Australia is for The Australians

Immediately following the release of the Stern Report on the Economics of Climate Change this Monday, all heads in Australia turned, as they invariably do, to the leader: Prime Minister John Howard. His message was frank, and totally in-keeping with his traditional political line: "I am not going to lead Australia into an agreement that is going to betray the interests of the working men and women of this country and destroy the natural advantage that providence gave us", he said. Just how he concluded that the report even suggested such an agreement, the day after it was published, I don't know, it's over 500 pages long and is very dense, but then perhaps he had a leaked copy, or perhaps he skipped straight to the end to see "whodunnit". Anyway, the UK release of the Stern Report was a carefully orchestrated affair *1; and so it seems it was no different here in Australia.

John Howard's political messages on climate change are simple enough; Australia is for the Australians he asserts, and, "there is no merit in basing policy on one report alone"*2, but lastly, perhaps more encouragingly, Howard describes how Australia plans to diversify its energy policy away from fossil fuel reliance and toward nuclear power and solar energy conversion*3. All reasonable comments from one wishing to stay in power one might think, but to what extent do they make any real sense?

Optimistically taking the encouraging sign first: diversification of Australia's energy portfolio and investment in solar technology, what is Howard talking about? The vaunted scheme to develop a solar power station in the State of Victoria is a 154-megawatt project, which would provide enough power for ca. 40,000 homes, or roughly 3.2% of the current population of the state (nearly 1% of the national total)*4. Not exactly a sweeping reform then. Perhaps that's because such technology requires Government subsidy. When exploitable fossil fuels are, in the words of Sir Nicholas Stern, the subject of "a massive market failure". This failure of the industry to pay the true cost of a toxic and finite-resource, and instead benefitting from extortionately low prices for extraction and consumption, means that new and more complex technologies struggle to compete in the marketplace*5. So how much subsidy is the Australian Government shelling out on solar? In fact, the total funding for solar projects here is just $75 million*6, reported to be less than half of one year's subsidy to company car users under fringe benefit tax*3.

The announcement of a commitment to "clean coal" is a little more worrying, because "clean coal" hasn't been invented yet, it's a set of unproved (and in some cases unrealised) technologies including plans to pump greenhouse gases underground. So we're supposed to believe that Australia is betting on achieving "clean coal" in order to reduce greenhouse emissions. This route is certainly more likely to be commercially viable, given the fact that the Prime Minister's own white paper intensifies national reliance on coal as a domestic energy source, and the size and value of Australia's annual coal exports*7.

So we take it that John Howard is not sufficiently alarmed by the Stern Report to make any huge concessions to the environmental lobby. Why should he, in his words, when it is "only one report"? Taking this at face value, it appears that he is also ignoring all the other warnings that have been made regarding unsustainable development, presumably on the basis that each of those is also "only one report". Mr Howard is a member of the exclusive club of climate change deniers and therefore allows himself to ignore the sweeping literature review undertaken by Nicholas Stern, along with the compelling gamut of science pointing to the reality of climate change. Instead the Howard Government is taking its economic advice from ABARE (which advocates the deregulation of coal mining) and has commissioned a report on Nuclear Energy*8.

And so we come to the most pressing of all Mr Howard's concerns, to preserve Australia for the "working men and women" and to protect the "natural advantage that providence gave us". Which is presumably why he continues to advocate un-restrained exports of the country's mineral wealth, ignores suggestions that capitalists should pay something approaching the "costs" to the Australian environment which their activities entail, risks the health and safety of future generations by promoting uranium enrichment for energy (and presumably military) use, and requires his soldiers (working men and women) to remain in Iraq and Afghanistan "until the job is done", or, should I say, when Iraq is "reasonably secure" *9.

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*1. Sarah Mukherjee, 31.10.06. "Digesting a Report in Record Time", The BBC.
See http://www.news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6100724.stm

*2. Michelle Grattan, Jewel Topsfield, James Button. "PM defiant on climate change". The Age.

*3. Peter Christoff, 31.10.06. "Crisis? What Crisis?". The Age.

*4. John Vidal "Australia to give solar power a Try". The Guardian.
(Percentage coverages based on populations taken from www.wikipedia.org; and assuming an average of four persons per home).

*5. Nicholas Stern, 2006. "The Economics of Climate Change". HM Treasury.

*6. Australian Government, August 2006. "Alternative Transport Fuels and Renewable Energy: August 2006 Update".

*7. Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, 2005. "The Composition of Trade".

*8. Australian Government Media Release. 06.06.06 (prophetic timing perhaps). Review of Uranium mining processing and nuclear energy in Australia.

*9. Australian Associated Press, 20.10.06. "Howard hits back at Iraq accustions". Sydney Morning Herald