The Guardian 28 November, 2007
Window closing
on climate change opportunity
Bob Briton
We can’t say we haven’t been warned. The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has reported that unless governments take immediate action to curb global warming the people of the world will suffer "abrupt and irreversible" effects. Up to 70 percent of plant and animal species could become extinct.
There will be fierce storms, frequent droughts and the spread of hunger and disease. By the end of the century, sea levels will rise by at least 18 centimetres and temperatures by between 6.8°C and 8.6°C compared to 1980-99 levels. Australia gets a special mention for potential loss of water security in the southeast and a devastating loss of biodiversity in the tropics and the Great Barrier Reef.
The IPCC’s "Synthesis Report" released in Valencia in Spain last week pulls together the conclusions of three working groups composed of hundreds of scientists from all over the world including Australia. They have waded through masses of data over the past four years and their conclusions are unequivocal. "The world’s scientists have spoken clearly and with one voice", UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said recently. "I expect the world’s policy makers to do the same."
Mr Ban is right to prod those governments still dragging their heels over climate change. The people of the world have already witnessed the early signs of climate change and are calling for action. Last Saturday’s resounding defeat of the Howard Government was the result of the pent up anger of working people over a host of issues but a major factor was Howard’s belated, inadequate concern for climate change.
While most voters are yet to question the role of the powerful interests behind the rejected Howard agenda and demand the appropriate political changes, they realise the current "let-it-rip" environmental vandalism of the transnational corporations must be curbed and curbed quickly.
Prime Minister-elect Kevin Rudd has committed his government to ratifying the Kyoto Protocols. He has already accepted an invitation from Indonesia’s President Yudhoyono to attend UN climate change talks in Bali next month. Prior to the election, the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) rated Labor only third of the major parties in its sustainability rankings behind the Greens and the Democrats.
The ACF also pointed out that the ALP’s position on these questions is the most improved in recent times and way ahead of the Coalition. These changes in policy have come about as a result of public pressure and it is clear that Australians expect a significant change in direction on environmental questions.
Labor’s undertaking on Kyoto leaves the US out in the cold as the last remaining saboteur of internationally accepted greenhouse gas emissions targets.
Pressure on the Bush Administration will increase with the loss of its climate change sceptic ally John Howard who also argued "national interest" in the face of mounting environmental concerns. These short-sighted arguments are being rejected with latest evidence showing that the necessary remedial action would not impose intolerable burdens on national economies.
The UN report sets out dozens of proposals for heading off catastrophic climate change and estimates that they should cost less than 0.12 per cent of the global economy until 2050.
"The costs involved in moving fast to address the emissions problem are incredibly small, or perhaps even beneficial overall, and that’s before we count the social and environmental cost of not taking action", Barry Brook of the University of Adelaide’s Research Institute for Climate Change and Sustainability noted in response to the release of the UN report.
International scientific opinion agrees, though, that the longer governments leave the big polluters unchecked, the harder and more costly a "fix" will become. At a certain point in the near future, the window of opportunity for effective action will have slammed shut.