Australia: Ambitious on Cigarettes but not Climate Change
Today, Australia introduced the most ambitious policy in the world to regulate cigarette packaging, and protect the health of all Australians. As someone who has seen the impacts of smoking affect my family, this is a welcome change. But when it comes to climate change, I am deeply concerned that Australia’s lack of ambition here at the UN climate negotiations undoes this good work, and threatens the health of all of us.
In the months leading up to Doha, Australia’s confirmation that it was ready to continue its commitments under the Kyoto Protocol was a cause to celebrate. After nearly a year of uncertainty, Australia had transferred its domestic action into the international arena. Already this has had a considerable impact on these negotiations.
On day one in Doha, Australia was applauded for its decision to continue its Kyoto commitments. Both developed and developing countries highlighted this in their opening speeches as one of the key pieces of the climate puzzle that had once again found its place.
But when the news was released that Australia had only committed to an emissions reductions pledge of 0.5% of its 1990 emissions, the applause stopped. And the silence sat still.
As an Australian, sitting in the halls and listening to our representatives announce to the world that we had abandoned scientific reasoning, and did not feel that it was our responsibility to make a significant contribution to solving a problem that will deeply affect not only our pacific island neighbors, but our own farmers - I felt a sense of shame. My grandfather was a farmer. And I want my grandchildren to be farmers too.
But if we don’t take concrete action to limit climate change below 2 degrees celsius, the potential temperature and rainfall variations that might occur across the South-East of Australia would make this an almost impossibility. At least in the way I would like to imagine it. As it states in our own submission to the UN in September:
In 2008-09, the Australian Government conducted a comprehensive national review of drought policy. This review found that Australian farmers faced an increased risk of drought over the next 20 to 30 years
What’s more, it would affect the health of Australian farmers as well. As Australia’s submission to the UN in October states:
Rural communities that experience downturns or disruptions in production due to changes in climate and environment are widely expected to experience stress, and, for many, depression. A decade of recent experience with drought and reduced farm yields in the southern parts of Australia underscore the risks of community morale, livelihoods, and health. One study of Australia’s most populous state (New South Wales) found that a decrease in annual rainfall by 300mm leads to an increase in the suicide rate by about 8% over the long-term average suicide rate.
And it is not only Australia’s farmers who will be negatively affected. According to the government’s own reports to the UN:
Even small changes in our environment can have dramatic effects on the human body. Serious heat stroke and even death can occur after a relatively short time if a person’s core body temperature exceeds 42 degrees Celsius. A three-day heatwave at around 43 degrees Celsius in the city of Melbourne in 2009 led to 980 deaths, an estimated 62 percent increase above normal fatality levels. Rising temperatures threaten the health of everybody, while those least able to respond will be the most at risk.
But this understanding of the human health impacts of climate change is something that seems to be easily forgotten in these political negotiations. Countries like Nauru have pleaded that “Doha is a matter of survival.”
And this is in no means false. Nauru is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world when it comes to the impacts of climate change. But the health impacts of climate change are being felt across the world. According to the World Health Organisation:
- Global warming that has occurred since the 1970s caused over 140 000 excess deaths annually by the year 2004.
- The direct damage costs to health (i.e. excluding costs in health-determining sectors such as agriculture and water and sanitation), is estimated to be between US$ 2-4 billion/year by 2030.
But even as countries such as Venezuela and the European Union have called for dramatic increases in Australia’s ambition to tackle climate change, we have remained content to sit behind the barriers of diplomatic dodgem-cars and bump up against every call to reason with a carefully rehearsed response, placing the burden of climate change mitigation squarely on every other nation’s shoulders. In a press statement, Minister for Climate Change Greg Combet stated that
“The commitment to sign Kyoto 2 is contingent upon countries around the world taking action on climate change and continued progress on a new agreement.”
But at the moment, the whole world is looking at us. Our lack of political will to combat climate change is causing serious geopolitical concerns. Many negotiators here in Doha that I have spoken to from both developed and developing nations feel that a number of our current positions regarding the Kyoto protocol may threaten to destabilize the globally binding Durban package, which is due to be finalized in 2015. And this would have unquestionable consequences for the health impacts
It is simply that we are not doing enough. And when report after scientific report states that developing nations such as Australia need to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by between 25-40% of our emissions levels in 1990, and our current targets sit at 0.5%, I can understand their outrage.
But how can it be that Australia can be so ambitious when it comes to cigarette’s, but lacks the same ambition when it comes to combating the local and international health impacts of climate change?




About the author
Chris WrightClimate researcher, political ecologist, activist and an award-winning slam poet from Australia.