PHILL PARSONS
Melissa Fyfe of The Age twitters “Just heard state energy min say people with solar panels shouldn’t profit from them. So profits can only go to companies making electricity? 12:18 AM May 19th from web @ http://twitter.com/melfyfe
With people of such capacity in charge you can be sure working families and small businesses will be ripped off over the climate as they are anytime anything involving a cash cow super profit for the big end of town passes through government.
For those not sure who Fyfe referring to, its the Victorian Labor government. These are the same buffoons who delayed the water reforms of the Murray Darling Basin and are still an obstacle to national container deposit legislation. Who are their special mates?
Here’s a little bit on the fate of the Managed Investment Scam plantations.
http://in.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idINTRE54L1D820090522?sp=true
Bartlett remains on a looser by not creating a carbon value for Tasmanian forest owners. Not only do we loose the carbon, but we loose out on the market value of the increasing carbon price pushing the value of timber even if the owner still decides to cut.
It’s as though Bartlett wants Forestry Tasmania to make losses so the working families and small businesses have to continue to pay because the government is unable to discipline this out of control organization and ensure a return on the asset commensurate with its value.
Indeed this week saw protests across the nation to expose the loss of carbon from woodchip exports from natural forest ecosystems.
Forestry responded by claiming that growing trees sink carbon making them a positive.
Now if you cut down a tree it stops storing carbon immediately. You expend carbon taking it to the mill and turning it into woodchips and then taking it away and turning it into paper, which you then send to its use point. If the product is a paper or cardboard and it does not go into long term document storage it may be recycled but eventually goes to landfill, is burnt or the fibres are won out from going round the triangle of arrows.
It’s true that the source of the timber is regenerated. In Tasmanian this follows a large portion of the remaining stored carbon, including that in the soil, being liberated from its store and sent off to pollute as carbon and as particles.
It may take more time to change transport, energy and agriculture but they will change and so will forestry or the climate for growing trees will go up in smoke.
It was poor growth rates that made return from the MIS plantations below those predicted on the prospectus. Whether the prospectus overstated the tree’s growth rates on the soils purchased or the rain left the first regions planted causing poor performance is not clear but we have had the longest running dry since record keeping in Australia began.
Brinksmanship may lead to a climate change election
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25544347-11949,00.html
The threat is there with the legislation to return in September or October and that being only a few months before the Copenhagen final agreement the targets to be agreed there are likely to be clearer making refusal to pass the legislation because the world’s targets are unknown a less viable argument.
Of course the Greens want a fixed 25%, that is their minimum and if strong targets that aim to keep below 450ppmv CO2 are achieved then the government can get the Greens support by changing the legislation. If the global community fails to set a strong target the argument about achieving it becomes somewhat academic and investment in a scientific miracle becomes vital.
Of course Rudd has tremendous domestic political difficulties if a 25% reduction in emission by 2020 is mandated. The carbon terrorists and climate criminals will ramp up the pressure on the government to get such changes watered down through another round of Hanrahan ‘we’ll all be rooned” lobbying using the timber communities tactic through their CFMEU agency.
Setting a low target and compensating industry is necessary for both old parties to retain the loyalty of their outdated and out of touch supports. Its environmental lunacy to retain low targets but smart politics to not be left high and dry by the rest of the world if disaster is assured by the global community setting low goals.
If the world recognizes the danger and sets high targets you can be assured the pressure for Australia not to conform will ramp up like the log truck rallies did when the pressure for forest industry reform came to bear.
Is a double dissolution election likely to occur later this year or will the government delay to after Copenhagen?
A week is a long time in politics and maybe the old parties think they can sell a message but one must consider that in a double dissolution it takes half as many votes to elect a Green Senator and the Greens poll above that in every State. It is likely they will elect 2 from WA which knows the impact of climate instability and also from Tasmania, a divided community with a significant portion well aware of the value of its natural environment.
The potential of going from 6 Green Senators to 10 will bring the Michael Field style preference allocation to the fore with both old parties and may ensure a Senate at the hands of a wild card like Family Firsts’ Fielding.
Xenephon from SA is likely to be returned, the community drivers for that remain in place. That state has been proactive in climate because like WA it knows what a bad outcome means, it has experienced a touch of that future. It can also see the advantages of being proactive. SA already benefiting from a climate protection proactive state Labor government, one of practical action in the community.
The Nationals are so out of touch with reality leaving them lost in the Bush seems the most appropriate. Either farmers will work out the cause of the decline in and irregularity of rainfall and the long term effects of the changes in temperature or they will remain supporting ignorance to their cost.
Of course the Nationals and hardline Liberals may have only agreed to back the 5-25 per cent range because they are convinced Australia won’t be called on to meet the more ambitious end of the spectrum.
It’s an interesting scenario where a whole political party and their Coalition allies in spirit can be joyful because the world has decided to take the risks associated with a dangerous range of temperature changes.
Those closest to primary production may not be writing papers on the changes they are seeing but they are noting them. The Nationals home base has been among the first to suffer in real terms as the outback dries out more and more, a double suicide for that party of dinosaurs.
The Coalition should fear a double dissolution fought on the climate as the government needs to fear the reaction of the community to its broken promise. ¾ of the population want action to stem the climate going pear shaped. It is a big ask to risk the future of voters children and grand children, let alone the future of those whose voting life is only beginning and they could act in their long term rather than the classic hip pocket interest.
Here is a piece from an Australian political scientist, the head of the department at Melbourne Uni. It’s a good short description of the international situation and the national outcome now the Liberals have decided to reject the Rudd government CPRS first time round.
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/time-to-take-the-lead-20090527-bnl5.html?page=-1
That China is looking for 40% cuts in the developed world is signalling it wants serious changes and if we invest in those changes China could benefit by making alternative energy cheaper than coal in China
And heres a bit on the Liberals argument about the Rudd government’s proposed scheme that leaves them hanging.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25549088-11949,00.html
Turnbull must feel as though he is trying to heard cats to safety as he attempts to bring those in the coalition and their carbon intensive high emitting backers into reality.
What you do in the anywhere has impacts elsewhere.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090527/sc_afp/climatewarmingpermafrost
It’s the elephants in the climate debate, those immutable laws in this example of heat, the physical state of water and the volume of atmospheric carbon, all neatly connected in a cycle not considered in the board rooms of the coal miners and burners.
