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Global Climate Change NUMBER 140 MARCH F CUS 2006 AUSTRALIAN ACADEMY OF TECHNOLOGICAL SCIENCES AND ENGINEERING (ATSE) IN THIS ISSUE: Fellows contribute their views on climate change; on energy options for Australia; on nuclear issues and on GM crops. Global climate change: it’s time to get serious By Barry Jones he year 2005 was the warmest on record, and inant, factor in US foreign and domestic policy goals. fi ve of the hottest years have been in a single de- It explains why Europe signed the Kyoto Protocol and cade. Th ere is convincing evidence that Arctic the US did not. sea-ice is melting at an unprecedented rate, that However, the US would not be a plausible or de- Tpermafrost is thawing in Siberia with the probability of sirable model of resource consumption for India or dramatic increases in methane emissions, that increased China. If it was, we would soon need a new planet. Th e microbial activity in Britain (and presumably the rest American environmental writer John McPhee calcu- of Europe) is releasing carbon stored in the soil. lated that the average American has the daily calorifi c Will this bring the world to a tipping point, beyond intake (food and fuel) of a sperm whale. As he pointed which what Margaret Th atcher called “a massive experi- out, the biota cannot sustain many sperm whales. ment with the system of this planet” is irreversible? Australia – resource-rich Australia – faces an exis- Th e Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change (1997) has tential choice with profound social, economic, environ- now been ratifi ed by 160 nations and came into force in mental and political implications, whether to follow, or February 2005. In the West the only states which have even exceed, the US model of high-level resource use. of Melbourne; the University at Fellow Chancellor’s Vice The Hon BARRY O JONES AO FAA FAHA FASSA FTSE FTSE FASSA FAHA FAA AO JONES O BARRY Hon The refused to sign are the United States, Australia, Mo- About two-thirds of anthropogenic CO2 emissions naco and Liechtenstein. President George Bush senior are accounted for by fi ve nations: the US with 39.5 per once asserted that “the American way of life was non- cent of the total, followed by Japan on 8.7 per cent, the former Australian Minister for Science. Email: [email protected] Science. Minister for Australian former negotiable”: I think he meant that the US, with 4.6 per Russian Federation 7.4 per cent, Germany 6.6 per cent cent of the world’s population, has a God-given right and the UK 4.6 per cent. However, as China, Japan and to consume 40 per cent of the world’s non-renewable Korea increase industrial production, these propor- resources in perpetuity. tions will change rapidly. Access to cheap oil is a dominant, perhaps the dom- u PAGE 2 Honorary Editor: Dr D C Gibson FTSE Statements and opinions presented in this publication are those of the www.atse.org.au authors, and do not necessarily refl ect the views of ATSE. AUSTRALIAN ACADEMY OF TECHNOLOGICAL SCIENCES AND ENGINEERING There is no copyright restriction on material published in ATSE Focus. It Address: Ian McLennan House, 197 Royal Parade, Parkville Vic 3052 may be reproduced provided appropriate acknowledgement is given to Postal Address: PO Box 355, Parkville Vic 3052 the author and the Academy. Telephone: 03 9340 1200 Facsimile: 03 9347 8237 Email: [email protected] ACN 008 520 394 ABN 58 008 520 394 Production: www.coretext.com.au Print Post Publication No 341403/0025 ISSN 1326-8708 1 COVER STORY: CLIMATE CHANGE t FROM PAGE 1 ‘exceptionalism’ which the US pursues elsewhere, such In annual per capita rates of CO2 emissions, Austra- as refusing to sign international conventions on land lia ranks fi rst (27.9 tonnes), followed by Canada (21.9), mines, the death penalty, torture and the International the US (21.1), Ireland (15.4) and the UK (10.8). Criminal Court. Professor George Monbiot (Th e Guardian, 29 Sep- In January 2006 the Asia–Pacifi c Partnership for tember 2005) argues that there are four stages of denial Clean Development and Climate (sic) held its fi rst about climate change: meeting in Sydney. Th e group’s name is odd: surely 1. global warming is a myth; there should have been a word or words aft er ‘Climate’? 2. global warming does exist, but it will provide more Th e partners, code name AP6, are the US, Australia, benefi ts than harm (for example, more crop yields); Japan, China, India and South Korea. 