[Oz-envirolink] Our planet is in peril: the time for patience is past

[hugh spencer]

http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/our-planet-is-in-peril-the-time-for-patience-is
-past-20081227-75va.html?page=-1

  Our planet is in peril: the time for patience is past

  Melissa Fyfe The Age December 28, 2008

  Opinion:

  PATIENCE is a virtue, they say. And when it comes to climate change,
voters are inordinately  virtuous. Mums and dads, community groups and
environmentalists have waited patiently for  our modern political processes
and leadership to produce some action.

  They waited through Kyoto, Bali, Poznan. They waited at polling booths to
elect a prime  minister who said he would do something. They waited for
Ross Garnaut and his several  reports. They wrote submissions, went to
public meetings. They waited for Treasury  modelling and the federal green
paper.

  Then, two weeks ago, Kevin Rudd blinked. You could hear the anger at his
carbon plan  crackling over the airwaves. With its low targets, Australia
had decided not to lead the way in  the hope China and India may follow.
The scheme gave cash instead of energy efficiency  help for households,
huge compensation to polluters and a get-out clause for Australia to buy
overseas permits instead of making its own hard cuts. Then, to top it all
off, Climate Change  Minister Penny Wong said she doubted a strong global
agreement would be struck in  Copenhagen next year.

  In the past fortnight, something has dawned on people who care about
climate change:  perhaps it is time to acknowledge that too much faith has
been put in the political process. If  those who fought for the Franklin
River acted like such compliant "stakeholders", the river  would now be
dammed.

  Perhaps it is time to realise our democratic system has an entrenched
inertia that makes it  almost impossible to deal with a long-term crisis
like climate change. It is partly a vacuum of  leadership: the three-year
electoral cycle means leaders have short-term vision. This is not  new. But
what the white paper process showed was how our system can be so thoroughly
corrupted by lobbying  Garnaut described the polluters' efforts as "the
most expensive,  elaborate and sophisticated lobbying  ever in this
country".

  In the wake of Rudd's decision, some in the environment movement are
talking about a  return to people power. They are talking not just about
individual action but national  campaigns of "direct action": protests,
civil disobedience, making life hard for coal-fired  power stations. They
are talking about moving out of the boardroom and back to front-line
action. They know that they will be risking jail. But their patience has
run out. "Until now the  sentiment was to give Rudd a fair go to deliver.
He's now had that time and hasn't delivered,"  one senior activist said. "I
think there will now be a place for radical action, particularly among
young people who feel their future is being taken away."

  A similar shift is happening globally. As the Crikey website mentioned
recently, a man  managed to walk into a British coal and oil-fired power
station and shut down a whole turbine.  "No new coal" was on the note he
left.

  Much has been written about the groundswell of small, local climate
groups. This movement,  often led by concerned mothers, shows climate
change is moving away from a traditional  environmental issue to one that
is fundamentally about morality, about not handing a crisis to  our
children. Rudd ignores this movement at his political peril, although Labor
knows the  Opposition is unlikely to outgun them on climate. But what
should not be underestimated is  the anger that will simmer among these
groups when they are busting a gut to fight carbon  pollution within their
communities, only to see this undermined by the Government on the  world
stage and in cosy deals with industry.

  This anger will boil over when the latest science starts to filter down.
Garnaut's review,  Rudd's decision and the Copenhagen meeting are all based
on findings from the  Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This
science is now two years' old. For  scientists, the biggest game in town is
now the loss of Arctic summer sea ice. The domino  effect of this
development was described by Britain's Public Interest Research Centre in a
report called Climate Safety, endorsed by a former IPCC co-chairman.

  Several respected scientists believe the Arctic sea will soon be ice-free
in summer. Their  guesses range from 2011 to 2015, 80 years ahead of IPCC
predictions. This could spark a  series of events that end with Greenland's
ice melting and many metres of sea level rise.

  It is partly because of these "tipping points" that two leading climate
thinkers  NASA's  James Hansen and Al Gore  say carbon dioxide
concentrations in the atmosphere should  be stabilised at 350 parts per
million. We are now at 385 ppm, so this means not just a zero-emissions
economy, but sucking down existing carbon. Right now the world is
struggling to  agree on 450 ppm. It may be a virtue, but the time for
patience has probably run out.

  Melissa Fyfe is The Sunday Age's state political reporter.

  ----------------------------------
  Comment by Philip Sutton:  Note that the 350 ppm target mentioned above
is not enough to  restore the Arctic sea ice and refreeze the permafrost. 
According to Jim Hansen's co-authored paper: "Target Atmospheric CO2: Where
Should Humanity Aim?" to be sure of  getting the Arctic sea ice back it
will be necessary to aim for about 300 ppm

  www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/TargetCO2_20080407.pdf (see page 13: 

"Stabilization of Arctic sea ice cover requires, to first approximation,
restoration of planetary energy balance. Climate models driven by known
forcings yield a  present planetary energy imbalance of +0.5-1 W/m2 [5].
Observed heat increase in the upper  700 m of the ocean [76] confirms the
planetary energy imbalance, but observations of the  entire ocean are
needed for quantification. CO2 amount must be reduced to 325-355 ppm to
increase outgoing flux 0.5-1 W/m2, if other forcings are unchanged. A
further imbalance  reduction, and thus CO2 ~300-325 ppm, may be needed to
restore sea ice to its area of 25  years ago.")
  For a full examination of this issue see:

http://www.target300.org/350_ppm.html

and this doesn't include the vexing issue of methane venting, that
according to observers in the arctic circle is becoming quite dramatic.
Methane (contained as 'clathrates' - methane weakly bonded to ice) has 30x
the global warming potential of CO2, and once released (by warming) can't
be put back, and greatly amplifies the warming effect (a positive feedback
loop).  HS.