What they said ... `For the next 15 years we are likely to continue to live in a fossil fool's paradise ... by 2012 we will have one of the most environmentally expensive lifestyles in the world, with the world's highest per capita greenhouse emissions' Peter Christoff, a specialist in geography and environmental studies
`If we were to agree to a stringent uniform emission target, the high economic costs could not be cordoned off. Those costs would impact on every sector of the Australian economy and community' The Australian Prime Minister, Mr John Howard
At the climate change conference held at Kyoto, Japan, in December, 1997, and attended by representatives of most of the world's nations, Australia was one of only three industrialised nations allowed to increase its greenhouse gas emissions over 1990 levels by the year 2012. (The two other nations so exempted were Norway and Iceland.)
Australia will be able to have greenhouse gas emissions 8 per cent above 1990 levels by 2012. All other developed nations agreed to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 5.2 per cent from 1990 levels by 2012.
Supporters of our position saw this as a victory for Australia, especially in economic terms. Opponents of our position have claimed we are damaging ourselves and the world environment.
Background
The gases commonly referred to as `greenhouse gases' are predominantly carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane. These gases are thought to play an important role in controlling the atmospheric temperature around the earth.
Their levels in our atmosphere are believed to have increased dramatically since the industrial revolution. They are produced when carbon-based fuels, generally fossil fuels, such as coal and petrol, are burned. Also implicated in the creation of greenhouse gases is land clearing as this reduces the number of trees, which convert carbon dioxide in the atmosphere into oxygen. A major source of methane are grazing animals such as cows. (Australia's sheep and cattle are estimated to account for some 12 per cent of our greenhouse gas emissions.)
CSIRO research suggests that by 2070 the earth's temperature is likely to have risen by between 1 and 3.8 degrees. (Since the last Ice Age, 10,000 years ago, temperatures have increased by 5 degrees.)
The effects of this temperature rise are believed by many to be sea-level rises as the polar ice caps and glaciers melt and the waters of the oceans expand. It has been suggested that sea-levels could rise by between 15cm and 95cm.
It has also been suggested that warmer oceans could lead to more intense cyclones and El Nino-like weather events causing more frequent droughts in Australia and east Asia, and more flooding in western South America.
In 1992 the Rio Earth Summit was held to address this potential problem.
155 nations, including Australia, signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. It came into force in 1994 and committed developed nations to the `aim of returning to their 1990 levels the emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases'.
It has been claimed that only three countries will reach the 1990 target by 2000. (Australia has been estimated to have increased its greenhouse gas emissions by 40 per cent.)
The Kyoto climate change meeting was designed to set legally binding greenhouse reduction targets for industrialised nations.
There were those, such as Britain, the Small Island States and G77 developing nations who believed that targets should be set in common across the industrialised nations.
Among the most rigorous in their proposed targets was the European Union, of which Britain is a member, which wanted a 15 per cent reduction on 1990 levels by 2010.
Australia went into the conference without having spelt out its target but it had made it plain at the South Pacific Forum and at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting that it did not support uniform targets and believed that it would not be able to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 2010 to 1990 levels. The Australian Government ultimately suggested that the best it could achieve was an increase of 18 per cent on 1990 emission levels.
In the event, Australia accepted a proposed increase in greenhouse gas emissions of 8 per cent above 1990 levels by 2012. This would still allow for an increase in industrially produced greenhouse gases of 18 per cent, while, it was claimed, reduced land clearing would ensure that Australia's overall increase was only 8 per cent.
All other developed nations will (except Norway and Iceland) agreed to cut emissions, without consideration of reduced land clearing, reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 5.2 per cent from 1990 levels by 2012.
(The European Union agreed to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 8 per cent below 1990 levels by 2012 and the United States agreed to lower its levels to 7 per cent below those of 1990 by 2012.)
There are a large number of Internet sites that deal with global warming from a wide variety of perspectives. The two documents referred to here can both be found within the United States Environment Protection Agency site. Each deals specifically with the nature of the Kyoto agreement and how it might be implemented within the United States and around the world.
The first is a full report of remarks and answers to questions by the United States Vice President, Al Gore. It is titled Remarks by the Vice President on Kyoto Agreement. It was made the day after the agreement was reached and gives a very positive interpretation of what was achieved.
