Update: For anyone having trouble getting to the Garnaut Review website, which obviously failed to anticipate the amount of traffic that would be heading its way, the report can be downloaded from the SMH. In pdf form, huge file.
I have no doubt some of our resident regular climate change bloggers will be offering some commentary when it’s released, and the contents digested, but here’s a thread for anyone who wants to discuss the interim Garnaut Report in the interim. It’s out at 12.30am, and I imagine it will be viewable at the Garnaut Review’s website. I think everyone would agree that it’s a most significant event, particularly since, as reported earlier this week, it would appear that Kevin Rudd will make his climate change response the signature issue of this term.
Peter Martin explains the process:
The report will outline a framework to guide the design of an Australian emissions trading scheme and a system by which its targets can be ratcheted up as other nations adopt similar schemes…Although the report will not contain recommendations, its author, the Professor Ross Garnaut told the Canberra Times last night that its views about the best design of the scheme would be clear.
The draft report will canvass neither the size of the necessary emission reduction target nor the cost of archiving that target.
That discussion will await the results of Treasury modeling due in August. The final Garnaut Report will be released in September.
Today’s launch of the report at the National Press Club will be followed by a series of five town hall meetings in each of Australia’s roadshow mainland capitals next week.
The following week, on Wednesday July 16, the Climate Change Minister Penny Wong will release a green paper at the Press Club outlining the Government’s thinking.
She has been keen to stress that the government will reach its decisions independently of the Garnaut Review, saying the green paper will outline its “thinking on these issues, informed by a range of matters, including Professor Garnaut’s report, including advice from within the Government and, of course, including the consultations with business, with industry that Government has been undertaking”.
Elsewhere: Gary Sauer-Thompson at Public Opinion has been joining the Garnaut dots.
Update: A link to Crikey’s coverage of the Garnaut Report, which will be updated as the afternoon goes on.
There was a preview in The Age yesterday.
My main interest will be in whether he says anything about the science, and specifically whether he recognises what Aubrey Meyer called the PILLAR TWO approach.
In other words will he take note of what Hansen said recently at Huffington Post.
Anyone not taking Hansen’s latest thinking into account should do an analysis and have it published in a peer-reviewed journal as to why he’s barking up the wrong tree. Otherwise the precautionary principle and a responsible attitude to risk demands that he be taken seriously.
I’m fed up with otherwise intelligent responsible people tip-toeing around the elephant in the room.
I had a five minute look in my lunch break to check out a couple of things that I was curious about. A few things that stood out to me:
1) It is actually caled ‘The Garnaut Climate Change Review’. I find the whole cult-of-personality thing a bit weird.
2) Garnaut has indicated that he prefers to use a discount rate that is below market rates (as Stern did). This will lead him to favour stronger action earlier than if he used a market discount rate.
3) Even with climate change, Garnaut’s modelling predicts that GDP will grow by 8.1 times current levels. Without climate change, it would grow by 8.6 times (p. 233). Either way, we’re going to be a hell of a lot richer in 2050 than we are today. Robert is going to win his bet.
Required: with regards to the first point, the name probably has its origins in its rather unusual origins. It was initiated by a (then) federal Opposition Leader, initially started by using the bureaucratic resources of the State governments, with the expectation that by the time it delivered it would be reporting to the (now) Federal government as to how to implement a national emissions trading scheme.
In such circumstances, what the hell are you going to call the damn thing?
I’ve just had dinner, and am going to settle in my room with a quiet beverage and read the thing in its entirety.
FWIW, this is the most significant thing that the Rudd Government will do in its first term, and probably in its entire period in government.
Update: A link to Crikey’s coverage of the Garnaut Report, which will be updated as the afternoon goes on.
Is the Garnaut Review website down, or is it just me?
It’s not loading for me at the moment, Andos. They probably didn’t anticipate the traffic they’d get today.
I think you’re right Andos. Probably a fair bit of traffic to handle!
it’s 13Mb and a lot of printing. A bit big for me to look at right now.
Peter Martin has an excerpt:
http://petermartin.blogspot.com/2008/07/if-you-read-nothing-else-today-read.html
If the Garnaut website is not loading for you, the SMH has a copy of the report on its website (beware, it’s 26 MB or something ridiculous).
Robert, I know the provenance of the report. I just think it’s odd that it’s so strongly associated with just one person. Presumably there was a secretariat involved in writing it, and I would be a little peeved if I worked hard on something and all the credit went to the chief dude. I guess generally when I read something like this I expect a bland name (like the ‘Emissions Trading Task Group’ last year) and that it will be informally known as the ‘Garnaut Review’. Not a big deal, just something that surprised me a little.
Have a fun night reading the report (it’s over 500 pages, so you could be in for a long one).
Garnauit’s speech at the Press Club made a few things cfrystal clear.
1. The Howard Government should have been doing something abour this years ago.
2. If Rudd soesn’t get his act together quickly, tepeat, quickly, and completely,the Murray Darling is stuffed, the Barrier Reef is stuffed, Kakadu is stuffed, etc., etc.,.
No apologies for being so simplistic. When you cut through all the science, this seems to be some of what he was saying.
Jeez, hasn’t anybody in the government heard of bloody Bittorrent? It’s made for transmitting stuff like this…
Of course not, Robert. Peer to Peer is only for illegal downloading of copyrighted material.
Garnaut’s speech framed the debate thus:
1. Climate change is an insidious and diabolical problem, not one requiring direct confrontation.
2. Delusionists are people advocating no action or policy makers considering small or symbolic steps that would not address the structural challenges required.
3. Our prosperity over the past 25 years is a result of ‘turning our back on protectionism and xenophobia’ and having the luck of the resource boom.
4. Because we’ve agreed at Kyoto that we neither have the moral authority to deny Chinindiazil their development narratives and to cut emissions first, the solution to the problem lies in decoupling GHG emissions from GDP growth.
Ergo, clean coal. *slaps forehead*
The ’science tells us’ that there’s a 10% chance of zero flows in the Murray Darling basin by the end of the century. In this vein, he took a dig at JWH’s delusionism by ending with a long list of national identities (people, icons, narratives) that emerged from said region.
I’m trying to download the report, with limited success. Why don’t they distribute it as a bittorrent?
ooops… thought that went up 15 mins ago!
Quiggin on Garnaut:
http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2008/07/04/garnaut-draft-report-released/
With more to come.
“Those (like the Federal Opposition) who are tempted to play the issue for short-term political gain will pay a big price in the end if they succumb to that temptation”, to quote, Quiggin.
Indeed, how much more ‘deep shit’ will need to happen before we get out of this public school debating school mentality?
Some further comments by myself and others here: http://www.aussmc.org/Garnaut_draft_report.php
Rather than update the post as I go along, I’ll try to do a roundup of bloggy reactions tonight before I go to bed.
Thanks to ‘Required’ for the SMH link to the report. I tried the site and other likely places for a couple of hours before calling The Department of Climate Change. I thought they would have had a copy they could email to me, but was told they too had been trying the website and didn’t have the report yet. These are the people who are going to lead us out of this difficult situation …..
I can email a copy to anyone if they’re still looking for it, assuming gmail doesn’t mind files that big (not sure). I’m under this username at gmail.com if anyone wants it.
I just tried the SMH site and it downloads ok:
http://www.smh.com.au/pdf/garnautreport.pdf
wilful’s right, though, it’s a big file so you’d want a reasonable fast connection to get it quickly.
So the interim conclusion on Garnaut: it’s bloody big!
If you’re struggling with a slow download, just remember, Brendan feels your pain. Maybe you could use the time to cook some processed saussages.
Analysis by Christine Milne: [link]
Upon a quick read of the summary, Garnaut gets it right on the dangerous climate change we now face (and in fact are experiencing), but he seems to have avoided flagging actions to immediately reduce carbon and other GHG emisssions.
Emissions trading on its own won’t necessarily do this, nor will the MRET.
It seems that conventional politics and economics are not well positioned to take real and immediate action on climate change in a similar vein to the gross mismanagement of the Murray Darling basin and other water catchments.
Avoiding massive emissions by protecting valuable native forests immediately would ge a great start.
And where is the plan to decommission coal fired power stations? The Brumby goverment in Victoria has just approved building an new one.
