BY JIM GREEN
Prime Minister John Howard announced in parliament on June 5 — World Environment Day — that the Australian government will not ratify the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gas emissions.
The announcement followed ratification of the treaty by Japan and the European Union. To become legally binding, the treaty must be ratified by at least 55 countries, including industrialised countries responsible for at least 55% of total 1990 carbon dioxide emissions. All that is now required for the treaty to enter into force is ratification by Russia and any one of a number of low-emitting countries.
Howard trotted out stale and discredited arguments against ratification. His specific lies were framed by one big lie: conflating the commercial interests of fossil fuel corporations with the "national interest". "As with so many things — indeed as with all things — this government will continue above everything else to assert the Australian national interest", he said.
Howard raised the fact that Third World countries had been exempted from the first "commitment period" of Kyoto targets, ending in 2012, ignoring the fact that Third World countries are the least responsible for climate change and the most vulnerable to its impacts. He also ignores the fact that it is very likely that Third World countries will adopt targets in subsequent commitment periods — unless, of course, they follow the lead of rich countries such as the USA and Australia which are in a far better position to adopt binding targets but refuse to do so.
Howard also resorted to the "carbon leakage" argument, raising the prospect that signing the protocol "would facilitate the export of dirty industries from this country into developing countries and thereby facilitate the flight of jobs from this country".
Carbon leakage is the fossil fuel corporations' "scare tactic of choice", according to Australia Institute director Clive Hamilton in his 2001 book Running from the Storm. Often it is coupled with the argument that overall emissions will be greater if this happens because there are superior technologies and more stringent environmental standards in Western countries compared to developing countries.
These arguments not only overstate the environmental superiority of Western production processes, they also ignore the many other reasons why corporations would prefer to invest in the developed countries, regardless of the greenhouse equation.
These reasons include access to far superior transport, technological infrastructure and corporate welfare, such as heavily subsidised electricity. Hamilton cites the decision made last year by Aldoga Aluminium Smelter Pty Ltd to invest $3 billion in a new aluminium smelter in Queensland.
Hamilton argues for special concessions for exporters in a few cases, such as liquified natural gas. "It is appropriate to develop greenhouse policies to accommodate these few special cases", he argues, "but it makes no sense to allow the carbon leakage tail to wag the greenhouse policy dog".
Ratifying the Kyoto Protocol would "cost us jobs and damage our industry", Howard told parliament. That argument was debunked by former Liberal leader John Hewson, now chairperson of Global Renewables Ltd, in the June 7 Australian Financial Review: "The claim that it will 'cost us jobs and damage our industry' is without foundation and, if anything, reflects little more than the claims of the aluminium industry, which is always threatening to take its smelters offshore, as ridiculous a proposition as that is".
For "evidence" of the supposedly major economic costs of ratifying the Kyoto Protocol, the government still relies on "research" from the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARE). ABARE's findings were "compromised" by funding from corporate greenhouse polluters, according to a 1998 report from the federal ombudsman. According to Hamilton, one corporate representative on ABARE's steering committee later mused whether the company "should ask for our money back".
Howard had just one other argument against ratification: "One of the things that makes Australia almost unique in this context is that as a developed country we are a major net exporter of energy". However, emissions from energy sources are counted towards the overall emissions of importing countries, not exporters such as Australia.
To the extent that there is any logic in Howard's argument concerning energy exports, it applies only to products with high levels of emissions "embodied" in them due to emissions-intensive production processes, such as aluminium, but Australia is by no means unique in terms of emissions-intensive industries.
Moreover, 1989-90 data from the Bureau of Industry Economics indicates that emissions embodied in imports is only slightly lower than the figure for exports. "If these figures are accurate, the case for special consideration collapses", Hamilton notes.
Some economic costs will arise with reduced demand for Australian coal. However, as Hamilton notes: "Claims for special consideration put Australia in the same camp as the Middle Eastern oil exporters who demand financial compensation as the world shifts away from oil".
From Green Left Weekly, June 19, 2002.
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