Global warming turns up political heat in Australia by Lawrence Bartlett
Thu Apr 12, 2:31 AM ET
SYDNEY (AFP) - Global warming is turning up the political heat in Australia, the only country in the world to have joined the United States in refusing to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on climate change.
With scientists warning that prized coastal homes are threatened by rising sea levels and rich farmlands are drying up, Prime Minister John Howard has undergone an election-year conversion from sceptic to activist.
Just six months after refusing to meet visiting former US vice-president Al Gore, now a campaigner against global warming, Howard has put climate change high on the agenda for a summit with state premiers Friday.
"I think we should have an intelligent discussion about climate change because there are roles and responsibilities for both levels of government," Howard said.
Among the proposals to be considered is a 300 million dollar (240 million US) project to map the impact of global warming on what is already the world's driest continent, local media reported.
The digital map would help pinpoint communities that face being washed away by rising sea levels and predict where rivers will run, possibly pointing to a radical shift of major agriculture from the drying south to the wetter north.
The summit comes hard on the heels of the release in Brussels last week of a major report by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which highlighted the threats to Australia.
The scientists predicted loss of high-value coastal land by 2050 due to rising sea levels and storms, increased droughts and major damage to World Heritage ecosystems such as the Great Barrier Reef.
One of the scientists who provided expert advice to the IPCC said the famous reef off Australia's east coast, treasured as the world's largest living organism, could be dead in 20 years.
Warmer, more acidic seas were killing the coral, said Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg of the Australian Research Council.
A conference in Sydney this week brought global warming threats even closer to home, with business risk analyst Karl Mallon warning that coastal residents would suffer the impact even before sea levels rise.
Mallon said the value of a home would plunge by up to 80 percent if it was assessed as uninsurable because of the dangers posed by severe weather events caused by climate change.
An Australian author of the UN report, Nick Harvey, said people wanting to live by the sea may have to pay a levy to fund costly coastal protection measures.
Despite softening his stance on climate change as opinion polls show widespread public concern about the issue, Howard still refuses to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.
He has criticised the agreement on the grounds that it did not commit developing countries to the same greenhouse gas restrictions as those imposed on industrialised nations.
Australia is a major exporter of the fossil fuels such as coal which emit the gases and is one of the worst polluters on a per capita basis, but Howard's continued refusal to ratify Kyoto puzzles some critics.
"I don't know that there is a logical reason," eminent scientist Tim Flannery, who was named Australian of the Year for 2007, told AFP
"I think everyone would agree he has a streak of stubbornness in him but I can't believe he would be so stubborn as to put that before the interests of the country.
"I see the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol as being supremely important, because what's happening at the moment is the Chinese are citing our recalcitrance as an excuse for them not to do anything."
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