Closing the climate change policy gap

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October 31, 2007

Labor finally admits the Government was right all along

THE uncomfortable facts about climate change have forced Labor to admit the inconvenient truth about its own position on global warming. If Labor wins office, Mr Rudd may find himself in the same position for which Labor has long criticised the Howard Government, refusing to ratify a post-Kyoto agreement because it does not include developing nations such as China and India.

First the facts: Australia is responsible for 1.4 per cent of global carbon emissions and this figure is expected to fall to 1 per cent by 2050. The developing world is responsible for 50per cent of global emissions and this share will increase to 75 per cent of emissions by 2050. By the middle of this century, the carbon emissions of China and India, at 32.1 per cent of the world total, will exceed the emissions of the US, Europe, Russia, Japan, Brazil, Canada and Australia combined. Global warming is, by definition, a global problem. The impact of carbon emissions does not respect national borders. In short, cutting Australia's carbon emissions, even by 100 per cent, will have almost zero impact on the human contribution to climate change. Without including China and India, any future climate change agreement is virtually meaningless. By agreeing to cut emissions after the existing Kyoto agreement expires in 2012, without insisting that China and India also make real cuts, Australia would simply be sending jobs and energy-intensive industries to the developing world.

These are the facts that Labor environment spokesman Peter Garrett tried to ignore in media interviews this week when he said that Labor might sign on to a post-2012 Kyoto-type accord without similar commitments from developing nations. Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd was forced to override Mr Garrett and declare that the inclusion of India and China was "fundamental" to any agreement to succeed Kyoto and a "precondition" of Labor's support. By going public, Mr Garrett removed the opportunity for Labor to continue to exploit community and media ignorance about what is needed to address global warming.

Mr Rudd claims it is the Government that has this week changed its stance to support different arrangements for developed nations and the developing world. However, the Government agreed at APEC for a climate change deal that would "respect differences in national circumstances" and "be consistent with common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities."

The squeeze for Labor this week has been to either support the Howard Government's attempts to bind developing countries into a global agreement, in which case there was no substantial policy difference between them, or to open the possibility for an agreement that excluded India and China, a policy that would inevitably export Australian jobs and industry. Mr Rudd was asked directly on ABC radio by Chris Uhlmann: "Will you sign a post-2012 agreement that doesn't have as an essential prerequisite developing countries cutting their greenhouse gas emissions?" Mr Rudd eventually replied: "A prerequisite or a precondition for us supporting the commitments regime under the second commitment period under Kyoto (is that) we would need to have the developing countries accept commitments at that period."

So this is the Rudd position. A Rudd government in five years' time would refuse to sign Kyoto 2 if China and India were not included. It's the very position for which Mr Rudd criticises Mr Howard on Kyoto 1.

Labor claims that Mr Howard's lack of leadership in not ratifying the Kyoto Protocol had allowed China to resist global pressure to reduce emissions. This argument is flawed at several levels. First, there is no evidence that Australia's ratification of Kyoto would have had any bearing on China's actions whatsoever. Second, it ignores the Howard Government's success in securing the Sydney Declaration at APEC in which, for the first time, China and the US committed to emission-reduction targets, albeit long-term aspirational ones.

Labor is continuing the fiction that the Eurocentric Kyoto agreement represents the Holy Grail of fixing the climate change problem. In truth, it is a system devised by the nuclear-powered states of Europe, led by France, which is biased against the world's coal-fired economies, notably the US. Europe's Kyoto advantage derives from the credits received for shutting down the inefficient industries inherited from the former communist Eastern Bloc. Despite this, unlike Australia, many European countries will not meet their Kyoto obligations.

Whether Australia ratifies the Kyoto agreement now is of little real consequence. Having met its targets, there would be little economic cost for the nation. It is therefore possible to appreciate the logic in Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull's unsuccessful cabinet submission that by ratifying Kyoto the Government could limit the political attacks against it, just as the release of terror trainee David Hicks from Guantanamo Bay instantly removed that issue from the electoral landscape.

While making the obvious point on Kyoto may have improved Mr Turnbull's image with some voters, the leaking of cabinet deliberations, whoever was responsible, has probably done long-term damage to his leadership aspirations within the Liberal Party. Mr Howard was never likely to agree.

Rather than ratifying Kyoto, it is more important that Australia gets its position right for the development of a carbon trading scheme that can fit into a global system to emerge from negotiations for a post-Kyoto framework. This means not agreeing to targets before discussions even begin. Global warming was assumed to be a strong suit for Labor, but events of this week have exposed Mr Garrett as an inexperienced politician and out of his depth when dealing with the Realpolitik of climate change. Mr Rudd has been forced to acknowledge that, faced with actually having to make the hard decisions, he would probably act exactly as the Howard Government has done. This is a sensible position that recognises Australia alone cannot save the world from climate change. The wrong decisions can, however, make things much worse for the nation's economic wellbeing