On the name I heard Garnaut say that they had an office competition for a name. He said the best was “No pain, no rain!”
Lyndall Curtis gave a good introduction today on The World Today and Mark Colvin on PM did a longish interview with Garnaut (transcript later).
Yes, Yes Yes!!!! He said it! HAHAHA
He said it people! I can’t believe he said it!
“No pain No rain”
Ignorance at its finest
Isn’t a shame then that the Liberal party and some parts of the MSM will see this as another opportunity to play trivial politics in order to boost their polls rather than be concerned with the gravity of the issue.
We are well aware that the ‘Green Mafia’ with the Howard Govt and some Murdoch papers made an art form of delaying and denying recognition, action and responsibility on this issue. The hard right of the Liberal party doesn’t accept Climate Change whilst those that do have the opinion that it is better to let it happen and, use the business opportunities that disasters can bring. For them it is a win win situation - they get rich and powerful no matter who suffers, lives or dies.
Yes..and i’m one of those liberals who has voted for the greens for the last 3 federal elections…
What concerns me is the science. Our state of knowledge.
Yes..action is required to negate
our effects on the climate.
HOWEVER, Garnaut should be a little more careful in his statements, because these apocalyptic statements about the murray darling basin for example(which would be perfectly adapted to the current dry without our terrestrial influence,irrespective of atmospheric carbon dioxide),only mislead the public on our current understandING of the earth system. Garnaut is the one in the crosshairs.
HAHAHAHA
Required and Robert
It’s the usual thing for major Reports of this kind to go by the name of their principal organiser-author. Hence, you never hear of the Report of the Review of Post-Arrival Programs and Services to Migrants 1978, but you do hear of the Galbally Report. Or at least I do.
Would have been nice to have some caps and trajectories…. but the modelling wasn’t ready yet.
A very important point was his ruling out of compensation to coal generators, which perhaps we already knew, but hopefully Wong and Rudd take this on board and don’t cave to special interests.
I’m not entirely convinced of his 50/30/20 (households/Trade-exposed/R&D) split for auction revenue. where does adaptation come in? and is that enough for R&D?
Clean coal is always going to be a tough one, esp as we still don’t have any full demonstration of it. let alone a commercially viable one.
however, Australia has to pick what it’s good at and where it can have the biggest effect globally. If we can show the world that we can do CCS at a relatively decent cost, then India and China (and the US for that matter) are going to have a much better chance of hitting some decent targets with our technology.
China and India will keeping building coal power stations. period. they will not accept massive cuts in their eco growth because we tell them to, and CCS is one of the few ways we can help them cut emissions and maintain some sort of growth. hence, CCS is a way of cutting the ties of eco growth and emissions.
Robert will be interested to note that he rules out Nuclear in Australia on grounds of cost likely to be higher than current estimates, we need to figure out where to put the waste, don’t have technology capability/ready workforce, and ‘not until public disquiet eases’.
Another interesting point which seems to be lost in the media more generally, is the transitionary period of the ETS that will likely take place. ie from 2010-12 (end of Kyoto).
By 2012 our emissions will probably just hit 108% in which case carbon price will be relatively low (possibly go to zero) and impacts to economy relatively low. (ie. don’t believe the elec generators scaremongering)
Garnaut wonders whether setting a fixed carbon price for this 2 year period would be a good idea as it may avoid the carbon price going to zero and help drive reductions in the short term before real reductions getting going in the post 2012/copenhagen scenario.
however, i’d be keen to see the auctioning style market get a test run before serious caps come in.
Penny Wong will be on Lateline shortly responding to the Garnaut Report.
Isotope, Garnaut has written off Kakadu and the Great Barrier Reef in addition to the Murray Darling basin. Not “if we don’t do something they are gone” but “it doesn’t matter what we do, they are gone anyway”!
Which is of course what many have been saying for some time based on current atmospheric C02 levels of 380ppm. But now apparently its official.
Wong sounded good on Lateline, but the Greenhouse mafia is obviously still ensconced in the corridors of power in Canberra.
Cue Garnaut: “but, even though we face a diabolical situation, we need a soft 2 year entry for emissions trading to make sure industry can adjust in an orderly and planned fashion”
Cue industry spokesperson: “Yes, we really need a soft two year entry for emissions trading from 2010 to 2012″.
