Climate criminal Australia threatens Planet. Australia’s pro-coal Emissions Trading Scheme

Gideon Polya, “Climate criminal Australia threatens Planet. Australia’s pro-coal Emissions Trading Scheme”, MWC News, 6 May 2009.

Climate criminal Australia threatens Planet. Australia’s pro-coal Emissions Trading Scheme

Australia - the world’s biggest coal exporter, and the OECD’s worst and one of the world’s worst per capita greenhouse gas (GHG) polluters – has just announced a Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) that will enable continued, “business as usual” (BAU), Planet-threatening Australian GHG pollution.

As detailed and documented below, the World is facing a Climate Emergency due to man-made global warming from profligate greenhouse gas pollution. Thus atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) concentration is now 387 ppm (parts per million) (as compared to about 280 ppm pre-industrially) and global average surface temperature has risen by 0.8C since 1990. A further 0.6C temperature rise is already “locked in” because of accumulated GHG pollution. 90% of climate scientists surveyed at the recent Copenhagen Climate Change Conference believed that the World would not avoid at least a 2C temperature rise (relative to 1900).

While the fossil fuel corporations, big business, neo-conservative politicians and climate sceptics maintain a barrage of obfuscation and denial in the interests of “business as usual” (BAU), many of the climatic disruptions forecast by successive Assessment Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are already being observed - the species extinction rate is already 100-1,000 times greater than that of the fossil record; the Arctic may be free of ice within 6 years; and hundreds of thousands in total of “climate refugees” are already a reality in India, Bangladesh, Myanmar and the Pacific.

According to top US scientist Professor John Holdren (Harvard University, Director of the Woods Hole Research Centre, former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and now President Obama’s chief science adviser) climate disruption from global warming is already happening around the world: “Melting land ice and thermal expansion of ocean water are raising sea level … 1993-2003 ~ 30mm=3.0 mm/yr; compare 1910-1990 = 1.5 +/- 0.5 mm/yr”. However sea level rise is but one parameter in an increasing burden of what Professor Holdren calls “climatic disruption” (see: John Holdren (2008), “The Science of Climatic Disruption” (power point lecture): http://www.usclimateaction.org/userfiles/JohnHoldren.pdf ) e.g.

(1) the extraordinary post-industrial spikes in the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide (CO₂) and methane (CH₄) concentration in the atmosphere (from 280 ppm to 397 ppm and from 750 ppb to 1800 ppb, respectively);

(2) increase in global average surface temperature (0.8^oC since 1890, noting that 90% of the extra heat has gone into the oceans and that the biggest surface temperature changes are in the Arctic and the Antarctic Peninsular);

(3) massive shrinking of glaciers (with the melting of Himalaya glaciers having serious implications for major river water flows in South Asia, South East Asia and East Asia);

(4) weakening of the East Asia Monsoon (with northern drought and southern floods in China);

(5) increasing permafrost thawing (with attendant CO₂ and methane – 21 times worse as a greenhouse gas than CO₂ on a 100 year basis release - and accelerated global warming);

(6) “the incidence of floods is up almost everywhere”;

(7) “wildfires in the Western USA have increased 4-fold in the last 30 years” (acres burnt in the 1960s and 1970s averaged about 0.5-1 million annually; acres burnt in the 21st century range from 2.5 -4.5 million);

(8) over the last half century “total power released by tropical cyclones has increased [roughly doubled] along with sea surface temperature”;

(9) “arctic sea ice is disappearing” (Arctic ice experts now say that all summer sea ice will be gone in 2015); and

(10) “under BAU [business as usual] much bigger disruption is coming” and “past IPCC assessments have underestimated the rate of growth of emissions” (indeed the actual CO₂ emissions in GtC/yr [gigatonnes carbon per year = billions of tonnes of carbon per year] are well above the worst IPCC scenarios).

In the face of realities that are evident to the man in the street, bald denial of man-made global warming (anthropogenic global warming, AGW) is no longer feasible – even notorious climate sceptic George W. Bush had to concede this reality eventually. However while the Murdoch media in particular do their best to publicize utterly false climate sceptic claims that we are headed for a new Ice Age, Bush-ite and neo-Bush-ite politicians in the Western Murdochracies have the task of maintaining “business as usual” while pretending to do something about climate change.

