In The Age on the 4th of February Peter Cozier explains why the Coalition’s measures on the climate would be ineffective. So rather than my rantings tinged with a partisan message her is the substance of the article.
“The cornerstone of its policy is to pay farmers, through a tender system, to store carbon in agricultural soils. Is it possible for Australia to cut emissions by 5 per cent by 2020, by storing carbon in vegetation and soils? Yes it is. Is that good news for the Australian environment? If it is done properly, absolutely.”
However, to avoid dangerous climate instability Australia needs to reduce our emissions by at least 25 per cent by 2020 [and by between 80 and 95 per cent by 2050].
“The Coalition’s policy doesn’t and can’t, get us anywhere near those targets. The Wentworth Group strongly supports the important role terrestrial carbon – the carbon stored in forests, grazing land, farmland and soils – has in addressing climate change, but unless we also transform our industrial economy, there is no chance of solving the climate change problem. [Peter Cosier is a member of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists, an independent body of Australian environmentalists, economists, scientists and business leaders with conservation interests.]
If we are serious about limiting climate change to less than 2 degrees we must put a cap on carbon pollution from transport and energy generation. The Coalition’s climate change policy rejects any form of market mechanism to reduce carbon pollution from energy generation and transport fuels. This defies all the economic evidence presented in recent years: the 2007 Shergold Report, the 2008 Garnaut Review and the 2008 Australian Treasury report.
Further, “ The Coalition’s scheme is not all good news for our farmers. First, under its scheme, farmers will be paid $10 a tonne of carbon dioxide to store carbon in soil. But $10 is a very low price. Under the government’s emissions trading scheme, according to Treasury modelling, farmers would be paid two, three or four times more than the Coalition’s offer. Second, while the focus of the Coalition’s policy on storing carbon in soils is a welcome development, for reasons it does not explain, farmers will not be paid to restore native vegetation on degraded land.”
“Under the government’s scheme, farmers would be paid to plant trees on degraded land and in areas of high conservation value. Farmers would get an extra income and they would be helping Australians to improve the health of degraded river systems in the Murray Darling Basin, fix land degradation across the south-west of Western Australia, improve water quality in the catchments of the Great Barrier Reef, and address overstocking in our vast range lands of northern Australia. The advantage of the government’s emissions trading scheme is that farmers would be paid to optimise terrestrial carbon across the Australian landscape, and also puts a cap on carbon pollution.”
“Ultimately though, neither of the major parties has adopted a cap that is deep enough to drive the industrial transformation. Climate change policy is not nearly as complex as some people would have us believe. We would be foolish not to accept the advice of the majority of the world’s climate scientists that even stabilising greenhouse gas concentrations at around 450 parts per million of carbon dioxide is likely to result in global average temperature increases of between 2.0 and 2.4 degrees (above pre-industrial levels) by 2050.
Achieving a ”450 ppm” stabilisation scenario needs global carbon dioxide emissions to peak no later than six years from now, and for net global emissions to be reduced by between 50 and 85 per cent by 2050 (relative to 2000). This will require developed countries such as Australia to reduce net emissions by at least 25 per cent by 2020 and by between 80 and 95 per cent by 2050.
Terrestrial carbon stored in vegetation and soils has a profoundly important role to play in the climate change solution. The amendments put forward by Malcolm Turnbull and agreed by the Rudd government to broaden the potential of terrestrial carbon offsets and for managing the unintended consequences that arise from a terrestrial carbon market are a significant improvement to the original legislation.”
phill Parsons
Peter van Olsen comments on the policy differences in The Australian, also on the 4th and covers much of the politics rather than the science and thus the urgency, bringing his analysis down to a struggle between two choices.
Playing politics with this in a partisan way may serve the blinkered to lead the muddled and confused into a world of permanent climate instability where the feedbacks of the climate system provide outcomes that make it increasingly difficult if not impossible for the complex of human activity that some describe as civilization and upon which the modern economy depends to continue to provide the underpinning natural services for society and its economic relations.
There is a very short window of opportunity for Australia to get it right and for other countries to follow our example. The only party with a policy to address the challenge based on the science is The Greens.
Methinks Labor will take on board much of the compromise suggested by the Greens in another attempt to pass the legislation, showing a willingness to compromise and thus isolating Abbott’s Coalition.
For those who may wonder why I don’t focus on Monckton, he is wrong but it is pointless arguing with those who have made up their mind or are benefiting from the position they have taken.
