You will recall the letter that was sent to many people during February last concerning the establishment of the Lavoisier Group and a proposed workshop on Australian greenhouse science and policy that was to be held in early April. The April workshop was postponed because the time allowed was too short. Many of you are aware that the new date for what is now a conference rather than a workshop is 23-24 May, and I am writing to confirm those dates.

In the meantime The Lavoisier Group is being incorporated, with the declared aim of ensuring that there is a proper debate within Australia not only about the strongly contested science of greenhouse, but also about the economic consequences, to all Australians, of a commitment by the Commonwealth Government to the establishment, by statute, of a unilateral carbon withdrawal regime.

The Commonwealth Environment Minister, Senator Robert Hill, admitted, in a Lateline interview on 19 April last, that Australia’s Kyoto target requires a 30 percent reduction in CO2 emissions from a business as usual trajectory.  What will be required, in the first instance, if Senator Hill’s Kyoto target is to be achieved, is the closure of all of Australia’s export industries which are located here precisely because we have low-cost, coal-based electricity, together with the closure of the generating plant which provides electricity for those industries.

A current example of opportunities now being cast aside, is the immediate threat to the investment of nearly $4 billion in a new LNG plant on the North West Shelf. This project is held up because the Commonwealth Government will not make a commitment to indemnifying the project from the impact of a CO2 emissions tax. Already, then, Australian investment and Australian jobs are at risk because of a treaty which has not been ratified, which is unlikely to be
ratified, but which powerful Ministers and bureaucrats are doing everything they can to bring into being by pushing Australia out into the front of the pack, without any regard to Australia’s national interest.

The threat to the North-West shelf LNG plant is merely a foretaste of things to come. Implementation of the Kyoto regime could bring to an end all investment in Australia predicated on the use of our low-cost energy. Mineral processing will go off-shore, and mining itself, an energy intensive industry, will find it much harder to remain competitive.

Farming is also energy intensive. Fertilisers, diesel fuel, pesticides, and other agricultural chemicals, are all energy intensive products, and so Australia’s farmers, already under huge pressure from subsidised production in Europe and the US, will find economic survival, under a carbon withdrawal regime, even more difficult than it now is.

The chief impact of a carbon withdrawal regime will be felt in rural and regional Australia. The cities will suffer a decline in their standard of living. But unemployment and bankruptcy will be concentrated in those regions of Australia which have developed because of the availability of low-cost energy.

I raise these matters to emphasise how few is the number of Australians who are aware of the nature of the changes which are in the Kyoto pipeline. As the debate between Senator Hill, Don Henry of the ACF, and Professor Ian Noble, on the Lateline programme cited above demonstrates, the arguments are about whether Australia is moving quickly enough to suppress the supply of low-cost electricity. There is no discussion, at all, of the economic and social consequences of such a regime.

In the light of these considerations I invite you to come to the Lavoisier Group conference
 “Kyoto and the National Interest”
and to pass on this invitation to your friends and colleagues.

Yours sincerely
 
 

Peter Walsh
President
 

inquiries regarding the Lavoisier Group:
C/- P O Box 424
Collins Street West     Victoria   8007
Tel:  03 9685 6479
Fax:  03 9685 6400

other inquiries melb@aie.org.au
 
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