Both the ALP and the Coalition have brought policies that most independent analysis suggests will fail to reach the presumed bipartisan target of a 5 per cent reduction in emissions from 2000 levels by 2020.

That, in itself, makes both policy positions untenable. They don’t match the science, they don’t match the expectations of public polling and they don’t match the business need for some sort of certainty to unlock the tens of billions of investment that must be made to bring Australia’s energy network, and its broader economy, into the 21st century.

The most remarkable thing is that the media and the electorate will let them get away with it. The extent to which they do will be answered by the performance of The Greens, the party – according to RBA board member Warwick McKibbin – that has produced “closest to the best policy on climate change”. And the only party that is unable to deliver it.

How the politics of Dumb and Dumber entered the climate debate can be traced back to the fateful day in Canberra when the Liberals rolled Malcolm Turnbull and, much to their own surprise, put Tony Abbott in his place.

Abbott’s climate scepticism didn’t win him any greater support, but his “great big tax” mantra certainly hit a nerve – mostly Labor’s. It fits neatly into a newspaper headline and an audio sound bite: so effectively, that Abbott hasn’t been compelled to produce another original thought on the matter ever since.

The Labor government has been unable to resist the scare campaign, centred as it is around the impact of energy prices in the western suburbs of Sydney. Ever since Rudd pulled the ETS, destroying the last vestiges of his credibility, and was finally dispatched, and Gillard and her advisors dreamed up the Citizens Assembly, the ALP has tried to create a smaller target for the Opposition.

Gillard didn’t even mention climate change in the official election launch, but the Opposition took a shot at it anyway, suggesting it had a secret deal with The Greens to produce an interim carbon tax. So Labor retreated further and promised it would not.

The ALP has promised a suite of policies that sound nice and are steps in the right direction, but don’t mean a lot because they lack ambition. The fuel efficiency measures still leave Australia well behind the rest of the world, the emission caps on new power stations will not affect those already in the planning stages, and the reward for early action for business means nothing unless company boards can see a carbon price.

The Liberals, bizarrely, have chosen a direct action scheme that rewards the two groups that argued loudest against an emissions trading scheme – the farmers and the heavy emitters – by creating a private and exclusive “abatement market” run by bureaucrats and to be paid for by taxpayers. How did this get through?

It reminds some observers of the Greenhouse Gas Abatement Scheme which was panned by a subsequent audit as being next to useless. Even more bizarrely, the Liberals climate spokesman Greg Hunt compares it to the UN Clean Development Mechanism. That, though, produces a tradable commodity, a Certified Emission Reduction unit. It’s a carbon market! Albeit one that has been rorted horribly because it is run by bureaucrats.

None of this is quite as bizarre as the concept of the citizens assembly. As soon as 14 million Australians go to the polls to elect their leaders, the ALP (presuming its re-elected) will go to the phone book to find 150 souls to consider a strategy to address the greatest moral and business challenge we face.

It turns out that UTS researchers have already done something similar, but much more extensive. A project they conducted, targeting not just 150 Australians, but 7000, and staggered over four in-depth studies, concluded that most voters want the government to adopt an ETS now, and to target bigger reduction targets.

The four studies – conducted at yearly intervals – showed that voters wanted revenues generated by an ETS to be used to ease poverty, assist seniors and invested in research and development, and not to be used to reduce taxes for business.

Professor Jordan Louviere, who headed the research, said it showed that the proposed Citizen’s Assembly was unnecessary – what the community has clearly wanted for years is an ETS.

“It is possible, now, for the government to come up with a workable ETS plan that meets the community’s expectations and makes the trade-offs clear that will come with an effective plan,” he says.

“From the public’s perspective any climate change plan consists of eight key features: When does it start? How will revenue be collected? What will be done with the revenue raised? What happens with the transport sector? Are energy-intensive sectors of the economy given special treatment? Does the plan have a strong R&D component? What reduction in carbon emissions should Australia aim for? Finally, should Australia move now or wait for other countries?

“We asked our survey respondents to choose between plans consisting of different options for these features. In doing so we made it clear to them the nature of trade-offs that would be involved in, say, holding back on the start of an emissions trading scheme or protecting certain industries.

