Is the Lucky Country’s luck running out?

Australia is, and has been for generations, a paradoxical place. Though it’s more than ten thousand miles and 12 time zones from England, it has still looked longingly over its shoulder to the ‘Mother ship’, many decades after the British Empire has faded away.

Maybe it’s when you’re so far away that you experience such a desperate need to belong; witness the Union Jack displayed on both the Australian and New Zealand flags. And Queen Elizabeth is Head of State! Australia has long been known as the Lucky Country; rich in both coal and minerals, its subterranean wealth has meant prosperity for many Australians.

Indeed, the country is the world’s number one exporter of coal. The Australian Coal Association’s website proudly tells us that the country in 2005/6 exported 233 million tons of the black stuff – 30% of the world total. When you think of Australian exports, you’re more likely to think of wool or beef, but in fact the country’s top five exports are coal, oil, iron ore, gold and alumina.

This ‘bounty’ from beneath the soil goes a long way towards explaining why Australia was the only other first world country to back the US in its refusal to sign up to the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. Its premier, John Howard, recently lost the election – and his own seat – largely as a result of Australians belatedly waking up to the real cost of the climate change that they themselves are contributing so much to.

Australian power plants are the world’s dirtiest and least efficient. They alone contribute 10 tons of CO2 for every man, woman and child of population, even worse than the US’s 8.2 tons per capita. The much-maligned Chinese power plants generate just 1.8 tons per person, but of course they do have 1.3 billion persons.

Speaking at the recent Bali summit, Australia’s new PM, Kevin Rudd quotably said there was ‘no Plan B’, or as he put it: “There is is no other planet any of us can escape to”. Australia now emits almost as much carbon and other greenhouse gases as highly industrialised France and Italy, even though each have three times its population.

Nature is already exacting a harsh revenge on Australians’ poor stewardship of their rich homeland. More than half the country’s farmland is now in the grip of extreme drought. David Dreverman, head of the Murray-Darling river basin commission, said: “This is more typical of a one in a 1,000-year drought, or possibly even drier, than it is of a one in 100-year event.”

The Murray-Darling river system, which receives 4% of Australia’s water, but provides three-quarters of the water consumed nationally, was already 54% below the previous record minimum. And this drought is increasingly looking permanent.

Australian climate scientist Tim Flannery in his book ‘We are the Weather Makers’ explains in great detail how Australians themselves have – generally unwittingly – been the main culprits in tipping the continent into severe climate-shifting drought.

Much of the damage wrought on the country was due to the direct import of agricultural practices well suited to Irish or British soils but extremely harmful in Australian conditions. The most famous examples of alien fauna devastating native flora was the disastrous introduction of rabbits, which have bred by the billion, since they have no natural enemies in Australia.

The subsequent introduction of foxes to control the rabbits was an equally bad decision, as they instead devastated native species ill-adopted to cope with being predated by foxes. Alien crops and a poor understanding of the nature of Australian soils have led to both drought and salinisation, with huge areas of land abandoned as the salt table has risen due to clumsy human interventions.

The era of easy wealth simply by digging up the ground is drawing to a close for Australia, the world’s worst CO2 offender, with a mind-boggling 26.1 tons per capita (Ireland, at 17 tons, is better, though still far, far worse than even highly populated industrial giants like Japan (10 tons per capita) or Sweden (7.9 tons).

But old habits die hard. Yesterday, Peter Walsh, a former finance minister in the 1980s, warned that cutting greenhouse emissions by 60% by 2050 would send Australian living standards ‘back to the Middle Ages’. An interesting concept, considering Europeans only first settled in Australia in the late 18th Century. We can only wonder what ‘Middle Ages’ Mr Walsh is referring to.

The same Mr Walsh heads the Lavoisier Group of hardline climate-change sceptics, or Luddites, if you prefer. The Lavoisier Group’s website has a fascinating Links section, with as motley an assortment of energy industry hacks, pseudo-scientific stooges and assorted crackpots as you could assemble.

Take for instance its link to the Greening Earth Society; it enthusiastically explains that it’s “a group that actually promotes the benefits of enhanced atmospheric CO2 levels!”. Great! Higher CO2 levels! Just what the self-destructing Australian climate needs!

Meanwhile, Mr Walsh reckons it’s all about ‘changes in solar behaviour’ of course. Amazing how long-retired politicians somehow have deeper insights into the complexities of climate science than the thousands of scientists who are actually qualified in the subject, and who regularly submit their research findings to rigorous peer review and publication.

Mr Walsh brings to mind Upton Sinclair’s famous observation: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it”.

ThinkOrSwim is a blog by journalist John Gibbons focusing on the inter-related crises involving climate change, sustainability, resource depletion, energy and biodiversity loss
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One Response to Is the Lucky Country’s luck running out?

  1. Nollaig says:

    Suggest that Australians read ‘Collapse’ by Jarred Diamond.

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