I seem to be becoming a regular reader of Crikey's Rooted Blog, which has an almost daily update on selected environmental issues of all kinds.
This latest post, by Greenpeace's John Hepburn expresses better than I could the frustration I feel about politicians who are dilly-dallying about whether or not to introduce some sort of carbon reduction scheme now or delay it yet again:
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/rooted/2009/02/27/financially-panicked-morally-bankrupt/
Also, can someone remind me what we actually have to do now Australia has signed the Kyoto Protocol?
2 comments:
Hi, yes, it is saddening isn't it?
You're probably making a point about our already legal obligation...
but just in case, Australia's committment under the original Kyoto protocol was to cap emissions to 108% of 1990 levels.
My understanding is that it is up to the country themselves on how they do i, and I'm not even sure the penalty for not making it.
I think it's once you've ratified you make some system that punishes your big emitters if they don't make up their share.
The howard argument was that we were going to do that anyway, so why sign up to a deal that would "slow economic growth". Which is BS because ratifying earlier would have been an economic opportunity to trade our cuts with other countries. sigh.
So we are now officially going to be checked that we held our emissions at 108% of 1990 by 2012. The big issue is what australia goes for in Dec this years, which is "post kyoto". Many european countries are coming to the table offering to make 20% cuts if they have to go it alone, but 30% if the deal involves developing nations. (Aus : 5 - 15 %)
Science says that the whole industrial world (incl aus) needs to do 40% collectively, some of that can be made up by projects in developing countries.
So while our domestic policy doesn't make that much differnce to global emissions levels, its really important that we step up and support the global effort.... and export our lovely lovely tech...
sigh. It's so simple, why so hard...
Thanks, Bee. You provided the answer I was looking for in my vaguest of vague questions...
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