If the ranks of columnists, pollies and industry shills lining up in battle formation to trash Ross Garnaut were thinking he was some sort of milquetoast retiring academic and policy wonk, who’d roll over in the face of the media noise machine, they’ve evidently made the wrong assumption. In fact, Garnaut seems to be doing his level best to keep the Rudd government from wobbling.
Garnaut’s retort to Michael Costa’s op/ed has the temerity to mention the elephant in the (Macquarie Street) room:
“The New South Wales [Treasurer] is a well known denier of the science,” he said.
In his article this morning, Costa called for “a sensible debate on important issues”. Decrying Garnaut as a “Chicken Little”, Costa himself painted all sorts of apocalyptic scenarios if dirty coal producers aren’t compensated.
Costa calls for “dispassionate” analysis. This from someone whose self interest - as the Treasurer responsible for the sale of electricity “assets” in a crumbling government - couldn’t be more blatant.
In other Garnaut Report response news, Brendan Nelson has now reverted to a pre-2007 Howard position:
“We must put Australia first,” he said today. “If we go ahead of the pack … we will simply transfer industry and jobs and our standard of living offshore.”
I hope Kevin Rudd makes the point that Nelson isn’t on the side of the “ute men” and the “battlers” here, but of big business interests and cashed-up polluters.
No word of innovation or opportunity?
Nothing worse than tonights ABC where the new recruit from Planet Janet, Chris Uehlman, was trying to spike Garnaut’s guns. But Rudd got his pat on the head from the Murdoch empire’s latest affiliate, for another sweet’n treacly Brady Bunch eulogy over a kids photograph.
Fortunately, we also saw Henson’s photographs being returned to him, but no apologies of course.
Yes, I have to say it was refreshing to hear Garnaut’s plain-speaking truths today. I can’t handle more than 30 seconds of Penny Wong’s ultra-controlled, on-message waffle anymore. She’s an instant channel changer for me.
Lets face it, the ETS has Buckley’s of getting up when you have to convince a nutter like Fielding to vote for it to get it through the Senate. The only hope it had was solid bipartisan support and Nelson completely trashed that today. In fact, the ETS probably died the day Nelson was elected leader. I reckon Turnbull would have supported it, I really do, but Nelson is so desperate he’ll go for populism everytime, especially after the petrol excise stunt worked for him.
Convince me otherwise.
Caronsink Says:
Easy. Double dissolution threat. Not even Fielding or Xenophon are invulnerable.
SJ, I doubt Nelson would survive the post-election leadership spill and the bill may be counted as being as good as passed provided the ALP and Greens maintained their numbers. Fielding may not be re-elected, but the quota being lowered to 7.69% means that he may simply be replaced by someone else equally as unpalatable who can be a thorn in the side of progressive Australian politics as late as 2014.
Jesus, Costa is repellent. Could he get worse if he tried? I mean, sure, Bacardi Breezer Nelson you expect this sort of tiny-brained response, but if Costa was actually smart he’d figure a way to get behind ETS and use it as an excuse to sell off the electricity industry. I can think of at least 3 facile arguments he could use that are all at _least_ as compelling as the rubbish excuses he’s been using so far.
I’m not going to mention them, because if he’s too stupid to think of them himself, I have no interest in even the faintest risk of helping him.
I doubt if Nelson will back ETS as he is controlled by the right wing of his party. But he may consider the long term interests of his party rather than short term populist survival although his form to date is not promising.There is a way to go yet and in the end a Double Dissolution has to be an option if all else fails. CC is that important.
If a DD then the voters get to decide directly whether they want to blow everything for the here and now or are interested in their own future and their children’s future. They will then have to wear that responsibility and share it with whoever then is Gov’t.
Lets hope it does not come to that.
You reckon Rudd has the ticker for that, especially after Gippsland, and especially after the huge swings in the Latrobe? He’d probably have to write off all the coal provinces in the country if the election was billed as a referendum on the ETS. I reckon you’d see the coal mining unions campaigning directly with Nelson (like the CFMEU in 2004) and the denialists will be hyperventilating.
Dunno much about Xenophon. I believe he is a sane and reasonable man. The same can not be said about Fielding.
I can see the democratic value in a double dissolution election framed solidly around climate change.
It genuinely would inform my choice of staying in Australia. If my fellow citizens can’t act responsibly on this issue, then f*ck em.
Hey what happens with the next normal election in the upper house after a DD one? Are the senators up for a half term chosen by ballot or what?
Ha! An ETS DD would be government suicide. The Libs can only dream of Rudd being that stupid.
Right, Craig Mc. Because - since households are to be compensated for higher petrol and electricity costs - Nelson’s “everyday Australians” are so concerned with the asset prices of dirty coal companies and obsessed with climate change denialism?
The federal government could just pay off the NSW government. Costa doesn’t really care about the power stations, he just wants to preserve the value of them so he can sell them off. If the NSW Labor party had a bit more foresight they would have succeeded in selling them off years ago and it would be private industry who would be wearing the cost of the decreased value in assets. Just another example of why government should not be both regulating and owning assets in the same area.
Michael Costa has a very simple and powerful response up his sleeve to combat Garnaut - challenge him to a debate.
The sceptic side of the debate has received a fraction of the airplay the beliver side has it would be very damaging indeed to the AGW case to allow someone high profile witht he debating skilsl to lay out the counter argument for all to see.
I’d suggest Garnaut play it very neutrally and quiet or he’ll let the genie out of the bottle.
That might work. Costa could shout swear words and wave his fist in the air like he did at the debate at the NSW Labor conference. Let’s face it - the guy’s a drop kick of the highest order.
Costa is a shrinking violet, it seems, Kingsley. According to the SMH, he’s turned down the opportunity to debate the issues with Garnaut:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/costa-ducks-garnaut-on-debate/2008/07/07/1215282747335.html
ha ha. gotcha.
Typical of an oaf like Costa, and most denialists.
carbonsink, it’s my impression that the CFMEU are quite responsible and on board with climate change and its impact on the coal industry. The membership may be a different story, though, as may be the AWU.
It’s inevitable, I think, that climate change and the ETS will be very much front of mind in the next election.
Brian Toohey pointed out that the sky is not going to fall in and that the GST rapidly became a non-issue. And the GST stank in the public mind from the outset. Rudd’s 2010 timetable doesn’t give much time for this settling period, so it’s almost inevitable that the pain will be almost imperceptible in the early stages.
Define “compensated” and “costs”. Further, predict the resulting unemployment rippling from such a disruptive policy. I bet you can’t and, much like John Hewson’s Cake Shop Waterloo, neither could any proponent during an election campaign. It would be suicide to try. Rudd’s not suicidal, so Emperor Fielding must be sated.
Kingsley - wtf? The sceptics have received way too much air, especially considering they’re a tiny minority (who also happen to be wrong). I reckon Garnaut would hand Costa his own arsehole to use as a hat.
Err, Craig.
(1) I’m not the Prime Minister.
(2) The government hasn’t yet released its consultation paper on the design of an ETS.
Chill, dude.
Kingsley,
It’s good to see the Flat Earth Society supporters entering the debate.
Sure they are, as long and the government continues to throw money at ‘clean coal’. What happens when CCS proves to be a miserable failure (inevitable IMO) and the only option is to shut down the coal mines?
I reckon the politics of an ETS is not too hard to manage, especially as the cost of petrol is gonna (temporarily) drop in a year or so. The key is to start off small but lay down a program to ramp it up over a decade or two.
Starting off small lets the government say “it’ll cost you less than a sandwich a day to save the planet - oh, and BTW we’re giving it back to you in income tax cuts anyway” (you can, like Howard, use bracket creep to do a three-pea trick here if the fiscal situation requires). Laying down a program satisfies genuine industry concerns about certainty.
