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Author Archive for CAHA – Page 7

The shock of the new should not be confused with a new kind of shock

by CAHA
January 25th, 2012

The summer holidays provide an opportunity for many of us in our largely urbanised population to revisit rural landscapes as we travel to visit relatives, go camping or engage in that Aussie summer favourite, a trip to the beach.

The encroachment of urban developments and industrial structures on previously bucolic rural vistas comes as a shock as we pass remembered landscapes suddenly altered by the telltale signs of human existence.

A new housing estate, factory, freeway, rail line, mine or power station; all change our natural environment in fundamental and inescapably distinct ways.

We may wistfully recall a sleepier, untouched time and place; but the change is quickly forgotten as we pass, and its impact fades until the next visit.

For those who inhabit changing landscapes however, the changes can disrupt one’s sense of place and sense of identity, and can lead to feelings sometimes associated with grief and loss.

As our steadily growing human population leaves its mark across the globe, with seven billion of us now sprawling out across seven continents, there are few places on Earth now left untouched.

This is having dramatic impacts on the natural environment, but are changes people largely accept because of the benefits those developments bring to human society (and the trappings of Western lifestyles many of us have come to expect): high speed Internet, road transport infrastructure commensurate with our predilection for cars, and reliable electricity and water supplies.

Much of this infrastructure development occurs infrequently, being big ticket items so costly that governments shy away from them, and substantial investments therefore only take place every decade or so.

In Australia this has left us with much ageing and inadequate infrastructure, particularly in the energy and transport sectors. We are likely to see significant changes in terms of infrastructure development to address this in coming decades. As the planning and development of this new infrastructure takes place, it will be important to keep in perspective its purpose and to choose technologies that pose the least environmental risk and are the safest in terms of their impact on human and ecological health.

Part of the impetus in the energy sector is the declining quality of existing infrastructure – our forty to fifty year old coal fired power stations have passed their use-by date, and it is only the cost of their replacement (and the histrionics of their politically powerful owners) that appear to compel governments to award ongoing licences to operate.

There are even more compelling pressures to upgrade our energy infrastructure however; the mining, transportation, and burning of coal for electricity generation poses serious threats to human health and is responsible for hundreds, possibly thousands of avoidable deaths each year from the toxins and pollution produced by this process. Coal kills; and whether we burn it here or ship it offshore for others to burn, it will lead to loss of life and the development of serious illnesses and human suffering.

Not only does coal poses a health threat, it is the principal villain in driving dangerous climate change worldwide, and its replacement therefore one of the big potential wins in cutting national emissions and reducing our very high level of emissions per person.

Gas too poses serious risks – given the shift to shallow coal seam gas mining as traditional natural gas reserves diminish, fertile farmland is being lost to industrial wastelands, and underground water tables threatened by the use of mining chemicals untested for human safety. Coupled with the emerging evidence that coal seam gas poses as big a threat to atmospheric pollution as coal (it may have an even higher lifecycle emissions profile than coal), this leaves renewable energy technologies such as solar and wind in the box seat in terms of safety for human health and as climate friendly technologies.

There are powerful vested interests however in preventing the widespread roll out of these technologies and recent activities suggest these interests are promoting anxiety and concern in the community regarding the safety of some renewable energy technology, such as wind power.

Often these concerns can be heightened by a sense of disruption with regard to place identity and are understandable human responses to changes in the known environment.

It is important to however not to confuse these responses with genuine concerns with regard to wellbeing, and the community must be careful not to allow those with vested interests to exploit the public’s sense of vulnerability around change and lack of access to credible information by promoting fears about the safety of wind power.

Recent reviews of the scientific literature demonstrate that there is no credible peer reviewed scientific evidence that demonstrates a link between wind turbines and adverse health impacts in people living in proximity to them.

A new paper has been developed by a coalition of Australian health groups should assuage community concerns on this topic. The Health and Wind Turbines position paper, released by the Climate and Health Alliance today, finds that while large-scale commercial wind farms have been in operation internationally for many decades, often in close proximity to thousands of people, there is no evidence of any associated increases in ill-health.