The second document is titled Kyoto and Beyond. It is a much more neutral and simply informative piece. It explains the operation of the emissions credits system which the United States proposed and had adopted which will allow countries which more than meet their emission targets to sell emission credits to other countries.
This document also makes it plain that the Clinton administration will not submit the Kyoto protocol to the Senate for ratification until key developing nations agree to establish their own emissions targets.
Arguments suggesting Australia's greenhouse gas emissions are appropriate
There are two main arguments offered in support of Australia's greenhouse gas emission targets.
The first centres around the claim that concerns about the extent of global warming and its consequences are exaggerated and alarmist. The second argument maintains that that it would have been both practically impossible and economically ruinous for Australia to have accepted a target such as that proposed by the European Union.
Alan Moran, the director of the Deregulation Unit at the Institute of Public Affairs and the Convenor of the Energy Forum, has argued that `global warming ... is essentially still conjecture.'
According to Mr Moran, and some others, the case for global warming has not been conclusively proven.
Mr Moran notes, `satellite measurements have shown no warming during the past 20 years, the only period for which we have accurate data.'
A similar view has been put by Michael Barnard, writing in the Herald Sun. He quotes Professor John Christy, of the Earth System Science Laboratory, University of Alabama, who is reported to have said, `the rhetoric on global warming has been less than scientific and is based, in many instances, on scientific information which is ten years' old and is known to be largely erroneous.'
According to those who doubt the accuracy of global warming predictions, there is no need to take precipitate action. Those who hold this view include some who support the position taken by the Australian government.
Further, it is argued, there are those who have exaggerated the significance of Australia's contribution to any supposed global warming.
It is claimed that though, on a per capita basis we might appear to have a disproportionately high dependence on fossil fuels and produce a disproportionately high share of the world's greenhouse gases, given the relative size of our economy, the contribution we actually make to greenhouse gas emissions is quite small.
The Australian Prime Minister, Mr John Howard, has noted, `Let us not forget that Australia accounts for only 1.4 per cent of global emissions.'
The second major argument offered if support of Australia's greenhouse gas emission targets is that they are economically vital for this country.
John Howard has claimed that Australia would have been disproportionately harmed by having to abide by the type of target proposed by the European Union.
Mr Howard stressed that Australia was unique in its dependence on greenhouse gas producing industries and products.
Mr Howard has claimed, `Eighty per cent of Australia's exports - petroleum products, basic metals, agriculture and chemicals - are energy and greenhouse-intensive goods.
`We would be penalised for being an efficient producer of energy and emission-intensive goods, most of which we export to other countries that need them for their own industrial growth. The magnitude of the task that Australia would face would be grossly disproportionate to that faced by others.'
According to this line of argument, meeting the targets originally proposed would be far more difficult for Australia than for other developed nations.
Those who criticised the European Union's insistence that their much more rigorous target be imposed on others, have claimed that meeting this target would be much easier for the Europeans.
Alan Moran has claimed, `For the European Union, achieving its targeted 8 per cent reduction in emissions by 2010 is a piece of cake. Europe is shifting its electricity fuel source from coal to gas. It is doing so for perfectly sound reasons unrelated to greenhouse. But, as a consequence, the shift reduces carbon dioxide emissions by one-third.'
It has further been claimed that adhering to a stringent reduction target would have disastrous effects on the Australian economy.
One estimate set the number of jobs that could be lost at 90,000.
Mr Howard has claimed, `even stabilising emissions at the 1990 levels by 2010 would put at risk about $68 billion worth on investment in the energy and mining sector over the next five years and tens of thousands of new jobs for Australians ... The job losses and dislocation of people's lives would be immense. If we were to agree to a stringent uniform emission target, the high economic costs could not be cordoned off. Those costs would impact on every sector of the Australian economy and community.'
Arguments suggesting Australia's greenhouse gas emission targets are not appropriate
There are two levels on which it is argued that Australia's greenhouse gas emission target is inappropriate. On the first level it is claimed that Australia is protecting its economic interests at the expense of much of the rest of the world. On the second level it is claimed that Australia's greenhouse gas emission target is not even in Australia's best interests.
It has been claimed that a failure to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases to at least the level proposed by the European Union will significantly endanger the health of much of the world's population.
This position has been put by the Australian Medical Association (AMA) apparently echoing a report in the British medical journal, The Lancet.
The Lancet, in its 8 November edition, 1997, warned that 8 million deaths could be avoided in the first 20 years of the next century if the European emission targets were meet.
