"If every country around the world did the same, man made climate change would be a non-issue."
In theory: Absolutely", 100% correct. In practice: Not possible
In case you forgot, the premise of may answer was that it was in response to a rhetorical question which stated:
If Australia went to zero emissions tonmorrow, What do you think that would achieve on a world scale???
So my answer was no more theoretical or practical than the question posed.
Do you really think that the reason economies have, to date, been powered by fossil fuels - and will continue to be powered to a large extent by fossil fuels - is because people like Jack who also exist in China and India?
That is not quite what I wrote Madam, as I was forward rather than backward looking. Since the beginning of the industrial revolution and the widespread use of fossil fuels, we did not fully understand the impact their use would have on our health nor on the environment more broadly.
Today we do.
For the last 30 to 50 years, it has become quite clear that their use - while offering the honey pot of short-term prosperity - comes at the cost of long term destruction of human health and the environment, be it through direct particulate pollution or man made global warming.
Likewise, 30 to 40 years ago, wind, solar and other renewable energies were in their infancy. They were costly and not a viable alternative to fossil fuels. Today, renewable energy is cheaper than coal, so there is little excuse to continue down the destructive path of burning fossil fuels.
So yes, from where I stand, it is people like Jack who are standing in the way of a better and cleaner future.
Do you not think it is an outworking of fundamental development economics?
No. I am not sure what fundamental development economics is, but the continued use of fossil fuel, which does not price in the actual cost to society for the damage done by fossil fuels is what allows their continued use. So our situation today is akin to that in the 1960s and 1970s, when tobacco companies were able to sell their toxic products without compensating society for the enormous cost their products were placing on the health systems around the world.
If only fundamental economics were applied to the burning of fossil fuels, I would expect a very different outworking with respect to global emissions to what we witness today -be it in the developed or the developing world.
What alternative energy history path can you describe that today's developed countries could have followed as they industrialised and modernised over the 20th century, in the process uplifting the quality of lives of their citizens, just as has occurred within developing countries over the first two decades of the current century?
As mentioned above, for a large part of that history, we could claim ignorance. But let's say that if in 1980 Australia had set itself a 26% to 28% emission reduction target for 1995 - and presumably met it in a canter - today we could set targets of incremental emission reductions to 50% to 75% reductions by 2030 and still meet them in canter, because we started down this path earlier and the journey would be more or less painless.
You often ask what we could possibly do to reduce our emissions further. Quite simply, we need to set more ambitious targets and apply the most effective way to meet those targets. An emission trading system has been demonstrated to be able to do the job - just put a more realistic price on carbon emissions. If other developed countries had done this long ago, more developing nations would opt for renewable energy sources over fossil fuels, because low renewable energy prices would have been achieved 10 to 20 years ago and by now we would already have the challenge of storage of intermitted renewable energy resolved. Developing nations would therefore install renewable energy instead of fossil fuels, because they would be the cheaper forms of energy.
What do you think Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao and Xi Jinpin should have decreed needed to be done differently that would have seen China's emissions rise end up being an order of magnitude less than the five-fold increase that occurred between 1990 and 2018, which saw China's emissions rise from 10% of total global emissions in 1990 to 30% today?
Ditto for India, which has replicating China's early developmental path?
What alternative tools did the developed world offer them. Instead of sending a clear message of climate change being a trans-national threat, the developed world dragged its feet in finding fossil fuel alternatives FASTER. Being technologically and economically more advanced, that is what we - the developed world - could have done.
But no, it is people like JACK who are holding us back. The climate change deniers and Murdoch press acolytes. Even Rupert's younger son is getting sick and tired of those arguments.