“Overall our results suggest that Australians are committed to a climate change plan that works. They believe that it is happening and clearly recognise that there are substantial costs to adopting a plan.”

Try getting a politician to say that. Maybe on Monday.

http://www.climatespectator.com.au/commentary/path-least-resistance-0?utm_source=Climate+Spectator+daily&utm_campaign=a5bcf06f72-&utm_medium=email

Climate Institute deputy chief executive Erwin Jackson said the government’s approach “was the kind of standard you would have introduced 15 years ago if you were trying to drive a change in technology; it’s the standard you have when you do not have a standard,” he said. The standard would apply only to new stations that are not yet proposed and can change after consultation with state governments, the energy industry and environment groups.

Ms Gillard is a manipulative piece of work; small wonder she and Tony Abbott get on.

She recommitted to considering emissions trading in 2012, with its earliest possible introduction in 2013 – the about-face that she backed and which played a central role in Kevin Rudd’s downfall, she also promised to;

• Create a 150-person “citizens’ assembly” to examine the science of climate change and the consequences of emissions trading.
  But isn’t that what we elect people to Parliment for; and we’re going toi ask 150 – unskilled people – to talk about it for a year? Will it be like the 2020 community discussions?
• On top of the 150 people, we get a Climate Change Commission of experts to inform the public about climate science and report on the level of international action to cut emissions. Huh? And then Invest $1 billion over the next decade in the electricity grid? That’s just a modest deposit on one power plant!

I am annoyed … Bob Brown has sold the preferences for what? While the Greens climate change spokeswoman Christine Milne said Labor’s proposal
was a farcical stunt straight from the script of television’s political satire The Hollowmen, my question to her and the Greens is, ‘what are you going to do about it?’

It’s like watching a smaller person being picked on and saying “Stop that behaviour” but not raising a hand …. we need another political party!

Derivatives are a rort as the GFC (Global Financiaol Crisis) shows, but if they put a price on carbon, will it just make more money for the finance sector, where more derivatives are sold than exist (like shares) at assumed increased vaules or that arent even owned by the seller (who hopes to buy some in the interum and then on-sell at a profit) ?

Julia Gillard isn’t dumb and she must appreciate right now, she can weight much of the proposals put in front of her with her own touch while she has a full head of steam and seen to be leader of Australia. If she exercises this power now, it will entrench her more and weaken those who will wait for her light to burn less bright as time and lack of absence takes effect.

Combating climate change is the single most important challenge of all time and people should not make money out of it. We need to tax carbon emissions heavily, so that emitters – everyone – starts to watch their emissions because they cost too much; but like taxing tobacco, alcohol and fuel, these taxes reduce consumption of goods. The cost to the environment massively outweighs any GST or conventional tax, so a big emissions tax will see everybody pay at a rate equal to their consumption.

Tobacco is taxed at about 75% of the retail price and alcohol and petrol are taxed at about 50% of retail price; and these products still seem to hold popularity. The Australian population is convinced that action on climate change is essential, so a big tax on carbon is imperative; the more energy that goes into a product, the greater the emission tax component. Its like cereals, rolled oats is about $1.20 per kilo whereas a highly processed oat flakes with honey and nuts sell for $8+ a kilo.

And lets start placing some higher tarrifs on imports to cater to the emissions generated overseas and in transport to Australia, to keep that ‘level playing field’ the politicians are so often keen to talk about.

Co-chair of the three-day conference and director of the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility, Professor Jean Palutikof, warns Australia will be one of the hardest hit developed countries in the world when climate change starts to bite. “The science tells us climate change is happening faster than we thought and that the window for us to adapt and prepare is smaller than we thought,” Professor Palutikof said.

“Australia is already experiencing the effects of climate change and is likely to be one of the most severely affected among developed countries. “Regardless of what mitigation actions we take now as a nation, or globally, to cut greenhouse gas emissions, it is too late to mitigate our way out of the problem; we will need a mixture of adaptation and mitigation measures.”

The CSIRO’s Climate Adaptation Flagship Director Andrew Ash said the conference is the first to focus solely on practical adaptation measures. “Adaptation is about preparing for climate change in order to minimise its impact on our natural, built and social environment,” Dr Ash said. “The precise level of impact is difficult to pinpoint, so successful adaptation also means building our resilience to cope with uncertainty.

