Environmental Peril « Alex Schlotzer

One of the major issues the Australian government committed to tackling in the 2007 federal election was climate change. There has been a fit of stops-and-starts by the government when it comes to climate change. The Rudd Government can no longer just rely on it signing the Kyoto Protocol. This was done nearly one year ago but what has been achieved in the meantime? It must be noted early on that the individual efforts of Australia’s states and territories in tackling climate change have been pretty poor. While this post is about the Australian government, the state and territories have been failing their constituents.

From early on the Rudd Government has illustrated a hypocritical approach to the environment and tackling climate change. It has been a continuing theme throughout the full year of his government’s first term. Although despite the commitments made, and not to mention the expectations placed on a new government for tackling these things, there has been a lack of real action. The first budget handed down by the new government decimated the solar rebate program along with Garrett giving the green light to the planned pulp mill in the pristine Tamar Valley (Tasmania).

Over the course of the year the government has released its paper on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, mis-named carbon reduction by the government, along with the Garnaut Report suggesting soft reduction targets and for cushioning those industries that are heavy polluters. And essentially proving to be a rather useless effort in truly tackling climate change. The government has continued to pause and delay on introducing other policy mechanisms like building and manufacturing regulations and requirements for environmentally sustainable methods. While the government is littered with intelligent and able people, the overall policy imperative from the ALP ultimately fails the environment.

Let us not forget the major push by the federal and state governments to expand uranium mining and exports. The Rudd Government attempts to play down the issue of uranium mining and its contribution to nuclear weapons proliferation. There are also the quiet efforts of the government, along with the nuclear lobby, to have nuclear energy included as essential to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. There is no room to include nuclear energy if the government is actually serious about reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Apart from the fact that the entire process of mining and milling uranium ore produces highly toxic waste, nuclear energy is an unviable source of energy as it would take too long to introduce and requires massive amounts of energy to build a nuclear power station; far more than would be supposedly saved.

Along with looking at uranium the government insists on wasting money on research and development for so-called carbon capture and storage and clean coal. Carbon capture and storage still remains a questionable way of mitigating greenhouse gas emissions but does nothing to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions. And there is nothing clean about coal, no matter how often the phrase clean coal is used. Indeed the research suggests that to make brown coal cleaner requires more energy and increased greenhouse gas emissions. But then while we try to capture and store greenhouse gas emissions, the Australian Government supports and encourages the continued logging of old-growth forests, native forests and our water catchments.

So what has the Rudd Government done to protect Australia’s precious environment or tackle climate change?