Rather than replacing highly profitable fossil fuel based power, deforestation, and methanogenic livestock with renewable energy, re-afforestation and needs-based agriculture, the Western Establishments have transmuted the Climate Emergency problem to a “public relations” (PR) problem - that they are dealing with via variously dishonest, fraudulent and demonstrably ineffective “emissions trading schemes” (ETSs) that are meant to encourage the “market” to respond to carbon pricing pressures and to start “heading in the right direction”. Yet this con-job is being mounted after top climate change economist Professor Sir Nicholas Stern has described man-mad made global warming as the greatest market failure in history.

Australia - the world’s biggest coal exporter and a world leader in “annual per capita greenhouse gas pollution” - now leads the world in the fraudulent ETS con-job stakes. The extreme right wing, pro-coal, pro-war, climate criminal and war criminal Labor Australian Government has just announced a refinement of its ETS proposals that will involve:

(1) pricing carbon at A$10 per tonne (over 30 times lower than the estimated “true cost” of A$320 per tonne associated with Australians dying from the effects of coal burning pollutants);

(2) selling “carbon pollution permits” at rigged auctions and then returning nearly all the money to the major GHG polluters (!);

(3) basing the ETS on an extraordinarily obfuscated global atmospheric CO₂ concentration “target” of at least 450 ppm – a level extremely damaging to the Planet and vastly higher than that recommended by scientists of circa 300 ppm;

(4) and, most importantly, delaying implementation for as long as possible to permit maximally profitable BAU for as long as possible.

The following carefully researched and referenced commentary on the disastrous Rudd Labor Australian Government Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) and entitled “Pro-coal Australian Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) devalues Australian lives, threatens Biosphere and ignores Science” has been placed (together with detailed documentation and similarly referenced summaries about the Climate Emergency) on the Yarra Valley Climate Action Group website (see: http://sites.google.com/site/yarravalleyclimateactiongroup/latest-pro-coal-australian-emissions-trading-scheme-ets-devalues-australian-lives-threatens-biosphere-and-ignores-science-and-climate-emergency ) . It is reproduced below for your convenience, information and dissemination. It has been sent as a Letter to Australian media and MPs.

The silence is deafening.

Letter.

Pro-coal Australian Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) devalues Australian lives, threatens Biosphere and ignores Science

The World is facing a climate emergency requiring urgent action - as perceived by its top scientists but not yet by First World Establishment media, corporations and politicians. [1].

Thus the stark opinion of Professor Sir David King (former Chief Science Adviser of the UK Government and Head of the UK Government Office for Science, 2000-2007, currently Director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at Oxford University, President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science and a senior scientific adviser to major global financial company UBS) is reported thus by Reuters (28 May 2008): “speaking at a climate change workshop hosted by Thomson Reuters in London [Professor King] said Europe needed to reduce its annual per-capita emissions by 80 percent, or from 11 tonnes of CO₂e, to India's current level of 2.2 tonnes per person by 2050”. [2].

Professor Sir David King: “If you (don't want) run-away climate change, you need to be at about 350 parts per million (ppm) of CO₂ ... We're currently at 387 ppm CO₂, going up at 2 per annum … If you include all greenhouse gases, we're at around 420 ppm CO₂e …the challenge, to move from where we are now [Europe’s 11 tonnes of CO₂e per person per year] to where the Indians are today [2.2], while growing the global economy at the same time”. [2].

“Annual per capita greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution” in units of “tonnes CO₂-equivalent per person per year” (2005-2008 data) is 2.2 (India), 6.7 (the World), 11 (Europe), 27 (the US) and 30 (Australia; or 54 if Australia’s huge Exported CO₂ pollution is included). [2-4].

Australia is the world’s leading coal exporter and a world leader in annual per capita GHG pollution. The pro-coal Rudd Labor Australian Federal Government has just announced its new revised Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) involving (a) a further delay in introduction until 2011; (b) massive subsidies for GHG polluters; (c) a target of “5-25% off 2000 GHG pollution by 2020”; and (d) an initial carbon price of A$10 per tonne. [5].

