Schools For a Sustainable Future

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Not so green, less than clean
Global Warming
by Claire Miller
Environmental Reporter

Australians are the world's worst greenhouse gas polluters, according to an analysis of national figures submitted to the United Nations. The 1999 analysis, by the Australia Institute, found that Australians per capita emit 26.7 tonnes of greenhouse gases per year, 25 per cent more than Americans, and more than double those of Europeans.

Australia has high emissions for a number of reasons. Its economy is heavily dependent on fossil fuels for electricity and for transport linking scattered population centres in a large country. Its agricultural base and continued broadscale landclearing also boost its emissions. Electricity generation is the largest greenhouse polluter, contributing 37 per cent of Australian emissions.

This is because 84 per cent of electricity comes from coal-fired stations. Coal is cheap and plentiful, but inefficient and highly polluting compared with wind, solar, biomass and gas.

Transport accounts for 16 per cent of total national emissions. Australia's large, sprawling cities encourage heavy reliance on cars, while road transport has increasingly replaced rail freight in recent years. The situation is exacerbated by government funding priorities that favor road and freeway building over investment in public transport and rail.

Agriculture accounts for 20 per cent of greenhouse emissions, mainly due to livestock flatulence. Landclearing is another source of emissions when the vegetation is burnt or rots down; plants also store carbon in the soil, which is released when disturbed by clearing, cropping and logging.

Australia has signed, but not ratified the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on climate change, an international agreement aimed at slowing down the rate of global warming. Most industrialised nations agreed under the protocol to reduce emissions by an average 5 per cent below 1990 levels by 2010.

The protocol is the political answer to the scientific consensus that emissions must be reduced by 60 to 80 per cent per cent to stabilise atmospheric concentrations at double the pre-industrial level; concentrations are 35 per cent higher than 200 years ago, making the world a warmer and less climatically stable place.

Australia, however, successfully argued it should be allowed to increase its emissions to 8 per cent over 1990 levels because of its economic reliance on fossil fuels and its growing population.

The Federal Government argued that a tougher target would slow economic growth and lead to massive job losses. Official analysis does not, however, take account of new investment and job opportunities in alternative "green" industries. These are growth sectors. Solar power industries, for instance, are growing at 25 per cent a year in New South Wales, while the Danish wind turbine sector is worth $1 billion a year and directly employs 12,000 people.

Climate change also has substantial economic and social costs in new coastal infrastructure to hold back rising sea levels, public health concerns as tropical diseases move south, and the damage from more frequent and intense floods, droughts and storms.

Despite the lenient target, the Federal Government's voluntary greenhouse abatement program has failed to curb emissions, which have leapt to 16.9 per cent over 1990 levels. The surge is largely due to coal-fired power being favored in the creation of a deregulated national electricity market in 1997 and a doubling of landclearing rates in Queensland.

It has been argued that whatever Australia does will make little difference because while it has high per capita emissions, it only contributes 1.5 per cent of the global total. The United States, by comparison, accounts for 36.1 per cent of global emissions.

Australia will not, however, escape the environmental or economic consequences of global climate change. Its example is also undermining international commitment to the Kyoto Protocol. Developing nations, set to overtake the emissions of industrialised countries early this century, are reluctant to impose controls while rich nations such as Australia cry poor and win leniency.

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The Age Publication
1st November 2000