climate change
18 Jul 2008
No Polluter Left Behind
Penny Wong's Green Paper looks after some of the nation's biggest polluters, writes Ben Eltham
Kevin Rudd and Penny Wong's Green Paper is out. The starting point for Australia's response to the fundamental transformation of economy — indeed, of the very climate we all live in — it's a long, abstruse and politically calibrated document that seeks to keep everybody happy. Well, everyone except the Coalition, the Greens, the States and Australia's climate scientists.We'll get to the potential political problems for the Government later. Before that, let's examine what the Green Paper contains.
The Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Green Paper is the Australian Government's first formal policy response to the issue of a possible Emissions Trading Scheme — the mechanism that Kevin Rudd, Wayne Swan and Penny Wong want to employ to try and cut Australia's greenhouse gas emissions by 60 per cent of 2000 levels by 2050. Coming in the wake of the Garnaut Review's Draft Report, it explains how the Government proposes to implement an Emissions Trading Scheme and actually bring carbon emissions down.
60 per cent? Therein lies the rub. The 60 per cent reduction was Labor's election promise, and to their credit Labor has so far been a stickler for keeping election promises. Kevin Rudd, we might remember, chose the 60 per cent target because, and I quote here, that's what "the science is telling us."
Unfortunately, that's no longer what "the science" is telling us, not by a long shot. Things have gotten worse — much worse — since many of those projections were modelled. China, in particular, is emitting way more carbon than anyone expected. And leading climate scientists scientists have done more research to suggest that the world is much more sensitive to changes in CO2 concentrations than even the alarmists had previously feared. As we have discussed previously, the latest research is very scary indeed.
In a nutshell, a 60 per cent reduction is not nearly enough. 90 per cent looks closer to the mark. In fact, if we're really serious about climate stabilisation (remember that large-scale climate change is already with us) we're probably going to have to find ways to actually reduce the amount of carbon in the atmosphere — for which there are currently no remotely feasible engineering solutions. Maybe we need to ask Mr Burns for the plans to that giant device that blocked out the sun.
Zooming back from the dizzying doomsday scenarios, what can we say about this Green Paper as a technical document?
Well, it's certainly not as bad as the malevolent spin-meisters at The Australian are making it out to be. Nearly all major sources of emissions are going to be included, except for agriculture which will be brought in by 2015. Petrol is in by the skin of its teeth, with a fuel excise offset that will see federal petrol taxes replaced by the price effect of carbon permits. The mechanisms for issuing and trading carbon look to be workable and the tax provisions seem straightforward (though it's worth noting that the ATO will probably have to establish case law in order to fine-tune the details of things like the deductability of carbon permit purchases).
But it could be a whole lot better. The fuel excise offset means no net pain for marginal-seat motorists, but also no price signal to help Australia adjust to the coming world of peak oil. Yet again The Greens' Christine Milne had the most sensible comment, pointing out that oil would cost $200 a barrel soon anyway and arguing that the Government should have "used the fuel excise to roll out public transport around Australia so that low income earners genuinely have an alternative".
There are plenty of other handouts in the Green Paper. Giving away free carbon permits to polluting industries just because they happen to export makes no sense for the planet, even if might keep a few thousand jobs in the country. Australian coal, iron ore and other mineral resources are a huge input to China's greenhouse gas emissions. To pretend that we don't share some responsibility for the carbon emitted from their steel works, power stations and aluminium smelters is dishonest. It also ignores the controlling position Australia has in the global coal marketplace.
Queensland Premier Anna Bligh doesn't seem too worried, judging by the amazing timing of her decision to open up a gigantic new coal mine in Queensland's central west. Her own website is trumpeting "the first new Australian coal port in 25 years" under a "trifecta of proposals which could deliver a 40 per cent coal export increase for the State." Oh great! Just what the world needs. More coal.
Including greenhouse exports would also have been a logical decision in light of the increasing dominance of resources in Australia's economy. Politicians, miners and their cheer-leaders in the business press can't ever see the mining boom as a bad thing - but as economists have long pointed out, a mining boom can often become a "resource curse".
A mining boom the size of Australia's distorts local economies, artificially inflates the dollar, pushes up the price of WA real estate and labour and generally makes the rest of the country's industries less competitive. Just ask the local councils in WA's north-west, who are struggling to deal with the planning and infrastructure issues of the massive growth of towns like Port Hedland and Karratha. In the 1970s the discovery of North Sea oil did the same to the Dutch economy — which is why this effect is often called "the Dutch disease".
At least making big carbon exporters pay permits would distribute some of their vast wealth back to the public. Instead we're actually subsidising them. As Christine Milne phrased it, "the polluter gets paid".
Let's now examine what economic journalist Peter Martin calls "the most dodgy part" of the Green Paper: its proposal to give oodles of cash away to coal-fired power stations.
Why? Good question. The Green Paper says it is because "if the change in regulatory arrangements was unanticipated and implemented without compensation, and investors viewed this as evidence that the Government was likely to change the regulatory regime in future in an unpredictable way, then investors might regard Australia's electricity market as a riskier investment proposition".
As Martin rightly points out, this analysis is a joke. First, the costs are already sunk. Secondly, those very same investors were completely unconcerned by the risk of global climate change and the obvious likelihood of some form of carbon price - a risk they should have known about for the past 15 years, if their CFOs bothered to read the scientific literature, or even turn on the TV. Now taxpayers are going to reward them for their short-sightedness. "This is a handout resulting from lobbying," Martin concludes. He's right.
Should Kevin Rudd and Penny Wong's Green Paper really be named after one of George W Bush's favourite policies? Is it a "faith-based initiative"? Absolutely, if your belief system is carbon capture and sequestration. Or would you prefer "No Polluter Left Behind." It's that too.
It's going to be a long way to a sensible climate change policy. But at least we've taken the first steps.
Delicious
Digg
StumbleUpon
Newsvine
Facebook
Kwoff
Discuss this article
To participate in the discussion Sign in or Register
Reality-check time.
All Emissions Trading Schemes that have been enacted, have only been enacted as a result of exemptions form the system.
Exemptions are the rule, not the exception.
This was the case in the US (in the early nineties) - where railroads were deregulated so that power plants could be EXEMPT from the true freight costs of using low sulphur fuel.
This was the case in the EU - where the German coal and coking industry (the largest industrial emitter of carbon in absolute terms) was made EXEMPT from the policy entirely.
This was the case (in now all but defunct) Kyoto Agreement - where China (again the largest emitter of greenhouse gases in absolute terms of all the signatories) was made EXEMPT from binding emissions caps.
And it now seems, at least according to the green paper, that the major emitters will be EXEMPT from any Australian system.
You’d think, after so many goes at it, some one might catch on that their might just be something wrong with the idea that we can trade our way out of this…
But then again, some out there don’t believe in evidenced-based reasoning.
After all, for the dogmatic true believers it is always "going to be a long way to a sensible climate change policy."
to hell in a handbasket
Ah Bob, I knew I could count on you to weigh in with a critical comment!
Ben,
Australia doesnt have a "controlling position in the global coal marketplace" - we arent a monopoly supplier, nowhere near it.Having lots of the stuff is different from controlling it, think MacDonalds and hamburgers.
Let’s say that we take full responsibility for coal exports and completely stop them. The result wont be less coal being used in China, the result would be the US, South America and Africa stepping up production and filling the gap we left behind, with the processes in two of those places being far less efficient than our own. That means that not only would the same amount of emissions be created in China because of using that coal, but more emissions would be created as a result of the less efficient mining that was used to mine that coal to begin with.
Net result - greater emissions being released than if we kept exporting.
Tell me again what makes no sense for the planet?
I had my mind changed over the partial grandfathering of existing power generation assets from full carbon pricing that Peter Martin mentioned by comment number 6 by Labor Outsider over here which you might find interesting:
http://possumcomitatus.wordpress.com/2008/07/17/some-carbon-is-more-equa…
Possum,
Suppose we take full responsibility for coal exports and completely stop them. This would increase the coal price, which will lead to less consumption, and greater production elsewhere. How much production and consumption will change depends on the price-elasticity of demand and the price-elasticity of supply. Overall coal consumption will decrease unless demand is completely inelastic or supply is completely elastic. There will be an effect from brown coal being a substitute good for thermal black coal, but there will also be an effect from gas and renewables being a substitute good for thermal black coal.
Arguing that we should ignore coal exports because someone else may increase coal production is similar to arguing that Australia should not worry about our emissions because we are only responsible for about 2% of world emissions. Both arguments are arguing that international prisoner’s dilemma and that we should be a free rider. The central problem is resolving the prisoner’s dilemma and turning global emissions around. Free rising makes this much more difficult.
A sensible policy would be for Australia to levy a border tax on coal exports, and encourage other countries to do the same.
Peter Wood
Possum - thanks for pointing out an error of fact there.
You’ve right - while Australia has quite a lot of coal we haven’t cornered the market.
But let’s examine the issue further. Australian coaking coal is a highly valued product much closer to Asian customers than say, Brazil. It could be argued that an Australian export coal tax could actually drive up world coal prices, which would send a price signal in favour of decarbonisation. It would also make overseas polluters pay something for the negative externality of cooking the planet.
The carbon leakage issue is a complex one but let me make this point: there is an ethical as well as a economic dimension to the carbon leakage argument. It may be true that other nations are going to burn their way to development, but that to my mind that doesn’t get Australia off the hook. Arms sales are another example: it is undoubtedly true that nations, armies and terrorists can buy weapons in a global marketplace, but does this remove the moral responsibility from those who do sell to them? Just because everyone else is doing it doesn’t make it right, as Kant pointed out two hundred years ago.
Let’s turn to the argument that "Australian coal is cleaner than the other stuff." This may be true, but then again, any coal is substantially more polluting than renewable energy sources. The purchasers of our exports do have a choice about how they generate their energy, just as we have a choice as to whether and how much coal we sell to them.
Ben,
Thanks for a good overview.
However, your statement, that Labor has so far kept its election promises, is debatable, to say the least:
- Labor promised $500 million over 6 years for the Renewable Energy Fund, but then allocated zero dollars for the 2008-09 financial year.
- It promised $100 million over several years for solar energy research, to be taken out of the $150 million Energy Innovation Fund, but then allocated zero dollars to solar for the 2008-09 financial year.
- It promised to expand the Mandatory Renewable Energy Target to achieve 20% of electricity generation by 2020, but will not implement this until 2009, if ever. The ‘if ever’ is included because the Labor Government recently established the Wilkins enquiry to report on whether such ‘complementary measures’ are required.
On current actions, there is no way that the expanded MRET will be achieved.
As far as I am concerned, a promise delayed is a promise betrayed.
Cheers,
Mark
The "pollution reduction tax" to be implemented according to the Green Paper seems to address everything except the reduction of the output of carbon dioxide. Everyone involved with its organisation of course will be far too busy to notice that and after 20 rears we will be putting out more carbon to try to off-set the detriment to our economy brought about by a so-called carbon trading scheme. It is interesting to note how both industry and traders have pricked up their ears at the very mention of such a scheme. With the army of accountants they all employ, it will be a breeze to make a few more megabucks from the scheme than they are currently able just producing a few cars,refrigerators, iron and steel, aluminium etc. One of the areas most in need of restrictions is that of flexible transport fuels: gas and petroleum (diesel and petrol in all their many forms). However, this appears to be the area most likely to escape and is not scheduled to be charged before 2013. Only a government could think up a process as wasteful of human resources and many other commodities, in setting up a system which charges a carbon tax and reduces excise by exactly the same amount - net result, no change. I expect that is why the scheme is not scheduled to come into operation until 2010 - because it will take at least two years for them to realise that a much easier method would be not to tax fuel and not to reduce excise! No paper work, no army of bureaucrats counting the tax from carbon on petrol and credits needed for excise adjustment. Brilliant Penny. Please go to the top of the class - leave your books though because you will soon be back.
All that said, a large number of people claim to believe that CO2 is actually causing Global Warming. However, if you ask any one who makes the most compelling argument for a carbon dioxide tax - sorry "pollution tax" - or points to the warming found by computers under the careful control of contributers to the IPCC, how carbon dioxide causes global warming, and I don’t mean how do the models find there is likely to be global warming, I mean what role does CO2 actually play in heating the atmosphere, they will have to admit they don’t know. Try finding on the internet an explanation that actually makes sense. There are any number of meandering explanations claiming to show that it does but they include no physics whatsoever of the real world of absorbing gases. Can any one clearly enunciate the PHYSICS which indicates precisely how an increase in carbon dioxide causes an increase in the temperature of the air, any part of the air, the surface, the mid-troposphere, the tropopause, to produce an increase in Global Warming. The models don’t look at this process, they simply assume it is a fact and inject in a small amount of heat to the system - and surprise, surprise, they find that the temperature increases just as a kettle boils when you increase the energy flowing into it by means of an electric current o a wood fire!! Why wouldn’t the atmosphere heat up when some external energy is injected into it, albeit through the additional retention of heat by an assumed process laid at the feet of CO2? If any one can give me a clear description of this process, please email the solution to me at
Thank you, John Nicol
In the blog above my email address has been deleted. It is at: jonicol at netspace.net.au
John Nicol
Mark - good points all.
There has certainly been some backsliding, and not just with the initiatives you raise. The computers in schools are proving more difficult than was first perhaps imagined, and the national broadband network roll-out is also running late.
On the other hand, I do think Labor has been surprisingly firm in delivering on election commitments. Wayne Swan’s budget and the emissions trading scheme itself are cases in point. While we may not agree with the shape of these commitments, it does seem that, in the main, Labor is keeping its promises.
Still, the solar and MRET actions are a concern. They certainly reinforce the argument that Labor is beholden to King Coal in its energy policy.
