Australia's "Don't Worry, Be Happy" Climate Policy

[hatrack]

EDIT

On July 28, the US government announced that Washington and Canberra had, for the last 12 months, been secretly cooking up an agreement with the governments of Japan, South Korea, India and China. The Asia Pacific Partnership for Clean Development and Climate will, in the words of US President George Bush, “allow our nations to develop and accelerate deployment of cleaner, more efficient energy technologies” rather than requiring or enforcing any greenhouse gas emission-reduction targets or time frames.

The new pact is a blatant manouevre to sabotage the next stage of international negotiations on enacting further mandatory emissions-reduction targets for the rich industrialised countries and bringing the larger industrialising Third World countries into the post-2012 emission-reduction process. Those talks are scheduled for November in Montreal. However, the rival Asia Pacific Partnership will meet in Adelaide just a few weeks before the Montreal gathering. While the exact details of what it will entail remain unknown, the intention of Washington and Canberra is clearly to tempt India, China and South Korea into breaking ranks with the rest of the world with the bribe of privileged access to advanced — albeit yet-to-be developed — energy technology.

Between them, the members of this fledgling pro-greenhouse gas pact are responsible for almost half of all current emissions. Leader of the Australian Greens Bob Brown, noting that a majority of the body’s members were among the world’s biggest coal producers, warned that “this is all about taxpayers’ money being diverted from developing clean, renewable technologies to try to make coal less dirty”. It is also likely that Washington will exploit the pact to promote the renewed expansion of nuclear power generation, and Canberra will eagerly seek to exploit this to sell more Australian uranium overseas.

Greenpeace International’s Stephanie Tunmore said on July 28 that “the pact ... is entirely voluntary and does not even mention greenhouse gas emissions reductions ... Unfortunately, it seems likely that Mr Bush and Mr Howard are seeking to protect the interests of their domestic fossil fuel industries and to deflect criticism for their total failure to address climate change... Up to 70-80% of global emissions must be reduced by industrialised countries by mid-century in order to avoid catastrophic climate change. Voluntary technology agreements, negotiated by the world’s worst polluters, are not going to get us there.”

EDIT

http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2005/637/637p11.htm

[Coastie for Truth]

1. What do you expect?

<>

[phantom power]

2. You'd think that a country suffering droughts so severe

that they are within months of creating actual ghost towns would take this problem more seriously.

[krkaufman]

3. If they think they're gonna get advanced alternative energy...

... technologies from partnering w/ the US, they have another think coming.