“High Polluting Victoria , Australia , Scraps Carbon Pollution Target
And Increases Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Pollution”
By Dr Gideon Polya
27 March, 2012
Countercurrents.org
The State of Victoria, Australia, is the worst polluting state in Australia which in turn is one of the worst counties in the world for annual per capita greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution. However the new ultra-conservative government of Victoria is trying to increase GHG pollution in all kinds of ways and has just announced its intention to scrap an existing plan for "20% off GHG pollution by 2020".
On 27 March 2012 The Age On-line reported that the Baillieu Liberal Party-National Party Coalition Government of Victoria, Australia, had decoded to scrap Victoria's plan to cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 20% by 2020: “A plan to cut Victoria's greenhouse gas emissions by 20 per cent over the next decade is set to be dumped by the Baillieu government on the basis that it would merely lighten the load imposed on other states. An independent review of the state's key climate change laws, to be released today, has found ‘‘no compelling case'' to keep the target following the introduction of the Commonwealth's minimum target to cut emissions by 5 per cent, to be mainly achieved through Labor's carbon tax” (see Carbon target scrapped}, The Age On-line, 27 March 2012: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/political-news/carbon-target-scrapped-20120326-1vust.html ) .
The Age kindly published my following comments on the article:
“The pro-coal, pro-gas, anti-environment Brumby Labor Government thoroughly deserved to be kicked out but its successor the pro-coal, pro-gas, anti-environment Baillieu Coalition Government is even worse and deserves the same fate even more so under the fundamental voter strategy of "Punish the incompetent incumbent".
The anti-environment Baillieu (Fail you) Government:
1. allowed cattle into the Alpine National Park,
2. sabotaged Victoria 's wind and solar energy industries,
3. backs logging of Victoria 's native forests (the best forest carbon sinks in the world),
4. is promoting massive expansion of exploitation of Victoria's 430 billion tonnes of brown coal (complete combustion would yield 520 billion tonnes of CO2 or 87% of the global terminal budget of 600 billion tonnes of CO2 that can be emitted before zero emissions in 2050),
5. backs and subsidizes expansion of dirty gas and dirty coal burning for power,
6. now scraps a "20% off greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution by 2020" target, and
7. ignores the shocking reality that Victoria is among the worst annual per capita GHG polluters in the world.”
In 2009 the WBGU which advises the German Government on climate change estimated that for a 75% chance of avoiding a disastrous 2C temperature rise (EU policy) the World must emit no more than 600 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) between 2010 and zero emissions in 2050. Australia's domestic plus exported greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution is so high that it had already used up its "fair share" of this terminal GHG pollution budget by mid-2011 and is now stealing the entitlement of all other countries, including impoverished and global warming threatened countries like Somalia and Bangladesh (see Gideon Polya, “Shocking analysis by country of years left to zero emissions”, Green Blog, 1 August 2011: http://www.green-blog.org/2011/08/01/shocking-analysis-by-country-of-years-left-to-zero-emissions/ and Gideon Polya “2011 Climate Change Course', 300.org: https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/2011-climate-change-course ).
Victoria , like the rest of Australia , is committed to remorselessly increasing GHG pollution despite the fact that Victoria is the dirtiest state in one of the worst GHG polluting countries in the World. Thus “annual per capita greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution” in units of “tonnes CO 2 -equivalent per person per year” (2005-2008 data) is 0.9 (Bangladesh), 0.9 (Pakistan), 2.2 (India), less than 3 (many African and Island countries), 3.2 (the Developing World), 5.5 (China), 6.7 (the World), 11 (Europe), 16 (the Developed World), 27 (the US) and 30 (Australia; or 64 in 2010 if Australia's huge Exported CO 2 pollution is included).
Noting that the world population is expected to reach 9.5 billion by 2050 (UN Population Division) , it is estimated that the world is facing a worsening Climate Genocide involving deaths of 10 billion people this century, this including roughly twice the present population of particular mainly non-European groups, specifically 6 billion under-5 year old infants, 3 billion Muslims in a terminal Muslim Holocaust, 2 billion Indians, 1.3 billion non-Arab Africans, 0.5 billion Bengalis, 0.3 billion Pakistanis and 0.3 billion Bangladeshis. (see “Climate Genocide: https://sites.google.com/site/climategenocide/ ).
What can decent people do? Decent people must (a) inform everyone they can and (b) urge international action to force climate criminal , climate racist Australia to get to zero emissions. Such actions might include, sanctions, boycotts, green tariffs, sporting boycotts , International Court of Justice litigations and International Criminal Court prosecutions (e.g. see Gideon Polya, “9 January 2010 Formal Complaint by Dr Gideon Polya to the International Criminal Court (ICC) re US Alliance Palestinian, Iraqi, Afghan, Muslim, Aboriginal, Biofuel and Climate Genocides”: https://sites.google.com/site/climategenocide/9-january-2010 ).
Dr Gideon Polya has been teaching science students at a major Australian university for 4 decades. He published some 130 works in a 5 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text "Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds" (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London , 2003). He has published “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ ); see also his contributions “Australian complicity in Iraq mass mortality” in “Lies, Deep Fries & Statistics” (edited by Robyn Williams, ABC Books, Sydney, 2007: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/stories/s1445960.htm ) and “Ongoing Palestinian Genocide” in “The Plight of the Palestinians (edited by William Cook, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2010: http://mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/4047-the-plight-of-the-palestinians.html ). He has published a revised and updated 2008 version of his 1998 book “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History” (see: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/ ) as biofuel-, globalization- and climate-driven global food price increases threaten a greater famine catastrophe than the man-made famine in British-ruled India that killed 6-7 million Indians in the “forgotten” World War 2 Bengal Famine (see recent BBC broadcast involving Dr Polya, Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen and others: http://www.open2.net/thingsweforgot/ bengalfamine_programme.html ). When words fail one can say it in pictures - for images of Gideon Polya's huge paintings for the Planet, Peace, Mother and Child see: http://sites.google.com/site/artforpeaceplanetmotherchild/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/gideonpolya/ .
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