The following article appeared in the 29 April 2010 online edition of Crikey.com. I don't know the author Luke Walladge - a former staffer for premiers Gallop and Carpenter - so his comments are entirely his own. However, I thank him for the supportive comments made about me and leave it to you to make up your own mind on the other issues he's raised.
NEVER MIND BUSWELL - BLAME THE CLOTS WHO PICKED HIM
by Luke Walladge
How Bernie Masters must be enjoying this.
In its inestimable wisdom, the Liberal Party went out of its way five years ago to shaft a popular, long-standing MP with a track record of service and integrity in favor of a boorish yob, a local mayor with more question marks than achievements next to his name.
Masters fought the blitzkrieg tooth and nail, but as is the way of these things, lost in the end. And for WA’s sins, one Troy Buswell was dumped into the state’s lap, baggage and all, bellowing and boozing and generally behaving like a provincial come to town for a spree. Which, of course, he was.
Should we be surprised that Buswell cheats on his wife, or that he cheated the taxpayer to pay for it? Should we really express any shock that a man who treats woman so appallingly as to s-xually harass them in Parliament House itself, should treat his wife with such contempt? Is all this really any more — or less — than we had a right to expect?
All political parties have their idiots, their embarrassments, their lapses of judgement. But this one’s a cracker.
Senior figures in the Liberal Party, old enough to know better, have been touting this fool as a future Premier for years. What that says about their political nous is obvious to anyone with a newspaper and the ability to read; if, that is, the choices of first Matt Birney and then Paul Omodei as leaders left anyone in any doubt to begin with.
Colin Barnett, the only man who could win an election (and we know that, because he did) was so far on the outer with his own party three years ago that he was the only state MP not to attend their planning and strategy session. Kim Hames, now deputy Premier, was such a decent, honest and hard-working MP that in the leadership ballot that elevated Buswell the first time he could only garner one vote — his own.
In racing parlance, it’d be fair to say the WA Liberals aren’t much judges of horseflesh.
Even as late as Tuesday morning, the foolishness continued. After Buswell’s press conference saw him admit to not merely adultery and deceit but also fraud and potential corruption, the recently deposed Treasurer still saw fit to argue that he should remain in his position. In this he was backed up by state Liberal president Barry Court, a professional descendant and political legatee if ever there was one. It was left, again, for Premier Barnett to state the screamingly obvious and demand Buswell’s resignation in Cabinet.
What a crew.
Barnett is an unlikely candidate for the position of sympathetic figure. Brusque, harsh and not overburdened with social graces, he’s the sort of politician who could leave the charm out of a charm offensive. But even he must be wondering what he’s done to deserve this; his premiership’s been distinguished more by putting out political spot fires than actually achieving anything. Be careful what you wish for, and all that sort of thing.
Is this the best the Liberals can do? Is Troy Buswell really the best they could offer WA? And if he wasn’t, why was he appointed in the first place?
The WA Liberal Party is one step away from descending into a rabble. With judgement such as theirs, you wouldn’t have much faith in their choice of federal candidates or state ministers, would you?
If Barnett cannot get his government’s act together and fast, he will find his support eroding very quickly. The electorate has a very good nose for scoundrels, fools and incompetence; better, it seems, than WA Liberals, who are now down one Treasurer and a whole lot of public trust.
How Bernie Masters must be enjoying this.
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Friday, March 12, 2010
WILDERNESS - Politics and Policy within the WA LIberal Party
Like most political parties, the Liberal Party in WA is a complex organisation, with lay and parliamentary members of varying abilitities and expertise acting to further their own or the party’s ambitions. After joining the party in 1984, I was elected the state MP for Vasse (a rural seat centred on Busselton in the south west of the state) in 1996, serving as a backbencher in the Richard Court government until the 2001 election when the Labor government was elected. Having a background in the environmental sciences, I was then appointed by then opposition leader Colin Barnett as the Liberal spokesman on science and the environment.
In the lead-up to the 2005 election, most shadow ministers were busy preparing policy or position statements that the Liberal Party could take to the election. In 2002 and 2003, I produced what I considered to be well-researched and argued documents on establishing an Invasive Species Council to tackle the problems of weeds and feral animals; a management strategy for the Ningaloo Marine Park and Cape Range National Park; a policy on reducing light emissions to the sky in urban environments (light spill); a proposal to introduce a levy to fund Natural Resource Management; a science policy; and a policy on wilderness in Western Australia.
Much to my surprise and frustration, several of these documents never saw the light of day. However, all became clear when I lost Liberal Party endorsement for the seat of Vasse in late 2003, to be replaced by Troy Buswell, a controversial figure who is now treasurer in the Liberal Nationals government that was elected in late 2008. Too late did I discover that certain of Buswell’s parliamentary supporters were actively working to deny me a public profile as a shadow minister, so that they could highlight my lack of public recognition as an argument against me during pre-selection, thereby encouraging delegates to vote for Buswell.
In early 2004, I resigned from the Liberal Party and stood against Buswell in the 2005 election, losing by 209 votes.
I produced the following draft position statement on wilderness in WA in September 2003. The reason why it remained hidden from public view may have been a result of the Liberal hierarchy believing it was not suitable to adopt as policy, although the most likely reason is as explained above – to deny me public exposure. Nonetheless, considering how little policy development has occurred on the important subject of wilderness in WA since the 2005 election, the issues outlined in the position statement remain valid today.
WILDERNESS IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA
Defining the difference
Introduction
A strong economy is dependent upon a healthy and diverse environment, but human impacts on the Australian environment now require a strong economy to properly manage our environmental assets. The need to find the correct balance between economic and environmental imperatives is urgent.
The Liberal Party has a long-standing commitment to the conservation of Western Australia’s natural heritage. The previous Coalition Government established five new national parks, five conservation reserves and 59 nature reserves to expand Western Australia’s conservation estate by 920,000 hectares. In addition, 2.6 million hectares of pastoral lands were acquired for conservation in the Gascoyne-Murchison and Pilbara regions.
Important natural areas should be protected from development, such as in National Parks or nature reserves, or through the voluntary actions of private landowners.
Wilderness is internationally defined as an area which is large, remote and natural. Wilderness areas provide significant social and environmental benefits, such as preservation of valuable ecosystems and biodiversity, while providing people with the opportunity to escape from modern society and “experience” nature.
Wilderness also has important implications for human access, tourism, mineral resource development and biodiversity management. These implications need to be fully understood and widely debated before wilderness areas are dedicated and locked away.
The benefits of wilderness
Wilderness areas are a unique part of the conservation estate. National Parks and other conservation reserves require active management and intervention, coupled with controls on activities which could compromise ecosystems. In contrast, wilderness is essentially left alone so that natural processes can occur almost totally free of human disturbance.
It has been argued that simply creating National Parks is not adequate to produce true “wilderness” conditions capable of providing authentic wilderness experiences free of permanent human structures and disturbance.
Wilderness issues
Identification and protection
In Western Australia, the Conservation and Land Management Act 1984 provides no criteria for wilderness identification. Classification of an area as wilderness can be made under the Act only if it is consistent with statutory management objectives for an area.
There is debate over the need to introduce dedicated wilderness legislation which would allow for the appropriate nomination, assessment, declaration, management and protection of wilderness areas. Such legislation exists in New South Wales and South Australia. However, controversy remains over identifying and protecting wilderness areas, with contention between conservation organisations and recreational groups, particularly with regard to levels of access and the amount of permitted disturbance.
Access
Wilderness is a very restrictive form of land use. The absence of roads is a basic condition of wilderness areas, with no motorised vehicles allowed, no recreational use of animal transport and restrictions on aircraft.
These restrictions create “equity of access” and elitist problems. The disabled, elderly and very young would find it extremely difficult to appreciate these areas as access must be by foot or non-motorised boat. Even during emergencies, access by vehicles is often opposed. In the eastern states, scientific research has been stopped as a result of new wilderness areas being created.
Restrictions on mining
Resource utilisation is usually banned from wilderness areas. With WA-derived mineral and petroleum exports worth some $30 billion annually to the Australian economy, the impact on mineral resource developments cannot be lightly dismissed in any discussions concerning wilderness areas.
The mining industry believes that, although some environmental impact is an inevitable consequence of most mining and mineral exploration activities, the actual effects on the land are very small. Post-mining rehabilitation ensures that such activities do not compromise long term conservation values.
Tourism
Western Australia is a unique holiday destination. According to the WA Tourism Commission, nature-based tourism generates around $3 billion annually for the State. About 60 per cent of visitors to WA travel to regional areas, supporting thousands of jobs in small and remote towns.
By restricting access to wilderness areas, tourism potential is also restricted. A vision for wilderness areas that allows for sustainable eco-tourism such as walk trails and other built features, but which otherwise enhances conservation of natural values, may be appropriate in some areas.
Management issues
While the “naturalness” of a wilderness area may suggest that a management plan is not needed, the existence of many threats to a wilderness area’s natural values will require on-going management. The potential for inappropriate fire regimes, feral animals and exotic weeds to affect wilderness areas has the capacity to irrevocably damage biodiversity and conservation values.
Access to wilderness areas is vital to undertake management actions such as fire suppression and pest control. Appropriate management actions would, however, be severely restricted by any limitations on the use of vehicles, as enforced in other wilderness areas.
Fire
It is generally accepted that the vegetation of Australia in 1788 was a result of complex Aboriginal burning practices, which had become a part of the natural system. Present day management of wilderness areas must therefore fully consider the future role of Indigenous people and fire in wilderness areas.
The loss to property, human life and natural areas through wildfires in Canberra and around Sydney has dramatically shown the impacts of wildfire in the Australian environment. In WA, last summer’s fire in the proposed Walpole Wilderness Park burnt out some 400 square kilometres.
Setting aside large tracts of land as wilderness without effective plans to deal with such situations invites the loss of natural values in both the short and long terms. Damage to habitats, whole ecosystems and surrounding property would be substantial.
The Labor approach
The Gallop Government’s recent draft wilderness policy statement, if implemented, would be bureaucratic, restrictive and expensive. It would also not protect most of the important natural values of wilderness areas since long-term management actions would be severely constrained.
For example, permission from the executive director of the Department of CALM would be required before a helicopter could gain emergency access to a wilderness area. Access for essential management actions such as fire control or weed eradication would require a costly and lengthy report to first be presented to the Conservation Commission.
Since no fire breaks would be allowed under this draft policy, the potential for the entire wilderness area to be burnt in a single wildfire would be high. In this situation, biodiversity and aesthetic values would be severely impacted, with localised extinction of species being highly probable.