And, Garnaut believes the dirty lie of clean coal, or has at least acquiesced to the industry spin meisters who keep lauding it (as well as Peter Batchelor and John Brumby in Victoria with their new brown coal power station).
The old phrase comes to mind: no jobs on a dead planet.
Now we appear to get it, but still won’t do anything urgent about it.
Seems like we are the proverbial frogs in a pot on a stove with the heat going up slowly, not noticing that it is nearly boiling.
Only one test is required: If it decreases emissions, do it. If not, don’t.
A 14Mb file is considered big? We definitely need better broadband availability!
No disrespect to Garnaut, but his report will tell us nothing new. Pointless to read it. The report is designed to give credibility to any effective action on Climate Change the government feels like making.
It’s a sad reflection on the savvy of our species that Rudd believes (no doubt rightly) it is still necessary after all this time to get some political cover for embarking on CO2 reductions.
Peterc, I’m still reading the report, but I think Garnaut is saying that aiming for 400ppm of CO2e is undoable and 450 can only be achieved with overshooting. Nevertheless he does have stuff in there about removing carbon from the atmosphere. I guess he lacks the bottle to swing the switch to emergency mode.
I was looking to see whether he has picked up on Hansen’s recent stuff. I’d have to say he hasn’t. The treatment of climate sensitivity is traditional, ie. in terms of short term feedbacks as per IPCC, giving a best guess of 3C instead of Hansen’s 6C.
Here is the Mark Colvin interview.
There were three other segments on PM.
BTW last year in April I did a post entitled Urgent action needed: Reef could die in 20 years and was criticised for being alarmist. That was on IPCC AR4 WP2 SPM I think.
No-one has ever been serious about saving the Reef.
A summary of the draft report, and some criticisms, is available here [link]
Yes wbb, it does look a lot like political cover. And they may need it with Nelson and Turnbull now being criminally negligent on the issue.
We need to get this issue right out of politics and in the hands of people who can really take action, hopefully before sea levels rise 5m.
wbb and Petrrc, I think the value of Garnaut goes beyond political cover. Quggin says:
Yesterday in the local “drive’ segment on local ABC the presenter, who didn’t have a clue about climate change, played the first 6 minutes and then interviewed a researcher from Griffiths Uni. Her question was, What does this mean for the average person.
The researcher amongst other things talked about the danger to six Australian hot-spots - the Murray-Darling, the Great Barrier Reef, Kakadu, SW WA, the alpine regions and SE Qld.
As soon as you mention the GB reef there is an Omigod! reflex reaction and a realisation that this is serious.
Hi international impact should not be underestimated. As Aubrey Meyer said on the other thread:
Garnaut has had the wit to see that some form of ‘Contraction and Convergence” is the only possible way of getting the Chinese on board with actual target cuts, which he sees as essential from 2013 if we are going to have a chance scraping through in any kind of acceptable shape.
Garnaut’s dilemma is that if he goes too far ahead of the pack he’ll become irrelevant and just be pissing into the wind.
At the same time, he doesn’t himself understand the stuff I’ve been banging on about. He doesn’t cite Hansen’s ‘trace gases’ paper of May 2007. On sea levels he’s back with Rahmstorf’s critique of the IPCC and sees the serious melting of Greenland as comfortably some centuries away.
But IMHO in context he’s made a useful contribution, but could have done better.
BTW he has gathered a lot of useful information that is hard to find elsewhere.
A thought on the politics of it.
Firstly, I think we’ve come a long way in a short time. Yes, these things needed to be addressed many years ago; however, since CC found a place on the ‘mainstream’ table so very recently the urgency of it is hitting hard. I’d regard this as a significant positive. In the frame of how a general public responds to huge issues, we’ve only just started. And while people may not read the articles such as “Act now or face disaster”, we’ve had a heck of a lot of them and the message is pushing in. Imaginably it will take a couple of years of the effect to gain traction - that is, a traction by which a public responds with emotive action - beyond the general sympathy now in place.
