Letter cuts to the chase

Short, to the point, letter from today's Age -

Climate crunch: Australia to fail on Paris commitments without massive renewable switch

Australia will fall short of its Paris carbon reduction targets signed under Tony Abbott unless it lifts its renewable energy production to levels higher even than Labor's plan for 50 per cent green energy reliance by 2030.

Chief Scientist Alan Finkel proposed a clean energy
target which would lock in a 28 per cent reduction
 in energy-related emissions by 2030. 

The first assessment by the Australia Institute's new Climate and Energy Program, to be released on Monday, has found that unless a higher burden is placed on the more expensive process of carbon reductions in other sectors – agriculture, transport and manufacturing – then the electricity generation sector will need to aim for a renewable energy target of at least 66 per cent by 2030, and possibly as high as 75 per cent.

That is, a power generation sector where the fossil fuel component is reduced to perhaps a quarter of the size it is now.

Power generation currently accounts for 35 per cent of total emissions, which is twice as much as the next biggest contributor, fuel combustion and transport, at 18 per cent. 

Read the story by Mark Kenny in today’a Melbourne Age - “Climate crunch: Australia to fail on Paris commitments without massive renewable switch.”

Our view of time makes the complexities of climate change even more complex

The road to hell?

Humans are creatures who by nature live and operate within a rather short time-frame.

Therein is the prime difficulty in having people understand the unfolding complexities of climate change – in a geological sense the outcomes of climate change will be here “tomorrow”, but on a human time-scale, those complexities are considered, by many, to be, wrongly a lifetime a way.

The science is now telling us that even people who are middle-aged today (50-60) will feel the early beginnings of a changed climate, their children most definitely and their grandchildren, oh dear!

Writing in a story headed: “United Nations predicts climate hell in 2050 with imagined weather forecasts” The Guardian tells about 'Reports from the future' that warn of floods, storms and searing heat”.

Interestingly 2050 is simply too far away for most people to contemplate or plan for.

The goal seems to be "nasty, brutish and short"

Science, in all its wonders and subtleties, has lifted humanity from a life that was “nasty, brutish and short”.

Environment Minister,
Mr Greg Hunt.

Interestingly, the present Australian Government appears patently opposed to embracing our grasp of scientific knowledge and just today the ABC has reported the our Environment Minister, Greg Hunt, has shown little concern for, or interest in, advice from the UN’s panel on climate change.

The government’s intent seems to be one of taking us back to an era of “nasty, brutish and short”.

In what appears to be an inexplicable contradiction between words and action, Mr Hunt says the government shares the panel’s goal to limit emissions growth and so restrict the increase in global temperatures to two degrees above pre-industrial levels.

Action to date by the Coalition Government that they actually mean what they say and have any grasp at all of the science of climate change.

A story headed: “Environment Minister Greg Hunt resists IPCC pressure for deep cuts to carbon emissions” reports that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has called for global emission cuts of up to 70 per cent by the middle of the decade.