Under Labor, establishment of wilderness areas would require closing and rehabilitating all vehicle tracks, walk trails, helipads and airstrips. Almost all recreational infrastructure would be removed, including campsites, signage and toilet facilities. Planes flying over wilderness areas would need to be at least 5,000 feet above the ground, while the question of a minimum distance from shore for boats moving past wilderness areas remains unanswered.
The way forward
A Liberal government would apply realistic priorities to the aims and management objectives of any wilderness area created in Western Australia. It would give highest priority to the protection and enhancement of biodiversity values. Wilderness areas would be carefully chosen to compliment the existing conservation estate, not replace it.
Indigenous people who have maintained their links to wilderness areas would be given appropriate responsibilities in wilderness management, including the use of fire, control of feral animals and weeds, and tourism opportunities. It would also allow appropriate Indigenous usage of wilderness areas using traditional methods while always ensuring protection of environmental values.
Strategic firebreaks would allow wide bands of bush to be regularly burnt so as to allow better control of wildfires. Key infrastructure facilities such as existing campsites and walking tracks would be retained but rationalised to better manage their use. For people who would otherwise be unable to access and enjoy wilderness areas, some eco-tourism opportunities would be provided, such as access by a small number of off-road personnel carriers for wilderness tours.
Selection of any new wilderness areas and the preparation of their management plans would require wide-ranging community consultation, including the involvement of existing recreational and other users of the proposed wilderness areas.
A Liberal government would oppose the Gallop Government’s elitist, restrictive and bureaucratic draft wilderness policy.
Conclusion
The WA Liberal Party acknowledges that creating wilderness areas can provide important social benefits and can preserve valuable ecosystems and bio-diversity. However, the protection of wilderness areas does not end with their gazetting. Money and expertise are required for these areas if they are to retain their wilderness qualities due to the on-going threats from feral animals, exotic pests, inappropriate fire regimes and, on a larger scale, climatic change. Already, funding for the environment is below acceptable levels, so any new wilderness areas would need to be adequately resourced.
Specific guidelines for the identification, recognition and management of wilderness areas need to be prepared, with the protection of bio-diversity as the primary for setting aside these areas.
In the lead-up to the 2005 election, most shadow ministers were busy preparing policy or position statements that the Liberal Party could take to the election. In 2002 and 2003, I produced what I considered to be well-researched and argued documents on establishing an Invasive Species Council to tackle the problems of weeds and feral animals; a management strategy for the Ningaloo Marine Park and Cape Range National Park; a policy on reducing light emissions to the sky in urban environments (light spill); a proposal to introduce a levy to fund Natural Resource Management; a science policy; and a policy on wilderness in Western Australia.
Much to my surprise and frustration, several of these documents never saw the light of day. However, all became clear when I lost Liberal Party endorsement for the seat of Vasse in late 2003, to be replaced by Troy Buswell, a controversial figure who is now treasurer in the Liberal Nationals government that was elected in late 2008. Too late did I discover that certain of Buswell’s parliamentary supporters were actively working to deny me a public profile as a shadow minister, so that they could highlight my lack of public recognition as an argument against me during pre-selection, thereby encouraging delegates to vote for Buswell.
In early 2004, I resigned from the Liberal Party and stood against Buswell in the 2005 election, losing by 209 votes.
I produced the following draft position statement on wilderness in WA in September 2003. The reason why it remained hidden from public view may have been a result of the Liberal hierarchy believing it was not suitable to adopt as policy, although the most likely reason is as explained above – to deny me public exposure. Nonetheless, considering how little policy development has occurred on the important subject of wilderness in WA since the 2005 election, the issues outlined in the position statement remain valid today.
WILDERNESS IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA
Defining the difference
Introduction
A strong economy is dependent upon a healthy and diverse environment, but human impacts on the Australian environment now require a strong economy to properly manage our environmental assets. The need to find the correct balance between economic and environmental imperatives is urgent.
The Liberal Party has a long-standing commitment to the conservation of Western Australia’s natural heritage. The previous Coalition Government established five new national parks, five conservation reserves and 59 nature reserves to expand Western Australia’s conservation estate by 920,000 hectares. In addition, 2.6 million hectares of pastoral lands were acquired for conservation in the Gascoyne-Murchison and Pilbara regions.
Important natural areas should be protected from development, such as in National Parks or nature reserves, or through the voluntary actions of private landowners.
Wilderness is internationally defined as an area which is large, remote and natural. Wilderness areas provide significant social and environmental benefits, such as preservation of valuable ecosystems and biodiversity, while providing people with the opportunity to escape from modern society and “experience” nature.
Wilderness also has important implications for human access, tourism, mineral resource development and biodiversity management. These implications need to be fully understood and widely debated before wilderness areas are dedicated and locked away.
The benefits of wilderness
Wilderness areas are a unique part of the conservation estate. National Parks and other conservation reserves require active management and intervention, coupled with controls on activities which could compromise ecosystems. In contrast, wilderness is essentially left alone so that natural processes can occur almost totally free of human disturbance.
It has been argued that simply creating National Parks is not adequate to produce true “wilderness” conditions capable of providing authentic wilderness experiences free of permanent human structures and disturbance.
Wilderness issues
Identification and protection
In Western Australia, the Conservation and Land Management Act 1984 provides no criteria for wilderness identification. Classification of an area as wilderness can be made under the Act only if it is consistent with statutory management objectives for an area.
There is debate over the need to introduce dedicated wilderness legislation which would allow for the appropriate nomination, assessment, declaration, management and protection of wilderness areas. Such legislation exists in New South Wales and South Australia. However, controversy remains over identifying and protecting wilderness areas, with contention between conservation organisations and recreational groups, particularly with regard to levels of access and the amount of permitted disturbance.
Access
Wilderness is a very restrictive form of land use. The absence of roads is a basic condition of wilderness areas, with no motorised vehicles allowed, no recreational use of animal transport and restrictions on aircraft.
These restrictions create “equity of access” and elitist problems. The disabled, elderly and very young would find it extremely difficult to appreciate these areas as access must be by foot or non-motorised boat. Even during emergencies, access by vehicles is often opposed. In the eastern states, scientific research has been stopped as a result of new wilderness areas being created.
Restrictions on mining
Resource utilisation is usually banned from wilderness areas. With WA-derived mineral and petroleum exports worth some $30 billion annually to the Australian economy, the impact on mineral resource developments cannot be lightly dismissed in any discussions concerning wilderness areas.
The mining industry believes that, although some environmental impact is an inevitable consequence of most mining and mineral exploration activities, the actual effects on the land are very small. Post-mining rehabilitation ensures that such activities do not compromise long term conservation values.
Tourism
Western Australia is a unique holiday destination. According to the WA Tourism Commission, nature-based tourism generates around $3 billion annually for the State. About 60 per cent of visitors to WA travel to regional areas, supporting thousands of jobs in small and remote towns.
By restricting access to wilderness areas, tourism potential is also restricted. A vision for wilderness areas that allows for sustainable eco-tourism such as walk trails and other built features, but which otherwise enhances conservation of natural values, may be appropriate in some areas.
Management issues
While the “naturalness” of a wilderness area may suggest that a management plan is not needed, the existence of many threats to a wilderness area’s natural values will require on-going management. The potential for inappropriate fire regimes, feral animals and exotic weeds to affect wilderness areas has the capacity to irrevocably damage biodiversity and conservation values.
Access to wilderness areas is vital to undertake management actions such as fire suppression and pest control. Appropriate management actions would, however, be severely restricted by any limitations on the use of vehicles, as enforced in other wilderness areas.
Fire
It is generally accepted that the vegetation of Australia in 1788 was a result of complex Aboriginal burning practices, which had become a part of the natural system. Present day management of wilderness areas must therefore fully consider the future role of Indigenous people and fire in wilderness areas.
The loss to property, human life and natural areas through wildfires in Canberra and around Sydney has dramatically shown the impacts of wildfire in the Australian environment. In WA, last summer’s fire in the proposed Walpole Wilderness Park burnt out some 400 square kilometres.
Setting aside large tracts of land as wilderness without effective plans to deal with such situations invites the loss of natural values in both the short and long terms. Damage to habitats, whole ecosystems and surrounding property would be substantial.
The Labor approach
The Gallop Government’s recent draft wilderness policy statement, if implemented, would be bureaucratic, restrictive and expensive. It would also not protect most of the important natural values of wilderness areas since long-term management actions would be severely constrained.
For example, permission from the executive director of the Department of CALM would be required before a helicopter could gain emergency access to a wilderness area. Access for essential management actions such as fire control or weed eradication would require a costly and lengthy report to first be presented to the Conservation Commission.
Since no fire breaks would be allowed under this draft policy, the potential for the entire wilderness area to be burnt in a single wildfire would be high. In this situation, biodiversity and aesthetic values would be severely impacted, with localised extinction of species being highly probable.
Under Labor, establishment of wilderness areas would require closing and rehabilitating all vehicle tracks, walk trails, helipads and airstrips. Almost all recreational infrastructure would be removed, including campsites, signage and toilet facilities. Planes flying over wilderness areas would need to be at least 5,000 feet above the ground, while the question of a minimum distance from shore for boats moving past wilderness areas remains unanswered.
The way forward
A Liberal government would apply realistic priorities to the aims and management objectives of any wilderness area created in Western Australia. It would give highest priority to the protection and enhancement of biodiversity values. Wilderness areas would be carefully chosen to compliment the existing conservation estate, not replace it.
Indigenous people who have maintained their links to wilderness areas would be given appropriate responsibilities in wilderness management, including the use of fire, control of feral animals and weeds, and tourism opportunities. It would also allow appropriate Indigenous usage of wilderness areas using traditional methods while always ensuring protection of environmental values.
Strategic firebreaks would allow wide bands of bush to be regularly burnt so as to allow better control of wildfires. Key infrastructure facilities such as existing campsites and walking tracks would be retained but rationalised to better manage their use. For people who would otherwise be unable to access and enjoy wilderness areas, some eco-tourism opportunities would be provided, such as access by a small number of off-road personnel carriers for wilderness tours.
Selection of any new wilderness areas and the preparation of their management plans would require wide-ranging community consultation, including the involvement of existing recreational and other users of the proposed wilderness areas.
A Liberal government would oppose the Gallop Government’s elitist, restrictive and bureaucratic draft wilderness policy.
Conclusion
The WA Liberal Party acknowledges that creating wilderness areas can provide important social benefits and can preserve valuable ecosystems and bio-diversity. However, the protection of wilderness areas does not end with their gazetting. Money and expertise are required for these areas if they are to retain their wilderness qualities due to the on-going threats from feral animals, exotic pests, inappropriate fire regimes and, on a larger scale, climatic change. Already, funding for the environment is below acceptable levels, so any new wilderness areas would need to be adequately resourced.
