Ian Lowe at the National Press Club
Shaping a Sustainable Future
By Professor Ian Lowe, President Australian Conservation Foundation
National Press Club Address – 30 August, 2006
I begin by acknowledging the Ngunnawal people as the traditional owners of this land. I am delighted to address the National Press Club today. It marks the 40th anniversary of the establishment of the Australian Conservation Foundation.
For 40 years, ACF has been a strong voice for the environment, promoting solutions through research, consultation, education and partnerships. Our members and supporters have played a key role in protecting some outstanding natural areas and raising public awareness of the importance of our unique environment. It is also 40 years since Chief Justice Sir Garfield Barwick, later a President of ACF, gave the first National Press Club address.
Today I want to talk about the most important question we face: what sort of Australia do we want in the future? We are at the cross-roads, deciding the broad direction of our future. Will it be the clean, green road of a sustainable future? Or will it leave our children a dreadful legacy of climate change, radioactive waste and derelict land? This is a critical juncture and we urgently need leadership. As Tony Blair said recently, I wouldn't like to be the political leader when in 15, 20, 30 years time, people look back and say, "Well, what on earth were they doing at that time?”
Most people now agree that we should be aiming for a sustainable future, but there is disagreement about what that means. Sustainable means able to be sustained. To focus your attention on this, let me take you through an exercise called negative brainstorming. Imagine we have been asked to develop strategies to ensure an unsustainable future. How can we achieve this goal?
Let’s start with a population growing exponentially. No species can expand its population indefinitely in a closed system. If we don’t stabilise our numbers by socially acceptable means, they will be limited in time by starvation, disease and fighting among ourselves. We can increase the impact of a growing population by increasing consumption per person; this puts compounding pressure on resources and the natural environment. We can deplete important non-renewable resources, such as oil, and over-use renewable resources like water, forests and fisheries. We can do serious environmental damage, like causing a major loss of species or changing the global climate. To ensure our economic decline, we can adopt the trade pattern of a Third World country, exporting raw materials and importing value-added goods and services. To increase social instability, we could widen the gap between the haves and the have-nots. And as a moral foundation for this unsustainable society, we would embrace materialism.
I don’t think I need to elaborate. The way we are currently living is not sustainable; it doesn’t satisfy any of the main criteria. Despite the evidence that the overall consumption of the present population is degrading our environment, we encourage both growing numbers and increasing consumption per person. If we haven’t yet passed the peak of world oil production, we are certainly near it, and there is no prospect of scaling up production to meet the demand we have stimulated.
So higher prices are inevitable. The evidence that we are over-using water and degrading our major river systems is overwhelming. Water restrictions are now semi-permanent. We are seriously changing the global climate, with economic and social consequences ranging from increased costs of water supply to growing numbers of human casualties from heat stress and severe weather events. We are already in the middle of the sixth major extinction event in the history of the planet, with global warming adding to the driving forces of habitat loss, introduced species and chemical pollution. In economic terms, we have had 44 consecutive trade deficits, a trend that should have alarmed our leaders. Their only solution is to urge the States to invest in infrastructure to allow us to export ever greater quantities of low-value commodities.
The Australia I grew up in was one of the most equal nations in the world. The gap between the rich and poor has been widening for decades, so we now rank third in the list of the most unequal countries in the entire OECD. Finally, consumerism is now our unofficial national religion, with ever larger shopping centres being built so we can worship seven days a week.
The present policy settings in Australia would lead any outside observer to conclude that we either can’t see that we not living sustainably, or are too short-sighted to care. If our civilisation is to survive, this century has to be a time of dramatic transformation, not just in technological capacity but in our approach to the natural world - and to each other. Both locally and globally, I believe we can achieve a transition to a sustainable future, but we need fundamental changes to our technologies, our social institutions and our values. My message of hope arises from recognising that human systems can change radically and quickly. The transition we need may be catalysed by growing community awareness of the problem. Unfortunately, our decision-makers and opinion-formers still behave as if there is no problem, or see potential solutions as threatening their short-term interests.
