Greens MPs

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.

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.

The Rudd Government's Emissions Trading Green Paper can now be downloaded from the Climate Change Department website here.

I've been trying to get to do a post on this since 12.30, but I'm alone in the office with Christine and the phone's been ringing off the hook - which is a good thing!

We will do a proper detailed post, but in the meantime, here is Christine's release from this arvo.

The upshot is that the Government has put their foot on the accelerator and the brake at the same time. The leak this morning about essentially keeping petrol out of the scheme (raising the price with one hand and dropping it by the same amount with the other!) is symbolic of the whole thing. An emissions trading scheme is about driving new investment, but this proposal would protect existing coal investments, shutting the door on efficiency and renewables and mass transit and alternative fuels.

Professor Garnaut is likely to be very unimpressed indeed today. His hard work has just been utterly trashed.

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 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?"

As the team at Hansard are struggling valiantly to catch up on the huge quantity of transcribing work coming out of Senate Estimates, it's going to be a little while before we're up to date here on what's been happening, but I thought I'd post a few key climate and oil-related transcripts now.

I've been a fan of First Dog on the Moon's since Crikey started running his work some time ago. Off the wall genius that it is sometimes hard to comprehend, sometimes incredibly moving, often ROFL.

While the battle of petrol price populism between the old parties drags on, Christine plugged away once again last night at her favourite Senate Estimates sparring partner, ABARE.

This piece was published today on Crikey's daily email. Also see my media release from this morning on the issue.