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CLW Interview with
George Wilkenfeld
Interview with George Wilkenfeld
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Background and Biography
The global issue of Climate Change which now dominates much of
public debate has had a notorious rise in the Australian landscape with "the ‘Toronto target’ of 1988 (to
reduce global carbon dioxide emissions to 80 per cent of the 1988 level by 2005)
and its endorsement by the Hawke government in 1989; ...the November 1997
negotiation of the Kyoto Protocol to the UN Framework Convention on Climate
Change. The issue then abated, largely due to the anti-Kyoto stance of the
Howard government and, after September 2001, the emergence and political
amplification of terrorism as a more immediate threat. Public concern surged
again in late 2006 on the strength of record droughts and an early start to the
bushfire season, reinforced by the publication of the Stern Review in October
2006 and the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) in February 2007." *
The IPCC report confirmed the linkage between human greenhouse
gas emissions and changes in the global climate, and the Stern Review concluded
that the costs and risks of timely action to reduce emissions would be far lower
than the costs of responding to massive climate change.
While both the Coalition and Labor have been forced to
publicly accept these findings, do their policies demonstrate rhetoric or real
commitment to adopting specific targets of carbon emissions within realistic and
short-term goal posts? Do their policies state how they are going to achieve
specific aims or are both parties only giving us empty assurances for our votes?
 George Wilkenfeld,
with
a PhD in Environmental and Urban
Studies from Macquarie University, Sydney,
joined the Energy Authority of NSW in
1982, and left in 1989 to establish George Wilkenfeld and Associates.
In the 1980s he set
up the national appliance energy labelling program, and in the 1990s, he
pioneered mandatory minimum energy performance standards.
In 1995 he co-ordinated the first major review of
the National Greenhouse Gas Inventory Methodology.
In 2004 he helped set up the national water
efficiency labelling program.
He compiles the electricity
sector of the Inventory every year, and regularly undertakes analyses of the
inventory as a whole for the Australian Greenhouse Office.
George Wilkenfeld has written many articles and spoken
passionately about his understanding of what is happening and what is at stake.
In the quote below, Wilkenfeld talks about the historic development of
Australia's energy systems and the paradigms that underlie the thinking behind
them.
"In Australia the paradigm of massive electrification led by
public sector investment, which gave us the State Electricity Commission of
Victoria and the Hydro-Electric Commission of Tasmania before World War II, and
the Electricity Commission of NSW and the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric
Authority immediately after, did not run its course until the late 1980s.
The next paradigm was marked by post-Thatcher economic policy,
culminating in the establishment of an east coast electricity trading market,
the commercialisation and corporatisation of State government energy trading
enterprises and the sale of some (in Victoria and South Australia) to the
private sector during the 1990s. This paradigm still dominates government
thinking, and will probably do so until it runs its course with the deregulation
of energy pricing and the sale of the remaining publicly owned energy
enterprises in New South Wales and Queensland, if not by the present governments
then by future ones.
The possibility of a carbon-based paradigm is only just
beginning to emerge. For the first time it is driven by ‘external’ voter concern
rather than from within the policy establishment. There have been ‘internal’
debates about greenhouse emissions since the late 1980s, but these have been
crushed by vested interests in the mining, minerals and energy industries and by
their captive government agencies. This has been documented in appalling detail
by Clive Hamilton, whose book Scorcher (2007) should be read as a companion to
Diesendorf’s.
Australia’s energy-related greenhouse gas emissions have grown
at an average rate of 2.1 per cent per annum since 1990 (Australian Greenhouse
Office 2007). Since the adoption of the first National Greenhouse Response
Strategy in 1992, and especially after the Commonwealth set up the Australian
Greenhouse Office in 1997, there have been many schemes to slow the rate of
growth. The impact has been negligible—in fact the rate of growth has been
slightly higher since 1997.
The total effort has been perhaps a third of what was needed,
and the programs have been about a third successful, so all up the effect has
been less than a tenth of what would have been necessary to stop emissions
growth, let alone reverse it. A lot of taxpayer and electricity user money has
been wasted on rewarding emitters for doing no more than ‘Business as Usual’.
Programs routinely take credit for normal efficiency improvements that
businesses would have made anyway, and the benefits of large projects tend to be
claimed by many of the companies involved and so double and triple counted.
