Impassioned Turnbull defends climate change science | ABC News

Former Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull has used a speech in Sydney to deliver a vigorous defence of climate change science.

Delivering the Virginia Chadwick memorial lecture last night, Mr Turnbull said a war was being waged on scientists by “those opposed to taking action to cut emissions, many because it does not suit their own financial interests”.

Mr Turnbull lost the Liberal Party leadership in late 2009 over his decision to support the Rudd government’s carbon pricing scheme and his successor Tony Abbott once described the climate change science as “crap”.

Speaking to a predominantly Liberal audience, Mr Turnbull said taking action to curb emissions was not a cry from ultra-radical socialists, telling his audience even Margaret Thatcher advocated cutting greenhouse gases.

“The question of whether or to what extent human activities are causing global warming is not a matter of ideology, let alone of belief,” he said.

“The issue is simply one of risk management.

“If Margaret Thatcher took climate change seriously and believed that we should take action to reduce global greenhouse emissions, then taking action and supporting and accepting the science can hardly be the mark of incipient Bolshevism.”

Mr Turnbull said those parties currently attacking the Labor Party for its carbon tax would also attack the Coalition if it tried to implement its plan to reduce emissions.

“If we form a government and then seek to meet that 5 per cent target [by 2020] through purchases of carbon offsets from farmers and payments to polluting industry to cut their emissions, the opponents of the science of climate change will be criticising that expenditure as pointless and wasteful with as much vehemence as they are currently denouncing Julia Gillard’s carbon tax,” he said.

‘Don’t abandon the science’

Mr Turnbull said parties with vested interests were trying to muddy the waters on climate science to prolong the export of coal, comparing their actions to tobacco companies discrediting the connection between smoking and lung cancer.

“It is undoubtedly correct that there has been a very effective campaign against the science of climate change by those opposed to taking action to cut emissions, many because it does not suit their own financial interests, and this has played into the carbon tax debate,” he said.

“Normally, in our consideration of scientific issues, we rely on expert advice [and] agencies like CSIRO or the Australian Academy of Science, are listened to with respect.

“Yet on this issue there appears to be a licence to reject our best scientists both here and abroad and rely instead on much less reliable views.

“So in the storm of this debate about carbon tax, direct action and what the right approach to climate change should be, do not fall into the trap of abandoning the science.”

Vested interest

Mr Turnbull said Australia’s dependence on coal meant it should spend much more on carbon capture technology.

“Many would say no country has a greater vested interest in clean coal,” he said.

“Some people would say that as we have a vested interest in coal being burned, we should oppose that action on climate change and, rather like the tobacco companies who sought to discredit the connection between smoking and lung cancer, muddy the waters on climate science in order to prolong the export billions from coal mining.”

He also rejected the view Australia should wait for China and India to act, saying Australia’s emissions were much higher per capita.

Mr Abbott said this week that Australia’s emissions reduction target, backed by both sides of politics, was “crazy” because it would be overwhelmed by pollution increases in China.

But Mr Turnbull said Chinese emissions per capita were one-fifth of Australia’s and India’s were less than one-tenth.

“Our regular references to their [India and China's] emissions and ‘Why should we do anything until the Chinese and the Indians do something’ – they find those references incredibly galling,” he said.

“Those of us who have represented Australia at international conferences on this issue know how incredibly embarrassing statements like that are when you actually confront the representatives of those countries.”

Australia is the highest CO2 emitter per capita on the planet.

Meanwhile in China – China plans carbon trading pilot scheme | AFP

BEIJING (AFP) – China will introduce a pilot scheme for carbon emissions trading and gradually develop a national market as the world’s largest polluter seeks to reduce emissions and save energy, state media said.

China will promote the market’s development through “punitive” electricity tariffs on power-intensive industries and other new policies, Xie Zhenhua, a top climate official, was quoted by Xinhua news agency as saying on Sunday.

The report gave no timetable or other specifics on how the system would work.

However, China has said previously it hoped to introduce a pilot scheme in a handful of major cities by 2013 and expand it nationally in 2015.

Faced with severe pollution, a predicted surge in urbanisation and a struggle to ensure adequate energy supplies to fuel its rapid growth, China has outlined plans to reduce carbon emissions in its latest five-year economic plan.

Carbon trading typically involves the setting of absolute limits on how much carbon dioxide emitters such as industrial enterprises can produce.

Once those are reached they can then purchase the unused emission allowances of other parties who have come in under their limits.

Environmental analysts have said China is keen to get a functioning carbon trading market up and running soon, especially with the expiry of the Kyoto Protocol looming in 2012.

China and other developing nations have not been bound by the protocol to reduce emissions of the gases blamed for global warming and climate change.

But it remains unclear what a future new protocol would call for with China under pressure to rein in emissions growth since it surpassed the United States as the world’s largest greenhouse gas source in recent years.

As part of the carbon-trading push, China will promote development of green technologies and products through means such as preferential taxation policies, Xie, a vice minister with China’s top economic planning agency, was quoted saying.

It also would “manage growth in energy-intensive industries”, he said.

China has pledged to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide produced per unit of gross domestic product by 40 to 45 percent by the end of 2020 — essentially a pledge to slow emissions growth, but not a cut.