Parsons’ report: Rich trawling at the end of the week

PHILL PARSONS, Parsons Report 25JUL09
Why Turnbull cannot turn a trick and Rudd will take him for a 3 month slog before gutting his brilliant career in November. Who said the environment would not be central to national politics?

This morning The Australian is headed up with Turnbull’s proposed log of claims, subject to party room [and ‘Iron Bar’ Tuckey’s] approval. The Rudd government is supposed to negotiate over this grab bag of points and come up with an ETS acceptable to the Liberal party room and thus get it passed through the Senate with the support of the biggest half of the Coalition parties.

Great political joke which I will return to.

On Friday the 24th The Australian carried 2 opinion pieces. One from the Minister for Mining, former ACTU Secretary, Martin Ferguson and another from Tony Abbott.

Fergusson appealed for more mining and export of dirty fuels, especially LNG [actually emits less carbon than coal when burnt] and uranium. He appealed to us on the grounds that the export of these fuels would lift 1.6Bn people without power and in poverty from these traps.

Either Martin is simple or Fergusson believes readers are so. The technologies most likely to provide power to people are the alternatives that can be erected at a household or village level to meet directly the needs of those in poverty. Experience with mini and micro hydro makes this clear.

Labor wants mor uranium mines, it is planning to change its policy against forcing a nuclear waste dump on the NT and you are going to get a national repository. The export or uranium makes it more likely that a dirty bomb will arrive somewhere.

Abbott uses a smoker analogy to belittle the ETS forgetting that smoking mostly kills smokers whereas an unstable climate has much wider impacts. In his tract he alludes to past climate fluctuations with an historical record, calling them changes, and thus reveals his disbelief. For Tony passing an ETS has much more to do with the Liberals regaining government by focusing on a supposed Labor weakness, the economy.

And what of the Liberals grab bag of changes to the scheme. O’Connor of the Climate Institute cannot understand what a shopping list from several Senators from the US midwest has to do with the Australian legislation.

The thing that guts US legislation is the special deals for sectoral interests. It distrots thje economy making further intervention by government necessary to offset the distortion pushing up both costs and taxes. Look at the distortions to the Tasmanian economy caused by the State governments special deals.

Labor’s actions on climate and the communities view that something must be done coincide [otherwise Labor would do nothing, it only stands for whatever gets it elected now] and so the Liberals continuing to oppose put them out of step on a popular issue. Better to pass a flawed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, flog the Rudd government when the economy falters under its load, and return to power promising to change [gut] the problem causing evil Labor plan.

All well and good because special pleading from industry, and their servant State Labor governments in the very very dirty brown coal powered state of Victoria and in the black coal exporting Queensland is applying pressure at the moment for more handouts and deals.

The time is with Rudd, he is popular and the economy appears to be climbing out of the GFC inspired downturn thanks to exports.

Why should Rudd deal with the Liberals?

If the Liberals fail to pass the CPRS legislation in the Senate in August will Rudd negotiate changes before the legislation is represented in 3 months? The Liberals then have to pass it then or face a double dissolution election giving Rudd a further 3 years and before the Copenhagen negotiations offer any sort of a lifeline to the Liberals.

Even then Rudd has the flexibility of a 20% range for the carbon emission reduction targets the government sets, because the joint sitting of both the House and the Senate following a Double Dissolution election is likely to give Labor a majority in its own right. The capacity to adjust the % reduction gives Labor the ability to avoid much of the discomfort that industry believes will come from an ETS.

So will Rudd take this course or throw Turnbull a lifeline, believing a wounded and inexperienced Liberal leader can be beaten anytime and that if the government agrees to amendments it will tie the Liberals to the CPRS and possibly split the Coalition.

Methinks Rudd will opt for the Double Dissolution. It allows him to grow on divisions within the Liberal party and in the Coalition over the time to the next election and to defeat their best hope whilst the economy retains an improving trend.

Labor will then be office until the end of 2012 before it must again face the people, a year after its CPRS has been in operation and when the Copenhagen treaty, whatever it contains, is about to come into force. It will also be about the time of Obama’s second election campaign.

The downside to this is a Hanson like phenomenon as those who don’t understand climate change drift toward the Nationals and those who see the CPRS as too little drift to the Greens. Both these parties will, in a double dissolution election, need fewer votes to secure a quota, and thus a Senator, so making it likely that all States have at least one Green Senator, and several may have 2.

The outcome for the Nationals is less clear.

In the lower house an election fought on the green issue may see an inner city seat go Green. Certainly, the dealing for preference allocation on the How to Votes will be extremely interesting. Indeed, this is likely regardless of the timing of the next election.

Does Turnbull retire, or go on to the first year of an ETS and the next election? Who replaces him? Are the Liberals, who have failed to grasp the science involved in understanding the climate under different greenhouse gas emissions regimes able, after such a defeat, to learn anything about the impact of human activity on present and future climate.

Will we see Liberal changes to the CPRS to hasten the move to a low carbon economy the next time round or will the fossil fools and other dinosaur types continue to lead the conservatives and business down a dead end.path?

Science has, since the industrial revolution, supplied the conservative philosophy with new candidates and money to run a political party, through its application to manufacture and to business. It has also driven the rise of the labor parties by creating industrial workers and conurbations.

Its all well and good to take the benefits of science for several centuries and use them, but when that same science points out the dangerous faults of the practices to date, you cannot fail to recognize them and change or continuing to stand on the edifice the benefits have made makes the fate of the King of Kings of Shelley’s poetical fancy as real as the internal combustion engine.

phill Parsons would like you to not that his comments do not tie him to supporting the Rudd governments CPRS or its role in international negotiations. For hius opinion there please read his past articles.

I would also like to point out another scientific discovery relevant to the climate. Here you can read about the decline of cloudiness.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090723141812.htm

The strong evidence referred to has feedbacks beyond the simple warming of the ocean due to reduced cloudiness. Warmer oceans reduce turbation with colder deeper layers hastening acidification and thus reducing the capacity of oceans to sink carbon. Warmer oceans impact on sea ice and on glacial tongues protruding into the oceans. Warmer oceans increase storm intensity.

Higher sea levels, greater storm damage, fewer fish, collapsed reef systems no longer protecting coasts and less rain. All brought to you by those denying the evidence of the record, of the model and of our own experiences.