressed with the Bracks Government's "black balloons" advertising campaign, which links household energy usage with the amount of carbon dioxide it releases into the air.

"I'm going to take that ad back and show it to some folks there, maybe put it on YouTube," he said.

With MATHEW MURPHY and LIZ MINCHIN

Leaders to tackle climate

2006-11-17T10:22:00.000+11:00

The Age

Tim Colebatch
November 17, 2006

GLOBAL warming and the Stern report on climate change will become part of the agenda facing the G20 meeting of the world's key finance ministers and central bank governors, which opens in Melbourne tonight.

The chief secretary to the British Treasury, Stephen Timms, told The Age that global warming, and the need to speed up the world's response to it, was so crucial that it must be debated as widely as possible, including by the world's financial leaders.

Australian Treasurer Peter Costello, who will chair the summit, agreed that the heads of the world's 20 biggest economies would discuss global warming when they debated future energy security and prices.

"That is very much on everybody's minds at the moment," Mr Costello said. In a world where "nearly everybody's oil is coming out of the Middle East", the huge growth in oil demand from China and India threatened to put great pressure on prices.

Forty of the world's most powerful finance ministers, central bank governors and heads of global financial institutions will be in Melbourne for the summit this weekend.

A massive security operation began yesterday around the Grand Hyatt hotel in Russell Street, where the three-day event is being held. Several major streets were blocked off and some one-way streets were reversed, creating traffic gridlock during the city's morning and evening peak hours.

Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon briefed police at their secret inner-city command post yesterday, as extra officers were rostered partly in anticipation of big street demonstrations against the summit this weekend.

The meeting brings together those responsible for running the world's 20 biggest economies, which account for 85 per cent of global output and two-thirds of the world's people.

The participants will include the world's key central bankers, led by new US Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, European Central Bank president Jean-Claude Trichet, and the bank chiefs of Japan, Toshihiko Fukui, and China, Zhou Xiaochuan.

International Monetary Fund head Rodrigo de Rato will also take part, along with World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz.

The meeting begins tonight with an official dinner at the Grand Hyatt. Formal discussions begin tomorrow behind closed doors and finish on Sunday.

Climate change is not on the formal agenda, but Mr Timms, who is representing Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, said he and others would raise it and the Stern report in the session on energy security.

"Climate change is certainly the biggest market failure in the world," Mr Timms said. "If we delay addressing it, then the costs the world economy will incur in a generation or two will be far, far greater than the costs of making changes now.

"We need an international consensus on a worldwide carbon market, so there'll be a price on carbon (emissions), allowing people to make decisions on energy-efficient, low-carbon technologies on a market-oriented basis."

Mr Timms predicted that Australia and the US, both of which refused to sign the Kyoto agreement on cutting greenhouse emissions, would be in the new consensus.

"Everybody can see the urgency," Mr Timms said. "I think there's a real prospect of getting the international consensus we need."

Britain would also urge the G20 to send a strong call to conclude the Doha round agreement to reduce trade barriers worldwide, he said, and to reform the role of the International Monetary Fund and voting power within it, to reflect the growth of new economic powers and low-income countries.

Ministers and bank chiefs from the 10 biggest emerging economies, headed by China, India and Brazil, will be at this weekend's meeting, the most important economic conference ever held in Australia.

They will meet with their counterparts from the 10 largest rich economies, for talks on issues from ageing populations to aid effectiveness.

Mr Costello said yesterday an international market for alternative fuels needed to be considered to avoid high oil prices in the future.

He told 2GB radio that countries such as China with its population of 1.3 billion, were "sucking up" scarce oil resources and the only solution was to look at alternative fuels.

But he stopped short of agreeing to a mandated system in Australia requiring people to use ethanol.

Greenhouse alternative will fail, says Gore

2006-11-16T08:46:00.000+11:00

SMH

Al Gore … better to join Kyoto.

Wendy Frew Environment Reporter
November 16, 2006

JOHN HOWARD'S promotion of a new global climate-change pact that would protect Australia's economic interests is unrealistic and likely to fail, the former US vice-president Al Gore says.

In Australia this month to train "climate change presenters", Mr Gore yesterday urged the Prime Minister to join negotiations taking place in Nairobi on a tougher second phase of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change.

"If [Australia's proposal] is not part of the rest of the world community then it has no meaningful force," Mr Gore said.

"If the proposition is that Australia will design a completely different [greenhouse gas emissions] trading system and then wait until the rest of the world abandons the main one and adopts the Australian one, that's probably not realistic … Joining the process now in Nairobi and seeking some modifications to Kyoto - that is entirely proper."

Mr Howard said on Monday he would form a taskforce to consider a global carbon trading scheme to help tackle climate change. His own Greenhouse Office has researched and made recommendations on emissions trading in papers dating as far back as 1999, but they have been ignored by the Government.

Yesterday the Prime Minister met with business leaders - including Don Argus from BHP, Oscar Groeneveld from Rio Tinto Aluminium and Colin Beckett from Chevron Oil - to discuss emissions trading. It appears scientists, energy experts and environmentalists will not be consulted although they have been long-term supporters of such a global scheme.

However, Mr Howard has warned he would not support any scheme that would damage Australia's fossil fuel sector or energy-intensive industries such as aluminium, steel and cement. Nor would he take part in any global agreement that did not set tough emission reduction targets for developing nations such as China and India.

Mr Gore agreed it was vital that future heavy polluters such as China and India dramatically cut their emissions, "but since the end of World War II every global treaty has had the same basis: the wealthy countries … go first and then those nations … if their per capita incomes are so much lower [than those of the developed world], they come along in the second phase".

On Tuesday the French Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin, threatened to tax imports from countries that had not committed themselves to the second phase of the Kyoto Protocol. "Europe has to use all its weight to stand up to this sort of environmental dumping," he said.

A recipe for environmental disaster

2006-11-15T16:22:00.000+11:00

The Age

November 15, 2006

For someone who prides himself on his leadership qualities, Prime Minister John Howard is looking rather uncertain right now. The image he conjured this week of a bedraggled, sodden figure in need of a raincoat and umbrella was rather unfortunate for a man trying to assert his political strength. There is a sense that in global politics, the Prime Minister has been caught without his wet weather gear. Rather than articulating a vision for the future, his rhetoric has for too long been shaped by denial. Following US President George Bush's lead, he refused to commit Australia to the Kyoto Protocol, which binds developed nations to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and has until recently rejected the need for strong local action on climate change. But, as Mr Howard has now acknowledged, the political climate, like the weather, is changing.

Australia cannot ignore changing global realities and how the nation fares will depend on much stronger leadership on the environment than the nation has had to date. Two weeks ago when the Stern report described climate change as the "greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen", Mr Howard told his party room not to be "mesmerised" by one report. He did, however, say Australia would sign a new Kyoto-style agreement on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but only if it included every other country. "If everybody is in, I am prepared to lead Australia in," Mr Howard said. Waiting for everyone else to join is a rather strange approach to leadership. In fact, as The Age has previously noted, the Prime Minister's words imply that he sees no leadership role for this country in environmental matters and that he is happy to follow in the wake of less developed nations. His claim that the Kyoto Protocol lacks validity because it exempts poorer nations from targets to reduce greenhouse gases misrepresents the nature of the agreement, which was specifically designed to encourage developed nations to initiate change as a precursor to involving the developing world at a later stage.

The Government can no longer ignore Britain's call to take seriously the findings of the Stern report and, with Mr Bush's diminished authority in US politics, it will need to engage more positively with ideas it previously dismissed. Accordingly, in the past fortnight, Mr Howard has been busy modifying his approach while trying to avoid the appearance of backing down. As Australia faces being sidelined at the United Nations Climate Summit in Nairobi - our failure to sign Kyoto restricts this country's delegation to observer status at some meetings - the Prime Minister has initiated a joint Government-business taskforce to prepare for Australia's possible participation in a global emissions trading system. But, lest this be interpreted as acceptance of the reality of the problem, Mr Howard remained adamant that his first responsibility was to protect the Australian economy and countered criticisms of his scepticism by saying "the truth is I'm not that sceptical". It is difficult to know quite how to interpret this.

In fact, Australia has little option but to engage more positively with the world in dealing with environmental matters. Carbon trading would place specific limits on greenhouse emissions and those exceeding their limits would have to buy carbon "credits", while under-polluters would be able to profit by selling their credits. Given our reliance on coal and our poor international record on dealing with climate change - Australia ranked 47th on a list of 56 countries released this week - the Prime Minister had little alternative but to soften his approach. It is to be hoped that the next step will be an acknowledgement that the Government has a moral responsibility to reconsider its response to the Kyoto Protocol. This was made more likely by French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin's call yesterday for punitive taxes on imports from countries that refused to sign the protocol. "Our efforts will be worthless if we (Europe) are the only ones fighting for the future of the planet," he said. Mr Howard will soon have no option but to respond to the political and environmental realities of global warming. Sadly, he has missed the chance to show genuine leadership.

Greens sceptical over greenhouse delays

2006-11-15T08:59:00.001+11:00

SMH

Wendy Frew Environment Reporter
November 15, 2006

ENERGY campaigners and green groups have warned that Federal Government plans to exclude heavy greenhouse gas polluters from any emissions trading schemes could result in higher carbon emissions from Australia.

They expressed disbelief yesterday that the Government - long a critic of emissions trading - was simply delaying taking action again.

A co-ordinator with Climate Action Network Australia, Julie-Anne Richards, said the Australian Government's attempts to propose a "new Kyoto" agreement at climate change negotiations in Nairobi this week put it at risk of being "seen as a world joke".

"There is already a global carbon trading scheme that's in operation right now, and it's within the Kyoto Protocol," Ms Richards said.

"Australia could already be taking advantage of this scheme."

Instead the Government was ducking the issue with proposals that "simply won't address the scale of the problem".

On Monday the Prime Minister, John Howard, appeared to yield to pressure when he told members of the Business Council of Australia that the Government would set up a working group with business to examine a carbon trading scheme.

However, he warned he would not preside over policies that would "rob Australia of its competitive advantage in the industries that are so important to us".

He also said an agreement between Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea and the US to develop technology to cut greenhouse pollution, in a group called AP6, could form the basis of a new global compact on climate change. However, AP6 has no targets for cutting emissions, no timetable to deploy so-called clean technologies, no carrots to encourage industry to cut emissions and no stick to penalise them if they fail to do so.

A campaigner with Greenpeace, Danny Kennedy, said the latest announcement seemed to be another government smokescreen.

"Do we really need a hat-trick of energy inquiries before we can move forward on tackling climate change? Mr Howard does not need to reinvent the wheel [on emissions trading]."

Little support for PM's new Kyoto

2006-11-15T08:33:00.000+11:00

SMH

James Button in Nairobi
November 15, 2006

* Greens sceptical over greenhouse delays
* French promise revenge for not signing protocol

Other related coverage

* Australia snubbed at climate meet
* The view from Nairobi
* Blair agrees Kyoto inadequate: PM
* Kenyan protest at summit on climate change

YVO DE BOER was, naturally, diplomatic. Asked what he thought of John Howard's vow to "push for a new Kyoto" at the global warming summit in Nairobi this week, the executive director of the United Nations climate change convention said Australia was "actively engaged" in general debates.

However, it joined the specific debate on the future role of industrialised nations in reducing greenhouse emissions "to the extent that it can as an observer".

While Australia is not the pariah it is sometimes said to be in climate-change talks, its decision not to ratify Kyoto in 2002 has almost certainly robbed it of influence, as the world prepares for a new agreement to reduce emissions after the the protocol expires in 2012.

Early indications from Nairobi are that if Mr Howard wants to rewrite the protocol from scratch, his plan will receive little attention or sympathy among the 6000 delegates.

Although the Environment Minister, Ian Campbell, has said there is "great enthusiasm" for the new Kyoto plan, no delegate who spoke to the Herald - including two members of the Australian delegation - understood what the phrase "new Kyoto" meant.

Mr Campbell was due to arrive in Nairobi yesterday.

Mr de Boer said "no Australian official has come up to me and said that they intend to return to the protocol".

The confusion exposes a vital issue at the conference, which enters its last and most important three days today.

Mr Campbell has said the protocol is flawed because it does not force fast-growing developing nations such as China and India to reduce their emissions.

Yet China, unlike Australia, has joined the global carbon market and is taking part in projects to reduce its emissions through the UN Clean Development Mechanism.

Virtually all countries agree that tackling escalating emissions from China - and those of the US, which did not ratify the protocol - is of huge importance to future agreements. Yet it is doubtful most believe the protocol must be re-created in order to address the problem.

The International Energy Agency's latest report, released last week, shows that China will overtake the US as the world's highest source of energy-related emissions by 2009 - 10 years earlier than the agency had initially forecast.

A central debate at the conference is how to further involve China and other developing nations in reducing emissions, without demanding they sacrifice the economic growth the West has already enjoyed.

Government to push for 'new Kyoto'

2006-11-13T21:19:00.000+11:00

SMH

November 13, 2006 - 5:33PM

Australia's push for its desired "new Kyoto" at a major climate change conference in Africa will be hobbled from the start because it has not ratified the Kyoto Protocol on easing global warming, critics warn.

Prime Minister John Howard has again stressed it's crucial for the world to look beyond Kyoto, which places curbs on emissions in industrialised countries, with lesser initial restrictions for developing nations, including the emerging powerhouse China.

"What we have to do is get an arrangement that involves everybody, and when you have everybody in it means ... no country is severely disadvantaged," Mr Howard said.

Environment Minister Ian Campbell is headed to Nairobi, Kenya, for the conference of the parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the body which oversees the Kyoto Protocol.

That conference will formulate a new stage of the protocol once its current timeframe ends in 2012, perhaps with mandatory reductions in emissions.

Australia is invited because it signed the original Kyoto document, although it never ratified it, as did 166 other countries.

A so-called meeting of the parties (MOP) to the Kyoto Protocol will be held after the COP meeting and it is from this later meeting Australia will be excluded.

The two-week conference opened last week with a warning that climate change may be most serious threat ever to face humankind.

Australia, which is sending a high-level delegation, will use the meeting to lobby for its technological solutions path to addressing greenhouse gas emissions and for an all-encompassing new agreement.

Senator Campbell said he had already held talks with countries including Britain and Canada to garner support for a post-Kyoto framework.

"Even the existing Kyoto signatories know that it's not working, they know that the world needs a better agreement," he said.

Greenpeace energy campaigner Catherine Fitzpatrick, who is in Nairobi, said Australia would be relegated to observer status because it is one of only two industrialised nations, along with the United States, to refuse to ratify Kyoto.

"Talk of 'new Kyoto' is just a ploy to detract from the fact that Australia has consistently refused to join the international community on taking cooperative action on climate change, whilst bolstering the big polluters such as the coal industry," she said.

Ms Fitzpatrick said the government had finally realised Australia was being sidelined by the rest of the world and was missing out on a multi-billion dollar global carbon market.

Greens senator Christine Milne, also attending the conference, said most countries would rubbish Australia's push, with Senator Campbell's delegation seen as a sideshow to the main game.

"What Australia's involved in is a dialogue with the other countries that are signed on to the climate change convention," she said.

"Australia could play a constructive role if it wanted to, even as an observer, but unfortunately it seems to use its position to make sure that the rest of the world doesn't move beyond what Australia is prepared to agree to."

The high level section of the conference will be opened by UN secretary-general Kofi Annan.

Former World Bank chief economist Sir Nicholas Stern, whose review of the possible impact of climate change on world economics made a huge impact on the issue last week, is also expected to address the conference.

Opposition environment spokesman Anthony Albanese, whose Labor Party has a policy of ratifying Kyoto, is also in Nairobi.

- AAP

Subsidies to pay for green power drive

2006-11-10T09:11:00.000+11:00

Wendy Frew Environment Reporter
November 10, 2006

SMH

NSW taxpayers will subsidise investment in renewable energy projects in other states and pay more to subsidise energy-intensive industries such as aluminium and steel under a State Government scheme announced yesterday.

The Government's decision to make energy retailers buy 15 per cent of their electricity supply from clean sources such as wind and solar by 2020 will add only $1 a week to consumer power bills, the Premier, Morris Iemma, said.

He said the scheme would cut the state's greenhouse gas pollution by 115 million tonnes - the equivalent of taking 25 million cars off the road for 12 months - and stimulate investment in renewable energy generation.

"The need to act on climate change and greenhouse gas emissions is clear," he said.

The "green" electricity could be sourced from anywhere in the National Electricity Market (which does not include Western Australia or the Northern Territory).

That meant NSW taxpayers would get the cheapest renewable energy available rather than relying on projects inside NSW, the chief executive of the Renewable Energy Generators of Australia, Susan Jeanes, said. "For example, the optimum sites for wind are found in South Australia and Tasmania," she said.

However, Greenpeace said the scheme could mean NSW would miss out on jobs and investment associated with renewable energy, making it more difficult to move away from coal-fired power.

"Overwhelmingly, our response [to the scheme] is positive, but we want NSW to start moving away from coal, not just offsetting its greenhouse gas emissions in other states," Greenpeace's energy campaigner, Mark Wakeham, said.

The increased price of power associated with the scheme will not flow to "energy-intensive users" such as the aluminium and steel industries. Mr Wakeham said that meant taxpayers would further subsidise those industries, which already receive tens of millions of dollars in electricity discounts.

The Opposition's environment spokesman, Michael Richardson, said it would have preferred a scheme that encouraged investment in NSW.

He called for NSW to fund research into so-called "clean-coal" technology to reduce greenhouse gas pollution from coal-fired power plants.

The renewable energy target follows a similar scheme in Victoria, which has a 10 per cent green power target by 2016. South Australia has a 20 per cent target by 2014, much of which has been met by Federal Government support for renewable energy.

Almost all of Tasmania's power is provided by renewable energy.

Mr Iemma also announced planning approval for a $220 million wind farm south of Tarago. Until now, there was no market for the cleaner but more expensive electricity generated by wind farms.

The Government's energy plan also includes a continued push for a national emissions trading scheme and curbing demand for electricity.

It also made a commitment to stabilising greenhouse gas pollution at 2000 levels by 2025, and cutting them by 60 per cent by 2050.

AT THE COALFACE
- In 2005, 90 per cent of NSW's electricity came from coal-fired power.

- Electricity generation contributes about one-third of greenhouse emissions in NSW.

- Only 6.1 per cent of the state's electricity consumption is from renewable sources.

Only a decade left to avoid climate change, says thinktank

2006-11-10T08:43:00.000+11:00

James Randerson and agencies
Thursday November 9, 2006
The Guardian

The world has less than a decade to reverse the growth in greenhouse gas emissions if dangerous climate change is to be avoided, according to a report from a thinktank that goes further than the landmark Stern review last week.
Lord Stern's report said that unless greenhouse emissions were tackled the world faced an economic downturn on a par with the great depression.

Yesterday's report from the Institute of Public Policy Research suggests Lord Stern's analysis was too conservative and governments need to move further and faster. To minimise the risk of a 2C rise - seen as the threshold for dangerous climate change - the authors say global carbon dioxide emissions would need to peak between 2010 and 2013.

By 2015 to 2020 the world would need to be cutting carbon emissions by 4%-5% annually and by mid century CO2 levels should be 70%-80% below what they were in 1990, say Paul Baer and Michael Mastrandrea, experts in risk analysis. The government's "aspiration" is to cut carbon emissions by 60% by 2050. "It is the timetable for action, above all, that our research shows we urgently need to rethink," wrote Simon Retallack, head of the IPPR's climate change team, in a foreword to the report. "We do not have decades in which to bend the CO2 curve: we have less than 10 years. The gap between what is necessary and what seems feasible clearly looms large. But if we want to avoid significant risks of appalling global harm we will need to re-examine what is feasible."
If the global average temperature rises by more than 2C, the report predicts, more than 2 billion people will be affected by drought and some of the world's most diverse ecosystems, including coral reefs and the Amazon rainforest, will be severely damaged.

But Sir David King, the government's chief scientific adviser, told the Guardian in an interview ahead of publication of the Stern review that it was looking increasingly unlikely that the world would be able to stay below the 2C threshold. Carbon dioxide levels are 383 parts per million and rising at 2ppm per year. He believed it would be politically realistic to stabilise CO2 at between 450 and 550 ppm, which would translate into a global average temperature rise of 2.2 to 3.5C.

Yesterday Tony Blair received a petition signed by 150,000 people and delivered by six children. The petition, from the Stop Climate Chaos Coalition, called for a climate change bill in next week's Queen's speech to cut UK CO2 emissions by at least 3% annually.

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31.10.2006: Profile: Nicholas Stern
31.10.2006: Leader: Stern warning on climate change
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26.10.2006: Tackle climate change or face deep recession, world's leaders warned
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NSW to set greenhouse gas targets

2006-11-09T17:27:00.000+11:00

SMH

Wendy Frew, Environment Reporter
November 9, 2006 - 11:02AM

NSW is to set mandatory renewable energy targets to cut greenhouse gas pollution and direct investment to the renewable energy sector.

Premier Morris Iemma today promised legislation would be introduced after next year's election to ensure 10 per cent of the electricity consumed in NSW by 2010 would come from clean sources of energy such as solar and wind power.

That will rise to 15 per cent by 2020.

Premier Morris Iemma said that, at its peak, in 2020, the scheme would cost taxpayers no more than $1 a week, while cutting greenhouse gas pollution in NSW by 115 million tonnes.

The targets will act as a much-needed stimulus to the renewable sector, which has lost ground because of a lack of support from the Federal Government. Coal is a far cheaper source of energy for electricity.

The Premier also announced planning approval for a new $220 million wind farm south of Tarago. Up until now, planning approval for such projects had been almost meaningless because there was no market for the cleaner but more expensive electricity generated by wind farms.

The Government's energy plan also includes legislating a cut in state greenhouse gas emissions, a continued push for a national emissions trading scheme and further work on curbing demand for electricity.

The Government has committed to stabilising greenhouse gas pollution at 2000 levels by 2025, and cutting them by 60 per cent by 2050.

At a press conference this morning, Mr Iemma said Australia needed a national carbon emissions trading scheme because greenhouse pollution did not recognise state boundaries.

However, he made no comment on the Government's continued support for massive exports of coal from the state, which generate significant greenhouse pollution in other countries.

Wind farm blast for Greens

2006-11-08T17:39:00.000+11:00

The Australian

Ewin Hannan
November 06, 2006

STEVE Bracks has launched a fresh attack on the Greens, accusing the minor party of lukewarm support for wind farms, a position he said was "ridiculous".

The Premier accused the Greens of trying to impose onerous "deep-green" requirements on drought relief payments to farmers and of stifling the development of water resources.

His criticisms came despite Labor giving indications it would allocate preferences in the November 25 state election to theGreens ahead of the Family First party.

Announcing plans to offer a $1000 rebate to households that connected water tanks to their laundries and toilets, Mr Bracks sought to contrast Labor's environmental credentials with those of the Greens.

The Greens are campaigning to stop the Bald Hills wind farm in the seat of Gippsland South, saying that while renewable energy projects were preferable to coal and nuclear power, they should be appropriately located.

Greens candidate Jackie Dargaville, who is contesting the seat held by Nationals leader Peter Ryan, has said that in coastal areas with tourism potential, wind farming is "not necessarily the way to go unless that's what the community wants".

Mr Bracks criticised the position, saying: "The reality is that one of the ways we're going to reduce greenhouse gas is to have wind power, alongside hydro, solar ... and clean coal.

"The Greens' perceived opposition to wind power is a wrong call, and it's rejected by the wider environmental movement."

Rescue plan for city water supplies

2006-11-08T17:31:00.000+11:00

The Australian

Dennis Shanahan and Verity Edwards
November 07, 2006
URGENT measures to ensure Adelaide and several Victorian towns don't run out of drinking water will be tabled at today's summit on the drought-stricken Murray-Darling Basin.

As part of a $2 billion national water project, there are plans to create new water storages along the Murray in South Australia and build a desalination plant to produce 30 million litres a day.

The summit, called by John Howard, comes as the water shortage crisis in Australia shifts from the availability of water for farmers to providing enough drinking water for cities and towns.

The Victorian Government's proposal targets the centre of the state, with plans to boost drinking water supplies in the region of Ballarat and Bendigo with pipes linking the Campaspe and Goulburn rivers.

There are fears in federal cabinet that the failure of autumn rains next year will lead to an unprecedented drought and water shortages, with dams drying up in April-May.

In another bid to win over regional voters, the Government has agreed to extend drought relief to small businesses for the first time.

The decision, taken by cabinet yesterday, will pump much-needed emergency funds into regional towns. Small business owners, such as harvesters and farm contractors, will be able to apply for the relief, provided a majority of their income is derived from primary production.

The Prime Minister will today outline the drought package, which will build on the $910 million recently announced in further assistance to drought-stricken farmers.

The Murray-Darling Basin last month recorded its lowest ever October inflow of 77 gigalitres, compared to the average 1100 gigalitres.

Mr Howard and premiers Mike Rann, Steve Bracks and Morris Iemma will try today to drastically accelerate the revival of the Murray-Darling Basin.

The Prime Minister said yesterday progress on the National Water Initiative and the aim of pumping an extra 500gigalitres into the Murray was too slow. "The progress with implementing that plan has been slower than I would have liked," Mr Howard said.

He said today's meeting in Canberra with the premiers of NSW, South Australia and Victoria "will be an opportunity for an agreement to accelerate progress" for the basin and discuss the drought.

He said the federal Government and the states had "hammered out" a National Water Initiative three years ago.

"One of the things I will raise with the premiers is accelerating the implementation of the plan that we all agreed on some years ago," he said.

South Australia has previously proposed building a weir on the Murray and using lakes as extra storages as well as building a $100 million desalination plant.

South Australian Premier Mr Rann said yesterday that he would lobby the Prime Minister and other premiers for a reversal of the Snowy Mountains Hydro electricity scheme decision to withhold water for release into the Murray-Darling system.

"There's actually quite a bit of water that's locked up, including behind one dam which isn't even being used for electricity purposes," Mr Rann said.

He said he would put a "whole range of options on the table" regarding water security for people living in South Australian cities and towns, including water storage along the Murray and its lakes and a desalination plant.

"One of the options that's before us is the construction of a weir at Wellington," Mr Rann said.

Mr Howard said the premiers had agreed on "quite a big plan" before and he was considering a $2 billion shopping list from state governments for water-saving projects, including massive pipelines, recycling and desalination plants.

As part of a national scheme of "big ticket" water projects, the West Australian Government is looking at a $617million pipeline from the Yarragadee aquifer to metropolitan Perth, and the Queensland Government has proposed a $500million pipeline in the southeast.

The NSW Government wants to spend $390 million for recycling effluent in western Sydney for industry, park watering and environmental flows in the Hawkesbury and Nepean rivers.

Labor environmental spokesman Anthony Albanese accused Mr Howard of playing cynical politics by holding the water meeting on Melbourne Cup day and when the Reserve Bank is expected to raise interest rates.

"The Prime Minister is more concerned about politics than water or climate change," Mr Albanese said.

"The fact is, climate change is cutting water flows in the Murray-Darling Basin right now. In November 2003 the Howard Government promised to give the Murray River 500gigalitres within five years under the Living Murray First Step program. Not a single drop has actually been returned," Mr Albanese said.

Mr Howard rejected Mr Albanese's claim and said the talks were being held on most convenient day.

"It will be on in the morning. Mr Bracks has got plenty of time to get back for the Melbourne Cup," Mr Howard said.

Federal Agriculture Minister Peter McGauran said the Government would not be forcing farmers to give up allocated water rights, although he warned of dire consequences if there were no seasonal autumn rains next year.

"We need cool heads and we can't be panicked into making snap decisions on water allocations," he said.

"The Prime Minister is going to work through these issues carefully with the heads of the various states with a direct involvement and responsibility, and we know that even an average autumn rainfall next year won't give the irrigators what they require in 2007 and possibly 2008."

The South Australian desalination plant would provide drinking water and boost the Murray flow. The water would also supply BHP's $5billion Olympic Dam extension.

Stern raises stakes on climate change action

2006-11-08T08:50:00.000+11:00

The Age

Jewel Topsfield
November 4, 2006

FORMER World Bank economist Sir Nicholas Stern warns that Australia must provide incentives for new technologies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions or they will not be used.

He said Australia faced "severe water stress" and rising sea levels if the globe continued to heat at the current pace, of particular concern as most Australian cities were on the coast.

In an alarming report to the British Government, Sir Nicholas this week predicted climatic and economic disaster if urgent action was not taken on global warming.

His latest warning came as the Australian Government wrote to the United Nations complaining about a report that challenged the Government's line that Australia was on track to meet its greenhouse gas emissions target.

At the same time, the Opposition and environment groups called for changes to environmental laws, which would force the Government to assess greenhouse emissions when considering whether to approve major new projects, such as coalmines.

Sir Nicholas stopped short of calling on Australia to join a carbon trading scheme.

"What's important is that each country acts strongly because if one country says I'm not going to do anything until everybody does everything, then that's a recipe for nothing happening and, of course, nothing happening is the most dangerous thing of all," he told the ABC.

"You could say all coal-fired power stations in Australia after some date should be carbon capture and storage. That's Australia's call and if that's the way Australia decides to do it, that would be a way of going forward which wouldn't necessarily be getting involved in a carbon trading scheme," he said.

However, he warned: "People have got to have an incentive to use these new methods or many would not do so."

The Howard Government has claimed it is on track to meet its Kyoto emissions target of an 8 per cent increase between 1990 and 2012, despite not ratifying the protocol. But figures from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change released this week show that Australia increased its emissions by 25 per cent between 1990 and 2004.

The Australian Greenhouse Office has written to the UN, claiming the result was inaccurate because it did not include greenhouse gas savings from reducing land clearing.

Environment Minister Ian Campbell said when land use changes were included, Australia's net emissions had increased by only 2 per cent from 1990 to 2004.

Green groups, Labor and the Democrats said yesterday a bill to amend Australia's major environmental legislation, now before Parliament, was a missed opportunity to protect Australia from climate change. Labor will move amendments to the bill in the Senate this month.

■For the first time in its 32-year history, the International Energy Agency will urge governments next week to speed up the construction of nuclear power plants as part of a cheaper, cleaner and safer global energy strategy, the Financial Times reports.

PM's stance on climate change immoral

2006-11-08T08:33:00.000+11:00

The Age

By Robyn Eckersley
November 8, 2006
Other related coverage

* China soon to become biggest polluter
* UN pressures Canberra over climate change
* Stern raises stakes on climate change action

Prime Minister John Howard has long maintained the Kyoto Protocol is flawed because it excludes major carbon emitters in the developing world. In Parliament last week, in defiance of the British Stern report, he declared that it would be foolish for Australia to embark on a carbon trading scheme, because developing countries would enjoy a free ride at our expense.

Yet the Prime Minister's stance directly contravenes Australia's obligations under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change 1992. The fundamental environmental justice principle running through this convention, which Australia has signed and ratified, is that parties should take steps to protect the climate "on the basis of equity and in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capacities" (article 3(1)). The convention provides that developed countries must "take the lead in combating climate change". Developed countries have benefited from a long history of exploiting fossil fuels and are responsible for the bulk of past emissions. They also have a greater economic capacity to absorb emission reductions and develop technological alternatives.

These environmental justice principles also served as the cornerstone of the Berlin mandate, which framed the negotiations for the Kyoto Protocol. Developing countries, including growing aggregate emitters such as China, are not expected to undertake mandatory emissions reduction until developed countries have shown the way. For the Prime Minister to maintain that the protocol is flawed because it allows free riders, flies in the face of the principles of the Kyoto Protocol's parent convention. The main reason the Kyoto Protocol is suboptimal, in both environmental and political terms, is because the world's biggest aggregate carbon polluter (the US) and the world's second biggest per capita carbon polluter (Australia) have defected.

The idea that a rich country such as Australia should not reduce its oversized per capita carbon footprint unless poorer countries also take measures to reduce their tiny per capita footprint is to kick the ladder down. It denies poorer countries the opportunity to improve the livelihoods of their peoples and avoids Australia's obligations under the convention. Such a stance is morally and politically unjustifiable.

Robyn Eckersley teaches global politics at the University of Melbourne.

Howard takes wind from the sails of alternative energy

2006-11-08T08:27:00.000+11:00

SMH

Water mark … boat ramps on Lake Hume have been left high and dry. A Herald /ACNielsen poll shows 91 per cent of Australians regard climate change as a serious issue.

Water mark … boat ramps on Lake Hume have been left high and dry. A Herald /ACNielsen poll shows 91 per cent of Australians regard climate change as a serious issue.
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Phillip Coorey Chief Political Correspondent
November 8, 2006

SYDNEY'S coastline would need to be festooned with windmills if clean, renewable energy was to generate enough electricity to replace that produced by fossil fuels or nuclear power, the Prime Minister said yesterday.

John Howard was responding to a Herald/ACNielsen poll that found 91 per cent regarded climate change as a serious issue.

More than 60 per cent were unhappy with the Federal Government's response to the challenge and were willing to pay more in taxes and for services if it helped.

Mr Howard said he found the results "quite unsurprising" and natural given the recent publicity on climate change.

He said he was particularly taken by the poll's finding that, when canvassed with energy options on how to best tackle global warming, almost 50 per cent opted for solar power.

Mr Howard said he could understand why people preferred solar power, but it and wind power would never be mainstream generators of electricity.

"Solar is a nice, easy soft answer. There is a vague idea in the community that solar doesn't cost anything and it can solve the problem. It can't …

"Solar and all these other things can make a contribution at the margins, but unless you want to have a windmill every few hundred feet starting at South Head and going down to Malabar … you simply won't be able to generate enough power from something like wind in order to take the load of the power that is generated by the use of coal and gas and, in time, I believe, nuclear.

"In the end, if you look years ahead, there are only two ways of generating the electricity that this nation needs - either through the current methods of fossil fuel use or through a combination of that in a cleaner form but with nuclear power."

Mr Howard said he understood what the opinion polls were telling him, but they would never dictate policy.

"I read what people say, I understand it, I'm sympathetic but in the end I've got to call it as it is, and calling it as it is means I have to say that solar and wind will not replace conventional power stations."

Mr Howard doubted he would meet the former US vice-president Al Gore, due to revisit Australia soon. Mr Gore, who lost controversially to George Bush in the presidential election in 2000, visited Australia recently to promote the film An Inconvenient Truth.

"We ought to be realistic," Mr Howard said. "I don't know I'm at the top of his popularity list. I am, after all, a rather close friend of somebody he's not very keen on."

Dire warnings for the earth's survival

2006-11-07T17:42:00.000+11:00

Bega District News

Tuesday, 7 November 2006

DIRE warnings for our future if our governments and we don't change our ways were delivered at the Sustainable Future Forum in the Bermagui Community Hall on Sunday.

The speakers for the day were Matthew Nott of Clean Energy for Eternity, anti-nuclear campaigner Helen Caldicott, concerned local resident Pat Thompson, Chris Allen of the Bega Eco-Neighbourhood Development, Dean Turner of The Crossing Land Education Centre and Suzanne Foulkes of Friends of the Five Forests.

The major concerns voiced by the speakers were climate change, water shortages, nuclear energy and depleted oil stocks.

Most pointed out that 92 per cent of those surveyed thought that the Commonwealth was not doing enough to invest in clean, renewable energy.

Ms Suzanne Foulkes of the Friends of the Five Forests said it was not a time for further political spin and prevarication.

"With both State and Federal elections due in 2007 we have to make it very clear to ministers and to candidates that we know the problems are not being properly addressed and that the environment is the political issue.

"It is vitally important that the continued destruction of our forests is halted and deforestation included on the agenda of any debate on climate change.

"The report released last week by Nicholas Stern, UK economist, makes the point that 'Action to avoid further deforestation should be an urgent priority'.

Ms Foulkes said local maps showed that virtually every major water catchment in the south east is in State Forests' hands.

"All of them have been logged severely and burned repeatedly over the last 40 years; every stream is silted up, every estuary has suffered heavy sedimentation which suffocates the natural water plants and prevents fish breeding.

"Forestry practices that are destroying our forests and the water transpiration cycles that our rainfall depends on.

"Water transpiration from trees returns water to the atmosphere.

"Deforestation causes diminished rainfall and increased desertification.

"The trees and their understorey plants retain water in the soil and keep it moist, they protect the land surface from landslides and erosion and prevent sediment runoff into streams.

"When the trees are removed these forests lose the ability to function as water catchments should."

Ms Foulkes said water was the highest value product that could be obtained from native forests.

"It is now very clear that the Australian people are way ahead of their governments in wanting action to prevent the inevitable collapse of the ecosystems that are our life-giving natural heritage."

Dr Helen Caldicott put dread into the hearts of all those at the forum as she spoke forcibly of the dangers of uranium mining, enriching uranium and nucelar energy.

She said the nuclear energy industry was a potent global warmer and reminded everyone that recently one of Sweden's plants was two minutes away from a meltdown which would have been as bad as Chernobyl.

Dr Caldicott, a paediatrician, said the genes of future generations would be affected by small amounts of radioactive fallout, but plutonium was far worse, with only a millionth of a gram causing lung cancer, liver cancer and, getting into the embryo, causing all kinds of genetic mutations.

She said that depleted uranium from USA weapons was still hanging around Iraqi fields and since the war started the incidence of children's cancer and deformed babies has risen by 700 per cent.

Dr Caldicott said there were plenty of other energy sources that could be used - solar, wind, geo-thermal, tidal - everything except nuclear.

"When we sell uranium we are selling cancer," she said

She said she did not think Prime Minister Howard would back a nuclear power station, despite his recent statements.

She believes the public will protest so much about it that he will withdraw and go for what he has already probably promised US president George Bush - the storing of the US nuclear waste in Australia.

Mr Chris Allen spoke about Bega Eco-Neighbourhood Development project that aims to be socially, ecologically and economically sustainable based on permaculture principles.

There will be mandatory standards for energy-efficient housing, a stand-alone water supply system harvesting rainwater and stormwater, a centralised system for the collection and treatment of domestic grey water, mandatory dry-composting toilets and a grid interactive neighbourhood-owned solar power system.

Ms Pat Thompson spoke about what people could do as individuals to stop using so much energy, such as turning off lights and electrical appliances at the wall and using solar energy.

Mr Dean Turner said civilisations that cut down their trees would collapse and experience political turmoil.

He said Australia has cut down a quarter of its forests whereas Japan decided 150 years ago that it would maintain three-quarters of its forests and it has.

He said that at The Crossing young people were educated to look after the land, save water, save the forests and their biodiversity.

Dr Matthew Nott said it was necessary to find solutions as soon as possible to overcome the problems of oil depletion, climate change and drought.

"In the Bega Valley Shire we are completely dependent on road transport for everything so when the oil runs out we shall be in a desperate situation unless we change our ways.

"Climate change is happening here and now and you can see its effects," he said.

"The solutions should come from individuals, local, state and federal governments.

"On the individual level we could buy hybrid cars, fluorescent lights, switch appliances off at the main, drive slower, ride a bike to work or school, put in a solar hot water system, plant trees and fly less.

´On a community level we must lobby politicians to get behind clean renewable energy such as wind farms and solar banks and encourage eco-tourism."

Dr Nott said the Bega Valley Shire Council was backing his target of 50/50 by 2020 (50 per cent reduction in energy use and a 50 per cent increase in energy).

Many of the speakers at the forum said Australia should be a world leader in promoting renewable energy.

Caldicott rejects PM's nuclear power stance

2006-11-07T09:18:00.000+11:00

ABC Online

A prominent anti-nuclear campaigner has rejected comments by the Prime Minister that nuclear power production should be an option in Australia.

Dr Helen Caldicott was the main speaker at an energy forum in Adelaide last night.

She says advances in technology means that renewable energy is a much better option.

Dr Caldicott also dismisses John Howard's comment that world attitudes to nuclear power are changing.

"I think he's kidding himself. I feel very strongly the sentiment in Australia is we will never accept nuclear power. We don't need it," she said.

"If ever there's a chance for us to become an energy superpower, it's to cover every house with solar panels and have wind farms everywhere."
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Clean Energy for Eternity

2006-11-07T07:58:00.000+11:00

By RICHARD MOFFATT

CLIMATE change is an extremely scary and challenging issue for us all to face.

It is not the least bit surprising to see a large proportion of the population denying climate change or slotting it in the 'too hard basket'.

Others just ignore it, or tell themselves that they play two small a part to make a difference.

The thing we resist the most as human beings is change. The greater the change, the greater the resistance.

But we have the ability to prevent a worsening climate situation and our individual efforts can make an enormous difference.

Clearly prevention is the most sensible path. In living history we have seen some monumental changes come from the 'too hard basket' - efforts such as the ozone layer, abolition of apartheid and the non-smoking movement.

When enough of the population are talking about a problem, change will follow.

Clean Energy for Eternity is planning a massive landscape sculpture in the Bega Valley. It involves discarded washing machines, dishwashers and dryers.

These taken-for-granted, energy insatiable devices that are servants to our consumerist lifestyles will be rearranged in a thought provoking moment of madness in the near future.

Keeping climate change in the general conversation is part of CEFE's commitment to raising awareness.

Preventing climate change is about common sense, firstly reducing power consumption and secondly by using clean energy.

Clean energy is available to your door through the existing power grid system. Connection is as simple as a phone call or completing an online application.

Climate change is our responsibility. You can choose to make a difference.

Green energy getsthumbs up from 2500 ACT marchers

2006-11-07T07:33:00.000+11:00

The Canberra Times

Sunday, 5 November 2006

Brad Watts

PEOPLE power triumphed over non-renewable power in Canberra yesterday in a potent show of support for green energy.

More than 2500 people with bicycles, tricycles, scooters and dogs paraded through Civic for the Walk Against Warming march.

Designed to highlight the importance of renewable energy and condemn the burning of fossil fuels, the Greens and Conservation Council-led march from the ACT Legislative Assembly to Glebe Park attracted an assortment of participants including jugglers, musicians, dancers, clowns and a man on stilts dressed as a blowfly.

The International Day of Action on Climate Change, held right across Australia including in regional areas, inspired different meanings for marchers including Raphaela Mazzone, 22, of Rivett who was dressed in green and carrying a sign saying: "Just do it".

"I believe climate change is one of the most important problems we face today," she said.

"We should all work towards finding a solution."

Garth Cogin, of Campbell, was equally passionate about the cause, saying it was time people made a difference.

"We should be providing investment for renewable energy - I think solar and wind power is the solution."

As part of the demonstration, the Greens Party announced plans to introduce a climate change remedy Bill into Federal Parliament.

Proudly wearing a Greens t-shirt, environmentalist and WA Senator Rachel Siewert said the Bill called for a 90 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

"We are hoping the Government will support it. If John Howard wants to get into bed with big business, he can at least make a recommendation for industry to stop burning fossil fuels," she said.

Senator Siewert described the large-scale event as a "fantastic turn-out" and much more than was expected.

The overall theme of the march was aimed at changing people's minds and switching to energy efficient light bulbs, installing solar hot water, walking to the shops instead of driving and reducing own greenhouse gas emissions. It was also about sending a powerful message to government, she said. "The Government is still in denial on this issue."

We'll pay to beat climate crisis: voters

2006-11-07T07:12:00.000+11:00

SMH

Phillip Coorey Chief Political Correspondent
November 7, 2006

ALMOST two-thirds of Australians are prepared to pay more tax and more for essentials if it helps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, according to a Herald/ACNielsen poll.

The finding comes as the Prime Minister, John Howard, prepares for a crisis summit with premiers today on the Murray-Darling river system. They will discuss restricting environmental flows to save towns and irrigators, as well as withdrawing water licences. The Murray-Darling Basin Commission will brief the summit on the severe impact of the drought on towns and irrigators.

The poll found 63 per cent would accept higher taxes and paying more for goods and services if it eased global warming.

The poll was taken from Thursday to Saturday last week following days of heated parliamentary debate on climate change.

It found 91 per cent of voters regarded global warming as serious, and 62 per cent were unhappy with the Federal Government's response.

Almost half of those polled cited solar power as the best way to tackle global warming, 19 per cent backed a carbon tax on fossil fuels and 17 per cent supported nuclear power. Only 9 per cent advocated using their cars less.

During debate last week on climate change Mr Howard ruled out a carbon tax or other levies on fossil fuels that would drive up the price of power and other services and cost jobs.

He said cleaning up emissions from fossil fuels was the best course of action, which over time would increase the price of coal-fired power and eventually bring the more expensive nuclear power into contention.

A Government commissioned report into the nuclear cycle to be handed down soon is expected to find nuclear power to be about 15 years from being viable, but only if a carbon tax or emissions trading scheme is imposed.

Labor is advocating reduced emissions targets, ratifying the Kyoto Protocol and investing heavily in renewable energy. The Labor leader, Kim Beazley, has baulked at conceding his measures would make energy more expensive.

Climate change has been given added impetus by the drought. Mr Howard and the premiers will discuss the parlous state of the Murray-Darling, whose main dams will run dry in six months without good rains.

The premiers of NSW, Morris Iemma, South Australia, Mike Rann, and Victoria, Steve Bracks, and the Queensland Deputy Premier, Anna Blight, will attend.

They will discuss withdrawing water rights from some farmers and short-term cuts in environmental flows to the river so spare water can be directed to irrigators and towns. One senior government source said it was important to "look after people first".

Mr Howard said yesterday he would press the premiers to accelerate the implementation of the 2004 national water initiative, which involves the trading of water rights and other measures designed to encourage the more efficient use of water. "The progress with it is too slow," he said.

The parliamentary secretary for water, Malcolm Turnbull, rejected suggestions that buying out major irrigators at the top of the basin, such as the cotton farm Cubbie Station in Queensland, would have measurable effects at the end of the Murray River. Ms Bligh will be proposing a buyout today.

The conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch said yesterday he had had a change of heart on climate change and believed global action was needed, though not in the form of the Kyoto Protocol. "I have to admit that, until recently, I was somewhat wary of the warming debate. I believe it is now our responsibility to take the lead on this issue," he said in Tokyo.

"Some of the presumptions about extreme weather … may seem far-fetched. What is certain is that temperatures have been rising and that we are not entirely sure of the consequences. The planet deserves the benefit of the doubt."

PM steams ahead on clean coal despite polls

2006-11-07T07:09:00.000+11:00

Canberra Times

Andrew Fraser

Prime Minister John Howard has dismissed polling which shows an overwhelming majority of Australians want the Government to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, levy greenhouse polluters and end the nation's reliance on coal.

Mr Howard told Parliament yesterday that cleaning up coal-fired power was the "most important" action to fight climate change and quoted Labor premiers Peter Beattie and Steve Bracks as coal industry supporters and former federal Labor Finance Minister Peter Walsh as an opponent of Kyoto because it would do untold economic harm to Australia.

"Our position is very clear," MrHoward said. "For two years [starting with a white paper] we have been arguing the cause of clean coal technology and today we have seen the premiers of Queensland and Victoria blow the Leader of the Opposition [Kim Beazley] out of the water."

The Newspoll, commissioned by Greenpeace, the Nature Conservation Council and GetUp, found 79per cent of Australians (71 per cent of Coalition voters) wanted Kyoto ratified. Nine in 10 Australians wanted a shift away from coal and four out of five agreed that greenhouse polluters should be made to pay for their emissions.

Mr Howard sought to discount the survey as an "online poll", implying that it recorded only the responses of people who wanted to contribute.

However, Greenpeace's Danny Kennedy emphasised that the Newspoll was a nationwide telephone survey.

Deputy Opposition Whip Michael Danby raised the issue in the House, noting the survey was conducted last weekend among a sample of 1200 adults aged 18 and over with the results "post-weighted" to Australian Bureau of Statistics population estimates. This gives it the same credibility as the fortnightly Newspolls, published in The Australian, on the nation's voting intentions.

However, Mr Howard said, "I think it is the job of political leaders in this country to read opinion polls but to do what they think is right for Australia. It is as simple as that."

He branded Mr Beazley an "11th-hour convert" to Kyoto ratification and said, "Let me tell the Australian people: we listen to their views on this issue. We are aware of the need to take practical measures to address greenhouse gas emissions, but I say to them: we are not going to take measures that destroy the great comparative advantage that this country has, we are not going to be panicked into knee-jerk responses that will hobble great productive Australian industries with enormous costs that are not borne by their competitors overseas."

Australians would have to accept that fighting climate change would cost more money in the future, MrHoward said.

"I think that people, over time, will adjust but they will have to accept that things will become more expensive," he said in a radio interview.

The survey found that four in five Australians agreed that they "should be prepared to pay a little more for their energy to help investment in renewable energy sources".

Democrats leader and energy spokeswoman Lyn Allison said this flew in the face of Mr Howard's consistent arguments that Australians were not prepared to pay more for energy.

"Clearly the Prime Minister has spent too much time pandering to the coal industry and not enough time listening to his constituents," she said.

Dismissing Mr Howard's announcement this week of $60million for 42 energy projects as "small handouts", she said, "I can only hope that public opinion will serve as a wake-up call and force the Prime Minister into real action."

Power Failure in Germany Triggers Blackouts in Europe (Update1)

2006-11-06T18:15:00.000+11:00

By Maria Sheahan and Francois de Beaupuy

Nov. 5 (Bloomberg) -- Power failure in a German electricity grid operated by E.ON AG caused blackouts across western Europe last night, depriving millions of homes of electricity, disrupting trains and risking outages to hospitals and airports.

About 5 million households in France went without power for as much as an hour in the nation's biggest outage since 1978, Andre Merlin, the director of Reseau de Transport d'Electricite, France's power-grid operator, told the press today.

Overall, some 10 million households across Belgium, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain, and Eastern Europe may have been affected, Merlin said. The grid failure in Germany led to the biggest pan- European power collapse in at least 30 years through a domino effect that swept through Western and Eastern Europe, he said.

``The main risk was a total blackout in Germany which could have spread to the rest of Europe,'' Merlin said. ``The likelihood of a significant incident is very weak,'' he said, adding ``a blackout is always possible, but we do everything to avoid it.''

E.ON, Germany's biggest utility, said today it may have triggered the blackouts by disconnecting a high-voltage power line over the river Ems in northwest Germany to let a ship pass safely, which in turn led a power grid in the region to overload.

`Priority Customers'

An automated safety system then went into play, selectively blocking power representing about 8 percent to 10 percent of electricity consumption in countries like France, Italy and Spain to safeguard ``priority customers, especially hospitals,'' Merlin said on today's conference call.

``This loss of production had to be quickly compensated for by a reduction in electricity consumption, not only in Germany but in the whole of Europe,'' Merlin said. Selective cuts ``allowed us to avoid a total blackout across the whole of France for several hours or days.''

Dusseldorf, Germany based E.ON is investigating the cause of the failure and will publish a statement ``as soon as there are more precise findings.'' The lights went out in many regions of Europe at 10:10 p.m., and power was restored by 11 p.m., E.ON said in a statement e-mailed today.

In Germany, Cologne-Bonn airport lost power and had to rely on an emergency generator, Deutsche Presse-Agentur reported, citing a spokesman for the Cologne city government. The German rail system also suffered, with at least 100 trains stranded carrying more than 1,000 people, Agence France-Presse reported.

In France, the power cut stopped a dozen high-speed trains for about half an hour, according to SNCF, France's national train operator. French fire brigades were called to help free people from lifts, AFP said.

European Inquiry?

Italy's energy authority will call for an inquiry by the European Union's Council of European Energy Regulators, which is due to meet on Nov. 7, Ansa reported, citing the regulator's Chairman Alessandro Ortis. Power was cut in parts of the Italian regions of Piedmont, Liguria and Puglia, La Repubblica said.

The power outage also affected Austria, Croatia and the Netherlands, according to press reports. Parts of the Belgian regions of Flanders and Wallonia were affected, while Brussels was spared the blackout, Belga reported, citing an official from Sibelga, which distributes electricity in the Belgian capital.

``Consumption wasn't very high last night,'' Merlin said. France was importing 3,200 megawatts from Germany last night, while exporting almost treble that amount of electricity to the U.K., Belgium, Switzerland and Italy.

Call for Reinforcements

The head of France's power-grid operator couldn't immediately assess the cost of the incident, and couldn't say whether it would lead to litigation. He called for the creation of a Europe-wide electricity network coordination center which would supplement the role of national grid operators.

``Infrastructures aren't obsolete, though they need to be reinforced'' as European electricity consumption grows by 1.5 percent to 2 percent per year, Merlin said. ``We need more interconnections.''

Italy in September 2003 had its biggest blackout since World War II, which left almost 56 million people without electricity for as long as 18 hours after a tree struck a power line in Switzerland. Critics said at the time the blackout may have been exacerbated by Swiss grid operators failing to warn Italian utilities on time.

RWE AG, Germany's largest power producer, last year suffered at least 10 million euros ($12.7 million) in damages from snow storms that caused blackouts for about 250,000 people in western Germany. Storms and snow toppled pylons and iced power lines in North Rhine-Westphalia.

To contact the reporter on this story: Maria Sheahan in Frankfurt at msheahan1@bloomberg.net .
Last Updated: November 5, 2006 12:09 EST

Nuclear power on agenda

2006-11-04T21:15:00.000+11:00

SMH

November 4, 2006 - 4:25PM

Prime Minister John Howard has put nuclear power firmly on the election campaign agenda, creating a clear demarcation between the coalition and the strongly anti-nuclear Labor and green groups.

Mr Howard, attending the Queensland Liberal conference in Brisbane, said he would do nothing to put the mining industry at risk by taking a panicky approach to greenhouse emissions.

His assurance follows the leaking of the findings of the government's nuclear energy task group, headed by former Telstra boss Ziggy Switkowski, which said nuclear power could be commercially viable within 15 years.

Mr Howard said nuclear power was potentially the cleanest and greenest of all forms of energy.

He said Australia needed a response to climate change which protected Australia's national interest and preserved its competitive advantage.

"Wouldn't it be an extraordinary national paradox if this country had achieved great prosperity, in no small measure due to the resources that providence has given us, and we are then to be knee-jerked into a response to global warming that crippled the very industries that gave us that prosperity," he said.

"And we would be foolish, from the national interest point of view, with our vast resources of uranium, to say that we are not going to consider nuclear power."

In the late 1960s the coalition government seriously considered a nuclear power station at Jervis Bay, NSW.

But the plan was shelved because nuclear power couldn't compete with power from abundant coal.

Resources Minister Ian Macfarlane said the reality now was that nuclear power would be competitive within 15 years, as requirements to capture carbon pushed up the cost of electricity from fossil fuels.

He said the next step was a public nuclear energy debate which used facts rather than fear.

"We want to see debate that is based in understanding and knowledge, not a debate based on scare tactics," he said.

The proposal prompted a strong reaction from Labor and green groups.

In Sydney, Labor environment spokesman Anthony Albanese told the Walk Against Warming rally the government was again pushing its nuclear fantasy.

He added it was unsurprising the government inquiry, which he said was made up of nuclear advocates, supported nuclear energy.

"Australians want to live with a solar panel on their roofs, not next door to a nuclear reactor," he said.

Opposition resources spokesman Martin Ferguson said Australia was a fossil fuel dependent economy with more than 600 years of coal reserves and there was no way nuclear power was going to stack up.

"Other nations will go nuclear ... our responsibility is to reduce our emissions through clean coal technology while also promoting the growth of renewables," he said in Melbourne.

Greens leader Bob Brown said Australia was now facing the dangers of both climate change and a nuclear power industry.

"Nuclear cannot and will not address climate change. It would take one to two decades to get going, ensure a major waste dump in Australia and inevitably encourage proliferation in neighbouring countries," he said.

Greenpeace said nuclear power wasn't clean or green, and never would be.

"Even if these technologies were feasible and safe, they wouldn't be able to contribute to reducing emissions for decades. That's just too late," Greenpeace spokesman Danny Kennedy said in a statement.

Wilderness Society nuclear campaigner Imogen Zethoven said the government was working towards establishing a toxic nuclear industry in 15 years, when renewable energy technologies were available now.

"The prime minister should be transforming Australia into a renewable energy power house not a nuclear waste dump for the rest of the world, an outcome that will be assured if we go down the nuclear energy path."

AAP

Climate change to dominate UK elections

2006-11-04T21:02:00.000+11:00

Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Broadcast: 03/11/2006

Reporter: Maxine McKew

Environmentalist Zac Goldsmith speaks to Maxine McKew about how the issue of climate change may determine the upcoming United Kingdom elections.
Transcript
MAXINE MCKEW: Well, the politics of climate change dominated the Federal Parliament this week, with the release of the Stern report in the UK giving added impetus to Labor's argument that Australia needs to sign up to the Kyoto Protocol, and while polling suggests an overwhelming number of Australians accept that more radical action needs to be taken, the Prime Minister has yet to endorse any kind of carbon pricing mechanism. But quite a different approach is being taken by Mr Howard's counterparts in the UK. There, Conservative Party leader, David Cameron, goes out of his way to parade his Green credentials. He rides a bike to Westminster and talks about putting a wind turbine on top of Downing Street. Unlike many European countries, the UK has achieved significant emissions reductions and with Gordon Brown having commissioned the report by former World Bank economist Sir Nicholas Stern, it may be that the next UK election will be a race to see who can present the most credible and the most radical proposals to reduce carbon consumption.

One Conservative suggesting a bold approach is environmentalist Zac Goldsmith. He inherited a fortune from his father, the late Sir James Goldsmith. These days he's the owner and editor of the Ecologist magazine and advocates a complete rethink of how we organise economic activity. Zac Goldsmith has been singled out as a potential star Tory candidate for the next election and is the deputy chair of the party's quality of life policy group and now he joins me from London.

MAXINE MCKEW: So, good evening to you.

ZAC GOLDSMITH: Good evening.

MAXINE MCKEW: Let's talk about the impact of the Stern report. I know you have been taking and writing about the impact of climate change for a long time. Do you see the significance of the Stern report in that it really is signalling that business as usual is no longer viable.

ZAC GOLDSMITH: The truth is it doesn't say a lot of new stuff and there's a growing scientific consensus, an obvious and quite loud demand now from the City of London, some of our biggest businesses, calling for a long-term framework on climate change, a pressure from the electorate, which is why we're seeing a response in politics, it's one of the reasons things are interesting in politics. I think what Stern has done is he has successfully removed the last major excuse for inaction on climate change. His main thesis is that dealing with climate change is not only not going to bankrupt our economy, it's actually going to open up all kinds of opportunities, it's going to be good for the economy, whereas not dealing with climate change, if even the most conservative predictions are correct, is going to be disastrous, economically, socially and, obviously, ecologically.

MAXINE MCKEW: Now, one of Sir Nicholas's key contentions is he says it represents one of the world's greatest market failures in that the full environmental cost of what we do is just not taken into account. Do you broadly accept that and if so what are the implications of that?

ZAC GOLDSMITH: I think that's exactly right. The market is without doubt the most powerful force we have for social change. There's nothing in history that's remotely comparable. But it does have a blind spot and that's the environment. It's a pretty significant blind spot. It doesn't take into account the health of the environment and the viability of the biosphere itself. That's a market failure. In my view that's where the Government needs to step in and correct that failure and the best way of doing that is finding a mechanism of pricing the environment into the market and that probably means setting very tight limits on pollution and putting high prices on emissions and if you do that and you do it sufficiently it won't make sense to pollute and you'll find businesses finding all kinds of alternatives. I think you'll trigger a process of massive innovation. We're already seeing it with the emergence of a half a trillion-dollar sector in environmental goods and services. We're really at the beginning of the process now. It is a market failure. I fundamentally agree with that and it has been now accepted fully by the Conservative Party in this country which, given the party is historically that party most associated with belief in the free market and the market itself, I think it is a significant thing that's happening.

MAXINE MCKEW: We know certainly that David Cameron gets the message but are you saying there's no longer any climate change sceptics in the Tory Party?

ZAC GOLDSMITH: Of course there's climate change sceptics. In any mass movement, whether political or otherwise, you're going to have lots of disagreement and this is an area of disagreement. The dominant message from within the party is this is something we have to deal with and you can't expect to be rewarded politically unless you come up with a cohesive, serious blueprint for dealing with climate change. The majority of the party now is absolutely behind David Cameron on that. There's very little hostility to him prioritising climate change. What's useful and almost more important than arguments about whether climate change is serious is at the heart of the Stern report, that even if climate change is a hoax, even if it's entirely a fabrication by a clique of scientists, dealing with climate change actually represents very few downsides. There's no downside really to a more efficient and leaner and cleaner economy. We have to find ways to design waste out of the system for all sorts of reasons. We need to reduce our dependence on oil and that's good politically. All these things we ought to do irrespective of climate change, and they happen not to represent a serious cost, although someone headed up their editorial in the Times a few days ago saying it may not be cost effective to change the planet, but we probably ought to give it a go in any case. Stern has found it is cost effective to change the planet. Climate change is another reason for doing that.

