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?'

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.

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.

This piece was originally published in today's Crikey email.

In the coming months before the emissions trading legislation comes before the Senate, the Rudd Government needs to think hard about what it is trying to achieve.

Does it plan to buy into the lowest common denominator populism of the Coalition? This approach drags the debate backwards, undermines the global climate fight, and risks alienating a significant portion of Labor’s own base who voted for leadership on climate.

Or will it lead from the front, inspiring Australians to embrace this challenge to rebuild, upgrade and retool for a zero emissions future? Will it appeal to people’s best instincts, articulating a positive vision of preparing ourselves for the future by investing in a systemic roll-out of energy efficiency, mass transit and renewable energy?

The final answer will be in the 2020 target that is promised in the legislation by the end of the year, but the signals from yesterday’s Green Paper were decidedly worrying. The Paper was framed entirely around costs and cash compensation instead of the opportunities for transformation we Greens have been advocating.

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.

This was published in Crikey this afternoon. My release from today is here.

Professor Garnaut’s much-awaited Draft Report [huge file here if the Garnaut website is still down] is, in general, strong on the architecture but terribly weak on the big, over-riding issue – preventing runaway climate change. His policy prescriptions are completely out of step with his science.

When we were looking for a transformative vision to take Australia into the post-carbon world, we got an incrementalist approach with a slow start and even a step backwards on the 2050 target.

Let’s firstly look at what Garnaut got right.

An edited version of this piece appeared in today's Crikey email.

Not long ago I wrote in Crikey giving the Climate Institute a very hard time over their positioning on geosequestration. While I still think they are utterly wrong on that, I write today to support their excellent report which the Federal Opposition yesterday dishonestly and disingenuously abused in Question Time.

Those with memories longer than most in the big old parties will remember that one of the Howard Government's favourite strategies in the climate debate, from the late nineties right through until their Emissions Trading Task Group report last year, was to state the costs of action in absolute terms while ignoring business-as-usual economic growth. Ably assisted by ABARE, Howard and his Ministers turned the costs of climate action into a bogeyman when a simple comparative analysis showed that the costs would be dwarfed by the rate at which we are all getting richer.

This analysis, shouted from the rooftops by the Greens, Greenpeace, Clive Hamilton and many others, was lost in the populist fray.

The Climate Institute's report yesterday, written by two leading economists in the field, former Greens staffer Richard Denniss and the CSIRO's Steve Hatfield-Dodds, is one of the best contributions to this debate yet. It demonstrates very clearly that, while the costs increases that will come down the line with an effective emissions trading scheme are quite substantial, they are still smaller than expected increases in wealth for all income brackets and for all carbon prices modelled.

In other words, even with a high carbon price, energy will actually decrease as a proportion of household spending!

The report goes on to say that, with investment in energy efficiency or cash compensation using the vast revenue accumulated through emissions permit sales, there will be very significant savings to all brackets for all carbon prices modelled. This is something the Greens have long been arguing. We strongly support compensation for low income earners, although there are far better ways to deliver it than cash payments. We propose a very substantial investment in a systemic roll-out of energy efficiency upgrades, such as insulation and solar hot water, through a scheme like our EASI policy as the best way to permanently reduce household energy costs.

To return to the point at hand, energy affordability comparisons are undeniably a tricky and complex issue, but that is no excuse for the Opposition's return to Howard Government form, quite deliberately abusing the report, taking figures out of context and using the report to say the exact opposite of what it actually says.

I've been shocked by Brendan Nelson's populism on petrol, but, just when I thought the Opposition could go no lower, they managed to achieve it. Cory Bernardi led the charge in the Senate, citing the report as demonstration of the unfair imposition on families of emissions trading.

The Government, tragically, made a ham-fisted attempt to defend its position. Instead of calling the Opposition to task for deliberately abusing and misusing the data, they fell back on first principles that the cost of inaction will be greater than the cost of action. That is, of course, true. But, when given such an opportunity, surely it would have been far better to use the details of the report itself and expose the Opposition on the issue.

This whole episode is symptomatic of the hijacking of the climate debate once again by those who would rather lie and suppress the truth than face up to the challenge. On Insiders this last weekend, George Megalogenis's valiant attempt to discuss how petrol price is actually declining as a proportion of household expenditure was shouted down by Andrew Bolt.

It is very clear that, if we are to have a sensible climate debate in this country, that debate needs to be between the Government and the Greens, leaving out the Opposition until they are willing to engage sensibly and with intellectual rigour.

I think Liberal Backbencher Chris Pearce may have done us all a big favour by taking the petrol price populism just that little bit too far this morning.

He went out on a limb calling for his own party to double its ridiculous 5c fuel excise cut to 10c and promptly got smacked down by members of his own party as well as others.

You know the message is starting to get through when Kerry O'Brien on ABC's 7.30 Report opens an interview with the Prime Minister by saying "isn't it time to look Australians in the eye and tell them the news is only going to get worse on oil?"