John Nicol, the physics of climate change is well understood and has been known in broad outlines since the 19th century. In a nutshell, greenhouse gases trap heat in the atmosphere, which is why the moon is very cold and Venus is very hot.
For an understanding of the contemporary frontier of climate science, there are several links in my article above to papers by James Hansen, whose considerable expertise I defer to in matters of climatology.
To directly answer your question, here is a link to a summary of the history of climate science by the American Institute of Physics:
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/summary.htm
Peter,
The global price of coal over the medium term would barely move an inch if we stopped exporting because its a highly competitive industry with vast quantities of the stuff floating around, and China’s demands for coal would hardly move with any short term disruptions in price because the pre-existing coal powered assets in place are relatively new. They aren’t going to run those generators less because Australia stops selling inputs - they’ll source the inputs from elsewhere - even at a higher price in the short term because their demand for electricity is growing exponentially.Australia ceasing to export coal wont strand a single coal powered asset in China.
Saying that ignoring coal is the same as arguing that because we have 2% of global emissions and therefore should do nothing is just a big red herring. The aim of our actions should be to produce a net benefit to human welfare. Australia stopping coal exports results in a net loss to human welfare globally - hardly a desirable outcome. It doesn’t even pass the first basic yardstick of public policy, which is also why it will never happen.
Sure it might make you feel good, but that doesnt stop a net increase in emissions from less efficient sources replacing Australian output in what is pretty close to a perfectly competitive global industry.
The prisoners dilemma part of the issue certainly wont be solved by Australia taking a lead and damaging itself when the results of that dont even reduce global emissions, but increase them!. If we want to solve the prisoners dilemma side, we need to focus more on how to monetize carbon abatement and offsets.
Ben,
Over the short term we could cause price disruptions by ceasing to export - but over the medium term it simply wont matter as new sources come on line to replace our own. There is so much coal around that the world hasnt even reached the point where we’ve found the need to actually measure global coal reserves accurately.
We know there’s large amounts in Australia, in South America, in the US, in parts of North Asia - basically where ever there’s a landmass there’s coal. We know there’s a lot of it, but there’s so much even places like South Africa haven’t been bothered to fully audit their reserves - and their resource companies would audit a small collection of ant hills if they thought there was a dollars worth of mineral wealth in it!
Coal is an issue where we really need to not put our heads in the sand over. Sure it would be lovely if the world could, let alone would make the decision to go "no more coal" - but it simply isnt going to happen because governments of poor countries want to pull their people out of poverty cheaply. And coal is cheap.
And as a global story - that’s really the end of the story despite how much we might not like it.
If we want our actions to directly reduce net global emissions from coal - all we can do is stop using coal domestically (which, remember, amounts to virtually nothing in the global scheme of things) since our exports will just be substituted for those of other countries. Our only other alternative on coal is to use our resource expertise to attempt to develop technology that allows for seriously reduced coal emissions from coal generators around the world.
I’m with you Ben, it would be wonderful if the world stopped using coal - but the world is not going to stop using coal. It would be wonderful if the world went renewable by next Tuesday, but it’s not going renewable by next Tuesday, next year or next decade - it probably wont go renewable in our lifetime.
So the question becomes one of whether we will cut off our nose despite our face, cease coal exports, and perversely increase total global carbon emissions as a result (while feeling mightily ethical and self-righteous about our counterproductive behaviour) - or do we actually attempt to lower global emissions using the hand that the world has been dealt and the reality of the situation we actually face?
tymoshenko
Ben: you share the essential ignorance displayed by the Green Paper with its pejorative title, Carbon Pollution Reduction. CO2 is not and never has been a pollutant any more than H2O is. Without any CO2 in the atmosphere there would be no life at all on this planet. So how much is too much? 384 ppm? Why - when owners of real greenhouses pump in extra CO2 up to even 2000 ppm in order to boost yields? Clearly you like Ms Wong and the ineffable Garnaut are also equally ignorant that all fossil fuels release H2O as well as CO2 when they are burnt to create power etc (La Trobe’s emissions are 5 H2O to one CO2, jet planes are 3 kg CO2 to one kg H2O). It is the water component of fossil fuel burning that explains the increasing global rainfall admitted even by the IPCC (AR4, WG1). Winds etc explain why it does not always fall where it was emitted. Same in Australia as a whole - but then just as George Bush knew and knows nothing of the world beyond Texas, so you like most all urban Australians have never been to the topend with its ever wetter climate. But clearly nothing will ever dissuade you from your belief that water and CO2 are pollutants. Even so I suggest you read David Evans in today’s Australian to learn some real climate science. Try learning some chemistry and plant physiology as well. Then get back to us.
Hang on.
Coal is cheap because in developed countries the infrastructure for burning it on an immense scale is already built and often close to being paid off. This is particularly so in Australia, so it’s understandable that people see coal as entrenched here.
But it’s not a situation that’s going to last forever, or even that much longer, and it’s naive to think that other countries including China, India and Indonesia won’t be drawn into international agreements on emissions reduction sooner (ie Copenhagen) or later. The miners are simply making hay while the sun shines. In 20 years investors will be clambering over themselves to fund renewables. The logic and trajectory of this are in the green paper, albeit in embryonic form.
Also, there’s not a lot of evidence that coal mining overseas, or the grades of coal being dug, lead to much higher emissions than Australian export coal. The companies like to put that line about, and good on them, but at the very least their arguments are open to question.
If we accept that we have better coal and mine it more efficiently than anywhere else, the best way of saving the world would be by exporting as much coal as possible. There are a few reasons why this argument is a bit thin, but in my opinion the main one is the energy security. As long as Australia is shipping it overseas as fast and as cheaply as possible, importers have no real incentive but to burn it, and invest in the facilities to burn it.
Contrary to some claims, Australia does have a fair degree of leverage when it comes to coal exports. Just because some places also have access to unmeasured and unexploited coal doesn’t mean it’s ready and waiting to be dug up and poured on to the next ship en route to Shanghai. It’s an expensive process that would give pause to importers and investors. It’s not a case of us cutting off our nose "despite" our face.
There’s also the fact, and it’s indisputable, that continually increasing coal exports gives ammunition to those parties who will want to see minimal outcomes from Copenhagen next year.
So, I’m not suggesting we stop shipping coal tomorrow. But the industry needs to begin the transition away from coal. We owe it to mine workers in Australia to broaden the scope of the energy industry here, and some in industry and unions recognise this and are acting on it. It’s very unlikely that other countries are not coming to the same conclusions.
The main reason why increasing coal exports is problematic is that if you are suitably convinced that climate change is real, then reliance on coal will have to fall. As Garnaut pointed out recently, not acting is more or less the same as accepting the consequences of unmitigated climate change. These people that trot out the lines about holding back development in the third world conveniently forget that acting to prevent and mitigate climate change will be of disproportionate benefit to poorer nations and peoples.
