Oh the futility. Australia’s entire annual production of carbon from all that mining, construction, industry and everything is replicated in China every 18 days.
If we cut our emissions by an obscene, bleeding 25%, we will spend billions and yet China will undo all our hair-shirt “savings” in just 5 normal days. (And that’s at current rates, it gets worse by 2030).
Australia is a giant coal and iron quarry built at the far end of the Earth, with a tiny, but rapidly growing population spread across a vast land. Transport distances are eye-watering. We run 94% of everything off fossil fuels and there are no more easy cuts to be made. Gaia gave us more uranium than any other country but we are religiously opposed to nuclear power. (What would it take to change that? Probably a bomb from China). We’ve got more Sun, hot rocks and empty space than anywhere, so if solar, wind or geothermal were going to work on Planet Earth, it would be here. We are God’s Gift to the renewable industry — yet they all fail. (Today Flannery’s Geothermal project crashed, last week Windorah’s solar farm shut, and last month, the whole state of South Australia nearly closed.) Earlier this year Tasmania — the renewables wonderland was flying in emergency diesel generators and seeding clouds to make electricity.
If China’s emissions increase (how could they not) then by 2030 it will only take China 8 days to outdo a 100% cut in Australian emissions.
In other words — by 2030, for all the pain it takes us to achieve a 25% cut in our current emissions. It will only China 2 days to undo our “gain”.
