Taking the climate bull by the horns
Australia has just undergone a regime change, having shaken off the yoke of a brutal, heartless despot in favour of what many fear amounts to the same wine in a different bottle. A core-promose of the Kevin07 campaign was the immediate ratification of the Kyoto Protocol. Melbourne’s The Age explains The challenge: to go from climate laggard to climate leader.
LABOR’S exceptional victory is built on its core promises, and tackling climate change is one of them. Kevin Rudd has promised that one of his first acts in government will be to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. This will come as a welcome relief to most Australians. We have been suffering from deferred ratification for a long time, and the move is 10 years overdue.
However, while in the conservative context of Australian climate politics ratification may seem like one giant leap for Australians, it is now only a modest step for mankind (and other species).
But now is our chance to do more than just ratify Kyoto. Now is a chance to make up for lost time and to show genuine leadership, real moral fiber.
In the leaders’ debate, late in October, Rudd stood by Labor’s long-term goal of cutting Australia’s emissions by 60% (against 2000 levels) by 2050 because “it comes from the science” that tells us to stabilise atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide at 450 to 490 parts per million. Scientists agree that 450 ppm is the critical threshold for keeping the average global temperature increase below 2 degrees and avoiding dangerous climate change.
The clear message of the latest Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change report — reinforced by the accelerating loss of our polar caps — is that global emissions must peak by 2015 and then be cut by between 50% and 85% by 2050 to contain temperature increases at 2 to 2.4 degrees.
All this casts the EU’s proposition and Labor’s long-term emissions target in a new light. Labor’s 2050 target promises unacceptable temperature increases of 3 degrees — climate catastrophe, according to the IPCC. Even a temperature rise of 2 degrees would condemn the Great Barrier Reef to extinction. Clearly Labor must deliver cuts much deeper and faster than its long-term target suggests.
The Rudd Labor victory offers Australians, and the world, an 11th hour reprieve, but only if the new Environment Minister, whoever that may be, or Kevin07 himself actually take the bull by the horns. — DS
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