Sorry about the long post, it’s been a long day!
Tymoshenko -
Firstly, can we inject a little civility into this debate? Name-calling is never productive. Should I just shout DENIALIST at you in caps to make my point?
Secondly, I studied biochemistry and physiology to post-graduate level. Which means I know enough about the scientific method to admit how much I don’t know - which is an awful lot. That’s why I have consistently argued that we should listen to the consensus position of the world’s climate experts. You apparently are prepared to cite the IPCC when it suits you, and yet profess to claim carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. Of course it is a pollutant: it is a toxic gas!
Really, if you can’t make at least a civil and rational comment on this vastly important issue, it would be better if you refrained from spilling your stupidity and bile onto our comments pages.
tymoshenko
Ben, please give examples of my stupidity and bile, and then explain WHY H2O and CO2 are pollutants. You have failed to do this so far. How on earth you can claim that CO2 is a toxic gas is beyond belief. Or do you abstain from Cokes and all other carbonated drinks for that reason? Somehow I have survived 70 years on a nearly continuous diet of gin and tonic, the latter full of "toxic" CO2. Clearly your professors never explained to you that it is all a question of degree: an atmosphere of 100% CO2 or water vapour (another GHG aka H2O) would indeed kill us, but at the actual concentrations (much less than 1% in each case) we manage to live. Why is CO2 at 380 ppm (just over one-third of one percent) toxic? Forget the alleged "bile", can we live without your toxic CO2? Or am I being "stupid" again? Or are you just armwaving?
World coal prices have been on a sharp upward trend for the past 12 months on the back of rising demand from Asia and supply bottlenecks in S Africa and Australia.
If Australia began to cut back on coal exports this would have a major long term price impact, increasing the attractiveness of cleaner generation. Bearing in mind that Australia supplies around 20% high grade coal to the world, this is why:
1) As Cubby points out, a lot of new coal reserves are v hard to get to, meaning the price of extracting alternatives is high, leading to a higher average marginal cost per tonne.
2) Only 50% of power stations globally can accept high sulphur content coal as a fuel input. This percentage is increasing as power stations become more efficient and less pollutive meaning that cut in Australian coal supplies will have a doubly high effect on prices of high grade coal.
A further question; why are we suddenly discussing the ins and outs of coal markets when the real focus should be on this far reaching consultative Green Paper? Lets get back to the point.
Ben, thanks for putting Mr Nicol on the proper track re:climate science. While there will always be uncertainties, there is today a greater scientific consensus around anthropogenic climate change than the theory of relativity.
Thanks
Billy Ray
You know it’s a pity that we don’t have much positive thinking around decarbonisation. We do have rather a lot of sun in Australia after all!
We always think of the negatives about lost mining revenues etc but what about the positives to do with large scale thermal solar generation say? Think of the industry we could support on the back of a very large solar thermal plant north of Adelaide with its 300+ days of sun a year.
Regarding the green paper in particular: EVERY measure should be taken to tell the world that we are serious about change and we want them to be also. I wonder how Australians would feel about having higher priced energy but also the knowledge that they did something (took the first economic hit) that lead to a world wide economic change?
Much better than getting rich from digging stuff up and setting it I’d say!
Nick
Tymoshenko, apologies if you misunderstood my point. I should clarify that CO2 is not a "toxic gas" in the sense of carbon monoxide or uranium hexaflouride. Small doses won’t kill you.
But, yes, CO2 is a pollutant. For an air breathing mammal, once it gets above 5% concentration in any air you might happen to breathe it’s a big problem. For global temperatures, according to the IPCC and most climate scientists, it begins to cause serious warming above 320 ppm.
I’m bowing out of the slanging match at this point.
BillyRay - thanks for your informative post.
tymoshenko
Thanks, Ben, but please note, today’s concentration of 384 ppm is 0.0384%, while your 5% equates to 50,000 ppm, a bit more than today’s 384 ppm. A pity Garnaut and Wong and your own good self are so arithmetically challenged. Your defence of them depends on that absurdity. And you did say CO2 is "toxic", i.e. at all levels.
Regards
Tymoshenko
Forgive my scientific ignorance, all you experts, but why the hell is timber counted as polluting the instant that it is cut down ? How the hell can they expect any farmer or Indigenous community to plant trees on a mass scale if they will be slugged with a carbon tax on the day that they harvest the bloody things ? So what would be the point of growing them then ?
Just asking.
Joe
Hi Joe
My understanding is you can offset forestry or other emissions against reforestation, which is I believe what many big polluters are planning to do.
Part of the reasoning about this is to provide an incentive to leave trees in the ground … remember if you’re planting trees to harvest them, you’re not actually sequestering carbon for the long term, merely "banking it" in the tree until harvest
Hi Ben,
This is the point - what emissions at harvest ?????? A tree takes up CO2, as far as I can tell from the learned debates, it doesn’t pump it out into the atmosphere. A log of timber may not take up any more CO2, but sure as hell its not putting much back either.
And what if somebody wanted to get just a tiny bit sensible and, instead of growing trees for firewood - duh ! - she wanted to raise furniture-timber trees, high-value, high-quality, with no intention of cutting them down and then just putting them all in a bloody great pile and burning them, which is what producting trees for firewood would be like ? How long does good furniture last - 50 years, 100 years ? Plus the time to grow the bloody things and you are up around 100-150 years. I can’t believe the stupidity of some people: do they want people to grow trees or not ? Utterly dumb-ass.
Joe
Tymoshenko, I’ve dug up a reference to acute CO2 toxicity for you (this is from a US EPA paper available here:
http://www.epa.gov/ozone/snap/fire/co2/appendixb.pdf:)
"Exposure to 7 to 10 percent carbon dioxide can produce unconsciousness or near unconsciousness within a few minutes (Schulte 1964, CATAMA 1953, Dripps and Comroe 1947). Other symptoms associated with the inhalation of carbon dioxide in this range include headache, increased heart rate, shortness of breath, dizziness, sweating, rapid breathing, mental depression, shaking, and visual and hearing dysfunction that were seen following exposure periods of 1.5 minutes to 1 hour …. Exposure to a concentration of 6 percent carbon dioxide can produce hearing and visual disturbances within 1 to 2 minutes (Gellhorn 1936, Gellhorn and Spiesman 1935)."
In terms of my arithmetic, I think you are confusing matters. I argued CO2 is a toxic gas. It is. I also argued that CO2 is a pollutant. It is. In regards to the long-term effects of CO2 on the atmosphere, I’d again refer you to the Hansen papers linked to above, or indeed the exhaustively referenced reports of the IPCC.
Joe - I’m going to do some research on forestry emissions and get back to you.
However I think we can say that the act of harvesting forestry products is in itself carbon-intensive, requiring chainsaws, logging trucks, pulp mills and/or sawmills. Obviously the carbon trapped in a wooden chair remains fixed, however there’s no doubt that the process of logging even so-called "sustainable" plantation forest is not carbon-neutral.