This Australian decision flies in the face of advice from top scientists such as Professor King in that it (a) ignores the urgency of action required; (b) provides massive subsidies for continued GHG pollution, (c) will only reduce Australia’s “annual Domestic and Exported GHG pollution” from its present value of 54 to 38-43 tonnes per person per year by 2020 (using UN Population Division data) ; and (d) ignores the circa 5,000 annual Australian deaths from coal burning pollutants that, at a valuation of A$10 million per person (US EPA) and an annual domestic use coal production of 156 million tonnes (2007; US EIA) yields an estimated “real” cost of coal burning of A$50 billion/156 million tonnes = A$321 per tonne. [4, 6-9].

The sine qua non in Australian public life is surely “loving Australia”, which surely means (a) love for Australians, (b) love for Australia’s unique flora and fauna and (c) love of Australian values (most notably, being “fair dinkum” or “telling the truth”). The Australian Government’s ETS clearly violates these fundamental injunctions by (a) devaluing Australia’s 5,000 annual coal death victim lives by a factor of over 30; (b) committing Australia to effective “business as usual” GHG pollution that, if adopted globally, will destroy Australia’s Great Barrier Reef (coral death above 450 ppm CO₂; atmospheric CO₂ currently 387 ppm and still rising at 2 ppm/year) and (c) blatantly ignoring top scientific opinion in the interests of major GHG polluters. [10].

Dr Gideon Polya

Macleod, Melbourne, Victoria 3085, Australia

[1]. Yarra Valley Climate Action Group, “Climate emergency: what top World scientific experts say “: http://sites.google.com/site/yarravalleyclimateactiongroup/climate-emergency-what-top-world-scientific-experts-say ; “Climate emergency: what outstanding Australian scientists say “: http://sites.google.com/site/yarravalleyclimateactiongroup/climate-emergency-what-outstanding-australian-scientists-say ; “Climate Emergency Facts and Required Actions “: http://sites.google.com/site/yarravalleyclimateactiongroup/climate-emergency-facts-and-required-actions .

[2] Michael Szabo, “Cut CO₂ to India’s level, top scientist urges”, Reuters, 28 May 2008: http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSL28290944 .

[3] Ross Garnaut, The Garnaut Climate Change Review, Chapter 7: http://www.garnautreview.org.au/chp7.htm .

[4]. Gideon Polya, “Australia’s “5% off 2000 GHG pollution by 2020” endangers Australia, Humanity and the Biosphere”, Yarra Valley Climate Action Group, 2008: http://sites.google.com/site/yarravalleyclimateactiongroup/australia-s-5-off-2000-ghg-pollution-by-2020-endangers-australia-humanity-and-biosphere .

[5]. ABC News, “Polluter’s lobbying paid off, says Greenpeace”, 4 May, 2009: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/05/04/2560560.htm .

[6]. UN Population Division: http://esa.un.org/unpp/ .

[7]. Gideon Polya “Devaluation of American lives. 7 million Americans, $49 trillion lost under Bush”, MWC News, 16 July 2008: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/23939/42/ .

[8]. Gideon Polya, Yarra Valley Climate Action Group, “Pollution deaths from fossil fuel-burning power plants”: http://sites.google.com/site/yarravalleyclimateactiongroup/pollution-deaths-from-fossil-fuel-based-power-plants ; “How many people die from carbon burning and climate change each year”: http://sites.google.com/site/yarravalleyclimateactiongroup/how-many-people-die-from-carbon-burning-and-climate-change-each-year .

[9]. US Energy Information Administration statistics: http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/country/country_energy_data.cfm?fips=AS .

[10]. Professors O. Hoegh-Guldberg and P. J. Mumby and colleagues, “Coral Reefs Under Rapid Climate Change and Ocean Acidification”, Science 14 December 2007: Vol. 318. no. 5857, pp. 1737 – 1742: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/318/5857/1737 .

End letter.

What can decent people do?

What can decent people do? Would you buy soap made in Auschwitz? If you knowingly and avoidably buy goods and services from climate criminal Australia and like climate criminal countries you are contributing to a looming Climate Genocide that, according to eminent UK climate scientist Professor James Lovelock FRS, will kill all but about 1 billion of our fellow human beings this century.