Australia and many countries around the world have been moving in a more environmentally friendly direction for the past few decades. The rise and rise of the Greens as a political party is testament to the growing public interest in protecting the environment.
It could even be said that one of the policies that helped Kevin Rudd and the Labor Party win government back in 2007 was a commitment to environment protection and preservation.
Now public opinion has started shifting as the costs of committing to an international Emissions Trading Scheme are starting to emerge and other more pressing problems such as employment and surviving the recession are now a much bigger priority.
What makes it difficult to rationalize it all, for most of us anyway, is that the arguments surrounding the issue are scientific ones, and most of us aren’t scientists.
As for the Emissions Trading Scheme do most of us actually even know what that means, except maybe that business will pay some type of fine or tax if they emit a lot of junk into the air? The Scheme itself (now commonly referred to as the ETS) is vague enough for most of us but I will deal with that later.
This is how I see either side of the argument:
PRO – Emissions Trading Scheme
Advocates of the Emissions Trading Scheme would argue that man has been destroying the earth for centuries and industrialization has contributed directly and immensely to the evaporation of the ozone layer.
Heavy polluters, they believe, should be forced in some way to clean up their act and imposing fines or taxes according to the pollution they are causing is a fair way to force them into other ways of producing their products.
The belief of advocates is that both Climate Change and the erosion of the earth’s surface has been predominantly man driven rather than natural and so therefore it is up to man to recognize this, make amends and rectify the situation, no matter what the cost.
It is all about taxing industry on however much they are contributing to pollution. How this is calculated is beyond my area of knowledge but advocates believe that this pollution is not only the main cause of rising temperatures around the globe and extreme weather conditions, but directly contributing to erosion of the earth.
The belief of advocates is that both Climate Change and the erosion of the earth’s surface has been predominantly man driven rather than natural and so therefore it is up to man to recognize this, make amends and rectify the situation, no matter what the cost. If we don’t they say, future generations will have to bear the cost with lost natural resources such as water and rising temperatures.
CONS – Emission Trading Scheme
Those who condemn the Emissions Trading Scheme believe advocates are sensationalizing the issue, that Australia is but a bit contributor to world wide pollution and that the costs to us would be far greater than any benefits to us in the short or long term.
First of all, detractors of the Scheme believe that the advocates of emissions trading are scaremongering about the pace of climate change. Many in this category believe Australia’s commitment would make little change and would come at a huge cost to Australian industry, most of all to the mining sector which is Australia’s largest exporting industry.
Most detractors also believe the much higher populated and developing countries such as China and even some of the bigger populated countries such as the United States should be the countries to take on most of the responsibility for rectifying the situation.
Challenging this is that China believes they should have much more of an extension because they have been polluting at this level for much shorter than most countries in the West. China also believes they should be allowed to catch up to the rest of the world before being expected to participate in the Scheme.
Agriculture too will come under the category of “high polluters” but in revised legislation now going before The Senate in Australia, the agriculture sector has been excluded from the scheme after extensive negotiation between the parties.
Electricity is another contentious issue. The Scheme will ultimately increase the price of electricity which will be a cost that all households as well as industry will have to bear. This will have a flow-on effect to products across the board and therefore all groceries and many necessary services are destined to become more expensive.
Detractors will say that in the current economic climate we are racing in too fast and this will leave Australians with much higher living costs and no real short term benefits. These disbelievers are also skeptical of the predictions of future temperatures and believe there is no concrete proof that the weather is changing that much at all, let alone that it is pollution that is the cause of it.
Confusing Most of Us
These two groups have polarized views on pollution and who should take responsibility for itand whether or not it is the cause of any global warming at all.
Since the economic crisis, according to recent polling, there has been a considerable shift in the priority most Australians are giving environmental issues. Generally the population still cares about the environment and believes industry should take some responsibility for it.
Where most of us start faltering on whether we really want to commit to an international scheme is the idea that many jobs will be lost in the process, costs of basic goods and services will escalate and generally Australians will be worse off. To add insult to injury, many are starting to doubt the benefits of racing forward with the Scheme.
The current economic climate and confusion over the issue is turning the community away from the issue. Coupled with that, the continuous battle in Parliament over whether or not Australia should sign up to an Emissions Trading Scheme in Copenhagen next month has made us all just a little bit tired of the issue, even if we were really interested in it in the first place.
It also leaves a lot of questions about who is in it for what because many of the arguments do tend to have a smell of self-interest about them.
Questions also arise about the pace of global warming. Are even the most cautious predictions of changes in the climate patterns to be believed or are they at their best mostly exaggerated?
If the media is to be our most influential source of information in this whole debate, then all those reporters and commentators should be investigating the interests behind the reports that are coming through.
They also need to talk to all of us as people rather than scientists and do away with all the scientific jargon and the presumption that all of us know what they are talking about. Most people don’t understand what an Emissions Trading Scheme is even if the information is presented to us as if we all do.
Making matters worse is the recent inclination to cut this down to ETS. And they wonder why we all just want to tune out.
