Hazelwood Power Station, Victoria. Credit: Damian Baker.
By Rich Bowden
A report released last week has named Australia as the world’s highest per capita producers of carbon dioxide.
The UK risk analysis company Maplecroft, relying on data from the US Energy Department, has found Australia produces 20.58 tonnes of C02 per person per year, edging out the US at 19.78 tonnes per capita. The company’s CO2 Energy Emissions Index saw Australia top a list of 185 surveyed countries,with Canada, the Netherlands and Saudi Arabia taking out the remaining top five positions.
Compounding the poor result, Australia also ranked 33rd out of 135 countries in Maplecroft’s Unsustainable Energy Index (UEI) with only Belgium and the Netherlands worse off amongst industrialised countries.
With Australia’s heavy reliance on coal as an energy source one of the main factors behind the poor assessment, Greens leader Senator Bob Brown said Australia’s concentration on increasing coal exports would only make per capita emissions in Australia rise.
“With our coal export facilities expanding, things are getting worse. The government’s emissions trading scheme will not reverse this,” Senator Brown said.
Greens leader Sen. Bob Brown. Credit mugley/flickr
Shortly after Senator Brown’s comments, The Sunday Age reported the Victorian Government was considering a 40-year, $700 million per year agreement to export brown coal to India.
As Australian business leaders and environmentalists digest the sombre news, the report has reignited debate on the seriousness of the figures given the country’s small population relative to other countries.
“Australia has about five times the per capita emissions of China for instance but China produces over 20 times the carbon emissions of Australia because China has such a huge population,” University of Adelaide professor Barry Brook told the ABC’s The World Today program.
“So you can play around with these numbers all you want but ultimately what matters is the total global carbon budget,” he said.
The Maplecroft report ranked China 44th on the list of polluters at per capita emissions of 4.58 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year.
“Blame game”
Speaking on the ABC’s The World Today, Mitch Hooke, chief executive of the Minerals Council of Australia, which includes some of Australia’s highest polluters, called nominating developed countries as highest emitters per capita was nothing more than a “blame game.”
“…really the whole argument about climate change should be about commitments to solutions, not seeking concessions, not getting into this business where the developing countries who have a lot more people and therefore lower per capita emissions think there should be less obligation on them to reduce emissions than the developed economies.”
“That’s why we have this continual per capita debate. It’s about trying to sheet blame, it’s about trying to sheet responsibility. Yet in actual fact everybody has got to focus on solutions to managing climate change,” Hooke said.
Carbon tax
However Tony Mohr from the Australian Conservation Foundation, said Australia’s poor carbon emissions record meant that a tax on carbon emissions was inevitable.
“This new report has been produced by a business for businesses and that really shows that the leading businesses are interested in what’s going on,” said Mohr. “Most businesses in Australia already understand that it’s a matter of when, not if, we have a price on greenhouse pollution.”
Coal continues to dominate headlines this weekend with protesters arriving at the Hazelwood power station on Sunday morning in a “switch off Hazelwood” protest.
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