Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
existing infrastructure, other environmental issues, realistic timing and the
value of a pluralistic portfolio of options.
What Australian Federal, State and in some cases, local and city govern-
ments are doing reflects the strength of the IPCC report, and the thrust of
the International Framework Convention on Climate Change.
This has led to a vigorous debate about whether Australia should sign the
Protocol to the Convention (Kyoto Protocol; Kyoto 1997). By and large, this
debate has been relatively poorly informed. It is true that, on the one hand,
the signing of the Protocol sends a strong signal of commitment by any gov-
ernment to the challenge of emissions reduction. On the other hand, it is
also true that contributors to the debate have often failed to recognise the
resource, economic and trade imbalances between nations that make it diffi-
cult to reach agreements that reflect some degree of equity of responsibility.
Further, where economic analyses of options have been applied, they have
invariably failed to cope with the admittedly difficult issue of the assessment
of costs forgone if climate change is avoided.
It is naïve to think that the commitments and basis of the Protocol are
not without political and national influences. Some countries have clearly
sought to produce a Protocol that favours their particular economic position
in energy trading with respect to others. Indeed, the Protocol is more about
the issue of how energy will be traded in the future and national positioning,
than about climate change. All nations start from different resource bases
(their mixture and amount of resources), different levels of technology and
economic development, and perceptions of the impact of climate change on
themselves. This leads to highly divergent views on what should or should
not be included in such a Protocol.
The fact remains: the global community needs to find solutions to the
problem of meeting energy demands and reducing emissions.
Challenge: through the Protocol or through alternative and perhaps even more
proactive and innovative approaches, to set in place the inducements (for
markets) and regulations that together lead to significant global emission
reduction. These targets need to be for reductions well beyond those within the
current Kyoto Protocol targets (which sets a combined target for Europe, for
example, of a reduction of around 7% from 1990 levels by the end of this
decade). All developed countries need to be looking at reductions of emissions
of around 50% by the middle of this century. For Australia, it is likely that the
global community will expect substantive reductions of emissions in the future
(unlike the increase of 8% allowed in the current agreements).