Change in our known environment can be challenging. Investing in safe community infrastructure is important for all of us. In making decisions about our future energy supply, we must consider the costs of current forms of electricity generation on climate change and health for all members of the community, including those living in proximity to infrastructure. Fortunately for the community and the climate, wind power offers a safe, reliable, climate-friendly alternative to harmful and high emissions from coal, and is available now at prices we can afford.

This article first appeared on Climate Spectator on January 25, 2012.

Categories Climate, Energy, Health, Solar, Wind
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Rolling the dice at Durban

by CAHA
December 9th, 2011

By Fiona Armstrong December 9th, 2011

 In the final week in Durban a sense of frustration is permeating the COP, where aspirations for a global  deal remain high, but expectations swing between mildly hopeful and almost absent.

The tone of the Australian delegation is one of determined but checked progress, maintaining there will be positive outcomes on some issues while keeping expectations low.

Australia continues its dream run in terms of public sentiment here, where many international delegates are under the impression that Australia’s carbon price legislation has real significance in terms of emissions reductions, seemingly unaware of the tiny step it actually represents. Still, the misconception is creating goodwill and perhaps even pressure on other countries to commit to binding targets at the international level, so what is lacking in policy efficacy is being made up in PR kudos, at least for now.

In terms of progress in the discussions, China is signalling a openness to legally binding obligations but stonewalling by New Zealand, Canada, Russia, the US and Japan means there is little hope of any final decisions on legal form. Many negotiating efforts by the big polluting nations appear to be about delaying decisions for as long as possible, with the staggeringly irresponsible date of 2020 for mandatory emissions cuts being advocated by the US.

The options currently being pursued range from: retaining some aspects of the Kyoto Protocol, but with limits to offsets, greatly enhanced measurement, verification and reporting, and the development of a new legally binding instrument to be agreed at COP18; to securing some agreement on mitigation measures but with the decision on legal form delayed until 2020. A review of global targets is being proposed to raise the level of commitments, but India, the US and China all want that delayed until after a scientific review slated for 2015.

Filling the coffers of the Green Climate Fund, for adaptation and mitigation in developing nations agreed to at Cancun, is also proving difficult; promised funds are failing to materialise and many nations are reluctant to name the figure they will commit in order to realise the agreed goal of $US100 billion per year by 2020.

Hopes of a fast start, that would see substantial funds committed between 2010 and 2012, are now looking a bit shaky. Ensuring these funds are a) delivered and b) new and additional (i.e. not rebadged aid funding) is the main game. Too little discussion has been had about additional ways of raising funds, however redirecting fossil fuel subsidies is an obvious choice, with the Robin Hood tax (a minuscule tax on financial transactions that could potentially raise US$400 billion a year) another obvious contender.

Bad behaviour by countries here at the COP is rewarded with the title of “fossil of the day“. Winners to date include: Turkey (for its 98 per cent growth in emissions post 1990 plus seeking Kyoto $ to spend on coal and roads); the US (for turning up but only wanting to discuss climate action in nine years time); Canada (for refusing to cooperate with just about everything); and New Zealand and Russia (joint first place for wanting to benefit from Kyoto but not be bound by it).

In the meantime, global emissions increased 6 per cent last year and millions of hectares of forests disappeared. The rate of global deforestation is 14.5 million hectares each year, as forests are converted to agricultural land to feed the inexorably rising global human population.

The gap between reality and commitment makes these a rather surreal set of discussions, the nature of which is well captured in this quote from Climate Action Network Australia Director Georgina Woods:

“We are all struggling to find a way to describe the kind of banal failure that is at risk of emerging here. I arrived steeled for major drama, hysterics and intensity; what’s happening instead is potentially worse – a slide into oblivion masked by the veneer of progress. Because there certainly is progress. The LCA text [long term cooperative action] represents a huge amount of work by negotiators in the last 12 months, and encompasses many things that the people of the world need and want to deal with climate change… and yet… putting off the major decisions… leaves open the possibility that they will find the important decisions all too hard, and find shelter together in their cowardice, and guiltily cobble together agreements that have the semblance of cooperation, but do not change the trajectory we are already on: towards a four degrees warmer world.”