Specific guidelines for the identification, recognition and management of wilderness areas need to be prepared, with the protection of bio-diversity as the primary for setting aside these areas.
Tasmania's Overland Track - 8 exhilarating days!
After hiking into Lake Pedder in the autumn of 1972 immediately prior to the winter in which this iconic lake was flooded, I have wanted to walk the Overland Track in central Tasmania’s highlands. Covering just 65 km from Cradle Mountain to Lake St Claire, descriptions of the track’s glacial-derived rugged scenery, cool temperate vegetation (especially the deciduous Notofagus bush) and highly variable weather fired my imagination. On April 13, 2009, our group of 9 began the adventure.
Boardwalks now allow walkers to avoid the worst of the deep mud across the button grass plains, but worse conditions were to test us. In the 40 or 45 km without boardwalks, the track consists of loose rock, a network of slippery tree roots, sunken timber from 40 year old track improvements and, after rain, pools of muddy water of indeterminate depth. While hiking poles were useful, the care needed to prevent spills, slips and twisted ankles often reduced the pace to just two kilometres per hour. Walkers had to stop before looking up to enjoy the scenery. Even the timber boardwalks were a hazard after rain or snow, with the non-slip central wire mesh usually just 30 cm wide.
Nonetheless, the experience was totally rewarding. We chose to stay in the government huts each night rather than brave the cold and wind of the tents. With the first day arguably being the hardest (10.8km, 700 metres of ascent and descent, a heavy pack and lacking fitness), we awoke after 11 hours sleep to snow, rain, hail and sleet. The West Australians amongst us loved the falling snow, with the two Belgians amused by our reaction to it!
Of the six huts we stayed in, four were basic but well designed, consisting of one large room, with benches and tables at one end and sleeping platforms at the other. Pelion hut was relatively new, able to hold up to 60 people in rooms separate from the cooking/eating room. Worst was the very new Windy Ridge hut, with numerous stairs, cold rooms and a vast main eating hall that discouraged socialising with other walkers (e.g., the benches and tables were bolted to the floor).
Wildlife along the track was minimal: wallabies at a couple of huts at dusk, leeches close to rivers, a few birds high in the tree tops. But the fungi were spectacular – every colour and shape imaginable. Even the teenagers in our group admired them.
Equally spectacular was the scenery. Ancient forests dripping in lichens; hill sides green with fields of moss; mountain sides covered in broken rock which in turn was covered by variably coloured and patterned lichens. Everywhere were smoothly glaciated valleys or jagged basalt hills which once stood above the ice. Large boulders of sandstone lay scattered on the button grass plains, having been dropped from melting glaciers.
At the end of our leisurely 7 nights and 8 days, we caught the ferry to the Lake St Claire visitor centre rather than walk the final 17 km along the lake’s edge – a boring exercise, we were told, in comparison with the 65 km of main track. We found hiking poles essential (one for me and two for Carolina). Dry socks at night rejuvenated the feet for the next day’s walk. Ear plugs in the crowded huts were needed to protect against the inevitable snorers, although there was no escape from the head cold that freely passed between walkers who shared the huts. Although we carried too much food, the excess was useful insurance against emergencies.
Prior to departure, Kevin Rudd’s stimulus payment helped pay for upgraded equipment, especially back packs and a good quality waterproof jacket for Carolina. We bought many items on eBay or via the internet from camping stores based in the east. Pre-packaged hiking food was very expensive (and our trial meals were small and bland) so we purchased packets of dried food – pasta, rice, noodles – from a Launceston supermarket.
The Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service website only contained active links to or email addresses of a limited number of the various service providers needed to plan for the walk. Fortunately (and this is the first of only two commercials in this article), staff in the Launceston store of Paddy Pallin were excellent and gave freely of their time and useful advice. We were also greatly appreciative of the help given to us by the Bunbury Mountain Design store where we purchased our backpacks.
The Overland Track was the hardest physical challenge I’ve yet faced but the pain was worthwhile. Side tracks up nearby mountains or down to beautiful waterfalls added to the scenic variety of the overall track. Our fellow hikers were good company, always helpful for advice or assistance. Rangers were present at most huts and were likewise friendly and helpful, always with emergency stocks of the most requested item which people run out of – rolls of toilet paper!
The scenery and challenge of the track completely outweighed the difficulties caused by the track’s poor condition. Overall, the Overland Track deserves its title as one of Australia’s ‘iconic’ walks. Do it before you get too old.
Bernie and Carolina Masters, with 2 Belgians Vincent and Robin Keunen and a family of 5 (including 3 teenagers) from Perth: Dan, Beth, Danii, Bethanii and Brodie Heeris.
Kim Chance's opposition to GM is political, nothing else!
FORMER MINISTER’S OPPOSITION TO GM IS POLITICALLY MOTIVATED
In January, 2010, an article appeared in the West Australian newspaper written by former state ALP agriculture minister Kim Chance. In it, he outlined his opposition to the growing of genetically modified (GM) foods in WA, but the article was more significant for the issues he failed to raise rather than for his stated concerns.
For the last 20 years, foremost in any ALP strategist’s mind is Labor’s reliance on preferences from the WA Greens at election time. This has controlled many of the state ALP’s policy decisions in recent years, including relaxation of drug usage laws and opposition to uranium mining and to the use of GM crops in WA.
In my eight years as a state MP, I came to the surprising conclusion that the most conservative party in the WA political scene is the WA Greens. Analysis of many of their policies shows that they are opposed to change in many aspects of the modern world, usually (but not always) implying a preference for a return to the simple, low technology life of the past. This conservativeness appeals to a certain class of voters who fear for the future and don’t trust scientists or technical experts, in spite of their high uptake of computer-based technologies, for example.
While the Greens are progressive on many social reform issues, their conservative attitude towards the modern world sees them opposing the use of GM in both food and non-food organisms such as cotton. While this article isn’t the appropriate place to analyse and debunk their many concerns, the reality of their opposition to GM and of the dependence of Labor at both state and federal level to their preferences are the main reason why former minister Chance and the ALP are also so opposed to GM.
Another major omission from Mr Chance’s article was any detail about the markets and sale price premiums that would be lost as a consequence of the WA government’s decision to allow GM canola to be grown more widely. Australia’s canola oil production ranges up to one and a half million tonnes per year, depending on seasonal conditions. In spite of the loud protests of GM opponents who claim that we’ll be losing valuable non-GM markets in Japan and Europe, there is an almost total lack of information on the size of these markets and how important they might be to Australian farmers.
The internet reveals that Tasmania is hoping to grow its non-GM canola exports to 10,000 tonnes per year (less than 1% of total Australian production), while dire predictions made in 2006 about the collapse of South Australia’s canola export market has proved groundless. No data is available on the claimed price premium paid for non-GM canola. The only conclusion that a rational person can make is that, if such markets really do exist, they are so small that they can provide virtually no benefit to Australia as a whole.
Mr Chance’s personal opposition to GM food is well reflected in his now famous 2005 statement “We might grow a tail if we eat GM crops”. It’s possible he may have been joking but, in the absence of a clear withdrawal of this claim, it’s best to assume he was serious, in spite of its total falseness.
In response to some of the claims made by Mr Chance, it is worth pointing out that:
• Farmers are currently the primary beneficiaries of GM technology, with higher yields and lower pesticide usage keeping their costs down. In turn, these cost savings help to keep consumer prices down. An October 2009 report for the UK government warned that the cost of sourcing non-GM food ingredients is increasing so that they now cost 10 to 20 per cent more than their GM equivalents. While comparisons between UK and Australia are sometimes difficult, nonetheless some non-GM foods now cost substantially more to grow than their GM counterparts.
• The primary reason why the major supermarket chains don’t stock GM foods is because none of them wish to be threatened by politically motivated campaigns run by green groups. Look at the anti-wool campaign run by the animal rights group PETA who also want to stop the keeping of pets and ban the recreational catching of fish. The term ‘green mail’ has been invented to describe the unacceptable practice of blackmailing certain parties to further the ambitions of some environmental zealots.
• WA’s recent GM canola trials were not designed to evaluate the economics of GM versus non-GM canola, as implied in Mr Chance’s article. It will be WA’s farmers who make the economic decisions about whether to grow GM crops or not, rather than the scientists who are more interested in oil yields or pesticide usage or the people who assess crop segregation issues.
• Analysis of GM product performance is not a task for government. Instead, it will be (and should be) carried out by the hundreds of WA farmers who will almost certainly choose to use GM canola to gain the economic and environmental benefits that this product provides. If the promised benefits fail to materialise, Monsanto will quickly lose customers, not gain them.
Interestingly, Mr Chance’s article hardly touched on the issue of GM product labeling, a requirement which would give consumers the ultimate choice in resolving the debate over GM foods. If all foods derived from GM crops were appropriately labeled and farmers given an unfettered choice of whether to grow GM or non-GM foods, the debate would be resolved within a few years as consumers either accepted or rejected the products placed on supermarket shelves.
Because of scaremongering over the use of GM technology, this choice is currently being denied to consumers, so one has to ask what do the greens and their supporters (such as the ALP) really fear? My belief is that they fear the ordinary person in the street making a decision that is contrary to the green’s emotionally-based and politically-driven opposition to GM technology.
The world didn’t implode when the Y2K bug struck and some of the excessively pessimistic claims about global climate change are now being reviewed and modified. GM foods have been eaten by hundreds of millions of people for more than 15 years without harm while farmers in many countries are rapidly taking up GM crops so as to enjoy the resulting economic and environmental benefits. Whether they are Luddites or political activists, people like Kim Chance should put aside their ulterior motives and come out in support of a technology whose time has come.
In January, 2010, an article appeared in the West Australian newspaper written by former state ALP agriculture minister Kim Chance. In it, he outlined his opposition to the growing of genetically modified (GM) foods in WA, but the article was more significant for the issues he failed to raise rather than for his stated concerns.
For the last 20 years, foremost in any ALP strategist’s mind is Labor’s reliance on preferences from the WA Greens at election time. This has controlled many of the state ALP’s policy decisions in recent years, including relaxation of drug usage laws and opposition to uranium mining and to the use of GM crops in WA.
In my eight years as a state MP, I came to the surprising conclusion that the most conservative party in the WA political scene is the WA Greens. Analysis of many of their policies shows that they are opposed to change in many aspects of the modern world, usually (but not always) implying a preference for a return to the simple, low technology life of the past. This conservativeness appeals to a certain class of voters who fear for the future and don’t trust scientists or technical experts, in spite of their high uptake of computer-based technologies, for example.