No, Ben, I’m not saying that anything is carbon-neutral - after a good curry, I myself am far from carbon-neutral. But surely the release of carbon etc. into the atmosphere in the process of harvesting trees from a plantation is relatively insignificant, barely carbon-positive. Trees absorb carbon dioxide and use it in their growth, isn’t that so ? And I don’t think that furniture timber would need pulp mills, and for its value, not much in the way of saw-mills either. Logging trucks ? Christ, how big are you expecting a plantation to be ? And in fifty years, will chain-saws still be petrol-driven ?
There is something ludicrously wrong with penalising growers of tree plantations - penalise power stations, aluminium producers, heavy vehicles, etc., but the idea of waiting for trees to mature and then slapping a tax on them, that is just bloody ridiculous.
Joe
Ben 18 july: "You apparently are prepared to cite the IPCC when it suits you, and yet profess to claim carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. Of course it is a pollutant: it is a toxic gas!"
Ben 20 July; "I should clarify that CO2 is not a "toxic gas" in the sense of carbon monoxide or uranium hexaflouride. Small doses won’t kill you. But, yes, CO2 is a pollutant. For an air breathing mammal, once it gets above 5% concentration [50,000 ppm] in any air you might happen to breathe it’s a big problem."
Ben 21 July: "Exposure to 7 to 10 percent [100,000 ppm] carbon dioxide can produce unconsciousness or near unconsciousness within a few minutes…I argued CO2 is a toxic gas. It is. I also argued that CO2 is a pollutant. It is."
Ben, do make up your mind, within 3 days you have said CO2 is toxic, non-toxic, and toxic again! Can you tell the difference between atmospheric concentrations of 384 ppm (2007 at Mauna Loa), 50,000 (Ben 20 July), and 70,000-100,000 ppm, Ben 21 July? When do you think the atmospheric concentration now at 384 ppm will reach 100,000 ppm at the present rate of growth of 0.5 per cent per annum? How much life would there be with 0 ppm of CO2? - obviously your "science" studies never acquainted you with photosynthesis.
Is it safe to drink Coke? Do tell! Red wine is a definite no-no: ‘Yeast metabolizes sugar to produce carbon dioxide and ethanol, also known as alcohol, in the production of wines, beers and other spirits, but also in the production of bioethanol:
C6H12O6 → 2 CO2 + 2 C2H5OH’
No more biofools please! Can somebody else please explain to Ben that CO2 is a fertilizer that boosts yields at up to at least 2000 ppm. (nearly six times today’s level).
tymoshenko
Tymoshenko, I think my position is pretty clear. Too much CO2 is bad for you, and the planet.
Joe - as I said, I’m going to do some research on the emissions issues around forestry. The general Kyoto position is that it is changes in the amount of forest cover generally that affect carbon emissions. Reforestation takes CO2 out of the atmosphere while deforestation reverses the equation.
Perhaps I can assist you tymoshenko.
Ben said that 5% was the concentration at which people will have difficulty breathing the air. He said, quite clearly, that 320ppm was the point at which "serious warming" began. So there’s no use you trying to conflate the two; he was quite clear.
He also clearly said that CO2 was not a toxic gas "in the sense of carbon monoxide or uranium hexafluoride", in that small doses won’t kill you. He did not say it was "non-toxic".
Clear now?
If you have a good argument, people will be more likely to be persuaded should you not rely on deliberate distortion of your opponents’ statements.
Tymoshenko, when are you going to realise that carbon dioxide can kill you - sure, like ice cream, a little may do you little harm, but if somebody dropped you into a vat of it, you would die very quickly. And there isn’t that much difference between 380 and 50,000 - it’s just a matter of time, after all.
No, Ben and Ben, there is something wrong with how carbon pollution is being calculated: take for example this issue of cattle putting methane into the atmosphere - if you put all the world’s mosquito and beetle farts together, I’m sure that they would easily outdo all the cattle in the world, as they have probably done ever since cattle were invented. Insect, bacteria and fish farts probably caused the over-heating of the planet back in the Carboniferous or whenever.
Surely there is a tolerable level of CO2 which is produced by ‘natural’ processes, and which is not particularly harmful to man or beast, and any level above that which is produced by ‘unnatural or industrial’ processes is what we should be trying to reduce ? i.e. not a straight-line penalising process, but a stepped process ? i.e. taxing emissions above a certain level, and progressively, but not below it ? Is this too naive ?
So surely, whatever takes CO2 out of the atmosphere should be promoted and encouraged ? Pump billions into re-forestation across the North of Australia, where it is going to be wetter - give all the grants necessary to Indigenous communities to save the planet, and go some way to resolving the unemployment problems in remote communities at the same time. Win-win !
Joe
Tymoshenko,
Everything is toxic in sufficient amounts: 100% oxygen will kill a breather of it. The toxicity of CO2 is in the amount that we are putting up in the air and the rate at which we are doing it. By rapidly changing the chemical composition of the atmosphere we WILL change it.
The atmosphere has undergone massive changes in the past, including reaching much greater and also much smaller CO2 concentrations, and will certainly so in the future but humans are evolved to something like what we have now and it would be prudent to keep it that way.
What has not been mentioned in this forum is that one of the first, very devastating, effects of increased CO2 in the atmosphere is increased acidity in the oceans which will stop coral forming. There is a point of acidity at which coral will no longer form calcium carbonate structures that make the reefs. Is increased acidity in oceans toxic? It’s a bit of a null questions in the face of a collapsing sea ecosystem.
Joe:
I’m not sure about your beetle fart hypothesis- I’d like to see some data on that. There are a lot of cows and rumen animals are particularly bad farters. I’m not sure beetles fart in the same way.
About the tolerable levels of CO2: remember what’s important here is the pace of atmospheric CO2 change. It may be that we are too late and there is enough stuff up there (or there will be soon) to change the atmosphere irrevocably. We actually need to reduce CO2 emissions by all means possible so that a step process or straight line process should be judged simply by their ability to rapidly reduce overall emissions.
Nick
Hi Nick,
At the risk of being e-lynched by deep-greenies, my point about beetle farts is this: is there a tolerable level of CO2 in the atmosphere, that contributed ever since Adam (and his dog) by all manner of organisms, a level that the Earth has dealt with more or less comfortably ? And that anything above that ‘natural’ level, and produced otherwise than by Mother Nature, is what we should be worrying about, and taxing ? i.e. don’t tax ‘natural’ producers, like growers of forests, on their products, especially not if they happen to be Indigenous too, Black as well as Green.
Joe
Did anyone seriously believe that the Rudd government would do something to get on top of this ‘green Götterdamërung’ we are faced with?’ At least they recognized there was a problem which is more than the rotten, rotten, little Johnny Howard and his bullying thugs, ever did.