“The impacts from climate change will be felt first and most severely in developing countries, and international co-operation is required to ensure developing countries have the tools and resources they need to adapt.” The conference topics span the economic costs of adapting; options for health, emergency and community services to cope with the added strain climate change will place on them; and adapting agriculture to cope with changing weather patterns to ensure long-term food security.

The trust recently compared the costs of six carbon-reducing measures. To save a ton of CO2 requires an investment of $131 in electric-vehicle technology, $51 in solar energy, and $18 in wind. It takes $57 to capture and store a ton of carbon from coal and $13 to save enough trees.

The biggest bargain? Birth control. At $7 per ton of carbon, family planning can reduce emissions by cutting the number of unintended births.

The idea has sparked controversy, not least because of the implicit suggestion that carbon sinners in the West should limit the reproductive capacity of the carbon poor in the developing world. But backed by David Attenborough, Jane Goodall, Paul Ehrlich, and other prominent conservationists, Project Director Roger Martin hopes the project will cut through the politics to address the impact of a burgeoning world population.

As Martin says, “It [Popoffsets] offers a practical and sensible response. For the first time ever individuals, companies, and organizations will have the opportunity to offset their carbon voluntarily by supporting projects to provide family planning services where there is currently unmet demand.”

The Optimum Population Trust has created a website (www.popoffsets.com) that allows travelers the opportunity to reduce their impact by contributing to family planning in countries with limited access to contraception.

A calculator on the group’s website determines typical carbon emissions for individuals in different countries: an American family of four emits about 82 tons of carbon each year; a donation of $575 can offset the impact. It would cost more than $4,600 to capture and store the same amount of carbon from coal.

The project sponsors insist that they oppose initiatives that advocate coercion. Instead, funds will go to regions where contraception is in short supply. In Madagascar, for example, women have an average of five children, and only one in five women has adequate access to birth control.

http://www.thesolutionsjournal.com/node/589

Fear through ignorance has long been a tactict by whatever political persuasion; conveying the user pays and exergerating the payment - because its always under written by the people rather than corporations – is what makes people jumpy, but really, it should be based on the user pays. Not like it is these days where – for example – brick and concrete roof tile manufactureres get a discounted rate for high consumption, it should be these sorts of companies that make products that increase energy dependence that should pay a premium not a discount. But really what is happening is these high embodied energy / construction materials companies are being rewarded for making stuff that makes us use more electricity.

We need a user pays system and Dr James Hansen (head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City) is using his Australian visit to push for a global carbon payment system. As a climate scientist, James Hansen said what countries should do after last year’s Copenhagen climate talks is ‘collect a fee at the mine or the wellhead or the port of entry and then distribute that money to the public as a green cheque or an income tax reduction’. He say the Federal Government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme is too heavily favoured towards polluters rather than a user-pays system.

He also said ‘all you really need is for the United States and China to agree that they’re going to do that and then it becomes relatively easy; Europe would go along with the United States and any countries that do not agree would have a border tax imposed on their products.

James believes the reason there was no agreement from Copenhagen was because there was no solution offered that favoured both the environment and the economies of the countries which took part.

Climate Cover-Up – The Crusade to Deny Global Warming is a new book by James Hoggan (Chair of the David Suzuki Foundation and the Canadian Climate Project), which provides a timely and alarming overview of a global propaganda campaign that has – for over two decades and largely funded by the oil and gas industry, successfully – made the public believe that climate science is controversial, unproven and unworthy of united global action.

These industry funded PR campaigns represent a fundamental breach of public trust Hoggan argues and have meant that we have lost two decades when we should have taken much strong climate action – two critical decades. His book charts a litany of scientists and right wing think tanks who have been paid off by the energy industry to become the mouthpieces of climate confusion and denial.

In 1998 the American Petroleum Institute (API) created a `Global Climate science communications plan’ aimed at convincing the media and public of `uncertainties’ in climate science, as opposed to promoting a genuine understanding of the science. Among the key aims of the communications plan was the intention, working on behalf of industry, to change conventional wisdom regardless of science and to overwhelm the media by injecting `balance’ into coverage – regardless of whether that balance reflected the true nature of the science.