MAXINE MCKEW: In terms of where we're at and in terms of where we need to be, though, we really have to move from a high carbon economy to a low carbon economy. Do you think - in terms of, say, the average Brit, are they psychologically prepared, let alone financially prepared, because there will be some cost.

ZAC GOLDSMITH: Of course there will be cost, but there's a lot of low-hanging fruit and I think while we're debating difficult issues like aviation and cheap flights, those are issues that will take a bit of time to resolve. With existing technologies, we can already dramatically improve the efficiency of homes. You can reduce the energy a home consumes by more than 50 per cent without the occupant knowing it, based on today's technology. There's no reason why new homes can't be built to higher standards. Car fuel efficiency is also something. We know the technology exists to dramatically improve the fuel efficiency of vehicles that are produced. China is already way ahead of the United States, not necessarily for environmental reasons but because of the cost of fuel. We know with existing technology we can do it. If every lightbulb in Britain was replaced with an energy saving lightbulb you would save the equivalent of two nuclear power plants and nobody would realise. The Government can step in now and start raising these targets. The other thing is the Government is the biggest spender in our country on NHS and so on. There are huge contracts negotiated on a monthly basis. There was a 1.6 billion pound ($3.95 billion) contract last week between the NHS and the DHL postal service and there was no mention of climate change. There are tools available now which could trigger rapid shifts in the way we live without requiring people to tighten their belts and live like monks, which people aren't willing to do.

MAXINE MCKEW: Can I ask what you try to do in your own life? Do you try to live carbon light?

ZAC GOLDSMITH: I have all kinds of privileges and luxuries available to me. I don't point to myself as a model. As it happens, I produce most of my own food. I was able to choose to put my office near my home, which reduces the need to travel. That's not something everybody can do. I wouldn't point to my life and hold it up as something for other people to follow. The Green movement in this country has not been successful. It is a marginal political movement because it has focused at pointing at the individual and telling people, "you have to live like a monk. If you don't you can't take part in the debate." It's not true. Things can be done at a systemic level that have dramatic implications in reducing our environmental footprint. I saw yesterday if everybody in the United States had recycled the aluminium cans they threw away last year they would have saved enough aluminium to rebuild the world's air fleet. It is one tiny example but shows we need to find a way of designing waste out of the system. If you do that it's wonderful news for the planet and not bad news for the consumer. We have developed an inherently wasteful society, one that doesn't value natural resources and that's something we have to rectify. I strongly believe, this is at the heart of the Conservative approach in this country, it does not mean telling people to live lives they don't want to live. I think we're opening opportunities from an investment point of view, financial point of view and lifestyles.

MAXINE MCKEW: Do you see the opportunities being seized in Europe? The only existing market mechanism is the Kyoto Protocol and when we look at what the Europeans are doing as opposed to the British, it is a very mixed picture. They set caps at a very high level as a result of pressure from industry.

ZAC GOLDSMITH: Yeah. Absolutely. I think there were more carbon - there was a greater carbon budget allocated than there was pollution at the time so it was a pointless exercise. It established, though, an infrastructure we can now use. The climate is changing. There is an appetite now in parliament finally - not just in this country but elsewhere in Europe, for real solutions to this problem. Politics is always the last to respond. If you walk down the high street in Paris, London or Vienna, the retailers are desperately competing to appear greenest. There was an open letter written in Britain from four of the biggest companies demanding strong action from Tony Blair. I can tell you as editor of the Ecologist magazine, four or five years ago I couldn't get our articles syndicated in the national press and I can get it every edition now. It's not because the articles are better but the debate has jumped forward in the last year alone. I think in Europe with the coming elections here and elsewhere, they will be fought on these issues. It is a mad prediction possibly, but I think the next election in the United States, we might see President Bush has had an almost homeopathic impact and the next election will inevitably have climate change as a major issue, which has never happened before. We can only hope that will be the case.

MAXINE MCKEW: You're suggesting, regardless of whether it is a Republican or Democrat who wins the next presidential election in two years time, that it will mark some kind of sea change and make possible is a truly global trading mechanism?

ZAC GOLDSMITH: Absolutely. I don't see this as a left-right issue. I think most people don't vote for political parties as they do support football clubs. This may be a top-down issue, big-small issue. It's not about left and right. It is about a willingness to address the biggest issues. I'm a member of the Conservative Party because I don't think you can be a conservative without being an environmentalist. I think the two are inseparable. If the Conservative Party hasn't taken this seriously in the past I would suggest it's because there aren't or haven't been that many conservatives in the Conservative Party. You cannot be a conservative and not care about the future generations, conservation, stewardship and so on. In the United States you have all sorts of people emerging. Senator McCain, this has been among his top priorities. We don't know if he'll be selected but he looks to be the front-runner at the moment. I may be wrong. Things can happen very quickly, change very quickly. It looks to me like the election might be fought on these issues. In the United States you have two counter-trends. You have the lead being set by Arnold Schwarzenegger who is prioritising climate change and others can take this on because he's the tough man in politics and this is his number one issue. Mayors across the United States have signed up to Kyoto which is largely symbolic but demonstrates there's two Americas - the Bush Administration has been stubborn and hasn't recognised the opportunities involved with dealing with climate change, sees it only as a threat and its action has fallen way short of what's required.

MAXINE MCKEW: You have mentioned some of the big economies. You haven't mentioned China and India. This is an equation the Australian Government and Prime Minister John Howard consider when of course the Prime Minister here rejects the idea of any Kyoto Protocol-style framework, the argument is China and India are not represented. I'm wondering what your views are on that argument?

ZAC GOLDSMITH: Well, I think they have to be represented, they have to be part of the process. China is becoming a very, very major part of the problem. What's interesting in China, whereas presumably in Australia, certainly Britain and the US, the pace of change has been slow so the environmental effects of our lifestyle have been slow to emerge, whereas in China everything's happened very, very quickly and as a result there are dust storms now in Beijing, the water table collapsed in northern China two years ago. All these things are obvious in China and as a result you already have an environmental movement in China, whereas at the comparable stage in our development we didn't have a movement. In terms of involving China and India in a global system, I think it's absolutely essential. I think there's the argument, that they have to be somehow able to catch up by using the fossil fuel route is impossible. We should use our leverage and some of the money we give in aid and investments overseas to recreate an alternative infrastructure, an energy infrastructure which is not going to be obsolete 10 or 20 years down the line but is built to last and contribute to solutions, not problems. We build oil pipelines through central Africa and actively create dependence on oil where they're going to have to reduce their use of oil so I think we can start to exert influence without requiring people to stay in the dark ages but actually we can encourage a development process which is clean, which is not going to be rendered obsolete.

MAXINE MCKEW: There is another clean option, of course, and that is nuclear energy, which again is something that Prime Minister John Howard in this country is talking about, but I gather you're something of a nuclear sceptic. Why is that?

ZAC GOLDSMITH: I think there are lots of reasons to be sceptical. I don't see nuclear as a solution to climate change because in order for it to be a solution it has to be something that can be replicated overseas and the fact is most people would not want to see a large number of countries adopt a nuclear program. You can see what's happening in Iran at the moment and it makes a lot of people nervous. I don't think we should adopt a solution we're not happy to see replicated elsewhere. Another reason is nuclear currently provides 18 per cent of energy in this country, if we were to replace all of them we would save four per cent to eight per cent of emissions so it's not saving too much. There are enormous savings to be made and very quickly by using household appliances. Because of the concerns of nuclear we never have the full picture of what it costs, in this country we have a £90 billion, about $170 billion bill just to clean up existing waste. If you internalise that and put it into the cost of nuclear electricity it wouldn't be anything like as competitive or cheap as it currently appears. If you add to that the security concerns, particularly following 9/11 and so on, I think nuclear power is - I would be hard to imagine it's not the most expensive form of energy, probably in the history of energy, if you internalise all those costs and it doesn't represent a solution.

MAXINE MCKEW: Just a final point, in terms of discouraging the big polluters, then, is the Conservative Party prepared to go to the polls next time round and advocate and argue the case for carbon taxes?

ZAC GOLDSMITH: I think there has to be - we're fully committed now to finding a way of pricing carbon into the market. There are all kinds of ways of doing that. You can have individual carbon budgets, you can have a carbon tax instead of a climate change levy which we have at the moment. I don't know which is the most effective. We have some time to work out the best mechanism. There is an absolute guarantee we'll provide a mechanism and it will be the best. Our job is to provide solutions to the problem and if we fail to come up with something sufficiently radical, sufficiently effective, I fully expect the party to be punished brutally by the electorate at the time of the election and that would be justified.

MAXINE MCKEW: For your comments tonight, Zac Goldsmith, thank you very much indeed.

ZAC GOLDSMITH: Thank you very much.

Climate march in Sydney

2006-11-04T19:44:00.000+11:00

SMH

Climate march ... people protest in the streets of Sydney.

November 4, 2006 - 2:06PM

Thousands of people marched through central Sydney today, ignoring wet and windy weather to protest against global warming.

An estimated 10,000 to 12,000 people packed the CBD around Martin Place for the start of the Walk Against Warming at 11am (AEDT).

Families pushing strollers, elderly couples, dreadlocked activists and vocal youngsters joined forces to call for action on climate change.

Some carried home-made banners demanding the use of renewable energy, while others had home-made wind-turbines strapped to their backs.

A grim reaper bobbed above the crowd as it marched to the Botanic Gardens while a stuffed penguin was carried on a stretcher and one float carried a 'Prime Minister John Howard' cavorting with a snappily dressed female coal mining executive.

Greens senator Bob Brown and opposition environment spokesman Anthony Albanese attacked Prime Minister John Howard's policies on climate change, and demanded leadership on renewable energy.

Mr Brown dismissed the federal government's suggestion nuclear energy could offer an alternative to polluting coal-fired power stations.

"Nuclear is not the answer, it is double jeopardy," Senator Brown said.

To deafening cheers, Mr Brown said the Greens would introduce a bill forcing Australia to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 90 per cent by 2050.

"Our task is ... put a smile on the face of future generations because we were prepared to pull our belts in, pay a little more and use the technology and opportunity this wonderful country has to take a lead in the world and turn around the menace of climate change," he said.

Mr Albanese said a Labor government would act immediately on climate change; ratifying the Kyoto Protocol would be its first act in office.

The proposal was greeted with loud cheers.

"I say, and Labor says, renewables not reactors are the solution to climate change," said Mr Albanese.

He said a Labor government would set a target of 60 per cent reduction in emissions, establish an emissions trading systems and substantially increase the mandatory renewable energy target.

It would also amend legislation to ensure all major projects were analysed for climate change impact and install solar cells on the roofs of all schools.

Speakers at the end of the march, at the Botanic Gardens, included celebrity chef Kylie Kwong.

AAP

Bay site for climate change study

2006-11-03T10:50:00.000+11:00

Bay Post/Moruya Examiner

Wednesday, 1 November 2006

By KIM TREASURE

BATEMANS Bay has been earmarked as one of two sites on the NSW coast for a groundbreaking new study that will look at the potential impacts of long-term climate change.

Natural Resources Minister Ian Macdonald said the study would use a combination of field data analysis, sophisticated computer modelling, and socio-economic modelling to measure climate change impacts and adaptation measures for the Clyde River/Batemans Bay system and the Wooli Wooli River system.

He said the findings would then be used to determine potential climate change impacts on estuary and beach systems along the entire NSW coastline.

Signing Kyoto not the solution to climate change: Howard

2006-11-03T10:47:00.000+11:00

ABC

The World Today - Thursday, 2 November , 2006 12:18:00
Reporter: Lynn Bell
ELEANOR HALL: The Prime Minister John Howard has rejected suggestions that he's out of step with the majority of Australians on the best way to tackle climate change.

A Newspoll commissioned by a coalition of green groups, including Greenpeace, has found that 79 per cent of Australians want the Federal Government to sign the Kyoto Protocol and to commit to targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The poll also found that more than 90 per cent of people want the Government to invest more money in wind and solar technology.

Labor has seized on the results, but the Prime Minister says Australia should not be panicked into taking steps that burden the nation.

In Canberra, Lynn Bell reports.

LYNN BELL: With the debate on climate change showing no sign of abating, today's poll was music to the ears of Labor's Environment Spokesman, Anthony Albanese.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Well today's figures from Newspoll show just how out of touch the Howard Government is when it comes to climate change.

Seventy-nine per cent of Australians want Australia to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.

LYNN BELL: But the Prime Minister denies he's out of touch, and has again urged Australians not to overreact to the Stern Report, which warns of a global economic depression if climate change is not addressed.

John Howard maintains the key to the problem lies in practical solutions and new technology.

JOHN HOWARD: There's a mantra and a mythology about Kyoto. The impression is being created that you solve the problem by signing Kyoto. If we were to sign Kyoto tomorrow, it wouldn't represent a practical measure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions over the years ahead.

If, on the other hand, we invest in clean coal technology, which we are doing and Mr Beattie and Mr Bracks support, then that is a practical measure.

LYNN BELL: The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for the Environment, Greg Hunt says Labor's plan to combat climate change, which involves signing the Kyoto Protocol, will massively increase the price of petrol and power.

GREG HUNT: It's probably going to take, on the Beazley plan, a doubling or a tripling of petrol and energy prices to make the sort of changes in emissions that he wants.

We do have to change emissions, but there are two ways of doing it. Either the Beazley way of driving down demand through driving up petrol and energy prices, or the Howard way of investing directly in cleaning up the power stations.

LYNN BELL: But Labor's Treasury Spokesman, Wayne Swan, says many within the community are prepared to wear the cost of emissions trading.

WAYNE SWAN: But we have a business roundtable that is currently out there arguing for an emissions trading scheme. The business community absolutely understands the long-term price of not acting here and so does the Australian community, and that goes to the heart of Stern again.

What Stern says is if we don't act now, the price of not acting, the price of not acting is far higher in terms of what the impacts are on the environment and what the impacts are on the economy.

The Prime Minister has acknowledged consumers will see a price rise, as climate change issues are addressed.

JOHN HOWARD: If we are to tackle this problem, over time things will become more expensive. It is unavoidable. However, it's got to be done in a way that doesn't unfairly burden Australia.

LYNN BELL: He says Australia should not be panicked into making decisions that are not in the national interest.

JOHN HOWARD: And I'm going to stick up for Australia's interests in this. I'm going to stick up for Australian jobs and Australian investments and I'm going to stick up for the things that we have a natural advantage in. They've got to change, they've got to adjust over time, but not in a way that robs us of a great natural advantage.

LYNN BELL: The South Australian Premier, Mike Rann, says it's now time for a summit on the issue of climate change.

MIKE RANN: What I intend to do next year is to see if we can make next year's COAG meeting a major summit on climate change because, you know, quite frankly, this is very perilous for Australia if we don't take it seriously because we're in the front line in terms of our climate.

LYNN BELL: And in keeping with the theme, the Industry Minister was this morning opening the new headquarters of his department in Canberra.

It's a building that features energy efficient lighting and solar hot water.

ELEANOR HALL: Lynn Bell reporting.

Government and Opposition trade insults over climate change

2006-11-03T10:32:00.000+11:00

ABC

PM - Thursday, 2 November , 2006 18:18:00
Reporter: Alexandra Kirk

MARK COLVIN: Rooster puppets and idiots featured in federal parliament's last question time of the week.

Emotions ran high as both sides traded insults over climate change, interest rates and industrial relations, all shaping up as key election platforms.

And in a sign the Government was feeling pressure, ministers took direct aim at the Labor Leader Kim Beazley and two of his close confidants, saying one had no substance and the other had no credibility.

From Canberra, Alexandra Kirk reports.

ALEXANDRA KIRK: The Government and the Opposition have been trading insults all week in a bid to establish they have the best climate change policy.

The debate's been sparked by the British Stern review warning of an economic catastrophe unless urgent action's taken to arrest global warming.

The Prime Minister acknowledges there's a problem that needs fixing.

JOHN HOWARD: Whether the doomsday scenarios painted in the Stern report are right or wrong, I don't think anybody can assert with great confidence.

I agree that the science says that the globe is getting warmer. I agree that over time we've got to take measures in order to tackle that problem.

ALEXANDRA KIRK: Add to that a poll commissioned by green groups, showing 86 per cent think the Government should be doing more to tackle climate change and 91 per cent think greenhouse polluting industries, should be made to pay emissions levies.

KIM BEAZLEY: Does the Prime Minister agree with his parliamentary secretary, who dismissed 92 per cent of Australians as just cafe latte drinkers, and does this explain your 10 years of inaction and climate change scepticism?

ALEXANDRA KIRK: John Howard dismissed Labor leader Kim Beazley as an 11th hour converter to Kyoto, praising the approach of another former Labor finance minister, Peter Walsh.

JOHN HOWARD: We're not going to be panicked into knee-jerk responses that will hobble great productive Australian industries with enormous costs that are not borne by their competitors overseas.

And we're not going to ratify a protocol, which in the words of a highly successful Labor Minister, would do damage of an economic kind on an unprecedented scale, to the great wealth producing industries of this country.

ALEXANDRA KIRK: But earlier in the day, in an interview with Sky TV, the Prime Minister did concede serious action on climate change would come at a cost.

JOHN HOWARD: Well, I think people over time will adjust and they will have to accept that things will become more expensive. There is no easy way.

ALEXANDRA KIRK: A week of Labor jibes on climate change ended in this attack from the Treasurer Peter Costello on his shadow Wayne Swan.

PETER COSTELLO: Watching the ABC News I saw the Member for Lilley, and the line for that day was, "the Government's global warming policies could be written on the back of a postage stamp".

But, Mr Speaker the camera had a wide-angle lens and as he delivered this line, you could see his Press Secretary Lachlan Harris moving his lips in sync with the delivery of the line.

They had obviously practiced it to such a degree that the timing was perfect.

We had the rooster puppet talking on this side, and the ventriloquist mouthing the words on that side Mr Speaker.

ALEXANDRA KIRK: The Treasurer revealed he'd gone a Googling.

PETER COSTELLO: You can actually buy a thing called a rooster puppet. "Don't be afraid to get cocky when you work this rooster puppet", it says. "You can strut and crow with the best of them when you animate his head and his beak".

ALEXANDRA KIRK: That put an end to the climate debate.

Labor changed direction, to the seven possible breaches of United Nations Oil for Food sanctions, imports from Iraq that stretch back six years.

Trying to eke out more information, Labor pressed the Foreign minister Alexander Downer who refused to elaborate, after bureaucrats in his department also wouldn't answer questions citing the ongoing police investigation and/or the Cole Oil for Wheat Inquiry which is yet to hand down its findings.

ALEXANDER DOWNER: Now there is no point in compromising the investigation just so you can make some childish party political point.

ALEXANDRA KIRK: Mr Beazley had the last word after Mr Downer demanded he withdraw an interjection.

SPEAKER: The Leader of the Opposition will withdraw that.

KIM BEAZLEY: I withdraw saying deal with this idiot.

SPEAKER: The Leader of the Opposition will withdraw without reservation.

KIM BEAZLEY: What do you want me to withdraw, the idiot?

SPEAKER: The Leader of the Opposition will withdraw.

KIM BEAZLEY: Well, I withdraw the idiot.

SPEAKER: So, withdraw.

KIM BEAZLEY: Withdrawn, Mr Speaker.

MARK COLVIN: Labor leader Kim Beazley ending that report from Alexandra Kirk

Howard defiant on climate

2006-11-01T21:21:00.000+11:00

Michelle Grattan and Jewel Topsfield, Canberra and James Button, London
November 1, 2006

JOHN Howard has remained defiant in face of the Stern report's dire warnings on climate change, saying Australia would join a "new Kyoto" agreement only if it included every other country.

In his first major response to Sir Nicholas Stern's call for urgent action, the Prime Minister yesterday told Coalition MPs not to get "mesmerised' by one report.

Today Mr Howard will announce projects worth $60 million on clean development and climate, including technology to separate and capture carbon dioxide emission from coal-fired power stations.

But he insisted yesterday that Australia would not sign an international deal on emission reductions that did not include all nations.

"If everybody is in, I am prepared to lead Australia in," he said. "But I am not prepared to lead Australia into an agreement that is going to betray the interests of the working men and women of this country and destroy the natural advantage that providence gave us."

His comments came a day after the release of the report by the former World Bank chief economist, in which he warns of a global financial disaster worse than the Great Depression unless concerted, worldwide action is taken soon to slash greenhouse emissions.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, whose Government commissioned the 580-page report, said Sir Nicholas had "demolished the last remaining argument for inaction in the face of climate change".

"We know now urgent action will prevent catastrophe, and investment in preventing it now will pay us back many times," Mr Blair said.

Britain wants a new international framework for emission reduction that would include Australia and the United States — which have refused to sign the Kyoto agreement among rich nations — as well as big developing countries such as China and India.

British Chancellor Gordon Brown is also pushing for Australia, California, Japan, Norway and Switzerland to join a European Union carbon trading scheme, which provides a system of financial incentives to companies to cut emissions.

The US, the world's biggest greenhouse polluter, was non-committal in response to the Stern review yesterday, welcoming it only as a contribution to the body of knowledge on climate change.

"The President has long recognised that climate change is a serious issue. He has committed the nation to investing in new technologies," the White House said in a statement.

While Mr Howard would not yield ground in the face of the Stern report, he also cast Australia as wanting to look to the future.

"I say no to the old failed Kyoto because it did not include the world's major emitters," he said. "I certainly would say yes to a new Kyoto, because a new Kyoto could only be on the basis that it has everybody in it."

Talking up the nuclear option, Mr Howard highlighted that as coal was cleaned, the cost of the electricity it generated would rise — opening the way for nuclear power. "As you clean up coal, you make it dearer, and as you make coal dearer, you make nuclear power economically more feasible."

The 42 projects to be unveiled by Mr Howard today will come out of the $100 million the Government announced in January as part of a six-nation Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate.

The CSIRO will get $8 million to develop a unit, suitable for export, to separate and capture carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power stations.

Today's grant will also include $5 million for a pilot plant at the recently announced solar station at Mildura which will demonstrate the technology potential for possible export.

The partnership includes China, India, South Korea, Japan and the US. There will also be private sector involvement.

The developments come as the Government faces the prospect of failing to meet the target it has set for greenhouse emissions and will need new measures to stay on track. Australia's target is to have no more than 108 per cent of its 1990 emissions by 2011.

Among the initiatives could be the extension of the rebate for people putting solar panels on their roof, and a one-watt standard for appliances on standby.

Treasurer Peter Costello said the biggest issue was to get countries like China and India, which had huge impacts on the globe, into an international arrangement. One aim of the Asia Pacific Partnership was to try to bring in these countries.

Opposition leader Kim Beazley accused Mr Howard of inconsistency. "You cannot on the one hand have your argument that the targets created under Kyoto create enormous problems for us, and on the other hand (say) that you are going to achieve them — and without creating these problems."

Shadow treasurer Wayne Swan, who was briefed by Sir Nicholas, said the Stern report made it clear there was no option for the globe and individual nations other than a "carbon clean strategy of economic growth."

The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry called for an emission trading scheme that included China, India and the US.

With KATHARINE MURPHY, AGENCIES

PM blows his climate trumpet

2006-11-01T21:18:00.000+11:00

The AGE

November 1, 2006 - 2:44PM

Prime Minister John Howard today took a swipe at long-running international meetings on climate change, lauding his government's practical measures to lower greenhouse gas emissions.

Mr Howard formally announced $60 million in government funding towards 42 collaborative projects under the banner of the Asia-Pacific Clean Development and Climate Partnership (AP6), which also includes China, India, the United States, Japan and South Korea.

He told the audience at the CSIRO's Ensis, a research and development organisation for the forestry industry, the government was taking practical steps to lower greenhouse gas emissions.

"It's all very well to have the international meetings and the conferences and try and reach treaty arrangements and everything, but what has made AP6 work is that we've put that aside and we've focused on practical partnerships," Mr Howard told reporters after his speech.

"That's why we've been able to reach agreement in just nine months on all of these projects.

"That is a great performance. That is a blink of an eye when it comes to these international negotiations."

Mr Howard, who has been under parliamentary pressure from the opposition this week for not ratifying the Kyoto Protocol, said there was a place for negotiation of treaties on climate change and Australia was taking part in the next major international meeting, that of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in Nairobi this month.

"But I think what the AP6 will do is to demonstrate to other countries that practical collaboration is the most immediate way of getting dividends in reducing greenhouse gas emissions," he said.

"People can relate to that. They see it and they understand that this is going to clean up that dirty smoke that comes out of the generators."

Mr Howard said symbolism would not clean up the air.

"Symbolism will not reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Practical methods will and that is what I'm interested in," he said.

"The thing that matters is doing things.

"Talk about hot air. There's an enormous amount of hot air on this issue but what we need are measures which actually achieve results."

AAP

PM announces $60m for clean energy

2006-11-01T21:15:00.000+11:00

SMH

November 1, 2006 - 7:54PM

Australia has become the first country in the Asia-Pacific climate bloc to hand over money for clean energy projects amid concern about the future of the regional partnership.

Prime Minister John Howard has announced $60 million for 42 collaborative projects, ranging from a device to capture carbon from power stations, to highly efficient solar panels.

But environmentalists have criticised the selected projects, saying more than half the funding is going towards coal and other fossil fuels rather than renewable energy.

And a left-wing think-tank has cast doubt on whether any of the other five countries in the Asia-Pacific Clean Development and Climate Partnership (AP6) will match the Australian money.

Mr Howard announced the funding, the first instalment of Australia's pledged $100 million, this morning with the flags of all six AP6 countries - Australia, Japan, China, India, South Korea and the United States - flying behind him.

In the shadow of a two-storey high prototype for the mobile carbon catcher, Mr Howard said he was taking practical action to clean up the use of fossil fuels.

"What could be more practical than to find a way of capturing carbon emissions from existing power stations, separating them out and burying the carbon?" Mr Howard said.

"I think what the AP6 will do is to demonstrate to other countries that practical collaboration is the most immediate way of getting dividends in reducing greenhouse gas emissions because people can relate to that.

"They see that and they understand, well this is going to clean up that dirty smoke that comes out of the generators and that's terrific."

But Australia Institute executive director Clive Hamilton said AP6 was in danger of collapse.

Dr Hamilton said the US Congress had twice rejected White House requests for $US46 million to fund commitments to the pact and that lack of support was mirrored in the other AP6 countries.

"There has been no political engagement and the process has been left to the bureaucracies," Dr Hamilton said.

"Australia is alone in putting money into AP6."

But Mr Howard said he was confident the other countries would meet their obligations soon.

Mr Howard will discuss climate change with the other AP6 countries, except India, at this month's APEC meeting in Vietnam.

"I know that Australia's contribution of $100 million towards projects under the partnership is the first, and I know that that contribution will be followed very rapidly by contributions from other countries that are part of the partnership," he said.

But the Wilderness Society pointed out that China, India and Korea would receive $5 billion to reduce greenhouse pollution as a result of their membership of the Kyoto Protocol.

It said $16 billion of projects were already in the pipeline for Kyoto countries, while AP6 had only been promised $169 million in projects.

Opposition Leader Kim Beazley said today's projects, while worthwhile in themselves, would be next to worthless if they were not within a global emissions trading regime.

Mr Beazley said Labor's plan to join the Kyoto Protocol and join an emissions trading scheme were the most comprehensive way to solve global warming.

"Unless you're prepared to commit yourself to ratification of Kyoto, to emissions trading and the establishment of targets, you do nothing," he said.

"That is what has been made amply clear by the Stern report and by what the scientists have to say to us."

The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, released in London, warns of economic and climatic disaster if urgent action is not taken to tackle global warming.

In his report, Sir Nicholas Stern slated Australia for not ratifying the Kyoto Protocol, which sets targets for reducing emissions.

But Mr Howard was unrepentant.

"It's all very well to have the international meetings and the conferences and try and reach treaty arrangements and everything, but what has made AP6 work is that we've put that aside and we've focused on practical partnerships," Mr Howard said.

AAP

Political tensions flare over climate change report

2006-11-01T08:58:00.001+11:00

PM - Tuesday, 31 October , 2006 18:10:00

Reporter: Chris Uhlmann

MARK COLVIN: The political temperature is rising in Canberra, with the release of the Stern review on the costs of climate change.

The Prime Minister told his party room today not to be mesmerised by one report, but he and his Ministers were talking of little else in the media.

The Report has had major international impact because Sir Nicholas Stern is not just Britain's Chief Economic Adviser, but a former chief economist to the World Bank.

The report's description of climate change as "the greatest market failure the world has seen" puts the argument in the economic basket, not just the environmental one.

The Federal Government has been re-working its lines on global warming, but the Labor Party appears to believe that on this issue it has the Government on the run.

Chief Political Correspondent Chris Uhlmann reports on a heated day in Canberra.

CHRIS UHLMANN: If you want a measure of the political bite of climate change right now, consider the level of Government activity in the last 24 hours.

Even before the Stern review was released, Government ministers were volunteering to be interviewed about it. Since it's release overnight, the Prime Minister, the Treasurer, the Foreign Minister, the Industry and Environment Ministers, and even the Education Minister have been talking climate change.

It's a sign of catch-up politics. The Government has long had a strong position on why it will not ratify the Kyoto Protocol. Until recently it was less coherent on whether or not it was a global warming believer and, if it was, what its alternatives to Kyoto were.

It's quickly drawing together those threads. Part of its political strategy now, similar to its recent position on Iraq, is to look forward, not back. John Howard.

JOHN HOWARD: But we can all accept for the purposes of this debate that it is a major challenge. And the question is what do we do about it in the future. We can debate the sins of emission or commission of the past.

We can argue about whether we should have signed what is now the old Kyoto, or ratified it. The real issue, the real challenge for this nation, for this Parliament, for this world in 2006, is to agree on a path forward that has a measurable impact on greenhouse warming.

CHRIS UHLMANN: So what are its ideas? The Government is backing technology, including nuclear power. Industry Minister, Ian Macfarlane.

IAN MACFARLANE: There is in this program, Mr Speaker, a $123-million renewable and remote power generation program, a $100-million renewable energy development initiative, a $75-million solar cities program, a $51.8-million photovoltaic rebate program, Mr Speaker, a $20-million advanced electricity storage initiative, a $14-million advanced wind forecasting capability.

And of course, Mr Speaker, on top of all of those things is the centrepiece, a $500-million lowering emissions technology demonstration fund, Mr Speaker.