And if Nelson and co are still stubborn you can start the Keating-style head kicking - “destroyers of the barrier reef”, etc. Populist oversimplification is a game two can play.
No offence you native Aussies, but this ‘debate’ will settle once and for all if Australia is the piss weak, third rate and visionless place that I have often suspected it of being. Hoping for all our sakes that it is not, but spineless imbeciles like Nelson, some of the idiotic comments above, and most of the media don’t engender much hope.
Why is that exactly? Can you tell me precisely when, because I’d love to buy some oil futures at the bottom
An economist vs a politician - each speaking outside their discipline. I could learn more here, and that’s feint praise.
How is Garnaut outside his discipline? He was commissioned to work on the economic impacts of climate change and propose economic remedies!
Any such debate would end up about the science, no matter how it started.
And I wouldn’t trust Garnaut to choose his own jumper, much less “remedies”.
Craig Mc, for your information the science is as settled as it will ever be. It’s just that zealots like yourself refuse to believe it.
Bottom line is: we now have, gasp, ECONOMISTS recommending action of climate change, along with the chorus of scientists.
This will be an interesting time which will assess the political design of democracy itself. Unfortunately it’s looking we are going to politicise important stainability issues for short term point scoring, and our career politicians are already appealing to the baseness of the voters:
“we are weary about supporting emmissions trading because it will increase the price of coal based energy for the battler” (of course it will). “We want to bring the price of petrol down at the pump for the aussie battler” (which will simply further stimulate global demand pushing prices even higher in the long term, idiots).
Voters are, as a group, interested in their individual short term well being. Yet we are depending on politicians who are first and foremost interested in advancing their personal careers (by appealing to the most voters) to push through plans which by their very nature will require some short term sacrifice for long term life as we know it. Interesting times ahead!
The CFMEU agrees that climate change is an issue that we must take action on - but says that there must be no reduction in coal industry jobs. Their policy paper on this is available online. This is one of the two reasons that Labor is tipping $1b into coal R&D (dressed up as “clean” when its not), the other reason being export $34b and general industry interests (probably also linked to politican donations).
Garnaut is treading this line too - by endorsing CCS as the “future for Latrobe and Hunter valleys” - when quite clearly it is not, except in wasting $$$ for short term political gain and incurring long term climate pain.
The Libs are not conservative on climate change - they are radically negligent. The proposition that we risk the planet and life on earth as we know it to “protect the economy” is absurd. Yet this is exactly Nelson’s (and Turnbull’s) contention. For them, short term political traction and argy bargy is the only game in town. This is rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic . . .
The opportunity the Libs are missing is to endorse the latest climate science and call for more urgent and immediate action than a 2010 ETS or 2050 targets. Schwarzenegger & the UK Tories are already in this space. Bang on a carbon tax tomorrow I say. Everybody understands taxes and they really do drive behaviour.
Meanwhile, in Australia, the Libs think that GE crops will solve the lack of water in the Murray Darling (Bill Heffernan has said so), that climate change is not really happening (Nick Minchin), and that taking 5c off petrol excise is the main game (Nelson), or was that 10c? (some dopey backbencher).
I don’t think climate change will be adequately addressed by politician or economists alone. We need a new process for taking real action; the old ways really won’t work - as we are witnessing right now.
I’m aware of the CFMEU and the CCS issue. Coal is our biggest commodity export earner. The only way to bury CCS is to give it our best shot first. Then if it fails it fails, and everyone goes on from there.
Garnaut would clean Costa up without getting tangled up in the science because he understands the uncertainty in the science and he understands the risk implications for economics - better than most economists, it seems to me.
How long and how much money before we admit its not practical though? 5 years? 10 years? And there will still be the opposition to any job reductions in the coal industry at the end.
Never stop believing Adrian!