We have obviously forgotten how the cigarette industry lied and bribied its way for years as did many chemical companies invloved in GM, so it comes as no surprise to know that the API communications plan begins with the mission statement that: “Victory will be achieved when average citizens understand (recognise) uncertainties in climate science; recognition of uncertainties becomes part of conventional wisdom (and) Media understands (recognises) uncertainties in climate science.”

Following this, Hoggan documents how influential think tanks took on the call of promoting this uncertainty, largely funded in doing so by ExxonMobil. In November 2006, conservative think tanks began offering cash to scientists who would agree to write critiques of the IPCC fourth assessment report. Ken Green of the American Enterprise Institute (who received significant funding from Exxon) offered US$10 000 plus expenses for such a critique, at a time prior to the IPCC Report being released. The AEI were clearly determined to criticise the findings of the IPCC report, whatever those findings were.

Meanwhile, the Climate Science Coalition (who have chapters in USA, New Zealand and Australia) were responsible for submitting a stream of sceptic articles to mainstream newspapers in an organised campaign of spreading oped’s around the world. The transparent purpose of this organisation is not to debate science, but to plant seeds of doubt in the public mind.

While the think tanks were doing their dirty work, the tactic spread all the way to the US congress. In 2007 the Republican Party pollster and spin doctor Frank Luntz wrote a memo advising the Bush Administration on how best to deal with the environmental movement; on climate change, he wrote, ‘the party should remind voters (sic) that scientific debate remains open; voters believe that there is no consensus about global warming within the scientific community. Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly. Therefore, you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate, and defer to the scientists and other experts in the field…. The scientific debate is closing (against us) but not yet closed. There is still a window of opportunity to challenge the science.”

In January 2007 the Fraser Institute, a Canadian Think Tank, released an Independent Summary for Policy Makers of the IPCC report which concluded “there remains an unavoidable element of uncertainty as to the extent that humans are contributing to future climate change, and indeed whether or not such change is a good or bad thing.” The Fraser Institute is also a recipient of Exxon funding.

Meanwhile, Greenpeace USA started to expose the impact Exxon was having on the climate debate. Greenpeace set up an ExxonSecrets website which found that in the ten years after the creation of the Kyoto Protocol, Exxon had invested more than US$20 Million in think tanks dedicated to questioning climate change science.

Shortly after, two academics from the University of Central Florida, Peter Jacques and Mark Freeman, released a paper entitled `The Organisation of Denial: Conservative think-tanks and Environmental Scepticism’ found that 92% of 141 books had recently been published downplaying the importance of climate change received funding from ExxonMobil. [The Exxon Valdez oil carrier of ExxonMobil is still the largest oil spill polluter and have not paid the original penalty for gross pollution of some otherwise pristine environment and wiped out a complete fishing community]

Finally, the UK Royal Society contacted Exxon and asked them to stop funding think tanks that undermined climate science. In 2007 Exxon reported that it had stopped funding organisations `whose positions on climate change could divert attention from the important discussion of how the world will secure energy the energy required for economic growth in an environmentally responsible manner.’ However, shortly after that, a new denier think-tank came to the fore – the Heartland Institute.

In 2008, Heartland offered an all expenses paid trip to New York and a US$1000 honorarium to any scientist willing to “generate international media attention to the fact that many scientists believe forecasts of rapid warming and catastrophic events are not supported by sound science.” They brought these scientists together for major international climate sceptic conferences in 2009.

One strategy of Heartland has been to generate public `petitions’ of scientists who refute climate change science. However, many of these petitions have been found to contain names that are either fictional or of scientists who do not endorse the positions espoused. Many of these scientists have written to Heartland expressing their dismay at the use of their name, but Heartland refuses to remove them.

For example Dr. Svante Bjorck, a geo Biosphere scientist from Lund University, whose name was included in a Heartland Paper prepared by Dennis T. Avery and published on Heartland’s website under the headline `500 Scientists Whose Research Contradicts Man-made Global Warming Scares’ wrote in a letter to Heartland “please remove my name. What you have done is totally unethical !!” Despite this and many other similar complaints, the article and the list of names remains on Heartlands website. No apology. No correction.

