Let's turn this into an opportunity
Blog Post | Blog of Christine Milne
Tuesday 1st December 2009, 2:18pm
by TimHollo in
It appears likely, although not certain, that the elevation of Tony Abbott to the leadership of the Liberal Party today rings the death knell for the Rudd Government's failure of an emissions trading scheme.
The Government and its backers will no doubt attempt to brand this as a victory for climate scepticism. But I see it equally as a defeat of climate hypocrisy and a moment of hope that we may now be able to have a sensible debate about climate policy in Australia - a debate that has been stunningly absent in recent months.
Tony Abbott in his press conference today distanced himself from climate scepticism. He noted that climate change is real, that we humans play a role in it, and that the debate is over the mechanism we choose to deal with it. We can, of course, safely assume that any mechanism Mr Abbott eventually proposes will be unacceptably weak on the science and will unfairly allocate the burden of action to the community instead of the polluters. But that is the ground on which this debate should be being fought - not action vs inaction, but what kind of action. The "will they won't they" politics of the CPRS prevents that debate from being heard.
Let's reflect briefly once again on the CPRS itself.
The Government has always been keen to frame this as a question of action vs inaction on climate change, but even they, in their now almost certainly defunct negotiations with the Liberal Party, agreed that there comes a point when action is so weak that it becomes functionally equivalent to inaction. The Greens and the majority of environmentalists in Australia believe that that point was passed long ago. But this scheme goes beyond weak - it will actually take Australia in the wrong direction [http://christine-milne.greensmps.org.au/content/whats-wrong-with-cprs-and-how-can-it-be-fixed]. As Citi Investment Research director Elaine Prior told ABC Inside Business on Sunday:
"One of the things that the package has done is provided more surety for the coal-fired generators to keep generating until roughly 2020 or beyond. So one might say in that sense that it's on the one hand created more stability in the electricity market, but perhaps reduced the urgency for people to look at change."
Between the woefully weak targets and the handouts and free permit allocation overwhelmingly skewed towards sandbagging existing industry, the scheme as designed would have undermined our ability to negotiate a meaningful deal in Copenhagen, and unleash a bonanza of investment in coal.
The CPRS would have been the national equivalent of a person changing a couple of lightglobes at home while cranking the air conditioner. The small action might make them feel good, but the overwhelming impact is still negative.
We have the opportunity to reject that choice today by voting down the CPRS. Once we get that flawed proposition off the table, it gives us the opportunity to put the debate back where it belongs - on the fundamental question of how we address the climate crisis. The Greens relish that opportunity. We are ready to give our all to that end.
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Irrelevant consideration
I'm sorry Christine, but it seems completely irrelevant to be worried about who pays. If the polluters pay then they pass the costs onto the community. So its pointless to insist the polluter pays, thats just ideology getting in the way of a solution. The question of who pays is absolutely the wrong one to focus on since the community always pays in the end.
The most important thing is simply to establish a price on carbon. We don't need 1000 pages of incomprehensible legislation to do that. KISS principle comes to mind.
Of secondary importance thing is to try to make sure the scheme doesn't unnecessarily carry additional costs due to a design that feeds billions to say brokers. A scheme that feeds brokers will certainly increase the final bill to the community because it results in a wealth transfer from ordinary punters to financial wizards (who don't actually contribute to the solution). Since the community always pays the question of how much they pay is more important than figuring out the order in which people pay.
Please leave the left leaning tendencies at the door and instead design a carbon tax that doesn't increase the overall tax burden. That is the carbon tax must replace existing taxes (i.e. state govt taxes to begin with). It neutralises completely the argument against a tax on the basis of it just being a tax. When pitching it, list all the taxes it will eliminate every time you bring it up.
So if the path of least resistance is to tax end consumers of carbon directly then adopt a taoist attitude and don't fight it. The obvious thing to balance a consumer tax is to raise the tax free income tax threshold while leaving the upper thresholds alone.
A tax of something like 30c/kWh for every kWh of non-greenpower consumed above say 1000kWh per person annum might be a way to start. It leaves the least wealthy alone since they can be assisted to consume less power. It enshrines a right to a certain amount of power and it addresses excess consumption of power which is at the root of our status as the world worst emitting nation. And it gives a massive boost to greenpower production since people will be buying RECs like crazy (i.e. buying greenpower) in response.
