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Global warming is a global emergency
Ian Dunlop, Crikey via Carbon Equity
Former Australian Institute of Company Directors CEO Ian Dunlop writes:
The fatal flaw in the current global warming debate is that most of the key players are singing off the wrong songsheet. Current policy proposals are based on scientific information which at least five years out-of-date. The latest information indicates that we now run a rapidly increasing risk of sudden and total failure of some part of the climatic system, from which recovery may be impossible — in short, a risk of catastrophe which may seriously damage society as we know it.
The evidence is mounting daily: …
The focus must be on the opportunities and benefits of creating new industries rather than the problems and costs of moving away from the old. It can be achieved at far less cost than the horror stories propagated by the existing sunset fossil-fuel lobby and in many cases with a net economic benefit. Employment is likely to rise as these new industries are far more labour-intensive than the industries they replace.
But compensation must be minimised — public funding should encourage a viable future, not prop up an unsustainable past, particularly when that funding is going to be in short supply. There is absolutely no justification for compensation to trade-exposed industries, or domestic high-emitters, in the emergency situation we now face. The world will be crying out for low-carbon product, which will be a source of competitive advantage.
Carbon taxes make no sense in current circumstances. They do not deliver guaranteed emission reductions and the inevitable continued tinkering with tax levels would be politically and commercially untenable.
The best tribute we can pay to the victims of the Victorian bushfires is to now start taking global warming seriously and stop playing political games.
Ian Dunlop was formerly a senior international oil, gas and coal industry executive. He chaired the Australian Coal Association in 1987-88, chaired the Australian Greenhouse Office Experts Group on Emissions Trading from 1998-2000 which developed the first Australian emissions trading concepts and was CEO of the Australian Institute of Company Directors from 1997-2001. He advises internationally on climate, energy and sustainability.
(25 February 2009)
Suggested by EB contributor Bill Henderson who writes:
Mr. Dunlop you’ll remember authored the best CC and PO together mitigation strategy doc yet (see below). He uses GW instead of CC, singing from different songbooks instead of New Denial, and he doesn’t mention Copenhagen.
Recommended:
Climate Change & Peak Oil: An Integrated Policy Response for Australia (PDF)
Peak Oil, Climate Change &
the Global Sustainability
Emergency (PDF – slides)
Copenhagen And Beyond: Climate Change Is An Emergency
Bill Henderson, Counter Currents
… There is no longer any real debate that human caused climate change is happening but will the emerging science presented push publics everywhere out of New Denial? New Denial: Yes, climate change is happening, but it is a gradually building problem with weird weather, melting ice, endangered polar bears and bug infestations and maybe catastrophic consequences late in the century, but we have time to mitigate with technology – new clean power sources and carbon capture and sequestering – and instruments like carbon taxes or cap and trade, completely within business as usual so that except for a few smart consumer choices our lifestyles, jobs and socio-economies do not need to really change.
Will the science presented at the Copenhagen conference awaken the informed public and policy makers – if not general publics everywhere – to climate change as an emergency requiring a massive reconfiguration of our socio-economies not possible in the present political and economic business as usual?
… Emergency legislation will stabilize the patient; triple digit carbon taxes are the scalpel to reconfigure the economy without eco-fascism, the monies raised used to hasten and ameliorate the transition; federally organized but regionally deployed; re-localization and a controlled step down to 50’s era material throughput must mean a new agriculture and natural resource management primary production and a much shrunken transportation system and service economy.
A very much shrunken domestic economy in a very much downsized global economy – but what is the alternative? It could also be a solution to the $80 trillion bad bet financial meltdown and peak oil too. And, thinking positively, the transition could be to a very much more harmonious, secure, quality lifestyle and richer culturally, happier socio-economy then our present deathtrap economy.
(4 March 2009)
Bill Henderson is a regular EB contributor.
Industry leaders denying climate change, says UK science minister
Ian Sample, Guardian
Senior figures in the manufacturing industry do not accept that human activities are driving global warming or that action needs to be taken to prepare for its effects, the UK government’s science minister said today .
Lord Drayson said recent discussions with leaders in the car industry and other businesses had left him “shocked” at the number of climate change deniers among senior industrialists. Of those who acknowledged that global temperatures were rising, many blamed it on variations in the sun’s activity.
(4 March 2009)
