State Plan is a plan to deceive
November 26th, 2006
Even as Premier Morris Iemma struts the media stage spruiking his government’s newly greened image, a careful reading of our new State Plan shows it to be little more than a well-spun apology for roads and the coal industry. If you care about mitigating climate change, it is a disaster.
And yet, encouragingly, the plan targets a 60% reduction in greenhouse emissions by 2050. What could be wrong with that?
Unfortunately they are just empty words.
For a start, look at the transport strategy.
It aims to ‘curb growth in transport emissions while maximising transport choice’. In other words, this government is planning to INCREASE transport emissions, which already make up 14% of existing emissions.
‘Maximising transport choice’ translates to upgrading roads at the expense of rail, condemning NSW to a truck and car-based transport future.
The Draft Plan had prioritised an increase in the proportion of freight moved by rail compared to road. This priority has been dropped in the final version which curiously offers a few rather puzzling excuses — that regional areas had shown ‘confusion’ about this during consultation, and it was mainly the web-based responses that favoured it. Huh?
Instead, the plan offers almost laughable solutions like encouraging businesses to transport their road freight out of peak hours to relieve congestion. ‘Sorry about that delivery you need, madam, but Mr Iemma wants us to leave it in the warehouse until 10am.’ As if!
The Greens would have liked to see a transport priority framed more like this: ’significantly reduce transport emissions through moving more freight by rail and providing effective public transport and cycling options to as many people as possible.’
The plan does not even mention cycling, although there is a feelgood picture of a cyclist in the chapter on health and obesity.
On public transport, the plan targets a woeful three percent shift from cars to PT in ten years’ time. Compare this to Strasbourg which has achieved a 56 percent shift in the past ten years!
These figures reveal the truth behind the state’s much-vaunted rail system upgrades — welcome as they are, they amount to little more than a catch-up following decades of neglect.
Energy targets
Mr Iemma is dining out on his ‘commitment’ to converting 15% of the state’s power load to renewables by 2020. It’s probably enough to satisfy most voters that we are doing our bit in the climate change battle.
Again though, the devil is in the detail. Power generation contributes 48% of our greenhouse load. So 15% of that is only 7.2% of an increasing total. It’s hard to see how we are to achieve the targeted 60% reduction by 2050!
But wait, there’s more.
The government will ‘consider’ forming an innovations strategy for key industries. The only industry singled out for help is the coal industry. The potentially jobs-rich renewable energy sector does not rate a mention.
With policies like this, the target of 60% by 2050 is just pie in the sky. A more realistic view is implied in the medium term target: reducing emissions to year 2000 levels by 2025. But given the plethora of weasel words like ‘commit’ and ‘consider’ in the plan, even this modest target seems doubtful.
In short, the plan is a greenwash, a sop to the roads lobby and the coal industry. The real strategy is: ‘do too little too late and leave it to our grandkids to fix the mess’.