Therefore, politically, Rudd is certainly faced with a task “as big as the GST was for Howard” as opined somewhere (the understatement of which goes to my point in this comment), but the two can hardly be compared. Rudd has to enshroud the leadership needed but he can (politically) realistically only do it incrementally. Somehow he has to encapsulate the immovable public sentiment and reflect that in policy, while forgoing the bigger changes others see as required as he waits for the general public to feel the same degree of personal commitment.
Doomsaying - hence the “big as the GST” thing - won’t cut it. People will turn away.
Places like LP, where people are politically connected, will naturally reflect a greater urgency for this than what Rudd can work with nationally. I feel it’s going to be a frustratingly slow game to start with, and Rudd’s upcoming policies will be treated with serious derision.
Intuitively, I feel he will get these right. Stage 1 (apart from getting elected) is to show he is on the case - that he’s listened. The ensuing outcry from its limitation will serve to move him to the next stage by result of a greater urgency raised yet again. Meanwhile, he has to protect his political backside lest the lot be lost.
Just a guess, I think the second term will show the guts and solidity of policy the actual urgency requires. The idea floated here being that Rudd will lock up his place in a very diverse public (not in sentiment, but in personal commitment - the thing he requires from the electorate in order to not suffer political damage) during the first term, sidelining the LNP who will be without a history albeit short on it. Term two poll may even be the referendum on CC in Australia. Then, into the second term, with a world more personally connected and committed, he can frame the gutsy calls more easily for citizens oz.
Meanwhile, too, local governments will have brought the message closer to home, and big corporate should be more widely committed to (openly) CC branding.
Hence, frustration for some years yet via Rudd. Obviously this could be all wrong, but I do believe this is how Rudd is operating first term. It’s about gathering information and suffering fallout during this time (”another committee!”; “all talk”; “no idea, no action” leading to ‘news’ sought elsewhere “young advisors”), then making politically astute policy, incrementally, all of this as as platform, to retain power and enact a very long term [extremely difficult politically] vision.
[that should be (policy) ‘foundation’ rather than ‘platform’ lest the latter be confused as a political platform, though there is some intermixing.]
Robert, I think that is pretty much on the money. Before the second half of 2006 there was not much stirring on the GW CC front, apart from those in the know, as it were, being frustrated by the lack of appreciation of the seriousness by politicians, policy makers and to a large degree, the public.
At the same time it’s worth remembering that under Kim Beazley the environment including climate change was one of about four major pillars of policy. It was around Easter, probably 2006, that Beazley announced a comprehensive climate change policy suite. In the end there was no more than a struck match between that policy and what Rudd took to the election. But it didn’t get the publicity and prominence it deserved.
In the second half of 2006 we had a book by Monbiot, a slide presentation by Gore and a report by Stern. Then in 2007 we had a constant flow of stuff from the IPCC. Now there are meetings everywhere, too numerous to follow in detail, with every significant political and business grouping having climate change prominently on it’s agenda.
So things are changing. As to the future, usually the most significant factor is something no-one saw coming. I’d note only that Rudd needs to deal with the Greens if he wants to do anything in this parliament. The opposition, meanwhile, deserves to become irrelevant, hopefully to be reborn at some later time when they find a leader.
But, yes, CC is likely to be the central issue in the next election.
Thanks for that timeframe, Brian. Gee, that’s not long, is it. That’s a blink of an eye, considering the size of this thing, to find a place in the public mind. In many ways this is unbelievably inspiring and heartening.
Without wanting to throw the thread off, by any means, I’d gently suggest CC is a challenge of public size more comparable with the abolishment of slavery. To hold the horses on the emotion of that latter concern, yet at the same time using it to indicate the levels and variance of personal connection when those particular changes had taken place (and still), that’s hopefully a way of indicating how difficult it is to walk a political path through this when prejudice, ignorance, lack of knowledge all round, and more particularly self-interest is involved to such a potent degree.
Referring there to mainstream take-up, we’ve come a long way very, very quickly. On the other hand, this would also indicate people haven’t yet taken it on board, as a personal commitment, or else those headlines would not so easily be run.
But will Garnaut admit he is a tool a of the eugenicist nazi race science cartel of neo-fascist arch manipulator Prince Phillip?