We have a beautiful and unique environment and many aspects of it are in good condition by international standards. But several national reports have documented the scale and seriousness of environmental problems: loss of biological diversity, degradation of inland waterways and destruction of the productive capacity of rural land. These problems are getting worse, because the pressures on natural systems are still increasing. Each year the Australian population grows by about a quarter of a million – and the Treasurer is using public funds and deceptive slogans to encourage women to have more children. Future generations will pay a high price for these irresponsible policies. Our material expectations are also increasing. Each year we use more energy, travel further in larger and less efficient cars, live in larger houses, consume more resources and produce more waste.
The compounding effect of more people, each on average demanding more, is putting ever greater pressure on natural systems. The decline is confirmed by Australian Bureau of Statistics reports on measures of Australia’s progress. Since 1990, all of the usual economic indicators show positive trends. The social indicators are mixed and almost all the environmental indicators are getting worse: more land being cleared, more species threatened, declining river health, more degraded land and rapidly increasing greenhouse gas emissions. The increasing economic production from the natural systems of Australia is coming at an environmental cost. We are funding unsustainable levels of material consumption by running down our natural capital. Or, to put it in economic terms, we are operating our ecological accounts at a heavy deficit for which our children will pay. In Tony Blair’s terms, do we really want them to blame us when they inherit degraded landscapes, or can only read about the species they will have lost?
Global studies by UNEP in its Global Environmental Outlook series show some successes, such as the concerted international effort to repair the ozone layer and “encouraging reductions in many countries” of urban air pollution. They also document global “environmental challenges” – increasing emissions of greenhouse gases, over-exploitation of water, 1200 million people without clean drinking water and twice that number without sanitation, species being lost at an increasing rate, fisheries in decline, land degradation and a range of serious problems caused by our disruption of natural geochemical cycles. Our activities are affecting global systems in complex, interactive and accelerating ways.
Last year the UN released the Millennium Assessment Report, a comprehensive report card on social, economic and environmental changes. It found that the world population has doubled in the last 40 years, but we have developed so successfully that we have more food per person now than ever before and are on average three times as wealthy as 40 years ago. The bad news is that the increased wealth has widened the gap between the rich and the poor; there are more people hungry today than 40 years ago. The worse news is that the overall level of human production is using the Earth’s resources at an unsustainable rate.
So what can we do to achieve a sustainable future? We need to move beyond the simplistic view that economic growth will solve our problems. In societies like ours where most people have the essentials of a decent life and more, economic growth does not necessarily make people happier or more fulfilled, especially when we factor in the social and environmental costs. Yet we are constantly being urged, as Clive Hamilton says, to use money we don’t have to buy things we don’t want to impress people we don’t like. In fact, Dr Richard Eckersley recently noted that the traditional seven deadly sins – pride, greed, envy, lust, laziness and so on – have been re-packaged as the marketing imperatives of the modern world!
We need a different approach, one that recognises our responsibility to future generations. There is a growing awareness around the world that a sustainable future will involve significant change. A few weeks ago, the Earth Dialogues in Brisbane saw Mikhail Gorbachev call for a huge investment in solar energy and clean water supply for the poorest countries of the world. The second report in the UN series on the global environmental outlook, GEO2000, noted that the present course is unsustainable, so doing nothing is no longer an option. The third report explored four possible future scenarios. In Markets First, our present approach, globalisation and a liberal trade agenda promote rapid economic growth, but nations are increasingly unable to prevent worsening environmental damage, and growing political instability undermines the conditions for orderly economic development. In Security First, the wealthy use force to try to suppress growing protest against ecological problems and a widening gap between rich and poor, creating a divided and violent world. In Policy First, governments take decisive action to curb environmental excesses, but it proves difficult to bring the material living standards of the poorer countries up to an acceptable level. The most hopeful scenario, Sustainability First, is based on a shift in values to make our goal satisfying basic needs for all within the limits of natural systems.
Couching the problem in those terms makes it clear that the present world is a long way from having the values needed for the transition to sustainability. We also don’t yet have the knowledge base we need to interact sustainably with natural systems. Great changes can in principle be made by policy reform, which could dramatically cut resource demands and environmental consequences of our lifestyle, but the political will to implement such a strategy is nowhere in sight. In the Hawke government’s Ecologically Sustainable Development process, nine working groups developed approaches which would bring both economic and environmental benefits in the major sectors of the Australian economy.
Fifteen years later, those consensus recommendations are still gathering dust in Canberra pigeon-holes. As the Global Scenarios Group concluded, policy reform has to overcome “the resistance of special interests, the myopia of narrow outlooks and the inertia of complacency”. As long as politicians are more concerned about the next election than the next generation, we won’t get the reforms we need.
