The Australian community is divided over whether the Federal Government's proposed revised climate change strategy is a step in the right direction. The changes extend the upper limit of possible carbon reductions to 25 per cent, but delay its introduction for a year until 2011.
Carbon-emitting industry groups have welcomed delays and additional financial concessions to them, but the new package has failed to convince hard core conservationists. Three major climate advocacy groups — the Australian Conservation Foundation, the World Wildlife Fund, and the Climate Institute — have made the necessary compromises to support Labor's position, which is also backed by the ACTU and ACOSS. But more radical critics such as the Greens, Greenpeace and GetUp regard it as a sham. From the other side of politics, the Coalition has already condemned it. So it will have a difficult time getting through the Senate.
The government's ongoing systemic support for the Australian coal industry and coal-based electricity generation ensures that Australia will continue to have the highest per capita greenhouse emissions on the planet. On this, Tony Kevin in his forthcoming book Crunch Time — to be published by Scribe in September — argues that something much more radical is needed than the government's half-hearted energy policies. He suggests that as the world struggles with the twin crises of global recession and rapidly accelerating climate disruption, we have reached a crunch time in which Australia needs to apply the fundamental insights of John Maynard Keynes to help feed and employ us, while reinventing Australia as a renewable energy-based economy that will sustain our children's and grandchildren's climate security.
If there's one single factor that could push the government's latest climate change policy over the line in the Senate, it's the additional credibility it would give Australia at the Copenhagen climate change summit in December. Environment ministers and officials will meet there to thrash out a successor to the Kyoto protocol.
Australia's previous position of not going above 15 per cent would have rendered our voice basically irrelevant at Copenhagen. Even though the revised figure is highly conditional, a 25 per cent goal is enough to signify a serious commitment to reducing carbon emissions.
The devil may well be in the detail, but it's usually the headlines that make the greatest impact.
Whether we like it or not, Australia has been thrust into the climate change limelight by a combination of government policy and