Dear Martin,
Thanks for your brilliant treatise in the Australian this morning. It is inspiring to see that one with so much responsibility is blessed with such vision.
The rigour with which you swept away ideology and ‘green faith’ with cold hard facts revealed your own unswerving commitment to rational analysis and objectivity. It was a shame that you didn’t mention anything about the costs or impracticality of carbon capture and storage, but perhaps you hadn’t yet seen the new study from Harvard that shows just how expensive CCS is likely to be.
But is great that you are so practical and understand the cold hard reality of CCS.
And I loved it how you subtly revealed your profound humanity through your concern for the most vulnerable communities in developing countries. No doubt your compassions for the poor in Bangladesh will continue to be on display when they are seeking asylum here in Australia as a result of rising sea levels (although perhaps you will no longer be in Government then?).
Thanks Martin, you are an inspiration to us all.
John
8 Comments
I have my doubts about clean coal, but can understand the seductiveness of the idea – if it can be made to work, it will be a relatively cheap and easy way out of the hole we’re in.
I think it’s a bit of a cheap shot at Ferguson to criticise his raising the issues of vulnerable communities. Part of the short sightedness of cc discussion at the moment is the refusal to consider the impacts maintaining our present way of life will have on theirs.
Simply put, most of the cc mitigation argument at present seems to revolve around us making our energy more expensive, which at best means a minor cut to our present lifestyles. It ignores the fact that this is effectively depriving other countries of the right to aspire to our lifestyle (if we cut our energy use but theirs rises, we haven’t solved anything). Mitigation only works if we freeze or backpedal EVERYONE’S present lifestyle, which isn’t a very saleable message to those starving in undeveloped countries.
The only saleable message is that the crisis is so serious that we developed cournties are willing to return to a slightly simpler standard of living, say that most of us were used to as children.
Then we can credibly argue to developing nations that they can’t aspire to our former lifestyles, because we can’t either.
My (admittedly limited and anecdotal) research says that even the most passionate believer in cc refuses to accept that reality. The mindset appears to be that we swap coal for renewables and can continue on as we are.
If cc believers aren’t willing to make major adjustments to their standard of living to save the planet, then you cannot expect any government to impose it on them.
I’m pro refugee, pro migration and have good arguments about its role in reducing world populations over all BUT — if Bangladesh goes down, we’re talking millions of people. Are you seriously suggesting that we take them all? Are you seriously suggesting that a Labor government would refuse to take any? Or is this just another cheap shot?
Zoomster,
Mitigation doesn’t only work if we freeze or backpedal everyone’s lifestyle. It depends what you mean by lifestyle for a start. It is certainly possible to have a similar (or arguably better) quality of life to the average Australia by using far fewer resources and far less energy. Similarly, it is possible to radically improve the living conditions of the world’s poor without going down the route of profligate resource consumption.
It is true that the industrialised world has developed based on cheap energy and resources – often extracted at great social and environmental cost from the developing world. This historical reality bestows a burden of responsibility on developed countries to help poorer countries – what this looks like in practice is a large part of the debate within the Copenhagen negotiations. Suffice to say, developing countries want more than industrialised countries want to give.
In terms of CCS, it won’t be cheap, and it won’t be practical to upscale. In fact, it would have to be one of the most expensive, least practical, least effective and most risky ways of reducing atmospheric emissions that you could possibly dream up. Which is why the coal industry are hardly putting any money into it.
Re the refugee question, you are right. We are talking hundreds of millions of people and serious social/political issues as a result. Which is why we need to do what we can to avoid climate change now. And I mean actually ‘do’ things. At the moment, Rudd, Ferguson et. al. are treating climate change like a political football.
But it remains a worry that he sits in the heart of Government and gives hope to the denialists in the party that perhaps they can do nothing.
It doesn’t make energy more expensive in the long term to switch to renewables (or nuclear power) now, because the things — experience, mass production, and ubiquity — which made fossil fuels the obvious choice for the 20th century will come to apply to other technologies as the wealthy countries adopt them. Dams and wind turbines provide electricity at costs competitive with new coal-fired power stations, and the same will eventually be true for direct solar power (both kinds and most techniques) and hot-rock geothermal power as those technologies become commonplace.
The whole point of having Annex A countries in the Kyoto Protocol is that the countries which can bear the cost should *meet* the cost of developing new clean technologies while they are still expensive. The sooner we step up to the task, the less we need brow-beat ourselves over denying development to poorer countries.
The sophistry at play in this argument is just breathtaking. Time to reframe and get on the front foot. Overconsumption of coal is going to cost us our comfortable first world lives. It will ruin our children’s futures and condemn our grandchildren to a vicious, war-ravaged, famine-stricken world if they live long enough. When will Marn factor some of these costs in. When will our gummet take a leadership role and stop pandering to vested interest. Do it. Do it now.
If your one of those (may I, Bernard?) wingnuts who scoops up rubbish noodlings to ‘debunk’ the science don’t bother replyng, this is to Crikey’s rational audience.
The total CO2 emissions from all human activity is less than .03%. The other 99.7% of CO2 comes mainly from the oceans and forests. Human activity is not significant enough to increase temperature. The increased frequency of solar flares is the only cause of warming.
Dear John,
is your letter supposed to be sarcastic? Your ideas are scrambled, hard to follow, and devoid of all punctuation and style. Perhaps a more direct style would suit a man of your limited intellect.
Pack it in John. Only .03% of carbon emissions come from all human activity. The whole thing is a sham to justify taxing the workers more. Solar flare activity is the only cause of climate variation.