Don Henry is the Executive Director of the Australian Conservation Foundation, Alan Tate is a Director of Ecos Corporation, a Sydney-based international business strategy group, Bill Nagle is the Chief Executive of the Australian Gas Association and John Hannagan is a Principal of Hannagan and Bushnell, a consulting firm specialising in the resource and energy sector.

Don Henry, Australian Conservation Foundation
Alan Tate, Ecos Corporation
Bill Nagle, Australian Gas Association
John Hannagan, Hannagan and Bushness

We all live on the same planet and are part of the biosphere. Our future is intrinsically linked to the preservation of the global life-support systems and to the survival of all forms of life.(Declaration of the World Conference on Science, Budapest, 1999).

As the world's leading scientists grapple with the problem of global warming, the United States prepares to drill for more oil and gas in a wildlife sanctuary in the Arctic. In Scandinavia, Finland contemplates the construction of a fifth nuclear reactor and how to store more toxic waste. While further south, Germany moves to scrap nuclear power altogether.

In Australia, our communities lead the world in newspaper recycling, while our bulldozers lead the developed world in the destruction of native trees and the habitat of our unique wildlife.

What is the best way to save the environment? There is no simple answer. Like the few examples above, the magnitude and multitude of the earth's environmental challenges are as diverse as the global community. But what is slowly becoming apparent to many economists, corporations and governments around the world is that wherever we live, we can no longer continue to consume and pollute in the way we have since the Industrial Revolution more than 150 years ago.

The recognition that we are all part of a global community and we will either sink or swim together is an important first step towards developing a sustainable world.

In the past, the environment has most often been treated as an add-on issue an afterthought to policies, products or services. In the 21st century, the environment needs to be part of all decision-making to ensure the best social, economic and environmental outcomes for all.

During the Industrial Revolution, human productivity increased by 20,000 per cent. Then labour was scarce and natural resources were abundant. Now labour is abundant, and natural resources are either scarce or their over-exploitation has led to severe environmental problems. In response to this, in the next 70 years the productivity of resource use needs to increase by perhaps 10,000 per cent. The technologies and design principles to achieve this are already in development. The digital revolution is merely the first taste of a complete industrial revolution a sustainability revolution.

The sustainability revolution must be built on a dramatic reduction in environmental impact (whether by waste or greenhouse gas emissions) on ecological systems. Cleverly applied, it must focus on job creation and the minimal use of resources in every field from manufacturing to agriculture, from primary industries to service industries.

Australia has an important role to play here a vastly different role from the negative one it played in November during greenhouse talks in The Hague. Australia must recognise that the drive for environmental sustainability can deliver even greater economic productivity than the old energy-intensive paradigm through new industries and markets as well as a clean and healthy environment.

Old paradigms such as the green movement versus corporate Australia, or jobs versus the environment, need no longer apply.

New industries, and the "cleaning and greening" of old industries, offer huge opportunities for our nation. The signs are already emerging that this is happening around the world. In the US, re-manufacturing (re-using waste materials) is a $US53 billion-a-year ($98 billion) industry employing 480,000 people directly. In Denmark, wind power contributes up to 10 per cent of Danish electricity needs and wind turbines are Denmark's fourth-largest export, worth $US1 billion a year and employing 12,000 people. In the US, renewable energy industries are expected to create more than 350,000 new jobs by 2010. In Australia, sustainable energy industries directly resulted in an estimated 23,000 full-time jobs in 1999-2000 and nearly 26,000 in 2000-01 an expected growth rate of about 13 per cent.

In the boardroom, shareholders are also delivering strong signals that they wish to invest in the sustainability revolution. During a four-year period to December 1999, the Dow Jones Sustainability Group World Index was outperforming the ordinary group world index by more than 50 per cent.

US socially responsible investment portfolios were worth $US1,497 billion in 1999, compared with $US529 billion in 1997 twice the growth of the general market. Socially responsible investments in the UK grew from $1.7 billion in 1998 to $7.2 billion in 1999.

However, this new wave of investment in sustainable industry must be tempered by the recognition that we must not view the world as a dog-eat-dog marketplace in which we compete with everyone else. It is essential that Australian governments, business and the broader community rethink our approach to our place in the world.

Global co-operation, rather than competition, is the only pathway to shared prosperity and sustainability.

Alan Tate is a Director of Ecos Corporation, a Sydney-based international business strategy group.

Free at last, my God, free at last! Well, perhaps it's still too early to celebrate release from the years of frustration as we watched incremental environmental improvement while the global ecosystem continued to break down. But we are getting closer.

Our progress is the result of an exploration and openness to new ideas, new partnerships, and new roles. We are in the process of fundamentally reassessing how change can be achieved.

The last big wave of environmental consciousness in the late 1980s saw society invest its faith in government to effect change. The optimism that grew from this surge of activism led to the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. Governments began building international agreements that promised to address the most pressing problems and to do so in a socially equitable way.

Periodic reviews of progress showed that on nearly all the indicators the global environment had continued to worsen. By the end of the 1990s, governments had achieved little beyond confirming that they were not in a position to lead the repair of our planet.

