Greens MPs

This was published today at ABC Unleashed

The release on Monday of the Rudd Government's climate change white paper is a clear demonstration that this Government is intent on playing politics with climate change without actually doing anything about it.

The useless emissions reduction target and self-defeating design of the scheme tells only half the story. The Government pre-empted the announcement by throwing half a billion dollars at expanding coal infrastructure in the Hunter Valley, and followed it up with a badly-designed incentive scheme for renewable energy that will ensure it does not grow beyond a marginal player to challenge the dominance of the coal sector.

Today's Age newspaper's editorial put it clearly:

This post was published originally this morning at ABC Online

One of the most important numbers in Australia's history was revealed yesterday - a number that carries with it the hopes and fears of millions of people and embodies our priorities as a nation, our balancing of the relative worth of human beings.

It has been argued that the 5 per cent 2020 emissions reduction target that Prime Minister Rudd announced is no more or less than a political balancing act - navigating a midway path between the competing demands of business and scientists, of the Coalition and the Greens. But that is an extremely superficial view, and one that fails to see just how all-encompassing climate change is. There are much deeper choices at the core of any decision on emissions targets.

Perhaps the most obvious of these choices is the question 'do we value our children as much as ourselves?'

It's hard to find the words to express quite how atrocious today's decision announcement has been.

Here's a video that expresses what a lot of us are starting to think - that all those who voted for Kevin Rudd thinking he'd be better than John Howard on climate change were sold a lump of coal.

If you're angry, come along tomorrow and join us at the rallies listed here.

This post was first published at ABC's Unleashed site:

With the global financial meltdown meeting the climate meltdown head on, the potential to deal with both crises using the same solutions has been gaining support.

Last month, the United Nations Environment Program joined with Deutsche Bank and others to promote a 'Green New Deal' based on investing billions of dollars in the four pillars of renewable energy, energy efficiency, clean transport and ecosystem protection, reducing greenhouse emissions, building infrastructure and creating millions of new jobs. World leaders such as US President-elect Obama, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon have publicly embraced the proposal, with Obama listing a $150 billion clean energy plan as his top priority.

The 'Green New Deal', taking its inspiration from Franklin Delano Roosevelt's 'New Deal' to build the USA out of the Great Depression, is only the most recent embodiment of strategies put forward from Hobart to London over the last few decades, recognising that investing in protecting the environment is the only sensible economic plan.

Yesterday the Rudd Government demonstrated very clearly where its climate and energy priorities lie - not with the proven renewable energy solutions, but with the geosequestration pipe-dream that Al Gore has recently called "too imaginary to make a difference in protecting either our national security or the global climate".

Fresh from burying Christine Milne's feed-in tariff Bill with a majority Senate Inquiry report saying it's a "great idea, but let's not do it", the Rudd Government went on last night to push through a Bill which gives a huge benefit to those who seek to bury CO2 under the sea floor - letting them make profits without having to carry the liability. This is a recipe for a new sub-prime crisis, telling industry that they can make significant profits safe in the knowledge that they will not need to carry the can for more than 20 years.

The debate on this bill is worth reading in its entirety if you have time. It exposes quite how blinded by industry rhetoric the Government and Opposition both are. Perhaps the pinnacle of this is to be found in

The thing I’ve found most fascinating about the responses to the Treasury’s ETS modelling
released yesterday is how, all of a sudden, a pile of big coal’s
biggest fans are agreeing with us that coal with geosequestration isn’t
going to come cheap!

Malcolm Turnbull, for example, told the media yesterday
that “The cost of carbon capture and storage is probably the biggest
single assumption in this whole analysis… There is no full-blown
demonstration plant employing carbon capture and storage so estimates
of its costs are speculative.”

Well-known climate naysayer, Brian Fisher, writes in today’s Australian
that “The Treasury’s assumptions on the capital cost of construction of
a CCS-ready coal-fired power plant appear to be about half those
estimated by well-qualified industry experts.”

This is a speech I delivered to the Sydney Institute last night. You can also listen to it here or download a pdf here.

Sydney Institute, October 27th 2008.

Green Politics, the Balance of Power and the Green New Deal.

Good evening. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you this evening about Green Politics, Balance of Power and the twin global meltdowns of climate and finance. There has never been a more critical time to be a Green and there has never been a time when the philosophy and experience of Green politics - based on forty years of environmental, social justice, peace and democracy campaigning - has been more important. The decisions that will be made in the next five years are crucial for the future of life on Earth.

On Monday, Waleed Aly had a superb opinion piece in the SMH which sadly went largely unnoticed. In the piece he argued persuasively that the biggest long-term impacts of major economic crises are the changes to the socio-political terrain that they tend to trigger.

The prime example, of course, is the dramatic shift towards fascism and other forms of xenophobic politics triggered by the Great Depression, not only in Europe but across the globe.

Aly's great fear is that the current economic crisis could well lead to a new xenophobic politics. This is a fear which rang a deep chord within me, as one whose political views were shaped significantly by a Holocaust survivor grandfather.

I've just seen this excellent video that I felt was worth posting. It is from Van Jones talking about his new book, The Green Collar Economy, putting a concise argument for spending half the money that was spent on the Wall St bail-out on delivering an economic and environmental boom.

In excellent news this morning, The Age reports that Christine Milne's amendments to the Luxury Car Tax, exempting fuel efficient vehicles from the levy, are already having an impact!

Ian Porter writes:

"THE changes made to luxury car tax have already started to influence the design of premium cars, with Audi announcing plans to install smaller diesel engines in some of its models so they consume less than seven litres per 100 kilometres - and become exempt from the tax."

Audi Chief Joerg Hofmann is quoted as saying: