10 November 2007
Clean Energy for Eternity Expo, Bega
Do you agree with the 50:50 by 20:20 target?
I certainly do agree with this even though I sometimes ask myself whether I’m really quite sure what it means! I helped to have this target adopted by the Bega Valley Shire Council, the first shire to adopt it. Things have come a long way since then, raising public awareness is essential, but I’m not sure how much progress we have made in actually cutting our greenhouse emissions.
You would be amazed at how many people in this election want to stop climate change and want cheaper petrol and bigger and better roads. Scratch a few of the candidates here today and I think you will probably find some who stand for all three. And there are at least two who definitely stand for native forest woodchipping and apparently don’t see any conflict between that and stopping climate change. If we are really serious about this, that has to change.
Government over the past few years has been characterized by the porkbarrel. I’m not just talking about the recent election campaign, I’m talking about Government. Expenditure which was once a normal part of a government program or redistribution of wealth, is now a gift from a munificent local member, and too bad if you don’t get on with him. You miss out. We’re about to find out how successful that is as an election strategy but it certainly keeps people frightened about upsetting the controller of the purse strings. That Father Xmas ethos has debased government. The pork barrel is not an effective weapon against climate change.
If there is one lesson from our experience of the past year or so, it is this: how hard it is and especially how hard it is if we as individuals and communities are to take on the whole task.
Yes I agree with the 5050 by 2020 target and I want to see government policy encourage that goal.
What will I do to help meet that target?
I don’t want to answer this question by simply promoting Greens policies. I am sure everybody here knows that the Greens have pioneered this issue. We have detailed policies; we have campaigned on the big picture and the small picture for many, many years. We didn’t discover it a few weeks or even a few months ago. Our election platform has achieved top score in the Climate Institute election scoreboard. The Greens rated 90% with Labor 40% and Liberal 23% in the report. The Australian Conservation Foundation assessment came to the same conclusion and rated the Greens even higher. And we’re not jealous of our policies. We want to see a bit of me-tooism coming our way. A strong vote for The Greens in this election will help the Liberal and Labor Parties adopt some better policies too.
You all know that. We are not the people you need to convert and as Greens candidate I accept that.
So I want to devote my time today to a slightly different angle: what Governments must do. How they must lead. If I was the Government there are two things I would do:
With these two steps we could make a nationally significant cut in greenhouse emissions (closing the chipmill) and we could ensure that coal fired power does not get an even bigger grip on our economy (by stopping the power line).
We could make some space for renewable energy. If the power lines are upgraded, it will be extremely difficult for local or regionally based initiatives to compete with coal. It is not Country Energy that is to blame for that decision; it is the Government, politicians. Just as it is Labor politicians, Mike Kelly’s State colleagues, not ForestsNSW who run the woodchipping industry. It is politicians who make the rules, not bureaucrats.
In this case, it is the State Labor Government but expect to get a big “me-too” on both woodchipping and electricity generation from Federal Liberal and Labor. We should be asking Mike Kelly what he thinks about his state colleagues insisting on a new powerline to bring more and more coal fired electricity to our region. Whatever he says, I can guarantee he won’t get an argument from Gary Nairn on it. Country Energy is only carrying out its legal obligations. The only thing that can stop it is an instruction from government.
I want us to look at the big picture here. Climate change is flavour of the month and that’s good. Everybody wants to do their bit, but we also need to get things in perspective. Closing the Eden chipmill would save possibly 20 times the greenhouse emissions saved by the whole of Australia by banning the incandescent light globe. It is possibly 200 times what the Bega Valley Shire council is saving by switching to green power. It is equivalent to taking every car in Sydney or Melbourne off the road for a year. Taking every car in Eden-Monaro off the road for a year would be equivalent to less than a week’s woodchipping.
So my simple message is this: whoever wins this election don’t let them get away. Keep up the pressure on them. The cheque book and the porkbarrel are not the weapons we need to combat global warming. The world – and our very small part of it - has to deal with the looming realities of oil depletion and global warming, which make our present way of life unsustainable. We must urgently reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. Public transport, even rail has to be part of the solution. If the pork barrel has become so deeply ingrained into our way of political life, and our future MP wants to dip into it, let it be for something useful like a railway, not bigger and better roads.
And at a time we are paying south east asian governments $200 million to stop logging there, we have to finally wake up to that here too.