While the protection of national self-interest continued to dominate the approach of government, the increasingly globalised nature of our most pressing environmental problems demanded a different approach. It required new champions possessing the power, the resources and the self-interest to effect change on a global scale.

The fact that growing numbers of the world's largest corporations are seeing it as in their shareholders' interests to be part of this movement is one of the most positive signs today.

Through business, we can achieve change faster than is possible through government. Climate change provides a stark example.

All governments are now convinced that global warming poses unacceptable risks to human and natural ecosystems. But this is not enough to bind them into agreeing to do anything about it. After eight years of debate, agreement around the Kyoto Protocol collapsed again last November in The Hague. New negotiations are scheduled for May, with the added wild card of a new US president.

And what are they arguing about? An agreement to reduce greenhouse emissions by about 5 per cent across the industrialised world. This when scientists advising the negotiators say global emission cuts of more than 60 per cent are needed just to stabilise greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Contrast this with the actions of growing numbers of major corporations companies like DuPont which has committed to reduce its greenhouse gases by 60 per cent within 10 years, or BP, which is reframing its business away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy, or the automobile sector, which is locked in a race to produce the first zero-emission car. Private-sector competition offers great opportunity to produce wins for the environment and for society.

This can only continue if companies can identify value for their own shareholders in moving ahead. Thankfully, the world's financial markets are helping. There has been a surge in the social investing sector of which environmental/sustainability screening has often been an important part over the last two years. The US is the dominant and most dynamic market, with increasing activity in Europe, Canada and Australia. Assets in professionally managed social investment funds doubled between 1997 and 1999, from $US1.1 trillion ($2 trillion) to $US2.2 trillion, representing 13 per cent of the $US16.3 trillion under management in America.

Leading social funds like Citizens Index Fund and Domini Social Index have been consistently outperforming the S&P 500.

Building and maintaining societal pressure on corporations to move forward is happening too. In one year, the New York-based Interfaith Centre of Corporate Responsibility sponsored 159 resolutions calling on 116 US companies to improve their corporate citizenship. It subsequently claimed breakthroughs on tobacco, the environment, racist advertising, equal employment opportunity, equitable lending and employment in Northern Ireland.

This is not an argument that says governments now have no role in regulating positive change. Rather, it is an acknowledgement that governments have consistently delivered lowest common denominator decisions, usually over painfully extended times, which today can only form the baseline for the sort of actions required to heal the environment.

It is an argument that says working together, society and the business world can achieve much more than the single reliance on government that dominated the environmental debate in the latter part of the last century. Thankfully, throughout the years of frustration we have remained bound by common values. We all want the planet to sustain our culture, our environment and us. The debate now is over how we achieve that.

Bill Nagle is the Chief Executive of the Australian Gas Association.

To date, public debate on improving our environment through changes to our energy mix has largely been centred around an anachronistic mindset of fossil fuels versus renewables. This approach has done nothing to promote cleaner energy generation in Australia.

It is time to think outside the square, particularly on the pre-eminent environmental issues of greenhouse and urban air quality.

In any debate on these issues and in any consideration of federal or State energy policies, there should not simply be an antiquated contrast between fossil fuels and renewables. Rather, the contrast should be between high-emission fuels, such as coal and oil, and low-emission fuels, such as natural gas and some forms of renewables.

Importantly, natural gas is the only major fuel that can realistically meet Australia's growing demand for a reliable and efficient energy supply, at least cost to our environment.

An independent study commissioned last year by the Australian Gas Association, Assessment of Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Natural Gas, shows clearly that natural gas has far lower greenhouse gas emissions than either black or brown coal.

The updated Australian National Greenhouse Gas Inventory, released last July by the Australian Greenhouse Office, confirmed that the emission intensity (emissions produced per unit of electricity generated) of brown coal is about 5 per cent higher than black coal, and 83 per cent higher than natural gas. Natural gas is also available in large quantities in Australia (lessening the need for fuel imports), has a reliable and secure supply system, and is often a major factor in encouraging industry development in the regions by providing economical energy options.

In the past year, some State governments have recognised these benefits and given natural gas a greater role in their electricity generation policies. In May, the Queensland Government announced its new Cleaner Energy Strategy, which requires that 13 per cent of State electricity sales be produced from natural gas by 2005, with another 2 per cent from renewable energy sources. The Government has already approved one 385 megawatt gas-fired power station.

Last month, the West Australian Government decided to upgrade its public power generation system, with at least 600 MW of the State's additional generation capacity for the next decade likely to be fuelled by natural gas. It has also approved the development of gas-fired power generation in the West Kimberley region, replacing diesel-generated electricity. South Australia and the Northern Territory are also strong converts to gas.

In Victoria and NSW, however, little natural gas is used in electricity generation, with most power produced from coal. If these States are to more fully contribute to improving air quality and lowering greenhouse gas emissions, they must follow the lead of Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern Territory in explicitly choosing natural gas for much more of their future power generation needs.