CHRIS UHLMANN: Labor senses the Government is making policy on the run. Shadow Environment Minister Anthony Albanese.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Let's have a look at what we saw today - at least seven different positions put by the Prime Minister between two o'clock and quarter to four this afternoon.

A Prime Minister struggling for relevance in a debate about the future.

CHRIS UHLMANN: There's a clear division between the two major parties on this issue. The Labor Party will sign Kyoto and back carbon trading.

Opposition leader Kim Beazley.

KIM BEAZLEY: We are going to be absolutely determined, Mr Speaker, both to ratify the Kyoto targets, to set real emissions targets, to establish an emissions-trading system, to invest in renewables, not in reactors, to fast-track clean coal technology.

We're going to do all those things, Mr Speaker, and be good international citizens, and good supporters of Australian industry as a result of that.

CHRIS UHLMANN: This is the beginning, not the end of the story. The Government's narrative on climate change is a work in progress. The Prime Minister is a pragmatist, and he's left the emission-trading store ajar, albeit with some heavy caveats.

MARK COLVIN: Chris Uhlmann.

Crisis? What crisis?

2006-11-01T03:01:00.000+11:00

The Age

Peter Christoff
November 1, 2006

AL GORE will visit Melbourne this month to talk about global warming. When tickets to his talk were released a fortnight ago, all 2600 were snapped up in 12 minutes. It is an inconvenient truth that local enthusiasm for Gore is an indicator of the absence of Australian political leadership on the issue of climate change. So, too, is this week's Stern Review, the 700-page report on the economics of climate change. It examines the threat in an anticipatory way, in contrast with the Howard Government's approach of denial, deferral and crisis management.

For almost a decade, key European policy makers have accepted that climate change is an economic risk, as well as a social and ecological problem. Britain under Tony Blair and Germany under Gerhard Schroeder and now Angela Merkel have adopted precautionary strategies informed by the best available scientific and economic advice, of which the Stern Review is the latest example.

As a result of early action, the United Kingdom is certain to meet its Kyoto target of 12.5 per cent reduction in emissions from 1990 levels by 2012. It has already cut them by 13 per cent. In 2003, Tony Blair set Britain the more ambitious target of reducing greenhouse emissions by 60 per cent by 2050. In 2005, Treasurer Gordon Brown commissioned the Stern Review to better inform Britain's next economic steps on climate mitigation and adaptation.

The report builds on the understanding that climate change is evidence of massive market failure, which requires urgent and substantial government action and international co-operation to prevent catastrophic outcomes. It proposes using global carbon markets, green taxes and significant state expenditure to tackle global warming. It warns that, unchecked, global warming could shrink the world economy by as much as 20 per cent, or $A9 trillion, and says 1 per cent of that sum must be spent, now, to combat climate change and cut carbon emissions.

This message does not come as a complete shock to Europeans. For some years, Germany has used ecotaxes and emissions trading to put a price on carbon, fund energy conservation and reduce vulnerability to rising oil prices. It has already cut its greenhouse emissions by 17.5 per cent and will meet its Kyoto target of minus 21 per cent by 2012. Renewables (especially biofuels and wind) have played a major part in this progress. They now contribute 10.2 per cent of Germany's electricity production, with a target of 12.5 per cent by 2010 and 20 per cent by 2020 — to be met while phasing out all Germany's nuclear reactors, also by 2020.

Compare these achievements with the litany of failures of Australian national climate policy. John Howard has admitted (on Four Corners in August) that he still regards climate change as a theory, not impending reality. Accordingly, his policies, belatedly reacting to symptoms of crisis (like the drought), pose a threat to our longer-term economic and ecological wellbeing.

The Howard Government has rejected national emissions reduction targets, energy efficiency targets and meaningful renewable energy targets. Australia's carbon emissions continue to soar. Instead of establishing an authoritative wide-ranging public inquiry into climate change's Australian threats, costs and remedies, the Government has one on nuclear power. It has followed industry-funded, narrow and biased economic advice from ABARE. The cabinet has repeatedly rejected a national emissions market or any other means of putting a price on carbon.

For a decade, the Federal Government has failed to act on the CSIRO's internationally respected advice about the seriousness and urgency of climate change for Australia's ecosystems and, by extension, rural production. Australia has no national policy to adapt to climate impacts. It has drought relief.

There has been no meaningful discussion of national energy security. The Prime Minister's energy white paper intensifies national reliance on coal as a domestic energy source, making it structurally harder to meet future emissions reduction targets. Lavish funding of road rather than rail transport has entrenched Australia's dependency on imported oil. Frenetic expansion of Australia's fossil fuel exports will make us economically vulnerable when the global economy ditches carbon.

The PM vigorously promotes "clean coal" (still an unacceptably high-carbon way of producing electricity), carbon geosequestration (economically uncertain, technologically unproven and unavailable for 15 to 20 years) and nuclear power (economically infeasible without massive government subsidy, with no safe long-term disposal of radioactive waste, and unlikely to be available here for at least 20 years). His Government fails to provide significant financial support for proven alternative energy options, such as wind and solar power. The funding for solar projects equals less than half one year's subsidy to company car users under fringe benefit tax.

A recent conference in Berlin highlighted the emergent scientific consensus that a global increase of more than two degrees would constitute a serious threat to life on Earth. As a result, the European Union will advocate cutting emissions to 30 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020 in forthcoming international negotiations. The gap between where Australia is now — pursuing a path of high emissions growth — and where the world will want and need to go, makes us vulnerable not only to global warming but economic and political blowback.

The Prime Minister is fiddling while Australia burns. To quell growing public concern, he would have to adopt the European-style measures he has rejected to date and embrace the international Climate Coalition of the Willing, of which Britain and Germany are leaders. More likely, 10 critical wasted years and further prevarication will define his climate legacy.

Dr Peter Christoff teaches about climate policy at the University of Melbourne and is vice-president of the Australian Conservation Foundation.

Forcing polluters to pay is the way forward

2006-11-01T02:35:00.000+11:00

SMH

Wendy Frew Environment Reporter
November 1, 2006

CARBON trading may be the best way to set a price on greenhouse gas pollution and tackle climate change, according to the watershed Stern report released in Britain on Monday.

No matter the approach - imposing taxes on carbon polluters, trading carbon or regulating greenhouse gas emissions - the aim of any climate change policy should be to ensure those generating greenhouse gases pay for the damage they cause, says the author of the report, a former World Bank chief economist, Sir Nicholas Stern.

Stern says a common price signal is needed across all countries, developed and developing, and different sectors of economies. That would allow countries and companies to decide how, where and when emission reductions were made, and to make the cuts for the lowest cost.

"Tradable quota systems, such as the EU's emissions-trading scheme, may be the most straightforward way of establishing a common price signal across countries," he says.

The assessment from the economist would have been welcomed in environment circles. So often derided for making unrealistic environmental demands that would damage economic growth, many green groups have long supported the idea that market mechanisms could help solve climate change. Put a price on the pollution associated with burning fossil fuels for energy and you will curb demand, they argued. For example, coal-fired power would become more expensive and renewable energy cheaper which, over time, would prompt business to switch investment away from polluting energy sources and to clean energy.

As Stern puts it, in economic terms, greenhouse gases are an externality. That is, a business decision or consumer action by one party affects another party who did not have a choice and whose interests were not taken into account. "Those who produce greenhouse gas do not face the full consequences of the costs of their actions themselves," he says.

"Putting an appropriate price on carbon, through taxes, trading or regulation, means that people pay the full social cost of their actions. This will lead individuals and businesses to switch away from high-carbon goods and services, and to invest in low-carbon alternatives."

The idea behind carbon trading is that the market can choose to spend money to cover the costs of cutting pollution, or continue polluting and pay someone else to cut their pollution.

Quotas would be set for how much carbon each country is allowed to emit; countries then work out quotas for their industries. If they want to protect a particular industry, some other sector of the economy will have to make deeper emission cuts. If the quotas are missed, "credits" for emission cuts made by others can be bought in the market.

The carbon price concepts in the report are not new. In the 1970s the US began trading sulphur dioxide and nitrous oxide to tackle acid rain.

More recently, the international climate change agreement, the Kyoto Protocol, initiated global trading in greenhouse gases. The World Bank estimates $US10 billion ($13 billion) worth of carbon was traded last year. Under the Kyoto Protocol, which Australia and the US have refused to sign, if a country wants to exceed its carbon limits it has to pay a price.

Efficient businesses can step in and earn money by cutting emissions on somebody else's behalf, hopefully encouraging greener technologies in the process. It won't be easy to establish such a market. Stern envisages a much broader version of Kyoto - for example, he wants to expand carbon pricing to aviation and shipping - which could mean even more tortuous negotiations than those that gave birth to Kyoto.

Nor will a carbon price be the only measure governments will need to adopt. The Stern report also calls for government policies to support a range of low-carbon and high-efficiency technologies, change voters' behaviour by fostering a shared understanding of the nature of climate change and put an end to broadscale land clearing.

An influential environmental columnist in The Guardian, George Monbiot, is looking well past global carbon trading. He has called on governments to set a personal carbon ration for every citizen that would be spent buying gas and electricity, petrol and train and plane tickets. If people run out, they must buy the rest from others who have used less than their quota.

Monbiot says other initiatives could include building regulations that impose strict energy-efficiency requirements on all major refurbishments; introducing a stiff "feebate" system for all electronic goods sold, with the least efficient taxed heavily; developing a national network where buses travel in dedicated lanes; and obliging all petrol stations to supply electric-car batteries for lease.

A clarion call: last stop before chaos

2006-11-01T02:32:00.000+11:00

SMH

November 1, 2006

The Stern report sets out why the global economy and society need a complete overhaul, writes Graeme Wilson.
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SIR Nicholas Stern spells out a bleak vision of a future gripped by violent storms, rising sea levels, crippling droughts and economic chaos unless urgent action is taken to tackle global warming. His heavyweight review - broken down into six parts - stresses that any delay will leave the world in "dangerous territory".

Climate change: the evidence

There is "overwhelming" evidence that "climate change is a serious and urgent issue" and has been created by man's actions. It "threatens the basic elements of life for people around the world - access to water, food production, health and use of land and the environment".

Temperatures are expected to rise by between two degrees and five degrees - an increase on the same scale as the last ice age - though the increase could be as high as 10 degrees by 2100 if greenhouse gas emissions continue at present levels.

The area affected by "extreme drought" will probably soar from 1 per cent of the world's land mass to about 30 per cent. In other areas, there will be widespread flooding and more intense storms. "The risk of abrupt and large-scale changes in the climate system will rise." Sea levels may rise by up to 12 metres over the next few centuries.

The severity of the impact requires "strong and urgent global action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions". There will also need to be "major action to adapt to the consequences that now cannot be avoided".

Impact on growth and development

By 2100 an extra 250,000 children a year will die in the poorest countries as a result of climate change; up to 220 million more may fall below the $US2 ($2.60) a day poverty line. A rise of between just one and two degrees may lead to the extinction of between 15 and 40 per cent of all species.

Rising sea levels will threaten countries such as Bangladesh, and cities including London, New York, Tokyo and Shanghai. Ocean acidification could destroy fish stocks, crop failure will leave hundreds of millions at risk of starvation and as many as 200 million people will be displaced by rising sea levels, floods and drought. It is already too late to avoid many of the problems facing people in the Third World.

"Strong and early migration is the only way to avoid some of the more severe impacts," the report warns.

The cost of stabilising greenhouse gas levels

Greenhouse gas levels have increased steadily since the Industrial Revolution from 280 parts per million of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO 2e) to 430ppm but the process has accelerated in recent years. "Very strong reductions in carbon emissions" are needed to ensure they are cut by 25 per cent by 2050 and "ultimately to less than one-fifth of today's levels". The goal is to stabilise levels at 550ppm, though existing fossil fuel stocks could take CO 2e levels beyond 750ppm, "with very dangerous consequences".

Early action is vital to stabilise greenhouse gas levels. This will require moves to ensure the price of goods and services reflect their "full costs" to the environment, and the greater use of new low-carbon technologies.

Policies to reduce emissions

Carbon pricing must be at the core of any policy. Governments must put an "appropriate price on carbon, through taxes, trading or regulation" and encourage people to buy low-carbon goods and services. There must be an expansion of carbon trading schemes to give industry and business financial incentives to reduce emissions.

At the same time, governments and the private sector need to step up investment in new technology to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The report calls for a five-fold increase in incentives for "low emission technologies", involving alternative ways to produce electricity, new forms of transport and other low-carbon energy sources.

Policies to cope with existing climate change

Increases in greenhouse gases mean countries must adapt to cope with the "unavoidable impacts of climate change to which the world is already committed". This could include, for example, farmers switching to more climate-resistant crops. However, this type of adaptation will only have a limited effect and "mute the impacts" of global warming. It must exist alongside strong and ambitious policies to reduce emissions.

It is also expensive. It may cost the richest countries up to $US150 billion a year - or 0.5 per cent of global GDP - to construct new buildings and infrastructure that can cope with climate change. Governments can help by investing in more accurate climate forecasting; regulations to encourage better use of land and higher-quality buildings; more coastal protection; and help for the poorest families who cannot afford insurance.

International action

The report calls for "stronger, more co-ordinated" international action on climate change, although this requires greater public support. Such a strategy will require a "broadly similar price for carbon" across the globe and close involvement of the private sector.

More must be done to encourage developing countries to opt for low-carbon technology as their demand for energy and transport grows.

Telegraph, London

Save our planet' versus 'save our pockets'

2006-11-01T02:31:00.001+11:00

SMH

James Button, Herald Correspondent in London
November 1, 2006

At dusk on Monday, in the warmest October on record in Britain, two free newspapers for commuters were distributed outside Tube stations.

Both papers headlined the Stern report on the economics of climate change. thelondonpaper led with: "A last chance to save the planet".

But London Lite said: "Two new ways to tax us more - green taxes will cost £2000 per family".

Save our planet versus save our pockets: it was a foretaste of how the climate change debate will unfold in Australia and around the world in the months and years to come.

While The Independent newspaper yesterday devoted its first 10 pages to the Stern report - beneath a headline, "The day that changed the climate" - the tabloid Sun groaned about the cost to shoppers of likely new taxes and painted its page three girl green.

Restricting or taxing cheap flights would devastate the Sri Lankan economy, Chris Cuddy, managing director of one of Britain's many low-cost airlines, cheapflights.co.uk , complained to Channel 4 news.

Nevertheless, the debate in Britain is more urgent than that in Australia, for one chief reason. Not only are both main parties determined to make climate change a priority, the Conservatives under leader David Cameron are trying to outgreen the Labour Government.

While Mr Blair suggested the Stern report marked a historic moment, when the environment joined growth and full employment as the main objectives of government economic policy, Mr Cameron called for new green taxes. Chancellor Gordon Brown has not yet publicly supported such taxes, though he is likely to do so.

Mr Cameron also proposed year-on-year targets to reduce emissions, a plan endorsed by Friends of the Earth but not by the government, which plans new targets for each decade.

The Conservatives have set up a website, How Green is Your Car?, with an environmental rating of every new car sold in Britain. Mr Cameron is putting solar panels on his new £1 million west London home, and has even proposed doing the same for 10 Downing Street, if voters send him there.

The unseasonably warm weather is also alarming people. On the first day of November the parks are green; very few leaves have fallen, against all normal patterns.

Despite the sense of urgency, a day after the Stern report's release it was unclear what measures the goverment would take to meet its targets, with The Times reporting that Mr Brown was angry about Environment Secretary David Miliband's plan to allow petrol prices to rise as a way of discouraging car use.

Mr Brown was also said to be unhappy about a leaked letter in which Mr Miliband proposed a range of new taxes on gas-guzzling cars, roads, airline travel and landfill.

Warming to change

2006-11-01T02:28:00.002+11:00

SMH

Phillip Coorey
November 1, 2006

ANALYSIS

THE CSIRO's chief executive officer, Geoff Garrett, was due to go before a Senate Estimates Committee this morning but had to cancel after being told he was needed at the CSIRO's premises for an event involving the Prime Minister, John Howard, and senior ministers.

That event will be Howard announcing $60 million for a swag of greenhouse gas reduction pilot programs.

The programs themselves will have no immediate significance in terms of global warming, but they will matter politically as Howard strives to convince the electorate he is taking climate change seriously.

Judging by its rhetoric, the Government has undergone a conversion from sceptic to believer over the past month or so, if only because the voters are worried.

However, some Coalition backbenchers were yet to be convinced.

Bronwyn Bishop questioned the link between climate change and the drought by pointing out Australia had a bad drought two years before Captain Cook arrived.

Had the good captain arrived two years earlier, he would not have bothered to stop.

De-Anne Kelly likened global warming to horse manure as she subscribed to the view that technology would fix everything.

That is, the invention of the car spared the US Government from cracking down on horses because the place was being covered in "you-know-what".

Warming to change

2006-11-01T02:28:00.001+11:00

A new Kyoto but let's not exaggerate: PM

2006-11-01T02:24:00.000+11:00

SMH

Phillip Coorey and Stephanie Peatling
November 1, 2006

JOHN HOWARD will announce today $60 million in spending on 42 projects aimed at reducing greenhouse gases as he seeks to combat Labor accusations that the Government has dragged its feet on global warming.

Climate change leapt to the top of the political agenda yesterday after the release of an alarming report by a former World Bank economist, Sir Nicholas Stern, warning of global economic depression should the problem not be dealt with within 10 years.

As the Prime Minister warned his back bench not to be "mesmerised" by the report, the Opposition Leader, Kim Beazley, accused the Government of not being fair dinkum.

"We need decisive national leadership," Mr Beazley said.

"We do not need this Johnny-come-lately to the climate debate. He has failed our children and our grandchildren." The Opposition Leader has long advocated signing the Kyoto Protocol, which sets greenhouse gas emission targets, as well as spending on developing renewable energy and clean coal technology.

Mr Howard said ratifying the protocol - which does not include the major polluters China, India and the US - would hurt Australian industry and cause job losses for no measurable reduction of global emissions.

He said Australia was keen to establish a "new Kyoto" and participate in an international carbon trading system if all countries agreed to do so.

"If everybody is in I'm prepared to lead Australia in," he said. "I say no to the old failed Kyoto because it did not include the world's major emitters."

Mr Howard said Australia would be foolish not to keep using its coal for electricity generation but that would become more expensive as the technology was introduced to make it cleaner. That would make nuclear power more competitive.

"As we clean up the coal, reduce the emissions and invest in the technology, eventually we are going to reach the point where we are going to have to look at the big N option," he said.

Today Mr Howard will unveil 42 projects as part of the AP6 group which Australia established with the US, Japan, Korea, China and India as a rival to the Kyoto Protocol.

One pilot project, worth $8 million, is known as post-combustion capture. Using solvents, it can separate carbon dioxide from emissions which can then be buried.

The technology can be applied to existing power stations, rather than requiring a new, cleaner one to be built. All AP6 countries are contributing to the project, which is led by the CSIRO.

Another $5 million will be spent on a pilot solar power station intended to make solar power cheaper and more efficient.

The aim is to reproduce it on a larger scale and sell the technology to the US and China.

Yesterday Mr Howard warned Government MPs not to be "mesmerised" by the Stern report, the 700-page assessment of the international economic impacts of climate change. He said climate change was a serious challenge but it was an exaggeration to suggest its effects could be worse than those produced by both world wars and the Great Depression, as the report said.

Mr Beazley said Mr Howard was more concerned with the politics than the substance.

"What the Prime Minister is saying to his party room is: 'Don't worry about the science, worry about the perceptions … Wait until next winter and it will go away."'

Climate change sceptics feeling the heat

2006-10-31T21:01:00.000+11:00

The Australian

Tuesday, October 31, 2006

FIRST, a simple illustration of how the politics of climate change has changed the dynamics of national politics.

Here’s Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane speaking on the Sunday program two months ago: “I am a sceptic of the connection between emissions and climate change”.

Now listen to Macfarlane fronting the 7.30 Report on Monday night: “Well, let’s get a few things on the table to start with, Kerry. Firstly, in terms of climate change, I agree that climate change is happening and that global warming is happening. I also agree that CO2 emissions and greenhouse gas emissions are too high and have to be lowered… there is a link between human habitation and global warming’’.

You’d have to think the timing of Macfarlane’s public volte-face had something to do with the release of Sir Nicholas Stern’s apocalyptic report warning global warming has reached crisis stage and could cost trillions of dollars to address (Fix global warming now, or pay later).

As the British government, which commissioned the Stern report, flags lobbying Australia to sign up to a global carbon trading market, John Howard remains defiant, defending the government’s green credentials and advocating the pursuit of a nuclear power option in Australia (PM defiant despite global warming alarm).

Labor, holding a steady two-party-preferred lead in Newspoll, sniffs an issue set to surge during the election year.

Here’s Kim Beazley arriving at parliament this morning: “John Howard is totally backward-looking on this. He doesn’t believe it. He looks at the glass being half empty whenever the issue is raised with him. Now that he understands that his road is a road not only to potential disaster for this country, but political disaster for himself, he’s starting to try and use the language. But he doesn’t know how to. He doesn’t know what to do. He’s too backward-looking to be able to handle it”.

Is this, to borrow a horrible cliche, the tipping point? Have the global warming sceptics lost the political argument? Is the government’s U-turn on climate change convincing?

Q&A: Stern report on climate change

2006-10-31T09:47:00.000+11:00

BBC News
31 October, 2006

Q&A: Stern report on climate change

Power firms have to cut emissions by 60-70%, the report says
The world faces an economic collapse on the level of a World War or a depression if climate change is not averted, according to a report by economist Sir Nicholas Stern.

Here, the BBC News website's business editor Tim Weber and environment correspondent Richard Black answer a selection of readers' questions.

Surely things like energy-saving light bulbs and forcing people to ride bicycles is a way to reduce emissions. Why does this government think that the only way to solve a problem is raising tax?
Richard Scott, Iver, UK

Richard Black: The argument used by some politicians and economists is that regulation is less efficient than setting up market mechanisms. This is why we have the European Emissions Trading Scheme rather than, for example, legislation banning short-haul flights or mandatory standards for vehicle fuel efficiency.

Stern is quite clear on the need for regulation but sees it primarily as setting the framework for market mechanisms. Another view of the reluctance to regulate can be found here:

Consumer choice and climate change

Gas bubbles trapped in ice store valuable climatic information
Are we going to be stuck with these taxes for life? When this country's emissions targets are met does that mean the taxes will go away?
Robert, West London

Tim Weber: We don't know yet what the new green tax regime will look like. As you point out correctly, a resounding success on the green front would mean that the "tax base" for green taxes would simply disappear. But don't bet on it.

Most tax proposals envisage that green taxes will simply shift the tax burden: green taxes will rise while other taxes will fall. Whether that's a realistic assumption is doubtful.

But whatever the regime, the government needs money to pay for education, health, defence and the rest of its budget. If the green tax base shrinks, chances are that green targets (and taxes) will be adjusted accordingly.

The UK contributes to a little over 2% of global emissions so how does our paying tax change the behaviour of China, India, the rest of Asia and the USA?
Martin, London

Tim Weber: Well, the UK tax regime hits UK tax payers only - it does not reach beyond the shores of these islands. Having said that, by setting an example the UK might change other countries' behaviour.

Too often governments dodge green laws by insisting that other countries move first. If the UK goes green, other large EU countries are likely to follow suit. And the five-year plans of both China and India already put much more emphasis on protecting the environment.

I drive 37 miles to work every day, I have no choice. My job skills are not needed locally. There is no bus and I work flexi-time so a lift share won't work. Will these "green" taxes take people like me into account?
Tog, Calne, United Kingdom

Tim Weber: You may well be one of the losers of green taxation.

Remember the fuel protests a few years back, when both truck drivers and people living in the countryside protested against high fuel taxes? Given your daily commute, you are very likely to pay more. But don't worry too much yet, the fine print for the green tax regime has not yet been written.

The Earth's climate moves in cycles, we get global warming, we get global cooling. Most this cycle is not 'man-made' but natural. How can you prove that what is happening is man made?
JR, United Kingdom

Richard Black: The Earth has been going through regular cycles of glaciation and warmer periods for at least the last 800,000 years, each cycle lasting for about 100,000 years. The cycling is presumably driven by differences in the amount of solar radiation reaching the Earth's surface, although solar variation is clearly amplified by mechanisms that are not completely understood.

What is happening now does not appear to be part of that cycle. The timing is wrong, the speed of change looks too abrupt:

CO2 'highest for 650,000 years'
There is a robust mechanism explaining why elevated levels of greenhouse gases will produce higher temperatures - it is accepted by scientists sceptical of the view that disaster looms.

And there is circumstantial evidence - the fast warming is happening at the one time in those 800,000 years when six and a half billion humans populate the planet, when there has been major loss of forest cover and widespread use of fossil fuels.

The concept of absolute proof is problematical in science - the only thing to do is read the evidence, not the spin, and make up your own mind.

We have massive taxation on petrol, yet people still buy big cars. Nobody buys rubbish to fill their bins, it comes with the products people want. When is the government going to change people's mindset with regard to pollution - rather than just hike taxes?
Scot, London, UK

Richard Black: The government has set up a project and a fund to persuade people of the case for personal action on climate change - you can find details at:

Defra climate change project

The government would also argue that it is setting an example, by measures including requiring the carbon offsetting of ministerial flights.

HAVE YOUR SAY
Tiny changes we make now can save millions of lives

Mark, London

Send us your views

Green taxes will not make the slightest difference to climate change. If they want to provide incentives, why don't they REDUCE tax for the lower polluters?
Justin Ticker, England

Tim Weber: That's just what the chancellor did in his most recent Budget, when he dramatically cut the vehicle excise duty for a range of low-polluting cars.

Having said that, an annual saving of £50 or £100 is not nearly enough an incentive to change the behaviour of people who buy high-emission vehicles like four-wheel drives or fast cars.

And if we look at the big ticket items, the recently introduced Europe-wide carbon emissions trading regime actually is some form of tax reduction for lower polluters.

But let's get real: the current green tax regime has failed to make a serious impact on all of us -polluters both big and small.

And if we accept that public services have to be paid from taxes that come from somewhere, then higher green taxes are more likely to do the trick. Let's just hope that the chancellor of the day will reduce other taxes to ensure that overall the tax burden won't rise.

OK, so If air travel is such a bad thing for the environment, as we are being told, can we look forward to the proposed airport expansion schemes in the UK being stopped?
Kaye, England

Tim Weber: Good question, but there is no good answer. Right now air travel faces hardly any green taxes.

Ultimately this is about supply and demand. If people fly less, the airport expansion schemes will be redundant. But it will be a bold politician who tells his Ryanair and Easyjet loving voters that their next holiday in France or Spain will cost them much more.

At-a-glance: Stern Review
Analysis: A stark warning
Will Stern make a difference?

Why aren't the government encouraging the use of ethanol and other bio fuels most diesels can run on them now?
Nicholas Ford, Benfleet, United Kingdom

Tim Weber: For starters biofuels are a pretty expensive way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It costs about 35p to produce a litre of biofuel. That in itself is not the problem, though.

To make biofuels a success, three things have to be in place:

Supply: Farmers first have to produce enough of the stuff; this would require a dramatic restructuring of global agriculture.

Demand: We would require a massive publicity campaign to persuade consumers to use it and tell them whether their car is suited for this fuel.

Logistics: The biggest problem, though, will be to persuade the owners of petrol stations - oil companies and supermarket chains - to make the massive investments needed to store biofuel (with a stainless steel tank going for £120,000 a pop). In a limited trial currently running in Somerset it took massive financial incentives to persuade several supermarkets to sell bio-ethanol at their forecourts.
And not everybody believes that biofuels are good for you. Some experts are warning that a massive investment in biofuel could lead to food shortages elsewhere. For now, the government is still trying to make up its mind on biofuels.

Key points of the UN report

2006-10-30T21:49:00.000+11:00

The Australian

October 30, 2006
IGNORING climate change could lead to economic upheaval on the scale of the 1930s Depression, underlining the need for urgent action to combat global warming, a British report on the costs of climate change said.

These are highlights of the report, a summary of which was obtained by Reuters.

PREDICTIONS

- Even if the annual flow of emissions did not rise beyond today's rate, the stock of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere would reach double pre-industrial levels by 2050 -- that is 550 parts per million -- and would continue growing thereafter.

- On current trends, average global temperatures will rise by 2-3 degrees centigrade within the next 50 years or so (compared with the period before 1850).

COSTS

- If no action is taken, climate change will reduce global consumption per head by between five and 20 percent, and is likely to be at the upper end of that range.

- The costs of extreme weather alone could be 0.5 to 1 percent of global Gross Domestic Product by 2050.

- By comparison, the annual costs of stabilising greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at 500-550 parts per million (ppm) is estimated to be about one percent of annual world GDP by 2050, a level the report describes as "significant but manageable".

ASSUMPTIONS/RISKS

- The report's cost estimate is based on stabilising greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at 500-550 ppm; it said costs would likely rise rapidly to achieve anything below this.

- A level of 550 ppm has up to a 99 percent chance of resulting in a more than 2 degrees centigrade global average temperature rise compared to the pre-industrial era. It says 550 ppm is associated with significant global warming risks.

- This suggests EU policy may be over-optimistic. EU leaders said in March 2005: "... with a view to achieving the ultimate objective of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the global annual mean surface temperature increase should not exceed 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels."

- Stabilising gases at 450 ppm, seen likely avoiding the most dangerous effects, was "already almost out of reach".

OPPORTUNITIES

- Markets for low-carbon energy products are likely to be worth at least $500 billion per year by 2050, and perhaps more.

- Climate change policy may kickstart reform of inefficient energy systems and removal of distorting energy subsidies, on which governments spend around $250 billion a year.

- In a calculation of the "social cost" of carbon, it estimates the net benefits in the long term of immediately implementing policies at around $2.5 trillion.

REDUCING EMISSIONS

- Large-scale uptake of a range of clean power, heat and transport technologies is required for radical emission cuts in the medium to long term.

- The global power sector will have to be at least 60 percent, and perhaps as much as 75 percent, decarbonised by 2050 to stabilise greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

- Even with very strong expansion of the use of renewable energy and other low-carbon energy sources, hydrocarbons may still make up over half of global energy supply in 2050.

- Extensive carbon capture and storage, burying greenhouse gases from power plants and factories underground, would allow continued use of fossil fuels without damage to the atmosphere.

- Policy to reduce emissions should be based on three essential elements: carbon pricing, technology policy and removal of barriers to changing people's behaviour.

- Public spending on research and development into low-carbon technologies has fallen in the last two decades. Likely high returns to a doubling of investments in this area to around $20 billion a year globally.