While the Greens are progressive on many social reform issues, their conservative attitude towards the modern world sees them opposing the use of GM in both food and non-food organisms such as cotton. While this article isn’t the appropriate place to analyse and debunk their many concerns, the reality of their opposition to GM and of the dependence of Labor at both state and federal level to their preferences are the main reason why former minister Chance and the ALP are also so opposed to GM.
Another major omission from Mr Chance’s article was any detail about the markets and sale price premiums that would be lost as a consequence of the WA government’s decision to allow GM canola to be grown more widely. Australia’s canola oil production ranges up to one and a half million tonnes per year, depending on seasonal conditions. In spite of the loud protests of GM opponents who claim that we’ll be losing valuable non-GM markets in Japan and Europe, there is an almost total lack of information on the size of these markets and how important they might be to Australian farmers.
The internet reveals that Tasmania is hoping to grow its non-GM canola exports to 10,000 tonnes per year (less than 1% of total Australian production), while dire predictions made in 2006 about the collapse of South Australia’s canola export market has proved groundless. No data is available on the claimed price premium paid for non-GM canola. The only conclusion that a rational person can make is that, if such markets really do exist, they are so small that they can provide virtually no benefit to Australia as a whole.
Mr Chance’s personal opposition to GM food is well reflected in his now famous 2005 statement “We might grow a tail if we eat GM crops”. It’s possible he may have been joking but, in the absence of a clear withdrawal of this claim, it’s best to assume he was serious, in spite of its total falseness.
In response to some of the claims made by Mr Chance, it is worth pointing out that:
• Farmers are currently the primary beneficiaries of GM technology, with higher yields and lower pesticide usage keeping their costs down. In turn, these cost savings help to keep consumer prices down. An October 2009 report for the UK government warned that the cost of sourcing non-GM food ingredients is increasing so that they now cost 10 to 20 per cent more than their GM equivalents. While comparisons between UK and Australia are sometimes difficult, nonetheless some non-GM foods now cost substantially more to grow than their GM counterparts.
• The primary reason why the major supermarket chains don’t stock GM foods is because none of them wish to be threatened by politically motivated campaigns run by green groups. Look at the anti-wool campaign run by the animal rights group PETA who also want to stop the keeping of pets and ban the recreational catching of fish. The term ‘green mail’ has been invented to describe the unacceptable practice of blackmailing certain parties to further the ambitions of some environmental zealots.
• WA’s recent GM canola trials were not designed to evaluate the economics of GM versus non-GM canola, as implied in Mr Chance’s article. It will be WA’s farmers who make the economic decisions about whether to grow GM crops or not, rather than the scientists who are more interested in oil yields or pesticide usage or the people who assess crop segregation issues.
• Analysis of GM product performance is not a task for government. Instead, it will be (and should be) carried out by the hundreds of WA farmers who will almost certainly choose to use GM canola to gain the economic and environmental benefits that this product provides. If the promised benefits fail to materialise, Monsanto will quickly lose customers, not gain them.
Interestingly, Mr Chance’s article hardly touched on the issue of GM product labeling, a requirement which would give consumers the ultimate choice in resolving the debate over GM foods. If all foods derived from GM crops were appropriately labeled and farmers given an unfettered choice of whether to grow GM or non-GM foods, the debate would be resolved within a few years as consumers either accepted or rejected the products placed on supermarket shelves.
Because of scaremongering over the use of GM technology, this choice is currently being denied to consumers, so one has to ask what do the greens and their supporters (such as the ALP) really fear? My belief is that they fear the ordinary person in the street making a decision that is contrary to the green’s emotionally-based and politically-driven opposition to GM technology.
The world didn’t implode when the Y2K bug struck and some of the excessively pessimistic claims about global climate change are now being reviewed and modified. GM foods have been eaten by hundreds of millions of people for more than 15 years without harm while farmers in many countries are rapidly taking up GM crops so as to enjoy the resulting economic and environmental benefits. Whether they are Luddites or political activists, people like Kim Chance should put aside their ulterior motives and come out in support of a technology whose time has come.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Bound to Burn
Humanity will keep spewing carbon into the atmosphere, but good policy can help sink it back into the earth.
By Peter W. Huber
Like medieval priests, today's carbon brokers will sell you an indulgence that forgives your carbon sins. It will run you about $500 for 5 tons of forgiveness -- about how much the typical American needs every year. Or about $2,000 a year for a typical four-person household. Your broker will spend the money on such things as reducing methane emissions from hog farms in Brazil.
But if you really want to make a difference, you must send a check large enough to forgive the carbon emitted by four poor Brazilian households, too -- because they're not going to do it themselves. To cover all five households, then, send $4,000. And you probably forgot to send in a check last year, and you might forget again in the future, so you'd best make it an even $40,000, to take care of a decade right now. If you decline to write your own check while insisting that to save the world we must ditch the carbon, you are just burdening your already sooty soul with another ton of self-righteous hypocrisy. And you can't possibly afford what it will cost to forgive that.
If making carbon this personal seems rude, then think globally instead. During the presidential race, Barack Obama was heard to remark that he would bankrupt the coal industry. No one can doubt Washington's power to bankrupt almost anything -- in the United States. But China is adding 100 gigawatts of coal-fired electrical capacity a year. That's another whole United States' worth of coal consumption added every three years, with no stopping point in sight. Much of the rest of the developing world is on a similar path.
Cut to the chase. We rich people can't stop the world's 5 billion poor people from burning the couple of trillion tons of cheap carbon that they have within easy reach. We can't even make any durable dent in global emissions -- because emissions from the developing world are growing too fast, because the other 80 percent of humanity desperately needs cheap energy, and because we and they are now part of the same global economy. What we can do, if we're foolish enough, is let carbon worries send our jobs and industries to their shores, making them grow even faster, and their carbon emissions faster still.
We don't control the global supply of carbon.
Ten countries ruled by nasty people control 80 percent of the planet's oil reserves -- about 1 trillion barrels, currently worth about $40 trillion. If $40 trillion worth of gold were located where most of the oil is, one could only scoff at any suggestion that we might somehow persuade the nasty people to leave the wealth buried. They can lift most of their oil at a cost well under $10 a barrel. They will drill. They will pump. And they will find buyers. Oil is all they've got.
Poor countries all around the planet are sitting on a second, even bigger source of carbon -- almost a trillion tons of cheap, easily accessible coal. They also control most of the planet's third great carbon reservoir -- the rain forests and soil. They will keep squeezing the carbon out of cheap coal, and cheap forest, and cheap soil, because that's all they've got. Unless they can find something even cheaper. But they won't -- not any time in the foreseeable future.
We no longer control the demand for carbon, either. The 5 billion poor -- the other 80 percent -- are already the main problem, not us. Collectively, they emit 20 percent more greenhouse gas than we do. We burn a lot more carbon individually, but they have a lot more children. Their fecundity has eclipsed our gluttony, and the gap is now widening fast. China, not the United States, is now the planet's largest emitter. Brazil, India, Indonesia, South Africa, and others are in hot pursuit. And these countries have all made it clear that they aren't interested in spending what money they have on low-carb diets. It is idle to argue, as some have done, that global warming can be solved -- decades hence -- at a cost of 1 to 2 percent of the global economy. Eighty percent of the global population hasn't signed on to pay more than 0 percent.
Accepting this last, self-evident fact, the Kyoto Protocol divides the world into two groups. The roughly 1.2 billion citizens of industrialized countries are expected to reduce their emissions. The other 5 billion -- including both China and India, each of which is about as populous as the entire Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development -- aren't. These numbers alone guarantee that humanity isn't going to reduce global emissions at any point in the foreseeable future -- unless it does it the old-fashioned way, by getting poorer. But the current recession won't last forever, and the long-term trend is clear. Their populations and per-capita emissions are rising far faster than ours could fall under any remotely plausible carbon-reduction scheme.
Might we simply buy their cooperation? Various plans have circulated for having the rich pay the poor to stop burning down rain forests and to lower greenhouse-gas emissions from primitive agricultural practices. But taking control of what belongs to someone else ultimately means buying it. Over the long term, we would in effect have to buy up a large fraction of all the world's forests, soil, coal, and oil -- and then post guards to make sure that poor people didn't sneak in and grab all the carbon anyway. Buying off people just doesn't fly when they outnumber you four to one.
Might we instead manage to give the world something cheaper than carbon? The moon-shot law of economics says yes, of course we can. If we just put our minds to it, it will happen. Atom bomb, moon landing, ultracheap energy -- all it takes is a triumph of political will.
Really? For the very poorest, this would mean beating the price of the free rain forest that they burn down to clear land to plant a subsistence crop. For the slightly less poor, it would mean beating the price of coal used to generate electricity at under 3 cents per kilowatt-hour.
And with one important exception, which we will return to shortly, no carbon-free fuel or technology comes remotely close to being able to do that. Fossil fuels are extremely cheap because geological forces happen to have created large deposits of these dense forms of energy in accessible places. Find a mountain of coal, and you can just shovel gargantuan amounts of energy into the boxcars.
Shoveling wind and sun is much, much harder. Windmills are now 50-story skyscrapers. Yet one windmill generates a piddling 2 to 3 megawatts. A jumbo jet needs 100 megawatts to get off the ground; Google is building 100-megawatt server farms. Meeting New York City's total energy demand would require 13,000 of those skyscrapers spinning at top speed, which would require scattering about 50,000 of them across the state, to make sure that you always hit enough windy spots. To answer the howls of green protest that inevitably greet realistic engineering estimates like these, note that real-world systems must be able to meet peak, not average, demand; that reserve margins are essential; and that converting electric power into liquid or gaseous fuels to power the existing transportation and heating systems would entail substantial losses. What was Mayor Bloomberg thinking when he suggested that he might just tuck windmills into Manhattan? Such thoughts betray a deep ignorance about how difficult it is to get a lot of energy out of sources as thin and dilute as wind and sun.
It's often suggested that technology improvements and mass production will sharply lower the cost of wind and solar. But engineers have pursued these technologies for decades, and while costs of some components have fallen, there is no serious prospect of costs plummeting and performance soaring as they have in our laptops and cell phones. When you replace conventional with renewable energy, everything gets bigger, not smaller -- and bigger costs more, not less. Even if solar cells themselves were free, solar power would remain very expensive because of the huge structures and support systems required to extract large amounts of electricity from a source so weak that it takes hours to deliver a tan.
This is why the (few) greens ready to accept engineering and economic reality have suddenly emerged as avid proponents of nuclear power. In the aftermath of the Three Mile Island accident -- which didn't harm anyone, and wouldn't even have damaged the reactor core if the operators had simply kept their hands off the switches and let the automatic safety systems do their job -- ostensibly green antinuclear activists unwittingly boosted U.S. coal consumption by about 400 million tons per year. The United States would be in compliance with the Kyoto Protocol today if we could simply undo their handiwork and conjure back into existence the nuclear plants that were in the pipeline in nuclear power's heyday. Nuclear power is fantastically compact, and -- as America's nuclear navy, several commercial U.S. operators, France, Japan, and a handful of other countries have convincingly established -- it's both safe and cheap wherever engineers are allowed to get on with it.