Current existing pledges fall well short of what the science indicates is needed to give us only a modest chance (66 per cent) of limiting warming to 2°C (itself a target that is not considered desirable or safe), so it’s no wonder a lot of talk here is focusing on the ‘gigatonne’ gap, or emissions gap, that exists between pledges and the actual emissions cuts needed. Global emissions leapt in 2010, but a recent UNEP report says this puts us on track to be 12 gigatonnes (Gt) of CO2e over what we can afford to emit if the world is to have any hope of staying below 2ºC, a goal described by NASA climate scientist Jim Hansen as a recipe for disaster.

What do we really want from Durban? Ideally, Ministers would go home having agreed to a multilateral approach to addressing climate change, with a combination of legally binding instruments, decisions, rules and guidelines. These should be, in the words of the COP President, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, South Africa’s International Relations Minister, “pragmatic, effective, timely and appropriate.” This would require documented commitments for which there are consequences if countries fail to keep them: mechanisms for ensuring emissions trajectories are consistent with the timeframe that science indicates; sufficient climate financing for developing nations to adapt as well as begin their own low carbon transitions; and action from all countries, led by the industrialised nations.

It’s not the case that there have been no genuine efforts to reach agreement. Indeed it seems there has been many constructive discussions, some of which may well have been influenced by the COP President’s invocation of ‘Indabas’ – a traditional form of South African participatory democracy in which people come together in the spirit of ‘Ubuntu,’ being motivated by the common good, to discuss a matter of great importance and to solve intractable or difficult collective problems in ways that benefit the community as a whole. (Sound familiar?)

So, what have we got without a global deal?

It seems increasingly likely that we will see emerging cooperation between nation states, as bilateral and regional deals are made. Some pressure may come from developing nations who refuse to provide offsets for wealthier countries who fail to act. Aside from those, we are left, largely, to rely on domestic policy commitments to deliver emissions reductions and the hope that commercial competitiveness and the actions of individual nation states will deliver a sufficiently broad rollout of clean renewable energy to see emissions peak in the timeframe left to avert runaway climate change.

The German Advisory Council (WGBU) remains cautiously optimistic this can be achieved and is working to facilitate that by offering a roadmap for a transformation to sustainability to any country or group of countries willing to take the lead. Their Social Contract for Sustainability offers willing leaders the opportunity to showcase how ambitious and committed actions can create a new pact for sustainability and demonstrate how breaking away from existing destructive pathways can deliver greater equity, social wellbeing, and economic security.

WGBU estimates the global cost of transformation would require $US200-$US1000 billion a year by 2030. This may seem a massive investment, but one they consider manageable through innovative business and financing models. They warn if it is not made, the costs associated with the economic, environmental and social disruption that a wildly unstable climate would be much, much more.

To create a bit of perspective, we already spend $500 billion globally each year on fossil fuel subsidies – a source of finance that would be more usefully deployed in a renewable energy transformation than driving dangerous climate change and causing millions of deaths from harmful air pollution.

In light of a less than optimum outcome from our governments, it’s encouraging other actors are not only envisioning but developing the roadmaps we need as a global community to reverse our current destructive path and shape a new future for our planet and our species.

But we should also prepare to be surprised, in the hope that those negotiators in Durban will reveal their hands as stronger than we thought. After all, they won’t be revealing all their cards till the very last. And before they do, may we hope they recall the words of that esteemed South African, Nelson Mandela, when he said: “It always seems impossible, until it is done.”

Categories Advocacy, Climate, Health, Uncategorized
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A carbon tax is not so scary, really

by CAHA
April 27th, 2011

Given the hysteria around the current debate on a carbon tax, it seems timely to republish on the CAHA blog an edited version of this article published in Fairfax’s National Times last year: No need to be afraid of a tax on carbon.