- The report argues that worldwide incentives to encourage the use of new low-carbon technologies should be raised by two to five times from the current level of some $34 billion a year.

ADAPTING TO CLIMATE CHANGE

- The additional costs of making new infrastructure and buildings resilient to climate change in OECD countries could be between $15 billion and $150 billion a year.

RESPONSE

- A global view on the problem's urgency and on long-term goals, plus an international approach based on multilateral frameworks and coordinated action, are essential.

- Securing broad-based and sustained cooperation requires equitable effort across developed and developing countries.

- Calculations based on income, historic responsibility and per capita emissions point to rich nations taking responsibility for emissions cuts of 60-80 percent from 1990 levels by 2050.

- A broadly similar price of carbon is necessary to keep down the overall costs of making these reductions and can be created through tax, trading or regulation.

- Enabling the European Union's Emissions Trading Scheme to link with other emerging trading schemes could improve liquidity while also establishing the nucleus of a global carbon market.

- Emissions from deforestation are estimated to represent more than 18 percent of global emissions.

- Need urgent action to preserve the remaining areas of natural forest.

POOR NATIONS

- The poorest developing countries will be hit earliest and hardest by climate change. The international community has an obligation to support them in adapting to climate change.

US, Australia blow Kyoto limits

2006-10-30T21:24:00.000+11:00

SMH

October 30, 2006
THE US and Australia are spewing out greenhouse gases well beyond the levels they agreed to before ultimately abandoning the Kyoto Protocol on climate change.

The findings are contained in a UN report, released today, that says greenhouse gas emissions by the industrialised world are still rising.

The US is firmly entrenched as the biggest polluter, says the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in its annual update on global-warming pollution.

Under Kyoto, which President George W Bush abandoned in 2001 because of what he cited as its cost to the US economy, the US pledged to reduce its emissions by six per cent by 2012, compared with the benchmark year of 1990.

But in 2004, it was 21.1 per cent above the 1990 benchmark year, the UNFCCC said. The increase from 2000 to 2004 was 1.3 per cent.

The report also showed that in 2004, Australia's greenhouse gas emissions were 15.8 per cent higher than Canberra had promised, under Kyoto, they would be by 2012.

Both the US and Australia signed the landmark protocol for curbing greenhouse gas emissions, but neither went on to ratify it.

The UNFCCC report said that, compared with 1990, the 41 industrialised countries it monitors trimmed their emissions by 3.3 per cent by the end of 2004.

But this was mainly due to the slump in the former Soviet bloc economies in the 1990s, which forced the closure or overhaul of thousands of power stations and factories that spewed out carbon dioxide.

Because of that historic change, countries in eastern and central Europe had a decrease in emissions from 1990-2004 of 36.8 per cent. But from 2000-2004, they in fact increased their pollution by 4.1 per cent as their economies emerged from the post-Soviet crash.

By contrast, the other industrialised countries saw an increase in pollution of 11 per cent from 1990-2004. From 2000-2004, the increase was two per cent.

"Industrialised countries will need to intensify their efforts to implement strong policies which reduce greenhouse gas emissions," the UNFCCC's executive secretary, Yvo de Boer, warned.

The report applies to so-called Annex 1 countries of the UNFCCC, the offshoot of the famous 1992 Rio Summit on the planet's environmental future and parent of the Kyoto Protocol. Annex 2 parties are developing countries and the poorer ex-Soviet republics.

The report showed the US remains by far the world's biggest polluter.

Of the 17.931 billion tonnes emitted by Annex 1 countries in 2004, 39.4 per cent was emitted by the US alone.

With 7.067 billion tonnes, the US accounts for nearly a quarter of the global total of greenhouse gas pollution (ie from Annex 1 and Annex 2 countries together).

The Kyoto Protocol ratifiers have pledged to cut emissions by on average five per cent by 2012 compared with 1990.

In 2004, they were 15.3 per cent below the 1990 level, although this figure masks the effects of the economic post-Soviet slump in eastern and central Europe and some hugely varying performances.

Japan, for instance, pledged a cut of six per cent by 2012, yet in 2004 it already had an increase of six per cent over 1990. Spain is pegged to a rise of only 15 per cent by 2012 but in 2004 was already 49 per cent over the 1990 target.

De Boer was upbeat, though.

He said Kyoto countries stood a good chance of meeting their promises provided they swiftly applied pollution curbing measures and used the protocol's market mechanisms to help accelerate these programs.

Emissions by Annex 1 countries from agriculture fell by 20 per cent from 1990-2004 and from industry by 13.1 per cent. But pollution by transport rose by 23.9 per cent, reflecting that reductions in this sector "seem to be especially hard to achieve," the UNFCCC said.

Greenhouse gases are so called because, as in a stuffy greenhouse, they linger invisibly in the air. Instead of letting solar radiation bounce back into space, the gases trap it, thus warming Earth's surface.

Scientists say there is mounting evidence that the world's climate system is starting to be affected by the warming and are demanding quick, deep cuts in the gases to avert what could be a catastrophe.

The big culprits for this carbon-based pollution are oil, gas and coal - the fossil fuels on which today's prosperity was built and on which every economy still depends.

Curbing the pollution carries an economic and thus political cost, because it requires users of these fuels to be more efficient or switch to cleaner alternatives.

AFP

Climate comes in from the cold

2006-10-29T11:51:00.000+11:00

SMH Weekend Edition
News Review Page 30

(photo of Clean Energy for Eternity human sign not included in the online version)

October 28, 2006

After playing down the effects of climate change for years, the Federal Government has suddenly changed its tune, writes Wendy Frew.

For Matthew Nott, it all started on New Year's Day.

Across the state, near-record temperatures drove many people indoors, demand for electricity soared as air-conditioning units were switched on and railway tracks buckled in the heat.

At Tathra Beach, 20 minutes east of Bega on the South Coast, where Nott had gone to cool off, the temperature had soared to 42 degrees by 10am.

"I was reading Tim Flannery's The Weather Makers and I thought 'What a juxtaposition, this book about climate change and record temperatures'," says Nott, an orthopedic surgeon who moved to the Bega Valley six years ago with his family.

It was a juxtaposition he says changed his life. With no political or environmental experience before then, Nott has since spent his spare time researching climate change. He was disturbed by what he discovered: predictions from the world's leading scientists that man-made greenhouse gases being pumped into the atmosphere would dramatically alter the earth's climate, and evidence some of the changes were taking place.

Frustrated by a lack of government action on the problem, in May Nott rallied 3000 residents in the Bega Shire to form a human sign on Tathra Beach that read "Clean Energy for Eternity". From that event, a small group of activists was formed to encourage the local council to cut energy consumption in the shire and source some of its electricity from renewable energy. The group has started to talk to residents in the neighbouring shires of Eurobodalla and Snowy River about similar programs.

While grassroots groups like this one were springing up all over Australia, little was changing in the top political echelons.

The Howard Government remained a steadfast critic of the Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement to tackle climate change, and argued any attempt to penalise greenhouse gas polluters would damage the economy.

Government ministers continued to play down the link between climate change, urban water shortages and the widespread drought.

But suddenly, two weeks ago, the Government's tune appeared to change.The Prime Minister, who had long scoffed at the "gloomy predictions" about climate change, finally made the link between drought and global warming.

"I don't think it alters my outlook on Kyoto, but it certainly emphasises that the world does have a problem with climate change," he said.

A few days later, he said climate change was a reason Australia should adopt nuclear power. Next up, the Foreign Affairs Minister, Alexander Downer, confessed that "a bloody hot day" in early October at the Port Elliot Show in his electorate near Adelaide crystallised his thinking on the issue.

This week, there was a flurry of Government announcements about clean energy: a $75 million grant for a solar power plant in regional Victoria and a backdown on a plan to abolish consumer rebates for solar energy were among them.

Was this a sudden change of heart from a Government derided by many for its "go slow" attitude on climate change? And if so, what prompted it?

An increasing sense of urgency about the devastation wrecked by the drought appears to be part of it. But political commentators, the Opposition and green groups say the Government's conversion is more rhetoric than real and is purely driven by public opinion.

"I think [the recent change] is utterly poll driven," says Greens senator Christine Milne. "In the federal budget, Costello did not once mention climate change and did not say the cost of the drought would blow out the budget.

"Two weeks ago Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane said [the climate change documentary] An Inconvenient Truth was "just entertainment" and Howard said we shouldn't exaggerate the link between climate change and the drought. Then, Friday week ago they suddenly changed their position," Milne says.

"The polling shows the Australian community have put two and two together and see that drought, more and hotter bushfires, the water shortage and climate change are all connected and they blame the Government for 10 years of inaction."

A Lowy Institute poll released in early October found 68 per cent of Australians believed climate change was a "critical threat" that should be immediately addressed, even if this involved significant costs.

As the institute's executive director, Allan Gyngell, observed, "this has become mainstream; it's no longer just an issue for Greens and people dressed up in koala suits".

The Climate Institute of Australia's chief executive, Corin Millais, agrees public opinion, particularly in rural areas, was a key factor in what he sees as a change in Government rhetoric.

"It is the polling that has focused the Government's mind, more than any intellectual position on climate change," Millais says.

"Climate change is on the [political] agenda. I think what the Government is now trying to decide is what [action] is palatable."

The Environment Minister, Ian Campbell, says claims the Government is only driven by the polls are unfair. He says the Government has been concerned about climate change for some time and remains open to new ideas about how to tackle it.

However, he concedes things have changed a little recently and he attributes that to the Prime Minister being tuned in to public concerns.

"That is his great skill," says Campbell. "I don't think the Prime Minister has crossed the road to Damascus but he has picked up that climate change has become a mainstream issue … people are seeing a pattern here."

He defended the recent clean energy announcements, made under the Government's $500 million Low Emissions Technology Demonstration Fund, pointing out that the money had been allocated some time ago.

But energy experts and opposition parties described this week's announcement by the Treasurer, Peter Costello, of a $75 million grant for a solar power plant in regional Victoria as "short-term thinking" and a one-off. Greenpeace's energy campaigner, Mark Wakeham, welcomed the funding but said the company behind the plant had admitted it might not have gone ahead if it was not for a Victorian Government renewable energy support scheme and this highlighted the Federal Government's inadequate policies.

"If you are going to tackle climate change you need systemic change," says Wakeham. "You need a price on carbon … you need incentives for all renewable energy, not just funding for one project.

"If that is the Government's response to climate change then we should be worried."

Labor's spokesman on the environment, Anthony Albanese, also welcomed the funding but questioned the timing of the announcement.

"The Government is good at allocating money to funds and then making political decisions at politically convenient times," he says.

"But on the issue of climate change, we require a systematic response. We need to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. We need to have a significant increase in our mandatory renewable energy target. We need a national target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and we need to have a price on carbon by having a national emissions trading system."

Without a price on carbon pollution, coal will remain Australia's cheapest energy source, way ahead of solar, wind and even less-polluting gas-fired power. It will make it uneconomic for coal-fired power generators to adopt technology that eliminates greenhouse gases, if and when that proves feasible.

It will also mean that nuclear energy - being touted by Howard as a major way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions - will be too expensive. That point was recently conceded by the former Telstra boss Ziggy Switkowski, appointed by the Government to examine the future of Australia's nuclear sector.

Switkowski, who expects to report to the Government in a month, told the Herald: "Australia is blessed with a couple of things - very low-cost electricity because of access to coal and gas, and many centuries of coal supply available. Any comparison will be unfavourable for every alternative source in the absence of an explicit cost for carbon."

Business groups, particularly banks, investment and insurance companies, have been quietly lobbying the Government for just that kind of policy.

Westpac's group general manager for stakeholder communications, Noel Purcell, says it should be acknowledged that the Government has been working on projects addressing climate change for some time. However, he says recent advice it would have received on the worsening outlook for the drought, plus the shift in public sentiment about climate change, would have influenced its position.

Now, "the big issue is putting a price on carbon and that has to be confronted", says Purcell.

Just how seriously Australians view climate change could be demonstrated next Saturday at the Walk Against Warming marches to be held in capital cities.

The Nature Conservation Council director, Cate Faehrmann, who is helping organise the event, says the response so far has been "absolutely amazing" and far stronger than for last year's walk, which attracted 5000 people in Sydney. "We have handed out 100,000 flyers, we are getting lots of phone calls from people who want to help out, businesses have contacted us to help advertise the event. The people who are coming to the walk are desperate that it be successful and are willing to do their bit to make sure it is."
The heat is on
> Over the past decade, Australia's greenhouse pollution has increased 10 per cent. It is expected to increase by 17 per cent more by 2020.

> In 2003, energy production accounted for 68 per cent of that pollution, and by 2020. It is expected to have increased by 70 per cent from 1990 levels.

> 166 nations have ratified the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. Australia is not one of them.

> The Federal Government has allocated $500 million over 15 years to develop low greenhouse gas emission technology.

> Every year, it spends $790 million on aviation fuel concessions, and $1 billion on fringe benefit tax concessions for company cars. Transport is a major contributor to Australia's greenhouse pollution.

Climate change: Our green paper

2006-10-28T09:00:00.000+10:00

The Independent

Tony Blair says global warming is among the biggest threats of our age. But are his plans for a Climate Bill ambitious enough? Here, we offer a more radical manifesto
Published: 26 October 2006

Set annual targets for emission reductions

The Government's policy of setting ambitious long-term carbon emission reduction targets has failed. Britain's emissions have been rising every year since 2002. A binding carbon reduction target should be determined by Parliament every year and the Government's performance in delivering these reductions must be monitored by an independent body.

Decentralise energy production

There must be generous grants for decentralised energy production (micro-generation). Local authorities should be given binding targets for reducing their carbon footprint.

Rethink aviation policy

Unless action is taken to curb the rise in the number of flights, all other national efforts to reduce emissions will be cancelled out by 2050. The Government must commit itself to working towards a EU-wide tax on airline fuel. The present aviation tax (levied per passenger) should be replaced with a tax on each plane journey (to encourage airlines to fill planes to capacity). And there should be a presumption against airport expansion in planning decisions.

Curb road pollution

The Government must unfreeze the fuel-tax escalator, cynically suspended six years ago, to discourage the second-biggest contributor to UK carbon emissions - car journeys. Road tax should be increased for fuel-inefficient cars.

Step up the drive for renewable energy

Nuclear power is not the answer to our problems: investment in alternatives should be stepped up. There should be greater commercial incentives for wind-power companies. The renewables target for the national grid (currently 10 per cent by 2010) should double.

Insist on greener homes

Statutory demands (rather than mere guidelines) are needed to ensure that all new houses meet strict energy-efficiency targets. There must also be council-tax discounts or grants for existing homes to increase energy efficiency.

Fight inefficiency

Britain should push for EU-level regulations to discourage energy-wasting products and packaging. Car manufacturers should also be required to meet strict fuel-efficiency standards.

Reduce industrial emissions

The Government's climate-change levy on industry has penalised energy use rather than emissions. This emphasis should be reversed. The Government should also sponsor more research into carbon sequestration techniques.

Invest in green transport

Britain needs far more investment in its cycle lane network and public transport infrastructure. All road-building projects should be reappraised.

masthead

Set annual targets for emission reductions

The Government's policy of setting ambitious long-term carbon emission reduction targets has failed. Britain's emissions have been rising every year since 2002. A binding carbon reduction target should be determined by Parliament every year and the Government's performance in delivering these reductions must be monitored by an independent body.

Decentralise energy production

There must be generous grants for decentralised energy production (micro-generation). Local authorities should be given binding targets for reducing their carbon footprint.

Rethink aviation policy

Unless action is taken to curb the rise in the number of flights, all other national efforts to reduce emissions will be cancelled out by 2050. The Government must commit itself to working towards a EU-wide tax on airline fuel. The present aviation tax (levied per passenger) should be replaced with a tax on each plane journey (to encourage airlines to fill planes to capacity). And there should be a presumption against airport expansion in planning decisions.

Curb road pollution

The Government must unfreeze the fuel-tax escalator, cynically suspended six years ago, to discourage the second-biggest contributor to UK carbon emissions - car journeys. Road tax should be increased for fuel-inefficient cars.

Step up the drive for renewable energy

Nuclear power is not the answer to our problems: investment in alternatives should be stepped up. There should be greater commercial incentives for wind-power companies. The renewables target for the national grid (currently 10 per cent by 2010) should double.

Insist on greener homes

Statutory demands (rather than mere guidelines) are needed to ensure that all new houses meet strict energy-efficiency targets. There must also be council-tax discounts or grants for existing homes to increase energy efficiency.

Fight inefficiency

Britain should push for EU-level regulations to discourage energy-wasting products and packaging. Car manufacturers should also be required to meet strict fuel-efficiency standards.

Reduce industrial emissions

The Government's climate-change levy on industry has penalised energy use rather than emissions. This emphasis should be reversed. The Government should also sponsor more research into carbon sequestration techniques.

Invest in green transport

Britain needs far more investment in its cycle lane network and public transport infrastructure. All road-building projects should be reappraised.

Evidence grows of waning ocean current

2006-10-28T07:53:00.000+10:00

SMH

James Randerson in London
October 28, 2006

SCIENTISTS have uncovered more evidence of a dramatic weakening in the vast ocean current that gives Western Europe its relatively balmy climate by dragging warm water northwards from the tropics.

The slowdown of the North Atlantic Drift, which climate modellers have predicted will follow global warming, has been confirmed by the most detailed study yet of ocean flow in the Atlantic.

Most alarmingly, the data reveals part of the current, usually 60 times more powerful than the Amazon River, came to a temporary halt during November 2004.

The nightmare scenario of a shutdown in the meridional ocean current that drives the Gulf Stream was dramatically portrayed in disaster film The Day After Tomorrow.

That scenario had Europe and North America plunged into a new ice age virtually overnight. Although no scientist thinks the switch-off could happen that fast, they do agree that even a weakening over a few decades would have profound consequences.

The Gulf Stream originates in the Gulf of Mexico, flows up the US east coast, then crosses the Atlantic, where it splits in two, with one branch crossing to West Africa. The other branch, the North Atlantic Drift, extends towards Europe. The warm water it brings to Western Europe's shores raises the temperature by as much as 10 degrees in some places and without it the continent would be much colder and drier.

Researchers are unsure what to make of the 10-day hiatus in the current in 2004.

"We'd never seen anything like that before and we don't understand it. We didn't know it could happen," said Harry Bryden, of Britain's National Oceanography Centre, who presented the findings to a conference in Birmingham on rapid climate change.

Is it the first sign that the current is stuttering to a halt?

"I want to know more before I say that," Professor Bryden said.

Lloyd Keigwin, of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in the US, said the 2004 shutdown was "the most abrupt change in the whole [climate] record". "Suppose it lasted 30 or 60 days, when do you ring up the prime minister and say let's start stockpiling fuel? … How can we rule out a longer one next year?" he said.

Professor Bryden's group stunned climate researchers last year with data suggesting that the flow rate of the Atlantic circulation had dropped by about 6 million tonnes of water a second from 1957 to 1998.

If the current remained that weak, he predicted, it would lead to a one-degree drop in temperature in Britain in the next decade. A complete shutdown would lead to a four- to six-degree cooling over 20 years.

Guardian News & Media

A huge wind farm and a dire warning

2006-10-28T07:47:00.000+10:00

The Age

A huge wind farm and a dire warning

Climate scientist Graeme Pearman says Australia could have led the world.
Photo: Simon Schluter

Sasha Shtargot, James Button and Liz Minchin
October 28, 2006

A $600 million wind farm generating enough electricity to power almost 190,000 homes will be built in western Victoria.

Planning Minister Rob Hulls said yesterday the wind farm, the biggest in the southern hemisphere, would be built on 5500 hectares of farmland at Macarthur, near Port Fairy.

And while the State Government was boosting its green credentials, Prime Minister John Howard said the evidence of global warming was stronger now than before, although he did not subscribe to "alarmist theories".

A comprehensive British report on the economic effects of climate change says that countries will need to spend 1 per cent of their annual gross domestic product to fight global warming. Doing nothing could cost them up to 20 times that amount, it warns.

The report, by Sir Nicholas Stern, says global inaction will lead this century to the submerging of the Netherlands, Bangladesh and many Pacific islands, and the destruction of the Great Barrier Reef, according to shadow treasurer Wayne Swan, who was briefed by Sir Nicholas on Thursday. The report will be published on Monday.

Several of the nation's foremost experts on the subject yesterday told The Age of their concerns about the Australia's progress on the issue.

Retired senior CSIRO scientist Barrie Pittock said "governments of all persuasions had not done enough, both here and overseas". "The real thing that we've been lacking (here) is a sense of urgency, because we do have to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in absolute terms this decade."

Former CSIRO chief of atmospheric research Graeme Pearman said there had been "great expectations a decade ago" that Australia would lead the world on responding to climate change.

"The fact that the climate is changing is now becoming bleedingly obvious to everyone, and everyone's in a sudden rush to ask what we can do. But the thing I worry about is, are we going to look back and really rue these 10 lost years of action?"

Sir Nicholas believed that a period of 10 to 15 years exists to save the global economy from severe damage but after that it would be too late, Mr Swan said.

Insurance analysts said in evidence to Sir Nicholas that they feared insurance claims caused by storms, droughts and other natural disasters could exceed the world's GDP.

The Stern report proposes a global carbon trading scheme, increased regulation of carbon-emitting products and green taxes as part of a framework of strategies to fight climate change.

Mr Howard said yesterday: "We'd be foolish to pretend that there aren't greenhouse gas emissions doing damage to the atmosphere … I think it would be equally foolish to imagine we're on the verge of collapse and a new dark age and an economic pestilence. That's an extreme view."

"The rate of melt of the Arctic icecap is indisputable and deeply troubling. It should convince everyone that climate change is by far the most urgent threat facing humanity. It also tells us that the long recalcitrance of the Howard Government in respect to climate change has already cost us dearly."

Mr Howard said cleaner coal technology needed to be developed, and — if it stacked up — the potential of nuclear power should be embraced. Wind power and solar could contribute "at the margin".

"I don't think we'll ever have the day where renewables replace power stations," he said. "There's simply not enough capacity, unless you have thousands of windmills."

The 183-turbine Macarthur project, will be operated by AGL.

Premier Steve Bracks yesterday cast the state election as presenting voters with a clear choice: "whether they want a cleaner environment in the future, with less greenhouse gases and tackling climate change, or whether they don't."

Mr Bracks said the wind farm would be lost to Victoria if the Government's 10 per cent renewable energy scheme was abandoned. The Opposition has pledged to end the scheme.

But former Liberal leader Denis Napthine, MLA for South-West Coast and a supporter of the project, said abolition of the scheme would not affect the wind farm's viability.

The Macarthur wind farm is the ninth to get the go-ahead in Victoria. A planning panel recommended approval after it received 1295 submissions, of which 1148 were in favour. David O'Brien, the Nationals candidate for South-West Coast, also supported it.

Annie Gardner, a Macarthur sheep farmer, said the turbines would devalue her property by 40 per cent and decimate local brolga numbers.

With MICHELLE GRATTAN, PAUL AUSTIN

Window of 15 years to fight climate change

2006-10-28T07:45:00.000+10:00

SMH

At risk … the Great Barrier Reef is among areas said to facing destruction

James Button Herald Correspondent in London
October 28, 2006

COUNTRIES will need to spend 1 per cent of gross domestic product to fight global warming, but doing nothing could cost them up to 20 times that amount, a British report on the economic effects of climate change warns.

The report, to be published on Monday, warns that global inaction will lead to the submerging of the Netherlands, Bangladesh and many Pacific islands, and the destruction of the Great Barrier Reef, according to the shadow treasurer, Wayne Swan, who was briefed by the author, Sir Nicholas Stern, on Thursday.

The 700-page report proposes a global carbon trading scheme, increased regulation of carbon-emitting products and green taxes as part of national and international strategies to fight global warming.

Sir Nicholas, a former World Bank chief economist, seeks to overturn conventional thinking by arguing that fighting climate change will save, not cost, money.

Whitehall sources told The Independent that the report was hard-headed. "It didn't deal in sandals and brown rice. It stuck to the economics."

Insurance analysts said in evidence to Sir Nicholas that they feared insurance claims caused by storms, droughts and other natural disasters could exceed the world's GDP.

Sir Nicholas believes a window of 10 to 15 years exists to save the global economy from severe damage - but after that it will be too late, Mr Swan said.

The report argues an incentive system - carbon trading - is essential to persuade rapidly developing countries such as China and India to tackle global warming.

But that alone would not be sufficient. "We have to set ambitious targets for reductions. They may be achieved through a mix of carbon trading, investment in new technologies, taxes and regulatory policies," he said.

The report - which may also propose carbon trading schemes for companies - - is certain to influence the global discussion on how to replace the Kyoto Protocol when it expires in 2012. Sir Nicholas has briefed ministers from the 20 highest carbon-producing nations - including Australia - on his report.

Mr Swan, who is in Britain to discuss global warming with government leaders, described the Stern report as "the most far-reaching analysis from any Western country".

Canberra's go-slow slammed

2006-10-27T10:57:00.000+10:00

SMH

Deborah Snow
October 27, 2006

THE Howard Government's stance on climate change was "unrealistic and unreasonable", with the latest scientific evidence showing global warming was having an impact faster than previously expected, a leading international expert has warned.

The chief economist with the British Government-backed Carbon Trust, Michael Grubb, slammed Canberra's go-slow policy response as "hard to understand, because it is so clearly not a position which can lead to any credible solutions".

Professor Grubb questioned the Government's continuing opposition to carbon pricing and trading schemes, which would reward businesses that switched to lower carbon-emission operations. Without these measures, industry would not invest in alternative energy technologies, Professor Grubb said.

In Europe, which has a carbon emissions trading scheme operating across 25 countries, the corporate world had shown it could adapt to and even profit from such schemes, he said.

The rising level of carbon in the atmosphere is the major cause of global warming.

"I must say, coming to Australia, in terms of [inaction] … at the federal level, it feels like going back in time because so little generally seems to have been done on the ground here," Professor Grubb told the Herald.

Although he has "not been allowed near the higher echelons of the political system" in Australia, he did meet senior public servants in Canberra on Monday. "I think I can legitimately say … a number of them feel pretty uncomfortable with the situation that Australia is in," he said.

Professor Grubb has helped write reports for the United Nations-backed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and warned that its next report, due out in 2007, would be "a lot more scary" than its predecessors.

"This is no longer an abstract problem that may hurt us at some point in the future" he told the Lowy Institute this week.

"We are not far from the point where the Arctic ice cap will start to melt".

World economy 'faces ruin' from climate change

2006-10-27T10:27:00.000+10:00

SMH

James Button Herald Correspondent in London and agencies
October 27, 2006

CLIMATE change could push the world into the worst recession since the Great Depression, with many countries facing economic ruin, a comprehensive British report on the effects of global warming will warn next week.

The report, written by the former World Bank chief economist Sir Nicholas Stern and commissioned by the British Treasury, seeks to overturn conventional wisdom by insisting that fighting climate change will save - not cost - governments money.

The report's contents have been kept secret but Sir Nicholas briefed environment and energy ministers from the world's top 20 greenhouse gas-emitting nations - including the Industry, Tourism and Resources Minister, Ian McFarlane - in Mexico this month.

Britain's chief scientist, Sir David King, said the report indicated "that if we don't take global action … we will be faced with the kind of downturn that has not been seen since the Great Depression and the two world wars".

"If you look at sea level rises alone, and the impact that will have on global economies where cities are becoming inundated by flooding … this will cause the displacement of hundreds of millions of people," he said.

Sir David described the Stern report as the most detailed economic analysis that has been conducted and said it would "surprise many people in terms of the relatively small cost of action."

But he told a climate change conference in Birmingham that achieving global consensus would be tremendously difficult.

"In my view, this is the biggest challenge our global political system has ever been faced with. We've never been faced with a decision where collective decision-making is required by all major countries … around risks to their populations that are well outside the time period of any electoral process."

Sir David compared the consequences of doing nothing on climate change because it was seen as too difficult to the effects of the Asian tsunami in 2004. Seismologists had warned that a disaster was likely because of tectonic activity, but no government chose to act on the advice.

"Thirty million [US] dollars as the cost to install some kind of early-warning system presumably looked like a lot of money," Sir David said, but added that such a system could have saved 150,000 lives.

The contents of the review into the economics of climate change have been kept secret since the nature of the work was revealed to the environment ministers.

The British Foreign Secretary, Margaret Beckett, said on Tuesday: "This is not just an environmental problem … It is a defence problem. It is a problem for those who deal with economics and development, conflict prevention, agriculture, finance, housing, transport, innovation, trade and health."

The International Energy Agency predicts that $US15 trillion ($20 trillion) of investment in new energy sources will be required during the next 15 years.

"The massive investment program that's ahead of us is an opportunity for us to move towards a zero carbon energy system. The investment process is going to act quite possibly in the opposite direction to an economic downturn," Sir David said.

with The Guardian

Warming to the idea (the worm is definately turning!)

2006-10-26T09:38:00.000+10:00

The AGE

October 26, 2006

A self-proclaimed climate-change sceptic, John Howard is now repositioning his Government to the front line of the global warming battle. Katharine Murphy outlines the reasons why.

IMAGINE a large artist's canvas. Draw four squares. Label them Drought, Water, Climate change and Energy. Start painting in the corner of each box and work your way carefully towards the middle, where the boxes intersect.

This is the image Grahame Morris sees when he looks at his former boss, John Howard, wrestling with the politics of global warming.

Morris was once Howard's chief of staff. Now he runs government services for PricewaterhouseCoopers and remains a keen observer of conservative politics. Faced with all the complexity on the picture, it is important to "paint in", Morris says, with his strategists' bent, "from each corner of the canvas".

But he won't predict where the lines will ultimately intersect. "The solution to this (problem) is lots of bits and pieces, not one big hit. Anyone who thinks they have all the answers on this is an idiot," he offers cheerfully.

But Morris will certainly acknowledge the potency of the issue. Climate change, he says, was a big deal for Australian voters a few years ago, but went off the boil. But now it's back, looming large in the consciousness of the community, back as he puts it "in full swing" as a mainstream political issue.

A much-quoted recent poll from the Lowy Institute bears out this conclusion: 68 per cent of respondents said climate change was a "critical threat" to Australia's interests over the next decade — rating it ahead of issues such as Islamic fundamentalism.

After a decade of trying to dismiss global warming as an elite preoccupation by strange hemp-wearing eco-warriors and the loathed latte set, John Howard has suddenly shifted gear.

