POSTKYOTO CONVERSATIONS
SPRING/SUMMER 2009-2010

A user-pays climate: whatever happened to Article 3?                    Peter Vintila

  I almost cried as I watched Tim Flannery interviewed all the way from New York a few weeks on Lateline. He argued that Rudd deserved a break: the Govt’s ETS was worth passing. Flannery also argued that more pressure should be put on the world’s poor – especially the Chinese and Indians. Favouring the rich over the poor has become neo-liberal wall paper in our culture so Tony Jones let it pass....  more

Climate war? Australia gets it wrong twice over                    Peter Vintila

  The recent Defence White Paper acknowledges possible future security risks associated with climate change but makes little of them. They won’t matter until 2030. For whatever reason, Australia is dithering. It is also at odds with a US defence establishment that began its serious thinking on the security implications of climate change in 2003...  more

"A tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing …"                    Peter Vintila

  The Prime Minister lacks Macbeth’s sense of the dark absurd … and Shakespeare’s brilliant wit. He is a man with a reckless mission and currently in a transcontinental flap. The world of global climate change policy is not taking it seriously enough, not moving fast enough for him...  more

Birdsong, wilderness and bio-fuels                    Peter Vintila

  By chance. these few words from a piece in Eurekalert, recently caught my eye: “… wildlife habitat, particularly that of the birds who call this country's grasslands home, is threatened” – threatened by the rapidly expanding production of crop based bio-fuels. The article is at once richly informative and suggests imaginative solutions.  more

John Howard’s off the planet…                    Peter Vintila                    April 2007

  Governments are just beginning to wake to the reality of climate change. It’s taken just some three decades of concentrated  scientific discussion and warning. The latest, just released and genuinely alarming Climate Change 2007 summary report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC – http://www.ipcc.ch/ ) builds on a now huge body of accumulated scientific effort and the work of thousands of scientists…. more


Nature’s economy comes first – even the ABC… Peter Vintila             April  2007

The press is full of climate change discussion now - following Stern and Gore last year and the IPCC a couple of weeks ago.  Yes, the issue is commanding a lot of column inches and air time at the moment.  But much of that space and time is actually devoted to discrediting the case for caution or those who argue for far-reaching change…. more

 

People’s climate change festival – for the sake of  democracy as well as the planet (An open letter to Bob Brown)                         Peter Vintila                              May  2007

Dear Bob
As we move into the 7th year of the new century, our democracy is becoming more uncertain.  Economic globalisation, although perhaps a fading force, is still eroding constructive political authority everywhere and terrorism is not helping either.  But now a crowded and wearying planet could make things worse. That’s why I write to you.  We do not hear a lot about democracy in current energy and climate change discussions – much more about rising sea levels and extreme weather or, more recently, loss of life, limb and GDP…. more  

 

Postmodern or Postkyotan ?                          Peter Vintila                            May 2007

Anyone navigating their way to this essay will have a basic understanding of global warming, of the need to reduce some half dozen global greenhouse gas emissions, most notably carbon dioxide or CO2. They will also be familiar with the Japanese city of Kyoto and the now famous but  also infamously slow Kyoto Protocol agreed to in principle in 1997 – but not fully drafted or ratified until 2005…..What’s so special about the Protocol and why was its birth difficult?  The answer is the same for both questions.  It arguably takes international governance of the global environmental commons in general and climate change management in particular, another step forward….. more 

 

Faking Decisions for the Future: Climate Change        Peter Vintila       June 2007
A critical appraisal of the WA Government’s May 2007 climate change action statement. ….. more 

 

Beyond Kyoto:        Peter Vintila       November 2007
New directions for climate change treaty thinking ….. more 

 

User pays won't save the planet :        Peter Vintila       November 2007
The principle of user pays won't save the planet ….. more 

 

INDONESIA PROVIDES HOSPITALITY AND WIT IN BALI:        Peter Vintila       December 2007
What will it take to save the planet? ….. more 

 

FISCAL CONSERVATIVES AND OTHER FOOLS IN BALI:        Peter Vintila       December 2007
Fiscal conservatism is a miserable aspiration – and disempowering as well. ….. more 

 

Coffee, confection and the trillion dollar climate connection! :        Peter Vintila       March 2008
A recent UN study calls for a $20 trillion global investment in climate change abatement over the next 20 years. ….. more 

 

Bali’s roadmap to nowhere… :        Peter Vintila and Miyume Tanji (draft paper)       July 2008
This paper reflects critically on the recent United Nation’s Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference in Bali. It argues that the Conference served to undermine the Convention’s Article 3: the principle of common and differentiated responsibility. The importance of this can hardly be overstated ….. more 

 

Garnaut favours internationalist strategies — and will soon be very lonely :        Peter Vintila        July 2008
First the bad news: the human species is currently discharging 28 gigatons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere each year. That’s about twice as much as the planet can reabsorb into terrestrial and marine carbon sinks — so we should be cutting back to half of that as quickly as possible ….. more