The Asia-Pacific Climate Pact B has Kyoto been Bushwacked?
By Alan Tate, former ABC environment reporter, partner Cambiar Sustainability Consultants. (Speech given at Politics in the Pub, Sydney 2/9/05)
Has Kyoto been bushwacked by the Partnership? I don't think so. Rather, the climate is bushwacking Bush. America has this week had a taste of the future. We all have.
The destruction of New Orleans is an historically significant event not only in terms of natural disasters, but also in terms of Americans' attitude to global warming. For years, the world=s climate
scientists have been warning that more severe and more frequent storms and floods will result from the day by day increase in greenhouse gases collecting in the atmosphere. People like me have been repeating their warnings and forecasts in forums like this. But it's been difficult to break through into the public mindset with those warnings. There's something too abstract about the predictions and warnings, something too remote about it all.
What do a few degrees increase in temperatures matter? It may make for nicer winters.
Storms and floods are something we=ve always managed our way through.
There=s been little realisation of the magnitude of what is coming Y what is forecast.
And now it >s upon us.
And this is what it looks like in the richest country in the world.
Thousands of dead, loss of property for hundreds of thousands, lawlessness and misery.
As Ross Gelbspan of The Boston Globe, wrote a couple of days ago:
AThe hurricane that struck Louisiana and Mississippi on Monday was nicknamed Katrina by the National Weather Service. Its real name is global warming.@
Although Katrina began as a relatively small hurricane that bounced off southern Florida, it was supercharged with extraordinary intensity by the high sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico.
Few people in America know the real name of Hurricane Katrina because the coal and oil industries have spent millions of dollars to keep the public in doubt about the issue. Exactly the same has occurred here in Australia.
The reason is simple: To allow the climate to stabilize requires us all to cut the world=s use of coal and oil by 70 percent. That, of course, threatens the survival of one of the largest commercial enterprises in history.
In 1995, public utility hearings in US found that the coal industry had paid more than $1 million to four scientists who were public dissenters on global warming. And ExxonMobil has spent more than $13 million since 1998 on an anti-global warming public relations and lobbying campaign.
There is evidence that ExxonMobil is also funding a handful of extreme right wing skeptics here in Australia.
Against this background, the ignorance of the American and Australian public about global warming stands out as an indictment of our respective news media.
When our press has bothered to cover global warming, it has focused almost exclusively on its political and diplomatic aspects and not on what the warming is doing to agriculture, water supplies, plant and animal life, public health and weather.
For years, the fossil fuel industry has lobbied the news media to accord the same weight to a handful of global warming skeptics that it accords to the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - more than 2,000 scientists from 100 countries reporting to the United Nations.
Today, with the science having become even more robust - and the impacts as visible as the megastorm that has destroyed New Orleans - the press bears a share of the guilt for our self-induced destruction.
My approach to global warming and what needs to be done to stop much worse climatic chaos is non partisan in a political sense. I don=t care which party or politician puts forward solutions. If they are meaningful solutions then I will support them.
So I am prepared to support the potential of the Asia Pacific Climate Partnership if it proves meaningful.
Because there is no doubt that technology is a big part of the solution and Y as much as we know about the Partnership Y it is about technology. What we need most from technology is its deployment B NOW B and further R&D capable of bringing us step-change technology breakthroughs in the near future - and technologies capable of delivering low carbon or zero carbon energy in all its forms.
So if the Partnership turns out to be about the deployment of technology B including coal technology B it will be most valuable.
The problem is, we just don=t know. And we are right to be worried because the historic response from both Bush and Howard has been about voluntary measures without enforceable targets or timetables. And that is not going to save us.
Let me try to summarise the Howard Government=s current position this way:
We won=t join Kyoto but we will meet its emissions target.
We=ll meet the target not by reducing energy or transport emissions B in fact they will skyrocket B we=ll meet it by the one-off action of ending large-scale land clearing.
We have no need for emissions trading or other price signals B at least for a long time.
Our energy and export future remains fundamentally with coal.
We recognise the need B long-term B for deep cuts in global emissions.
And acknowledgement that the climate impacts on Australia from global warming are likely to be severe.
