Climate Change. A change for a better environment

The poor outcome of the much anticipated Climate Change talks held last December in Copenhagen, Denmark highlights the political difficulty we all have with change.

Major western countries such as the United States and Australia are wedded if not welded to old technology although cheap in monetary terms is highly polluting.

Power stations for instance are mainly old fashioned coal powered in Australia. they belch out heavy noxious greenhouse gases

Today Monday the 12th of of April, 2010 Penny Wong Federal Minister for Climate Change & Water gave a lecture at QUT on the latest developments following the climate change summit last December in Copenhagen. Her lecture was very informative giving a detailed response to audience questions in relation to where the current negotiations are as to the CPRS Accord signed in Copenhagen as well as the Federal Governments multi-million dollar strategy for pollution abatement programmes.

It seems at this point in time the implementation of 4th genreation nuclewar power for Australia is off the table right now. There is a large investment in carbon cincs & Solar panel eneergy technology on a large scale.

The governments un-conditional target for carbon reductions is 5% by the year 2020. This figure will probably rise as a more conditional increase will be negotiated when further countries involved in climate negotiation treaty resolve the targets which they intend to implement.

For what I can gather the current Federal Labor Government had a mandate from the last Federal Election some 2 and a half years ago to take firm action on climate change. The governm,ent negotiated with the coalition opposition for several month's to water down the existing legislation to make it more amenable to big & small business. At the last minute the opposition squib-bed on the legislation and refused to pass it in the Senate at the same time elected a new leader in Tony Abbott who is a clear climate sceptic when it comes to taking action on change. For the most part Abbott has changed his position several times on this issue. The government needs the support of the coalition and/ or the minor parties to get it through the Senate.  I put a question to the Minister about the governments  position on the new fourth generation nuclear reactors.  The mininister said that at this stage unlike other countires such as france the government see the long lag time as a factor in not taking up the nuclear power option choosing to look at solar,carbon sequestrration, wind, gas tubine  at this point in time.

"Delivering a public lecture at the Queensland University of Technology today, Senator Wong rejected nuclear power in favour of renewable energy and carbon capture and storage of emissions from coal.

"The majority of our power still comes from coal," she said.

"If you look at the International Energy Agency's projections out to 2050, coal is still going to be a significant part of the world's energy profile - that's a fact.

"So if you want to do something about climate change you're going to have to find some technologies to address emissions from coal, otherwise you don't have a solution to climate change.

"We've got a pretty strong interest in doing that because of our coal exporting profile."

Senator Wong rejected the nuclear option.

"Nuclear power - we do have a view that that's not the sensible course when it comes to domestic power generation," she said..."