Follow Arnie’s lead

WE have been altogether too gloomy about climate change. Just look at the fun Arnold Schwarzenegger is having in California, which contains the sixth largest economy in the world. Where Australian politicians see only risks, the Governator sees opportunities.

I love this “glass half full” approach! Last month he hailed the arrival of the environmental revolution as the successor of the industrial and technological revolutions.

“Right now the most innovative scientists, venture capitalists and companies are racing to find and to implement new technologies for alternative energy. It is fantastic … The Wall Street Journal called it ‘California’s new gold rush’. Capitalism, the long-alleged enemy of the environment, is today giving new life to the environmental movement.”

What a contrast to Australia’s Opposition leader, Brendan Nelson, who warned that “Mr Rudd is at risk of doing enormous damage to our country’s economic future” in his response to climate change.

In Australia, there is terrible gloom and doom in some quarters about the pain of cutting emissions by 60 per cent from 2000 levels by 2050. But Schwarzenegger reckons that is for wimps: he is committed to an 80 per cent cut by 2050 and 25 per cent by 2020, and that is from 1990 levels. He wants to get there through a mix of regulation and market mechanisms. The carbon intensity of transportation fuels sold in California has to be reduced by at least 10 per cent by 2020 and more thereafter. One million solar systems are due to be installed on roofs by 2018 with the help of government incentives to households and building owners. Up to $US5000 ($5230) is available to purchase or lease alternative fuel vehicles. This week, Schwarzenegger announced that a five-passenger, all electric sports sedan with a range of 360km a battery charge would be manufactured by Tesla Motors in California.

It is true that it is easier to achieve overall targets for emissions reductions in California than in Australia, with its large coal and other energy intensive industries. But Ross Garnaut argued in his interim report in February that Australia had the human and natural resources to do relatively well from an ambitious international reduction in greenhouse gases. Most important, he pointed out, it had exceptional skills in engineering, management and finance in the resources sector, leaving us well placed to introduce low-emission innovations. As well, we would benefit from increased international demand for uranium and natural gas, we were well endowed with renewable energy, and our coal was clean by international standards and therefore more attractive to buyers.

As Garnaut also has pointed out, there are bigger risks from doing nothing, given that Australia could be the biggest loser among developed countries from failing to tackle climate change.

Some argue that it is futile for Australia to make decisions in the absence of co-ordinated and comprehensive international action. But if every country took this attitude, nothing would be done.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 8th, 2008 at 9:09 pm and is filed under Global Warming, Climate Change & Energy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.