As I say, it=s a confused and contradictory position and one that has B until now B been designed to make it appear as if we are doing stuff. But the fact is that we are doing very little.
The Partnership provides the opportunity for the government to turn that around.
But an effective Asia Pacific Partnership designed to deploy technology, is not an alternative to Kyoto B it=s a potentially valuable adjunct. And I think the central debate now should be about how to construct a bridge between the two approaches.
In this regard, I=ve been most closely involved with the work of the International Climate Change Taskforce - a unique international cross-party, cross-sector collaboration, including leaders from public service, science, business, and civil society in both developed and developing countries. The Taskforce has directly recommended an agreement among large greenhouse emitting nations to share and deploy technology.
But it has also recommended a design for a new B Post-Kyoto global framework capable of involving every nation on Earth in the fight against climate change.
The proposed global framework enables all countries to contribute in an equitable manner by allocating countries to stages that reflect their national circumstances.
Developing countries progress through a three-stage process that initially aligns climate and development objectives and subsequently ensures limits on their greenhouse gas emissions, and they move from stage to stage at a rate reflecting changes in their national circumstances.
For the United States and Australia, integration with the global effort post-2012 would require making commitments to domestic action under binding domestic emissions caps and adopting domestic cap-and-trade schemes for emissions. These schemes would be harmonised with the EU or Kyoto trading system provided there is parity in the level of caps or a system of discounting for credits from schemes with substantially weaker caps. Trading between the systems could begin during or immediately after the Kyoto Protocol=s first commitment period.
These are all examples of the top down approach to changing current government settings.
But on their own they are not enough.
Without community pull B and despite the latest evidence of the destruction that is coming B our government will, I fear, not be inclined to shift from its present comfortable position.
Where is the community now? Australians broadly understand that climate change is important and that renewables are good.
But there is no depth to that understanding. I argue that the community has no understanding of the importance of this stuff Y no real understanding of the magnitude of what is coming and what it is going to mean to each one of us.
There has been a terrible failure to connect the Australian community with climate change and the options we face.
Partly this is a result of the political vacuum that have existed here for a decade.
Partly it=s the result of media that have let down their audiences on this issue.
Partly its been the result of an often distracted NGO community that has not B until recently focused on climate change as its absolute priority.
But the need to mainstream climate change in the community and in Canberra is driving NGOs into strange places now.
One of those things in the making is something I=m involved in B an ambitious grass-roots campaign on climate change designed to kick start widespread community action Y that brings together B for the first time - the leading national and state greens groups and the corporate sector.
The campaign will be like no other ever conducted by the green movement. It will have teams of trained campaigners moving from suburb to suburb, town to town, engaging local community leaders and media on climate change and what it means specifically for residents and businesses within each area. It will combine street stalls and direct mailing with door to door sales of green power and energy efficiency options.
The campaign aims to connect with literally millions of Australians, right across the nation over a three-year period. And, by the way, it will offer whichever renewables retailer or retailers that partner with the green groups a big competitive advantage.
I hope this will prove a great example of how to create a community constituency on the need for progressive action and progressive policies on climate change.
(Throughout the 1990s, Alan Tate was responsible for attending, analysing, and reporting the negotiated passage of the Kyoto Protocol for the national audience of the ABC in his role as National Environment Correspondent. He has attended every Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC since their inception and has a wide range of political, corporate, and NGO contacts within the COP process. He has received a wide range of awards for his environmental reporting, including Australia==s most prestigious journalism award BB the Gold Walkley.
He left journalism in 1998 to help facilitate and advise business on the trend towards corporate sustainability. He was appointed a director of Ecos Corporation and headed its climate change practice. During this period, Alan provided high-level strategic advice to major corporations in the United States and Australia. Alan is now a partner in Cambiar Pty Ltd., a Sydney-based strategy consultancy that works with progressive businesses and Governments on gaining competitive advantage and public support by focusing on sustainability. Cambiar also provides advice and assistance to green NGOs and progressive business organisations.
Alan is the current senior deputy chairman of Environment Business Australia. See: www.environmentbusiness.com.au/directors.htm)