It’s just not that simple, Brian. I wish lived in Popper’s fantasy world of falsificationism, but this issues demonstrates - perhaps more than any other - that questions of epistemology are also questions of social order.
As I’ve stated several times here, we’re on the cusp of a complete paradigm shift in our understanding of biology thanks to nanobes. Just bracketing out the complexities involved in this process by saying we’re “99% certain” is wingnuttery of the highest order. There are immense risks in pumping this stuff underground considering how much of the biosphere is down there.
And the cost of doing it will exceed the comparative cost of renewable energy available right now.
And it would not be available in time.
And it is not proven anywhere in the world yet for burning coal.
The best and cheapest form of CCS is to leave coal right where it is - safely and cheaply (zero cost) sequestered.
This really isn’t about a real alternative, it is just PR cover for the status quo - with an illusion that somehow it will be “fixed”.
Trouble is, nearly all of the $500m LETD is allocated to coal, and Rudd has kicked in another $500m for good luck. This dwarfs spending on proven renewable energy - and they have killed solar with their federal means test on rebates + ridiculous claytons feed-in tariffs.
Never confuse motion with action.
dk.au, good point. Personally, I’ve not placed much store on CCS as an answer. As a gas (a tonne of coal produces over three tonnes of CO2) the volumes are humungous. Condensing CO2 into a fluid takes huge energy and I understand it is extremely vile stuff to have anywhere. So I couldn’t see it as more than a partial answer, perhaps for residual uses of coal or gas that we can’t replace, if there are any.
I had heard that the biomass underground in much larger than the biomass above it, but biology is not my strong suit. If we are going to have a paradigm shift in our understanding that precludes CCS then hopefully this will filter through to policy makers in quick time.
Costa probably thinks Garnaut is an introverted academic who never leaves the seminar room. He even said that Garnaut should get in the “real world”. Costa should have googled Garnaut’s CV before flapping his gums. He was Ambassador to China in the 80s. You don’t negotiate with the Chinese without learning some street smarts and growing a thick skin. Garnaut’s been Chairman of a bank (BankWest) and Chairman of mining company. He knows more about the real world than Costa, whose entire career has been spent in the ultimate closed society, the NSW Right.
Of course Costa’s got power stations to sell, and Garnaut has just severely devalued them. Imagine if you were selling your house and somebody from the government decided a glue factory is going to be built next door. That’s what just happened to Michael Costa. No wonder he’s pissed off.
Garnaut has just severely devalued them
I really think that any putative purchaser of a coal fired power station might, just might possibly, consider emissions trading as part of a due diligence.
Regarding CCS, I’m sure it’s safe, and technically feasible, just like nuclear, but it’s the economics of the matter, and the opportunity cost of missed investment in better cheaper technologies that is the main game.
On another topic. Did anyone notice that in the same week last week two power stations were announced in Victoria, as well as the sale of another in (I think) NSW? Origin are building 550 MW gas for $650M, expanding to 1GW later. Babcock and Brown sold a similarly large gas fired plant for $700M. Meanwhile the new ‘clean’ brown coal plant is $750M for 400MW.
What gives? Gas is much cheaper already, on those figures, and far cleaner. Until we run out of that as well.
Of course, I understand the coal fired plant is still hunting for finance. Can’t see how they’d get it on those figures.
“Condensing CO2 into a fluid takes huge energy and I understand it is extremely vile stuff to have anywhere.”
Not quite. As was established here late last week, it’s a quite necessary thing to have around the graveyard when naked zombies go on a crazed franger-bender for WYD.
wilful Says:
It’s a bit more complicated than that. The short run marginal cost of the gas plant (open cycle) is upwards of $40/MWh. The SRMC for brown coal is more like $4/MWh. Gas has lower fixed costs, as you’ve noted, but higher variable costs.