The Federal Government, too, must move to more explicitly encourage an increased use of natural gas over coal in electricity generation. While it, and the Australian Democrats, are to be commended for actively working to develop further natural gas vehicles refuelling infrastructure and increase the natural gas vehicles market, little has been accomplished federally in to requiring more natural gas use in electricity generation. The Council of Australian Governments recently agreed to develop a national energy policy during 2001. This provides an ideal opportunity for the economic, environmental and regional benefits of natural gas to be fully recognised in future electricity generation decisions.

The AGA believes that the policy should, inter alia:

• Address the close link between energy generation and greenhouse gas emissions.
• Ensure that greenhouse programs and measures encourage fuel-switching to lower emissions fuels such as natural gas.
• Ensure that major project approval processes assess the greenhouse implications of energy use.
• Remove regulatory structures and market rules that now constrain new gas entrants into the electricity generation and co-generation sectors.

The AGA also supports the introduction of a domestic emissions trading scheme as part of an international scheme, to provide an impetus for energy producers and industry to switch to lower-emission fuels such as natural gas. Natural gas provides the perfect fuel for today. It can reliably, cost-effectively and realistically meet Australia's growing energy demand, at least cost to our environment. Its increased use will also provide substantial economic and regional development benefits in this country.

These important attributes should be further recognised by policy makers, industry and the Federal and State governments in the year ahead.

John Hannagan is a Principal of Hannagan and Bushnell, a consulting firm specialising in the resource and energy sector.

Warnings of imminent collapse of the planet from global warming occur almost on a daily basis. Every storm, hurricane, drought, flood, avalanche, or event that is deemed to be abnormal, is linked to an increased concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Claims of the hottest or driest period since global record-keeping began 140 years ago form the basis for many of these ``news" stories, or more unreliably the memories of our own short lifetimes, using the halcyon days of the past as the measure of today's climate.

To paraphrase Thoreau: ``You can't recall time without injuring eternity." Or put another way, if we rely on our memories and the brief records of climate, rather than a considered analysis of what history has to tell us, to respond to perceived changes we are certain to compound the issue, not resolve it.

The world's response to climate change has been a call for global action by all countries, to be paid for by the developed economies.

This call to arms was first sounded in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, adopted in 1992. The battle plan, types of weapons and timing of the offensive were drawn up at Kyoto in 1997 but the parties are still at loggerheads as to who should lead the charge. No-one wants to be first into battle but all want the spoils of victory.

What seems to be missing from the UN's approach is an understanding that battles are won on how well prepared you are, not how well armed or big your force is. Understanding and knowing the enemy are just as important as recognising the enemy.

Central to any process aimed at addressing environmental issues is the clear understanding that change in nature is incremental and our response to managing or reversing such change, where necessary, should also be incremental. An incremental response to issues such as climate change will encourage the most cost-efficient use of resources.

While government policy tends to reflect the aspirational values of the community, government looks to industry to foot the bill for the community's aspirations. If industry is to continue picking up the tab for political promises, it needs to be part of the process that determines how it will operate.

The Australian Government, through its climate agency, the Australian Greenhouse Office , has established a $400 million greenhouse gas abatement initiative. This initiative, commonly referred to as G-GAP, is designed to foster adoption of clever technologies in energy generation and use.

One would have thought that here was an ideal opportunity for a collaborative approach between the Government and Australia's coal-based energy generators. Not so, it seems, as the thought of Australia continuing to use its almost limitless reserves of coal is anathema.

Victoria has a 500-year proven reserve of coal. It would seem pointless to abandon this extraordinarily competitive fuel source and replace it with a high-cost alternative such as natural gas, especially when gas is much more valuable in other applications and as an export to energy-poor countries such as Japan. The rush by climate campaigners in government to force a single solution on to the stationary energy sector means that Victoria's key asset is under threat.

Victorian generators, which have been among the earliest participants in greenhouse gas reduction programs, have been researching technology-based solutions to emission reductions. Current indications from these research programs are that greenhouse gas emissions from brown coal could be reduced by as much as 40 per cent. What's needed to prove up this technology is to move from the existing test-bed model to a scaled-up pilot plant.

Here's where G-GAP and the Government should be eager to nurture such an exciting and potentially important advance in coal-fired generating technology. Instead, the Australian Greenhouse Office has seen fit to reject repeatedly applications by the Victorian Co-operative Research Centre for Clean Power from Lignite power generation companies for G-GAP funding.

The brown-coal research project is a prime example of the benefits of using incremental gains in technology to deliver step change in environmental management, with enormous economic benefits to the community. Such an approach would allow for a gradual and sustainable uptake of new technologies without distorting the capital investment locked into Australia's energy-intensive manufacturing and processing sectors.

It seems the path chosen by the AGO is to look for the coal technology equivalent to cold fusion. In other words, a complete revolution in the way in which we generate and source energy, before establishing whether it is either available or viable.

A not inconsequential result is that the Government may spend $400 million sponsoring projects that deliver absolutely nothing but marginal abatement opportunities. A bad outcome for the community, and potentially a worse outcome for the environment.

Surely the lesson from this is that to effect change you need a partnership that reflects the structure of the community. Dictating the terms on how change should occur must result in failure. The environment deserves better.