phill Parsons
HAVING been recently impacted by a perfect storm of both, Canberra should know better than playing politics with fire and drought.
In judging the debate about a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, and the policies that impact on it, it is important to remember that 2 years ago Austrlaian business decided it wanted emissions trading.
Business knows that most develped nations will take this direction with their own domestic emissions trading schemes, the European Union already has, making it economically unwise for Australia not to have such a scheme as these schemes will affect the direction of development and willeventually merge into a global market.
Some in business even recognize that beyond the economics it is environmentally dangerous to continue down the path of business as usual. Dr John Hewson, Liberal leader in the early 1990s’, believes a 40% reduction in emissions by 2020 and 95% by 2050 would be the correct target, going further than the Greens position from an understanding of the science.
A prudent Australian government knows it should put an emissions trading scheme in place. Mitigation is necessary as insurance against further dangerous climate instability and meets a demand from the community to protect its future even if they do not clearly understand the outcome.
Even John Howard reluctantly reached this conclusion before being dismissed for being out of touch with the Austrlaian people, including on the dangers of climate instability. His big sticking point was Austrlaia going it alone or leading. Neither were on his agenda as he believed it would hurt the Austrlaian economy.
Emissions trading can address the problem of Carbon pollution at a low cost provided that the price of Carbon stimutes action. Too many ‘free permits’, too low a price for Carbon and the signal to change will only be passed on to the consumer, requiring more government regulation and intervention.
Now we have industry lobbying the old parties, Liberal taking the course of delaying until the big emiiters of the rest of the world come on board and Labour under pressure to start with a small target and a low price with lots of support for polluters.
The danger for the Liberal course is that they will remain irrelevant if the US joins up to a global treaty in Copenhagen in 2009 and if the big emitting Annex 2 countries of Brazil, India and China agree to reductions at their second tier level of commitment as developing countries.
Kunming appears to have more solar water heaters per km2 than Sydney so I would not underestimate the Chinese ability to act once it becomes State policy.
For Labor, folding to lobby groups will make their action look like inaction and people will wonder why anything had to happen making any cost appears like an unnecessary impost, Rudd painted as all show and no blow.
And then for both there is the actual outcomes. Ongoing droughts, megafires, heatwaves, storm events, and their impacts, all will be attributable to insufficient action, even if strong Australian action has a minimal impact on total global emissions.
The responsibility lies with government and as the Climate Crisis becomes more evident the Green vote increases as the 2007 election shows.
The choice for other parties is to adopt a pale form of Green policies or oppose them completely.
The Liberls are thrashing about, unable to clearly ennunciate the direction and timetable they would take, simply preparing to criticize any action tkaen by Labor when changing the economy’s energy sources is the equivalent of ensuring there is an adequately resourced fire brigade because you can be sure there will be a fire.
Very short term, such a stance will cost them credibility as the approval of the Tamar Valley Pulp Mill did, except this will be a national long lasting loss.
Labor has chosen the pale image and made several mistakes in doing so.
Outstanding is the solar energy rebate. Not only setting a low $100,000 income cutoff, their rules exclude corporations and thus exclude the not for profit sector such as charities from support. Neither reasonable or responsible.
The Greens are targeted as extreme. Dr Hewson, a noted economist and GST advocate was painted as extreme over GST and now the economy has grown with it, the States seeing it as an essential tool in funding their activities. Hewson has the same reduction target as the Greens – 2020 by 40% and 10% more to 95% by 2050.
Whilst deniers, sceptic populists and politicians continue to play with the community the reality will continue to unfold.
In the old mother country the 3 old parties vie with each other over who is the greenest even though in the writers opiion their targets are too small. They announce schemes and targets that would leave the polluters here agahst.
Ignoring the evidence of the past millions of years because the actual causes are debateable and denying the validity of ever improving models may be acceptable to those who love to question, to those who are conservative and to those with a vested sectoral interest but denying your own eyes requires a special talent.
The Arctic ocean goes closer and closer to dark open water as the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere climb to greater levels. The locals, the Inuit, whose oral history goes back into the mists of time have no reference point for what is happening to the environment on which they depend.
And when the Arctic Ocean opens entirely, going from a reflective ice and snow white to dark absorbative life rich ocean blue, the summer sun’s rate of heating it will go up, the rate of melt of the permafrost will increase, the relaease of methane hydrates will feed into that loop of greenhouse gases causing more heating and a turning point that cannot be addresssed on the trading floor, at the polling booth or in the boardroom will roll towards inevitability.
And this is only one dark scenario of many that ware appearing before us.
Delay, dither and fiddling with the edges by low targets and long transition periods are not an option.
The global community may fail to agree at this round of negotiations to an adequate target and the actions taken may end up being insuffucient. We may well cross a point of no return, leaving a diablical future to the children all parties claim are so precious but only one with parliamentary representatives actually has policies about the Climate Crisis that indicates they are.
We need to address this real problem now by accepting it costs just like everything we have done to improve our lives, it is not one with which we have the luxury of adversarial politics.
Ensuring an adequate adjustment package for a sectoral intersts is understandble. However, using the issue to gain a benefit for a political party, for a business or industry sector or for a particular group of workers when the stakes gambled with inadquate action are extremely high and is criminal.
Of course we must also take our responsibility on board and take all those actions we can afford.
