John Murphy (Lowe, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Evidence of the disastrous consequences of unabated carbon dioxide emissions causing global warming has finally become so overwhelming that even the most recalcitrant members of the Howard government have now admitted that there could just be a problem. Unfortunately, the government’s proposed solutions, such as nuclear power or geosequestration, will only reduce emissions by relatively small amounts over an unacceptably long time frame. Under this government’s policies, Australia’s coal-fired power stations will still be spewing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in 2050, by which time the rest of the world will have shut down their coalmines and moved on to the replacement of fossil fuels with renewable energy.

Other governments have already published strategies for rapidly reducing greenhouse gas emissions. In the case of California, for example, the immediate plan is to cut vehicle emissions by 30 per cent by 2016 and total emissions by 25 to 30 per cent by 2020. Under the Warming Solutions Act 2006, signed into law by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a cap and trade system will be established that will make California, with the world’s sixth largest economy, a world leader in the effort to reduce greenhouse gas pollution.

Greenhouse gas reduction strategies that are already under way in California include a 30 per cent improvement in vehicle fuel consumption by 2016, solar panels on one million California-roofs, natural gas usage efficiency improvements, domestic appliance efficiency improvements, zero waste and high recycling programs. According to two independent analysts, these and other measures will reduce emissions to year 2000 levels by 2010, to 1990 levels by 2020 and to 80 per cent below 1990 levels by 2050 and will be implemented at no net cost to the Californian economy while creating 20,000 new jobs and expanding the state’s economy by $US60 billion. So much for the Prime Minister’s claim that reducing greenhouse gas pollution is unaffordable and costs jobs.

The failure of the Bush administration to act against the causes of global warming has led informed commentators to warn that the United States risks becoming a technological backwater as other nations, including Canada, the Europeans, China, Japan, Korea and India, rebuild their energy industries and move away from fossil fuels. Similarly, the Howard government’s slavish following of the blunders of the Bush administration puts Australia at risk of being left with an unsustainable and inefficient fossil fuel economy based on increasingly unsaleable commodities such as coal. The government believes that the coal industry can remain insulated from the tide of change that is beginning to sweep aside the old fossil fuel economy, and it promotes the delusion that the industry will continue to expand in the face of growing international pressure to reduce the use of coal, the largest single source of greenhouse gases.

Australia is the world’s largest exporter of coal, and in 2002 Australian coal exports of over 200 million tonnes earned $13 billion in foreign exchange. At present, the world burns about five billion tonnes of coal per annum, of which Australia’s exports represent about four per cent. Most of the coal that is used around the world is mined near the point of consumption and the coal export trade is only a small fraction of the total output. If the rest of the world follows California’s lead and cuts greenhouse gas emissions to 80 per cent below 1990 levels, then it is evident that the export coal industry is in for a steep decline, if not a large-scale collapse, in the near term.

In his last term, former President Bill Clinton warned that the coal industry was in a ‘sunset phase’; yet despite this warning the industry and, in particular, the Howard government acts as if nothing will change. What policies has this government developed to cope with the inevitable crisis facing the coal industry, the largest single source of Australia’s overseas income? I am sure that—as with the Howard government’s responses to events such as the AWB scandal—there are no preparations, no precautions but just the usual fabrication that no-one actually told the Prime Minister anything.

The UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, speaking at the recent UN climate change conference in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, said—referring to Australia and the United States:

They, the US and Australia, have to be in step with the rest of the industrialised world. They have a responsibility to their citizens and to the rest of the world.

It is evident that neither the Prime Minister nor President George Bush will ever accept this criticism and that the only possibility for change lies with the election of new governments in both countries. They cannot come soon enough. (Time expired)