For more
than decade, the right wing of politics in Australia has procrastinated over
addressing climate change. Time and again a concerned public has been fed the
claim that Australia would be wasting its time “going it alone” on pricing carbon,
and would only disadvantage Australia's polluters in the world market.
At the
same time we are assured that if Australia was to reduce its carbon emission to
zero, it would make no difference to climate change because of the relatively
small percentage Australia contributes to the world's overall emissions.
These
arguments ignore the moral perspective of Australia being the world's highest
per-capita polluter, or that Australia is the world's largest exporter of coal,
and soon to become the largest exporter of equally polluting unconventional
gas.
Since
introducing a price on carbon, Australia's Labor Party has been widely
pilloried by mining and other polluting industries, and opposition politicians,
with the latter vowing to do away with the “tax” if and when it regains power.
But now
the first of those arguments is set to be turned on its head. China, the usual
target of right-wing finger-pointing when talking pollution, has just launched
the world's second largest carbon trading scheme, significantly stepping up its
efforts to combat climate change and its own air quality problems (the European
Union has the world's largest scheme, covering 2.1 billion tonnes of CO2-e).
China has
been indirectly pricing carbon for years, but this pilot scheme will be the
first mandatory carbon market in the country, expected to cover around 700
million tonnes of CO2-e by 2014, with plans to implement a national scheme
around 2016 which is predicted to result in a reduction in emissions of 4.5
billion tonnes by 2020 from the 2005 base line.
When
compared to Australia's 380 million tonnes, and California’s 165 million
tonnes, China's figures are impressive, and show what can be achieved if the
political will is present. It's time for our political dinosaurs to wake up and
follow China's lead, and for the general public to get behind any move towards
a clean energy future.
- J. Edwards
This article was the VOICES FOR THE EARTH column published in The Daily Examiner on 1st July. It appeared under the title: "China plan is wake-up call in push for cleaner environment."
