AUSTRALIA
Renewable Energy Wins, Controversially
By Stephen de Tarczynski
MELBOURNE, Jul 14, 2011 (IPS) – Australia has taken a major step in reducing its future greenhouse gas output with the announcement of a plan that will initially place a tax on every tonne of carbon pollution produced by hundreds of the country’s major emitters.
“Most Australians now agree our climate is changing. This is caused by carbon pollution. This has harmful effects on our environment and on the economy and the government should act,” said Prime Minister Julia Gillard in a televised address to the nation on Jul.10, just hours after the full details of the carbon scheme had been revealed.
The tax is the first step in the design that proponents say will see Australia reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent on 2000 levels, an increase from the previous target of a 60 percent cut.
Australia is responsible for around 1.47 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, similar to Iran and France, according to 2005 data from the World Resources Institute, the latest year for which statistics are available. Yet on a per capita basis, Australians are the biggest polluters among developed nations.
Despite this, there remains heated debate about how – and even if – Australia should reduce its carbon output.
Protests against implementing a carbon price and questioning human-induced global warming have been held in numerous Australian cities over the past few months – albeit often opposed in other areas by larger rallies calling for far-reaching government action. Climate scientists at leading universities have reported receiving death threats and abusive telephone calls.
Coal is big business here, where around ten percent of the world’s reserves are located.
Australia is the fourth largest coal producer in the world – behind China, the United States and India – yet the most prolific exporter, supplying about 27 percent of global demand. The burning of coal at power stations also accounts for more than 83 percent of this country’s own electricity generation.
The carbon tax plan includes a commitment to close the larger coal-fired power plants by 2020
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Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers and TV channels have supported all the US-UK wars over the past 30 years, from Margaret Thatcher and the Falklands war in 1982, through George Bush Senior and the first Gulf War in 1990-91, Bill Clinton’s war in Yugoslavia in 1999 and his undeclared war on Iraq in 1998, George W. Bush’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, with Tony Blair on his coat tails, and up to the present, with Barack Obama continuing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and now adding Libya to his tally of seven wars.
The Free 