Nevertheless governments claim success on the grounds that without these efforts
emissions would have been even higher.
The only measure that matters is the absolute level of
emissions, not the percentage reductions below mythical ‘baselines’. We will
know that the federal government is serious about greenhouse when it nominates a
target year for Australia’s emissions to peak and a rate at which they should
then fall, and it details how emission rights will be rationed to ensure that
this happens as planned. Of course, in our pluralist democracy the views of
governments balance and reflect the will of voters and special interest groups.
So far the latter have dominated the greenhouse debate, and while the popular
voice has become louder it is arguable that public support for action would
weaken if people understood more clearly the scale of what really needs to be
done." (Cutting greenhouse emissions—What would we do if we really meant it?
George Wilkenfeld Australian Review of Public Affairs, August 2007)
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INTERVIEW WITH GEORGE
WILKENFELD
From your understanding, can you state what level of climate
change do you envisage occurring in the short and long term future?
I am
not an expert on the science of climate change, although I have
enough of a general scientific background to follow the general
arguments and find them persuasive. I read the Assessment Reports
of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (http://www.ipcc.ch/ )
and the climate projections for regions of
Australia
published by the CSIRO (http://www.csiro.au/science/ClimateChange.html)
and I get very worried. I think the climate is already becoming
warmer, dryer, more variable and more extreme: higher maximum and
minimum temperatures, more intense rainfall (but less rain overall,
making collection and storage more difficult), high wind events,
more fires, more violent and more southerly hurricanes.
This
will affect every aspect of our lives - where and how we live, what
food we eat, what diseases we get (as dengue fever moves south, for
example), how and where we travel. Less tangibly, it will affect
the natural world around us - many species of plants and animals we
have grown up with and which make up our mental landcape as much as
our physical world will vanish in our lifetime, at least from the
wild. Also, as countries less rich and fortunate than
Australia are
at greater risk of being overwhelmed by drought, rising sea levels
and starvation, much of the world will be far less pleasant to visit
than it is now. Goodwill between nations could become very
stretched indeed.
And
we will have done all this to ourselves.
What types of myths and half-truths do you consider
governments adopting to mask their inaction?
It
is not just 'their' inaction - it is ours. In democracies we get
the governments we deserve, and their actions (and inactions)
reflect the deepest views of their electors.
Governments in the West get elected largely on the promise of
increasing and maintaining material prosperity, and they are given a
very short time to perform. Occasionally, an immediate security
threat (or perception of threat) intrudes for a while on the
relentless push for economic growth. Planning has become a dirty
word - more and more is left to the operation of the market, and
oversight of the market is limited at best. Competition between
special interest groups has taken the place of agreed social goals.
This
model is exactly the wrong one to deal with a threat like climate
change, where the only effective solutions must be centrally
planned, sustained, and involve some material sacrifice in the short
term. Our governments (and oppositions) are reflecting back to us
the myths and half-truths we want to hear:
-
that whatever we do as a country is not significant - others
must act first, or shoulder more of the responsibility than us
-
that the solution will be incredibly difficult
-
conversely, that it will be easy, and we can continue to live
more or less the way we do now, with a few token gestures
(buying 'carbon credits' when we book air travel!)
-
that we can leave it to the market, without co-ordinated
planning
-
that simply giving out taxpayer money to special interests
groups (whether the coal lobby or the renewable energy lobby) is
effective
-
that there is such a thing as 'clean coal' or that nuclear
energy is a realistic solution
-
that we can still have cheap energy and endless material growth
What do you think are the major factors that inhibit
governments from making the transition from coal to natural gas so
that we can progress towards a renewable energy system?
The
unwillingness to undertake any form of planning from which there may
be immediate and influential losers, such as the mining companies
and/or coal miners and their families, who are concentrated in
particular regions and seats. Of course, if governments were
prepared to explain the danger and the strategy clearly, and
compensate those who are actually disadvantaged (as distinct from
those who think they are), the workers in the industries affected
would probably support the strategy no less than other responsible
and informed citizens.
What do you think of the reasons the Australian government
has chosen for not wanting to sign the Kyoto Agreement? How does
their refusal to sign this Agreement affect our situation and
prospects?