Just while we’re on history, Denis Atkins in today’s CM points out that Garnaut said we should have done the ETS six years ago when Howard decided not to against the advice of at least three government departments and their ministers. In a sense Howard chose his place in history and he chose a place he can’t be retrieved from. I don’t mind him being in the dustbin, but it’s a problem for all of us.
The other point I’d make is about McKibbin. His economic formulation of an ETS rests on his interpretation of the physical science. He thinks there are no imminent dangers and we have plenty of time to get the appropriate policies in place. So he was quite comfortable with new brown coal power stations.
Garnaut says that whatever the economic merits of McKibbin’s approach, we simply don’t have time to do it his way. I don’t understand it all, but I’d back Garnaut.
So McKibbin too has chosen the dustbin, but it’ll only cost us if we take any notice of him. I’m sure he’ll find willing listeners in the Coalition. Nelson says they’ll be taking their own advice and McKibbin was on the Shergold task force that came up with 2012 as a starting time.
Picking up on Nelson and the Coalition.
What can they possibly do? If Rudd’s task is to divine a level of public commitment, such that the majority possess that level as to willingly (let alone emotionally) accept personal change into their lives, devise policy to reflect that, and then sell it - consider the Coalition’s predicament.
They are without a media megaphone (Keating: “you can hardly make a public point in Opposition, but in Government everything that comes off the lips is magnified”), and their task is not to solve CC but to obtain government.
It follows that they must then take a more populace line than Rudd, which, because of media lack, would be many notches down the scale from the level Rudd chose.
Of course, it’s easier to spoil when a big issue presents, simply because the spoiling comment is sharp and consumable. But that doesn’t help an Opposition obtain government - people won’t want to elect that into power and have it represent them particularly on something as crucial as CC.
To obtain government the Coalition must have a credible alternative CC policy, and notwithstanding the leadership and team required to enact if elected, such a low-notch policy would be flying in the face of where the action is at. At that point in the future, such action will be much more than mere meetings and public awareness - there will be examples in place where sectors of the community have already made sacrifices and taken the steps towards their own positive contribution and these would form a formidable voice against a populist, opportunist policy.
They’re buggered. The Coalition has nowhere to go on this. How can they possibly catapult ahead of the Labor Party, with limited media, carrying weight, on an issue requiring leadership and team. (And that weight is not only CC heavy, but includes the focus on ‘the individual’ bleeding through its veins).
Swap Nelson for Turnbull, and the only thing which changes is a better occasion established for Rudd to make his choice. Again, this is part of why I believe Rudd won’t commit to a policy of any guts and substance in the first term. He won’t make himself a target for a clever Opposition spoiler.
Brian has called it - usually the most significant factor is something no-one saw coming. I’d add it will come from outside of Australia.
And on top of that then we can see Rudd again laying down a foundation.
First term Rudd CC, I believe, would be better regarded not as a federal response in all of the above light, but one where the focus is helped back down into the local community. The more the shift can be made from responsibility Rudd to responsibility local, the more effectively Rudd can form the guts and substance. Not denying federal responsibility here by any means, merely mentioning this to table a process and one which we may keep an eye out for its occurrence, engineered out of the PM’s office somehow.
Pretty good report overall, sensible, measured, cautious, conservative. My quibbles (believing in clean coal, not including recent Hansen et al thinking about sea levels) are totally trivial. If the government were to fail to act following this draft report and the reception it’s got, it doesn’t deserve to govern.
I think it will work. All eyes on the opposition now.
Over on Insiders this morning, ABC reporter in Canberra (I don’t recall who it was now) offered his thrilling observation about how the “Weather Department” (sic) can’t predict the weather next week, how can it predict climate? That’s just denialists claptrap play number one. And then proceeded to offer the observation that as a “former seminarian” how it was all a little theological. With journalists, the ABC no less, operating like this, I have no hope we’ll get any sort of sensible debate or policy response (which will politically respond to the complete ridiculousness of the public debate).
Unfortunately Tyro Rex. these are the questions that have to be answered if you are going to ask the public to make sacrifices.
