Emissions trading fazes many, but there is much to be done at a local level. IT MAY not have been the first sign, but last week brought one of the more obvious indications yet of an affliction we will see plenty of over coming years: climate-change fatigue.

While polls consistently tell us people want action to stem global warming and are prepared to make sacrifices to get it, the answer — emissions trading, now spun as a carbon pollution reduction scheme — remains esoteric. Widely agreed to be the most important transformation of the economy in a generation, the fine detail of emissions trading bores people so much that it failed to entice a single talkback caller when Climate Change Minister Penny Wong was on ABC Melbourne local radio just five days after her blueprint was launched.

Lately there has been a proliferation of reports telling us of worsening scientific projections, of ways to cut our carbon footprint, of industries that believe climate change is a real problem but that somebody else should pay to fix it. So it is perhaps not surprising that arguably the most significant report to date detailing the impact of climate change on Melbourne didn't get the attention it deserved when it was released last week.

Called FutureMap, the report by the Committee for Melbourne — an influential collection of business and community leaders and academics — spells out the "locked-in" climate shifts we can expect over the next two decades regardless of what we do, including more hot days, less rain but more intense storms, and more bushfires.

More importantly, it is a call for action, with recommendations on economic, social and environmental steps to adapt to the changes already on the way and mitigate the effects beyond 2030.

Cities have a crucial and often underacknowledged role to play in tackling climate change — in fact, they are responsible for about 75% of the world's emissions. While we are sitting around hoping the world's leaders will get their act together on a global solution, there is plenty that can be done on a local level that is being ignored.

As the committee's climate change taskforce co-chairman Tony Wood puts it, Melbourne is an unusual city. The CBD and inner suburbs, built around a cafe culture and with plenty of public transport possibilities, most closely resemble Europe. Yet its outer reaches, where satellite cities spring up and roads are the link to the rest of the state, are closer to an American model.

It means approaches to tackling climate change in Melbourne must be multi-dimensional. Take transport. The report calls for a massive investment in public transport to improve its capacity, frequency, reliability and coverage.

Borrowing an idea from Melbourne City Council urban environment director Rob Adams, it also recommends a legal right to construct buildings up to six storeys high on public transport routes to boost its use from 9% to 35% of all motor journeys.

Recognising that we will continue to drive, the Committee for Melbourne backs Sir Rod Eddington's call for new highway links in unconnected parts of the city. But it also wants changes to the way vehicles are manufactured — moving away by 2015 from gas-guzzlers to cars that are friendlier to the environment to bring us in line with world-leading European standards.

There are recommendations to encourage cycling and walking, but also left-of-field suggestions worth a look, such as letting people salary sacrifice the cost of public transport tickets to make it more attractive.

The report reaches into most corners of how we live, calling for changes to our buildings, social equity programs, urban resilience (including making Melbourne more flood-resistant and boosting CBD greenery through heat-reducing parks and rooftop gardens) and business practices.

The most striking push is to introduce mandatory energy efficiency standards for all homes and offices. With buildings responsible for 23% of Australia's emissions and the estimated average energy rating of Melbourne homes just 2.5 stars (compared with a five-star minimum for new homes and major renovations) a significant difference could be made through insulation, double glazing and window shading. Low-income households would need to be given time to upgrade, and have access to loans, grants and rebates.

Less striking, but possibly most important, is a call for new legislation to be passed through a climate-change filter — will it have an unintentional negative impact on the planet? — and a review of regulations that perversely encourage emitting more greenhouse gas. At a national level, the most ridiculous example remains fringe benefits tax concessions that offer incentives to drive more kilometres each year in company cars.

The report sets up the committee as a player in the national climate-change debate. One of its priorities is an independent investigation to cut through the chaff on "clean coal" — capturing carbon dioxide as it is emitted, transforming it into a liquid and pumping it underground — and analyse whether the economic case for the technology will stand up.

Not all of the report is as forthright. Plans to include an emissions reduction target for the city were shelved, for example, after the authors failed to agree. And there are plenty of good ideas on the horizon not explored in FutureMap: take Sydney's tentative plan to build dozens of miniature gas turbines in the CBD to power skyscrapers and feed energy back into its grid, potentially cutting emissions from electricity by more than 50%.

But the ultimate message is clear and timely — while international negotiations stumble on, there is plenty that can be done in our own backyards, and the State Government and business have a crucial role to play.

(Por Adam Morton*, The Age, 28/09/2008
*Environment reporter