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.

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.

Peter Griffiths – ClimateCleanup.com – CO2 Reduction technologies

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).

In his H.W. Arndt Memorial Lecture (pdf) Garnaut said:

I have considered carefully the proposal of Warwick McKibbin, my long-time friend and ANU colleague, to base a long-term permanent mitigation system on a “hybrid” of an ETS and a price cap. Warwick was a pioneer of serious work on the economics of climate change in Australia. If his proposals for gradual and constrained action had been applied in the late 1990s when first suggested, we would be in a better position today.

The world is now some way down the track on an international system based on emissions reduction targets, starting with developed countries. As discussed in the Interim Report, there are many imperfections in the Kyoto agreement that must be corrected in its successors if there is to be worthwhile progress towards reducing risks of dangerous climate change to acceptable levels. But the focus needs to be on the improvement of the system that has been emerging within the UNFCCC. There is no time to start again. A price cap is not consistent with the emerging international approach.

The idea that a cap could be put on the carbon price, and Australia and the world accept the amount of mitigation that happens to come from that is inconsistent with the urgency of the emissions reduction task. The work of the Review on the reality of the rate of growth in emissions in the Platinum Age has led to realisation that the time available for effective action is considerably shorter than previously assessed. Warwick’s own work, adopting different methods, has arrived at a position on “business as usual” emissions that is as similar to ours as we both are different from the earlier conventional wisdom.

In the context of over-performance on Australia’s Kyoto targets, there is a case for the 2010 ETS to begin with a fixed, low price for permits as a purely transitional measure in the start-up period. For this to work, the period to the end of 2012 would need to be separated from the more demanding mitigation effort from the beginning of 2013.

A fixed, low price would be better than a price cap because the separation from the post-2012 mitigation effort may lead to a zero price under an ETS, that would not allow the building of the ETS institutions and processes. The merits of such an arrangement will be discussed in detail in the Draft Report.(Emphasis added)

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.

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.

“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.

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

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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.

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 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.

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”?

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.