We can’t predict weather for more than a week, but if we make a computer model , with the limited knowledge we have, then we can predict the climate in the future. You may be convinced but the average person with 2 cars and a house in the outer suburbs (aka the swinging voter) might be a tad sceptical.
Questions, what question is that? You may as well say “we can’t predict solar spots, how can we model a black hole?!” There is a difference, a significant one, between predicting an exact outcome (squally showers next Wednesday, Max 19 degrees) to predicting a statistical likelyhood (chances are, blue skies in July most days for Brisbane and Sydney), and a casuality (increased atmospheric carbon dioxide levels increase global planetary temperature).
OK so the “average” person might not be able to see that, but it’s the role of a journalist to repeat the _Facts_ not parrot the uninformed claptrap of a denialist opposition. The idea that the science says allows for a political line like the one run by the LNP is just .. wrong. And the media should call them on it.
The best line I think of that the government should repeat is simply “75 metres!”. Stuff your 10 cents a litre on petrol, the comparison in outcomes is devastating.
I saw Garnaut do the National Press Club address. I thought it was a load of guano, from which someone stands to gain a huge profit.
Who exactly?
What exactly about it was bat shit? You sound like Colbert … trust the gut reaction never mind the facts. And is that “someone” who “stands to gain”, by any chance the group otherwise known as “climate scientists”?
Or to put it a slightly different way Lorikeet”I saw Garnaut do the National Press Club address. I thought it was a load of guano, from which most people stand to incur a huge loss”.
One of the huge problems Rudd faces with CC politically, is the media seems to be locked into this denialist claptrap (eg ABC this morning of all places - at least they had Henderson instead of Bolt). The Government really has to call the media climate deniers on this and repeatedly and repeatedly tell the electorate a huge proportion of their MSM commentators are either ill-informed (that twit on the ABC) or outright liars (eg Bolt. Akerman, all that motley crew.) The Governmentr MUST discredit them so much that no-one, absolutely no-one, will listen to them.
Trouble is, I don’t really think the Government is up to or capable of that, so the CC message will be subverted every step of the way.
Brian
Please get your facts straight if you are going to quote me. I was not on the Shergold Taskforce. I advocated 2010 in a submission to that Taskforce and in my press interviews at the time. I advocated 1997 in my work in my other work on Australia in the early 1990s. I do not think that we should delay at all. I think we should put in place a system that will not have to be reconstructed in 5 years because we picked the wrong target and blew the money on political campaigns rather than carbon abatement.
Warwick McKibbin
I do apologise, Warwick. My memory was obviously faulty. Actually I saw your interview with Alan Kohler on Inside Business this morning. My impression was that you were recommending a system that had superior flexibility so that, as you say, it could respond to how things developed. On the face of it that sounds sensible.
I don’t pretend to understand emissions trading systems enough to have a settled view about them myself. In the course of time a transcript of the segment should appear eventually. Apart from the market wrap the whole program was on climate change.
*Prof. Garnaut and Contraction & Convergence.*
. . . . .
He does discuss C&C in detail. He also gives the reference as: -
http://www.gci.org.uk/briefings/ICE.pdf
Links to the actual C&C methodology and its history are retrievable through this link. These resources are what Prof Garnaut and his authoring team based their views of C&C on. GCI is grateful to them, as it is this actual methodolgy that underlies the more slogan/jargon-esq constructions that are sometimes put upon it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Full Report at: -
http://www.gci.org.uk/Garnault/Climate_Change_Review_Draft_Report_040708.pdf
Full C&C section at: -
http://www.gci.org.uk/Garnault/Garnaut_C&C.pdf
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Actually, I think emissions trading is far too complicated for the average person, and most politicians, to understand. Complex, ill understood human systems don’t usually work too well.
“Well its a cap on all our emissions” Rudd said today. “Well petrol prices should not go up” responded Nelson.
I find McKibbon’s assertions about financial systems for addressing climate change to be similarly obtuse. They seem to echo Howard’s line about “don’t set targets that may harm our economy and/or competitive advantage”. If we don’t set targets and goals we usually don’t get them. Ask any psychologist.
This is nonsensical when faced with polar ice cap melt, rising sea levels, global food shortages and drought.
I favour a much simpler carbon tax payable on emissions. That would be tangible and real - just look at how income tax drives behaviour.
