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As the Government prepares to beef up its population policy credentials, some mayors are protesting that growth is too far ahead of the transport system’s ability to cope.

 

Allan Sutherland, the Mayor of the Moreton Bay region, which is expected to absorb an extra 84,000 new homes over the next 20 years, said infrastructure was needed to accommodate growth. “You can’t just keep jamming terracotta roofs all over the place and not improve your transport system,” he said.

The poll found that 59 per cent of those surveyed were in favour of the Government working to limit the region’s population growth.

Thirty-five per cent were opposed.

The result was even more emphatic among Labor supporters, with 65 per cent in favour of population limits.

The poll also found that 59 per cent of Queenslanders thought the forecast population of 6 million for southeast Queensland by the middle of the century was too much, with 33 per cent saying it was about right.

Concern over the region’s growth has rekindled debate on a population cap for southeast Queensland, despite Premier Anna Bligh and property industry groups dismissing the idea.

Population growth will be a key issue at today’s Council of Australian Government meeting and Ms Bligh yesterday announced the involvement of scientist Tim Flannery, demographer Bernard Salt and environmentalist Ian Lowe at next year’s South-East Queensland Growth Summit on March 30 and 31.

Ms Bligh said southeast Queensland had more interstate migrants than any other state.

But she said she was yet to see “any sensible or legal way” to cap the population.

“As attractive as a population cap sounds, I think it’s misleading to imply to people that such a thing could be done,” she said.

The Wells family, who exchanged Yorkshire in the UK for Springfield Lakes, west of Brisbane, are part of the influx that has made southeast Queensland the fastest growing region in the country.

“We came here on holiday in 2002 and said we’ll be back – we just loved it,” Claire Wells said yesterday.

Mrs Wells said she and husband Shane had poured over pages on the internet devoted to Springfield Lakes and had liked what they’d seen.

“We were even more impressed when we saw it in reality,” she said.

The prospect of further growth didn’t bother Ms Wells so long as the needs of residents were met.

“There’s room for everybody and with growth comes new opportunities,” she said.

However, southeast Queensland head of the Sustainable Population Australia lobby group Simon Baltais said there must be a limit.

“Pro-growth lobbyists are ignoring the science . . . at the expense of the general community and the environment,” he said.

 

  • Our chance to protect the world’s forests.

     

    The Wilderness Society has been at the forefront promoting the role nature can play in safeguarding our climate.

    Find out more about the role we’ll be playing in Copenhagen »

    25% of greenhouse gas emissions are caused by logging and degrading forests and bushland – so protecting forests makes climate sense.

    Stopping deforestation is, in principle, cheap and simple – don’t cut them down.

    But it gets more complex when countries are asked to regulate the problem. Finding a solution to these issues is one of the strongest hopes for the Copenhagen summit.

    Our special Copenhagen page has the latest from our Climate Change Campaigner Gemma Tillack via daily blogs from the climate summit, and you’ll be able to get the latest climate tweets on our Twitter page.

    Get the latest at our special Copenhagen page »

    Thanks for your support – stay tuned in the coming days for more updates.

    The team at the Wilderness Society

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  • Newspapers unite to demand climate action in Copenhagen

    “Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage out planet, and with it our prosperity and security.”

    The newspapers range from Italy’s La Repubblica and Politiken in Denmark to The Cambodia Daily, the Irish Times and the Toronto Star.

    The crunch conference gathers 192 nations under the flag of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

    The goal is to deliver an accord that will ratchet up efforts against climate change, driven by uncontrolled emissions of heat-trapping carbon gases from fossil fuels.

  • The truth about climate: Copenhagen isn’t enough

     

    But that is still a distant ambition. In terms of hitching themselves to a model of environmentally sustainable progress, Copenhagen delegates are still haggling over the prenuptial agreement.

    Why the cold feet? The problems divide into three broad categories.

    First is money. On a simple cost-benefit analysis, the best value lies in substantial and early action, as Sir Nicholas Stern’s landmark report in 2006 found. The price of dealing with natural disasters and population movements triggered by global warming in the future is higher than the price of cutting emissions today.

    But at Copenhagen the question of cost cuts across delicate diplomatic lines. It is broadly recognised that countries that have already industrialised, and so already pumped billions of tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere, ought to subsidise the transition to greener energy elsewhere. But there is no agreement on how big the subsidy should be or how the transfer will be managed. The idea of western taxpayers, for example, helping the Chinese to develop competitive new green technology is not an easy sell in the US Senate.

    There lies the second problem: politics. A global treaty to limit emissions would require a global enforcement regime to ensure its provisions were met. That means some submission of national governments to international authorities, possibly with inspections and sanctions of some kind. The US has always been virulently opposed to any such implied subordination. But without US participation a climate deal is practically useless.

    Meanwhile, the prospect, however distant, of a global climate governance regime will surely fire the growing anti-environmentalism movement to new excesses of paranoia.

    And that is the third problem: denial of the science. The opponents of a climate deal are newly emboldened by the recent publication of hacked emails from a leading research centre, purporting to show manipulation of data and intent to suppress dissenting opinion. In fact, the emails, taken in the context of a vast and uncontroversial body of correspondence, prove nothing. They demonstrate, at worst, a cavalier prejudice against work that the correspondents deemed shoddy. They categorically fail to show the case for man-made climate change is flawed, or even exaggerated.

    The climate conspiracy theory falls apart when you consider the effort that would be required to sustain such a scam (recruiting thousands of scientists, falsifying mountains of data) and then ask what plausible motivation there could be to continue such a vast conspiratorial effort? None, is the simple answer.

    Man-made climate change is real. Copenhagen is clearly not the last major climate summit of its kind, but it must be the last one conducted in an atmosphere of public debate where science is still fighting a rearguard action against nonsense.

    It must also be the last summit where binding treaty obligations are deferred. The scientific case for action is irrefutable. So is the economic case. That just leaves the politics, where courage is the deficient commodity. The prenuptial talks have gone on too long already. The time has come to exchange the necessary vows.

  • Break-in targets climate scientist

     

    Fears of further attacks by climate-change deniers have also put Copenhagen delegates under increased pressure to reach a comprehensive deal to limit carbon emissions, with Britain’s chief negotiator, energy and climate change secretary Ed Miliband, warning last week that there was no certainty that a deal would be reached. “We need to have our foot on the gas all the time,” he said on Thursday. “We should not be complacent about getting a deal.” It was crucial that Britain, and Europe, showed ambition in setting an agenda for a tough, binding agreement and not let the efforts of climate sceptics derail negotiations, he added. “Our children will hold us in contempt if we fail now.”

    Analysts say the key to success at Copenhagen would be the establishment of a treaty in which developed countries agree to make major carbon emission cuts while developing nations make lesser, but nevertheless significant reductions of their own. Ultimately, the aim is to ensure that the world’s output of CO2 begins to decline by 2020. If this is not achieved, temperatures will rise by more than 2C and take the world into uncontrollable global warming.

    In addition, the Copenhagen summit will also have to establish a mechanism by which the west will pledge to pay billions of pounds in aid to the developing world to introduce renewable technologies and other climate-control measures. So far, there is little sign of rapprochement, particularly over the issue of cash aid from developed countries.

    “Rich nations tell us they are going to Copenhagen to seal a deal, but we say not an unfair deal. We will never give way,” said Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamed, Sudan’s ambassador to the UN. Bangladesh’s senior delegate was equally robust, describing the $10bn so far offered by the west as “peanuts”.

    However, there was more encouraging news last week when India’s prime minister, Manmohan Singh, announced he would attend the summit, joining Gordon Brown and President Barack Obama on the final day of the meeting. India is the world’s fourth biggest emitter of greenhouse gases and has just pledged to cut its carbon emissions by 20-25% by 2020. India had previously been reluctant to commit itself to carbon cuts. Singh’s new stance suggests his country is now prepared to be more co-operative.

  • Copenhagen: the african dimension

     

    Any concerted effort to tackle climate change in Africa must focus primarily on poverty reduction and the UN’s millennium development goals (MDGs), the internationally agreed effort to halve extreme poverty and hunger and reduce major diseases by 2015. Any attempt to “seal the deal” – as the secretary-general puts it – must therefore also involve a development deal for African nations and other developing regions.

    However, finalising such a deal isn’t just about responding to Africa’s vulnerabilities. It also means that we must assess how African countries can contribute to the solution.

    First, we must remember that climate change is not a problem of Africa’s making: according to estimates, the continent has contributed only 3.8% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. Further, Africa’s potential to help tackle climate change is both largely unrecognised and unrealised. For instance, thanks to the forest cover and rich topsoil found in many countries in Africa, the region represents a major carbon storehouse. African forests take in 20% of the carbon absorbed by trees across the world.

    It is now widely recognised that global temperatures should not increase more than two degrees Celsius as compared with pre-industrial levels. The world will not be able to achieve that goal without reducing emissions from land use and leveraging the untapped capacity of ecosystems to store carbon. Africa has a central role to play in that process.

    The climate deal that replaces the Kyoto protocol in 2012 could result in important additional funds for developing countries. These funds could represent a primary source of development financing for the continent. Climate change management thus offers a number of “win-win” opportunities for African countries to both reduce the adverse effects of climate change and address some of their deep-rooted development concerns such as access to energy, food security and the prevention of crises and conflicts.

    While these key issues should serve as the core pillars of Africa’s engagement in the negotiations, the next question is how to transform these opportunities into concrete actions and results.

    Africa will require urgent support for the formulation of climate change strategies as well as upfront financing to take highly effective measures for adaptation and mitigation.

    Because of the sheer impact and magnitude of climate change on the continent, African leaders at national and sub-national levels (regions, provinces and municipalities) must not only co-ordinate their responses to its effects but also ensure that they are in line with existing development plans.

    With over 70% of greenhouse gas emissions influenced by local behaviours and investment choices, sub-national authorities, which are often responsible for making key decisions on the ground, will be essential actors in this process.

    African policymakers are aware of the need to co-ordinate climate strategies, as exemplified by a recent declaration, signed by 30 African ministers, which speaks of “a consolidated framework to ensure coordination and coherence …of climate change initiatives and sustainable development plans in Africa at all levels.” As such, one of the immediate priorities will be the creation of a fund that would build the capacities of developing countries in preparing such low-carbon and climate-resilient strategies.

    In addition, a range of resources – from grants and loans to fiscal measures and market-based instruments – will be needed for successful mitigation and adaptation on the ground. Additional aid is also urgently required to complement the new adaptation fund of the UN framework convention on climate change (UNFCCC), which is helping vulnerable countries to meet the costs of adaptation.

    Market-based instruments are essential. If properly reformed, the clean development mechanism (CDM) and other carbon market schemes could play a significant role in funding a broad portfolio of renewable energy and energy-efficient options in Africa. These could represent more than 180 gigawatts of additional power generation. That is more than twice the region’s total existing capacity.

    Biocarbon, the carbon sequestered and stored in the world’s trees, plants, soil and oceans, offers similarly attractive investment options that could significantly contribute to reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.

    The stakes and options are clear. If world leaders seal the deal – and ensure that it is a deal for development – the result could be a huge new boost in the fight for human development and environmental sustainability in Africa.