But getting on with it briskly is essential, because costs hinge on the huge, up-front capital investment in the power plant. Years of delay between the capital investment and when it starts earning a return are ruinous. Most of the developed world has made nuclear power unaffordable by surrounding it with a regulatory process so sluggish and unpredictable that no one will pour a couple of billion dollars into a new plant, for the good reason that no one knows when (or even if) the investment will be allowed to start making money.
And countries that don't trust nuclear power on their own soil must hesitate to share the technology with countries where you never know who will be in charge next year, or what he might decide to do with his nuclear toys. So much for the possibility that cheap nuclear power might replace carbon-spewing sources of energy in the developing world. Moreover, even India and China, which have mastered nuclear technologies, are deploying far more new coal capacity.
Remember, finally, that most of the cost of carbon-based energy resides not in the fuels but in the gigantic infrastructure of furnaces, turbines, and engines. Those costs are sunk, which means that carbon-free alternatives -- with their own huge, attendant, front-end capital costs -- must be cheap enough to beat carbon fuels that already have their infrastructure in place. That won't happen in our lifetimes.
Another argument commonly advanced is that getting over carbon will, nevertheless, be comparatively cheap, because it will get us over oil, too -- which will impoverish our enemies and save us a bundle at the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security. But uranium aside, the most economical substitute for oil is, in fact, electricity generated with coal. Cheap coal-fired electricity has been, is, and will continue to be a substitute for oil, or a substitute for natural gas, which can in turn substitute for oil. By sharply boosting the cost of coal electricity, the war on carbon will make us more dependent on oil, not less.
The first place where coal displaces oil is in the electric power plant itself. When oil prices spiked in the early 1980s, U.S. utilities quickly switched to other fuels, with coal leading the pack; the coal-fired plants now being built in China, India, and other developing countries are displacing diesel generators. More power plants burning coal to produce cheap electricity can also mean less natural gas used to generate electricity. And less used for industrial, commercial, and residential heating, welding, and chemical processing, as these users switch to electrically powered alternatives. The gas that's freed up this way can then substitute for diesel fuel in heavy trucks, delivery vehicles, and buses. And coal-fired electricity will eventually begin displacing gasoline, too, as soon as plug-in hybrid cars start recharging their batteries directly from the grid.
To top it all, using electricity generated in large part by coal to power our passenger cars would lower carbon emissions -- even in Indiana, which generates 75 percent of its electricity with coal. Big power plants are so much more efficient than the gasoline engines in our cars that a plug-in hybrid car running on electricity supplied by Indiana's current grid still ends up more carbon-frugal than comparable cars burning gasoline in a conventional engine under the hood. Old-guard energy types have been saying this for decades. In a major report released last March, the World Wildlife Fund finally concluded that they were right all along.
But true carbon zealots won't settle for modest reductions in carbon emissions when fat targets beckon. They see coal-fired electricity as the dragon to slay first. Huge, stationary sources can't run or hide, and the cost of doing without them doesn't get rung up in plain view at the gas pump. California, Pennsylvania, and other greener-than-thou states have made flatlining electricity consumption the linchpin of their war on carbon. That is the one certain way to halt the displacement of foreign oil by cheap, domestic electricity.
The oil-coal economics come down to this. Per unit of energy delivered, coal costs about one-fifth as much as oil -- but contains one-third more carbon. High carbon taxes (or tradable permits, or any other economic equivalent) sharply narrow the price gap between oil and the one fuel that can displace it worldwide, here and now. The oil nasties will celebrate the green war on carbon as enthusiastically as the coal industry celebrated the green war on uranium 30 years ago.
The other 5 billion are too poor to deny these economic realities. For them, the price to beat is 3-cent coal-fired electricity. China and India won't trade 3-cent coal for 15-cent wind or 30-cent solar. As for us, if we embrace those economically frivolous alternatives on our own, we will certainly end up doing more harm than good.
By pouring money into anything-but-carbon fuels, we will lower demand for carbon, making it even cheaper for the rest of the world to buy and burn. The rest will use cheaper energy to accelerate their own economic growth. Jobs will go where energy is cheap, just as they go where labor is cheap. Manufacturing and heavy industry require a great deal of energy, and in a global economy, no competitor can survive while paying substantially more for an essential input. The carbon police acknowledge the problem and talk vaguely of using tariffs and such to address it. But carbon is far too deeply embedded in the global economy, and materials, goods, and services move and intermingle far too freely, for the customs agents to track.
Consider your next Google search. As noted in a recent article in Harper's, "Google . . . and its rivals now head abroad for cheaper, often dirtier power." Google itself (the "don't be evil" company) is looking to set up one of its electrically voracious server farms at a site in Lithuania, "disingenuously described as being near a hydroelectric dam." But Lithuania's grid is 0.5 percent hydroelectric and 78 percent nuclear. Perhaps the company's next huge farm will be "near" the Three Gorges Dam in China, built to generate over three times as much power as our own Grand Coulee Dam in Washington State. China will be happy to play along, while it quietly plugs another coal plant into its grid a few pylons down the line. All the while, of course, Google will maintain its low-energy headquarters in California, a state that often boasts of the wise regulatory policies -- centered, one is told, on efficiency and conservation -- that have made it such a frugal energy user. But in fact, sky-high prices have played the key role, curbing internal demand and propelling the flight from California of power plants, heavy industries, chip fabs, server farms, and much else (see "California's Potemkin Environmentalism," Spring 2008).
So the suggestion that we can lift ourselves out of the economic doldrums by spending lavishly on exceptionally expensive new sources of energy is absurd. "Green jobs" means Americans paying other Americans to chase carbon while the rest of the world builds new power plants and factories. And the environmental consequences of outsourcing jobs, industries, and carbon to developing countries are beyond dispute. They use energy far less efficiently than we do, and they remain almost completely oblivious to environmental impacts, just as we were in our own first century of industrialization. A massive transfer of carbon, industry, and jobs from us to them will raise carbon emissions, not lower them.
The grand theory for how the developed world can unilaterally save the planet seems to run like this. We buy time for the planet by rapidly slashing our own emissions. We do so by developing carbon-free alternatives even cheaper than carbon. The rest of the world will then quickly adopt these alternatives, leaving most of its trillion barrels of oil and trillion tons of coal safely buried, most of the rain forests standing, and most of the planet's carbon-rich soil undisturbed. From end to end, however, this vision strains credulity.
Perhaps it's the recognition of that inconvenient truth that has made the anti-carbon rhetoric increasingly apocalyptic. Coal trains have been analogized to boxcars headed for Auschwitz. There is talk of the extinction of all humanity. But then, we have heard such things before. It is indeed quite routine, in environmental discourse, to frame choices as involving potentially infinite costs on the green side of the ledger. If they really are infinite, no reasonable person can quibble about spending mere billions, or even trillions, on the dollar side, to dodge the apocalyptic bullet.
Thirty years ago, the case against nuclear power was framed as the "Zero-Infinity Dilemma." The risks of a meltdown might be vanishingly small, but if it happened, the costs would be infinitely large, so we should forget about uranium. Computer models demonstrated that meltdowns were highly unlikely and that the costs of a meltdown, should one occur, would be manageable -- but greens scoffed: huge computer models couldn't be trusted. So we ended up burning much more coal. The software shoe is on the other foot now; the machines that said nukes wouldn't melt now say that the ice caps will. Warming skeptics scoff in turn, and can quite plausibly argue that a planet is harder to model than a nuclear reactor. But that's a detail. From a rhetorical perspective, any claim that the infinite, the apocalypse, or the Almighty supports your side of the argument shuts down all further discussion.
To judge by actions rather than words, however, few people and almost no national governments actually believe in the infinite rewards of exorcising carbon from economic life. Kyoto has hurt the anti-carbon mission far more than carbon zealots seem to grasp. It has proved only that with carbon, governments will say and sign anything -- and then do less than nothing. The United States should steer well clear of such treaties because they are unenforceable, routinely ignored, and therefore worthless.
If we're truly worried about carbon, we must instead approach it as if the emissions originated in an annual eruption of Mount Krakatoa. Don't try to persuade the volcano to sign a treaty promising to stop. Focus instead on what might be done to protect and promote the planet's carbon sinks -- the systems that suck carbon back out of the air and bury it. Green plants currently pump 15 to 20 times as much carbon out of the atmosphere as humanity releases into it -- that's the pump that put all that carbon underground in the first place, millions of years ago. At present, almost all of that plant-captured carbon is released back into the atmosphere within a year or so by animal consumers. North America, however, is currently sinking almost two-thirds of its carbon emissions back into prairies and forests that were originally leveled in the 1800s but are now recovering. For the next 50 years or so, we should focus on promoting better land use and reforestation worldwide. Beyond that, weather and the oceans naturally sink about one-fifth of total fossil-fuel emissions. We should also investigate large-scale options for accelerating the process of ocean sequestration.
Carbon zealots despise carbon-sinking schemes because, they insist, nobody can be sure that the sunk carbon will stay sunk. Yet everything they propose hinges on the assumption that carbon already sunk by nature in what are now hugely valuable deposits of oil and coal can be kept sunk by treaty and imaginary cheaper-than-carbon alternatives. This, yet again, gets things backward. We certainly know how to improve agriculture to protect soil, and how to grow new trees, and how to maintain existing forests, and we can almost certainly learn how to mummify carbon and bury it back in the earth or the depths of the oceans, in ways that neither man nor nature will disturb. It's keeping nature's black gold sequestered from humanity that's impossible.
If we do need to do something serious about carbon, the sequestration of carbon after it's burned is the one approach that accepts the growth of carbon emissions as an inescapable fact of the twenty-first century. And it's the one approach that the rest of the world can embrace, too, here and now, because it begins with improving land use, which can lead directly and quickly to greater prosperity. If, on the other hand, we persist in building green bridges to nowhere, we will make things worse, not better. Good intentions aren't enough. Turned into ineffectual action, they can cost the earth and accelerate its ruin at the same time.
Peter Huber is a Manhattan Institute senior fellow and the co-author, most recently, of The Bottomless Well. His article develops arguments that he made in an Intelligence Squared U.S. debate in January. He is president of Stratfor and was with the CIA (as was his wife Meredith) before they founded Stratfor, a private intelligence agency.