Another option might be to put a carbon tax in the too hard basket and simply double the MRET to 40% by 2020 and toss out SHWS and also eliminate 15 year deeming, that should kick the RECs price up nicely and the renewable projects will follow.
Please
Can we please please pass the current cprs as a simple start. I know it will be better. We need a start. Voting it down is a disaster.
Please
vote
why did I vote for the greens - you had a chance to do something and blew it. You'll become irrelevant now.
CPRS (Conservative's Polygamised Recidivist Scam)
Wooooohooo!
Couldn’t agree more Christine.
As the proverb says, more or less "there is opportunity in times of change"
The Mad Monk is surely God sent!
So it looks as if Big Ears is going to crucify himself on the cross of the hardliners with nails of denial (that’s your modern conservative; self delusion, denial and pugnacious obstinacy). Nails which of course will be hammered home by the Fist of foolishness.
No doubt the sceptic mob who is still not absolutely convinced that they lost the last election will help drag that cross all the way to a DD election, and be formally and undeniably TROUNCED.
That election could very well be there after remembered as the "CLIMATE CHANGE REFERENDUM" (or similar). And with luck we will have an opportunity to see a vote on an improved policy with increased minimum targets. Especially if China, touting a 45% by 2020 reduction target can earn credibility. (and providing the nuclear alternative for Oz is pre- emptively crippled)
It was entirely probable that either the climate change issue would be sidelined or the Libs would eventually self destruct over the necessity for drastic policy measures. But who would have thought it would be so soon!
To campaign on any other issue during a flash lead up to a DD election would be transparently delusional, even to the most gullible of us.
There’s very little chance that the Libs could gain any ground without some kind of ALP media blackout and a massive PR campaign on their part. It’s obviously a very neat gambit for the ALP to make the play. With an almost assured outcome which will just about dissolve any cohesion the conservative's might have developed over the next few years, why would you waste time?
I say BRING IT ON!
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And this just published article (below) would seem to be both support for and an affirmation of the necessity for a cohesive environmental policy with real teeth. Source: YAHOO 7 Business! Which if you had your head well and truly elsewhere and did not know, is representative of the popular media's very conservative heartland!
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The coal, hard facts on climate policy
Wednesday December 2, 2009, 11:12 am
So a national climate showdown is looming. But while most of the focus has been on the federal Coalition's contortions over the emissions trading scheme, the Government is also struggling to launch the epic energy revolution necessary to dramatically slash carbon emissions.
This is for our kids, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and his ministers are fond of saying about tackling climate change. That is why, they say, Australia needs an emissions trading scheme, renewable energy and - to sell more coal than ever before.
That's right. While Mr Rudd has excoriated global warming sceptics in the Opposition and backed the need to urgently reduce global carbon emissions, Federal and state governments are spending more than $10 billion on port and rail infrastructure in a bid to double Australia's coal exports by 2030.
Like most governments around the world, Australia has a raft of contradictory policies affecting climate change. In fact, like most other governments, Canberra administers more global warming-inducing policies than the other way around.
It's a reflection of how 150 years of dependence on fossil fuels has curled its way through the many nooks and crannies of government.
For instance, carbon emissions from the burning of coal is one of the leading causes of global warming. And one of the major sources is coal-fired power stations.
Yet governments have approved new investments to expand the electricity grid in ways that could lock Australia into the existing, highly centralised architecture based on supply from coal-fired power stations for at least another 30 years.
All that without the necessary upgrades needed to bring on large amounts of power generated from wind, solar or geothermal.
Then there's the proposed emissions trading scheme. It is supposed to install a market signal to drive investment and customers away from carbon polluting businesses.
Some coal-fired power stations complained it meant they may have to shut down eventually. Well yes, that would be the point of such a scheme, wouldn't it?
Not according to the Federal Government, which has promised $7.3 billion over 10 years in compensation to encourage operators to build less carbon-polluting gas-fired power stations.
But they don't have to. They can still operate their existing stations and get the money without any requirements to reduce their emissions.
