Fergus Green in the Financial Review on Australia's fossil fuels
On November 26, Dr Fergus Green (Philosophy and Religious Studies) and Richard Denniss co-wrote an for the Financial Review on what he calls 'Australia's dirty great secret': fossil fuels.
Production gap
Recently, the world has been searching for sustainable solutions to the current and future climate problems that we face. A large part of this consists of doing research into realistic changes we can make. "A ground-breaking new analysis, produced by an international consortium of research institutes, has today released the first estimate of the global fossil fuel 鈥減roduction gap鈥濃攁 new indicator that tallies national plans and projections for coal, oil and gas production, and compares these with the production levels that would be consistent with the Paris goals." Unfortunately, at this rate, we will not reach those goals anytime soon.
Global embarrassment
"For Australians, the results are a cause for global embarrassment. Australia is already the world鈥檚 largest exporter of both coal and liquefied natural gas (LNG), making it the world鈥檚 third biggest exporter of fossil carbon, behind only Russia and Saudi Arabia. But the report reveals the staggering extent of Australia鈥檚 plans to expand coal and gas production even further." Green and Denniss argue that the Commonwealth and state governments "should implement bans on any new fossil fuel exploration and production, and develop plans for the managed decline of Australia鈥檚 fossil fuel sector", but instead look the other way and even promote their policies.
Taking a stand
Luckily, the Australian public and other organisations are fighting back by speaking up and re-sparking the debate that was nearly silenced by the elections. And, more importantly, they do not stand alone: "Meanwhile, as the devastating effects of climate change ravage other countries, foreign governments are increasingly spending diplomatic capital to criticise countries engaging in conspicuous acts of carbon production." Australia will have to take responsibility for fueling the gap.