Oz—too small to matter?

Our cockwomble of a PM, Scott Morrison, denies a link between climate change and our unprecedented bushfires (it's just arsonists), denies that climate change is even happening (it's all natural),  but if it is, we (Oz) only emit 1.3% of global CO2 (so we're helpless to stop climate change), and anyway, switching to renewables will devastate the economy (rubbish).  This farrago of half-truths, lies and obfuscations is accepted and magnified by the Murdoch press and media channels, and isn't properly questioned and refuted by other "centrist" media.  Only The Guardian and the ABC have been any different.

Here are some excerpts from a piece by Simon Holmes à Court in The Guardian, and it addresses the claim that Oz is too small to matter when it comes to climate change.

Australia’s unforgiving, unrelenting and unprecedented fires have demonstrated so clearly that the climate doesn’t recognise tricky “Kyoto carryover” accounting and doesn’t care for juvenile finger pointing at other countries.

With a warming climate, this brutal summer is a preview of what will become a regular occurrence in our lifetimes. More and more Australians realise that climate change is a clear and present threat.

Our only chance to maintain our standard of living, and our economy, is if all countries rapidly decarbonise. Many are committed to this, Australia is not. We cannot expect global progress if we ourselves aren’t prepared to at least pull our weight, let alone show any leadership.

Yet, we have a prime minister who looks into the camera and speaks to a people in survival mode and deep trauma and waves away our responsibility. He claims that we are responsible for just 1.3% of global carbon dioxide emissions, as if we are irrelevant.

Australia is the 14th largest emitter out of 208 countries. If all countries with emissions under a “measly” 2% were lumped together we’d together be responsible for almost as much annual emissions as China and India put together.

Australia has never been irrelevant and we certainly aren’t now.

Australia has the highest emissions per capita of all major nations. The average Australian has four times the carbon footprint of the average global citizen, significantly due to our unusually high reliance on coal for electricity, the poor energy efficiency of our vehicles and buildings and the high domestic emissions from coal and gas extraction and processing.

China and India haven’t yet peaked their emissions – unsurprising given their stage of development – but both are decoupling emissions from development such that their average citizen will never have the carbon footprint the average Australian has now.

The “too small to matter” argument is logically absurd, but it is also morally bankrupt and economically reckless.

We all know that throwing one piece of litter out the window wouldn’t ruin the environment, but if all did we’d soon be surrounded by rubbish.

How about voting? It is a foundation of our democracy that nobody’s voice is so small as to be meaningless.

Likewise, if any one taxpayer stopped paying tax we all know it wouldn’t make a measurable difference to the government’s bottom line, but if everyone stopped paying tax it would smash consolidated revenue.

So when did we become a nation of shirkers? We’ve always punched above our weight. A young Australia was immensely proud of the troops committed to the first world war, even though the Diggers comprised less than 1% of the Allied Powers. We are only 0.3% of the global population but are gutted whenever we’re not near the top of the Olympic medal tally.

The UN Environment Program recently announced that global emissions need to reduce by 7.6% every year for a decade to keep warming below 1.5C. With no emissions reductions projected, it’s no wonder that Australia’s climate policies were recently ranked dead last among 57 nations.

Meanwhile, other countries are embracing the challenge.

In November I visited a cement factory in Belgium that is trialling a low-cost technology – originally developed in Australia – for decarbonising cement manufacture. Globally, the cement sector is responsible for around 8% of emissions, as growing developing countries urbanise.

In Essen, in Germany’s Ruhr Valley, I saw a technology that allows power-hungry aluminium smelters to operate well (and increase profits) in renewable-dominated grids. The technology was first developed in Gladstone and partly Australian-owned before being sold offshore.
 In nearby Duisburg, I visited ThyssenKrupp, a major German industrial company with a commitment to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. The company has embarked on an ambitious plan to decarbonise steel production, also responsible for around 8% of global emissions, with the ultimate goal of replacing coal with hydrogen. ThyssenKrupp is also developing technology to combine “waste” gases with “green” hydrogen – hydrogen produced with renewable energy – to synthesise chemicals such as methanol and ammonia, providing a pathway to lowering emissions from aviation and agriculture.

As these economies wean themselves off coal the demand for hydrogen will skyrocket. With the potential to harness vast quantities of low-cost renewable energy, Australia is well placed to become an energy superpower in a decarbonised global economy.

None of the major industrial companies I visited in Europe sees decarbonisation through a sacrifice lens. There’s no talk of “economy wrecking targets”. Rather, having accepted that the economy must be decarbonised, they are rushing to seize a competitive advantage.

Meanwhile, Australia is a world away, in every sense. A rich, talented, capable nation is being held back by a lack of honesty and a lack of imagination – a nation held back by the vested interests of those who profit from the extraction and sale of gas and coal.

Our prime minister is paralysed, unable to acknowledge that fossil fuel emissions are changing the climate, and that the changing climate is hurting Australians.

To which I would add: if Australia, one of the richest countries on Earth, with one of the highest per capita emissions, refuses to do anything about its emissions, how will we be able to ask China, a much poorer country, with much lower per capita emissions to cut hers?  But it is essential that China cut her emissions if we are to avoid 3 degrees C rise by 2100.  1 degree has been bad enough, and as emissions continue to rise, things will only get worse.