The
reasons given are entirely specious. In fact, the present
government was very pleased with the Protocol when it was negotiated
in late 1997, but cooled over the next two years as the fossil fuel
interests lobbied it and in some cases actually wrote its climate
change policy. In early 2001 President Bush repudiated the
Kyoto protocol and the
whole framework of international obligations, in effect putting the
right of Americans to waste energy above all other global
principles. The Australian government then had a further reason to
abandon
Kyoto - to support the
US alliance.
In
retrospect, this chain of events may come to be seen as the loss of
a crucial decade, not just for us but for the world. We are now, in
2007, at the stage of beginning to take the issue seriously. Had we
done so in 1997, ratified the
Kyoto protocol and put
in place the necessary strategies, it would have been much harder
for the Bush administration to withdraw. The international effort
would have been strengthened rather than fractured, and the
developed countries would now be in a position to exert moral
pressure (and offer assistance) for the developing world to join in
efforts to contain emissions.
Also, we are outside the core of Kyoto-ratifying countries that are
now beginning to negotiate the post-Kyoto arrangements (which may
have real teeth, unlike the initial Protocol, which was a necessary
first effort). We may well find that our exports to Kyoto-ratifying
countries will be taxed for their carbon content.
What concerns you most about the energy efficiency standards
of household goods and transport vehicles for personal use? Are the
companies that produce and sell such products abiding by any forms
of controls?
The
standards regime for appliances works reasonably well, but
compliance could always be improved. The biggest problems are
imports from developing countries, some of which (not all!) are not
tested properly or the results are deliberately falsified. This
is a compliance issue (like food or safety standards) that can be
managed. The actual minimum efficiency levels could be much more
stringent, and will probably be ramped up as part of a first serious
effort to reduce emissions.
There are no mandatory standards for cars - just a series of
'voluntary' targets which the motor vehicle industry has
consistently failed to meet. This is another example of favouring
powerful lobby groups (the carmakers and the automotive unions) over
the public interest. Australia has persisted in making
large, inefficient cars that very few private buyers actually want,
which are propped up by the purchases of company and government
fleets, which after a few years dump them cheaply on the private
market.
You have stated,“In
the meantime,
Australia’s emissions continue to
rise inexorably, despite the outlay of considerable amounts of
private and public money, most of which has been wasted.”('Clean
coal' and other greenhouse myths Research Paper No 49) http://www.tai.org.au/documents/downloads/WP108.pdf
What are the main reasons for such a
deplorable outcome?
The combination of all
of the above.
Are there five
things that each of us can do to effect a better outcome in relation
to all of the above issues for ourselves and our planet?
Live in the smallest
house you can - ask yourself if you really need all that space.
If you build a new
house, make sure it needs as little heating as possible and NO air
conditioning - there are very few parts of
Australia where a properly designed
house should need air conditioning. Consider putting a photovoltaic
array on the roof (you can get money from the government for this).
Use gas for water
heating, space heating and cooking - avoid using electricity for
those purposes (unless it is a solar-electric or a heat pump water
heater). If you must have air conditioning, buy the most efficient
(5 or 6 stars on the energy label) and use the reverse cycle for
heating.
When you buy a new car,
make sure it has a fuel consumption no higher than 8 litres/100 km.
You don't have to buy a Prius - there are plenty of small, efficient
conventional cars. If you REALLY need something for occasional
towing, off-road etc, rent it when you need it.
Think about what you
eat. In general, locally grown means less transport and less
emissions. Eat as little meat and fish as possible - the greenhouse
impact of a kg of beef is higher than a kg of aluminium, and a lot
of energy is needed to catch fish commercially (not to mention the
fact that nearly all fisheries and aquatic ecosystems are under huge
pressure).
What leadership strategies do
you use to create the changes you see as being significant and what
motivates you to keep doing so?
Talk to other people of goodwill, but
don't waste time with denialists. Try to do what you advocate (if
not always perfectly!). Vote as if global warming was the most
important issue (or at least equal with every other 'most important'
issue!). Don't underestimate the magnitude of the problem but don't
despair.
In the context of the upcoming
Australian federal election, how do the promises of the major
political parties weigh up in your opinion?
There is no real difference between
the major parties. Neither
acts as if it considers global warming other than a useful
rhetorical strength (or weakness) to be exploited or neutralised
during the election campaign. For more on this, see my article
http://www.australianreview.net/digest/2007/08/wilkenfeld.html.
Some of the minor parties have much better policies, and could be
influential in the Senate.
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