No wonder Treasury estimates the so-called Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme won't see Australia's domestic carbon emissions fall until after 2033, and only then if clean coal has been invented and deployed around the country - which many experts, including former Howard government minister and Coalition frontbencher Ian Macfarlane believe is unlikely.
The Australia Institute economist Richard Dennis says there are countless examples of how current policy settings counter efforts to mitigate climate change:Governments spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year subsidising oil exploration and extraction;There are subsidies to offset increasing petrol costs, which mute the incentive to get cars off the road;The fringe benefits tax ensures that the more employees drive, the greater tax concession they receive; and so on...
It highlights the enormous challenge facing governments in trying to bring about an energy transformation without slamming business and consumers into fossil fuel rehab - and throwing governments out of office.
Many in the federal Coalition believe the Government proposal has already gone too far. But some business and policy analysts worry the Government's first steps, while in the right direction, are too tentative to ensure the nation starts down a new path.
"You can't do this without it hurting," Mr Dennis said. "It's like increasing the price of cigarettes and then providing a rebate to smokers so as to insulate them from the extra cost.
"The whole point of using a market instrument is to use price signals to change people's behaviour.
"The Government has muted all the price signals, which means the (emissions trading) scheme will have little or no impact on consumers and on our carbon emissions."
Every electorate
If there is to be a future election on a CPRS we need a GREENS Candidate in every electorate, even in Safe/Blue Ribbon/Heart Land seats. We need to know the strength of public support on this issue Australia wide & a ballot tally room is the is the principal survey vehicle. It need not be a logistical nightmare fielding that many (appropriate) candidates considering the unlikelyhood of winning a Labor or Liberal safe seat, but we need to know the extent of protest votes over either Coalition scepticism or Labor whitewash legislation.
For my part, I do support (in principal) a CPRS. The commitment to carbon reduction is only as strong as the cost to individuals & organisations. The cost of doing nothing will only be apparent to anylists scouring over obscure charts & tabulations without an up-front charge on carbon, just as how much consumer tax we paid was obscure before receipts with a GST printed upon them.
As much as I supported a CPRS, what scared me about it was how much I didn't know about Mr Rudd's legislation. I was affraid ordinary Australians would suffer higher living costs while big business enjoyed all the concessions, that billions of tax dollars would go to free carbon credits while 'we' could not even get subsidies on solar panels. The conservatives were right when they accused Labor of making the issue of a CPRS a point of Political Correctness, because that's how badly the Government sold its legislation. We need to know individuals can make an effort to reduce carbon emmissions to their own benifit & that, that credit cannot be snapped as a free ride by polluters? We need to know we will not be flooded with cheap imports from Non-CPRS countries & that Australians will not be put out of work by companies going off-shore?
I want to cast a protest vote & send a message to both the major parties, but I live in a Labor safe-seat....
Change the Counts - Queensland the stolen election
in 2007 The Greens should have won the Queensland Senate Seat
Larissa Waters was denied representation because of the way we count the Senate vote. The system is not fair or accurate.
The principle is simple. Each vote must be treated the same and be of equal value. Any candidate that is excluded from the count should be redistributed as if that candidate had not stood.
If you recount the QLD senate vote excluding all candidates except the last seven (3 ALP, 3 Liberal/NP 1 green) Larisa Waters should have been elected.
She was denied representation by the way in which we count the vote.
We should be using Meek or the Wright System where on every exclusion the vote is reset and the count restated. The count continues until all vacancies are elected in a single iteration.
I WANT A FAIR AND ACCURATE SYSTEM. WHILST I AM PLEASED THE ALP GAINED AN EXTRA SENATE POSITION I CAN NOT SUPPORT THE FACT THAT IT DID SO NOT ON MERIT BUT ONLY AS A RESULT IN A FLAW IN THE WAY WE COUNT THE VOTE.
WHY HAS THE GREENS NOT RAISED THIS ISSUE? ITS TIME TO FIX IT AND MAKE IT RIGHT.
WHY IS BOB BROWN REMAINING SILENT ON THIS SERIOUS FLAW IN THE WAY WE COUNT THE SENATE VOTE?
Submission 51
JSCEM
Change that counts
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