Greenhouse: a scientific, political and moral issue.

• Jurisdiction: Australia
• Author: Lowe, Ian
• Date: 22 March 2005

The atmospheric science community has long been convinced that greenhouse gas emissions are changing the global climate and demand attention. Under the Kyoto Protocol, negotiated under the United Nation's Framework Convention on Climate Change, the developed world as a whole is obliged to reduce emissions to 95 per cent of the 1990 level. Australia has a responsibility to limit its emissions for the 2008-2012 period to 108 per cent of the 1990 figure. Despite the fact that we have very high emission levels per capita, the Australian government obtained this uniquely generous target at Kyoto by threatening to walk away from the convention unless we were given special treatment. We justified this stance by claiming that we were holding out for a realistic target, and struck a moralizing pose by suggesting that other nations were making unachievable promises. Given our public stance at Kyoto, we now look both foolish and irresponsible as our energy-related emissions spiral out of control. Our uniquely generous Kyoto target is to increase our emissions by 8 per cent above the 1990 level by the 2008-2012 period. We are already more than 30 per cent above the 1990 level, and our consumption of electricity and transport fuels is increasing rapidly. It is also our duty as good global citizens to do our share in address the most urgent environmental problem facing the world. At the time of writing, the Howard government was still using creative accounting to claim that we were within reach of our Kyoto target.

Despite frequent claims, there is no convincing evidence that we would suffer economically from endeavouring to meet the Kyoto target. (1) The task has been made more difficult by more than a decade of inaction since the release of the report of the Ecologically Sustainable Development Working Group on Energy Use and the subsequent 1992 National Greenhouse Response Strategy (NGRS). (2) In 1998 the National Greenhouse Advisory Panel (NGAP) recommended a renewed commitment to the NGRS; instead, the government disbanded the NGAP and released a National Greenhouse Strategy which contains laudable sentiments but little in the way of practical measures. The only national policies that advance the Kyoto aim are the modest '2 per cent' target for renewable electricity and the range of measures imposed on the government by the Senate during negotiation of the GST package. However, the Australian Capital Territory and such cities as Brisbane, Adelaide and Melbourne have now set local targets to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Studies overseas conclude that most sensible reduction measures produce new jobs for the fundamental reason that they replace energy-intensive activity with labour-intensive processes.

As a first step, we should be developing a national greenhouse gas reduction strategy to allow us to meet the Kyoto target. Some measures require government spending, some require changes in the signals governments send to the community, while others reduce expenditure that now encourages wasteful emissions. The longer we delay action, the less likely we are to achieve our goal. We now know that the Kyoto target does not go nearly far enough. The Australian Climate Group recommended that we should adopt a target of cutting emissions by 60 per cent by 2050, a goal that has been adopted by the British government. (3)

Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Australia has a higher rate of greenhouse gas emissions per capita than any other country, with the current level about twenty tonnes of carbon dioxide per head. (4) Our total emissions are already well above our target for 2008-2012 and still rising. In the Kyoto negotiations under the Framework Convention on Climate Change, Australia was given a more generous target than any other developed nation. The United States, Canada, Japan and the European Union as a whole are expected to reduce their emissions below the 1990 level by 2012. Norway, Iceland and New Zealand were given more generous targets because these three countries already get more than 85 per cent of their electricity from renewable sources--principally hydro-electricity and geothermal power, with a significant contribution from wind power in the case of Norway. Australia is alone among those countries heavily reliant on coal in having been given a target that allows emissions to be increased by up to 8 per cent above the 1990 level. Further, in what is known around the world as 'the Australian clause', the Kyoto agreement allows land use change to be counted. Any reduction in the rate of land clearing will thus contribute to Australia being regarded as having lowered its emissions. Most observers see the Australian target as being especially generous in the light of our historical performance. While the developed world has reduced its carbon emissions per unit of economic output by about 25 per cent since 1970, largely through the efficiency improvements spurred by the oil crises of the 1970s, Australia's performance had only improved about 4 per cent by the year 2000.5 That means that Australia can make relatively easy improvements in its emissions profile simply by embracing the technological gains that are now accepted in the northern hemisphere OECD nations and have produced their pre-Kyoto emissions reductions.

Some have argued that we need not take steps to meet the Kyoto target because the treaty has not been ratified by the Bush administration, presumably believing that the process might yet collapse as a result of the obstructive attitudes of our government and that of the United States. Our government's stance has consistently been to try to reduce still further our Kyoto obligations by arguing for a widening of all the 'loopholes' in the protocol: emissions trading, Joint Implementation, the Clean Development Mechanism and the contentious area of carbon sinks. The Kyoto Protocol has now been ratified, despite the obstruction of the United States and Australian governments. Despite some claims by Australian observers, the most likely future scenario involves more demanding targets. The Kyoto agreement allows effective stabilization of emissions from the developed world at present levels but the carbon dioxide emissions today are about 2.5 times the level that can be absorbed by natural systems. (6) Achieving the declared goal of the international community--stabilizing the atmosphere at levels that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference to the climate--will require much larger reductions than specified by the Kyoto Protocol. More importantly, a truly global agreement must include developing countries, which are very unlikely to accept any agreement that freezes their material living standards as far below OECD countries as they are now. One possible scenario is a re-enactment of the process for limiting ozone-depleting chemicals. The Montreal Protocol of 1987 was a first step but was recognized as inadequate and subsequently tightened at the Stockholm and London meetings. As Senator Hill told the Australian business community five years ago, future renegotiation of the climate change convention will be unlikely to give Australia the uniquely generous treatment it received in Kyoto. Given the growing anxiety around the world about recent manifestations of climate change, stronger measures are quite likely.

Dimensions of Emissions Growth

A clear driving force is population growth. The national figures show that emissions per head increased by only 2.2 per cent between 1990 and 1997, whereas overall emissions grew by 11 percent. (7) Data for electricity use in south-east Queensland show clearly that population growth is an important factor, but emissions growth there is dominated by lifestyle choices and inefficient technology that are together increasing per capita energy use. It should also be noted that transport emissions are growing significantly faster than the population. A sustainable future will involve stabilizing both the population and emissions per person. At the moment, both those factors are increasing. In terms of energy-related emissions, the two 'big-ticket' items are coal-fired electricity and transport, accounting between them for about 80 per cent of emissions.

Achieving Savings

There are three ways to reduce emissions. We can reduce energy use, improve the efficiency of converting energy into the services people want, and use less carbon-intensive sources of energy. There is relatively little scope for using less energy because fuel energy provides the quality of life that most people now take for granted. One way of looking...