I reckon our response to climate change should be taken out of the hands of economists and politicians. Neither are qualified to deal with it. They have been major contributers to the cause of the problem and are therefore ill equipped to solve it.
peterc, I have one problem with a carbon tax - it can’t readily be traded between countries. Otherwise yes, i think it’s simpler and cleaner, something that is undervalued when modelling these things.
But I profoundly disagree with your last sentence, about the economists. Oh and I guess about the politicians as well. If we don’t like the ones we’ve got, it’s up to us to change them, and they (perhaps sadly) mostly reflect the will of the populace.
The oil drum has a pretty comprehensive roundup of media comment.
Concerning my comment on Warwick McKibbon and his response, I had the impression that he placed less urgency on implementing mitigation measures than does Garnaut based, presumably, on his assessment of the physical science.
In his H.W. Arndt Memorial Lecture (pdf) Garnaut said:
I haven’t had time to check out the Draft Report and I don’t know whether McKibbin’s position has changed. By arrangement at Quiggin’s McKibbon has stated his position in the context of a post on carbon taxes versus emissions trading.
Some of the submissions could only be described as ‘interesting’.
Upon reflection the Opposition appears to have two realistic courses of action:
1) They take the populist road as mentioned above and hope for Labor failure. Hence a policy designed as a backstop which illustrates they are on board with CC and one to capture the fallout in the next poll if Labor chooses the wrong line or weight.
2) They can shadow everything Labor does, providing full support on all but minor matters, and to mention a minor matter of difference only in passing and from time to time. This is me-too taken to an extreme, but consider the implications in the suburbs. What the Coalition would be doing here is reframing CC as a worldwide reality and that it’s inescapable.
Instead of establishing CC as an Australian electoral decision (a potent point of policy difference) by offering their full agreement to policy Rudd they remove CC from the voters’ decision-making process. Then, they can fight the poll on what they consider their strengths. If they’re wily enough they can use this reframing to create a reframing of ‘economy’, and the like, off the back of it.
What criticism would they cop with the me-too thing ‘gone mad’(can hear some of them now)? Lots of msm, but what is interesting about this particular me-too is the over-riding answer can be cast as anything but political. “We’re here to save the planet. We’re here for our kids”. This kills the albeit recent criticism of me-tooissm, as a political ploy.
Is it conceivable the Coalition can face the next poll having removed CC from the cut and parry agenda? Would they be disciplined to say “Look/ {sorry about that, force of habit), to say “We have no argument with Labor on this. Our assessment of the situation is the same. We act for the future..”.
But no. It’ll be 1).
The primary hook in this initiative is purpose. Our own purpose in GHG - CO2 Reduction as stated is
clear - “Saving the planet from an environmental disaster of epic proportions is an urgent matter and needs collaborative effort” - I welcome the Garnaut Report - unlike the Y2k problem we do not have a definite date to work toward saving from a disaster- however the Garnaud Report suggests ten years at tops.
Are people aware that China is currently commissioning a new Power Station every week - that’s right every week one new power plant goes into production of CO2 emissions.
Professor Garnaut adds great weight to our own purpose - as this is how we will solve the Climate Change problem - a common purpose to save life on planet earth.
Peter Griffiths - ClimateCleanup.com - CO2 Reduction technologies
Peter G, anyone who has been reading posts here for a while would be very aware of what China is doing.
Hansen is saying that even if we stopped using coal now, not just building new coal power stations but choked off coal emissions and magically replaced them with renewables and/or nuclear, we would still be in overshoot mode because we need negative emissions. We are heading down the wrong road.
Garnaut has released a submissions report and it is on the Garnaut Review web site (see here).
Thanks, I’ll have a look. Anything particularly notable?
I haven’t read all of it yet. He mentioned that quite a few submissions criticised the IPCC for being too slow and conservative, and not predicting things like the arctic melting. He also discussed land use and agriculture a bit and summarised some of the submissions on that. Garnaut mentioned some concerns from environmental groups about accounting for native forests.
I remember Garnaut saying in the public forum in Sydney that the reason why there wasn’t much on land use and agriculture in the draft report was that the chapter hadn’t been finished yet.