Liberal, Labor and climate change: miserable renewable targets with pitifully inadequate funding

November 1, 2007

“Coalition and Labor targets for greenhouse gas emission reductions are way below the type of reductions needed to keep global warming below two degrees above pre-industrial levels”, Zane Alcorn, Socialist Alliance candidate for Wills, said today. “Even the Green’s better targets are inadequate.”

Alcorn, co-author of the Alliance’s Climate Change Charter, was responded to Labor leader Kevin Rudd’s announcement yesterday of a 20% Mandatory Renewable Energy Target (MRET) by 2020.

Alcorn pointed out that climate science had identified a greenhouse gas concentration of 450 parts per million of carbon dioxide equivalent as the threshold beyond which an increase in average temperatures above two degrees became increasingly probable.

“Labor's greenhouse reduction target of 60% by 2050 would almost certainly see world average temperatures rise far into the danger zone. It’s policy consistent with a greenhouse gas concentration of 550ppm CO2 equivalent and a temperature increase of three degrees”, he explained.

Dr Renfrey Clarke, the Socialist Alliance’s lead Senate candidate in South Australia and well-known commentator on climate issues in Green Left Weekly added: “What would a world three degrees hotter than at present be like? It would not include the Great Barrier Reef, bleached and dead at temperatures little above those of today.

“The last time global temperatures were three degrees higher than at present was in the Pliocene period some three million years ago. At that time, there were no icecaps in the Northern Hemisphere, and sea levels were around 25 metres higher than they are now. Already the US Navy is suggesting there may be full arctic melt as early as 2013.”

Clarke continued: “It cannot be that the ALP's policy researchers are ignorant of the real situation. Their “60 by 2050” position has been chosen for political reasons, not scientific ones. Labor leaders have clearly calculated that “60 by 2050” will reassure the public that Labor is responding to the challenges of global warming, while not putting big business offside by suggesting that the ALP's climate change policies will substantially affect profits.”

Zane Alcorn added: “If Rudd were serious about tackling global warming he would be calling for 20% renewables by 2012. The MRET for 2020 would have to be 95%.”

Alcorn also underlined the “incredibly paltry” funding approach of the major parties to meeting their MRETs. “They talk in hundreds of millions when the job will require tens of billions”, he stressed.

“Take the twenty four billion dollars in new jet fighters being proposed by the government. If that were dedicated to wind turbines it could easily supply a quarter of the Australian grid”, he explained. “There would also be funds left over for serious research and development into solar voltaic , solar thermal and geothermal.”

Renfrey Clarke concluded: “Even the Greens, who call for reductions of 30% below 1990 levels by 2020 and of 80% by 2050, haven’t produced either targets or solutions adequate to the immensity of the challenge. Of nationally organised Australian political parties, only the Socialist Alliance’s Climate Change Charter, with its target of 90% by 2030 and it 10-point action plan puts forward a proposal anywhere close to what is needed.”

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION: Zane Alcorn 0401 466 831 Renfrey Clarke 08 8363 9268
Email environment@socialist-alliance.org Web www.socialist-alliance.org