A trend that Hoggan identifies in his book is that of the `echo-chamber effect’ among climate deniers. It relies on the echo chamber model of PR – sending out messages that reverberate through a series of think tanks, blogs, and sympathetic media outlets. This means that false claims made on climate denier websites are often repeated until they slip into the mainstream media.

A good example is UK Botanist David Bellamy writing in New Scientist that `555 of all the 625 glaciers under observation by the World Gracier Monitoring Service in Zurich have been growing since 1980′. When Guardian columnist George Monbiot contacted the World Glacier Monitoring Service in Zurich to verify the claim he was told “This is complete bullshit.” Monbiot later tracked the figure to the denier website Junk Science and globalwarming.org and discovered it was written by long time industry funded denier Candace Crandall.

Another key example is that of the Hockey Stick graph designed by paleoclimatologist Michael Mann, and used in the third IPCC Report. A retired Mining executive and investor, Stephen MacIntyre, launched his attack on the Hockey Stick Graph in 2003 in an obscure Journal Energy and Environment after more reputable journals refused to publish it.

Although Mann rebuffed most of the criticisms, he did add a clarification for the record, and this was enough for the news to spread through the deniers echo-chamber that the graph was discredited. By the time the story was spun back into mainstream media, it was often used by right wing columnists to discredit the entire science of climate change. That was despite the National Academy of sciences affirming the legitimacy of the Hockey Stick graph.

Also identified in Hoggans book are a new category of climate sceptics – the nondenier denier. These people, typified by Bjorn Lomborg, put themselves forward as reasonable interpreters of the science, even allies in the fight against climate change, but then undermine the public appetite for action. Despite Lomborg’s book The Sceptical Environmentalist being heavily criticised by the Danish government for `fabricating data’, as well as being `misleading’ and containing `plagiarism’, Lomborg became the toast of the sceptics movement, receiving awards from conservative think-tanks in the US and UK.

The problem is that in the interests of traditional journalistic balance, people like Lomborg can appear to be `centrist’ voices. Falling between the environmental side of the debate and industry funded lobbyists who were regularly overstating the anti-warming side, people like Lomborg who might argue – there is warming but we need to direct money to more pressing issues like AIDS – were given a large space in the media.

James Hoggan refers to the work of a number of researchers who have tried to find peer-reviewed papers doubting the science of climate change, but is those cases, researchers such as Benny Peiser in the US and Lawrence Solomon in the UK could not find a single peer-reviewed article in the past 15 years denying anthropogenic climate change or a single well qualified “denier” of the human contribution to climate change.

In this climate of deliberate manipulation and misinformation James Hoggan concludes that the alleged controversy around global warming should now be identified for what it is – a carefully constructed ruse to keep people from supporting the kinds of actions that will compromise the profit potential of large energy organisations, including the largest corporation in the world – ExxonMobil.

The book is essential reading.

With climate change being seen everywhere around the world, resulting in changing weather patterns, many countries are re-evaluating existing generation and looking for ways to reduce infrastructure costs, be it promoting wind or solar or other more extreeme choices (like geothermal and tide).

What we need in Australia is a Hugo Chavez (Venezuelan President) who has declared a national emergency in the electricity sector as the country’s worst drought in 50 years dries up water supplies in hydroelectric dams.

Despite the continued USA’s inteference which has some opposition parties blaming the government for the lack of rain in more than a year, Chavez has more popular support than most any other American president.

El Nino – through climate changes – is now hitting the world harder and the Venezuelan government is scrambling to avoid a power-grid collapse by buying generators from Brazil to China after nationwide rolling blackouts failed to prevent dam-water levels from dropping. Chavez fired his electricity minister and retracted an electricity conservation plan for Caracas last month after the measures left traffic lights without power, prompting protests.  The Guri dam is 46% full down from 60% at the beginning of the year (according to the National Administration Center, which operates the power grid) and its waters are used to generate more than two-thirds of the South American country’s power.