The agreement between The Gillard Government and The Greens that a carbon price is paramount to tackling carbon pollution signalled a restoration of a significant climate policy agenda in Australia. It was well overdue, given the overwhelming recognition that a carbon price is central to effective emissions reductions.

This has been the case since Sir Nicholas Stern’s landmark report in 2006, which identified a carbon price as a key element to cutting emissions. And despite independent MP Bob Katter’s poor opinion of Sir Nicholas (describing him in 2010 as “a lightweight”), Stern remains a pre-eminent expert on the economics of climate change.

Nothing has changed since his report in terms of the need for a carbon price; only the urgency of its application has increased.

Achieving this in Australia, however, has been difficult to date – the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) was a miserable attempt at pricing carbon, and its flawed approach (rejected quite rightly by The Greens and others) with inadequate targets, excessive use of offsetting and unnecessary compensation to polluters, has contributed to the discrediting of emissions trading as the preferred option for pricing carbon internationally.

While Opposition Leader Tony Abbott remains vehement in his opposition to new taxes, he doesn’t (yet) appear to understand that his policy of direct investment is just another way of putting a price on carbon. And while Abbott may be opposed to the idea of a specific carbon tax, the allocation of funds to reduce carbon emissions is using revenue collected through taxation.

To argue that we shouldn’t have a carbon price because it will drive up electricity prices is nonsense – electricity prices are already going up and will go up even further without a carbon price, because there is no incentive to invest in energy generation infrastructure while there is uncertainty around a price on carbon. Capital expenditure on power generation in Australia is expected to decline $10 billion over the next five years unless there is a price on carbon.

In terms of actual mechanisms, the most appropriate tool is a carbon tax. Supported by most environmental economists (and others such as Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz and Jeremy Sachs), a carbon tax is already in place in many European jurisdictions where it has reduced emissions while maintaining, even improving in some instances, economic productivity.

Most arguments against a carbon tax incorrectly identify the misplaced allocation of funds as a flaw of the mechanism itself, rather than its faulty implementation. A carbon tax is a way of obtaining revenue (appropriately, by taxing polluters). What is done with that revenue determines what its impact will be on the community, whether it is supporting low income or vulnerable households or supporting the expansion of renewable energy technologies – not the tax itself. Its popular appeal could also be enhanced by reducing other taxes, such as income taxes, while maintaining the pressure on polluters to find ways to cut emissions.

The “anti-tax” position adopted by Abbott is a very simplistic argument. A carbon tax will provide a revenue base that we can use to diversify our economy away from a ”quarry and dump” to potentially manufacturing, operating and exporting renewable energy infrastructure – creating thousands of jobs and bringing wealth to our deprived regional areas.

We are witnessing of course the inevitable squealing from the emissions intensive industries, and re-runs of the “sky is falling” argument by the big polluters. The reality, however, is that ongoing opposition to a price on carbon will mean we better steel ourselves for the “brownouts” that will result, not because of the carbon price, but because we lack one. The failure or unwillingness to invest in new power generation will inevitably lead to considerable economic disruption and societal dysfunction.

But while a carbon price is central, it is only one tool in the suite of policy options that are needed to bring down emissions, help make clean renewable energy cheaper, and discourage polluters from dumping their waste in the atmosphere. We need to move quickly to a suite of policy mechanisms that not only make clean renewable energy competitive with fossil fuels but will also reduce emissions from transport and building stock and agriculture.

To achieve this it is vital that we legislate a carbon price and move on from the argument about a carbon tax versus emissions trading. We must seek the establishment of a national plan to guide Australia’s transition to a low carbon and then zero carbon economy. Other more responsible countries are investing in whole of society transition plans – recognising that transition is inevitable and, carefully managed, it will bring far more positive outcomes than ad hoc adaptation and emergency responses.

We’ve had enough of intermittent commitment to individual policy mechanisms – it is time for a considered framework that will guide our country’s transition to the low and then zero emissions society that promotes and protects our economic, environmental and social wellbeing.

A version of this article appeared on the National Times on 4th September 2010.

Categories Advocacy, Health policy, Uncategorized
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