The Lancet suggests that rising global temperatures threatened human lives in many ways. It was suggested that more frequent and intense heatwaves would cause heat stress and an increase in respiratory illnesses. Lives would also be endangered through the direct hazards of more common extreme weather events such as storms, floods and drought.
It was also claimed that human health could be threatened indirectly by the expanding habitat for disease-carrying insects and the threat of famine precipitated by drought.
There is also concern that rising sea levels could be particularly hazardous for small island states such as many of Australia's Pacific neighbours which would find much of their arable land flooded as well as having to face the other dangers already outlined. Some of these island states, it has been claimed, would simply cease to exist.
The Age, in its editorial of September 18, 1997, noted, `There is no better place than the islands of the South Pacific to debate the significance of global warming ... Several [South Pacific] nations ... are only a few metres above sea level. If effective international measures are not taken quickly, these nations fear that they will, literally, go under.'
Looking only at Australia's potential benefit, one of the arguments presented against Australia's greenhouse gas emission target is that it is so low it is not in Australia's long-term interests.
Clive Hamilton, the executive director of the Australia Institute, claims that Australia's target is so low `that we need to do almost nothing to reduce our energy emissions'.
Mr Hamilton explains that greenhouse gas emission targets are set against 1990 levels of greenhouse gas emission. In 1990 Australia emitted 496 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. Twenty-three per cent of this (116 million tonnes) derived from land clearing.
Clive Hamilton claims that by 1995 Australia's emissions from land clearing had already fallen to 78 million tonnes. The Howard Government package, effectively approved at Kyoto, would, according to Mr Hamilton, allow Australia to increase greenhouse gas emissions by 18 per cent over the 1990 and still have at least 88 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent come from land clearing.
Thus, Mr Hamilton argues, Australia will be able to meet its overall target of an 8 per cent increase over 1990 greenhouse gas emissions by increasing emissions from industry and other sources by 18 per cent and at the same time increasing emissions from land clearing by 10 million tonnes over 1995 levels.
Mr Hamilton claims that the current reduction in land clearing is part of a natural change in land use and has not occurred as a means of lowering our greenhouse gas emissions.
It is argued that the level of emissions allowed Australia places us under no pressure to modify either our land clearing practices or dependence on fossil fuels.
Peter Christoff, a specialist in geography and environmental studies, has claimed, `For the next 15 years we are likely to continue to live in a fossil fool's paradise ... by 2012 we will have one of the most environmentally expensive lifestyles in the world, with the world's highest per capita greenhouse emissions.'
Critics of our position have suggested that we will remain dependent on energy sources that later world climate conferences will restrict more and more severely.
The result of this, it has been suggested, is that while other countries develop `clean' alternative technologies and fuel sources Australia will not do so. Ultimately, it is claimed, we will find ourselves unable to produce `cleanly' and so compete in an increasingly climate-conscious world.
A number of critics have also suggested that the supposed damage to Australia's economy which would result from reducing our greenhouse gas emissions has been exaggerated.
Further, there are those who have maintained that in the medium to long term the damage that would be done to Australian agriculture by the impact of global warming and the dislocation brought about by rising sea levels would cause far more economic damage than reducing our dependence on fossil fuels.
Further implications
It appears that the scientific consensus is that global warming will occur and is only likely to be controlled by a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. What will happen with regard to greenhouse gas emissions in the medium to long term is not clear.
Critics of the Kyoto conference have complained not simply about the latitude granted Australia. There are those who consider the conference was fatally flawed from its inception because it aimed only to arrive at an agreement binding all industrialised nations.
Alan Oxley, chairman of the APEC Study Centre based at Monash and the University of NSW has claimed that China, India and the other Asian economies are likely to have greenhouse emissions twice those of the industrial world within the next 40 years.
Thus, some have argued, it is crucial that the process of climate control become a world-wide concern.
Such an aim, however necessary, is likely only to make the process of arriving at binding agreements more difficult.
With regard to Australia, it does seem likely that at the next world climate convention more will be expected of us. It has been argued that a lenient stance was taken with regard to Australia only because securing the agreement of Europe, the United States and Japan to much more stringent targets was considered more important.
At this stage it is impossible to predict how successful Europe, the United States and Japan are likely to be in meeting their emission targets. It appears that the United States will make no move at all toward meeting its targets unless it gets agreement from a number of key non-industrialised nations (who were not involved in Kyoto) to set targets of their own. This may well prove a major stumbling block to the United States taking active part in the Kyoto protocol.