A state of emergency has been declared and Chavez announced measures to penalize households and businesses that consume more than a certain level and provide incentives for them to cut energy consumption; electricity companies will charge a surcharge on households that consume more than 500 kilowatt-hours an hour a month and don’t reduce their usage by 10% whereas those that cut energy use at least 10% will get a discount and those reducing consumption by more than 20%will see their bill halved.

Those that increase usage by 10% will see their bills double and those increasing consumption by 20% will receive a 200% surcharge. Chavez said ‘this is a motivator; we don’t want to charge anyone; what we want is for you to be more careful and save energy; this is a punishment to be imposed upon the people who waste’.

Failure to comply with the cuts will prompt a notification, followed by short-term suspensions of service and then an indefinite cut.

The government plans to add 4,000 megawatts of power into the national electrical system this year to resolve ‘the basic crisis’ and Venezuela will add 15,000 megawatts of power generation by 2015 at a cost of $15 billion. Venezuela hired a Chinese company to build power plants over the next two years, Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez said yesterday after returning from a trip to Russia, China and Japan to sign energy deals and seek financing. The plants have generating capacity of 2.7 gigawatts. 

The down side – for the environment – is that new plants will be powered by diesel, natural gas or fuel oil, which Venezuela has plenty of and they will help resolve electricity crisis with allies including Cuba and Argentina. ’We will be unrelenting’ Chavez said.

This is not possible in a world already over-populated and under the increasing weight of physical environmental and financial limits to growth.

Also, the idea that government can ride to the rescue and keep policy in place over numerous election cycles or that mainstream media will do anything which might upset the interests of their major advertisers or their owners, doesn’t apprecaie the full picture.

Climate loses political game

John Hewson

One of the most important and urgent challenges in government today is how to make significant longer-term policy change in a political world run essentially as a game over the 24-hour media cycle. Ironically, even though elections are easily won on the promise of “change”, the electorate inevitably resists it in its detail. There is no better current example than Obama!

I am particularly disturbed by the way our current “debate” on the challenge of climate change is unfolding. The magnitude and urgency of the challenge is being lost in short-term political point scoring. And most of the media has been lost in the “colour and movement” of that political contest. In terms of the policy imperatives, both sides have squibbed the challenge. A fight as to whose tax is the lesser, to achieve a mere five per cent reduction in emissions, against a policy imperative calling for reductions of more like 25-40 per cent by 2020, is today’s equivalent to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, in a world where there are many more icebergs as the polar icecap melts.

Beyond that, a combination of Rudd’s low base target, together with his failure to develop the need for, and then to adequately explain, an ETS, let alone admit to some of the inadequacies of his proposal, and the perceived failure of Copenhagen, has left the door wide open for Abbott’s political onslaught. To be clear, Abbott’ response is mostly political. While there is merit in soil carbon, tree planting, solar, etc, if they were to be well developed policies, as part of a more broad-based overall response, his strategy is the belief that you can frighten and fool most of the people, all of the time.

Forgive me for recalling the GST debate in the early 1990s. I understand just how well Abbott’s strategy can work, having been “done slowly” by the Master, Keating. But then the shoe was on the other foot. I was attempting to advocate major change from Opposition. Keating had all the resources and authority of Government to frighten people that I was “too big a risk”. And the substance of policy positions didn’t matter then. Keating was able to easily disown his painful past on tax reform in general, and the GST in particular. Nobody bothered to recall his commitment to the Parliament, back in 1985, that he would fight for both until his dying breath, having been rolled by the motel room, back-down, deal between Hawke and then ACTU President Kelty.

The media fascination back in 1993 was in the colour and movement of my slow death. There was virtually no focus on the undeliverability of Keating’s LAW tax-cuts without a GST. It was his final admission of that, later in ’93, with an added dash of his arrogance, that cost him Government in 1996. Rudd has the resources of Government. He has the capacity to reach the people. Public meetings, a paid and sustained media blitz, and/or whatever, he should explain and defend his case. He should be able to expose a political fear campaign for what it is !  Unfortunately, while the economics of an emissions trading scheme are pretty straight forward, the politics are admittedly tough.

