Professor Ian Lowe told a packed room at Peregian Beach Community Association’s meeting today that while China’s share of emissions is 27% and Australia’s share is only 1.5%, Australia’s per capita emissions at 15.8 tonnes/year are ahead of the rest of the world including USA (15.5), Canada (15.3) etc except for Saudi Arabia (16.9).
Therefore, each of us obviously can do our bit to assist with addressing what he referred to as a “climate emergency”. It is the scale and pace of recent change which is creating the emergency with a wide range of impacts.
He also stated that the cost of providing new power in Australia favours wind ($40/MWh) large scale solar ($40) and wind or solar + storage ($60) compared to baseload gas ($90) and new coal fired power ($120).
To debunk the suggestion that renewables cannot supply our needs, he pointed to South Australia, where wind and solar supplied over 50% of total power consumption last year and on many days it met 100% of demand and exported the surplus to Victoria.
He concluded by saying we need adaption strategies. We influence the future and we need to move to cleaner energy and more efficient use of it.
His message was to act locally but that we need to convince the members of Federal Parliament that we are concerned about climate change if we expect them to act.
