Hanrahan was an optimist

The press release from Melbourne's Monash University is specifically designed to shock and awe people.

Titled: "Car is doomed, energy experts warn", the press release states categorically that a country such as Australia cannot hope to meet CO2 emissions targets for 2050 without cutting road transport by 80 per cent, just to reduce Australia's per capita greenhouse gas emissions to an ideal average.

Unlike Hanrahan, the pessimistic anti-hero of John O'Brien's satirical poem, 'Said Hanrahan', the Monash boffins are concerned by the profound effects potentially forced on society by CO2 reduction targets, rather than the regional ill effects of a drought.

"Our calculations show that not even the best combination of fuel efficiency, hybrid and electric cars, alternative fuels and car pooling could provide the reductions needed to meet the 2050 targets for avoiding dangerous climatic change," said Monash's Associate Professor Damon Honnery.

Professor Honnery is not a climatologist. He is an expert in alternative energy and specialises in transport issues, so he is speaking with the credibility of one who sees the limitations of future technological advances in these areas. There is, in his view, a tendency on the part of economists and climatologists to presume that technology can offset the climactic effects imposed by increased population and increased power consumption.

"The problems facing us [in transport] are the same as for every other sector. The climate scientists are telling us that we have to limit average temperature rises to about two degrees," he said.

"In order to meet that sort of very small temperature rise, we would have to cut our emissions by about 90 per cent, probably by about 2050.

"If you could aim for four degrees, it might not be 90 per cent [reduction of greenhouse gas emissions]. It might be something very much less. It all depends on where we agree we might limit the change.

"So, we're going to limit it to two degrees, that's what everyone is saying we have to do. The consequence of that -- a 90 per cent reduction in emissions -- how do you that? How do you cut everything by a factor of ten?

"And it's very probably going to be much more than that, because population is increasing around the world, there's uptake of vehicles, there's a whole range of factors that are conspiring to increase the very thing we're trying to reduce.

"That 90 per cent value is based on a global average. Now Australia emits probably somewhere between four and five times the average of the globe.

"If we're to agree with developing countries that we're going to have an equitable transition to this CO2-neutral economy and energy system, that means we might have to reduce [emissions] by a factor of twenty.

"[Even reducing carbon emissions by 90 per cent by 2050], we would still be five times the [global] average.

"If we're going to continue using fossil fuels, that means, we now have to get somewhere between ten and twenty times the fuel [efficiency in cars] we currently have. Now, there is no technology that can do that, in terms of fossil fuels -- it's just impossible.

"We're running up against the second law of thermodynamics there, so there are good reasons why we can't do that.

"A hybrid vehicle could probably get us to a factor of two -- and that's if everybody [drove hybrids by 2050].

"Fleet fuel consumption in Australia has got worse, over the last few years, so we're fighting a losing battle there as well.

"If we increased our [vehicle] occupancy [rate] from one, one and a half people per car to maybe four, we might get another factor of one and a bit -- so that might lift it to a three-fold reduction, but we're after a factor of ten at a minimum.

"You have to travel more too, because they're not all going to the same place. That's one of the reasons that car pooling has always been so unsuccessful -- apart from the fact that no one wants someone [else] in their car. That's the nature of cars, it's a very personal thing.

"If we moved to alternative fuels, we can't produce enough of these. So called first generation alternative fuels, like ethanol and bio-diesel, are grossly limited in how much we can make. We would have to convert everything that had a bit of sugar in it to a fuel -- and that's hopeless because we now have to eat something.

"So we're running up against it there -- and there's a lot of debate about whether these things are actually greenhouse-neutral.

"[Things like microbial hydrogen production] are the great unknown. Imagine a scenario where, in 50 years, we have to convert our entire transport [system] to run on hydrogen. That's not going to happen, it's taken us 20 years just to get rid of leaded fuel.

"If we reached a point where there was some dramatic, climatic event -- and they call these 'tipping points' -- would we then be able to shift our system to run on these fuels? And the answer of course is 'no'.

"We've been researching fuel cells for more years than we care to remember and we haven't made very much progress in getting them to the point of being able to use them in vehicles -- cheaply.

"Technology can help you, but it can't do 90 per cent -- not with technology that's currently available. You've gotta actually develop it, get it working, make it commercial and implement it -- with a large enough penetration into the marketplace to have the 90 per cent reduction.

"Production of hydrogen from algae, for example, the question is: can we do this in 42 years? I think the answer is 'no'. To build a new power station takes ten years in Australia. To build a new power station based on clean-coal technology with all the bells and whistles could take ten years. For hydrogen, forget it.

"Our belief is that when you exhaust all other options, there are two that are left. The first one is the obvious one, we're all going to travel an awful lot less. That's not very helpful, because we have to travel and the trip to work is the predominant travel we do.

"Public transport can't help us overcome this, because public transport can't solve the many disparate reasons for going to work in one place and living in another. In the end, we can't get a factor of ten out of public transport. Maybe three -- and then we'd have to build [an extended] transport system.

"My personal opinion is if we are going to [aim for] 90 per cent, the disruption over the next 40 years is going to be massive," Professor Honnery said.

So, far from being an anti-car zealot, the Professor is actually using the death of personal transport as a wake-up call for his second option...not to drum up a broad push for CO2 reduction measures, but to point out the absurdity of the existing targets, which are not achievable by current means.

In 42 years from now, society -- in Australia especially -- could only achieve those targets set by such drastic measures as forcing cars off the road for the vast majority of the populace, 'encouraging' a massive proportion of employable citizens to work from home, reduce household energy consumption by effectively banning air conditioning and central heating, 'promoting' reduced population levels -- and probably some other magic bullet not clearly foreseeable at the present.

The Professor is not at all optimistic that this drastic level of social change is possible.

"When you look at what people can achieve in real crisis -- in moments of crisis in the first and second world wars, for instance -- what can be done is quite extraordinary. But we're now dealing with a global issue. Those issues were national, despite them being global conflicts.

"Globally, that means governments making decisions -- and I think that's going to be extraordinarily difficult to do. It probably requires at most 10 countries to make those decisions, but they're the 10 countries that never want to talk to one another.

"There's a huge gap between what people are saying we should do and what we are realistically able to do. Economists and climate scientists usually come up with 'this is what we need to do' and they simply wave their hands at the technologists and say 'they'll solve the problems'. Well, we're saying we can't -- and any technologist that says they can, is not being honest about the gravity of the change that's necessary.

"And so our statement about 'the car is doomed' should be read in terms of 'if we are to do what people are telling us to do, then things like cars are likely to be doomed'.

"It's very likely, in fact, that what is doomed is the two-degree temperature rise [target]. We're already committed to about one and a half degrees. So, what we're really arguing about is spreading that half a degree over the next 50 years -- and that's going to be tough."

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