The policy is to cap emissions, by putting a price on carbon, to force/encourage all levels of our society to change their behaviour, from big polluters to households.  In these economic terms, it is the “price” that principally drives the change, although a complete response to climate change, may have other incentives/mandation as a complement, such as banning incandescent lightbulbs, mandating bio-fuels and other alternative technologies, etc.  [Here he is very wrong, mandating biofuels is a backward step, as more resources and energy is consumed than the resultant energy edrived from the biofuels]

In these terms there must inevitably be “losers”, at least in the short-term, as relative prices move. While Governments will always, understandably, want to offset or cushion the impact on some consumers/ businesses etc., or assist in the necessary adjustments, the policy doesn’t allow you to push this too far, as you actually want the “price” to bite and force the desired change in behaviour.  Enter the politics! It is so easy to frighten and confuse. Potential “losers” can be screamed about and interviewed and, in the end, it’s all too easy to argue that “if you don’t understand it don’t vote for it !”

It is also easy to scaremonger on the possible consequences for economic growth and jobs, although the counter argument that a full and adequate response to climate change should see a technological revolution, spawning new industries and considerably new employment, is certainly worth the fight.  So, while managing this detail, Rudd must also sell the “big picture”, the “big challenge”, the imperative, the economic, social and moral imperative, to move to a low-carbon society as a matter of genuine urgency.  The real challenge is for leadership on such a fundamentally important issue. Our political leaders have a responsibility to provide it, and the media has a responsibility to call for it, and to reward it, rather than to just wallow in the “colour and movement” of grossly irresponsible politicking.

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2812572.htm

While polls may indicate an improvement in the LNP (Coalition) appreciation, its more what Kevin Rudd – now also a proved non-performer with other failures like Wong and Garrett – has lost; so is the marginal percentage swing the more astute voter or more likely the donkey vote ?

Abbots climate change policy has received a lukewarm reception from scientists picking through the detail and finding not very much. Many raise doubts that the policy could achieve its stated aim of reducing emissions by 5% on 1990 levels over the next decade when companies would be entitled to continue to release greenhouse gases at business as usual levels.

Previous deregulation of every industry in Australia has seen excesses rather than trimming back, so a policy that does not penailise growth and does not have a cap on emissions is very unlikely to achieve a 5% cut by 2020, but by then Tony Abbot and every other politician in parliament at the moment will have retired on a fat pension while the rest of Australians suffer not just in harsher conditions, but in poor economic positions.  And it is about money; the absence of a clear and consistent price signals a serious flaw in the policy.

Professor John Foster (school of economics at the University of Queensland) said ‘sSome of the incentives to encourage carbon reduction in power generation, land use and other areas are laudable, but given that complex tendering processes are involved, the bureaucracy and associated costs of managing schemes in such a wide range of areas will be difficult and more expensive than suggested; this is a policy that pivots around the palatable business as usual and why it’s so cheap’.

The policy document suggests that sequestering carbon in the soil would be the main way of achieving the 5% cut, restraining annual national emissions of greenhouse gases to 525 million tonnes by 2020. How this soil carbon sequestration is supposed to work is by enriching soils with organic matter, often in the form of charcoal-like biochar, which locks up carbon for long periods. [The CSIRO is co-ordinating the trial of several techniques for sequestration and monitoring, but at this stage the process involves
only broad estimates of the amount of carbon locked up underground]. However, biochar itself has a high embodied energy (transportation, drying and burning and spreading).

The opposition’s policy is that an emissions reduction fund would be established and pay for the capture of 10 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in the soil by various projects in the first year. By 2020, the capture of 85 million tonnes would be funded, but questions have been raised about whether soil carbon sequestration will work on the enormous scale required and over the fact that it is not internationally recognised as a legitimate method of storing carbon.

Frank Jotzo (a senior lecturer at the Crawford School of Economics and Government at the Australian National University) said ‘soil carbon improvements and research on bio-sequestration are worthwhile investments if implemented well, but they are not the answer to Australia’s rising emissions from energy use; what is needed is a strong and pervasive price signal to emitters through  an emissions trading system, perhaps starting with a fixed price to provide certainty in the start-up phase’.

Kevin Rudd looked happy to see Tony Abbot when they each appeared at church together (got to get all them votes); having a fellow light-weight with even less charisma was a real godsend ….