One area of potential action is local governmment with its operational costs and planning. Changing to lower emissions fuels, taking action to increase energy efficiency are constants possible with the funds from ratepayers being invested in operations and infrastructure.
Planning decisions, because of their long term impact, need to ensure a low carbon footprint into the future.
If government is going to intervene in the economy it must be in a way that is neutral and not support one carbon emiter over another.
Fuel price support, if it is given must be available to all domestic users, road and non road, if it is to have an equal effect on the carbon footprint and not favour the most polluting road traffic, easpecially the private motor car, over rail and public transport.
Here must be that level playing field so that the least Carbon intensive medium determines the one favoured over time.
One investment the Federal government should make using Infrastructure Australia funds is to invest in a biodiesel production industry based on sustainable crops in the wheatlands, Further, investing heavily in research to produce this and other carbon nuetral fuels from algae, research that is already underway, would give Austrlai a tremendous technological advantage. Diesel fuel is the basic driver of the modern land transport sector.
A particularly Tasmanian government failure is rail. When the major states have targets to increase rail freight direct from the port, this government plans to locate a hospital nesxt to the port railyards and a rail hub away from the said port to the periurban.
This only works if the plan is to move to a single freight port at the other end, but as yet there is no re-announcement from the permananet government of their plan, just the usual bit by bit erosion, to reduce opposition to what the beauracracy sees as the best final solution.
If a ‘free’ permit to pollute is to be given to the electricity sector then it should be offset with a highter mandatory renewable energy target so over a short period of time emissions are reduced by investments in alternative low carbon technologies.
Overlooking energy efficiency in seems to be a studied response in government inaction. Producing energy at the point of use has many advantages not least the reduction in energy loss in transmission.
Supporting a centralized power production structure based on plants near the coal source is wasteful when many gains reductions can be achieved by producing power near the end use point. It makes the federal governments mean test of $100,000, excluding those who could afford solar and including those who cannot a poor example of their commitment to action.
Clearly the announcements by Minister Garrett on cutting down the funding of solar energy through a rebate scheme show a bias toward polluting coal, one driven by the influence of the CFMEU union and by the coal industry, the convergence of a perfect storm.
We have seen the new technologies developed in Austrlaia to address the change to a low carbon economy go overseas where they are developed, the developers duly rewarded, rather than delayed by the no cannot do attitudes of the Austrlaian style of government.
Concerns about international competition are easily addressed by adding a Carbon levy to imports from countries that have not set a carbon pollution reduction target in line with international agreements post 2012. This takes into account the countries level of development as the world contracts Carbon pollution and the economies per capita emissions converge.
It also provides the government with the wherwithall to compensate the community if industry moves to countries that fail to set targets for Carbon pollution reduction.
If land use is to be left out of an emissions trading scheme because it is hard to measure their emissions land use could be changed to ensure that the +-85Mt of CO2 emitted each year from privately owned farmland is sunk on that land, there is farmland of low productivity that could be managed as carbon offset sinks.
Drought ravaged land in districts with a declining rainfall moving them inexorably to uneconomic under the results of 15 years of the business as usual approach, slavishly followed since the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, is a prime target for Carbon offset planting.
Even on farms in the stil productive zones, rocky hilltops, steep slopes, river and creek banks and salt affected land, all could be revegetated with additional benefit of environmental improvements.
Offsets for farmers polluting activities could fall outside the guidelines for trading if they are to offset on farm activity and not be traded but just count against land use emissions.
And it is not as though all land use emissions have to be offset in the first year. Targets allow for changes over time, and it is possible to make them sectoral, so that farmers can offset land use more slowly given the vagaries of climate and the capacity of regions compared to cities whose density allows rapid change through energy efficiency gains.
Farmers as a community have much to loose and should therefore voluntarily make such commitments. Government support through the Natural Heritage Trust could meet the costs of creating the space through fencing leaving the growing of plants to experts, the farmers.
Failure to act in their own interst in only leaves farmers open to be measured for emissions and have to pay accordingly as well as sees their enterprises more often impacted by drought, by storm, by fire and of lucky by flood. These are all to become more intense as the climate looses the stabiltiy which has underpinnned the increasing complexity of human activity which the arrogant style as civilization.
However if both old parties remian locked into the paradigm of boss versus union with the boss manipulating all players the voters will turn away from them to what seemed like an extreme party until the climate changed and now it is mainstream.
The Liberlas may continue to play the politics of opposing provided they do so responsibly instead of whipping up hysteria about economic impact when, if they are not still in denail about the climate, they should be proposing their alternative scheme.
Otherwise they will be taking the extreme ground appearing further and further out of touch until a new leadership arises
Labor has to govern, but it cannot create a scheme that has no impact on the Carbon pollution whilst the costs are borne by their former voters. They will find this as unacceptable as Work Choices, the more their families are threatened through prices for basic commodities whilst the impacts of climate instability continue.
Failure to ensure adequate action will gnerate crisis after crisis in society. If you think the price of fuel is too high or the fluxes of the stock market are having an impact on the value of your savings or the rain has failed making your farm less viable. if the bush around your home appears more fire prone or the summers are simply too hot it will get worse.
Passing over the point and taking a long path of return to the parameters that defined habitability is a long journey and we may fail, the laws of physics and chemistry being immutable. It may not be the end for the stupid monkey but it will be difficult even if we act now. Failure leaves the unthinkable as the future for the children’s children.