By Peter W. Huber
Like medieval priests, today's carbon brokers will sell you an indulgence that forgives your carbon sins. It will run you about $500 for 5 tons of forgiveness -- about how much the typical American needs every year. Or about $2,000 a year for a typical four-person household. Your broker will spend the money on such things as reducing methane emissions from hog farms in Brazil.
But if you really want to make a difference, you must send a check large enough to forgive the carbon emitted by four poor Brazilian households, too -- because they're not going to do it themselves. To cover all five households, then, send $4,000. And you probably forgot to send in a check last year, and you might forget again in the future, so you'd best make it an even $40,000, to take care of a decade right now. If you decline to write your own check while insisting that to save the world we must ditch the carbon, you are just burdening your already sooty soul with another ton of self-righteous hypocrisy. And you can't possibly afford what it will cost to forgive that.
If making carbon this personal seems rude, then think globally instead. During the presidential race, Barack Obama was heard to remark that he would bankrupt the coal industry. No one can doubt Washington's power to bankrupt almost anything -- in the United States. But China is adding 100 gigawatts of coal-fired electrical capacity a year. That's another whole United States' worth of coal consumption added every three years, with no stopping point in sight. Much of the rest of the developing world is on a similar path.
Cut to the chase. We rich people can't stop the world's 5 billion poor people from burning the couple of trillion tons of cheap carbon that they have within easy reach. We can't even make any durable dent in global emissions -- because emissions from the developing world are growing too fast, because the other 80 percent of humanity desperately needs cheap energy, and because we and they are now part of the same global economy. What we can do, if we're foolish enough, is let carbon worries send our jobs and industries to their shores, making them grow even faster, and their carbon emissions faster still.
We don't control the global supply of carbon.
Ten countries ruled by nasty people control 80 percent of the planet's oil reserves -- about 1 trillion barrels, currently worth about $40 trillion. If $40 trillion worth of gold were located where most of the oil is, one could only scoff at any suggestion that we might somehow persuade the nasty people to leave the wealth buried. They can lift most of their oil at a cost well under $10 a barrel. They will drill. They will pump. And they will find buyers. Oil is all they've got.
Poor countries all around the planet are sitting on a second, even bigger source of carbon -- almost a trillion tons of cheap, easily accessible coal. They also control most of the planet's third great carbon reservoir -- the rain forests and soil. They will keep squeezing the carbon out of cheap coal, and cheap forest, and cheap soil, because that's all they've got. Unless they can find something even cheaper. But they won't -- not any time in the foreseeable future.
We no longer control the demand for carbon, either. The 5 billion poor -- the other 80 percent -- are already the main problem, not us. Collectively, they emit 20 percent more greenhouse gas than we do. We burn a lot more carbon individually, but they have a lot more children. Their fecundity has eclipsed our gluttony, and the gap is now widening fast. China, not the United States, is now the planet's largest emitter. Brazil, India, Indonesia, South Africa, and others are in hot pursuit. And these countries have all made it clear that they aren't interested in spending what money they have on low-carb diets. It is idle to argue, as some have done, that global warming can be solved -- decades hence -- at a cost of 1 to 2 percent of the global economy. Eighty percent of the global population hasn't signed on to pay more than 0 percent.
Accepting this last, self-evident fact, the Kyoto Protocol divides the world into two groups. The roughly 1.2 billion citizens of industrialized countries are expected to reduce their emissions. The other 5 billion -- including both China and India, each of which is about as populous as the entire Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development -- aren't. These numbers alone guarantee that humanity isn't going to reduce global emissions at any point in the foreseeable future -- unless it does it the old-fashioned way, by getting poorer. But the current recession won't last forever, and the long-term trend is clear. Their populations and per-capita emissions are rising far faster than ours could fall under any remotely plausible carbon-reduction scheme.
Might we simply buy their cooperation? Various plans have circulated for having the rich pay the poor to stop burning down rain forests and to lower greenhouse-gas emissions from primitive agricultural practices. But taking control of what belongs to someone else ultimately means buying it. Over the long term, we would in effect have to buy up a large fraction of all the world's forests, soil, coal, and oil -- and then post guards to make sure that poor people didn't sneak in and grab all the carbon anyway. Buying off people just doesn't fly when they outnumber you four to one.
Might we instead manage to give the world something cheaper than carbon? The moon-shot law of economics says yes, of course we can. If we just put our minds to it, it will happen. Atom bomb, moon landing, ultracheap energy -- all it takes is a triumph of political will.
Really? For the very poorest, this would mean beating the price of the free rain forest that they burn down to clear land to plant a subsistence crop. For the slightly less poor, it would mean beating the price of coal used to generate electricity at under 3 cents per kilowatt-hour.
And with one important exception, which we will return to shortly, no carbon-free fuel or technology comes remotely close to being able to do that. Fossil fuels are extremely cheap because geological forces happen to have created large deposits of these dense forms of energy in accessible places. Find a mountain of coal, and you can just shovel gargantuan amounts of energy into the boxcars.
Shoveling wind and sun is much, much harder. Windmills are now 50-story skyscrapers. Yet one windmill generates a piddling 2 to 3 megawatts. A jumbo jet needs 100 megawatts to get off the ground; Google is building 100-megawatt server farms. Meeting New York City's total energy demand would require 13,000 of those skyscrapers spinning at top speed, which would require scattering about 50,000 of them across the state, to make sure that you always hit enough windy spots. To answer the howls of green protest that inevitably greet realistic engineering estimates like these, note that real-world systems must be able to meet peak, not average, demand; that reserve margins are essential; and that converting electric power into liquid or gaseous fuels to power the existing transportation and heating systems would entail substantial losses. What was Mayor Bloomberg thinking when he suggested that he might just tuck windmills into Manhattan? Such thoughts betray a deep ignorance about how difficult it is to get a lot of energy out of sources as thin and dilute as wind and sun.
It's often suggested that technology improvements and mass production will sharply lower the cost of wind and solar. But engineers have pursued these technologies for decades, and while costs of some components have fallen, there is no serious prospect of costs plummeting and performance soaring as they have in our laptops and cell phones. When you replace conventional with renewable energy, everything gets bigger, not smaller -- and bigger costs more, not less. Even if solar cells themselves were free, solar power would remain very expensive because of the huge structures and support systems required to extract large amounts of electricity from a source so weak that it takes hours to deliver a tan.
This is why the (few) greens ready to accept engineering and economic reality have suddenly emerged as avid proponents of nuclear power. In the aftermath of the Three Mile Island accident -- which didn't harm anyone, and wouldn't even have damaged the reactor core if the operators had simply kept their hands off the switches and let the automatic safety systems do their job -- ostensibly green antinuclear activists unwittingly boosted U.S. coal consumption by about 400 million tons per year. The United States would be in compliance with the Kyoto Protocol today if we could simply undo their handiwork and conjure back into existence the nuclear plants that were in the pipeline in nuclear power's heyday. Nuclear power is fantastically compact, and -- as America's nuclear navy, several commercial U.S. operators, France, Japan, and a handful of other countries have convincingly established -- it's both safe and cheap wherever engineers are allowed to get on with it.
But getting on with it briskly is essential, because costs hinge on the huge, up-front capital investment in the power plant. Years of delay between the capital investment and when it starts earning a return are ruinous. Most of the developed world has made nuclear power unaffordable by surrounding it with a regulatory process so sluggish and unpredictable that no one will pour a couple of billion dollars into a new plant, for the good reason that no one knows when (or even if) the investment will be allowed to start making money.
And countries that don't trust nuclear power on their own soil must hesitate to share the technology with countries where you never know who will be in charge next year, or what he might decide to do with his nuclear toys. So much for the possibility that cheap nuclear power might replace carbon-spewing sources of energy in the developing world. Moreover, even India and China, which have mastered nuclear technologies, are deploying far more new coal capacity.
Remember, finally, that most of the cost of carbon-based energy resides not in the fuels but in the gigantic infrastructure of furnaces, turbines, and engines. Those costs are sunk, which means that carbon-free alternatives -- with their own huge, attendant, front-end capital costs -- must be cheap enough to beat carbon fuels that already have their infrastructure in place. That won't happen in our lifetimes.
Another argument commonly advanced is that getting over carbon will, nevertheless, be comparatively cheap, because it will get us over oil, too -- which will impoverish our enemies and save us a bundle at the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security. But uranium aside, the most economical substitute for oil is, in fact, electricity generated with coal. Cheap coal-fired electricity has been, is, and will continue to be a substitute for oil, or a substitute for natural gas, which can in turn substitute for oil. By sharply boosting the cost of coal electricity, the war on carbon will make us more dependent on oil, not less.
The first place where coal displaces oil is in the electric power plant itself. When oil prices spiked in the early 1980s, U.S. utilities quickly switched to other fuels, with coal leading the pack; the coal-fired plants now being built in China, India, and other developing countries are displacing diesel generators. More power plants burning coal to produce cheap electricity can also mean less natural gas used to generate electricity. And less used for industrial, commercial, and residential heating, welding, and chemical processing, as these users switch to electrically powered alternatives. The gas that's freed up this way can then substitute for diesel fuel in heavy trucks, delivery vehicles, and buses. And coal-fired electricity will eventually begin displacing gasoline, too, as soon as plug-in hybrid cars start recharging their batteries directly from the grid.
To top it all, using electricity generated in large part by coal to power our passenger cars would lower carbon emissions -- even in Indiana, which generates 75 percent of its electricity with coal. Big power plants are so much more efficient than the gasoline engines in our cars that a plug-in hybrid car running on electricity supplied by Indiana's current grid still ends up more carbon-frugal than comparable cars burning gasoline in a conventional engine under the hood. Old-guard energy types have been saying this for decades. In a major report released last March, the World Wildlife Fund finally concluded that they were right all along.
But true carbon zealots won't settle for modest reductions in carbon emissions when fat targets beckon. They see coal-fired electricity as the dragon to slay first. Huge, stationary sources can't run or hide, and the cost of doing without them doesn't get rung up in plain view at the gas pump. California, Pennsylvania, and other greener-than-thou states have made flatlining electricity consumption the linchpin of their war on carbon. That is the one certain way to halt the displacement of foreign oil by cheap, domestic electricity.
The oil-coal economics come down to this. Per unit of energy delivered, coal costs about one-fifth as much as oil -- but contains one-third more carbon. High carbon taxes (or tradable permits, or any other economic equivalent) sharply narrow the price gap between oil and the one fuel that can displace it worldwide, here and now. The oil nasties will celebrate the green war on carbon as enthusiastically as the coal industry celebrated the green war on uranium 30 years ago.
The other 5 billion are too poor to deny these economic realities. For them, the price to beat is 3-cent coal-fired electricity. China and India won't trade 3-cent coal for 15-cent wind or 30-cent solar. As for us, if we embrace those economically frivolous alternatives on our own, we will certainly end up doing more harm than good.
