Australia's frontier mentality in denial over energy

By Sid Astbury Jun 26, 2006, 3:37 GMT

Sydney - Petrol sales fell for the first time ever last year as price-shocked Australians traded in their four-wheel-drive vehicles for less thirsty cars, took fewer trips and gave public transport another go.

'Drivers have clearly altered their behaviour,' said Craig James, an economist at the CommSec brokerage.

What has not changed, however, is the country's energy policy.

Coal is to power 90 per cent of its electricity generation, and the official target for renewable energy sources is stagnating at 2 per cent of the mix.

Furthermore, Prime Minister John Howard's conservative government plans to do little to crimp an oil-import bill expected to rise above 10 billion Australian dollars (7.5 billion US dollars) this year as Australia looks to imports for about half its oil needs.

'The reality is that the older fuels, of which we have large supplies, are going to contribute the bulk of our energy needs,' Howard said when assuring the country's 120,000 coal miners that their jobs were safe. 'The energy advantage provided by our resources is something that Australia must not throw away.'

Opinion polls consistently showed that people want the government to do something about climate change, but the reality is that Australians are ready to vote out any government, state or federal, that tries to reduce global warming by addressing its causes.

The only vehicles manufactured in Australia are six-cylinder jobs that drink petrol - a product line that the federal government supports with big subsidies.

Allan Evans, president of the NRMA motoring association terms this 'unfortunate' but adds: 'It's been part of the Australian culture for a long time.'

Australians, who pump out more greenhouses gases per capita than even the Americans, who lead the world on nation-by-nation production, maintain a sentimental attachment to the time before environmentalism.

What some call the 'frontier mentality' shows up in a tree-clearance rate on a par with most developing countries.

The pricing of its natural resources is also low, and only the United States has cheaper petrol and bigger engines.

In another bow to its ally, Canberra joined Washington as the only governments of rich countries to refuse to sign the Kyoto Protocol, a United Nations instrument negotiated in Japan in 1997 that sets binding targets for developed countries to reduce the greenhouse-gas emissions linked to global warming. Howard said that joining 55 countries in trying to reduce emissions would reduce the country's prosperity.

And only in Sydney, where the dams are half-empty and the world's biggest desalination plant is planned, could a politician court votes by promising its 4 million residents that they would never suffer the indignity of Londoners and be obliged to wash their cars with recycled water.

Only 15 billion litres of Sydney's water is recycled each year, equivalent to 2 per cent of its water use.

'Recycling is a good strategy, but it will not solve Sydney's water problems,' Utilities Minister Frank Sartor said.

'There is no market for this water,' he said. 'It is not a practical answer.'

Meanwhile, Australia continues to rely on coal for power. The country, a massive continent with one of the world's lowest population densities, doesn't have even one nuclear power plant.

By comparison, France, in the heart of one of the most densely settled areas on the planet, looks to nuclear power plants for three- quarters of its electricity.

Howard, citing the need for Australia to respond to high oil prices impacting on the lifestyle of its people, said in May that nuclear power was an option that should be on the table.

After all, Australia has a third of the world's easily recoverable reserves of uranium and is an exporter of the nuclear feedstock to 26 countries.

'I have a very open mind on the development of nuclear energy in my own country, and that includes an open mind on whether or not Australia should in fact process uranium for the purposes of providing fuel for nuclear power in the future,' the prime minister said.

But Australians tell opinion pollsters that theirs is not the sort of country to have nuclear power plants. The opposition Labour Party also frowns on the atomic option.

'The problems of cost, safety, waste disposals and nuclear proliferation in the climate of terrorism are more acute today than they have ever been,' said Labor environment spokesman Anthony Albanese.

He also played to the frontier mentality, saying voters would punish any government that sang from a different songsheet.

'When it comes to the nuclear debate,' Albanese said, 'let's hear from the prime minister where the nuclear reactors will be sited, in what electorates, in what areas outside capital cities and where the nuclear waste will be stored.'