Clive Hamilton was on Newsradio on the weekend. Suzuki says that if China doesn’t change we all go down. Hamilton was attacking Howard’s usual line about our entire output being worth a few months of the Chinese increase etc. Implying that what we do is of no significance.

Hamilton was suggesting that we should be “punching above our weight” in this area too, and provide an example if we want China and India to change, but as we are now we have no influence to leverage. He reckons that apart from being the highest per capita producer of CO2 we are 10th in absolute terms.

Suzuki says we have no credibility left.

In other news, Al Gore is in town. He wants to recruit and train 75 people to do his slide show. Phillip Adams said he was trying to get an interview.

News is coming out about Stern. Do nothing and we have a depression bigger than 1929. The price of mitigation goes up the longer we leave it, but 1% of GDP or roughly equivalent to what we spend on advertising would be the go.

Stop emitting now and the sea keeps rising for 100 years.

Brian, thanks for that.

Essentially he says that we need firstly to get the pricing right and invest in technology. The pricing alone won’t sovle things fast enough.

One other point Brian makes

Of course we were the only country granted a rise in emissions

Isn’t quite right. I believe there were a few who obtained increases including Iceland which got a bigger increase than we did.

Human induced climate change is one of the major challenges confronting the world this century.

But Howard has also consistently said that he doesn’t believe the more extreme scenarios (by that he means mainstream scientific opinion.)

Senator Ian Campbell makes it clear that they think we can do climate change in a doddle by knocking off half our emissions by 2100, whereas he should be saying we have to decarbonise the electricity grid by 2030 and the transport system by 2050.

I think they are picking up the changes of attitude in the electorate shown in the Lowy Institute survey, but haven’t worked out the policy implications yet. The attitude is that we can (and should) keep burning coal to maintain economic growth while we invent the technology to knock over the problem.

From what I’ve heard in a couple of days Stern is going to tell the Brits and the world that the ‘business as usual’ approach will see the economy tank.

The two projects the government has recently funded at $125 million are just the implementation of the approach coming out of the energy White Paper two years ago. It involves picking winners but does nothing structural to facilitate the implementation of any technological advances.

Also these projects, worthy though they may be, are all in the name of mitigation. They are doing nothing about adaptation for farmers, for example – just more money to extend their misery and more counsellors to keep them alive. I’ll concede they have recently asked the ONA for a review of the security implications of climate change, but they’ve already sent the Pacific peoples a strong message that they can’t come here to escape the rising waters.

Tony Eastley on AM ran an interview with Wayne Swan who had just been briefed by Stern. Swan certainly had received the message loud and clear.

Btw Suzuki’s recent speech was on Newsradio. In answer to a question he called Senator Campbell either ignorant or a liar. Campbell always spruiks about how we are going to meet our Kyoto targets which is more than most of the countries signed up to Kyoto will do. Suzuki says that 31 out of 34 countries will most likely reach their targets (Canada is one that won’t.)

Of course we were the only country granted a rise in emissions and we’ll make it courtesy of Beattie’s tree clearing laws. Meanwhile there will be close to another $500 millions sprayed around on high profile projects to impress us.

I’ll be interested in listening to the podcast for the reasons behind your third point. It would seem to me that while strictly capping has its benefits in being able to control the amount of emission better, the ability of a tax to allow flexibility in emissions levels year to year would also have benefits.

ie. If because of weather conditions etc, less power is needed then there is still the same incentive to conserve CO2 per unit under a tax, whereas under a cap and trade system the price will drop and usage and therefore emissions will increase to the cap. Conversely in a say cold year the demand will be greater but supply of emission credits is limited so the price will spike to kill demand, but the question is do we want these price spikes.

Perhaps averaged over a sufficiently large area this is not a problem.

They can see which way the wind is blowing but they are still coming at it from the angle of how to make a buck out of it

1) Certain sectors do better than others from emissions trading. The power and cement companies, as Steve pointed out, have done very nicely.
2) The IEA reckons between $11-$17 Trillion dollars will be invested in low carbon technologies over the next 20 years or so.

So basically, I hope our economists have done their sums right. Because if the Stern review makes the sorts of waves Grubb reckoned it would, things could get a lot more interesting here.

Because he’s shown that he believes in nothing aside of his political survival and is a follower not a leader, he’ll begin the steps toward an effective policy that will be completed by someone more capable (Malcolm Turnbull anyone?), that kind of self interest I can live with for the moment.