By pouring money into anything-but-carbon fuels, we will lower demand for carbon, making it even cheaper for the rest of the world to buy and burn. The rest will use cheaper energy to accelerate their own economic growth. Jobs will go where energy is cheap, just as they go where labor is cheap. Manufacturing and heavy industry require a great deal of energy, and in a global economy, no competitor can survive while paying substantially more for an essential input. The carbon police acknowledge the problem and talk vaguely of using tariffs and such to address it. But carbon is far too deeply embedded in the global economy, and materials, goods, and services move and intermingle far too freely, for the customs agents to track.
Consider your next Google search. As noted in a recent article in Harper's, "Google . . . and its rivals now head abroad for cheaper, often dirtier power." Google itself (the "don't be evil" company) is looking to set up one of its electrically voracious server farms at a site in Lithuania, "disingenuously described as being near a hydroelectric dam." But Lithuania's grid is 0.5 percent hydroelectric and 78 percent nuclear. Perhaps the company's next huge farm will be "near" the Three Gorges Dam in China, built to generate over three times as much power as our own Grand Coulee Dam in Washington State. China will be happy to play along, while it quietly plugs another coal plant into its grid a few pylons down the line. All the while, of course, Google will maintain its low-energy headquarters in California, a state that often boasts of the wise regulatory policies -- centered, one is told, on efficiency and conservation -- that have made it such a frugal energy user. But in fact, sky-high prices have played the key role, curbing internal demand and propelling the flight from California of power plants, heavy industries, chip fabs, server farms, and much else (see "California's Potemkin Environmentalism," Spring 2008).
So the suggestion that we can lift ourselves out of the economic doldrums by spending lavishly on exceptionally expensive new sources of energy is absurd. "Green jobs" means Americans paying other Americans to chase carbon while the rest of the world builds new power plants and factories. And the environmental consequences of outsourcing jobs, industries, and carbon to developing countries are beyond dispute. They use energy far less efficiently than we do, and they remain almost completely oblivious to environmental impacts, just as we were in our own first century of industrialization. A massive transfer of carbon, industry, and jobs from us to them will raise carbon emissions, not lower them.
The grand theory for how the developed world can unilaterally save the planet seems to run like this. We buy time for the planet by rapidly slashing our own emissions. We do so by developing carbon-free alternatives even cheaper than carbon. The rest of the world will then quickly adopt these alternatives, leaving most of its trillion barrels of oil and trillion tons of coal safely buried, most of the rain forests standing, and most of the planet's carbon-rich soil undisturbed. From end to end, however, this vision strains credulity.
Perhaps it's the recognition of that inconvenient truth that has made the anti-carbon rhetoric increasingly apocalyptic. Coal trains have been analogized to boxcars headed for Auschwitz. There is talk of the extinction of all humanity. But then, we have heard such things before. It is indeed quite routine, in environmental discourse, to frame choices as involving potentially infinite costs on the green side of the ledger. If they really are infinite, no reasonable person can quibble about spending mere billions, or even trillions, on the dollar side, to dodge the apocalyptic bullet.
Thirty years ago, the case against nuclear power was framed as the "Zero-Infinity Dilemma." The risks of a meltdown might be vanishingly small, but if it happened, the costs would be infinitely large, so we should forget about uranium. Computer models demonstrated that meltdowns were highly unlikely and that the costs of a meltdown, should one occur, would be manageable -- but greens scoffed: huge computer models couldn't be trusted. So we ended up burning much more coal. The software shoe is on the other foot now; the machines that said nukes wouldn't melt now say that the ice caps will. Warming skeptics scoff in turn, and can quite plausibly argue that a planet is harder to model than a nuclear reactor. But that's a detail. From a rhetorical perspective, any claim that the infinite, the apocalypse, or the Almighty supports your side of the argument shuts down all further discussion.
To judge by actions rather than words, however, few people and almost no national governments actually believe in the infinite rewards of exorcising carbon from economic life. Kyoto has hurt the anti-carbon mission far more than carbon zealots seem to grasp. It has proved only that with carbon, governments will say and sign anything -- and then do less than nothing. The United States should steer well clear of such treaties because they are unenforceable, routinely ignored, and therefore worthless.
If we're truly worried about carbon, we must instead approach it as if the emissions originated in an annual eruption of Mount Krakatoa. Don't try to persuade the volcano to sign a treaty promising to stop. Focus instead on what might be done to protect and promote the planet's carbon sinks -- the systems that suck carbon back out of the air and bury it. Green plants currently pump 15 to 20 times as much carbon out of the atmosphere as humanity releases into it -- that's the pump that put all that carbon underground in the first place, millions of years ago. At present, almost all of that plant-captured carbon is released back into the atmosphere within a year or so by animal consumers. North America, however, is currently sinking almost two-thirds of its carbon emissions back into prairies and forests that were originally leveled in the 1800s but are now recovering. For the next 50 years or so, we should focus on promoting better land use and reforestation worldwide. Beyond that, weather and the oceans naturally sink about one-fifth of total fossil-fuel emissions. We should also investigate large-scale options for accelerating the process of ocean sequestration.
Carbon zealots despise carbon-sinking schemes because, they insist, nobody can be sure that the sunk carbon will stay sunk. Yet everything they propose hinges on the assumption that carbon already sunk by nature in what are now hugely valuable deposits of oil and coal can be kept sunk by treaty and imaginary cheaper-than-carbon alternatives. This, yet again, gets things backward. We certainly know how to improve agriculture to protect soil, and how to grow new trees, and how to maintain existing forests, and we can almost certainly learn how to mummify carbon and bury it back in the earth or the depths of the oceans, in ways that neither man nor nature will disturb. It's keeping nature's black gold sequestered from humanity that's impossible.
If we do need to do something serious about carbon, the sequestration of carbon after it's burned is the one approach that accepts the growth of carbon emissions as an inescapable fact of the twenty-first century. And it's the one approach that the rest of the world can embrace, too, here and now, because it begins with improving land use, which can lead directly and quickly to greater prosperity. If, on the other hand, we persist in building green bridges to nowhere, we will make things worse, not better. Good intentions aren't enough. Turned into ineffectual action, they can cost the earth and accelerate its ruin at the same time.
Peter Huber is a Manhattan Institute senior fellow and the co-author, most recently, of The Bottomless Well. His article develops arguments that he made in an Intelligence Squared U.S. debate in January. He is president of Stratfor and was with the CIA (as was his wife Meredith) before they founded Stratfor, a private intelligence agency.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
EARTH HOUR – A WASTE OF HUMAN ENERGY
In his 2004 book entitled “Conspicuous Compassion”, Patrick West claimed that affluent societies had become shallow and insincere in their attitudes towards other people and the serious problems facing the world. He argued that people were reducing themselves to acts of conspicuous compassion: acts that generated a high public profile while showing participants’ emotional commitment to actions that ultimately were of little material benefit in solving the problems or issues about which people claimed to be compassionate over.
In the environmental field, recent years have seen similar acts of conspicuous compassion. Examples include bans on disposable supermarket plastic bags; public campaigns to stop the cane toad from reaching the Kimberley region of Western Australia; and now Earth Hour where we turn off our lights for an hour in March to show our communal support for action to reduce global energy consumption. Sadly, each of these conspicuous acts has failed and will continue to fail.
The reasons for these failures are similar: the goal of each action was not to make an actual difference to the issue of concern but to make people feel good while they very publicly proclaimed their awareness of the issue.
Disposable plastic bags were replaced by bright green or blue plastic bags which shouted the message that I’m more environmentally friendly than you. At the same time, the sale of plastic bag products from supermarket shelves reportedly increased as people were forced to find replacement bags for their kitchen rubbish bins and other uses for which the free bags were no longer available.
Cane toads continued to hop towards the WA/NT border, as herpetological researchers hoping to find biological or other controls that would reduce cane toad populations throughout Australia were starved of funds because of government misdirection of money to Toadbusters and other high profile but totally ineffective feel-good campaigns.
And now we have Earth Hour, where parties are held around the world to celebrate in a very public way the commitment of party goers to symbolic recognition of their understanding of the serious problem of anthropogenic climate change, while actually making no difference to energy consumption in either the short or long terms.
For each of these examples, conspicuous but effective actions could have been devised to make a real impact on the underlying problems. Supermarkets and other outlets should have been required to sell disposable plastic bags at a price reflecting the actual costs of their production, litter collection and landfill disposal or recycling. The public could still have bought the green or blue reusable bags to use on their weekly shopping outings, but people would have been forced to make rational economic decisions about whether to pay, say, 10 cents for the previously free bags or to pay a little more for bags able to be reused 100 times.
Cane toad researchers should have been fully funded to investigate biological and other science-based options for toad control, provided that their research programs included public awareness activities and information dissemination to communities such as Kunnunnurra which were next in line to be invaded by the toads.
And can Earth Hour be improved? Of course. Rather than having throwaway symbolic gestures lasting just one hour a year, groups involved in Earth Hour should decide upon just one important energy saving action (such as installing solar hot water systems or low flow shower heads or buying fuel efficient motor vehicles or using public transport) and then spend a full year informing governments and communities of the real difference that people could make by adopting that year’s action.
Does the wearing of pink clothing or ribbons make a real difference to community support for breast cancer research? Probably not. Does Glenn McGrath’s personal appeal to governments and the community to fund cancer research make a difference? Absolutely yes, so it’s a great pity that his personal tragedy was somewhat trivialised by campaigns encouraging people to wear pink ribbons.
Did the cane toad campaigns in the east Kimberley region of WA enthuse large numbers of local people? Without doubt, but what a shame that their preparedness to do some hard work was not directed into actions that could have produced significant improvements to the Kimberley environment such as revegetation of wetlands, feral cat control or improved fire regimes of natural areas.
Earth Hour is a con, a fraudulent excuse to show we care while doing nothing useful to make a difference. As members of Alcoholics Anonymous are required to do, we must admit we have a problem with Earth Hour and commit to turning it into a campaign that will achieve real environmental outcomes.
Let’s leave symbolism to the politicians. Surely the community can operate at a higher level than people who are self-seekingly attempting to get re-elected every 3 or 4 years. Clean-Up Australia is removing thousands of tonnes of rubbish from our public lands every year at the same time as it changes public attitudes about littering.
Earth Hour has similar potential to achieve the two important goals of making a real on-ground difference while also changing public attitudes, but it needs to leave its symbolic gestures behind. Instead, it should agree to focus on one effective action to be highlighted each year, with that action capable of being adopted by the broader community.