Backbenchers who have been worried about climate change feel they are finally being listened to. Canberra is knocking itself out telling the community they have the political will to deal with rising temperatures, although we are not sure yet how.

But with an election looming next year, the Government is busy, busy, busy. One day, it's buckets of money to farmers on the bones of their backsides in the dry. Howard flew back to Australia from the Pacific

last night and will head straight to the west of NSW to visit drought-stricken farmers with a plane full of television crews in hot pursuit.

While holding out the hand of friendship to the bush, Howard is brawling with the states over water policy. One minute we seem on the verge of a referendum that would see Canberra take control of the nation's water resources, the next day they are suing for peace, asking the states to work co-operatively in the national interest.

Yesterday, there was more money both for solar power and to clean up Victoria's Hazelwood power station.

The Prime Minister is also flying kites about nuclear energy. Australia needs nuclear energy, he said a week ago, because it is a critical part of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, which may be making the weather worse (which leads us back to

the drought). And the drought leads us to water. No rain, naturally enough, stretches Australia's already stretched water resources.

Drought-water-climate-energy: the Prime Minister is bolting the political narrative together and looking frenetically busy. But so far, there has been more politics than substance. The really tough policy decisions now loom.

Treasurer Peter Costello said on Tuesday Canberra would consider "small adjustments" in policy to make business reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. Industry is giving the Government some cover to press ahead. Business Council of Australia president Michael Chaney yesterday accepted global warming as a reality — and hinted business would cop modest steps requiring it to cut emissions. The head of the Minerals Council of Australia, Mitch Hooke, acknowledged on behalf of Australia's big mining giants on Tuesday that "there will be a carbon price in a carbon-constrained world".

HOWARD will get a report from his nuclear taskforce next month, which will give him a road map to increase the use of renewable energy in Australia and add it to the mix. Both energy sources will reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but they are more expensive than coal, and that will increase electricity prices to consumers.

At the centre of the challenge before the Government — the centre of the canvas, where the lines of the four boxes meet — is whether to put a price on pollution, and through that, improve the economic viability of power sources other than coal.

There are many options to "price" carbon. There is a carbon tax — which the Government has ruled out. There are emissions trading schemes, in which greenhouse gas emissions are capped and companies trade permits among themselves. The Government is sending mixed messages about whether it would accept emissions trading. Another option that would put a price on pollution is to make companies increasingly bear the costs of their emissions, by requiring investment and use of technology to make coal clean, or to capture emissions and bury them.

Greg Bourne had a long career as a petroleum executive for BP before joining environmental group WWF Australia as chief executive. Bourne says Howard is moving with alacrity on global warming because voters are genuinely alarmed at the doomsday scenarios. He says Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth hit home with the Australian public, as did Tim Flannery's recent book, The Weather Makers.

"The electorate is now signalling that they care and they are worried, and this Government hates being left behind," Bourne tells The Age. He predicts Canberra will put a price on pollution, otherwise there is every possibility of Howard looking like King Canute, with the waves lapping at his feet.

Australia will remain critically dependent on coal. Bourne says business is prepared to pick up at least some of the tab for its pollution, and is already "shadow pricing" — in plain terms, factoring the cost of a pollution price into its operations.

"I think the Government will go there," he says. "I think they will signal a carbon price is coming in."

His prediction is the Government will unveil a "modest" carbon price, signal that it will take effect from a certain date, and call for submissions from business about the best way to design the system.

Business is also signalling that it is prepared to cop a global system of emissions trading.

Around the world, governments are wrestling with their restive populations on climate change.

Reports from the United Kingdom suggest the Blair Government will shortly agree to legislation cutting carbon emissions. The move will follow a report by Sir Nicholas Stern, which was commissioned before new negotiations on the Kyoto Protocol due to begin in Nairobi in November.

Solar plan embarrasses Howard

2006-10-25T20:34:00.000+10:00

The AGE

October 25, 2006 - 7:05PM

The Federal Government felt the heat of climate change today when a huge solar energy project given federal funds said it may not have gone ahead without the Victorian Labor government.

On the day the Federal Government prepared to flaunt its green credentials by announcing $75 million for the solar project and $50 million to clean up a power station, it was embarrassed at the official launch.

Solar Systems Generation received $125 million in federal and state grants to build its proposed solar concentrator using photovoltaic cells in north-west Victoria.

The $420 million solar power project is expected to pump electricity into the national grid equivalent to the annual needs of 45,000 homes, with no greenhouse gas emissions.

Both the company and Premier Steve Bracks said Victoria's renewable energy target of 10 per cent green power by 2016 - known as VRET - had made the project, the largest of its kind in the world, viable.

"The VRET scheme is a key ingredient in the economics of the project," the company's managing director Dave Holland told reporters today.

"If VRET was to shut down, we would have some serious discussion with the government of the day."

With the Federal Government capping its own mandatory renewable energy target at two per cent, federal Treasurer Peter Costello played down the significance of Victoria's scheme.

Mr Costello said the solar project would "absolutely" be viable even without VRET because it was a technology demonstration scheme.

Asked if today's $75 million in federal funding for the project was an endorsement of Victoria's renewable energy targets Mr Costello said: "No, not in the slightest".

Mr Costello said the $50 million towards cleaning up the Hazelwood coal power station would make a major contribution towards reducing emissions.

"It just shows practical, considered, financially viable, workable technologies which can improve the emissions problem that will help us on our way to reduce global warming," he said.

With more clean energy announcements expected in coming weeks, the opposition and some green groups criticised the government for taking a piecemeal approach to greenhouse gas abatement measures rather than an over-arching scheme.

But the two projects were largely welcomed, with most groups pleased to see action from the rich low-emissions technology demonstration fund, a $500 million barrel of money which was announced in June 2004.

The fund's aim is to generate a further $1.5 billion in private investment in technologies to clean-up existing fossil fuel industries, and for renewable energies.

Labor's environment spokesman Anthony Albanese criticised the government for taking more than two years to announce the project.

"The government is good at allocating money to funds and then making political decisions at politically convenient times - reannouncements."

Greenpeace spokesman Danny Kennedy said the government was starting to bow to growing public pressure and concern about climate change.

"If the federal government's strategy is to lay out a series of LETDF announcements from now to the election, it is a thinly disguised attempt to avoid the real action that is needed - moving Australia away from polluting coal," he said.

Greenhouse lobby group the Climate Institute welcomed the funding but said it was not an adequate response to climate change because the projects were not required to begin to cut emissions until after 2030.

"While it is important to demonstrate new technologies, this announcement ... is like throwing a cup of water on a bushfire," chief executive Corin Millais said.

Cooperative Research Centre for Greenhouse Gas Technologies (CO2CRC) chief executive Peter Cook congratulated the government for including carbon dioxide capture and storage in the Hazelwood project.

"The project will see state-of-the-art technology fitted to one of Hazelwood's 200 megawatt electricity generating units to reduce greenhouse gas emissions initially by an estimated 30 per cent," he said.

"With carbon capture and storage technologies, the scheme has the potential to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by more than 80 per cent in the longer term.

"It will be one of the world's foremost demonstrations of post-combustion capture of carbon dioxide."

AAP

Penguins protest CSIRO's frozen research

2006-10-25T10:14:00.000+10:00

The Canberra Times

Wednesday, 25 October 2006

By Rosslyn Beeby

Arriving at CSIRO's Black Mountain laboratories today, federal Science Minister Julie Bishop will be greeted by a flock of seven angry penguins, protesting against cuts to renewable energy research.

Tethered to the nature strip, the inflatable penguins head a protest procession of 15 signs spaced along Clunies Ross Drive, urging the public to take action to "Save Our CSIRO".

The signs spell out the ecological dangers of climate change, warning that a temperature rise of one degree will kill 82 per cent of the Great Barrier Reef, and warn the public to "beware executive spin denying CSIRO decline".

The protest penguins and signs were installed - "out of core work hours" - by scientist David Grice as "a private citizen deeply concerned about the future of CSIRO".

A notice taped to the tummy of one of the penguins flags the formation of "an underground group" of rebel scientists, who will offer "alternative views to executive spin" through leaflets distributed to the public and to CSIRO staff.

"I am deeply concerned about the CSIRO executive decision to focus research on coal and decrease research on renewable energy, combined with the gagging of climate scientists, " the notice says.

"Serving the public without fear or favour has turned into fear of funding cuts and favour of the Government's ideology... Scientists roll over and submit and seal their lips for fear of offending the Government and suffering further cuts to funding.

"Despite their silence, research funding has not even kept pace with inflation, making the purpose of their silence meaningless. And then to reinforce the decline of our CSIRO, executive mouthpieces tell the public everything is brilliant and how exciting the future will be, with the zeal of deluded over-optimists."

Mr Grice, who has worked on major research projects at CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems for 25 years, distributed leaflets yesterday at the CSIRO Discovery Centre.

"Why Penguins?," the leaflet begins.

"I originally thought of polar bears but emperor penguins are much more relevant to Australia (and I could buy them!) with the extreme possibility of Antarctica melting.

"A less extreme possibility is disruption to their food supplies as suggested is already happening for fairy penguins. Anyway the idea of emperor penguins marching on CSIRO asking why they are funding coal research but at same time reducing renewable research seemed like a reasonable idea."

CSIRO sources at Black Mountain said CSIRO corporate staff removed the leaflets, describing Mr Grice as "a troublemaker" and "out of touch" with changes to CSIRO's research priorities.

CSIRO group executive Dr Steve Morton said Mr Grice "has a right to voice his views as a public citizen" and was unlikely to be disciplined or formally cautioned for his penguin protest.

"Naturally, I have different views to those expressed in the leaflets," he said.

Dr Morton said CSIRO was planning to build its capacity for solar research and had only closed down one small program as a result of its recent overhaul of research priorities.

"We intend to focus on solar energy and organic photovoltaics, leaving the development of silicon photovoltaics to other research institutions," he said.

Dr Morton denied there had been substantial funding cuts to environmental research programs at CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems but said some staff were unhappy that "we've stopped some smaller areas of research".

PM turns up heat on solar power

2006-10-25T09:11:00.000+10:00

Joseph Kerr and Dennis Shanahan

October 25, 2006

A PROPOSED $400 million solar plant that could deliver 154 megawatts of power will be the cornerstone of the Howard Government's fight against climate change.

In a political shift that steals an approach trumpeted by federal Labor, the federal and Victorian governments will contribute $125 million towards the plant, to be built in northern Victoria using technology developed by Melbourne firm Solar Systems.

The announcement today, part of a $230 million package, is the first in a series that will see an eventual $2 billion invested in new technology aimed at cutting greenhouse emissions.

A coal-drying project in the Latrobe Valley is also expected to be announced today, to help burn Victoria's large brown coal deposits more cleanly than current technology allows. Other projects include seed funding for developing affordable ways of pumping carbon gases from coal-fired power stations underground or diverting carbon dioxide from coal before it is used to generate electricity.

The federal Government hopes its spending will encourage up to $10 billion in greenhouse-friendly electricity projects.

The funding is also going towards developing solar and wind technologies as part of a mix between fossil fuel power and renewable energy sources.

Treasurer Peter Costello, who will announce the funding today with Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane, has kept alive the prospect of domestic nuclear power, predicting that a plant will be built in Australia as soon as it becomes economically viable, perhaps within 10 years.

Mr Costello said the Government should not legislate to stop companies investing in nuclear energy apart from on safety and environmental grounds. "I don't think we should legislatively stop it," he said yesterday.

"I think we should legislatively say, provided you meet all of the requirements in relation to safety and export controls and all those sorts of things, environmental consideration, that there is no legislative bar and then I would let the market work. And the day it becomes commercial someone will build it."

The Howard Government's announcements come before the release next week of a British review, which will radically change the attitude to the economic effect of climate change with long-term predictions of economic costs if it's not addressed quickly.

Before heading to Fiji for the Pacific Islands Forum, where climate change and rising sea levels are major concerns, John Howard said climate change had to be addressed.

The Prime Minister said there was no single answer, but Australia's role as an energy producer for the world meant it should look at technological ways to cut greenhouse emissions from coal-fired power.

Instead of simply converting direct sunlight that hits expensive photovoltaic cells to electricity, the Solar Systems technology works by concentrating the sun's rays with cheap glass and steel on to highly efficient photovoltaic units. The Melbourne-based company has been focusing its efforts on drawing ever greater efficiencies from photovoltaic cells, as well as improving its mirror technology. It has invested more than $40 million in developing its technologies.

Such a solar power station would be one of the biggest in the world, but would produce only a quarter of the power of a small coal-fired station.

The funding comes from various federal Government commitments, including promises under the Asia-Pacific Clean Development agreement - struck by the AP-6, which includes India, China and the US - of $500million, state governments and the coal industry's own $300million.

A spokesman for Victorian Energy Minister Theo Theophanous said the state was "likely to attract more significant renewable energy projects thanks to our renewable energy targets, which will cut 27 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions".

More announcements are expected in Queensland - where Premier Peter Beattie has pledged his own funding to develop clean coal technology - and one other state.

Mr Beattie recently said he wanted a clean coal process developed before he committed Queensland, a large coal producing state, to a proposed states-backed emissions trading system that would push up the cost of electricity and impose costs on carbon emissions.

Mr Howard on Monday said the Government was about to reveal funding "for exciting new technologies, including those designed to ensure that the use of our abundant fossil fuel reserves will in the future occur in a cleaner, greener fashion, thus reducing the process of climate change".

PM turns up heat on solar power

2006-10-25T09:03:00.000+10:00

The Australian

Joseph Kerr and Dennis Shanahan

October 25, 2006

A PROPOSED $400 million solar plant that could deliver 154 megawatts of power will be the cornerstone of the Howard Government's fight against climate change.

In a political shift that steals an approach trumpeted by federal Labor, the federal and Victorian governments will contribute $125 million towards the plant, to be built in northern Victoria using technology developed by Melbourne firm Solar Systems.

The announcement today, part of a $230 million package, is the first in a series that will see an eventual $2 billion invested in new technology aimed at cutting greenhouse emissions.

A coal-drying project in the Latrobe Valley is also expected to be announced today, to help burn Victoria's large brown coal deposits more cleanly than current technology allows. Other projects include seed funding for developing affordable ways of pumping carbon gases from coal-fired power stations underground or diverting carbon dioxide from coal before it is used to generate electricity.

The federal Government hopes its spending will encourage up to $10 billion in greenhouse-friendly electricity projects.

The funding is also going towards developing solar and wind technologies as part of a mix between fossil fuel power and renewable energy sources.

Treasurer Peter Costello, who will announce the funding today with Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane, has kept alive the prospect of domestic nuclear power, predicting that a plant will be built in Australia as soon as it becomes economically viable, perhaps within 10 years.

Mr Costello said the Government should not legislate to stop companies investing in nuclear energy apart from on safety and environmental grounds. "I don't think we should legislatively stop it," he said yesterday.

"I think we should legislatively say, provided you meet all of the requirements in relation to safety and export controls and all those sorts of things, environmental consideration, that there is no legislative bar and then I would let the market work. And the day it becomes commercial someone will build it."

The Howard Government's announcements come before the release next week of a British review, which will radically change the attitude to the economic effect of climate change with long-term predictions of economic costs if it's not addressed quickly.

Before heading to Fiji for the Pacific Islands Forum, where climate change and rising sea levels are major concerns, John Howard said climate change had to be addressed.

The Prime Minister said there was no single answer, but Australia's role as an energy producer for the world meant it should look at technological ways to cut greenhouse emissions from coal-fired power.

Instead of simply converting direct sunlight that hits expensive photovoltaic cells to electricity, the Solar Systems technology works by concentrating the sun's rays with cheap glass and steel on to highly efficient photovoltaic units. The Melbourne-based company has been focusing its efforts on drawing ever greater efficiencies from photovoltaic cells, as well as improving its mirror technology. It has invested more than $40 million in developing its technologies.

Such a solar power station would be one of the biggest in the world, but would produce only a quarter of the power of a small coal-fired station.

The funding comes from various federal Government commitments, including promises under the Asia-Pacific Clean Development agreement - struck by the AP-6, which includes India, China and the US - of $500million, state governments and the coal industry's own $300million.

A spokesman for Victorian Energy Minister Theo Theophanous said the state was "likely to attract more significant renewable energy projects thanks to our renewable energy targets, which will cut 27 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions".

More announcements are expected in Queensland - where Premier Peter Beattie has pledged his own funding to develop clean coal technology - and one other state.

Mr Beattie recently said he wanted a clean coal process developed before he committed Queensland, a large coal producing state, to a proposed states-backed emissions trading system that would push up the cost of electricity and impose costs on carbon emissions.

Mr Howard on Monday said the Government was about to reveal funding "for exciting new technologies, including those designed to ensure that the use of our abundant fossil fuel reserves will in the future occur in a cleaner, greener fashion, thus reducing the process of climate change".

We're running out of power

2006-10-25T08:30:00.000+10:00

SMH

Anne Davies and John Garnaut
October 25, 2006

NSW faces blackouts and skyrocketing electricity prices within five years unless it increases supply, the national energy market regulator has warned.

In a report to be released today, it forecasts that demand for electricity in the state could outstrip supply by 2010-11, causing the network to fall below its tough reliability standards.

The forecast for NSW and other states will again focus debate on how Australia should meet its power needs in the face of mounting evidence about the effects of climate change on farming, tourism and other industries.

Today the federal and Victorian governments will announce funding to help build one of the world's biggest solar power stations, a $400 million project that will be a key part of the national strategy to fight climate change.

The federal Treasurer, Peter Costello - who has previously dismissed the prospect of Australian nuclear power as commercially unviable - shifted his position yesterday. He said a nuclear plant would be built as soon as it became commercial, and that was possible within 10 years.

Australia's greenhouse emissions are among the worst in the world - 3.41 tonnes of CO2 per capita - according to a report released yesterday by the conservation group WWF.

NSW's energy demand is being fuelled mainly by air-conditioning - a standard feature in new homes - which leads to bigger and more frequent peaks in demand in summer, according to the report by the National Electricity Market Management Company.

NSW's demand is projected to grow by 0.2 per cent in the year to June 2007, but the number of summer days with a 10 per cent or more likelihood of exceeding the network's reliability standard is forecast to rise by 2.7 per cent.

Mainland states depend mainly on greenhouse-causing coal, although NSW is turning to gas-fired plants to meet the increasingly sharp peaks in demand. Gas-fired plants are more expensive to run but have about half the emissions and are more suited to peak demand. But the rising population will mean more need for baseload power to meet everyday needs, which are currently met by coal-fired stations running 24 hours a day.

The regulator is responsible for managing the wholesale electricity market, following the introduction of a national trading system. Its predictions are notoriously conservative, based on the worst case, such as the failure of a power station on a hot day.

NSW is not the most vulnerable state. South Australia faces potential power shortages as early as 2007-08 and Victoria a year later.

NSW has improved its position since last year, after it decided to build a gas-fired power plant at Tallawarra, on the South Coast.

The state Energy Minister, Joe Tripodi, said yesterday: "The most important thing about this is we have plenty of electricity, both peak and baseload, and the need has been pushed out for another year. The biggest issue for the NSW electricity industry is peak demand, and that's where our efforts have been applied."

The Government was close to awarding tenders for a second gas-fired plant at Munmorah, on the Central Coast, and several more were planned.

A white paper on energy was due out last year, but - like the State Government's water plan - it seems to have disappeared from the political agenda. Mr Tripodi said the Government now intended to make policy announcements as they were needed.

Green groups had promised to campaign against any new coal-fired power stations as the election in March approached. The white paper is unlikely to see the light of day until after polling day.

Without a pollution tax, nuclear power has been dismissed as uneconomic because of the large start-up costs and Australia's abundance of cheap coal. But the Industry Minister, Ian Macfarlane, says nuclear plants could be under construction within 10 years, and the Prime Minister says they will play a role in reducing global warming. Yesterday Mr Costello said: "I have said that it is not commercial as of now. Can I conceive a time when it will become commercial? Yes.

"Will it be 10 years? Maybe, possibly not. But … it will become commercial, and when it becomes commercial someone will build it. I don't think we should legislatively stop it. I think we should legislatively say, provided you meet all of the requirements in relation to safety and export controls and all those sorts of things, environmental consideration, that there is no legislative bar and then I would let the market work."

Mr Costello would not endorse any pollution tax.

Trying to avoid the reality of climate change

2006-10-24T08:29:00.000+10:00

SMH

By Ian Dunlop
October 24, 2006

This may yet turn out to be the year in which Australia gets serious about climate change. Community concern has been growing for some time, but even last month, during Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth visit, the Federal Government preferred denial, epitomised by Industry and Resources Minister Ian Macfarlane's immortal comment on the film: "It's just entertainment, and really that's all it is."

For far too long Australian debate has remained stuck on the question of whether climate change is man-made, a debate that we will not know the answer to for decades. Meanwhile, scientific opinion has moved strongly to the view that human activity, particularly emissions of greenhouse gases, probably is a major contributor. But what measures should we be putting in place to mitigate the effects of climate change and to adapt to it?

In the past week those risks have become real as we focus on the full implications of high temperatures, drought and water shortage. Finally, it seems that ministers are starting to acknowledge that climate change may have something to do with it - yet Federal Government policy remains confused and contradictory.

In particular, the Government remains adamantly opposed to ratifying the Kyoto Protocol, preferring to focus its efforts on the Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate (AP6). If we are serious about tackling climate change, that needs to change.

The political spin on this issue has the Government tied in knots. Ian Macfarlane notwithstanding, the Prime Minister now apparently accepts that climate change needs to be addressed. He does not want to ratify Kyoto, but emphasises that we are meeting our Kyoto obligations. If so, why not ratify it?

The essential difference between AP6 and Kyoto is that Kyoto sets binding limits on carbon emissions from the outset and provides for various mechanisms under which these can be achieved, including emissions trading that puts a price on carbon pollution. AP6 relies on developing clean technology without accepting any binding commitment to reduce carbon emissions, or pricing carbon.

The Australian Government position is that AP6 is complementary to, not a replacement for, Kyoto. Environment Minister Ian Campbell says we need a carbon emissions trading system to put a price on carbon pollution and to reduce emissions, but that it would be premature to introduce it before clean technologies are developed. In short, our policy is to avoid doing anything to rock the boat of conventional economic growth, particularly while the resource boom lasts.

On any rational technical or economic grounds, this policy makes no sense. Further, it is ethically flawed. If we accept that carbon emissions are a serious problem, why do we maintain the enormous subsidy the fossil fuel industries have enjoyed for decades by not pricing carbon?

The 1997 Kyoto Protocol has been ratified by 165 countries, including China and India, encompassing more than 86 per cent of the world's population. Kyoto legally binds 36 industrialised countries, from the 165, to reduce their emissions of six greenhouse gases by 5 per cent overall relative to 1990 levels during the first commitment period from 2008 to 2012.

To achieve the 5 per cent reduction, the countries negotiated individual targets dependent upon their circumstances. These countries include the EU and Russia but exclude the US and Australia, which refused to ratify the protocol despite having led the negotiations and signed it in 1997, and which are the highest per capita carbon emitters in the world.

Kyoto has a cost, but the cost of the initial commitment is nowhere near the disaster that various vested interests claim. The cost will rise as emission reductions are tightened, but so will the opportunities for innovation and new market development, provided government and industry are seeking solutions rather than reactive defence of the status quo.

There must be a global solution to this global problem. The Government professed itself well pleased with the target negotiated for our participation in the protocol, an 8 per cent increase in Australian emissions over 1990 levels on average over the 2008-12 period. Then the US refused to ratify Kyoto in 2001 and, in a volte-face, Australia obediently followed suit in 2002. The Asia Pacific Partnership was finally launched in 2005.

We need to combine an improved Kyoto with increased emission reduction obligations and developing country participation, AP6 and probably a great deal more. We urgently need a price placed on carbon emissions and a mechanism for reducing those emissions.

Developing a new international framework is hardly realistic. The protracted Kyoto negotiations demonstrated the enormous effort required to get a global agreement of this kind off the ground and time is of the essence. Kyoto represents the binding commitments that the Australian and US governments seem desperate to avoid. But "what gets measured gets done".

Most importantly, we should keep our energy options open. There are no silver bullets to fix this problem: the solution lies in serious emission reductions and myriad initiatives across the energy spectrum, to encourage alternative energy supplies, increase efficiency and reduce demand.

Ian Dunlop chaired the Australian Coal Association in 1987-88 and the AGO Experts Group on Emissions Trading in 1999-2000.

Sniffing out an election

2006-10-24T08:15:00.000+10:00

The European solution

Illustration: Spooner

By Tim Colebatch
October 24, 2006

Tony Blair and his Dutch counterpart, Jan Peter Balkenende, are two European politicians John Howard likes. Blair is from the left and Balkenende from the right, but last week they joined to send European leaders a stark wake-up call on the issue Australians rate as more serious than terrorism: global warming.

"The science of climate change has never been clearer," the two PMs wrote. "Without further action, scientists now estimate we may be heading for temperature rises of at least three to four degrees above pre-industrial levels.

"We have a window of only 10 to 15 years to avoid crossing catastrophic tipping points. These would have serious consequences for our economic growth prospects, the safety of our people and the supply of resources, most notably energy.

"Europe has the opportunity to lead the world in making the technology transition to a low-carbon economy . . . The technologies are already available or within reach.

"A historic political choice faces us. The need to respond to climate change can be seen as a burden. Or it can be seen as a once-in-a-generation opportunity for Europe to mobilise the political will and resources to transform and modernise our energy system."

This is Europe, mind you. It already has the world's most advanced emissions trading scheme. The European Union has 36 action plans to cut emissions from everything from buildings to power generators to cars.

John Howard, now rethinking his own policies on global warming, might marvel at his European mates saying they must do far more. While Europe has pledged to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 8 per cent between 1990 and 2010 - and insists it will meet the target, though others are sceptical - Australia has pledged only to hold its growth in emissions to 8 per cent.

Even that will require some tricky accounting. The Australian Greenhouse Office estimates that by 2010, we will be pumping out 45 per cent more carbon emissions to produce energy, and 53 per cent more from industrial use. We get down to 8 per cent growth only because three-quarters of the growth in energy and industrial emissions will be offset by a one-off decline in land-clearing and new plantations.

By 2020, the Greenhouse Office predicts Australia's emissions will have swollen 22 per cent from their 1990 levels. Transport would be emitting 78 per cent more gases than in 1990, power generation 70 per cent more, industry 75 per cent more. The gap between us and Europe would be stark.

Blair and Balkenende have both been here recently and, among other things, asking Howard to do more on global warming. Now that he is interested, he might look at what they propose. They argue for:

· Strengthening the EU's emissions trading system, which has had a bumpy start, by tightening the caps (i.e. reducing emission levels), extending it to cover more than the 11,500 firms so far included, and linking it to other countries.

· Adopting a wide-ranging plan presented last week by EU energy commissioner Andris Piebalgs to cut Europe's energy consumption by 20 per cent by lifting energy efficiency in appliances, cars, buildings, power generators, the lot.

Among other things, it envisages higher taxes on fuel-inefficient cars, minimum efficiency standards for appliances (including in stand-by mode, which accounts for 7 per cent of European energy consumption) and ad campaigns to persuade households to turn down thermostats, insulate their homes and turn off lights when they leave the room.

· Investing more in biofuels and wind farms at sea, accelerating development of clean coal technology and establishing policies for "an effective and durable post-2012 (i.e. post-Kyoto) framework".

How does this help Howard frame his own policy? Well, he must start by creating a financial disincentive to emitting greenhouse gases. Without that, there will be no carbon capture and storage, no clean coal technology, and no nuclear power stations. Without a carbon tax, or European-style emissions trading scheme, dirty coal will remain by far the cheapest source of baseload power, and the only one any firm wanting to stay competitive could use.

The arithmetic is simple. Dirty coal (A) plus the cost of cleaning it (B) must cost more than dirty coal (A). A+B must be more than A. The Government has to admit that and bite the bullet.

Around the world, emission targets are in, and Kim Beazley and the states have embraced them as Labor's solution. But if Howard wants to differentiate himself, in the long term, he would do better to go for a carbon tax. Why? Because it is more likely to be adopted in any global agreement after Kyoto.

Howard won't want to be seen to back down by signing Kyoto or adopting an emissions trading scheme. That's not important. What really matters is the post-Kyoto agreement, and to have Australia lead the way towards it.

A global agreement on emissions trading would be a Swiss cheese. Every country would demand special deals to protect industries. It would be far cleaner and simpler to have a common global tax on carbon emissions, whether in Mumbai, Mombasa or Melbourne.

This is not a time for Howard to play politics. We are going to need a lot of new investment in energy over coming years, and it ought to start now. But what investors need is policy certainty. We are asking them to commit to very expensive, very long-term projects on time scales over which prices of rival fuels and resources could change dramatically.

They deserve to have a stable long-term policy environment. In this area, as much as possible, policies should be bipartisan. Play politics with it, and Australia will be the loser.

Tim Colebatch is economics editor.

Eco companies to quit NSW

2006-10-22T09:47:00.000+10:00

SMH

Pilot scheme ... Welder Daniel Sattler at Liddell Power Station.
Photo: Brock Perks

Catharine Munro
October 22, 2006

NSW risks losing $9 billion in energy investment if it fails to make a quarter of the state's electricity green by 2020, says a report to be released today.

High-tech companies have confirmed they will abandon projects combating climate change and go overseas if Premier Morris Iemma does not do more to help.

With a national scheme about to expire, the companies want new state laws to force electricity retailers to buy energy that is generated using solar power, wind or waste instead of fossil fuels, which are blamed for climate change.

NSW would be halfway towards meeting a 25 per cent renewable energy target if 19 proposed projects, worth $3.1 billion, were developed, the report, co-written by Greenpeace, the Total Environment Centre and the Nature Conservation Council, said.

One proposed project, a solar power development near Moree in the state's north-west, could generate enough power to light up a town the size of the state's largest inland city, Wagga Wagga. Managing director of Solar, Heat and Power, Peter Le Lievre, who is planning the Moree development, said government schemes in Europe and the US were far more profitable.

"If there's nothing coming from NSW we will go overseas," he said. "We are up and out of here.

"It's a pity because we got our start in Australia but we have to pay our bills and make money."

The company has one pilot scheme running. It feeds electricity, generated by solar power, into the grid at the Liddell plant near Singleton in the Hunter Valley.

As the March state election approaches, the issue of alternative energy is shaping up to challenge the Labor Government's green credentials.

The results of polling by independent think tank the Lowy Institute show voters see climate change as a serious concern.

Even China appears to be doing more to find alternatives to fossil fuels, by demanding that 15 per cent of its energy must come from renewable sources by 2015.

Australia was the first country to introduce targets for renewable energy, but the Federal Government has not maintained the targets, leaving no incentives for new companies to look for ways of creating electricity out of alternatives to fossil fuels. Victoria and South Australia have already decided to set their own targets.

"NSW has one of the worst regimes in place for ensuring renewable energy," said Greenpeace's green energy campaigner Mark Wakeham.

"The proof is that since 2001 only two wind turbines have been introduced in NSW and there have been 215 in South Australia."

Meanwhile, a 1 per cent increase in temperatures in Australia would make the drought in NSW increase by 70 per cent, the report says.
Source: The Sun-Herald

Ozone hole 'biggest ever'

2006-10-21T09:22:00.001+10:00

The AGE

Andrew Darby, Hobart
October 21, 2006

THIS spring's Antarctic ozone hole has been declared the largest on record, an emphatic reminder that man-made atmospheric harm is set to continue for decades to come.

The hole peaked at 29.5 million square kilometres this year — 100,000 square kilometres larger than the previous largest hole recorded in 2000 — the World Meteorological Organisation said yesterday.

It was also the deepest recorded over eastern Antarctica, at one point leaving a layer of sky above Australia's Davis station with no ozone at all to guard against ultraviolet radiation.

The roughly oval-shaped hole, four times the size of Australia, swung over South America and the Falkland Islands, and reached its greatest extent on September 24.

Its effects on people were limited by the low angle of the sun and cloud at that time of year. Extremely cold temperatures over winter, down to minus-93 degrees in the upper atmosphere, were to blame for the expansion of the hole this year.

According to Antarctic Division atmospheric scientist Andrew Klekociuk, the cold could be linked to climate change. Some global warming scenarios point to a balancing cooling effect in the upper atmosphere.

"We need some years' evidence to sort out the natural variation in temperature from possible effects of global warming," Dr Klekociuk said.

Global ozone depletion concentrates each year at the poles, and especially the Antarctic, where the return of the sun after winter combines with man-made gases in the atmosphere to eat ozone.

Bans on products such as chlorofluorocarbons, used as spray can propellants and refrigerants until the 1980s, have stemmed the damage.

All right for some: the deserts that have taken our rain

2006-10-21T07:15:00.000+10:00

SMH

As the sun emerges after a day of rain, Michael McIlvenny sends a weather balloon up from the Giles meteorological station on the edge of the Gibson Desert.

As the sun emerges after a day of rain, Michael McIlvenny sends a weather balloon up from the Giles meteorological station on the edge of the Gibson Desert.

Photo: Glenn Campbell

James Woodford
October 21, 2006

IF THE rain is not falling in Sydney's catchments and throughout southern Australia, where has it gone?

The answer, says the acting head of the Bureau of Meteorology's National Climate Centre, David Jones, is north-west and Central Australia, where residents are finding climate change may have a wetter flipside.

Most dramatic is the desert outpost of Giles, which sits on the edge of the Tanami Desert near the junction of South Australia, Western Australian and the Northern Territory. In 50 years the remote weather station, home to five people, has seen its rainfall double - from a yearly average of about 150 millimetres to around 300.

If current trends continue, ecological changes will begin to follow - greener for the desert and the Kimberley, but browner for southern Australia.

Because Giles is one of the driest spots in the continent, a doubling of rainfall has not yet had a visible impact, says the officer in charge of the weather station there, Michael McIlvenny.

But Dr Peter Kendrick, Pilbara-based regional ecologist with the West Australian Department of Environment and Conservation, said doubling rainfall has a "huge impact" in such an ecosystem, given that desert fauna and flora are tuned to respond rapidly to episodic rainfall.

Dr Jones says he already believes the extra rainfall in some other less arid areas has given agriculture and grazing a valuable buffer against degradation.

But in southern Australia, the colour of climate change seems to be brown.

Dr Michael Raupach, a scientist with the CSIRO Division of Marine and Atmospheric Research, and chairman of the Global Carbon Project, has recently made some frightening observations from satellite photography.

He and his team have discovered large swathes of the continent are becoming visibly less green. "Depending on the area, we are finding parts of the continent that are more than 50 per cent less green," he said. "This means a browning of the continent. The trend started in the late 1990s and since then has been going on in a ratchet fashion, with jumps in browning occurring in drought years."

What makes this finding so alarming is that if the drought does not ease then the logical conclusion of the current trend is a massive death of vegetation, huge bushfires and the release of vast volumes of carbon, further feeding climate change.

Normally, Dr Raupach said, forests have the chance to recover through flooding rains between droughts, but the low-rainfall conditions of the past decade have been relentless.

While sporadic recovery of greenness occurred in places, nowhere has vegetation climbed back to what it normally would be between droughts. Worst affected seem to be south-west Western Australia and almost the entire Murray-Darling Basin, ecosystems, already fragile because of land degradation.

"It's almost literally true that it keeps me awake at night," Dr Raupach said.

The weather bureau's Dr Jones says "superficially, the rainfall shift to the north-west of the continent doesn't make a lot of sense". This is because theoretically the entire nation has been in the grip of El Nino for much of the last decade.

Perhaps the huge release of aerosols into the atmosphere by Asian nations could be a factor in the increased rain, he said.

One thing that is certain is that the Australian climate has shifted dramatically in the past half century. In a vast band of the continent between the Nullarbor coast and the Kimberley there has been an average annual increase in rainfall of between 100 and 200 millimetres.

"Around Broome and Wyndham, rainfall has increased by 300 millimetres — particularly in summer and autumn," Dr Jones said.

On the other hand, Sydney's annual rainfall has decreased by between 100 and 200 millimetres a year and in Mackay by as much as 300 millimetres a year compared to the 1950s.

Weather systems known as north-west cloud bands used to travel across the continent from monsoonal troughs in the Kimberley, bringing the kind of rain to southern Australia which filled dams and caused floods.

"In the last few years to a decade these north-west cloud bands have almost disappeared. The linkage to the tropics has broken down," Dr Jones said.

"Since 1950, since global temperatures have increased along with aerosols and ozone, all of a sudden we have seen rainfall trends that are very distinct.

"One would be naive to put these trends down to natural variations. They're very large and a number are consistent with what we see from climate change computer models."

The drying of southern Australia has attracted the most attention until now, he said.

"What we are seeing in the rest of Australia is just as dramatic, it's just that it's positive. People don't seem to notice climate change when it's beneficial to humans."

Dr Kendrick said with greater rainfall, vegetation would increase in arid areas. There would be changes in fauna. The desert mouse had extended its range from the central deserts to the west Pilbara, and camel numbers were increasing.

It's time for new ideas on how to live with climate change

2006-10-20T05:56:00.000+10:00

Peter Cullen
October 20, 2006

AUSTRALIA is drying out. We have lived through a decade of reduced rainfall in which dam levels have dropped, bringing widespread water restrictions. We seem to have been asleep, waking to find that just denying climate change did not make it go away.

People on the land have been living with drought for several years, hoping there would be enough rain to put some water into dams for stock to drink and to produce feed. But hoping does not solve the problem, so it is back to handfeeding stock and worrying about whether to borrow money to buy more feed or just get rid of them. Many farmers are selling animals because they know they can't carry them over another long, hot and dry summer.

Australian farmers have learnt to live with the unpredictable patterns of droughts and flooding rains, and to manage feed and livestock in these circumstances. However, each dry spell is greeted with what the author Michael McKernan calls "indignant surprise". We've been slow to realise some areas are in drought almost permanently.

Four years ago the Farmhand Foundation was set up, and it raised millions of dollars from the public to help drought-stricken farmers. Yet what has changed? Here we are again. We have kept people in desperate circumstances going for a few more years, and kept up intolerable pressures on a damaged landscape. Urban Australians get a layering of the topsoil when odd showers deposit dirt on their cars and they mutter about not being able to wash it off because of water restrictions. Yet this soil is the main asset of many farmers who watch it blow away with increasing desperation.

We should not just leave these people to suffer, but we need a much better approach than our present drought policy. All Australians should be eligible for basic support when hard times befall them. We have a social welfare system that provides this, and relaxing some of the asset tests to ensure that farmers are eligible is reasonable.

But our drought policy goes beyond this and is a business support program, to prop up businesses in trouble due to drought. Other industries do not get this support. We are seeing lots of small and independent service stations close under the relentless pressure from the big grocery chains. Yet no one is proposing a life-support system to keep those businesses afloat when they can no longer make a decent living.

The "exceptional circumstances" drought policy of recent years was designed to provide financial assistance to support farm businesses in the sorts of droughts that came along every 20 years or so. But we find we are in almost permanent exceptional circumstances, with calls to widen the eligibility and provide open-ended support.

Climate change is upon us and may get worse. It is time to re-examine our drought policy and see what is appropriate for a drier and hotter Australia.

Economists have suggested that an income-based loans scheme may be a better approach. Farmers who believe their businesses are viable could get a loan, to be paid back from their income when better times return. This is a scheme proposed by the Australian National University economist Bruce Chapman and colleagues and is modelled on the HECS scheme that makes public funds available to pay for higher education, and the debt incurred is taken out with tax when the recipients' income reaches a certain threshold. Something similar may be appropriate for drought relief.

The continuous drip-feeding of drought relief just helps people with little hope of recovery to hang on a bit longer. It seems designed to maximise their misery and the land degradation they cause as they scratch a living on farms that are too small to be viable.

A loan scheme like HECS would force these people and their bankers to make hard choices as to whether to hang on or sell. Hanging on would incur a debt. Selling, perhaps with readjustment support that governments already make available, would enable them to leave with dignity and sufficient funds to start a new life elsewhere. It may also enable remaining farmers to buy additional land that may make their businesses viable.

Business as usual doesn't seem very smart. There must be better ways of learning to live with changing climate.

Professor Peter Cullen is a member of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists. It advocates the sustainable management of Australia's natural resources

Finally, the penny drops - SMH

2006-10-20T05:44:00.000+10:00

Illustration: Rocco Fazzari

October 20, 2006

A hot Adelaide day helped change the Government's views on climate, writes Peter Hartcher.

ALEXANDER DOWNER, like a good local member, made an appearance between the flower displays and the dog judging at the Port Elliott Show two weeks ago in his electorate near Adelaide.

"It was a bloody hot day, 33 degrees and a north wind - often the Port Elliott Show is cold and rainy," recalls Downer. "And a bunch of people, not just farmers, were saying: 'Maybe there is something in this climate change thing."'

The Foreign Affairs Minister had taken a closer interest in climate change in recent years, but that day crystallised his thinking. He phoned one of his Liberal colleagues, Greg Hunt, who has spent years advocating the need to act on global warming.

"It's time," Downer told him.

For the slight and scholarly Hunt, it was a sweet moment. "He'd been working on me for a long time," confesses Downer. Only a few weeks earlier the pair had thrashed their way through a robust argument on the subject.

Hunt now believes that the conversion of the Howard Government is, effectively, complete and that Downer has been pivotal.

The Government, disdainful of the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse emissions and long sceptical of the case for any action to address global warming, is positioning itself seriously to address the matter.

It is playing catch-up with its constituents. Sixty-eight per cent of Australians believe global warming - or global heating, as the Greens call it - is a "critical threat" to Australia's vital interests over the next 10 years, ahead of Islamic fundamentalism, according to the Lowy Institute poll published this month. Many major companies around the world are far advanced in working on the problem.

The drought, already very serious, will become dire as it slowly strangles the artery of south-eastern Australia, the Murray-Darling, in the year ahead, and entire towns and industries are rendered insolvent and obsolete.

So the Government will need to act with the zeal of a convert. But a great deal of work is going on unseen within the Government. While Labor continues to beat the Coalition with the lash of Kyoto, the Government is working to blindside Labor with a new agenda in the year to the next election.

Downer likens Labor's use of Kyoto to the witch-hunt practice of dunking women in water. If a government has not ratified the treaty, it's a witch. "I don't even believe in witches," he says.

He wants Australia, which has promised to meet its Kyoto obligations even though it refuses to ratify the treaty, to exceed the ambitions of Kyoto in cutting greenhouse gases.

Hunt, the federal parliamentary secretary on the environment, believes the Government has had two Eureka moments in the past 15 months. First was the realisation that the world needed a mechanism for concerted global action that would include the biggest greenhouse polluters. The Government ruled out the Kyoto Protocol because it had been rejected by the US and because it excluded the big new belchers, China and India.

But last year the Government helped craft a new international grouping, the six Asia-Pacific nations known as the AP-6. It embraces Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea and the US, which together account for half of all global emissions. Second was a much more recent acceptance that Australia needed to take more dramatic and urgent steps to cut its own emissions.

"I think the cabinet was converted when Downer changed his mind, and he convinced the Prime Minister with help from Ian Campbell [the Environment Minister]," says Hunt. "And the Prime Minister moved a couple of other doubters when he moved."

Only one sceptic appears to remain in the cabinet room, and that's the Industry Minister, Ian Macfarlane.

Will the Government's agenda be all about nuclear power? So far, this has been the mainstay of the Prime Minister's response.

"I believe very strongly that nuclear power is part of the response to global warming," said Howard this week. "It is clean green."

But Howard has given the task of examining the future of Australia's nuclear sector to a panel chaired by the former Telstra boss Ziggy Switkowski. The companies that own Australia's uranium industry, BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto, have made the obvious point to the inquiry that it is not economic for Australia to process uranium, nor to develop a nuclear power industry.

Yesterday Switkowski, who is expecting to report to the Government in a month, said: "Australia is blessed with a couple of things - very low-cost electricity because of access to coal and gas, and has many centuries of coal supply available. Any comparison will be unfavourable for every alternative source in the absence of an explicit cost for carbon."

In other words, nuclear power will not be economic in Australia unless the Government makes a dramatic policy change. An "explicit cost for carbon" means the Government would need to charge a carbon tax, or introduce an emissions trading system - or provide vast subsidies to nuclear power plants.

If the Government takes any of these courses to make nuclear power viable, it will be a major change for Australia. But the Government is examining a great deal more than just the nuclear option.

The head of the Co-operative Research Centre for Greenhouses Gas Technologies, Dr Peter Cook, believes that new carbon capture technologies will allow Australia to cut its greenhouse emissions in half. This and other subjects are receiving a lot of attention inside the bureaucracy. Several proposals will be going to the cabinet in the months ahead. After making the journey from atheism to agnosticism, the Government now has religion on global warming. Thank God.

Peter Hartcher is the Herald's political editor.

Not spent: $362m to fight global warming

2006-10-20T05:41:00.000+10:00

SMH

Stephanie Peatling
October 20, 2006

Latest related coverage
A man on top feels the pain of those at the bottom
Peter Hartcher: Finally, the penny drops
Peter Cullen: It's time for new ideas on how to live with climate change
Advertisement
AdvertisementMORE than one-third of the budget set aside for Federal Government projects aimed at tackling global warming has not been spent.

The amount, $362 million, is almost equal to the sum announced by the Government for drought relief this week, and sparked Opposition calls for farmers to push for more action on global warming.

The Opposition's public accountability spokesman, Kelvin Thomson, said: "[Farmers] have been sold out by those Liberal and National Party representatives who, over the years, have sought to undermine and scuttle every effort at tackling global warming and climate change."

The figures, compiled by the Department of Environment and Heritage, show the Government did not spend all its budget for climate change programs for the eight years from 1998.

In that time, a little more than $1 billion was set aside for global warming projects, prompting government claims of record spending on it.

But only one-third of the budgeted money was spent, the figures show. In 2000-01 the unspent amount was 65 per cent of the funds allocated.

Mr Thomson said the money showed that the Government was not serious about global warming.

"The Government owes Australians, and Australia's farmers in particular, an apology for this shameful neglect.

"I frequently hear people … like the Treasurer [Peter Costello] talking about debt as a terrible legacy for our children and our grandchildren. It is a terrible legacy for our children and our grandchildren that this Government has failed to seriously deal with global warming. Future generations will be horrified by this period of wilful inaction."

This week the Government announced drought assistance worth $350 million.

The Prime Minister, John Howard, promised to stand by drought-affected farmers, but warned people not to "overdo" the link between climate change and the drought.

The announcement prompted some scientists and environmentalists to call for a rethink of drought policy and for some areas of land to be declared unsuitable for agriculture - a call quickly rejected by the Government.

The Minister for the Environment, Ian Campbell, is in China supporting a renewable energy project a Tasmanian company has sold to authorities. It was funded under a project set up by countries that signed the Kyoto Protocol, which Australia refuses to ratify.

The acting Minister for the Environment, Eric Abetz, dismissed the figures as incorrect and as old news.

"The underspend in the early years referred to reflects a reallocation of funding to ensure the best greenhouse gas reductions for expenditure. Almost all of these early underspends were rescheduled, and continue to be spent as part of Government's $2 billion climate change strategy."

Khaleej Times

2006-10-17T09:21:00.000+10:00

Climate change is real and happening in Australia
By ROSS PEAKE (DOWN UNDER)

16 October 2006

AUSTRALIA, the world’s second driest continent after Antarctica, is in the grip of the worst drought in its recorded history. The impact is huge, not only on the farmers forced to sell their sheep for virtually nothing, but also on the nation’s economy and its mood.

In a double whammy for rural people, interest rates are about to go up again, while their incomes go down. This could produce a significant backlash against the conservative government of John Howard at next year’s election.

Australia is the driest inhabited continent, the flattest, and has the oldest and least fertile soils. Only the southeast and southwest corners of the continent have a temperate climate. Those areas have the crops and the herds. But most of the grassy fields have been replaced by dry, barren land. Dams are almost empty, revealing cracked earth. This week a major river, the Darling, simply stopped flowing. Cattle walk across the riverbed which has been reduced to a series of muddy puddles. It is a stark symptom of the lack of rain. This has led to renewed debate about the river dying because too much water is captured by upstream dams for cotton farms.

Major inland cities like Goulburn are facing a crisis, with dam levels down to 10 per cent of capacity. Town councils will soon have to pay to truck in water for drinking, while all watering of gardens is banned. As well, the bushfire season has come early. Hundreds of fires are burning — some in rugged mountain country, others within site of the major cities. The fires have been fanned by unseasonal hot, dry winds that has dashed hopes that rain might save some of the coming summer’s grain harvest. Everywhere you hear people talking about the approach of another El Nino event and blaming climate change. But the Howard government is adamant it will not change its mind about signing the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gas emissions, despite being told the country is facing an unprecedented drought.

Scientists gathered in Canberra last week to impress on the government that the nation is in the grip of the worst ever drought. They emphasised that the future for farming looks bleak because of the seriousness of the water shortage. One expert, Wendy Craik from the Murray-Darling Basin Commission, is making frightening predictions. "If we don’t get a decent break it’s very possible that our storages could be empty by the end of April-May next year," she said.

Already farmers are rounding up their sheep that have no feed, and taking them to market for sale. Sadly, the forced sale is producing only about one fortieth of what the sheep were worth this time last year. Adding to farmers’ worries is the prospect of interest rates on their huge loans going up. This week it was revealed Australia was officially in a rural recession. Treasurer Peter Costello said the situation in rural areas was worsening. "For most of the wheat belt we will not be getting a crop," he said. But on the same day statistics were produced showing employment is rising so fast in the cities that interest rates may have to go up next month. The Reserve Bank warns it might have to push up interest rates to stop a possible rise in inflation.

The federal government usually has a "hands off" approach to the Reserve Bank but National Party leader, Mark Vaile, who is also deputy Prime Minister, broke the convention with a direct appeal to the bank not to add to the farmers’ debt burden. He said another interest rate rise now would be a "killer blow" to farmers, the National Party’s natural constituents. This week Vaile will steer another rescue package through federal cabinet. It is expected to provide A$750 million to farmers through subsidies.

Looking to the future, clearly the use of agricultural water in the Murray-Darling Basin must be cut. It’s just as well that Howard is calling for storm water run-off in major cities to be captured for re-use. He also wants a re-think of the current policy that drinking water is used only once before being flushed into the rivers or oceans. Could it be recycled for agriculture? All these options are on the table, along with desalination plants. There is an ironic twist to the drought as commentators recall that a famous Australian poem begins, "I love a sunburnt country, a land of sweeping plains, of ragged mountain ranges, of droughts and flooding rains." Clearly, it’s going to be a tough summer in Australia.
Ross Peake is a Canberra-based political analyst

Climate solution 'must include nuclear power'

2006-10-16T18:33:00.000+10:00

The Australian

October 16, 2006

ANY serious consideration of the problems presented by global warming must involve nuclear-powered electricity generation, Prime Minister John Howard said today.

Mr Howard berated Labor for not accepting that position when he was asked by opposition environment spokesman Anthony Albanese if there was any other country on the planet where renewable energy projects were being closed.

"It's the view of the government that there are many contributions to be made to solving the problem of global warming," Mr Howard told parliament.

"Renewable energy is part of the solution but another very important part of the solution is nuclear power."

Mr Howard said the government had always acknowledged that renewables were part of the response to global warming, but so were other energy sources.

"If you're really serious about tackling the problem of global warming, you've got to be serious about the potential contribution of all of the energy sources, including nuclear power,"he said.

Earlier Mr Howard said nuclear power was part of the solution to global warming.

"Those who say they are in favour of doing something about global warming but turn their faces against considering nuclear power are unreal," he said.

"It is part of the solution, I'm not saying it's the only solution.

"I just think that if we're serious about having a debate about global warming, particularly as the holder of some of the largest uranium reserves in the world, we have got to be willing to consider the nuclear option."

Mr Howard said part of the reason he commissioned the taskforce, headed by nuclear physicist and former Telstra boss Ziggy Switkowski, was because he felt strongly about the benefits of nuclear power.

"It is clean green," he said.

But he couldn't say when Australia may get nuclear power. "As to when, as I say, I'd like a bit more advice on that," Mr Howard said.

Labor has pledged there will be no nuclear power if it wins government, but it does plan to re-examine its policy of no new uranium mines at its national conference next year.

Opposition Leader Kim Beazley wants the policy changed but faces a difficult job convincing some sections of Labor that it is the way to go.

Mr Keating thinks a change in the Labor policy would be a mistake. "I think I would stay with the existing policy," he said yesterday.

"This is not a good industry to encourage, and anyone that has an electricity program, ipso-facto ends up with a nuclear weapons capability."

Unholy trinity set to drag us into the abyss

2006-10-16T08:19:00.001+10:00

SMH

Ian Dunlop
October 16, 2006

Scorched earth

We are about to experience the convergence of three of the great issues confronting humanity. Climate change, the peaking of oil supply and water shortage are coming together in a manner which will profoundly alter our way of life, our institutions and our ability to prosper on this planet. Each is a major issue, but their convergence has received minimal attention.

Population is the main driver. In the 60 years since World War II, the world population has grown at an unprecedented rate, from 2.5 billion to 6.5billion today, with 9 billion forecast by 2050. That growth has triggered insatiable demand for natural resources, notably water, oil and other fossil fuels. Exponential economic growth in a finite world hitting physical limits is not a new idea; we have experienced limits at a local level, but we have either side-stepped them or found short-term solutions, becoming overly confident that any global limits could be similarly circumvented.

Today, just as the bulk of the world's population is about to step on to the growth escalator, global limits emerge that are real and imminent. The weight of scientific evidence points to the fact the globe cannot support its present population, let alone an additional 2.5 billion, unless we embrace change.

Climate change, peak oil, water shortage and population are contributing to a "tragedy of the commons", whereby free access and unrestricted demand for a finite resource doom the resource through over-exploitation. The benefits of exploitation accrue to individuals, whereas the costs are borne by all.

Examples at local level abound, include overfishing and interrupting river flows for farming and irrigation. One mark of a mature society is that equitable solutions are found to the "commons" dilemma, and we have been relatively successful in doing this at local level. However as these issues become national and global, solutions become harder. For climate change, peak oil and water, the ultimate "commons" is the earth's atmosphere which we have been using as a garbage dump for carbon and other emissions.

As Aristotle said: "What is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it. Everyone thinks chiefly of his own, hardly at all of the common interest." In an underpopulated world this may not matter, but in our overpopulated world it is disastrous.

Solutions require that we move beyond narrow national self-interest, take a global view and place our society and economy on a genuinely sustainable footing. Sustainability, "meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs", encompasses the entire basis upon which global society operates, not just the environment. It requires realigning our ethical framework, moving away from the winner-take-all individualism which has created so many of the "commons" problems, to a more co-operative individualism, where managing the global and local "commons" is paramount.

Rather than the negative, focusing on supposed job cuts and fear of change, we should focus on the positive: we have a unique opportunity to set humanity on a new course, built around an ethical renaissance and sustainable societies. Undoubtedly there will be pain in the short term as conventional politics, economics and business models are turned on their head. However, the tools and technologies to solve these problems are available, the cost is less than we have been led to believe, and the benefits greater. Further, change can be achieved rapidly given the right impetus.

The missing ingredients for change are acceptance of the problem, the collective will for action and genuine long-term vision and leadership. Given the dominance of short-term pragmatism in our political and corporate cultures, it is likely our leaders will continue to procrastinate and not rise to the challenge. The pressure for change must come from the community at large, where it is building toward a "tipping point" which will force a fundamental realignment of political and corporate attitudes.

Historically, this has rarely happened without a crisis. Fortunately the trinity are about to trigger that crisis with a prolonged period of "creative destruction" which will radically transform society and economy whether we like it or not. Our stark choice is either to embrace the tipping point bearing down upon us, seizing the opportunity to build a sustainable future, or fudge the issue, try to muddle through in the time-honoured manner and increasingly lose the ability to control our own affairs.

For Australia, along with many other countries, water is the priority. Resolving the water crisis will be the first test of whether we can combine long-term vision and principled leadership with the need to take the hard decisions quickly enough to stave off impending disaster. If so, it will stand us in good stead to tackle the even greater tasks ahead.

Formerly an oil, gas and coal industry executive, Ian Dunlop chaired the Australian Coal Association in 1987-88 and chaired the Experts Group on Emissions Trading of the Australian Greenhouse Office in 1999-2000.

Stark reality of climate change

2006-10-15T21:53:00.000+10:00

October 15, 2006 12:14am
Article from: Sunday Mail (SA)

SOUTH Australia this week stared into the abyss and did not like what it saw.

The strands of the future suddenly came together to wake even the most complacent to the fact that human actions are having a dire impact on the planet's weather.

Consider this week's events: our worst recorded drought, raging springtime bushfires, record low inflows to the River Murray, soaring temperatures, looming rural recession and strict water restrictions.

This, against a backdrop of the past decade having some of the hottest years in recorded history, is a taste of the future.

For years scientists argued about a theoretical greenhouse effect, which became an academic debate about global warming, which became an urgent call to deal with climate change.

This week, those abstract discussions walked into every house in South Australia without bothering to knock and announced: "I'm here – get used to it."

The ramifications of climate change now are well and truly out of the lecture theatre and in the lounge room.

The drought is having a devastating financial and social impact on farming communities as weather patterns look set to change beyond the expected cycles of drought, good times and flood.

As Premier Mike Rann told the ALP state conference yesterday, there are predictions the Goyder Line will need to be redrawn.

A CSIRO report on the consequences for the state of climate change include increased droughts, floods and bushfires.

This represents a challenge to Australia that goes well beyond other challenges facing us right now, such as the nuclear ambitions of a tin-pot dictator in North Asia.

Climate change has been ignored for too long – it is here, we must deal with it.

Anger as Chinese wind farm lauded

2006-10-15T09:56:00.000+10:00

SMH

Kerry-Anne Walsh
October 15, 2006

ENVIRONMENT minister Ian Campbell will attend the opening of a $300 million Australian wind farm in China on Tuesday, built by the same company forced to halt lucrative Australian projects because of his policies.

Wind farm specialists Roaring 40s announced six months ago it was stopping work on projects at Heemskirk in Tasmania and Waterloo in South Australia because of poor government support.

The projects were worth $550 million. It was estimated they would create 200 full-time construction jobs.

A Roaring 40s' press release highlighted the Federal Governments' decision not to increase the mandatory renewable energy target as the key reason for halting work on the projects.

At the same time, Senator Campbell blocked another wind farm project, the multimillion-dollar Bald Hills venture in Wangaratta, Victoria, because he believed the wind turbines could kill one orange-bellied parrot every few years.

Other companies have shifted their investment projects offshore, citing a lack of government support for the renewable energy industry.

But tomorrow Roaring 40s will announce that Senator Campbell will attend the opening of the Chinese wind farm project.

His attendance offshore to laud projects he has helped block in Australia has the Opposition jumping mad.

"For Australia's renewable energy industry, Senator Campbell's trip to China adds insult to injury," Labor environment spokesman Anthony Albanese said.

"It is rank hypocrisy for Senator Campbell to celebrate investment and jobs in China after his damaging actions in Australia against the renewable energy industry.

"Government policies have lost hundreds of jobs and stalled the development of the renewable energy industry in Australia.

"Renewable energy companies are investing in China because China has a renewable energy target of 15 per cent, compared to Australia's pathetic 2 per cent target."

Leading renewable energy company Pacific Hydro recently announced it might scrap plans for wind farms in Portland, Ararat and Ballan in Victoria.

Mr Albanese said the Vestas nacelle wind turbine assembly plant in northern Tasmania had also announced it would be closing, resulting in the loss of 100 jobs.

He also pointed to comments by Australia's fourth-richest man, Zhengrong Shi, who made his wealth from developing solar energy technology in China. Mr Shi said recently that if Australia had a similar incentive program to China's, he would have set up a local manufacturing plant.
Source: The Sun-Herald

The excuses have dried up — we must sign the Kyoto pact

2006-10-15T09:54:00.000+10:00

SMH

October 15, 2006

John Howard has little choice but to review his sceptical outlook as the harsh reality of global warming makes itself clear.

FINALLY, it seems that not only is the warming planet thawing the great polar ice caps, but it is also melting Prime Minister John Howard's reluctance to accept the reality of global warming. With Australia in the grip of the worst drought on record, and scorching October weather leaving many voters feeling suffocated even before summer, the PM may have little choice but to start shifting to the left on environment policy before the ground shifts beneath him. At the annual federal conference of the Nationals in Canberra yesterday, the conversation rarely strayed from drought and climate change. And what are we going to do about it, many conference delegates asked.

