By Allen Myers
In defending its determination not to commit Australia to binding greenhouse gas reductions at next week's international meeting in Kyoto, and in fact to seek approval to increase Australian emissions, the Howard government has been arguing that agreeing to mandatory reductions would cost Australia too many jobs.
In parliament on September 22, John Howard claimed that uniform greenhouse gas reduction targets would cost the country 90,000 jobs, and also involve a 40 cents a litre increase in petrol prices and a doubling of electricity prices.
"The Australian nation produces 1.4% of all world greenhouse emissions. We are prepared to play our fair part ... but we are not prepared to sell out the Australian national interest", Howard declaimed.
Howard cited the 1.4% figure to give the impression that Australian contributions to greenhouse gases are not very important. But the figure should be compared to Australia's share of the world's population — about 0.3%. In other words, per capita, Australia creates almost five times its fair share of greenhouse gases.
Howard wants to make this disproportion worse, at the expense of other countries. And this is what he calls "fair".
Equally shonky were the prime minister's figures on petrol and electricity prices. According to the Financial Review, they were supplied by Dr Brian Fischer of the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics "based on his modelling". This is presumably the same model which the government has used previously, and which was funded to the tune of $560,000 by coal, oil and aluminium companies.
The Financial Review quoted Fischer as saying that he had assumed that stabilising emissions at 15% below 1990 levels by 2010 would require a carbon tax of $900 per tonne.
Democrats Senator Meg Lees pointed out the next day that an Industry Commission study had found that a carbon tax of only one-tenth that level would more than meet the target for reduced greenhouse emissions.
Furthermore, there is no reason to assume that a carbon tax is necessary, at any level, in order to reduce greenhouse gases, since there are many other ways in which emissions can be reduced. Providing decent public transport, for example, would reduce emissions by reducing private vehicle traffic. Development of solar electricity would reduce carbon dioxide and other gases from coal-fired power plants.
As for jobs, people could be excused for cynicism about Howard's sincerity, in view of his government's ongoing destruction of tens of thousands of jobs in the public service and in Telstra.
But the claim of 90,000 jobs at risk involves more than just hypocrisy. A week after Howard first made the claim, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade released the report which was supposed to justify the figure he had used.
This revealed that none of those jobs really exists.
Contrary to the impression created by Howard's claim of "job losses", the DFAT study mentioned no threat to any existing job. All of the jobs to be "lost" are future jobs which the government predicts will be created under present conditions but which it predicts will not go ahead if there are mandatory greenhouse gas reduction targets.
These predictions are based on nothing more than a DFAT survey of state governments and companies which are examining the possibility of mineral and energy investments. The survey found investments of $68 billion "under examination"; if all of these went ahead, "around 90,000 long-term jobs may be created".
But Howard knows very well that corporations are constantly studying possible investment projects, and that most never proceed, for reasons such as lack of markets, competitors' moves and alternative investments appearing more attractive. As Keith Tarlo of Greenpeace commented on the DFAT survey, "Predictions of 'resource booms', like the prediction that the job-loss claim is based on, are notoriously based on wish lists, not reality ... only a small proportion of projects ever go ahead."
Similarly, it should not be assumed that any particular such project which was really proceeding would have to be scrapped if Australia adopted mandatory greenhouse reduction targets: it might well be permitted if emissions were being reduced by other means. For example, Greens Senator Bob Brown points out that 23% of Australia's present greenhouse gas emissions are due to clearing of native vegetation.
Furthermore, a mandated reduction in industries which produce large amounts of greenhouse gases could easily create more jobs in the industries that replace them. If, say, Australia had to produce less of its electricity by burning coal, new jobs in the solar power area would probably outnumber jobs lost in coal mining.
Predictions like Howard's dishonest claim of 90,000 job losses tacitly assume that companies invest in alumina refining or petrol refining because they want to produce aluminium or petrol, and that if they can't do so, they will simply sit on money that would otherwise be invested. That is nonsense.
Corporations invest to make profits. While they usually prefer to do so in industries with which they are familiar, if they can't do so, they invest in some other field. This is the case regardless of whether they are prevented from profiting in the normal way by economic conditions or by government regulation of their activities.
So there is no need to fear that strictly enforced reductions in greenhouse gas emissions would cause an increase in unemployment. But there is very good reason to fear what a failure to enforce reductions will do to our planet.
The solutions to the jobs crisis and to the environmental crisis both require that we no longer allow greedy corporations to determine what is produced and how.