Market-led wealth generation and government-led technological change need to be supplemented and guided by a values-led move to an alternative vision of our future. So we need courage and real leadership right now. We should see the economy as a means of serving our needs within the limits of natural systems, rather than an end in itself. We need a technological transition based on the principles of renewable resources, efficient use and “industrial ecology” – using the waste of one industrial process as the feedstock of another. We can eliminate hunger if we stabilise our population and improve distribution systems; the world now produces two kilograms of food per person per day, more than enough if it is equitably distributed. Above all, we can create a future of genuine globalisation, recognising that we share a common fate with the whole human family, rather than the false globalisation that considers only economic issues.
I want to say some specific things about energy because it is the basis of modern civilisation. We have easier lives than our grandparents did because we use much more energy: electricity, gas and transport fuels. Energy has also been used to ease other shortages. Cities without water now use desalination, but that takes energy. We have increased food supply for our growing population by farming more intensively – using energy. As we exhausted rich metal ores, we moved on to poorer deposits – but that requires more energy. Without usable energy, our society would literally grind to a halt.
We now face two serious problems.
Experts disagree about whether we are approaching the peak of world oil production, or have actually passed it. Either way, we are near the end of the age of cheap petroleum fuels. The second problem is that our use of “fossil fuels” – coal, oil and gas – is seriously changing the global climate. We have known about the problems of peak oil and climate change for decades. But Australia still has no concerted responses, no overall energy policy, just a few half-baked schemes and political stunts thrown together hastily to give the appearance of action.
Petroleum fuels are becoming more expensive as increasing demand faces slowing production. Prices are now about $1.40 per litre. To put that in perspective, it is still less than we pay for milk, orange juice, beer or cask wine, all of which can be produced sustainably! Because oil is a limited resource, we could be paying $2 a litre by the end of the year and $5 by 2010. That will have a dramatic impact, especially on those who now drive long distances in large fuel-hungry vehicles. The response should include both supply options – other transport fuels – as well as the demand side of the equation: how can we reduce our need for oil products? Some alternative transport fuels have been known and used for decades: alcohol from sugar cane and synthetic liquid fuel from gas. There are new forms of transport energy on the horizon; hydrogen produced from water by renewable energy is the most likely to be sustainable.
These alternatives will cost much more to move people and goods around. So we need a new approach. We are still squandering billions of dollars on dinosaur road schemes when the resources should be developing alternatives like better public transport, bikeways and footpaths. This would improve community health and social cohesion at the same time as slowing climate change. More fundamentally, we need urban planning to make services more accessible and reduce our need to use resources for unproductive transport.
We also need to put much less carbon dioxide into the air. There are two ways to do this. First, we must use cleaner fuels. We can’t afford to keep using old technologies that are changing the global climate – like coal-fired electricity. Using electricity to heat water or cook, rather than burning gas, puts about four times as much carbon dioxide into the air! Renewable energies, like solar or wind power, are cleaner still. These natural energy flows are huge, far greater than human energy needs. As a specific example, the entire world’s energy use for a whole year is only about double the solar energy hitting Australia in one summer day! We should get much more of our energy from sun, wind and other renewable sources. It might cost a bit more than burning coal, but it won’t impose the large and growing costs of climate change.
The Federal Department of Resources and Energy estimated in 1992 that we could get 30 per cent of our power from renewables by 2020, with no more than 10 per cent increase in cost. Even if there had been no improvement in efficiency or lowering of costs in the last 15 years, that extra price would only have been what the government added to electricity charges by the GST. In terms of renewables, we really could be an energy super-power, but our governments are clinging to a fossil approach, based on fuels that are limited in quantity and are changing the global climate. As I said here last year, nuclear power is dirty, dangerous and economically unattractive. It is too expensive, too slow and inevitably creates a dreadful legacy of radioactive waste and the potential for nuclear weapons. Just as we no longer mine asbestos, we should reject all elements of the nuclear fuel cycle. The Opposition would be wise to consider very carefully the terrible fruits of uranium mining when it reviews its uranium mining policy at its national convention next year.
