BY JIM GREEN
The federal Coalition government is planning a wrecking operation at an international climate change conference at the Hague from November 13-24.
The conference — formally known as the Sixth Conference of the Parties (COP6) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change — is supposed to finalise rules for implementing the Kyoto protocol, which calls for 39 developed countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 5% below 1990 levels during the period 2008-2012.
There has been some expectation that sufficient countries will ratify the protocol in the wake of COP6 that it will "enter into force" (obtain legally binding status on those countries which ratify the protocol) in about two years.
The agreement will not take effect until it is ratified by 55% of countries accounting for at least 55% of global greenhouse gas emissions. It is highly unlikely that the protocol could enter into force without ratification by the United States, which is responsible for over a third of global emissions. US ratification is highly unlikely.
However, it remains a distinct possibility that the rules agreed to at COP6 will be so liberal that corporate polluters and their political accomplices will be more than happy to ratify the Protocol. There will be considerable pressure on national delegations to stitch up an agreement, no matter how inadequate.
One of the major bones of contention concerns allowable methods for achieving emission targets. Achieving targets is not to be confused with reducing emissions. The major thrust of negotiations in recent years has been to create and expand loopholes which would allow countries to meet targets with little or no reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
The loopholes include accounting for carbon "sinks" such as forestry plantations and land-use changes. Greenhouse credits could be awarded for replacing old-growth forests with plantations. On November 9, Greenpeace and the World Wide Fund for Nature released a report which claims that Tasmanian native forest is being cleared to make way for plantations in order to generate carbon credits under a joint venture between the Tokyo Electric Power Company, Mitsubishi and North Forest Products.
Other problems with sinks include the potential for business-as-usual practices to generate greenhouse credits, and the potential for creative accounting, made all the more likely because of the complexity of accounting for sinks.
Another loophole is the so-called Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which would credit developed countries for assisting in the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in developing countries. Depending on COP6 negotiations, the CDM could include credits for "clean" coal, sinks, nuclear power and much else besides. In March, TransAlta, a US-based energy utility, announced that it was financing a project to feed Ugandan cows supplements to reduce the volume of their farts, in order to buy some time and political support for its plan to upgrade three coal-fired power stations.
Another so-called flexibility mechanism is emissions trading, which would allow countries emitting fewer greenhouse gases than their target level to sell the excess "hot air" to countries exceeding their limit. This is attractive to former Soviet countries, and some eastern European countries, whose emissions have fallen since 1990 due to economic downturn.
Potential buyers of hot air — most likely advanced capitalist countries such as the US and Australia — are also attracted to emissions trading because of the potential it offers for creative accounting. It is easy to imagine funds paid for emissions credits being deducted from other line items, such as aid/development funding.
Other key debates at COP6 concern monitoring and compliance issues. Monitoring of practices such as land clearing is difficult enough at the best of times; throw in some deliberate intransigence and the ever-present creative accountants and the whole Kyoto process promises to degenerate into farce.
The compliance debate concerns measures to be taken against countries failing to meet their greenhouse targets. These might involve financial penalties or other sanctions, but most likely countries failing to meet their agreed target will be subject to no penalties and will instead be "facilitated" to improve their performance.
Australia's 'international competitiveness'
The federal government agreed in 1997, as part of the Kyoto protocol, to reduce greenhouse emissions to 8 per cent above 1990 levels. Latest figures indicate emissions are running at 17% above those in 1990.
The Australian government is pushing for "uncapped" (unlimited) use of flexibility mechanisms — such as emissions trading, the CDM and sinks — which will allow countries to meet targets with little or no domestic emissions reduction.
The Australian delegation to the Hague will push for a weak monitoring regime and against binding penalties for countries failing to meet their targets.
Maintaining the "international competitiveness" of Australia's capitalists is the "framework" of the government's greenhouse policy, according to a September 6 media release from Nick Minchin, federal minister for industry, science and resources. Long-term social and environmental impacts come second.
Don't be fooled by any criticism of the federal government by Australian corporate greenhouse polluters over the coming fortnight. It's all part of the facade.
The government's willingness to pander to the interests of corporate polluters has been made easier by industry front groups, most notably the Lavoisier Group, headed by former Labor minister Peter Wash. The barking mad conspiracy theories of the front groups make the Coalition government seem reasonable and responsible in comparison.
Walsh says the CSIRO is an organisation "based not on science but on politics". However, the CSIRO is primarily composed of politically naive — and/or politically expedient — technocrats. It is renowned for it's meaningless pronouncements — "The key to achieving successful change will be to ensure it is socially and economically sustainable, as well as environmentally desirable" — and for proposing technical fixes to cure all of the world's ills.
Junk science
The CSIRO's Dr. Graeme Pearman says that current emission levels would have to be cut by more than 60% just to stabilise carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations body of 2500 scientists, has recently revised its estimates upwards and is now projecting temperatures will rise 1.5-6oC between 1990 and 2100, up from its 1995 forecast of one to 3.5oC.
This alarming situation is not reflected in the establishment media. The feature column in the October 19 Sydney Morning Herald was titled, "The greenhouse effect isn't so bad after all". At the Australian, conservative columnist Frank Devine has titled recent articles, "Greenhouse emission protocols a lot of hot air", and "Cool reason commands us to ignore the hot air".
"Rather than Australia being a global pariah — as green zealots claimed when it fought for the best deal at Kyoto — we risk being seen as global mugs if we ratify the protocols next month", Devine advised on October 16, quoting freely from industry front groups to justify his position.
Samuel Gregg, a "moral philosopher" from the Centre for Independent Studies, an Australian conservative think tank, worried aloud in the Melbourne Age on August 16 about the impact of "green paganism" on Christian traditions.
In the Courier-Mail on July 5, another luminary from the Centre for Independent Studies, Barry Maley, argued that "Australia should heed a petition opposing the [Kyoto] treaty signed by over 17,000 American scientists."
This sign-on internet petition includes the signatures of "Dr Jerri Halliwell" (a.k.a. Ginger Spice), and Drs Burns, Honeycutt and Pierce — from the television sit-com Mash.