Testing Victorian Labor's climate credentials

Having watched federal Labor take a battering at the polls over its climate backflips, the Victorian Labor Government has learned some lessons in preparing for the state poll of 27 November.

Labor is working hard to get on the front foot on climate, especially in preparing to defend a number of northern inner-city seats which on the results from relevant booths at the federal poll would either fall to the Greens (Melbourne, Richmond) or are line-ball (Northcote, Brunswick). Whilst the Greens as yet do not appear to have released an election-ready climate and energy policy, Labor is promoting its recent climate initiatives, exemplified by this current local newspaper advertisement, on-the-ground campaign material, and social media.

But how well does Labor stack up? Premier Brumby has made much of the government's climate bill, but the Victorian Government has also promised a $50 million subsidy for a new coal power station in Victoria, to be built by the company HRL-Dual Gas. The project is currently seeking EPA approval. It will increase Victoria’s greenhouse gas emissions by up to 4.2 million tonnes each year.

That's the same amount that emissions will be cut with Premier Brumby's plan to close one-quarter of Hazelwood power station. That's a dirty trick, saying you will close a small part of one coal power station because you care about the climate, then handing over taxpayers' money to build a new one!

Hazelwood was due to close in 2009, but instead the state Labor government extended its life past 2030. It is an industrial dinosaur and the dirtiest coal-fired power station in Australia.

Victoria’s brown-coal emissions have increased 10% in the last 10 years, and new, dirty brown coal reserves have been handed over to industry. Deals have been signed to dig up and export more brown coal.

Key messages of Climate Code Red

On the publication of "Climate Code Red" in mid-2008, we tried to elaborate some of the key themes in the book:

1. Our goal is a safe-climate future – we have no right to bargain away species or human lives

• No species has the right to consciously determine what proportion of all other species on earth should become extinct — as the compromise 2 and 3-degree temperature rise targets do. Lacking the collective will to act in a sustainable manner is no excuse.
  
• Humans have created the looming catastrophe of global warming and we have the capacity and duty to undo the damage and act in a sustainable manner, to cool the earth back to the safe-climate zone.
  

Bubbling our way to the apocalypse

Here's an article published in Rolling Stone in November 2008, which while focused on the permafrost issue, made some comments about the trajectory of the Rudd Labor government on climate. They turned out even worse that expected.

Bubbling our way to the apocalypse

Despite some public stunts that suggest concern about carbon, the Rudd Government's global warming plan just doesn't add up

by David Spratt and Damien Lawson

Kevin Rudd should send his climate change minister, Penny Wong, to Siberia.

Not as punishment, but because our future may depend on Penny Wong and climate policy-makers around the world understanding what’s going on there. For beneath its frozen landscape a catastrophe is lurking, and Siberia may about to become the scene of global retribution for our extravagant consumption of fossil fuels.

"Siberia" has become a metaphor for exile and deprivation. In the nineteenth century more than a million prisoners were deported there. Last century at last 18 million people were banished to the Soviet Union's labour camps for political and other prisoners, known as the Gulag, scattered across north-east Siberia.

What would 3 degrees mean?

David Spratt

The failure of international climate negotiations means that if all countries acted on ALL their commitments, the world would still warm by more than 3 degrees, according to Climate Tracker. 

So what would a world 3 degrees warmer llok and feel like? Scientists draw on a number of disciplines and methods to answer the question, including paleo-climatology (study of past climate history), complex mathematical models of the world's climate system tested and refined against past climate data, observation of current events and specific research testing hypotheses. Mark Lynas surveyed much of this research for his book "Six degrees: our place on a hotter planet" (Harper Collins, 2007). Drawing from his work and other sources, the following is an overview of some of the scientific projections as the world warms. These are not all certain events, but they are what scientific research thinks is likely. A full set of references on pp. 301-327 of "Six Degrees".

Three degrees of warming

Three degrees may be the “tipping point” where global warming could run out of control, leaving us powerless to intervene as planetary temperatures soar. America's most eminent climate scientist, James Hansen says warming has brought us to the "precipice of a great “tipping point”. If we go over the edge, it will be a transition to “a different planet”, an environment far outside the range that has been experienced by humanity. There will be no return within the lifetime of any generation that can be imagined, and the trip will exterminate a large fraction of species on the planet" ["Wild" magazine, April 2007].