In the campaign for the Federal election to be held on November 10th, Opposition Leader Kim Beazley has committed a future Australian Labor Government to ratifying the Kyoto protocols. If this occurred, Australia would be committed to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions to 8 percent above the levels existing in 1990.

Now whether you believe in the greenhouse effect and consequent global warming or not, Australia should be making a big effort to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. Apart from any concern about greenhouse gases, Australia really is quite wasteful in its overall use of energy.

Nor do we have to be particularly clever in finding ways to reduce our energy use. In fact, while the USA is commonly thought of as a wasteful nation, in many ways they are much further down the track than Australia in reducing energy use. This is particularly the case with housing design to minimise heat loss and therefore, energy use. If you want instances of this, look at their widespread use of double-glazed and triple-glazed windows, low-E glass, super insulation of walls, roof and floors, air-to-air heat exchangers for central heating and so on.

American householders have been forced down this path mainly because of their bitterly cold winters, far colder than anything most Australians could imagine. Even so, it is likely that many new American homes now use less energy over their winters than most Australian homes do in our comparatively mild winters.

Nor is our energy wastage confined to the domestic scene. In transport and industry we are also very wasteful and there is lots of room for major improvements.

Should we care about energy waste when overall we are doing quite well on the economic front? Well, that's a stupid question really because energy waste costs each and everyone of us quite a lot of money every year.

Overall, I am not sure whether Australia should ratify the Kyoto protocols or not but I am sure that we could get major economic benefits by improving our energy usage. It would not be hard for an incoming government to come up with cost-effective incentives for the housing, manufacturing and transport industries to reduce energy usage.

While we are at it, the Government should act to stop any more coal-burning power stations from being built. If any more thermal power stations need to be built, they should run on natural gas – such power stations have much higher thermal efficiency than coal-fired stations and they produce far less emissions. Gas-fired stations also can be brought on line very quickly and do not have to be left running to provide so-called "spinning reserve". Apart from that, extraction of natural gas is far less environmentally damaging than any form of coal mining.

And finally, it really is about time that the Government made a major push to develop large-scale solar power generation in this country. We have the sun and we have the know-how. Let's push it hard because the future payoffs will be great.