Pollution will be a poll issue

Climate change will continue to be a big issue in most countries in the new year. Many governments, especially politicians seeking power, understand the potential of this issue to motivate voters.

However, there are costs, that's why leaders always talk of "aspirational" goals which mean, sometime in the future, or for democracies, after the next election.

Ten thousand delegates invaded Bali, and after much publicity, they said what a great success the conference was, the substance of the conference was to agree to have an agreement by 2009.

This is neither as bad nor as cynical as it may sound. The Kyoto Agreement was flawed. China and India had not signed, and many developed and emerging economies had not signed. T

he US and Australia had a better record of reducing pollution than some who have signed. Now the hard work of establishing an inclusive agreement with binding disputes mechanisms to handle differences needs to be navigated and negotiated.

The only global institution with such mechanisms is the World Trade Organisation whose disputes systems may serve as an example.

When 90 per cent of doctors say you have a problem you listen, and when the world's re-insurance industry who insure the insurance companies, say something's up with the climate, then it's time to listen.

If doomsday predictions are right and we take action, nothing much is lost except a lowering of living standards if they are wrong, we still will have a cleaner planet and give birth to a new series of industries that will eventually create jobs and make us less dependent on oil.

Not a small or unimportant thing. However, some sense of proportion is called for, modesty required.

New Zealand and Australia's total carbon emissions only account for a few weeks of China's and India's growth. China's energy growth over the past five years equals Japan's, the world's second largest economy's total energy consumption.

What concerns me is the absolute, uncritical, non science-based arguments that are being smuggled back into our economic and political management.

Unattractive policies that have so often failed before. Corporations seeking to graze on subsidies and grants that inevitably come from severe government non-market interventions are holding their hands up and hands out.

The old "left", dressed in green camouflage, will want to control business with the levers of government because, as they say, pollution is a by-product of capitalism, and communist pollution, by far the worst historically, mostly goes uncommented upon.

Populist headline-grabbing, simplistic solutions are easy to market by environmental groups. The aviation industry is an easy target because it produces about 2 per cent of carbon dioxide emissions. But wait a minute, that's approximately the same as the emission created by the hand clay brick-making industry, globally.

Nearly 97 per cent of the world's clay bricks are produced in developing countries. China produces about 700 billion hand-made bricks and India produces 140 billion hand-made bricks.

In India, the brick industry is the third largest user of coal, in China, it is the fourth largest. The poor have no money to invest, they scavenge for fuel, cut down trees, use old car tyres, battery casings, used engine oil, anything that will burn.

This is extremely hazardous for workers and spews pollution into the atmosphere which becomes an un-priced sewer. Yet the technology at a low cost, a payback time of less than six months that will lower pollution by 80 per cent is available, has been for years.

It will neither affect jobs nor is it particularly hi-tech, but if the technology was adopted, it could lower emissions by 1 per cent and improve working conditions for the poor.

These low-tech improvements have the potential to acquire carbon credits by eliminating 250 million tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere using available, inexpensive, clean-burning development mechanics.

I guess brick-building is not a sexy subject, tourism and aviation are. I'm not attacking alarmists, we need alarmists, they by their extravagant claims force up reaction and change. Competition creates efficiency, efficiency is just another word for conservation.

Let's hope government interventions are transparent, competitive, and don't create another generation, and industry, of corporate bludgers and sanctimonious do-gooders who then want to put a saddle on the productive sector and tell us all what to do, regardless of the cost or reality, knowing their jobs and futures are secure in this growth industry.

Mike Moore former Prime Minister of New Zealand former Director-General of the World Trade Organisation Adjunct Professor, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia.