Greens MPs

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

So the day after tomorrow (ah that hoary old Hollywood chestnut...), Penny Wong will finally release the government's Green Paper, to which Professor Garnaut is one of many 'inputs'. Most of the others being big business.

While it won't be anything like final design, and it won't include any emissions targets or trajectories, the paper should give us a much better idea of what the government's thinking is on emissions trading. We'll have more of an idea of whether it'll be something The Greens can support with amendments. The signs thus far are that it should be supportable, but there is still the chance that it'll be so full of holes that we'd be better off without it.

Here's some notes we've put together on some of the key issues with emissions trading that we'll be looking out for.

I've been meaning to post since last night on the crazy Garnaut submission the Productivity Commission released yesterday, but simply haven't had the time.

In the interests of having something on the blog about this important piece of work to undermine climate action, I thought I'd just post Christine's comments from yesterday.

This morning, I joined Bob Brown and our ACT Senate candidate, Kerrie Tucker, down at the ANU's Big Dish to launch a new policy that we are quite excited about - Farming Renewable Energy.

We've noticed that whenever we raise this as a concept it garners a particularly positive response, so we developed it into a detailed policy proposal to help those farmers whose livelihood is most threatened by climate change impacts to start profiting by becoming part of the solution. Instead of staring at a dustbowl, this policy can give people reason for hope.

The policy is about drawing together the need to reduce emissions urgently and the need to adapt to the climate change that is already locked in. We have to face up to the fact that, thanks to our actions over the last centuries, there will be parts of Australia that have been farmed for generations that will become far less viable for agriculture. But we can't just abandon those communities to their hotter and drier future. We certainly can't just go out there with an akubra and a relief cheque and pray for rain. We need to support them in staying on the land, keeping their communities vibrant, and moving into a future where climate change is an opportunity, not just a threat.

At Bob's press club speech last week there was a question about the feasibility of achieving a Mandatory Renewable Energy Target (MRET) of 15% by 2012.