Our urgent task is to develop energy supply and use patterns that would be sustainable. Advanced forms of renewable energy like hot dry rock geothermal, SLIVER cells, other new solar technologies and large wind turbines are all more promising than geosequestration or nuclear, without their associated problems.
The second part of the solution is turning energy more efficiently into the services we want. We don’t actually want energy; we want hot showers and cold drinks, the ability to cook our food, wash our clothes and move around. Most of the technology we use is very wasteful. Several European countries now have a target of cutting energy use to a quarter of the present level by efficiency improvements. Even China has mandatory fuel efficiency standards and is building cars that are much more efficient than the gas-guzzlers we are still encouraging local manufacturers to produce.
The call for a new approach is now coming from the community, from local government, from the professions and from the business sector. The Australian Business Roundtable on Climate Change recently called for a long-term aspirational target for cutting greenhouse emissions like the UK goal of 60 per cent reduction by 2050 or the California goal of 80 per cent, as well as a short-term binding target, like a 20 per cent reduction by 2020, and a clear financial signal to drive investment.
As in the USA, the Australian states are taking the lead and developing a framework for emissions trading. Contrast the approach of the State governments and the Australian Business Roundtable with the Prime Minister’s energy statement last month. The PM raised the spectre of spiralling fuel prices and wage cuts to justify not acting to price carbon and make deep cuts to greenhouse emissions. He selectively used ABARE’s worst case scenario modelling to back this up. He also took a swipe at European emission trading schemes, saying they were beset with complexities. European experts report flourishing markets, with big banks, insurance companies, hedge funds, legal and accounting firms embracing the schemes with enthusiasm.
On Four Corners this week, the Prime Minister showed the contradictions in his approach to climate change. He said emissions trading is unacceptable, even though it is supported by business and economists, because it would increase prices of electricity and petrol – yet he was quite happy to instruct an inquiry to investigate the viability of nuclear power, an industry that has never survived anywhere without massive ongoing public subsidies. He said we hadn’t ratified Kyoto, shaming us on the global stage, because it doesn’t solve the problem and doesn’t impose binding restraints on the biggest polluters, China, the USA and India. Instead he supported the AP6 move – which doesn’t solve the problem and doesn’t impose binding restraints on the biggest polluters, China, the USA and India.
This approach raises defending the indefensible to a new height. Putting a price on carbon will provide the right price signal to industry to invest in cleaner technologies than dirty, coal fired power stations. It will help our economy become more efficient and drive investment in renewable energy.
There will always be some who say we can’t afford to do things better. As the International Chemical Secretariat showed in its recent report, Cry Wolf, some vested interests have always resisted change by over-stating the costs and ignoring the benefits. When the catalytic converters that have dramatically cleaned up our urban air were proposed, some in the car industry claimed they would cost over $1000 each with a fuel consumption penalty on top, for no obvious benefit. In fact, they cost about $100 each, led to more sophisticated engines and improved fuel efficiency, and are estimated to have reduced health care costs in the UK alone by about $5 billion a year. It was claimed that measures to clean up sulphur dioxide from power stations and stop acid rain would add 25 to 30 per cent to electricity costs; they had no significant impact on prices. When regulations to clean up coal mining were proposed in the US, industry claimed it would cost between $6 and $12 per ton; it cost less than $1. The Australian Business Roundtable on Climate Change has concluded that we can afford to take strong action to reduce greenhouse pollution. More importantly, strong action now will be much better for the economy than inaction now, leading to a need for much more drastic measures in the future.
We need also to invest in science, as I told this forum ten years ago. Instead the scientific community is under pressure. Within CSIRO there is now a culture of managerialism, so wary of offending the government that scientists have been instructed not to comment on issues that have policy implications. Even universities, once prized for their belief in academic freedom, increasingly expect academics to conform. The government policy line is set, often based on ideology or whim. Science is urged to get on board the policy bandwagon. Those who support it cheerfully speak out, but those who know it to be wrong are intimidated into silence.
The recent stacking of the NH&MRC ethics committee with people likely to favour Tony Abbott’s view of the world aroused public concern. But this is only the most recent of a whole series of decisions. The independence of the Australian Research Council has been wound back and last year Brendan Nelson, as Minister, overturned ARC recommendations on advice from unqualified ideologues.
Research organisations and individual scientists now practise what a colleague called “the pre-emptive crumble”, falling over before they are pushed and taking great care not to antagonise the national government.