For years, Mr Howard has been a sceptic on the effects of climate change. A few months ago he told the ABC's Four Corners program that while he accepted global warming's broad theory, "I am sceptical about a lot of the more gloomy predictions". Yet those gloomy predictions are already starting to arrive, most visibly in the form of the drought crippling the farm sector along the south-eastern seaboard. Less rainfall in the south, more rainfall in the north has long been one of the key predictions of the effects of global warming for Australia. And guess what? This is exactly what is happening. For the farmers struggling to make ends meet, we would contend this is what might be called a "pretty gloomy outcome". But does the PM doubt the rainfall figures? Perhaps Mr Howard, who rarely goes a day without hopping into his jet aircraft, should spend more time looking out the window at the effects of the paucity of rain on the ground below. Or as former US vice-president Al Gore pointed out on his recent visit to Australia, forecasters "predicted more category 5 cyclones. You had two of them this year … and a category 4 as well. I think it's the challenge of our lifetimes, and our lifetimes represent the period when the human species will make fateful decisions that will determine the future of human civilisation." Mr Howard could also do worse than listen to his own parliamentary secretary with responsibility for water, Malcolm Turnbull, who said in a speech to the Australian National University last week that: "Climate change is not a theory but a fact, as we see particularly starkly in Australia." And as the drought worsens, the weather conditions become ever drier, and the heat from the hundreds of bushfires blazing around the country grows more intense, Mr Howard will, in the lead-up to next October's election, begin to look ever more isolated if he continues to hold the line against decisive action on climate change.

Whatever other policy fixes Mr Howard is now contemplating as he looks to shore up his electoral prospects, he must move Australia into line with the rest of the developed world and sign the Kyoto Protocol. Mr Howard says nothing will be gained by this — nonsense. Already he admits Australia will not meet the second round of reduced greenhouse gas emission targets set for the nation under Kyoto, yet a few years ago he was boasting that we were on track to meet those same targets. Perhaps we would have tried harder had we been a signatory? And if Australia signs, that puts more pressure on the US to sign, which will, in turn, mean still-developing industrial powerhouses such as China will feel pressure to sign up.

Melting snows are last lifeblood

2006-10-14T18:20:00.001+10:00

The Australian

Selina Mitchell
October 14, 2006

WATER flows transferred from Snowy Mountains rivers after melted snows are keeping the Murray-Darling river system alive - but the predicted long hot summer could jeopardise even that last-resort lifeline.

According to the latest report from the Murray-Darling Basin Commission, water in the three major reservoirs is rapidly decreasing as the hot, dry weather continues.

Allocations to irrigators who draw water from the river system - which stretches from Queensland, through NSW and Victoria to South Australia - have already been slashed and some farmers will receive no water this year.

A reduction in crops generated in the basin - Australia's food basket - could dramatically affect the national economy.

Total water capacity in the basin sits at 34 per cent at the beginning of the irrigation season, during which irrigators will use billions of litres from the basin for crops such as rice, citrus fruits and cotton.

Unseasonably warm and dry conditions continued along the Murray River system over the past week, with virtually no rain across the entire basin.

Hume Reservoir is at 14per cent capacity, Menindee Lakes 13per cent, Dartmouth Reservoir 50per cent capacity, and Lake Victoria (which has by far the smallest storage capacity) is at 80per cent.

There has been little water for important wetlands such as Hattah Lakes, which are stressed due to the extended drought, the report says.

Commission chief executive Wendy Craik warned that if there was no rain, the basin's water storages would be bone dry by May next year.

"Then we will have to rely on the Snowy releases, which may also be lowered due to drought, and any rainfall into the catchment."

Some NSW towns in the basin, such as Byrock, are already relying on water carting.

Other towns' supplies - including those of Ivanhoe, Bourke, Wilcannia, Broken Hill and Cobar - are being closely monitored by the state Government.

Ms Craik said even Adelaide's water supply could be threatened as the city is located near the end of the Murray River.

Victorian towns are also facing shortages but insiders said the situation in the state's Murray region was not as dire because the resource had been carefully managed.

Liberal senator and NSW farmer Bill Heffernan said Australia was headed for its worst drought. "What we need is a proper audit and then to ration the water to the point of worst-case scenario," he said.

"That may well mean everyone suffers, including the environment. The basin has 4.2 per cent of the runoff and 70 per cent of the farming activity. We need to look to the water resources of the north to help us out."

Senator Heffernan told the ABC yesterday there had been a complete failure of crops in his district in southern NSW.

"The Bureau of Meteorology and the Murray-Darling Basin confirm that we are entering into new territory in terms of water deficiency and certainly dry weather," he said.

Almost half of the water that will be used for irrigation in the Murray-Darling Basin this summer will come from the Snowy River scheme.

This year the Snowy will provide 2088GL of water to the Murray and Murrumbidgee river systems.

Across the basin, only 5630GL is available on paper for irrigation - and the reality is expected to fall short of that figure.

The Murray-Darling Basin is Australia's most important agricultural region, generating a third of the nation's gross value of agriculture production.

2006-10-14T18:16:00.001+10:00

Editorial: Drought shows political failure
October 14, 2006

The states are to blame for water problems, not nature

JUSTIFIED concern about the severity of the drought now facing Australia should not be allowed to obscure the abject failure of governments around the nation to secure adequate supplies of an essential resource. The failure is a lack of foresight rooted in political pork-barrelling to rural irrigators and greed at the expense of city water users. The result has been environmental degradation requiring billions of dollars to address, a crisis in agriculture during periods of low rainfall and the absurd situation of water rationing in a country at the peak of its prosperity. The problem for urban consumers has arisen because water has been traded through state monopolies that, when faced with a squeeze of their own making, have simply turned off the tap.

As reported in The Australian yesterday, the first national audit of water resources conducted by the National Water Commission has found the states continued to fail in water management. And the blame-shifting continued at yesterday's inaugural meeting of the Council for the Australian Federation, where yet another promise was made for a national focus on water. But there has been little progress on the long-promised national water market and the most pressing task: the buyback of water rights that have been over-allocated for decades by state governments keen to curry political support. Such a buyback has been identified as the most sensible - and cheapest - way to save rivers in the Murray-Darling system. The drought has made the task urgent but there is a reluctance for political and economic reasons. Buying back only water saved through covering open channels, and introducing drip irrigation and better water management has proved too slow and not enough. But new technology must be adopted. Among the predictions in The Australian's groundbreaking 2026 series starting next Saturday is that current irrigation methods will have disappeared in 20 years' time. Without these advances, it is hard to see how we can continue to justify growing water-hungry crops such as cotton and rice.

None of this addresses the issue of long-term underfunding in urban water resources. By 2026, water consumption in Brisbane will have increased more than 60 per cent. In Sydney, it will be up 35 per cent, with a similar figure in Melbourne. As the present restrictions demonstrate, water authorities have been negligent in planning for the future, both in terms of storage and interstate co-operation. Federal Parliamentary Secretary for Water Malcolm Turnbull has clearly outlined how greed has sponsored the short-term planning. It has done so because delivering "old" water from existing dams is very cheap, but delivering "new" water from new infrastructure is very high. This means that when government-owned water utilities have been faced with an excess of demand over supply they have protected cash flow and dividends by introducing water restrictions. The drought has brought the house of cards tumbling down, however, because restrictions are causing political pain. It is a classic tale of how state monopolies fail consumers. In the absence of market forces and competition, governments have treated water as a cash cow and run their businesses into the ground. The drought has forced a reappraisal that must ultimately bring proper price signals to the water market. This will both deal with uneconomic farm practices and stop the absurd situation whereby elderly residents are forced to water their garden using a bucket.

The states are to blame for water problems, not nature

2006-10-14T18:12:00.000+10:00

The Australian

Editorial: Drought shows political failure
October 14, 2006

JUSTIFIED concern about the severity of the drought now facing Australia should not be allowed to obscure the abject failure of governments around the nation to secure adequate supplies of an essential resource. The failure is a lack of foresight rooted in political pork-barrelling to rural irrigators and greed at the expense of city water users. The result has been environmental degradation requiring billions of dollars to address, a crisis in agriculture during periods of low rainfall and the absurd situation of water rationing in a country at the peak of its prosperity. The problem for urban consumers has arisen because water has been traded through state monopolies that, when faced with a squeeze of their own making, have simply turned off the tap.

As reported in The Australian yesterday, the first national audit of water resources conducted by the National Water Commission has found the states continued to fail in water management. And the blame-shifting continued at yesterday's inaugural meeting of the Council for the Australian Federation, where yet another promise was made for a national focus on water. But there has been little progress on the long-promised national water market and the most pressing task: the buyback of water rights that have been over-allocated for decades by state governments keen to curry political support. Such a buyback has been identified as the most sensible - and cheapest - way to save rivers in the Murray-Darling system. The drought has made the task urgent but there is a reluctance for political and economic reasons. Buying back only water saved through covering open channels, and introducing drip irrigation and better water management has proved too slow and not enough. But new technology must be adopted. Among the predictions in The Australian's groundbreaking 2026 series starting next Saturday is that current irrigation methods will have disappeared in 20 years' time. Without these advances, it is hard to see how we can continue to justify growing water-hungry crops such as cotton and rice.

None of this addresses the issue of long-term underfunding in urban water resources. By 2026, water consumption in Brisbane will have increased more than 60 per cent. In Sydney, it will be up 35 per cent, with a similar figure in Melbourne. As the present restrictions demonstrate, water authorities have been negligent in planning for the future, both in terms of storage and interstate co-operation. Federal Parliamentary Secretary for Water Malcolm Turnbull has clearly outlined how greed has sponsored the short-term planning. It has done so because delivering "old" water from existing dams is very cheap, but delivering "new" water from new infrastructure is very high. This means that when government-owned water utilities have been faced with an excess of demand over supply they have protected cash flow and dividends by introducing water restrictions. The drought has brought the house of cards tumbling down, however, because restrictions are causing political pain. It is a classic tale of how state monopolies fail consumers. In the absence of market forces and competition, governments have treated water as a cash cow and run their businesses into the ground. The drought has forced a reappraisal that must ultimately bring proper price signals to the water market. This will both deal with uneconomic farm practices and stop the absurd situation whereby elderly residents are forced to water their garden using a bucket.

Push to take water from the bush for cities

2006-10-14T18:09:00.001+10:00

Tlhe Australian

Rick Wallace and Matthew Warren
October 14, 2006
THE states have condemned the federal Government for stalling key water projects as they face growing pressure to buy water from farmers to top up city supplies.

Amid rising tensions over what has been labelled one of the worst droughts in the nation's history, state leaders lashed out at suggestions in the commonwealth's first national water audit that they had "failed" in key areas of water reform.

Queensland Premier Peter Beattie accused the Howard Government of "political bastardry", saying it had disributed only "piddly amounts" of cash for water reform and had leaked the audit findings to The Australian in a bid to embarrass the premiers ahead of a meeting of Labor leaders yesterday.

But the states face a new pressure point after Australia's foremost water expert, Peter Cullen, told The Weekend Australian it was inevitable irrigators would have to give up water to supply cities as climate change reduced stream flows in urban catchments.

"There will be trade of water from rural users to urban users," Professor Cullen said. "I mean, rural people are using 75 per cent of the water we take out of our rivers across Australia, urbans are using 10 or 12 per cent.

"If urbans take an extra 1 or 2 per cent, I think that won't have a huge impact on the countryside but it's probably going to be necessary to sustain some of our cities."

His comments come amid tough new water restrictions in Adelaide and Brisbane and the prospect of a ban on watering of lawns in Melbourne.

Professor Cullen, a key architect of federal and Victorian water policy, said Victoria's Bracks Government would have to rethink its ban on buying water from irrigators, such as citrus fruit and rice growers, to supplement Melbourne's supply.

"The (Bracks) Government have signed the National Water Initiative, which does have as one of its principles that there will be that free trading between agricultural users and urban users," he said.

"The urban pressures are going to continue to be strong and governments aren't going to let a city run out of water. So you have got two options - you can buy it or you can take it and I think the farmers would prefer it was bought."

But state leaders speaking at a meeting of premiers in Melbourne yesterday - with the exception of West Australian leader Alan Carpenter - declined to commit to buying additional water from irrigators for their capitals.

"That's certainly not our plan," Victorian Premier Steve Bracks said. "I agree with NSW and the other states on this matter, as we look around the metropolitan area there is water from stormwater, from recycling, from treatment plants, which can be reused and replace drinking water that can be freed up for our growing populations."

So far, NSW and Victoria are pursuing policies of quelling demand through restrictions and advertising campaigns to reduce water use, as well as investing in recycling.

Queensland has announced plans to build two major dams to create a water grid to supply its southeast.

John Howard yesterday questioned NSW's opposition to new dams. "I mean, I grew up in Sydney and I've got to say the failure to build dams in NSW over the last 10 or 20 years has been scandalous," he said.

Western Australia is buying water freed up by transforming an open-ditch irrigation scheme to help supply Perth, as well as building a desalination plant.

Professor Cullen, who is a commissioner of the National Water Commission and the chairman of the Victorian Water Trust Advisory Council, said water entitlements had been a "huge free kick" for farmers and there was no reason they should be prevented from selling them.

"There are other people who want access to that water who might be prepared to pay more for it and if you can get more money for selling your water than splashing it on grass to grow hay then what's wrong with a farmer selling his water?" he said.

"The whole idea of giving farmers these rights was allowing water to move to higher-value uses. Why should urban people be any different in their needs to a vegetable crop?"

Speaking at the inaugural Council for Australian Federation meeting in Melbourne yesterday, the premiers dismissed claims they were failing on water, saying the commonwealth was holding up reform by delaying approval of state water recycling projects submitted to the $2billion National Water Initiative.

Mr Bracks said the states had met demands to submit large projects for consideration but no funding had been approved.

"At the last COAG (Council of Australian Governments) meeting we actually raised the need for speedier action on the National Water Initiative," he said.

"We said we should submit one big project for each state and the Prime Minister, to his credit, picked it up. We agreed to get them in, we've got them in and we are waiting for funding."

Mr Beattie blamed the commonwealth for playing politics.

"In that fund there is over $2billion of commonwealth money. All we have had all so far are piddly amounts."

And South Australian Premier Mike Rann said: "All of us have put in submissions for the funding of major projects under the National Water Initiative and obviously what we want to see is a speeding up of that process."

Mr Howard said yesterday his preference was still to co-operate with the states rather than take over control of water reform.

Lightbulb giveaway is switched off

2006-10-14T17:56:00.000+10:00

SMH

Matthew Warren, Environment writer
October 14, 2006

A SCHEME to cut greenhouse gases by giving away millions of low-energy lightbulbs and shower heads has been shut down after households installed less than half of the products.

The independent regulator overseeing the scheme, which earned 11 companies about $20million in profits since its introduction in 2003, became concerned in August when the rate at which the low-energy appliances were being given away started to approach the number of possible fittings in NSW.

More than a million triple-A-rated shower heads and about 10million low-energy lightbulbs have been provided free to NSW households in a novel, low-cost scheme to cut greenhouse gas emissions as part of the state's Greenhouse Gas Abatement Scheme.

In a Newspoll survey of NSW households commissioned by the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal, it was discovered that about 46 per cent had received at least one free light and shower-head pack, but less than half reported installing either device.

The packs were actively distributed by about 11 companies who received greenhouse abatement certificates that could then be sold to energy retailers who were required to offset their emissions as part of the scheme.

A typical pack containing five low-energy lightbulbs and a shower head was worth about $45 in certificates, while the material cost of providing the bulbs and shower head was about $20, making it profitable for energy retailers and other companies involved in the scheme to distribute as many as possible.

These packs were actively promoted across NSW - the scheme is being considered elsewhere in Australia - with each distributor required to keep a register of those receiving the packs.

However, no cross-referencing or tracking of registered participants allowed households to sign up for multiple packs with different providers, with anecdotal evidence suggesting a number of householders had signed up for multiple packs and were stockpiling the free lightglobes.

Easy Being Green chief executive Paul Gilding said his company gave away about 2.5 million bulbs over the life of the scheme but supported the decision by IPART to close the system down.

"When it showed signs of going out of control, they did the absolutely right thing in stopping it," he said. "The No1 objective must be carbon abatement and the reason they had to stop it was because there was a real danger that there wouldn't be any carbon abatement."

Mr Gilding said the scheme required tighter data management to ensure only one pack went to each household and greater audits to ensure that households actually installed the low-energy devices provided.

About 15 per cent of households openly admitted in the Newspoll survey to receiving more than one pack. The greenhouse gas savings come from the lower energy use over the life of the lightbulbs compared with the conventional bulbs that they were designed to replace and the greater energy efficiencies derived from more efficient showerheads.

Despite the intervention of IPART, NSW Energy Minister Joe Tripodi said the promotions had been a great success by increasing the community's awareness of greenhouse issues.

Politicians scramble to act on drought

2006-10-14T08:21:00.000+10:00

SMH

Stephanie Peatling and Jonathan Pearlman
October 14, 2006

DROUGHT aid for desperate farmers will be considered by federal and state cabinets next week as governments try to ease hardship and allay concern about the crisis in the bush.

In Canberra, Government MPs will consider whether to relax the criteria for exceptional-circumstances payments, and NSW MPs will also consider an assistance package.

State and territory leaders yesterday made an unprecedented intervention over the drought and rising interest rates, advising the Reserve Bank Governor, Glenn Stevens, that another rate rise would have a severe impact.

The leaders, who gathered at the inaugural meeting of the Council for the Australian Federation in Melbourne, took their first joint action in a letter to Mr Stevens. "The council agreed to call upon the Reserve Bank to take into account the severe impact of the drought on economic growth and recognise that any interest rate rise will have a devastating impact on farmers, rural and regional communities," they said.

The NSW Opposition Leader, Peter Debnam, said the Government should declare a state of emergency across the state.

"The water crisis is not just in rural and regional NSW; it's in metropolitan areas too, especially on the Central Coast," he said.

The Prime Minister, John Howard, said farmers would not be left destitute as a result of the harsh conditions. "It is a very, very severe drought and it will be consuming a lot of my attention - it already is - and we'll be making certain that the assistance measures remain very generous," he said yesterday.

Cabinet will also discuss whether some areas should be declared officially in drought so that farmers can receive emergency relief payments.

The Greens leader, Bob Brown, said the drought had been "Howard enhanced" due to the failure to adequately address climate change.

Mr Howard said he did not think the severity of the drought warranted the Government changing its position on the Kyoto Protocol on climate change.

The Opposition's agriculture spokesman, Gavan O'Connor, urged the Government to change its drought policy. "[It] must be tailored to the conditions now being faced by farmers… the like of which many have never seen before," he said.

In NSW, the Iemma Government warned that the drought was nearing diabolical levels.

The Primary Industries Minister, Ian Macdonald, said farmers had been rushing to sell livestock and the drought would lift meat, poultry, milk, flour and egg prices.

"We will have a situation where all food prices will rise … significantly, cutting into household budgets," Mr Macdonald said.

"For the first time in many generations we have a drought that's virtually across the southern half of the continent.

"If we don't get rain by March or April, the water supply problems will be diabolical," he said.

Climate change triggers war, warns expert

2006-10-14T08:17:00.000+10:00

The Age

By Catherine Best in Melbourne
October 13, 2006

CLIMATE change was one of the biggest menaces facing humankind and threatened to breed terrorism, war and the collapse of civilisation, a global health expert said today.

Dr Colin Butler of Deakin University painted a grim picture of the catastrophic consequence of global warming as communities worldwide competed for scarce resources.

Dr Butler, a senior research fellow in global health, said inequality over access to resources, such
as water and food, bred desperation and resentment, potentially sparking terrorism and war.

"Over the next century ... I see this (climate change) as an enormous threat and I agree ... that this is one of the biggest threats that we could face,'' Dr Butler said.

"People talk about it being bigger than terrorism but I think it interacts with terrorism and can stimulate conflict and potentially the collapse of civilisation.

"I know it does sound a bit alarmist but ... I think that you can analyse global terrorism, in part, as a reaction to global inequality.''

Dr Butler was a presenter at a climate change conference hosted by the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne today.

He spoke about the impacts of global warming on human health and said that while the physiological effects of drought, famine, heat and cyclones were more tangible, the broader social consequences could be catastrophic.

Already the effects of global warming were being felt in the spread of malaria, and events such as the European heatwave of 2003 which killed between 30,0000 and 50,000 people in France and Italy, Dr Butler said.

But, in the event of a massive drought, where food and water became scarce, desperation could breed resentment.

"What's to stop someone who's desperate, who sees the world as so unfair (becoming a terrorist)?'' Dr Butler asked.

In Australia, climate change is expected to result in more than 2000 heat-related deaths a year by 2100, when the temperature is predicted to soar by up to 5.8 degrees.

The upside, Dr Butler said, was that there was more chance of instigating change to combat global warming when people start feeling its effects.

"Not too many people read the literature or necessarily can visualise what's happening to a polar bear in Alaska but if you start to see that it has a bigger impact; if you start to see it in your own family ... I think that will really motivate people,'' Dr Butler said.

He also fired a shot at the Catholic Church - who hosted the conference - saying their "pro-natalism'' approach to population control was no longer appropriate.

When the Rivers Run Dry:

2006-10-14T08:14:00.000+10:00

What Happens when Our Water Runs Out by Fred Pearce

BOOK: WHEN RIVERS RUN DRY

Introduction
Water Demand
Startling Statistics
Further Information

Introduction
Fred Pearce is a respected freelance writer on environmental, development and demographic issues. In his latest book he has spent five years examining the water situation world wide.

After a dry winter the SE is already being threatened with water restrictions. In the UK a survey in 2004 indicated that seven new reservoirs were planned and planners were reviewing plans for a national grid.

Yet 30 years ago the public sector predecessors of Thames Water concluded that repairing leaking mains and fitting new valves to toilet cisterns would be cheaper and as effective as building a new reservoir. We lose between 20% and 30% of water before it reaches the customer through leaking mains, but water engineers are fixated on large schemes rather than controlling the demand side or managing water more effectively.

Water Demand
The largest demand on water is for irrigation; the UK is uses a relatively modest amount of water for agriculture, but with climate change and drier winters this is likely to change.

Worldwide demand for water has increased; the green revolution of high yielding varieties are only green when land use is considered, they are generally worse than the crops they replace, “They produce less crop per drop”.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation say that at least a third of the world’s agricultural land “water rather than land is the binding constraint”.

Startling Statistics
Pearce gives some startling statistics: to grow a kilo of rice takes between 200 and 500 litres of water; to fill a kilo jar of coffee requires 20,000 litres, while a litre of cow’s milk requires 4,000 litres for fodder.

With the Aral Sea an ecological disaster and major rivers worldwide dry for long periods or in some cases where water has been diverted, permanently Pearce uses the phrase a “new water ethic” bases on sustainability, ecology and sharing.

Eden Books February 2006. ISBN 1903919576 List price £18.99

Hotter means drier

2006-10-14T07:11:00.000+10:00

The Age

George Monbiot
October 14, 2006

As the planet grows warmer, fresh water will become increasingly scarce, writes George Monbiot.

IT LOOKS dull, almost impenetrable in places. But if its findings are verified, it could turn out to be the most important scientific report published so far this year. In this month's edition of the Journal of Hydrometeorology is a paper written by scientists at the UK Meteorological Office, which predicts future patterns of rainfall and evaporation.

Those who dispute that climate change is taking place like to point out that the predicted effects of global warming rely on computer models, rather than "observable facts". That's the problem with the future — you can't observe it. But to have any hope of working out what might happen, you need a framework of understanding. It's either this or the uninformed guesswork that some seem to prefer.

The models can be tested by means of what climate scientists call backcasting — seeing whether or not they would have predicted changes that have already taken place. The global climate model used by the Met Office still needs to be refined. While it tracks past temperature changes pretty closely, it does not accurately backcast the drought patterns in every region.

But it correctly reproduces the total global water trends over the past 50 years. When the same model is used to forecast the pattern over the 21st century, it uncovers "a net overall global drying trend" if greenhouse gas emissions are moderate or high. "On a global basis, drought events are slightly more frequent and of much longer duration by the second half of the 21st century relative to the present day." In these dry, stodgy phrases, we find an account of almost unimaginable future misery.

Many parts of the world, for reasons that have little to do with climate change, are already beginning to lose their water. In When the Rivers Run Dry, Fred Pearce, who is New Scientist magazine's environment consultant, travels around the world trying to assess the state of our water resources. He finds that we survive today as a result of borrowing from the future.

The great famines predicted for the 1970s were averted by new varieties of rice, wheat and maize, whose development was known as the "green revolution". They produce tremendous yields, but require plenty of water. This has been provided by irrigation, much of which uses underground reserves. Unfortunately, many of them are being exploited much faster than they are being replenished. In India, for example, 250 cubic kilometres (a cubic kilometre is a billion cubic metres or a trillion litres) are extracted for irrigation every year, of which about 150 are replaced by the rain. "Two hundred million people (are) facing a waterless future. The groundwater boom is turning to bust and, for some, the green revolution is over."

In China, 100 million people live on crops grown with underground water that is not being refilled: water tables are falling fast all over the north China plain. Many more rely on the Huang He (the Yellow River), which already appears to be drying up as a result of abstraction and, possibly, climate change. About 90 per cent of the crops in Pakistan are watered by irrigation from the Indus. Almost all the river's water is already diverted into the fields — it often fails now to reach the sea. The Ogallala aquifer that lies under the western and south-western United States, and which has fed much of the world, has fallen by 30 metres in many places. It now produces half as much water as it did in the 1970s.

All this was known before the new paper was published. While climate scientists have been predicting for some time that the wet parts of the world are likely to become wetter and the dry parts drier, they had assumed that overall rainfall would rise, as higher temperatures increase evaporation. At the same time — and for the same reason — soils could become drier. It was unclear what the net effects would be. But the new paper's "drought index" covers both rainfall and evaporation: overall, the world becomes

drier.

Even this account — of rising demand and falling supply — does not tell the whole grim story. Roughly half the world's population lives within 60 kilometres of a coast. Eight of the 10 largest cities on earth have been built beside the sea. Many of them rely on underground lenses of fresh water, effectively floating, within the porous rocks, on salt water which has soaked into the land from the sea. As the fresh water is sucked out, the salt water rises and can start to contaminate the aquifer. This is already happening in hundreds of places. The worst case is the Gaza Strip, which relies entirely on underground water that is now almost undrinkable. As the sea level rises as a result of climate change, salt pollution in coastal regions is likely to accelerate. As these two effects of climate change — global drying and rising salt pollution — run up against the growing demand for water, and as irrigation systems run dry or become contaminated, the possibility arises of a permanent global food deficit. Even with a net food surplus, 800 million people are malnourished. Nothing I could write would begin to describe what a world in deficit — carrying 9 billion people — would look like.

There are four possible means of adapting to this crisis. One is to abandon regions that are drying up and shift production to the wettest parts of the world — the Amazon and Congo basins, for example. But as these are generally the most forested places, this will lead to a great acceleration of climate change, and of the global drying it's likely to cause, as the carbon in the trees is turned to carbon dioxide. Another is to invest in desalination plants. But even the new desalination technologies produce expensive water, and they use a great deal of energy. Again this means more global warming.

Another is to shift water, on a massive scale, to the drying lands. But vast hydro-engineering projects have seldom succeeded in helping the poor. Giant dams and canals — like the Narmada system in India, the Three Gorges in China and Colonel Gaddafi's "Great Man-Made River" — are constructed at stupendous cost.

Then, when no further glory can be extracted by the government officials and companies who built them, the fiddly work of ensuring the water reaches the poor is forgotten, and the money is wasted. As Fred Pearce shows, perhaps the best method, which in the past has kept cities alive even in the Negev desert, is the small-scale capture of rainwater in ponds and tanks.

But to stand a high chance of averting this catastrophe, we must ensure that the drying doesn't happen. The predictions in the new paper refer to global warming in the middle or at the high end of the expected range. Beneath that point — 2 degrees of warming or so — a great global drying is less likely to occur. As the figures I've published show, to keep the rise in temperature below this level requires a global cut in carbon emissions of 60 per cent by 2030 — which means a 90 per cent reduction in rich nations. It sounds ridiculous. But then you consider the alternative.

George Monbiot's book Heat: How to Stop the Planet Burning is published by Penguin.

The Independent

2006-10-14T06:54:00.001+10:00

Global warming bill could reach trillions

October 13 2006 at 03:52PM

By Jeremy Lovell

London - Failing to fight global warming now will cost trillions of dollars by the end of the century even without counting biodiversity loss or unpredictable events like the Gulf Stream shutting down, a study said on Friday.

But acting now will avoid some of the massive damage and cost relatively little, said the study commissioned by Friends of the Earth from the Global Development and Environment Institute of Tufts University in the United States.

"The climate system has enormous momentum, as does the economic system," said co-author Frank Ackerman. "We have to start turning off greenhouse gas emissions now in order to avoid catastrophe in decades to come."

'Arguably the most imposing scientific and technical challenge that humanity has ever faced'
The study said the cost of inaction by governments and individuals could hit £11-trillion a year by 2100, or six to eight percent of global economic output then.

Most scientists now agree average temperatures will rise by between 2°C and 6°C by the end of the century, driven by so-called greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels for power and transport.

Already at 2°C they predict a massive upsurge in species loss and extreme weather events like storms, droughts and floods, threatening millions of lives. Polar icecaps will melt, raising sea levels by several metres.

Beyond that, the world enters into the unknown with the possible shutdown of the life-giving Gulf Stream and possibly catastrophic runaway change due to so-called climate feedback.

By contrast, spending just £1,6-trillion a year now to limit temperature rises to two degrees could avoid annual economic damage of around £6,4-trillion, the Tufts report said.

'It will affect all of us as well as all our children'
The report came the day after oil major Shell said business should see the challenge of climate change as a chance to make billions of pounds due to the demand for new technologies and products to slash carbon emissions.

"For business, tackling climate change is both a necessity and a huge opportunity. We have to step up to the challenge," Shell UK chairman James Smith said.

The British government is in the closing stages of a ground-breaking global study of the economic costs of climate change which is expected to be published within the next two weeks stressing the massive costs of inaction.

During a debate in parliament on Thursday Environment Minister David Miliband said the problem was worse than previously thought and the sternest challenge faced by mankind.

"Preventing the transformation of the earth's atmosphere from greenhouse to unconstrained hothouse represents arguably the most imposing scientific and technical challenge that humanity has ever faced," he said.

"It is local, national and international. It will affect all of us as well as all our children," he added.

Britain is set to meet its Kyoto target of cutting carbon emissions by 12 million tons by 2012, but the government is under pressure from opposition parties and environment groups to introduce laws setting enforceable national reduction targets. - Reuters