However, to just recognize the problem is no longer enough. To deal with a calamity of such, quite literally, earth-shaking importance requires courage. I’m talking REAL courage. The sort of courage that we as the voters of OZ could force upon our governments. Only:- the only thing the average Australian is interested in is the footy, followed by cricket………………fill in the dots according to one’s preference. ‘Navel gazing’ is probably up there. If we could force (all it would take is a referendum) all governments to a two year term. It would mean that no longer would it be a question of "What will big business think ? what will the bl*ody Catholics think? What do the Latter Day Saints think? What will the Greens think? Way, way down at the back of the queue is the lone question, "What will the voter think?" If it’s the second year of a two-year term, without a chance of being re-elected, may perhaps the politician think. "It’s my last shot, so I might as well make it a good one". I can see a couple of negatives in there; however, I can see a thousand negatives with Australia being landed with a foreign, overseas head of state. Oh, but don’t the oldies love it? They care a hell of a lot more for QEII aka bum-face, than they care about our country. Think of the expression on the face of a member of the Country Women’s Association. A face lit up with orgasmic lust and lips closed like a rat-trap at the mere mention of QEII’s possible replacement by an OS-TRIAL-IAN.
With this superbly middle-class attitude, together with the worship of Catholicism,
bad grammar, and nick names; Australians are all leached out of thought and couldn’t give a stuff about anything.
If Kevin Rudd could preoccupy his mind with the thought that he may not be re-elected, he might do some good. But he’s too wrapped up in naked little girls to amount to much.
Hi Venise,
I don’t think that all is lost, not just yet. So, sorry, neither you nor I can wash our hands of the difficult issues that we are inflicting on our children and grandchildren. Roll up your sleeves, Venise ! Courage, mon brave !
Joe
Venise - I don’t think it’s as bad as all that, though I do share your considerable frustration with the current political process. On the other hand, although it’s easy to have a shot at the CWA (a really important and worthwhile NGO in the country, by the way) and "middle-class attitudes", I think many in our society and government are facing up to the challenge of climate change, as terrifying as it sometimes appears.
But are Australians "all leached out of thought"? I don’t believe it for a minute. We’re full of good ideas, and if the polls since the Green Paper release show anything, they show that the average Australian is much smarter than the media and the Opposition give them credit for.
Venise Alstergren:
ben.eltham: Semyon Konstantinovich, your uncle was a brave man. But very stubborn. He had always wanted to be a marshal of the Soviet Union and he got there by half-routing the Finns, still half is better than nothing, I suppose. Tell me, why did you change the spelling of your name?
Venise Alstergren:
ben.eltham: Semyon Konstantinovich, your uncle was a brave man. But very stubborn. He had always wanted to be a marshal of the Soviet Union and he got there by half-routing the Finns, still half is better than nothing, I suppose. Tell me, why did you change the spelling of your name?
Venise Alstergren: I’m pleased that you should think that Australians aren’t leached out of thought. I know I tend to overstate things, but I’m talking about your real ocker. He-and just such a man said to me the other day-; we had been talking about the pronounciation of the word resevoir. I said "well if it was mean’t to be pronounced your way the word would read resevwar" This man is not a stupid man and he has very high class tastes. He hates footy and only drinks champagne, which makes him pretty unusual. Anyhow he said "I come from a Scottish familly, I don’t have any Mediterranean blood in me, and I was born in the Western Suburbs; so I’m not going to pronounce it resevoir". He is a died-in-the-wool Liberal Party man. He likes to think the whole Greenhouse, CTS, etc, etc, was invented by the Labour Party, and the trajedy is, there are hundreds of Australians like him. Look at Andrew Bolt for Chr*sts sake.
Cheers
Venise Alstergren:
Hi Joe, I know it’s for our children, and their granchildren. I just don’t happen to think that mankind is going to be around that long. Thanks to over population the world will be at 9 billion people in about 10 years time. The flip side of Global Warming IS over population. There are so many people out there who are incapable of saying, "I don’t believe in God, the Catholic church, whatever. And you heard that madman, and consumate bully aka George Pell, telling the faithful at the Catholic Gymkhana to go forth and multiply!
I have a lot of courage mais je regret tous les choses. A bien-tot. Which just about runs me out of French.
Cheers
Venise
Hi Venise,
The sure-fire solution to population growth is the education of women: if girls have decent schooling, and hopefully some tertiary education as well, three things at least happen:
* they are kept away from reproducing for that much longer;
* since education forgirls usually occurs in societies which have some respect for women, they usually have a bit more choice over who and when to marry;
* the more education, the more girls/women want to do something else besides use their biology: work, for example. And when they do decide to have kids, on the whole, they have fewer than their barefoot sisters.
Ergo, fewer children: in Europe, population growth is either stalled or negative. In China, when their single-child policy works its way through the demography, and they discover too late that it will lead to a population decline, it is unlikely that they will hit fifteen hundred million: India might reach that figure before China.
But that’s the point: if the Indian economy is to take off, they will need to educate their girls, if only to have enough trained professionals. So it will have to be for Africa, and South America.
So pollution will still be a more pressing problem than over-population in twenty, fifty one hundred years. People won’t be the problem.
Joe
Ben,
Good article and congratulations on your very admirable efforts in responding to readers’ comment. Hope I am not joining the debate too late. I’m a strong supporter of climate change mitigation, but I find that I cannot join the chorus of condemnation this green paper has been subjected to. I have a couple of points:
- A stronger proposal than this green paper would never make it through the senate.
- Regarding the free permits given to trade exposed industries, carbon leakage is not just an ethical and economic problem, it is a an environmental problem too. If the costs we impose on companies that must compete in international markets are too high, they will simply move their operations off shore, to countries that do not impose carbon constraints. That is the reality of our globalised economy. For example if our aluminum producers move their production facilities to China as a result of our ETS, our national carbon emissions will reduce but the global emissions will stay the same or possibly increase.
- On the issue of coal, I broadly agree with Possum Comitatus, but I want to add one more point. Whatever actions we take regarding our coal exports, coal is getting more expensive. The rising price of oil will continue to spill over into other fossil fuels (due to the rising costs of mining, and fuel switching to coal-to-liquids for example), causing a much higher price rise over the long term than we could engineer by erecting a tariff barrier against our own exports. In any case, such a proposal would be an economic and political self-inflicted wound, and I don’t think it is realistically on the cards. A better approach is to make sure all major polluting countries implement carbon cap-and-trade systems. The global system we are aiming for is one where we control emissions, not inputs.
I have expanded on these points here:
http://everythingischanging.wordpress.com/2008/07/22/responsible-economi…
Venise Alstergren
Hi Joe,
I am in total agreement with you about women being the key to our future.In fact I couldn’t agree with you more. What worries me about this hypothesis is the fear I have of so many women throughout the world who are in thrall to any form of religion. Don’t forget reason and religion are mutually exclsive terms of reference.
