Gideon Polya, “Post-Copenhagen Climate Criminals. US & Australia ignore realities & solutions”, February 2010.
Post-Copenhagen Climate Criminals. US & Australia ignore realities & solutions
Alarmed as a scientist by global warming trends, 12 years ago I published a book called "Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History. Colonial rapacity, holocaust denial and the crisis in biological sustainability" (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 1998). My argument was a simple and straightforward one about rational risk management – history ignored yields history repeated, genocide ignored yields genocide repeated, or in 21st century terms, spin-based denial or ignoring of horrendous realities permits their continuance because of lack of requisite ameliorative action.
The core example I chose in my book "Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History" (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 1998; second, updated edition 2008) was the colonial and post-colonial history of Bengal. 2 centuries of horrendous man-made famines in British-conquered Bengal commenced with the 1769-1770 Great Bengal Famine (10 million deaths) and concluded with the World War 2 Bengal Famine (peak years 1943-1944, 4 million deaths in Bengal, and 6-7 million deaths in Bengal and the adjoining provinces of Bihar, Orissa and Assam). My message back in 1998 was that these events have been substantially rubbed out of British history and mega-deltaic Bengal faces a final, devastating, holocaust from First World greenhouse gas pollution, global warming, sea level rises and delta-inundating storm surges. My book concluded with a detailed argument that if prosperous, educated, resource-rich, democratic countries such as Australia cannot deal with the overall issue of global warming and global sustainability then the world is doomed.
Sadly my predictions in 1998 have become a worsening reality in 2008 as sea levels continue to rise and tropical hurricane intensities have doubled. Of the developing world's worst CO2 polluting countries back in 1997 (the US, Canada and Australia), the US and Australia refused to ratify Kyoto and Canada signed, but then proceeded to violate the agreement by cavalier "business as usual" (BAU). Since 1997 the world's atmospheric CO2 concentration has climbed from about 358 ppm to a current 390 ppm, with climate criminal America being the biggest culprit. Consult the US Energy Information Administration and you will discover that domestic fossil fuel-derived CO2 pollution by Australia (ignoring its fossil fuel exports) has climbed at a roughly constant rate in the period 1984-2007 – impervious to the pleas of scientists and 4 successive and increasingly pessimistic Assessment Reports by the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (1PCC) in the period 1990-2007.
Key data from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration indicates that the increase in atmospheric CO2 is roughly linear with time at a constant rate of increase of 2.5 ppm per year. An important study published in December 2007 in the prestigious US scientific journal Science – the top world scientific journal – says that coral reefs cannot survive in the warmer and more acid ocean conditions obtaining at too high atmospheric CO2 concentrations. At concentrations of greater 450 ppm coral reefs are seriously ill and at greater than 500 ppm they will simply die. The tipping point for Australia's Great Barrier Reef will come at 450 ppm CO2 – on present trends in 24 years' time (in 2034) unless the world acts now.
If the Australian Rudd Labor Government was serious about its inexplicit desire to lower world greenhouse gas emissions it could have supported the EU in its demands at the 2007 Bali Conference for explicit 25-40% greenhouse pollution reductions by 2020 for developed countries. In fact it refused to undertake any such commitment, thereby assisting the ultimately successful US, Canadian and Japanese emasculation of the Bali Consensus through removal of the binding targets demanded by the EU countries.
Indeed after its successfully sabotage (together with the US) of the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Change Conference Rudd Labor won't commit to anything but a derisory "20% renewable energy by 2020" and irresponsible and immoral goals of “5% reduction from 2000 levels by 2020” and "60% reduction on 2000 levels by 2050" which will actually see on current projections an increase in Australia's "total Domestic plus Exported fossil fuel-derived annual per capita CO2 pollution in “tonnes CO2 per person per year" from 46 (2000) and 54 (2008) to 49 (2020) and 55 (2050). [1].
Rudd Labor still refuses to constrain Australia's record world #1 coal export industry that makes Australia the developed world's #1 annual per capita greenhouse polluter.
Thus as of 2008, “annual per capita greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution” in units of “tonnes CO2-equivalent per person per year” (2005-2008 data) is 0.9 (Bangladesh), 0.9 (Pakistan), 2.2 (India), 3.2 (the Developing World), 5.5 (China), 6.7 (the World), 11 (Europe), 16 (the Developed World), 27 (the US) and 30 (Australia; or 54 if Australia’s huge Exported CO2 pollution is included
The Australian coal export industry currently earns about A$30 billion (2009) and employs about 25,000 workers – however taking a longer term view the Great Barrier Reef is estimated to be worth about A$5.8 billion annually and is associated with 63,000 jobs nationwide (according to Australia's Access Economics).
Australia can do 2 major things in relation to its developing world #1 per capita greenhouse gas pollution – (1) it can keep the coal in the ground and shift 25,000 workers into the renewable energy sector and (2) it can dramatically increase renewable energy provision to eliminate the estimated 85% coal-based electricity in Australia.
Too hard basket? No, as briefly outlined below.
The total installed electricity generating capacity in Australia is about 50 Gigawatts (50 billion watts).
The current install cost is about A$4 per watt (photovoltaic arrays), A$2 per watt (wind farms) and A$2 per watt (coal-fired power).
Continental Australia has a huge coastline of 60,000 kilometres in total. Australia has a huge southern coastline and huge wind energy resources from the Roaring Forties. Australia also spends about A$10 billion each year on subsidizing fossil fuel use (as reported by the Institute for Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology, Sydney.
If that A$$10 billion per year were used to install wind farms, in one year it could be used to install 5 billion watts of wind power and it would take a mere 10 years to install 50 Gigawatts, equivalent to Australia's current electricity capacity by 2017 [of course, this calculation ignores the 20-40% capacity factor associated with wind power as compared to 70-90% for a base load coal burning-based plant i.e. the wind doesn’t blow all the time. The net capacity factor of a power plant is the ratio of the actual output of a power plant over a period of time and its output if it had operated at full capacity the entire time.] .
Yet Rudd Labor only envisions 20% renewable energy (perhaps about 10 Gigawatts renewable) by 2020. Further, stupid, ignorant, timid or whatever Rudd Labor would not even do anything in the way of 2020 pollution reduction targets until its commissioned Garnaut Report (Australian Rudd Labor's "Aussie Stern Report" ) is released (draft by July 2008, final form after comment and revision, late 2008). As indignant Greens say, Rudd Labor is "waiting for Garnaut" (like Samuel Beckett's famous play "Waiting for Godot").
Given the extraordinary spin and resolute "denial' and "ignoring" of the Rudd Labor Government, one fears that its insistence on the "Garnaut Report" before it takes key CO2 reduction target decisions is simply disingenuous time-wasting in the interest of fossil fuel corporations and their workers and hence in the political interests of the neo-Bush-ite Rudd Labor régime..
Of course even cheaper options are available. According to Professor John Veevers ("The Innamincka hot fractured rock project" in "Lies, Deep Fries & Statistics", editor Robyn Williams, ABC Books, Sydney, 2007; also see energy cost-related related chapters by Dr Gideon Polya "Australian complicity in Iraq mass mortality", Dr Mark Diesendorf "A sustainable energy future for Australia", and Martin Mahy "Hydrogen Minibuses"): "Modelled costs are 4 cents per kilowatt hour, plus half to 1 cent for transmission to grid. This compares with 3.5 cents for black coal, 4 cents for brown coal, 4.2 cents for gas, but all with uncosted emissions. Clean coal, the futuristic technology of coal gasification combined with CO2 sequestration or burial, yet to be demonstrated, comes in at 6.5 cents, and solar and wind power at 8 cents."
An even cheaper option still is for Australia (area 7.7 million square kilometres) which can be seen as the world's biggest continuous landmass solar collector. The latest "balloon solar collector PV technology" of US company Cool Earth Solar (that does not compromise agricultural use of land use for solar collection) is expected to have an install cost of US $1 per watt. If that technology is indeed what the Cool Earth Solar people claim it to be, then Australia could install 50 Gigawatt (50 billion watt) Cool Earth Solar solar capacity at a cost of US$50 billion (A$1 = US$0.9).
Thus a recent report on Cool Earth Solar (an Innovation in Renewable Energy finalist for the 2009 Excellence in Renewable Energy Awards) and entitled “Balloons concentrating solar energy has mass utility potential”: “A new venture firm is discussing their novel idea of using balloons as a form of energy capture and power source of the future. Cool Earth Solar is that company and they are from Livermore, California; where they have designed and manufactured the eight foot plastic inflatable’s that they envision will be taking the renewable energy industry by storm. Their balloons will be put under the microscope as they begin installing their power facility, connecting their solar sensitive balloons for power generation. Their initial operation is projected to produce two hundred fifty thousand watts of current from the balloons that appear to be eight foot wide Mylar birthday decorations. The plan is to be operating at full capacity by the end of this year. When phase one of their worldwide plan is finished, they intend to build a second plant that will generate 1.5 million watts located in Tracy, California. The plan has always been to take their idea to the global market. According to company sources, the materials to make the balloons costs about two dollars per inflatable and the power they generate is projected to be priced at equal levels as natural gas fueled electric current… As solar enthusiasts like to state – The amount of sunlight hitting the earth in one hour could power the whole earth for an entire year. This has become a mantra at Cool Earth Solar.” [2].
Some key estimates provided by Cool Earth Solar (2010): “Electric power plants produced 17,320 terawatt-hours (TWh, trillion watt hours) in 2005. In 2030, the world is projected to need about 33,264 TWh - nearly double the amount of 2005. The amount of sunlight that hits the Earth's surface in one hour is enough to power the entire world for a year. One solar power plant, using Cool Earth's technology, covering 150 miles by 150 miles, would generate enough power to meet all the electrical needs of the United States through 2030… When we are installing plants "at scale" in a year or two, we believe we'll be at a price point of a dollar a watt. To give that some context: a typical flat-panel PV system on a resident rooftop is about seven to eight dollars a watt.” [2].
But it won't happen under an egregiously ignorant, spin-obsessed, poll-driven, "look the other way", neo-Bush-ite Rudd Labor Government which has so far - apart from its "20% renewable by 2020" pledge that in reality may be about 10 times lower because of shonky accounting- given no indication of a willingness to take the necessary hard decisions (or even the necessary easy decisions) so that "Australia can pull its weight" in the words of Professor Garnaut (December 2007) i.e. slash its developed world #1 annual per capita greenhouse gas pollution to parity with the world average. The US under Obama has similarly refused to bite the bullet, notwithstanding much rhetorical grandstanding. .
What can decent people do to save Australia's Great Barrier Reef? The world and Australian politicians simply will not act responsibly - as shown by the extraordinary, remorseless, remarkably constant rate of increase of Australian CO2 pollution over the last quarter century. It is up to decent people all around the world, individually or collectively, nationally and internationally, to apply Sanctions and Boycotts and to demand Sanctions, Boycotts, Green Tariffs and Reparations Demands against the principal climate criminal countries – Obama America, Harper Canada and Rudd Australia – who are threatening the human world with climate genocide and the planet’s biosphere with Terracide.
[1]. Gideon Polya, “Post-Copenhagen Australia will increase its per capita Domestic plus Exported GHG pollution”,Yarra Valley Climate Action Group, 2010: http://sites.google.com/site/yarravalleyclimateactiongroup/post-copenhagen-australia .
[2]. Cool Earth Solar, “Solar technology to power the planet”, 2010: http://www.coolearthsolar.com/news .