Larissa Brown is the 2008 Australian Young Environmentalist of the Year. She is the founder and executive director of the Centre for Sustainability Leadership, a non profit organisation dedicated to supporting Australians to make their communities, workplaces and sectors more sustainable. Real Dirt asked her to put some thoughts together for a guest viewpoint…. 

In the US Barack Obama went from outside chance to presumptive president by adopting the language of change. Whether or not it is matched by underlying substance, the language itself has clearly proved inspirational. Perhaps Americans are ready to ask better of their leadership.

Here, the abject pettiness of the past months petro-politics is embarrassing. Each party threw fits of moral outrage over the demerits of the other’s proposal. The only thing that appears to have retained solid bipartisan support is ongoing myopia. The studiously avoided fact is this: governments fail the petrol-dependent public, not by refusing to cut a few cents in the dollar on a product tipped to head north of $200 a barrel by year’s end, but by continuing to heavily favour a set of policies that consolidate that dependence.

For over a decade, there has been an urgent case for a wholesale paradigm shift from oil-dependence to one in which issues of sustainability (which the current petrol debate undoubtedly forms a part) are given central consideration in infrastructure planning. Compare real expenditures for road versus public transport infrastructure (any year, any government); take just a cursory peek at the Victorian state government-commissioned Eddington report, or simpler still, catch the 8:30 Flinders Street train from Caulfield. Take a shoehorn.

On the environmental front, the urgency has never been greater. Until recently, it was thought that stabilising greenhouse gas (GHG) levels at around 450 ppm (parts per million) would be likely to contain global temperature increase below 2 degrees C. This represents a critical threshold: above this level, feedback mechanisms built into the earth system are likely to become self-sustaining and drive continued warming until our climate reaches a very different state, regardless of what we do. The rate of climatic change would be such that ecological and human systems would be unable to evolve or adapt in step, and would almost certainly suffer catastrophic damage as a result.

In this context, to describe as ‘petty’ the sniping over a few cents a litre seems like world championship understatement. In small part at least, Rudd Labor rode to electoral victory with a mandate for action on climate change. Kyoto was a popular no-brainer. The current policy of a 60% reduction in emissions by 2050 is – if applied globally – broadly consistent with stabilisation of GGH to only 550ppm, and is therefore dangerously anachronistic. Several years ago, when Nicholas Stern’s economic review of climate change advocated the same target, it was understood to be consistent with a change of 3 degrees C. In light of the research presented above, the change may be closer to 6 degrees C.

It’s not all bad news. Between oceans and terrestrial ecosystems, the earth system currently absorbs close to half of anthropogenic emissions (though there is some indication that this is declining as the earth warms). Therefore, we reduce CO2 levels by bringing emissions below this capacity. Stabilisation alone means that global emissions must be cut by at least 50% in the short term. Even if this is achieved by 2020, we will still approach 400 ppm in this period.

This data is drastically at odds with the targets being tossed around at present, and it is therefore easy to dismiss as politically naïve and wishful thinking. But if this is what must realistically be done to stabilise our climate system, how does the dismissive rhetoric help the dire situation we are facing? The earth’s system won’t respond differently just because we achieved 10, 25 or even 50% of what is required to avoid the point of no return. Granted, democracies are built on the idea of brokering compromise between competing interests, yet there are situations that require a complete solution to go forward: there could scarcely be a clearer example than climate change. The crucial question is, what other interests do we consider to be in conflict with the preservation of the planet’s life support system?

As the situation stands, we have at hand a great diversity of tools and technologies already capable of doing the job. Provided that we make a real and deep commitment to far-sighted policies that create incentives for changes in lifestyle and for technological innovation, the future holds a promising future. On the other hand, if we continue to sink investment into infrastructure that, at best, hinders out ability to face future challenges, we only increase the inertia that must be overcome to adopt more forward-thinking policies later.

We should be honest about the fact that these changes will carry large upfront costs. These costs must be considered as what they are: a crucial outlay to ensure a better future. We routinely accept a similar bargain in our private lives – the money spent on buying or renting a home, for example, means less money available elsewhere. But we happily accept this constraint because it provides a basis for future prosperity. If it is a sacrifice at all, it is a strategic one that we usually call ‘investment’. Whatever the transition costs, they pale in comparison to those associated with the profoundly negative environmental consequences of our current trajectory.

Making a successful transition to a sustainable world is something we can do because we must. The potential power of transition can be measured when we look at the tens of millions of dollars that fossil fuel interests have invested on climate change disinformation campaigns. Those involved envision the very same possibility as the environmental groups they oppose: a future where fossil carbon is simply left in the ground. However, where one group looks to free economies and citizens from the submissive position in a relationship of dependence, the other looks to strengthen that relationship by denying the catastrophic effect of their product on the earth with only one agenda in mind: profits.

When we begin to understand the future as something that is open to negotiation, we will inevitably reoccupy the democratic space that has been filled in our absence by lobby groups and narrow industry interests. And we should, and will demand more than the unfortunate followship that has characterised the past few weeks of public debate.

It will also relieve us of the weight of despair that comes from the belief that a grim future is simply our lot. The truth is that we live in exciting times. We stand at a divide between two futures – in one direction lies not a technological revolution, but one in which our development as a whole is predicated upon an understanding of ourselves as part of a complete system upon which we rely for our survival; on the other side lies the unimaginable trauma that extends from the mistaken belief that we somehow stand apart from and above it. Which one would you choose?