Given the problems we face, we must encourage new ideas and support challenges to conventional wisdom, not suppress them. The government’s short-sighted policies are systematically depriving us of the innovations and new knowledge we need.
New technology and improved efficiency are crucial, but they won’t achieve a sustainable future unless we also embrace new values. I like the idea that we should aim to become what has been called Globo sapiens, wise global citizens. Rather than the inevitably futile path of trying to dominate nature, we need to understand the limits of natural systems and live within those limits. Rather than continuing to erode the social fabric for short-term political gain, we must develop social institutions that will allow us to work together to solve our difficult problems and take the hard decisions needed for a sustainable future. Rather than seeing the level of material consumption as an end in itself, we should recognise that consumption is, at best, only a means to the end of greater satisfaction.
As a counter to the negative brainstorm I began with, let me give some specific goals we could achieve within 10 years, things to celebrate on ACF’s 50th anniversary in 2016. Australia will have dramatically cut greenhouse pollution and assumed a global leadership role in avoiding dangerous climate change, mainly by using and exporting renewable energy technology. We will enjoy sustainable cities with households using much less energy and water, producing much less waste. We will boast the world’s best national park system with substantially increased protection for our forests, rivers, wetlands, tropical savannah and oceans. We will have protected the great world-class landscapes of northern Australia, including the Kimberley and Cape York, working hand-in-hand with the traditional owners. We will be helping our neighbours in the Asia-Pacific region to protect their magnificent forests and coral reefs. I want ACF’s 40th anniversary to be a turning point on our journey into the future, the year we determined to work more effectively together to produce a sustainable way of life that will be better for all future Australians
You may think this vision is utopian, but that has been said about all the important reform movements. Those who opposed slavery two hundred years ago were told that no economy could function without slave labour, while the suffragettes were persecuted when they demanded the vote for women a hundred years ago. Only forty years ago, Indigenous people did not count as Australian citizens. Twenty years ago it was still utopian to dream of Berlin without the Wall, or South Africa without apartheid – or even such modest goals as good coffee and civilised licensing laws in Queensland! Many social reforms we now take for granted were initially denounced as utopian. They happened because determined people worked for a better world.
I remember hearing the American folk singer Pete Seeger explain to an audience why he was singing the hymn Amazing Grace in a bracket of folk songs. The hymn was written by the captain of a slave trade ship, becalmed in the Atlantic. With time to reflect on his activity, the captain decided that it was morally untenable and literally turned the ship around, sailed back to Africa and released his cargo of slaves. Seeger was encouraging us to reflect on the morality of living beyond our means at the expense of our grandchildren and develop a commitment to “turn the ship around”.
So how can we persuade people that this is an attractive option? The US economist Lester Thurow said that it is hard to tell people the party is over, especially if they haven’t got to the bar yet! I am, in those terms, telling you that one type of party is coming to an end. But I am also telling you about a better party that is starting up. It is a better party because it won’t run out of food and drink. It is a better party because it won’t leave you with a very nasty hangover of radioactive waste or disrupted global climate or despoiled natural systems. It is a better party because it is based on quality of human experience rather than gluttonous consumption. It is a better party because the neighbours won’t be enviously peering through the windows or throwing rocks on the roof, because they will all be invited. And it’s a better party because our children will be able to keep enjoying it after we are gone.
Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, reminded British voters before their 2005 election that there are always excuses for avoiding these important issues. Without a strong mandate for change, he said, we can’t be surprised when courage fails and progress is limited. I have two French postcards at home that inspire me. One says, in French, If it’s not you, my little one, who will begin to change the world? Who will do it? It reminds me that we should all do what we can to produce the sort of future we want, rather than waiting for others.
The second says Prendre des chemins de courage – take roads of courage. As Rowan Williams said, we all have a responsibility to help change popular views and give courage to our leaders to take responsibility for our future. Next year is a Federal election year. I want more of our elected politicians to have the courage to move beyond short-term economics and base their election platforms on planning for a sustainable Australia. They might be surprised at the response if they involve us as equals in serious discussion of our future.
It would be much easier to ignore these difficult issues, to enjoy our material comforts and our wonderful lifestyle – but a sustainable future is clearly a better future. Working for it is our moral duty to the countless millions of other species that we share this planet with, and the future generations for whom we hold it in trust.