Extracted from Environmental Management News  

Tuesday, 14 April 2009

Whoops, he told the truth! Two weeks ago Professor Peter Newman, a member of the Rudd Government's Infrastructure Australia body, overstepped the mark and was severely reprimanded. He went public in calling for the government to scrap plans for doubling Newcastle's coal exporting capacity because this will contribute to global warming. Dexter Dunphy unloads.

You might think that was a no-brainer. But it seems Newman forgot that he shouldn't question the sincerity of the government's rhetoric on sustainability and, in particular, be indelicate enough to ask whether exporting as much coal as possible as fast as possible actually reflects a genuine environmental commitment.  

It wasn't long of course before Newman was put right by those outstanding environmentalists Joe Tripodi, the NSW Ports Minister, and Nikki Williams, chief executive of the NSW Minerals Council. Williams thought Newman's remarks "extraordinary" and Tripodi, with his usual subtlety, said Newman "needs to decide if he can comfortably meet his obligations" as part of the body charged with rebuilding Australia's infrastructure - in other words, shut up or ship out.

Newman went further - he said that coal would be a declining export for Australia in the future as the world moves to a low carbon economy. Coal industry representatives have been whining about missing out on the polluters' permits the Rudd Government is preparing to hand out to other polluting industries if its carbon trading legislation goes through parliament.

But of course the coal companies are and will continue to receive enormous handouts in other ways - for expanding Hunter Valley rail lines and port facilities and, not least, for research on carbon sequestration, so-called ‘clean coal'. Clean coal technology has not yet been shown to be viable. Even the best case scenarios put out by its supporters show that, if it ever works, it will be decades before it is commercially viable, particularly for existing power plants, and carbon capture and sequestration will make electricity far more expensive than using alternative technologies.

But it is a great justification for not abandoning coal. So vested interests keep arguing that, if the government sinks enough public funds into the research, we won't have to change our ways - just stuff the carbon underground and hope there is no earthquake.

So why is the government subsidising coal when the future lies with alternative energy technology? This is particularly strange given that Henry Waxman, chairman of the powerful US House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee, recently released draft legislation to reduce greenhouse emissions and stated that "our goal is to strengthen our economy by making America the world leader in new clean energy and energy efficiency." Why this strange Australian myopia?

Guy Pearse has just written a carefully documented Quarterly Essay, ‘Quarry Vision: Coal, Climate Change and the End of the Resources Boom' (Issue 32, 2009) in which he documents how hard and effectively leaders of the resources industry have worked to keep our collective quarry vision alive, magnifying its economic value to Australia's economy, coopting parliamentarians of all political persuasions to the cause and forming environmental ‘front' organisations to ‘greenwash' the industry's image.

Pearse was once a card-card carrying member of the Liberal Party and a speechwriter for former Environment Minister Robert Hill. He has also been an industry lobbyist and spin doctor so this is a well-documented, insider story of deliberate, sophisticated manipulation of political processes and public consciousness, backed by large sums of mining money.

Regardless of the governments in power at federal and state levels, the resources lobby manages to coopt key decision-makers and distract public attention from realistic discussion of environmentally sound and economically viable futures for Australia. As a result, most current governments in Australia are spending public resources in locking Australia's future into the industries of the past.

Yet the services sector is responsible for 75% of GDP as against, at most, 15% for mining and its ancillary related businesses. Even at the height of the minerals boom, mining employed only about 1.3% of the workforce. As far as the industry is concerned, half a dozen largely foreign-owned companies dominate it and can readily organise to preserve their collective interests. By contrast, the much larger services sector consists of a plethora of organisations and has not formed an industry body with enough political clout to challenge the domination of the resources lobby.

But surely we need coal to produce energy for Australia? As a result of having massive coal reserves, which make coal relatively cheap, our power is still largely drawn from coal-fired generation plants. Not surprisingly therefore we are, per capita, the world's greatest carbon emitters. But we could move in 10 to 20 years to producing all the energy we need, even exporting energy, using alternative energy sources such as solar, wind, biomass and thermal, with natural gas as a temporary support.

This process of moving our industrial base from dependence on carbon to alternative genuinely clean and sustainable energy sources would be relatively painless if we made a planned and orchestrated transition. There are also real advantages in developing distributed systems for producing energy as they are less vulnerable to the massive power failures we face as the climate heats up and air conditioners drive up energy use.

The other way to reduce carbon emissions right now is to pursue a full scale reduction in demand. It is great to turn off lights for Earth Hour but we have to cut electricity use every hour. We can do that by careful redesign of houses and appliances, by changing our distribution systems, producing and buying locally and by changing our lifestyle. But shush, that's another unmentionable...



Vantage Point columnist Dexter Dunphy is visiting Professor in the Faculty of Business at the University of Technology, Sydney, specialising in corporate sustainability and organisational change. Contact at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it