Today, Garnaut on Tour hit Sydney. The highlight of an otherwise rambling 40 minute set of riffs was the good professor’s intervention into the talking point of the moment:
“We’ve suggested Australia should play its full part in a global mitigation effort… I note there’s been a lot of discussion since the report came out that Australia should not be a leader well I can assure people who don’t want Australia to be leader. There are 25 countries in Europe that have gone well beyond us, there are some states in the US that [are more populous] and have taken action, so for those who don’t want Australia to be a leader, you’ve got your wish.”
In the meantime, Turnbull propagates a rather out of date world where unilateralism is noble good bad and border tax adjustments are Teh Great Taboo. Or something.
BTW, a few points from the address and Q&A at Paddington Town Hall this morning:
1. There’s a weird hagiography of the US Sulfur Dioxide trading scheme amongst neoliberals. In rejecting calls for policies of direct intervention Garnaut made the familiar, vague reference to ‘lessons to be learned’ from the US experience. While its political expediency in bringing pro-market Republicans and Environmentalists together is legendary, surely the most important lesson is that the US Market was no more cost effective than the direct measures taken in Europe. If an ETS is to be the centrepiece of our policy response, we shouldn’t have any pretensions about its inherent efficiency (cf. Quiggin’s third point)
2. The 4-5 questions on carbon capture and storage (and ‘clean coal’) were all ‘when’ questions - FoE said 20-30 years, Garnaut rejected that saying 5 with the right policy measures, whilst paradoxically stressing that the future prosperity of The Hunter Region et al is contingent on successful carbon capture and storage.
But the ‘when’ aspect of CCS is only half the story. The more relevant question is ‘who’. Who decides when the science of pumping CO2 into the habitat of most of the earth’s biosphere is settled? Concentrating simply on the ‘when’ questions brackets out this vital decision-making process. In that sense, CCS is completely different to wind and solar because guarantees of permanence rest on dynamic biological science rather simply not creating the emissions in the first place. So it’s worrying that Garnaut glosses over all this by asserting that CCS is just in a phase of technical development that all technologies, including wind and solar ones, have to go through. And while he was adamant that it shouldn’t be an ‘either/or’ choice between fossils and renewables our experience with recent policy has shown otherwise, with the $500m Clean Energy fund massively biased towards coal.
3. Fiona Ryan of the Wilderness Society made the excellent point that, while we’re keen to throw money at teh bad bad neighbours, we continue to allow deforestation in our own backyard. I believe she mentioned that some 3% of national emissions are attributable to logging in NSW alone. Another area with which we need to get our own house in order first. (more on the int’l deforestation here)
Some video highlights from the Melbourne briefing are at A Taste of Garnaut:
The Climate Challenge
It was worth venturing, somewhat ironically, out in the cold to join the 2000 who filled the Town Hall. I was impressed with Ross. He’s getting it from both sides but seems unflappable.
One possibility not being taken in assessing what will happen with an international agreement on global warming is the effect of the change in the US Presidency at the start of 2009. On the Republican side, Senator John McCain was the sponsor of a 2003 bill with Democrat Joe Liberman aimed at taking action on greenhouse gas emissions. He would probably take the US in a new direction if elected. Similarly, Barack Obama would be likely to support an emissions trading scheme in the US, as is being mooted by a number of north-eastern states. And the success of California’s measures would not be lost on either of them. The result could be that by the end of 2009, the US could be committing to relatively high emission reduction targets for 2050. What India and China have been saying is that they insist on action by the developed countries first. When they see such action, they may well come to the party at Copenhagen, albeit at a slower pace than the developed nations.
Paddington Town Hall, tough crowd.
Seriously though, the scrambling from the Opposition shows how far they have to go to get themselves government-ready. Let us have no truck with poll twitches, 24-hour gaffes or other MSM nonsense. You’ve seen what a dying government with a resurgent opposition looks like, so there’s no confusing the current situation with that.
I think the Greens spokesperson got this one right (ahem, for a change): The libs have dealt themselves into irrelevance on this score. Time to deal with the Greens, and the other two new senators.
Having just watched the environment part of Q&A, Garnaut is wrong,…and he is right. All of the lead positions on climate change action are not taken, but it is completely impossible for Australia to claim a lead role, with our political makeup.
If Helen Coonan is the best that the coalition have to speak on environment then it is clear why their party is in the toilet. Christine Milne has all of the marbles lined up, but Emerson demonstrated that Labour is playing politics with this issue every bit as much as Howard was (steady as she goes mate, not too much and just enough), Jaivin was there representing the uninformed and Bolt was the voice of…no, he’s just a voice.
