Page 4600 - Week 12 - Thursday, 15 October 2009
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But uncertainty on the final shape of the CPRS is no excuse for inaction. Actions do speak louder than words, and that is why the government is working collaboratively with businesses and the community to arrest the growth in the territory’s greenhouse gas emissions and then seek to drive them down. Given that our emissions are not yet even stable but have increased at an alarming average rate of 1.7 per cent since the year 2000, this is a significant challenge. But by setting a long-term goal of Canberra to be a zero-net emitting community, to be carbon neutral, the government is confident that all parties will be alerted to, and some even inspired by, the need to urgently take action to mitigate and adapt to the impacts of climate change.
Of course, the cost implications for Canberrans must be carefully evaluated during policy development and the government will always seek to make reasonable judgements in consultation with the community on this matter. The government’s analyses will also properly take into account the very real and significant costs associated with doing nothing as have been documented by both the Stern and Garnaut reviews.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we know with absolute certainty that dealing with climate change requires significant behavioural change for individuals and for all of us as a community—change in how we use energy, how we travel, how we build our homes and our city, to name but a few of the more obvious. And we know that changes of that nature take time. There is no point in putting off getting these underway. Waiting in the hope that a CPRS or some other single scheme will be all that is needed is a high risk strategy that only delays the inevitable.
During my visit I had the benefit of discussing these issues with a number of senior policy makers in the United Kingdom and Germany, including, for example, Mathias Machnig, the head of the federal German ministry of environment, nature conservation and nuclear safety. And what was their unequivocal view? It was to work with the community now to identify and then deliver the changes needed and understand that governments cannot rely on solitary policy instruments. An array of clever and innovative policies is essential. This is not a theoretical position. It is based on their hard experience.
Quite apart from the very obvious arguments in favour of ensuring the perpetuation of a worthwhile existence for our planet, I also believe there is a clear moral obligation to take individual and collective responsibility for the warming of our climate to dangerous levels. As I have already noted, the decisions taken by this generation will affect all future ones.
The second insight is: governments must act now. Unless governments accept both the seriousness and the urgency of anthropogenic global warming and respond accordingly, that is seriously and with urgency, we will not avert the catastrophe that President Obama referred to in the quote I read earlier. I saw much evidence of governments overseas at all levels taking serious action. For example, the 2008 Climate Change Act made Britain the first country in the world with legally binding emissions targets—34 per cent by 2020 and 80 per cent by 2050. This was not wishful thinking; the UK government has a detailed plan on how it will achieve its emissions targets through action in every sector of the economy while maintaining energy
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