Toyota Environment and Technology Conference

Toyota brought together luminaries and the media yesterday to announce the company's local Sustainability Report for this year. It was a regular Greenfest, with a range of hybrid models available for test driving by the journalists and presentations from Doctor Karl Kruscelnicki of the Sydney University and Professor John Thwaites, former deputy premier of Victoria.

The Hino hybrid truck similar to the one pictured was arguably the most interesting to drive. Combining an auto-stop/start diesel with an electric motor to assist, the Hino was easily capable of pulling away from a standing start in third gear -- such was the torque available.

Unsurprisingly perhaps, the event -- called the Toyota Environment and Technology Conference -- was a serious look at the future of society generally and the automotive industry in particular, from Toyota's perspective.

Many future developments were canvassed during presentations by Toyota's senior management in Australia, but a counterpoint to the generally optimistic views propounded by Toyota came from John Thwaites.

"Technology is going to be vital, but technology alone is not enough," he asserted, explaining that climate change will be "devastating" for the environment, the global economy and society.

The former Victorian Labor politician, stating that behaviour change was as important as future technology, drew the analogy between climate change and an asteroid impacting the earth.

"If we were told that there was a 40 per cent chance that an asteroid was going to hit the earth sometime in the next 20 years, I'm sure the whole world would pull out all stops, to do whatever could be done to avoid that," he said.

"But although we've been told by the overwhelming majority of scientists, that climate change presents an overwhelming threat to the earth -- of that sort of size -- as yet, we have not seen substantial action taken around the world to reduce emissions that cause climate change."

To illustrate what can be achieved through public education campaigns Thwaites used data from Melbourne's water, vehicle fuels and power usage since 1960, outlined in a graph.

Water use -- despite the data not including usage since the recent imposition of water restrictions -- showed a drop from its 1960 level to around 90 per cent per capita of that figure, as at the end of 2006.

And water use has been the subject of long-term public awareness campaigns ("Don't be a wally with water", for one). By comparison, fuel use for transport has increased by 218 per cent. Worse still, stationary energy use (electricity) had increased by 556 per cent.

Citing experts from the International Panel for Climate Change (IPCC), Thwaites described the current global situation -- with surface temperatures increasing -- as "unequivocal".

Thwaites pointed to the "12-year" drought in Victoria as one glaringly obvious sign of climate change, but also an early warning for the world.

If we continue on current trends, he said, we can expect to pay far more to combat climate change in future than the one per cent of Gross Domestic Product it would cost us now, using a statistic proposed by Nicholas Stern, British economist. Thwaites quoted Stern's remark that climate change was "the biggest market failure", but also regards it as a political and social failure.

Without changing our ways, we will see up to 250 million climate change refugees seeking habitable places elsewhere -- including Australia. In the Asia/Pacific region, countless islands will become uninhabitable as sea levels rise. On that point, Thwaites posits that the Arctic may be ice-free within a decade.

And where does Australian road transport sit within all this?

Road transport in this country contributes just 13.7 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions, according to figures supplied by Thwaites, but that figure has grown by 30 per cent since 1990.

With Australia's vehicle parc up to an average of 12 years old, we have to start changing over our cars now, just to see a significant change in emissions from road transport by 2020.

"There's no silver bullet," says Thwaites.

"Just to give you an idea of the size of the task, currently each of us -- in notional terms -- is emitting about 27 tonnes of CO2 a year...

"To get to the stage where the world is reasonably safe, most of the experts are saying that we have to reduce that from 27 down to around three... but it can be done.

"If that does sound very difficult, think of the United Kingdom, or France and Italy -- they're not terribly different to us -- they emit around 10 or 11... Well under half of the emissions we have here in Australia. So it's not as if the whole world has to go down that path.

"And China -- supposedly the great problem -- is around six. India is less than two.

"We really stand out as world-beaters, when it comes to emissions," he said.