It is now obvious that Rud (getting smaller by the day) has carefully orchestrated the pace with his “I’m waiting for Garnaut” who was clearly told to NOT present before the Senate changeover, after which time there would be no hope of passing any legislation through with the loss of numbers. So at present there is no certainty at all that there ever will be any any significant environment action in Australia at all. The Greens are unlikely to compromise to pass the half baked wishy washy plan that Labour is cooking up, which will not get Coalition support either because it will not have a Nuclear plan and will not include the doubling of coal consumption,,,and Fielding is irrelevent. Sum total? Abject failure. No leaders here.
Rud is strutting the world patting different backs while the one burning issue is on hold. And to make it all look kosher, Garnaut is touring the country spreading his watered down assessment of science reality, looking every bit as smug as Howard did, preselling the “we mustn’t rush into these things, 2010 is fine” message. The real fact is that they can’t rush into anything because there is way possible of getting any legislation through.
Garnaut is right there are no leaders here. The world will have to look elsewhere. Brazil perhaps.
BTW: Shanahan @ TheOz. is pushing Nelson’s “Going it alone” and “”leading the way” spin - neither of which, as those who read OS news on-line or views it on TV (or was a Coalition member or supporter urging Howard to act on climate change) know is even close to being true. http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/dennisshanahan/index.php/theaustralian/comments/going_it_alone_is_risky/
On the other hand, Steve Lewis, in the Courier Mail’s dead tree ed p 34 (not on-line yet; but will be posted there & on news.com.au later) condemns Nelson’s line as reinforcing “a widely held view that his leadership is terminal.”
If only we were “leading the way”, as Howard would have, had he ratified Kyoto (as many of his party colleagues & supporters urged)! But there’s no way, after Whitlam, and Howard’s “near miss” in Election98, that any first-term PM is going to take a radical approach.
There was a time when we jumped at opportunities to “lead the way”. Sadly, it seems to have passed.
If you want to hazard a guess about the Rudd gov’s response, “green” sections (or synonyms thereof) in UK, Irish, European & Californian on-line papers are likely to be a very good guide. Give existing schemes an Oz twist, and you could just about take bets on the responses.
Meanwhile, back in “not the truth, the whole truth etc” newsland’s reports on the Murray’s problems, the Darling’s plight - as Menindie Lakes start filling & rain again falls on the Darling’s western QLD catchment area, with more is forecast within a week - is looking better than for many years. I did read last weekend that, once Broken Hill’s water supply is guaranteed, water will flow further downstream, so the SA reaches may be “flushed out”.
Perhaps not publicising this much beyond the bounds of the parts of QLD that actually know about it helps create a sense of urgency re the Murray; but I thought “knowing what is best for” a nation went out with the Stuarts “Divine Right of Monarchs”.
If the W QLD catchments of the Darling’s tributaries continue to get good rain (as they have since summer) the way is open for climate deniers to undermine the Murray’s urgent need for remedial action. Unless its basin gets great late winter & spring snow & rain, that would be disastrous.
Fiona Ryan would want to back up her claims with a few more facts… I’m not sure how much deforestation there is exactly in NSW, but none of it is due to logging.
I have no idea about NSW but here in my local rural area in SA where 80% of the native vegetation of tens of thousands of square kms was cleared yonks ago, deforestation [if you can call mallee scrub ‘forest’] continues.
Unofficially.
Nearly every time I travel around my district, anywhere and everywhere, I can see new large piles, more than house size, of broken trees piled up along roads and fences where roadside or field corner scrub has, for some purpose, been destroyed.
And everybody does a Nelson, not Brendan the other one, you know Horatio who didn’t see the signal cos he put the telescope up to the blind eye.
Its not as if the land is valuable agriculturally, a few sheep, very few, and mostly weed infested or bare ground for most of the year.
A fraction is cropped.
This region is barely on the right side of Goyder’s Line and Brian’s recent map of below average rain for the last 30 years covers all of the region. So the clearing is not going to further valuable farming by any major degree.
I don’t know why they do it.
I suspect they don’t know either.
Habit maybe.
Contempt for the scrub.
When we tell local people we are trying to regenerate native veg at our place we get two extreme responses. “That’s wonderful” or “Why?”
The old saying, “If it moves shoot it, if it stands still cut it down” is absolutely still the overwhelming ethos in my region.
I suspect that it is similar in other rural places.
It’s not similar in Victoria. Total area of native veg lost per annum is now in the low thousands of hectares. According to satellite photos, so fairly accurate. Plus onground intel for the native grasslands, which are far more critical.
The key causes of habitat degradation and loss are urbanisation and new agricultural enterprises (such as raised bed cropping).
If you include the catchment reveg works we’re in a slight gain. The only real carbon debt is from bushfire.
Very usefull post, i think i will use it.
Thanks.