The Catholiic religion urges their followers to pro-create, and the majority of their female believers are ill-educated women who sincerely believe their church to be sacrosant. They actually believe that the Pope is God’s representative on earth, that Jesus was the son of God, and that the Cardinals and priests are ordained to rule their lives. Just as her cousin-in-thought; Fatima of Saudi Arabia, believes utterly, that the local mullah is the font of all wisdom, that he alone can translate the word of God from the Koran and she believes him when he tells her to keep breeding for the greater glory of Allah.
It will take generations of the female members of the Exclusive Brethren to start questioning the so called wisdom of their men. But, as a planet, we don’t have the time or room to allow these generations of women to realize then are on a dead-set loser. We can’t let the world’s population to get to 15-20 billion whilst waiting for these women come to their senses.
I’ve got to dash, as I’m in need of some lunch, but I will be back this afternoon.
Venise
Brett - no it’s neveer too late to comment on an article - thanks for your thoughts here.
Senate politics: the threat of a double-dissolution election would certainly concentrate the minds of wavering Senators
Carbon leakage: It strikes me that carbon leakage is a variation of the classic "race to the bottom" debate we often see in discussions of globalisation. So in a sense we are a hostage to the world’s worst practice (at least in terms of carbon emissions) until some kind of global carbon price is established. It’s such a big challenge.
On the other hand there is obviously some truth in what you say: concrete, steel and aluminium are essential components of the modern economy and we would be better off making them in highly efficient low-carbon industries onshore than importing them.
I’ve had a chat to Miriam Lyons here at the Centre for Policy Development on the issue. She agrees that carbon leakage is a real issue but that it should be approached on a case-by-case level. She also quite likes the Greens’ idea of tying free permit to audited improvements in reducing pollution - rather than just giving permits away, or letting even relatively clean plants rest on their laurels by say investing in forestry offsets.
Miriam also thinks the recent Per Capita paper on the aluminium industry is worth having a look at:
http://www.percapita.org.au/01_cms/details.asp?ID=120
Finally, I completely agree with you on the need to include as many industries and countries in a cap-and-trade system as possible, working towards a "contraction and convergence" scenario. As Jeffrey Sachs has recently pointed out, China ia actually working much harder, and compared with already-industrialised nations much earlier, on environmental mitigation than many in the rich world assume.
Hi Venise,
Thanks for your thoughtful comments - I think they are bit black-and-white really: there is space between reason and religion (look at Iran, for example) which allow women just a little room to move: I cold be wrong but I think women make up most of the engineering and medicine students in Iran. Iran, after all, is nothing like Afghanistan. Even a brutal dictatorship like China allows women to get to university in huge numbers. Even Saddam’s Iraq encouraged women to go to uni. Keep your eye on India - just notice whether or not it makes it easier for women to get a good education.
In Australia, Indigenous women are now at parity with domestic students generally: 1.6 % of the ‘domestic’ adult female population (i.e. over 20) is Indigenous, 1.6 % of all ‘domestic’ students are indigenous. Two thirds of all Indigenous graduates each year tend to be women: a total of about fifteen thousand, out of twenty three thousand by the end of this year. Not bad - there were only a thousand Indigenous graduates just twenty years ago.
I’m not saying it will happen in the next few years, trying to turn pig-ignorant male-dominated cultures around to give women a fair go will take decades, but it will happen perhaps faster than we might think. I don’t think that the world’s population will reach nine billion soon, and certainly not 15-20 billion. But the trade-off is that better-educated people, including women, want a more expensive lifestyle, and that means more pollution, given our current technology. Pollution control is the issue, not population, Venise. So what do we all do about that ? My money is on furniture- and building-timber plantations, especially on Indigenous land (well, isn’t it all ?)
Cheers,
Joe
Venise Alstergren
Hi Joe,
Yes, in Iran women, indeed people, are far better educated than people in the West imagine. I was in Iran, Syria and Jordan, by myself, using public transport, a woman on my own about five years ago. It was a wonderful experience. And I met some wonderful people. Yes, the universities are full of women working flat out to become medicos, dentists, scientists, chemists-you name it- BTW English is a mandatory subject in Iran.( Can you imagine making Australians learn another language? The Anglo/Irish/Scotish brigade in the Western suburbs would riot against this.) But, and it’s a huge but. Thanks to the religion, the men who run it, and the women who dutifully follow the teachings of their men (it would need a full and bloody revolution to fix the problem and women are not born fighters) preference is ALWAYS given to men. So most of this excellent education is just not used. Sure there are lots of women in the travel industry, university teachers, etc. but where are openings for potential surgeons, and jobs of this calibre? If you thought the land of OZ used to be bad it’s 10-100 times worse in Iran. The system, backed up by the mad Mullahs and Imans alienates men and women. A simple fact. In the land that used to be world famous for it’s wines, especially the wines of Shiraz, sees not one grape vine left. Why is this serious? Because so many medical products are based on alcohol. So many of Iran’s medicos are dersisive of the religion as dictated by Iran’s Ayatollahs (Syria and Jordan have a much better attitude towards their (also Islamic) religion. Yet than can do nothing for fear of being thrown into a very nasty slammer.
I don’t think indigenous Australians-in respect of pollution, women”s rights, whatever, have either a positive or negative position in this particular place. The sooner EVERYBODY realizes that we are all in this together, the greater the chance of fixing the problem.
In my opinion pollution is the flip side of over-population. If there were less people in the world, the less water, food, oil, land and so on, would be consumed, ditto the less pollution. I see both pollution and over-population as being at either end of a see-saw. If one gets too heavy, the whole balance will be thrown out of wack, and balance is everything.
I do not believe man has got another 10 years. If gigantic steps towards controlling the problem aren’t taken in the next 5 years we will revert to barbarism. Which is exactly what the Catholic Church wants. The greater the chaos, the greater the chances that man will, en masse, reach out to the Catholic God. This is why I hate the Catholic Church so much. ALL THEY WANT ARE THE NUMBERS, THE CHURCH DOESN’T GIVE A STUFF ABOUT A DECENT LIFE, OR HUMANITY. There endeth the lesson.
No, I don’t think population and pollution are the flips-sides of each other, Venise; the wealthier a population is (not the more numerous) the more it uses resources, and uses them more wastefully, i.e. for luxuries - so it’s not people per se, but their access to resources, and the amount of resources they use, and for what. America could have ZPG and - if their economy was in any sort of shape - they would gluttonise the world’s resources more and more. The Chinese population could stop dead and China would still be rapidly increasing its use of resources, and its capacity to pollute. Africans make up around a sixth of the world’s population but how much of its pollution ? Probably barely 5 %.
Don’t blame people so much as their desire for goods, especially luxury goods, and some people far more than others: if you totalled up how much resources some waste of space like Alan Bond or Paris Hilton uses in a year, on air travel, booze, food, clothes, accommodation, it would be a hundred times, a thousand times what the average African uses. Greed and gluttony, not just numbers.
Cheers,
Joe
Ben,
Senate politics: You are certainly not the first to suggest a DD. I’m not very politically minded, but Tim Watts has gone to considerable depth to explain why it would be a risky move for Labor:
http://tokblog.org/?p=681
Carbon leakage: Thanks for the link to the Per Capita paper. It was interesting and we certainly need to encourage the full cost accounting approach.
