Crisis Gloom Equals Climate Boon

Last year Federal Minister for Climate Change and Water, Penny Wong, was telling Australians that the drought in the Murray-Darling was a consequence of global warming.  It was our fault because of green house gas (GHG) emissions including from Australians' general over-consumption and wasteful affluent lifestyles.

Indeed, predictions for the entire planet have been dire, with pleas, including from the Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, that we must change our ways and drastically cut our carbon dioxide emissions or we will lose not only the Murray-Darling, but the Great Barrier Reef, Kakadu and snow from the High Country.

This year, with the financial crisis resulting in a general slowdown, there is a lot less "stuff" being produced, built, and moved about in Australia, and also in the US and China.

This must translate into fewer GHG emissions.  Furthermore, if, as many environmentalists suggest, the path of righteousness is to live as frugally as possible, less "stuff" is good news.

But instead of seeing the economic bad news, as good news for the environment, the Australian government has been handing out money with the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, begging first pensioners, and now the rest of us, to spend, spend, spend.

My mother is planning to do the right thing and buy a dishwasher with the cheque she received from the government just before Christmas.

All she perhaps needs to do now, in terms of following government advice, is stop serving beef at her dinner parties.

Government climate change adviser, Ross Garnaut, was suggesting we should ditch cattle for kangaroos to reduce methane emissions.

If Mum did this, when she stacked that dishwasher after her next party she could perhaps be happy in the knowledge the meat she had served was from a low emissions source.

But should government on the one hand be suggesting low emission sources of food, and on the other suggesting Australians buy more "stuff"?

The reality is that you cannot have it both ways.

Given available sources of energy, economic activity and emissions are directly related.

The Federal government cannot be determined to maintain domestic growth above two percent, on the one hand, while at the same time telling us we are destroying the environment with our emissions.

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