It is to be hoped that technological development will present industry with relatively painless ways of reducing emissions, however, for such hopes to eventuate governments and private industry need to be prepared to invest substantially in research.
Sources The Age
18/9/97 page 18 editorial, `Beggaring our neighbors'
23/9/97 page 15 comment by P P McGuinness, `Stemming rising tide of dire forecasts'
25/9/97 page 17 comment by Kenneth Davidson, `Greenhouse forecasts and hot air'
1/10/98 page 15 comment by Clive Hamilton, `PM's doomsday job scenario is misleading'
7/10/98 page 11 comment by Prime Minister John Howard, `Climate change and a forecast of economic winter'
10/10/98 page 1 news item by Claire Miller, `Business supports gas emission cuts'
10/10/98 page 10 news item by Tim Winkler, `Query on greenhouse job losses'
3/11/97 page 15 comment by Sharon Beder, `The big bucks of business back attack on greens'
29/11/97 page 6 news item by Claire Miller, `AMA warns of climate risks'
29/11/97 page 6 news item by Caroline Milburn, `Jobs at Alcoa depend on Kyoto outcome'
29/11/97 page 21 analysis by Russell Skelton, `The heat's on the US'
13/12/97 page 13 news item by Claire Miller, `Emission target no problem for Australia, says economist'
22/12/97 page 9 comment by Alan Moran, `Right to reject the herd'
22/12/97 page 9 comment by Peter Christoff, `Greenhouse win creates a fossil fool's paradise'
The Australian
3/9/97 page 13 comment by Paul Kelly, `White House vs greenhouse'
29/9/97 page 1 news item by Paul Kelly, `Emission bans put $12bn in jeopardy'
29/9/97 page 4 news item by Stephen Lunn, `Emissions outstrip Rio summit target'
1/10/97 page 12 letters from Australian Democrat Senator Meg Lees and Dr Dennis Matthews, `The economics of greenhouse'
24/10/97 page 5 news item by Cameron Forbes, `US greenhouse plan angers Japan'
30/10/97 page 11 comment by Frank Devine, `Let's follow PM's example and get serious about our actions'
28/10/97 page 2 news item by Stephen Lunn, `Clouds over greenhouse win'
3/11/97 page 15 comment by Simon Longstaff, `Should our sacrifice be greater?'
10/11/97 page 11 comment by Alan Oxley, `Time to clear hot air over gas emissions'
1/12/97 page 4 news item by Nick Nuttall, `Pacific nations prepare to evacuate disappearing islands'
1/12/97 page 4 news item by Robert Garran, `Councils call to set standards'
16/12/97 page 13 comment by Clive Hamilton, `The Kyoto conundrum continued'
The Herald Sun
14/9/97 page 45 comment by Michael Barnard, `Global warming or just hot air?'
19/1/97 page 2 news item by Scott McKenzie, `PM rejects gas fears'
30/9/97 page 11 news item, `Greenhouse gas claims inflated'
30/9/97 page 18 editorial, `Fight the gas ban'
Internet
* It appears that the English Board of Studies may be refining its guidelines on the use of Internet sources for CAT I.
* Currently it is probably preferable for students to restrict their use of Internet sources to Part 2 of CAT I.
* Please consult your teacher for direction on this matter
There are a large number of Internet sites that deal with global warming from a wide variety of perspectives. The two documents referred to here can both be found within the United States Environment Protection Agency site. Each deals specifically with the nature of the Kyoto agreement and how it might be implemented within the United States and around the world.
The first is a full report of remarks and answers to questions by the United States Vice President, Al Gore. It is titled Remarks by the Vice President on Kyoto Agreement. It was made the day after the agreement was reached and gives a very positive interpretation of what was achieved. It can be found at http://www.epa.gov/globalwarming/news/speeches/gore2.html
The second document is titled Kyoto and Beyond. It can be found at http://www.epa.gov/globalwarming/greenhouse/kyoto.html
It is a much more neutral and simply informative piece. It explains the operation of the emissions credits system which the United States proposed and had adopted which will allow countries which more than meet their emission targets to sell emission credits to other countries.
This document also makes it plain that the Clinton administration will not submit the Kyoto protocol to the Senate for ratification until key developing nations agree to establish their own emissions targets.
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