In the environmental field, recent years have seen similar acts of conspicuous compassion. Examples include bans on disposable supermarket plastic bags; public campaigns to stop the cane toad from reaching the Kimberley region of Western Australia; and now Earth Hour where we turn off our lights for an hour in March to show our communal support for action to reduce global energy consumption. Sadly, each of these conspicuous acts has failed and will continue to fail.
The reasons for these failures are similar: the goal of each action was not to make an actual difference to the issue of concern but to make people feel good while they very publicly proclaimed their awareness of the issue.
Disposable plastic bags were replaced by bright green or blue plastic bags which shouted the message that I’m more environmentally friendly than you. At the same time, the sale of plastic bag products from supermarket shelves reportedly increased as people were forced to find replacement bags for their kitchen rubbish bins and other uses for which the free bags were no longer available.
Cane toads continued to hop towards the WA/NT border, as herpetological researchers hoping to find biological or other controls that would reduce cane toad populations throughout Australia were starved of funds because of government misdirection of money to Toadbusters and other high profile but totally ineffective feel-good campaigns.
And now we have Earth Hour, where parties are held around the world to celebrate in a very public way the commitment of party goers to symbolic recognition of their understanding of the serious problem of anthropogenic climate change, while actually making no difference to energy consumption in either the short or long terms.
For each of these examples, conspicuous but effective actions could have been devised to make a real impact on the underlying problems. Supermarkets and other outlets should have been required to sell disposable plastic bags at a price reflecting the actual costs of their production, litter collection and landfill disposal or recycling. The public could still have bought the green or blue reusable bags to use on their weekly shopping outings, but people would have been forced to make rational economic decisions about whether to pay, say, 10 cents for the previously free bags or to pay a little more for bags able to be reused 100 times.
Cane toad researchers should have been fully funded to investigate biological and other science-based options for toad control, provided that their research programs included public awareness activities and information dissemination to communities such as Kunnunnurra which were next in line to be invaded by the toads.
And can Earth Hour be improved? Of course. Rather than having throwaway symbolic gestures lasting just one hour a year, groups involved in Earth Hour should decide upon just one important energy saving action (such as installing solar hot water systems or low flow shower heads or buying fuel efficient motor vehicles or using public transport) and then spend a full year informing governments and communities of the real difference that people could make by adopting that year’s action.
Does the wearing of pink clothing or ribbons make a real difference to community support for breast cancer research? Probably not. Does Glenn McGrath’s personal appeal to governments and the community to fund cancer research make a difference? Absolutely yes, so it’s a great pity that his personal tragedy was somewhat trivialised by campaigns encouraging people to wear pink ribbons.
Did the cane toad campaigns in the east Kimberley region of WA enthuse large numbers of local people? Without doubt, but what a shame that their preparedness to do some hard work was not directed into actions that could have produced significant improvements to the Kimberley environment such as revegetation of wetlands, feral cat control or improved fire regimes of natural areas.
Earth Hour is a con, a fraudulent excuse to show we care while doing nothing useful to make a difference. As members of Alcoholics Anonymous are required to do, we must admit we have a problem with Earth Hour and commit to turning it into a campaign that will achieve real environmental outcomes.
Let’s leave symbolism to the politicians. Surely the community can operate at a higher level than people who are self-seekingly attempting to get re-elected every 3 or 4 years. Clean-Up Australia is removing thousands of tonnes of rubbish from our public lands every year at the same time as it changes public attitudes about littering.
Earth Hour has similar potential to achieve the two important goals of making a real on-ground difference while also changing public attitudes, but it needs to leave its symbolic gestures behind. Instead, it should agree to focus on one effective action to be highlighted each year, with that action capable of being adopted by the broader community.
Friday, January 30, 2009
DEEP-FRIED KITTENS
PETA's dangerous new campaign
Jan 26th 2009
From Economist.com
PEOPLE FOR THE ETHICAL TREATMENT OF ANIMALS (PETA) claims 2m “members and supporters”, making it the world’s largest animal-rights organisation.
Much of its popularity likely derives from some important work it has done improving the welfare of farm and research animals around the world. But there is another side to animal-rights organisations. Many of them, PETA included, advocate that animals should not be regarded as property (no pets), and should not be used for food (even milk, honey and fish are out), clothing or research. Those who take such a hardline view are a distinct minority.
Even by PETA’s standards, its latest campaign against fish is particularly troubling. In the past PETA has drawn much mirth for its “fish empathy” campaigns, and at one point tried to have fish sticks banned. But its latest campaign, dubbed “Save the Sea Kittens”, is beyond satire. The sea kitten site aims to rebrand fish in the eyes of younger consumers. “It’s time for a serious image makeover,” an ad says. “And who could possibly want to put a hook through a sea kitten?”
The site clearly is pitched towards younger web surfers. You can create your own cartoon sea kitten, customising your cute cartoon fish with sunglasses, a tiara, a pink skirt and, naturally, kitten ears. Sea Kitten accessory items include, rather bizarrely, a bowl of water (someone may need to remind PETA that fish live in the sea and therefore have the benefit of large quantities of the stuff).
The site also urges that e-mails be sent to H. Dale Hall, the director of America’s Fishing and Wildlife Service, asking him to stop “promoting the hunting of sea kittens (otherwise known as ‘fishing’).” When Mr Hall has stopped laughing long enough to pick himself off the floor and raise a still quivering forefinger, he will relegate such emails swiftly to the electronic dustbin. But while such complaints to the authorities are likely to fall on deaf ears, marketing aimed at children is not. Neither are attempts to manipulate the genuine worries of their parents.
One part of the site contains sea-kitten bedtime stories. These seem to be largely intended to scare children away from eating fish. But one story is aimed at both parents and children. “Tony the Trout is the smartest Sea Kitten in his school,” it begins. “Already litter-trained at two months old, Tony went on to double-major in neuroscience and environmental studies at Clamford University, eventually graduating with honours. When Tony is caught and fed to a precocious young child who, having eaten one mercury-filled sea kitten too many, falls to the bottom of the class, the irony is not lost on him”.
The big problem with this story and all this direct marketing is that the scientific evidence that eating fish is vital to children’s health and intelligence could not be clearer. And this finding takes into account the detrimental effects of mercury, which are far outweighed by the benefits accrued by the benefits of eating fish.
Last year, a British parliamentary report concluded that the omega-3 fatty acids found in fish formed an important part of human brain structure. It also found that a deficiency of omega-3 fatty acids has been “associated with certain mental and behavioural disorders, such as ADHD, depression, dementia, dyspraxia, greater impulsivity and aggressive behaviour”. It added that food-health campaigns should make explicit the role of omega-3s, “which appear to be crucial to children’s life chances, particularly in utero and in early childhood”. Another study showed that pregnant women who eat more fish have smarter children, despite the higher levels of mercury that they ingest—indeed, their mercury exposure can predict the intelligence of their children.
In America, the FDA has spent five years exploring this topic, and having the benefit of access to similar data, the final conclusions are unlikely to be radically different from the British report. At the very least, on the basis of what we know already, campaigning to frighten children away from eating fish runs a real risk of reducing the nutritional quality of children’s diets.
The case for promoting fish to children is clear; this campaign is wrong. Even by PETA’s own standards it is wrong. Humans are animals too. We should no more insist that a tiger be fed tofu than we should tell a child not to eat fish
Jan 26th 2009
From Economist.com
PEOPLE FOR THE ETHICAL TREATMENT OF ANIMALS (PETA) claims 2m “members and supporters”, making it the world’s largest animal-rights organisation.
Much of its popularity likely derives from some important work it has done improving the welfare of farm and research animals around the world. But there is another side to animal-rights organisations. Many of them, PETA included, advocate that animals should not be regarded as property (no pets), and should not be used for food (even milk, honey and fish are out), clothing or research. Those who take such a hardline view are a distinct minority.
Even by PETA’s standards, its latest campaign against fish is particularly troubling. In the past PETA has drawn much mirth for its “fish empathy” campaigns, and at one point tried to have fish sticks banned. But its latest campaign, dubbed “Save the Sea Kittens”, is beyond satire. The sea kitten site aims to rebrand fish in the eyes of younger consumers. “It’s time for a serious image makeover,” an ad says. “And who could possibly want to put a hook through a sea kitten?”
The site clearly is pitched towards younger web surfers. You can create your own cartoon sea kitten, customising your cute cartoon fish with sunglasses, a tiara, a pink skirt and, naturally, kitten ears. Sea Kitten accessory items include, rather bizarrely, a bowl of water (someone may need to remind PETA that fish live in the sea and therefore have the benefit of large quantities of the stuff).
The site also urges that e-mails be sent to H. Dale Hall, the director of America’s Fishing and Wildlife Service, asking him to stop “promoting the hunting of sea kittens (otherwise known as ‘fishing’).” When Mr Hall has stopped laughing long enough to pick himself off the floor and raise a still quivering forefinger, he will relegate such emails swiftly to the electronic dustbin. But while such complaints to the authorities are likely to fall on deaf ears, marketing aimed at children is not. Neither are attempts to manipulate the genuine worries of their parents.
One part of the site contains sea-kitten bedtime stories. These seem to be largely intended to scare children away from eating fish. But one story is aimed at both parents and children. “Tony the Trout is the smartest Sea Kitten in his school,” it begins. “Already litter-trained at two months old, Tony went on to double-major in neuroscience and environmental studies at Clamford University, eventually graduating with honours. When Tony is caught and fed to a precocious young child who, having eaten one mercury-filled sea kitten too many, falls to the bottom of the class, the irony is not lost on him”.
The big problem with this story and all this direct marketing is that the scientific evidence that eating fish is vital to children’s health and intelligence could not be clearer. And this finding takes into account the detrimental effects of mercury, which are far outweighed by the benefits accrued by the benefits of eating fish.
Last year, a British parliamentary report concluded that the omega-3 fatty acids found in fish formed an important part of human brain structure. It also found that a deficiency of omega-3 fatty acids has been “associated with certain mental and behavioural disorders, such as ADHD, depression, dementia, dyspraxia, greater impulsivity and aggressive behaviour”. It added that food-health campaigns should make explicit the role of omega-3s, “which appear to be crucial to children’s life chances, particularly in utero and in early childhood”. Another study showed that pregnant women who eat more fish have smarter children, despite the higher levels of mercury that they ingest—indeed, their mercury exposure can predict the intelligence of their children.
In America, the FDA has spent five years exploring this topic, and having the benefit of access to similar data, the final conclusions are unlikely to be radically different from the British report. At the very least, on the basis of what we know already, campaigning to frighten children away from eating fish runs a real risk of reducing the nutritional quality of children’s diets.
The case for promoting fish to children is clear; this campaign is wrong. Even by PETA’s own standards it is wrong. Humans are animals too. We should no more insist that a tiger be fed tofu than we should tell a child not to eat fish
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