SOBER scientific studies and predictions say the existence of humankind is under threat. Global warming caused by the burning of fossil fuels – which in turn fill the atmosphere with heat-trapping “greenhouse gases” – has the potential to reduce much of the planet to a wasteland within a few lifetimes. Average temperatures are increasing around the world, with one predicted consequence being an increase in sea levels and the flooding of major population and economic centres. Even if world industry was shut down overnight, the compounding effects of atmospheric pollution of the past 150 years would mean the situation would worsen for another century or so before it got better.

In 1999, Adelaide ABC Landline reporter Ian Henschke was awarded a scholarship to the Reuters Fellowship Program at Oxford University to learn more about global warming. On completion of his stay he presented a paper entitled “Essays on Global Warming and the World Response”; the outlook was bleak but there was an optimism the world community was mobilising its intellect and resources to counter the threat. Five years on, he finds the Australian Government still refusing to ratify the Kyoto Protocol aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It is also lukewarm on the development of alternative, renewable energy sources; in January, it officially terminated its involvement in the international greenhouse emissions trading scheme, a key plank of the protocol; in February, a Senate inquiry was told of Australian firms being overlooked for renewable energy contracts because of the country’s refusal to ratify Kyoto agreements. The United States is also openly sceptical of global warming theories and refuses to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.

A less-optimistic Ian Henschke offers this response.

THE United Nations’ Kyoto Climate Change Conference of 1998 was seen as a first step in addressing the problem of man-made global warming. Australia, through the arguments of a team lead by Environment Minister Robert HIll, fought for and won special consideration.

The Kyoto Protocol, in broad terrms, tried to get the developed world to agree to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 5 per cent. Using 1990 figures as the base line, the targets were supposed to be reached by 2010. But Australia argued it was different and should be given an increase of 8 per cent on our 1990 greenhouse gas-emission levels. We were somehow a special case. We also wanted to use tree planting as a means of reaching our target. In other words, because trees soak up carbon dioxide as they grow and store carbon in their roots and branches we could offset our carbon emissions by planting more trees. Roughly, four tonnes of trees store one tonne of carbon from the atmosphere. Polluters could simply offset their pollution by increasing tree numbers.

I raised these issues while in Oxford and quickly realised that Australia had a very poor reputation as a result of our international environmental manouverings; today, that reputation would be even worse. We said we would play the game if the rules were changed. Then, after winning special consideration, we pulled out and refused to play. As far as tree planting goes to stabilise world climate, Sir John Houghton from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates we would have to plant an area the size of Australia from coast to coast with trees six times over. There simply is not enough land.

The other problem with tree planting is that all the carbon stored in the trees eventually goes back into the atmosphere when the tree is cut down and the wood eventually rots and decays. The only real solution, Sir John says, is to switch to renewable energy sources and cut back on the wasteful way we live. We may be starting to use less water now that our Murray-Darling river system is dying, but despite the atmosphere being overloaded we are using more fossil fuel-based energy every year.

There are plenty of people who say the jury is still out on man’s ability to heat up the planet; the book The Skeptical Environmentalist has become a best-seller. If you are one of the skeptics, consider the following facts. In little more than 200 years the world’s population has grown from one billion to more than six billion – and will reach nine billion by 2050. Along the way we have cut down much of the world’s forests and cleared continents to provide the farmland and create the sprawling cities and towns we live in. We have dug up and burnt the stored carbon from millions of years ago in the form of coal, oil and gas. Australia has become a world leader at this. We have just passed the US as the biggest polluter on the planet. The average Australian is now responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions per person than the average American; we clear more land per capita than Brazil.

On average, one Australian uses 25 times more fossil fuel than one person in India. In other words, 20 million Australians have the same effect on the world’s climate as 500 million Indians. The US, like us, has a long-term love affair with burning fossil fuels. It has just 4 per cent of the world’s population and yet is responsible for 25 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.

A few years back people disputed the need to do anything about ozone-depleting gases. The large corporations told us the hole in the ozone layer was an unproven and, anyway, it was too costly to change the way we refrigerated, hairsprayed and styrofamed our world. Today, New Zealand and Australia live with the legacy of that ignorance and inaction when profits came before human life. Solar radiation now kills thousands of ordinary people in our part of the planet every year: we have the highest rate of deaths from melanoma and skin cancer in the world.

The long-term effects of global warming are just beginning to become evident. We are driving a fossil-fuelled economy so fast we are bound to crash, but we love it so much we can’t stop. We talk about sustainability but we are a long, long way from even taking our foot off the accelerator. And if we do it will take decades for us to slow down the damage. Eminent UK academic Professor Frank Thompson, from the Oxford Forestry Institute, says the best way to think about our situation is to imagine the world’s weather system had a certain amount of energy in it before the industrial revolution. We soon changed that.

The energy from the sun is stored in the world’s oceans, and if we create a blanket of greenhouse gases by clouding the atmosphere with carbon and other pollutants, we crank up the whole system. The extra energy in the oceans, if they are raised by just a degree or so, will have a massive impact. Think of the vast amount energy we would have to expend to raise the temperature in a pot the size of the world’s oceans. The impact of global warming means a warmer, wilder, wetter world where there will be winners and losers. Some parts of Australia will get hotter and drier, some parts warmer and wetter. We are carrying out an unauthorized experiment with the planet’s weather system. The rest of the world will also have its own chaotic response, from increasing heat waves in Europe to worse snow storms in Texas. In the long term, there will be raised sea levels and increased flooding in the equatorial regions. There will be tens of millions of environmental refugees.

The Kyoto protocol was just a tiny first step to try to redress the balance, a step to stop the warming that is and will continue to bleach and kill the Great Barrier Reef and gives us even bigger El Ninio events that saw our national capital’s suburbs ablaze last year. But most of the world’s leading scientists in the global warming arena believe we need to cut emissions not by 5 per cent but by 50 per cent if we are going to have a real chance of fixing the problem.

Australia has become a pariah on this issue. Along with the US we are seen as coming out with incoherent and inconsistent policies that make us part of the problem, not part of the solution.