A carbon tax of $20-25 per tonne of CO2 is required to tip the balance in favor of gas. That would ensure that no new coal plants get built, and that future baseload plants were gas. That’d be enough to cut our emissions by 20-25% as the existing coal stations were decommissioned and replaced by gas plants.
dk.au - I obviously haven’t been keeping up. What on earth is a nanobe? My biology is a little focused on a single eukaryote. Would you mind posting a reference for a decent review that someone marginally outside the field wouldn’t drown in?. I have good library access so don’t mind if it is in something like Science or Cell.
And I don’t think Brian’s suck it and see for carbon capture was Popperian, more a recognition of a political reality. Rather in line with your expressed view, in fact.
Dr S, the nanobe thing may or may not be true, I think that was dk’s point. We don’t understand enough to be confident that we can pump shirtloads of CO2 underground and that it will both:
a) stay there, and
b) have no adverse impact.
dk SJ et al.,
I can understand people’s nervousness about geoengineering solutions but we already have natural subterranean reservoirs of CO2. Under pressure it alters from its gaseous form to liquid under pressure. It leaks (so does natural CO2), but slowly; if the leaks become significant, you see it as a geyser. In theory, it is possible to inject CO2 safely and store it underground.
If you have reservations it would be best to think about the extraction close to the power source, the efficiency and the economics compared to other energy sources. If I had to rank nuclear and CCS as technologies for their inherent safety, I would choose CCS. And if it weren’t for human error and sociopathic human motive, nuclear would probably be hunky dory as well.
It’s the human aspects of these technologies we have to worry about, not the geophysical aspects.
Just to be clear, the 20-25% reduction would be in Australia’s total emissions, not just emissions from electricity.
Dr S, you’re right, “suck it and see” was more what I had in mind rather than trying to prove a negative in a Popperian manner.
To put it another way, you follow the path to see whether you think it’s leading somewhere. At some point you make an assessment.
I don’t see it as an either/or or CCS as a cover for the coal industry, as some respected commenters do. The situation is serious enough that we should try all half-reasonable avenues, and I mean with govt support, not just hang about and see what the market comes up with.
Roger’s remarks are encouraging, but dk.au is obviously onto something that not too many people are aware of yet.
Roger, there’s a very narrow range of carbon tax where carbon capture from coal is viable.
Below the minimum, you just emit to atmosphere. Above the maximum, you switch to gas.
I don’t know what the minimum is, but the maximum is something like $30-40 tonne of CO2.
If you add in the risk factors for carbon capture, like that no-one can tell if the stuff is going to come boiling to the surface in ten years time, it’s not a good bet.
Luke Weston has just done a post on CCS and “near-zero emissions coal technologies”.
A couple of quotes:
Thanks for the explanation SJ. Simple enough, gas is more expensive (though even then, why? Is piping more expensive than digging?)
I would not put my money anywhere near anything coal fired. Gas is just the only way to go for the interim.
According to this website, as of 2002 we had 100 years of domestic supply, or 50 years with exports. Is that still roughly the case, or have we sold off the farm to China? In simple terms, do we have enough gas to bridge across to genuine renewables?
wilful,
Everything you wanted to know about Australian natural gas reserves is here:
Australian Natural Gas - How Much Do We Have And How long Will It Last ?
Gav is due to do an update including coal seam methane soon.
Thanks carbonsink. Short answer, 30 to 50 years, depending on lots of things.
Time enough.
I’m much more worried about people making this split cleanly. Our understanding of these geophysical aspects is entirely human and just saying ‘nature does it’ is glib at best and duplicitous at worst.
The ‘truth’ or otherwise of Nanobes is a moot point. They’ve been discovered (or constructed if you’d rather the Peter Galison-esque interpretation http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/features/science/index.html). The wikipedia page is a good start:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanobe
Thank you dk.au. No wonder it didn’t turn up in the biological science journals. I shall hunt down the primary references and have a look.
Not sure I am hugely comfortable with quotation marks around the word truth though.