Throughout 2007 Australians had the luxury of feeling virtuously green by doing not a great deal. One only had to turn off the light in the next room, shop with a Woolworths green bag, ride to work once or twice a month and sign the odd Get Up email petition to get that warm, green feeling inside. Because the Australian Prime Minister of the time, John Howard, suffered what's known as 'quarry vision' and hadn't yet accepted climate change as a serious concern, Australians were basically let off the hook: with no emission reduction targets to aspire to, any contribution, no matter how insignificant, was a plus.
But 2007 was also 'two thousand and Kevin', the year Australians ditched their old PM in favour of someone who proported to offer them a future, instead of a man who traded on his past. High up on his list of done-wrongs was the former PM's failure to grasp the extent to which Australians actually noticed when it did and didn't rain, and why. As the rest of the world eyed the country's worst drought in a thousand years as one of the more photogenic indications of global warming, Australians were left to ponder the wisdom of a man who thought signing the Kyoto Protocol was against the national interest, spending twice as much on government advertising as he did fighting climate change.
Howard really appeared to have lost his marbles when he claimed his so-called Sydney Declaration - consisting of voluntary targets between APEC members - would provide a better fix, despite the fact that its measures would lead to an 130% increase in carbon emissions by mid-century.
A change of government at the November 2007 election signaled the growing importance of climate change to an increasingly nervous and alarmed electorate. But Australia's new Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, the ex-diplomat, already appears to be a leader who will put Australia' sovereign political interests ahead of our global responsibilities to tackling this planetary emergency. While Rudd signed the Kyoto Protocol in his first act after being sworn in as Prime Minister, he refused to commit to the 25-40 per cent emissions reduction target by 2020 put on the table at Bali. His chief achievement was instead tactical, in helping to ensure China and the US remain at the negotiating table despite their divergent interests. The objective here is not to be 'led by the science' but to reach an agreeable outcome for everyone, no matter how watered down and ineffectual it may be.
Already it's looking like Bali may be worth even less than Kyoto, even while the scientific community becomes more and more alarmed at the current rate of climatic change.
In his book The Revenge of Gaia, scientist James Lovelock has compared the Kyoto Protocol to the 1938 Munich Agreement, when Europeans states tried to politely appease Hitler's ambitions. Only the full force of Hitler's aggression would galvanise them into action. As Churchill said of Munich: "Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting". We must now hope that a policy of appeasement toward climate change is not Rudd's arch-strategy.
Meanwhile, Australia has some tough work ahead of it during 2008. Right now the country's emissions are heading above the Kyoto Protocol target of 108 percent of 1990 levels by 2012. UN Framework Convention on Climate Change figures show that Australia is 25.6 percent over the 1990 benchmark, and with current growth rates at around 1.5 per cent per year it looks like we'll hit 130% by 2012. When you hear Australian Environment Department officials insisting we're on track to meet our Kyoto targets, you need to know why: before ultimately refusing to ratify Kyoto in 2002 Australia had negotiated itself a special loophole in the Kyoto reporting framework (known as the 'Australia clause') which allowed us to include reductions in land clearing to buffer (i.e reduce) our reported emissions.
Australia's whole positioning in the climate negotiations for the next two years will depend on convincing the world that Australia is genuine. We can fudge the statistics to improve our own interests, keep clearing our greatest carbon sinks - native forests - and export our growing emissions to developing countries through trading regimes. As the ABC reported in December, it was with exquisite timing that on the day that bulldozers went into the Styx Valley in Tasmania to clear-fell ancient forests holding 1,400 tonnes of carbon per hectare, Peter Garrett stood in front of a banner in Bali saying "Save Wildlife. Reduce Carbon Emissions" and talked about biodiversity benefits of saving forests.
Australians can continue to rely on sloganeering and piecemeal action to save the planet, to little effect. Ultimately though, this country will just keep getting dryer and hotter. In Australia climate change means the major cities moving the equivalent of hundreds of kilometres inland - Sydney to Dubbo, Melbourne to Echuca, Perth to Kalgoorlie. It's happening now. The Murray Darling Basin, which produces one-third of the country's food supply, is experiencing its worst drought on record, exacerbated by temperatures which in the measured analysis of the Bureau of Meteorology 'surpass previous records by a considerable margin'.
2008 might be '2000-and-gr8' but if so that's going to require some serious emissions dieting. In lieu of our great leaders agreeing to mandatory and global cuts, it will be up to individuals to do what they can.
To George Monbiot, perhaps the most important crisis here is a personal one, inside each and everyone of us. He writes: "What did YOU do when it counted? What part did YOU play? What kind of a person will the crisis of climate change expose you to be? In the end, there are no more important questions than these: Who are you? Why are you here?"
Citizens of the developed nations need to show those in the developing world what really matters - a new car, or enough rain to grow the crops that feed us? We also need to show 'future generations' - like the angry kid here - that we have their interests at heart, or face their wrath.
So its a year to slow down: shop less, walk and ride more, fly as little as you possibly can and keep telling our politicians what really counts here; our land, our future, our food supplies, our water. Our planet.
Climate change is not just a great new business proposition. It is a planetary emergency the likes of which we've not seen before.
Welcome to the slow lane. And have a gr8 year.