PM's stance on climate change immoral

By Robyn Eckersley
November 8, 2006

Prime Minister John Howard has long maintained the Kyoto Protocol is flawed because it excludes major carbon emitters in the developing world. In Parliament last week, in defiance of the British Stern report, he declared that it would be foolish for Australia to embark on a carbon trading scheme, because developing countries would enjoy a free ride at our expense.

Yet the Prime Minister's stance directly contravenes Australia's obligations under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change 1992. The fundamental environmental justice principle running through this convention, which Australia has signed and ratified, is that parties should take steps to protect the climate "on the basis of equity and in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capacities" (article 3(1)). The convention provides that developed countries must "take the lead in combating climate change". Developed countries have benefited from a long history of exploiting fossil fuels and are responsible for the bulk of past emissions. They also have a greater economic capacity to absorb emission reductions and develop technological alternatives.

These environmental justice principles also served as the cornerstone of the Berlin mandate, which framed the negotiations for the Kyoto Protocol. Developing countries, including growing aggregate emitters such as China, are not expected to undertake mandatory emissions reduction until developed countries have shown the way. For the Prime Minister to maintain that the protocol is flawed because it allows free riders, flies in the face of the principles of the Kyoto Protocol's parent convention. The main reason the Kyoto Protocol is suboptimal, in both environmental and political terms, is because the world's biggest aggregate carbon polluter (the US) and the world's second biggest per capita carbon polluter (Australia) have defected.

The idea that a rich country such as Australia should not reduce its oversized per capita carbon footprint unless poorer countries also take measures to reduce their tiny per capita footprint is to kick the ladder down. It denies poorer countries the opportunity to improve the livelihoods of their peoples and avoids Australia's obligations under the convention. Such a stance is morally and politically unjustifiable.

Robyn Eckersley teaches global politics at the University of Melbourne.