Page 345 - Week 01 - Thursday, 27 February 2014
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One of the things I hear about the place is: why should we do anything when others are not doing anything? If I had time, I would refute that others are not doing anything—they are, and in droves. But this is the moral question: if we as wealthy Australians, as people who have quality clothes on our backs, food on our tables and money in our bank accounts, do not take action to reduce our emissions, then who do we think should? If we as a clever, creative city with an educated community do not take action, then who will? If we as a compassionate and caring city want to improve the quality of our own lives and also of others who do not take action on climate change, who will? Australians have one of the highest rates of per capita greenhouse emissions of people on the planet. How can we ask others to take action to reduce their emissions if we do not take action ourselves? What barometer of morality would allow us to think that that was tenable?
The other thing I often hear about taking action on climate change is cost: how much will it cost us? Many people say that the cost is too high. I guess the question is: how much would you pay to ensure that we can transition to clean energy and give up using polluting fossil fuels? Perhaps 5c per kilowatt hour, maybe 10, perhaps even 12? When we think about what we are getting for our money, it is likely that we as a community would pay quite a lot more. We are not just giving up polluting fossil fuels but also investing to keep the world’s atmospheric carbon at safe levels, to prevent up to six degrees of global warming, to prevent so-called tipping-point events such as the release of methane from permafrost, to prevent chaotic storms, fires, freezes and bushfires. We certainly should not expect to get it for free, and as a community we also need to acknowledge that it is something definitely worth paying for.
We always need to be mindful about how any costs are spread across the community and to consider the impact on low income families in particular. Some actions that are required to meet targets can disproportionately affect some in our community, in part because they are already struggling financially but also because some people are more significantly affected by the measures themselves due to their lifestyles. For example, people who are at home a lot during the day perhaps due to a disability may have disproportionately high electricity use.
To the sceptics I say this: if nine doctors told you that you had an operable cancer and one doctor told you that you did not, would you not consider going ahead with the operation? You would not sit around and argue if the cancer was real, how it might have come about, whether it was happening faster or slower than it otherwise would have happened or that it was caused by moon rays or the food you had eaten. No, you would proceed with the operation and make the changes that were needed. It is called risk assessment—look at the balance of the evidence and take action based on the evidence. The overwhelming evidence of climate change is that we have a problem. We owe it to the people we work for to take action.
In summary, the issue of global climate change is a dastardly one. There is little doubt that the global community is moving too slowly to remedy the problem and that we will not be able to keep global emissions at a safe level. We are heading for a train wreck. Right now, it is not always easy to see how the train wreck is going to be avoided. But I know this: for the global community to even have half a chance of stopping dangerous climate change, we need everyone on board.
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