Unfortunately, I found that the paper had one significant flaw. It considers the value of the carbon emissions savings due to plant closure to be positive (and offsets this against the negative social value from job losses). But if a plant closure here leads to a new plant being built in another country, there are no emissions savings at all. Even if the new plant is identical to the one that was closed, globally we have lost out due to the significant amounts of carbon emitted in the construction of the new plant.
Climate change is a global problem, and we must remember to think globally when we talk about solutions. It we simply stop doing the things we see as bad for the environment - like aluminium smelting or coal mining - and let someone else do them, we have achieved nothing. We must keep doing these things, while leading the world in reducing the impact that they have AND in reducing our demand for these activities.
Spot on, Brett.
Venise Alstergren:
Then we must agree to disagree. Certainly the wealthier the population the more they consume. But try to imagine the now starving millions of Africa, suddenly having the money of the average Australian; together with the concomitant greed of the average Australian. Let’s say that the many, many dictators of this continent suddenly dropped dead and the people had suddenly attained reasonable income. What chance would the people have to get educated within 5 years? Can’t you hear the population/pollution clock reaching high-noon? approximately One billion people on a consumer spending binge, without the infrastructure to cater for them. Pollution and over-population coming together in a cataclysmic bang. One, then the other falls off the see-saw (the see-saw which represents the planet and the eco-systems which support it). The vine, to use another analogy, carrying the whole hideous mess, strangles in its own excessive growth. The clock is still ticking and it is now five minutes to midnight. We have five cosmic minutes to overturn the Catholic Church, the Muslim beliefs, the Exclusive Brethren, all the mad religions with which America is beholden to, the Anglicans, every half-baked superstitious ignorant twaddle masquerading as a belief in God. We have now got four minutes to midnight. Four minutes to educate the masses. No time for a smooth transition. We have to overturn the Kimilsungism of North Korea, wake up and get rid of the lethargy which besets most of the western world. It is now three minutes to midnight and the world has reached 8 billion people, none of whom have any time to consider the consequences of their actions; they’ve been too busy having fun!. It is two minutes to midnight; Western countries, and the Tiger economies of Asia, belatedly realize that education, and the need for it is of paramount importance. It is one minute to midnight. The Pope and the Mullahs, the whole cacophony of multitudes of ignorant followers, not to mention the world’s politicians, finally realize they are in ‘standing-room’ only. The Pope (an old and wizened man of ninety) climbs laboriously up to the podium and clears his throat in order to appeal to the billions of Catholics to exercise birth restraint. The clock reaches midnight. The pontiff and all the glories of the Church’s possessions are covered with a dense cloud of black vomit which has been hovering overhead is, in fact not the prelude to the re-en-carnation of Jesus Christ after all; (the message the Church has been telling its ignorant followers for the past four years); it is merely the final answer to the ignorance and stupidity of mankind. It is, quite simply, the over- population bomb which was predicted by saner elements of the community. Slowly the acid rain eats into the skin of the suddenly mute denizens of the world. Olé, olé.
Venise,
Yes, this is precisely the task before us: to try to convince people, no matter where they are, to consume less, or more sensibly. And improving life for people in Africa won’t happen anywhere near as quickly as you suggest, which perversely will mean less consumption of resources. The poorer, the less consumption. Not that I’m recommending that as one solution to global warming ! But that’s how it goes: the richer people get, the more they pollute, not by just existing on the earth but by using more of its resources and putting more crap back. I wouldn’t be surprised if Australia uses more resources than all of Africa, and pollutes more, but I could be wrong there.
So there is a double task before us: to raise the education level of the world, as a whole, especially of the women, and at the same time to persuade everybody, wherever they are, to use reasources sparingly and pollute less - which they can do, the more income they have. Many years ago, 1973 I think, there was a wonderful bloke on radio named Malcolm Caldwell, murdered by the Khmer Rouge in early 1979, who pointed out that, as you suggest, the world could not support everybody using resources at the same rate as the US or Australia or the West generally. So the task is to find alternatives, not to blame the poor, even inadvertently or obliquely.
Joe
Venise Alstergren
If I gave you the impression I was blaming the poor I completely misrepresented my case. I have seen far too much poverty in far too many countries not to feel anything but compassion for the poor. Yes they are generally ignorant. Not because they were born that way. But because they have limited access to what we in the West-I know poverty exists in the West as well-take for granted. It is the maintainers of poverty, ignorance, despair, over-population, disease, starvation and desperation that I blame. I have a feeling you may be a Catholic-this is not said to deride you- You agree with many things I say, however there seems to be a ‘wall of glass’ through which you don’t seem to wish to face the evil which IS the Catholic Church. Other religions aren’t much better, orthodox Judaism is another religion which acts against women. How many female Rabbis are there? The fundamentalist right-wing churches, all churches, in fact, especially Islam and Catholicism treat women as shit. But it is only the Catholic Church which actively says to the world "Go forth and multiply’. It may be implicit in other religions, but it isn’t actively preached. In a world as fast losing control over it’s own future as this world. This is insanity. That alone is enough to condemn the Catholic Church. Add to that its vested interest in deceiving its own followers; of lying to them, taking advantage of their poverty and ignorance, misleading these followers with out and out lies and voilå, the ultimate hypocrisy of the Church. Other religions seek to empathize with their (male) adherents. I just can’t believe they are at all sympathetic towards women. They’re not. But the so called Holy Romans turn this whole religious thing into a black-art form. They won’t allow female priests for Christ’s sake! As to why women would want to support this contemptible male club escapes me. The Church, is enmeshed in a total conspiracy to prevent the poor from helping themselves. Even the schools the Catholics have, teach, along with ordinary education, lies, superstitions, fairy tales and distortions of a book which was written 2000 years ago. The Church loves everything that is illogical. It is an immutable fact of life that logic and religion are mutually exclusive.
I hope it is apparent that I am an atheist. Normally atheists don’t proselytize, you have just found one who is not content to lie down and let other religions alone. I was born an atheist and will die one. I’m tired now, goodnight.
I’ve had a moderately long day; so I will finish here. I’ll be happy to return to the fray tomorrow. Sharpen your sword. This could be a long duel.
Cheers,
Venise
Hi Venise,
No, I’m a marxist and an atheist, since about 1950. As for the Catholic Church, in spite of the fact that about 5 % of its Australian members turned up in Sydney last week (and 95 % didn’t), I believe that fundamentally it is dying, for all the hoop-la. Natzinger has the allure and the permanence of fairy-floss and I have the feeling that this was a sort of a swan-song, at least I’d like to think so. In a short time, the Catholic church will seem irrelevant.
That may be even the case with sections of Islam - the salience of 9/11 and Iraq and Iran and Afghanistan and Bali may have had the effect of forcing debate - often for the first time ever - in parts