3. global warming may cause more harm than good, but Th e AP6 Communiqué sets no specifi c targets or it will cost too much to tackle; and objectives and essentially privatises the problem of 4. it should have been tackled, but it’s too late now. greenhouse gas emissions: government steps back, fails to provide leadership, goals, penalties or incentives, and invites industry, in a context-free zone, to come up with new ideas. In the past decade the Taskforces are to be set up for eight industrial sec- tors, such as cement, steel, aluminium and coalmining. quality of public debate in But they will be working in isolation. No taskforce will examine energy effi ciency or broad policy options. Australia about climate Th ere are no taskforces for oil or the motor industry. (Does that come as a surprise?) Government funding is change has been woeful. minimal and Australia’s contribution is larger than the – Barry Jones US’s. Tim Flannery writes (New York Review of Books, 23 Th e G8 Summit held at Gleneagles, Scotland, in February 2006): “Both the Bush administration and July 2005 agreed on a Plan of Action: Climate Change, the Howard government … have now admitted that the Clean Energy and Sustainable Development and the US current situation cannot go on. But they want to keep was a signatory. Aft er vigorous negotiation, led by Tony burning coal and at the same time have a stable climate Blair, the US agreed to sign the communiqué stating – an impossible outcome.” He describes AP6 as “omi- that climate change “is happening now” and that hu- nous”. It is certainly cynical. man activity “is contributing to it” and to reaffi rm the In the past decade the quality of public debate in importance of work by the Intergovernmental Panel on Australia about climate change has been woeful, with Climate Change (IPCC). professional industry consultants and lobbyists taking Th e text stated: “While uncertainties remain in our the lead. Environmentalists are on the defensive. Mi- understanding of climate science, we know enough to chael Crichton’s novel State of Fear (2005), heavily pro- act now to put ourselves on a path to slow and, as the moted by the American Enterprise Institute, portrays science justifi es, stop and then reverse the growth of environmentalists as terrorists. greenhouse gases.” It would come as a shock to many politicians, in- Th e document is woefully weak, little more than an dustrialists and consultants in Australia to realise that expression of vague hopes, and concerns about fl oods, Lord Browne of Madingley, Chair and CEO of BP, crop failures, disease and rising sea levels were deleted. and Lord Oxburgh, Chair of Shell, support the Kyoto Failure to refer to Kyoto targets, setting benchmarks Protocol and call for carbon taxes so that industry can or a timeframe for action is disturbing, since reducing make rational decisions about future investment. In greenhouse gas levels is likely to be part of a 40-year cy- the US, Texaco, General Motors, DaimlerChrysler and cle, probably longer. We need to be planning for 2046– Duke Energy are supporters of global action on climate 50, even if major polluters act now. Remember that the change. (ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Insti- fi rst phase of the Kyoto Protocol only runs to 2011. tute and Dick Cheney’s energy task force are strong Nevertheless, Gleneagles is a small fi rst step for the opponents). US towards acknowledging the reality of human con- Meanwhile, CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Re- tribution to climate change. It modifi es the policy of search, a world leader for decades, is scaling down and www.atse.org.au 2 CLIMATE CHANGE contributing to a signifi cant brain drain: it is not one of Suffi ce to say that the evidentiary base for human the organisation’s ‘National Research Flagships’. Public impact on climate change is far higher than it was investment in alternative energy has been stripped. En- for Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. Th e US acted ergy effi ciency is no longer on the agenda, and perhaps strongly on one and repudiated the other. it never was. Renewables have a low priority. The Hon. Barry O. Jones AO FAA FAHA FTSE FASSA is a Fellow Not all the causes of and linkages in climate change of all four Australian Learned Academies. He was a Member are clear and we now speak of the higher incidence of of the House of Representatives 1977–98, Minister for Science 1983–90, a member of the Executive Board of UNESCO ‘extreme weather events’, including warming, cooling, 1991–95, National President of the ALP 1992–2000 and drought, fl oods and hurricanes, rather than ‘global 2005–06 and a Visiting Fellow Commoner at Trinity College, Cambridge 2000–01. He is currently a Vice Chancellor’s Fellow warming’. Th ere are striking parallels with the campaign at the University of Melbourne. against the smoking/lung cancer links.
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