Media's own climate agenda

THE Poznan climate change conference guarantees the public will be fed the usual diet of myths and lies by an Australian media opposed to the Garnaut report, the most comprehensive published analysis of climate change mitigation so far.

Myth one is that an Australian emissions reduction of 5 per cent to 15per cent at 2020 from year 2000 levels is an abject disgrace. With speculation the Rudd Government may settle for similar targets, the propaganda line is this means an Australian sell-out.

The claim is bunkum. It is based entirely on politics. Ross Garnaut argues that Australia's target should be a 10per cent reduction from year 2000 levels by 2020 and 80 per cent by 2050, consistent with a global goal of greenhouse gas concentrations at 550 parts per million.

In per capita terms these targets for Australia equate to reductions of 30per cent and 90 per cent respectively, given our growing population. "In per capita terms Australia is called upon to do more than Europe, Japan and the US," Garnaut says. Expecting Australia to do more than most of the developed world lies at the heart of Garnaut's targets. It is the reality of the 10 per cent reduction goal for Australia. Much of the media works furiously to conceal this and the falsehoods that it generates have misled the public.

Garnaut rightly stresses the per capita method of analysis. But it is rarely used in Australia's media these days. The reason is obvious. Per capita analysis shows reduction targets of 5-15 per cent are a big contribution by Australia in its own right and judged by other developed nations. Because much of Australia's media wants to convey the opposite impression, it prefers absolute percentage figures. As Garnaut says, the media, by relying on "the old and ultimately unproductive framework of comparing percentage reductions in total national emissions from some baseline", is able to attack Australia and belittle its effort compared with Europe. This is a deliberate media tactic. It reflects a cultural cringe and pro-green bias.

Myth two is that the existing framework based on Kyoto and the Bali road map can solve the problem. It can't. This is one of Garnaut's central conclusions. It is conspicuously ignored or denied by Australia's media as a device to discredit Australia's efforts. Garnaut's report highlights the geopolitical crisis posed by climate change: the problem is now caused by developing nations yet the Kyoto-based political solution involves the developed nations. This is an epic absurdity, a tragedy with no international solution in sight.

One of Garnaut's themes is that emissions from developing nations, notably China, are rising much faster than predicted. This exposes the grand delusion "that this problem can be solved without developing countries playing a major part in the process from an early date". In short, the Kyoto-Bali model that developed nations meet their targets first and developing nations follow is obsolete and needs immediate revision.

Garnaut shows that since 2000 developing nations accounted for 85per cent of emissions growth. Their emissions growth is eight times faster than that of industrialised nations. He forecasts that by 2030 China will be responsible for 33 per cent of emissions, the US 11 per cent and India 8per cent. Garnaut says that by 2030 China's emissions will "easily exceed those of all developed and transition countries combined".

Yet the Bali road map, following Kyoto, does not impose binding actions on the nations that cause the problem. There is, Garnaut says, no prospect "to achieve substantial cuts in global emissions" under present arrangements. "No global agreement would be effective unless China took on binding targets."

The point is that "the only effective mitigation is global" and a scheme to deliver such global mitigation, so far, does not exist. Media genuflection before Kyoto and Bali is ingrained for its own purposes. It was a device to discredit the Howard government and is now a device to discredit the Rudd Government.

This is the media narrative to avoid Garnaut's demonstration that the present global model does not work. There is almost no debate in Australia's media about the principles for a new international agreement, principles put forward at length by Garnaut. That is because focus on the real issue would undercut media attacks on the Australian Government.

Such hypocrisy was exposed by Garnaut's article on this page on Monday when he made clear that even if developed nations, including Australia, did cut emissions in the 25-40 per cent range by 2020 this could not solve the problem "in the absence of early constraints" on developing country emissions.

Myth three is that Australia must act in advance of other nations. This is the mainstream media-scientific-green position. The formulas used are that Australia must be "in the forefront" or "set an example" or "lead the way", presented with the usual moral vanity and invoking of the science.

They are repudiated by the Garnaut report, which accepts the science and whose foundation is that Australia's response must be proportionate to the action the world takes or fails to take in Copenhagen in 2009. This would seem to be entirely reasonable. It is likely the Rudd Government will accept a variation of this principle.

Garnaut is unforgiving about the intellectual vacuity of Australia's media-driven debate.

"It is delusional for any one country to develop its own views on the amount of mitigation that it is prepared to undertake without analysing whether that contribution fits into a global outcome that solves the problem," he says. Such "delusional" activity is a perfect description of Australia's debate. It has many manifestations; witness the fairytale that what Kevin Rudd decides will save or doom the Great Barrier Reef or that Australia must commit unconditionally to targets in the 25-40 per cent range.

The sound moral position for Australia, as Garnaut suggests, is a full and proportionate response according to the global effort. This is why he recommends that Rudd should offer a 25 per cent cut consistent to keep concentrations at 450ppm but only on the absolute condition of a valid global agreement to this effect (about which there is no prospect at present).

The media is about to put the Rudd Government on trial when its targets are released next week. But the media should also be put on trial in any contest about honesty and integrity.

When you hear calls for Australia to cut emissions unconditionally in the 25-40 per cent range by 2020, ask why Australia should be expected to do significantly more than other developed nations in per capita terms when any such action would make no difference to the climate change challenge. Ask why Australia should merely entrench the Kyoto-Bali framework that is manifestly inadequate to solve a global problem whose nature has changed fundamentally in the past decade. And ask what is wrong in moral and practical terms with Australia tying its response to the political burden the rest of the world assumes given that our global emissions contribution will be about 1per cent of the total by 2030.