I’ve written here before about the perverse view that Australia’s weak targets actually help in our international negotiations – the view that we need to be what proponents of this argument call “realistic” to bring others on board.
This is a nonsense. Everybody knows that, to get a real global agreement, we will need to bring China, India and the other developing nations on board. And anyone with any sense knows that, for those countries to sign up, we need the rich, high-polluting countries like Australia to sign up to very signficant near-term targets.
Already from Poznan we have South Africa’s delegation telling Australia, among others, to get with the program or scuttle the global deal. The Age’s Adam Morton quoted him yesterday as saying:
“Japan, Russia, Australia and Canada have avoided putting their numbers on the table for too long,” the statement said. “They now need to come forward with credible and ambitious mid-term targets within the 25 per cent to 40 per cent range.”
Mr Van Schalkwyk warned that failure by the four nations to produce an unambiguous commitment to reducing their carbon footprint would make it difficult to persuade developing countries they should curb their emissions.
Rumours are getting stronger that the target she will now release after Poznan will be in the order of 5-15% – a recipe for breaching tipping points and sending us towards climate chaos. Minister Wong, of course, has repeatedly articulated that Australia never signed up to the 25-40% negotiating range in Bali last year. What she hasn’t ever articulated in public is that her delegation is still chairing meetings of the Umbrella Group – the global community’s main spoiler group in the negotiations, featuring Australia, USA, Canada, Japan and Saudi Arabia.
The real question is whether Rudd, Wong and co actually believe their rhetoric. Are they really so naive as to assume that they can pull the wool over the world’s eyes? Or is the rhetoric geared at the Australian people, safe in the assumption that the Australian media won’t challenge them and they will get away with murder.
Because, really, that’s what they are doing – getting away with murder – mass murder.
5 Comments
As the country with the most to lose from global warming Australia should be leading the world in attempting to halt rising co2 levels. The real suckhole of it all is we cant stop anything by changing our own habits, we depend upon the rest of the world to save us, and we are standing in their way?
That is about as smart as a pig seeking its own slaughter.
Why on earth would we do this? It is just plain stupid. USA, Canada and Japan are all countries limited to some extent by cold and might perceive that they have something to gain by warming the world.
They must be having a real good laugh at us because what have we to gain?
Our media is a disgrace and I would urge every one who reads this to STOP buying newspapers and show just 1 friend how to find this discussion page or even the greens blog page. We cant depend upon the pricks who should be leading the way for us, it is up to us, and if we don’t do it our kids will suffer badly or in the words of Garnaut “On a balance of probabilities, the failure of our generation would lead to consequences that would haunt humanity until the end of time.”
I love my kids too much for that and only wish the media of this country would stand up and point the finger at who is to blame for the unholy conspiracy that threatens to destroy any quality of life that our kids might have.
Penny Wong’s only claim to fame has been to show the world that, in Australia, being a woman of Asian parentage, and being gay has been no impediment to her becoming yet another Canberra pen-pusher. My feelings about Peter Garrett aren’t crash-hot either.
Twobob: I don’t wish to be rude, but because of your writing style (?) I’m not quite sure what you’re trying to say. I would have thought most Australians are willing to think ‘Green’. it’s the governments of the world, terrified of losing votes and being supine about big business that are impeding progress. If anyone is waiting for other countries to lead the green push, it will be our government which lives in fear of the effing rural vote and the National Country Party, which is responsible. Why else was the collapse of the Murray-Darling Basin allowed to happen? Giant irrigation companies, with huge tax benefits getting free access to free water, courtesy of State and Federal governments which did the damage.
Certainly it is the media’s job to keep us informed. However, there is possibly a limit to what they can say before legal problems arise. Or having to suggest their readers look up endless copies of Hansard; which readers can’t or wont assimilate. As it’s late I cant give you a huge list of what they’ve achieved. But I can think of two cases where the media was extremely vocal. The obscene amount of politicians which were bought by the owners of the giant Cubbie Station allowing them to dam the vast flooding from the Murray-Darling rivers to grow crops such as rice and cotton. In a country totally unsuited to grow these crops. That they were allowed to reduce these rivers to the foetid, sluggish, polluted beyond hope, streams of today is something for which the governments of Victoria, South Australia and NSW, and the Howard government can never be forgiven.
The next example being that anybody who could read would have been aware of the Gunn company’s ability to buy Tasmania’s premier Paul Lennox and his fellow crooks, in order to obliterate vast tracts of native old-growth forest, before sending these old and priceless trees (casually wiping out the indigenous wildlife) to be reduced to pulp to send to Japan to be turned into lavatory-paper, before being re-imported back to Australia as the afore-mentioned bum-cleaner.
I hope this will point you in the direction as to where you can help to stop these sorts of crimes against the environment. Turn your fury into action. Get in touch with the ACF and heritage groups. Write letters to your member for parliament, your local state member. And so on, pata ti pata ta. I dare you to go for it.
Too right John.
And twobob is right, above – we do rely on the rest of the world to save us, and we can’t do it on our own. Every nation in the world relies on all other nations in the world to save themselves. It’s game theory.
We need to announce strong targets of at least 40% by 2020, stand alongside the positions of progressive governments like Denmark and the Pacific Island states, and stop holding the rest of the world back!
Even though the Australian government knows that a comprehensive international agreement is necessary to save the Great Barrier Reef and Kakadu, they are undermining that from happening, so that they do not have to reduce emissions so much.
The full statement from Marthinus Van Schalkwyk is here.
Peter Wood
climatedilemma.com