Kyoto 'a slogan, not a solution'

ENVIRONMENT Minister Ian Campbell today stood firm on Australia's long standing refusal to sign onto the Kyoto protocol to limit greenhouse gas emissions, declaring it a slogan not a solution.
Senator Campbell, fresh back from the UN framework conference on climate change in Switzerland, backed urgent action on climate change but with better quality practical international action.
He said there was a sense of frustration that the whole process was becoming too bureaucratic and that more practical action was needed.
But for Australia, that would not involving signing the Kyoto accord.
"I don't think people who make alarmist predictions do us much of a favour because the public will switch off. There are going to be substantial serious consequences of not addressing climate change, urgently and with multiple billion dollar investments.
"The problem is too serious to offer up slogans as solution. Signing Kyoto is a slogan. It's not a solution. Investing billions of dollars in the technologies we need to transform the way we produce and use energy is a substantial solution."
Senator Campbell said Australia could end all carbon emissions overnight but growth in China alone would replace Australian emissions within 10 months.
"We could be the best climate change country in the world – and we are one of the best – but without cooperative effective action internationally we will not save Perth's beaches," he said.
Labor has strongly backed Australia signing the Kyoto Protocol but Senator Campbell said the reality was that protocol was being rewritten.
He said Kyoto signatories such as France were nine per cent over its Kyoto target, Norway 22 per cent, Portugal 26 per cent and Spain 36 per cent.
"The whole world is moving beyond Kyoto and Labor is saying sign up to something that was really drafted six, seven, eight years ago, which we know is not working," he said.
"There is no gain to ratifying. We are part of a process that is designing the post-Kyoto world."
Senator Campbell said the Switzerland meeting aimed to prepare a group of some 30 ministers for the next meeting in Nairobi in a few weeks.
He said what he sought to achieve was a new focus on technology transfer so that innovative technology could be speedily disseminated through the world.
Unlike many of his coalition colleagues, Senator Campbell backed the thrust of the movie An Inconvenient Truth by former US vice-president Al Gore.
He said respected scientists agreed with him that the science in the movie was sound and the consequences of not addressing the problems were very substantial.
"We have got to remember there are consequences of global warming. There will be sea level rises. There already have been," he said.