Those coal eating surrender monkeys1 sure get defensive when cornered. The latest shrill squeaking comes from Heather Ridout of AIG with the plaintive request to cut carbon dioxide later. Ali Moore nailed this duplicitous bullshit argument in an interview, pointing out that we’ll have to deal with it at some point in the cycle. Ridout’s response is to start with a ‘dry run’:
Well a dry run can take a number of forms. One approach is just to require reporting without a carbon price. Another might be to set a fixed price. So there’s a variety of things that could be put in place. We would still say we have to have a definite transition set in place so that after that dry run we move into a freer market regime where we ratchet up the targets. Hopefully by then we’ll know what the rest of the world’s going to do.
Heather, it’s called NGER. The legislation passed in 2007. Any business who hasn’t already prepared for various carbon prices by now really doesn’t deserve to survive. A few cent movements in the Aussie Dollar dwarf the impact of a carbon price for most industries, yet strangely we don’t see the AIG calling for an unfloating of the currency.
Meanwhile in Poznan, Australia is doing its darndest to shift the goalposts on any effective global agreement taking shape by pushing for various landuse and forestry activities to allow us to keep digging up, shipping and burning coal into eternity. Anna Rose, Erwin Jackson and John Hepburn have details. The AYCC also notes that this comes at the expensive of the ratification of Labour’s promise to ratify the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
“A few cent movements in the Aussie Dollar dwarf the impact of a carbon price for most industries, yet strangely we don’t see the AIG calling for an unfloating of the currency.”
Excellent point, dk. This is just an delaying strategy from the people who brought you “clean coal” which, the more I read about it, is clearly nothing more than an orchestrated time-buyer. I dont believe anyone has the slightest intention of proceeding with sequestration at any point in the future: its just a rhetorical shut-up strategy to buy time, and nothing more.
I’d file Ridout’s views under “ignore”. Its not even clear they represent economic common sense anymore – the winners will be those that invest, move on, and sell the tech when its all inevitable.
This is low-innovation, low-rent thinking.
Perhaps its time more of us started to question the massive influence concentrated in Heather Ridout’s hands. She is by far the most powerful lobbyist in the co9ntry and in many ways almost a de facto memnber of the Government, considering how many committees, advisory panels and boards she is a member of. I’m sick of the free reign she gets in the media as the go-to quoter for every conceivable article. Most of the AI Group’s members won’t even be part of the CPRS as they will be far below the relatively high emissions threshold required for mandatory reporting and emissions permits.
An even scarier prospect for me is that people (viz. naive researchers) have been bought into the project (http://www.co2crc.com.au/) with little thought for the politics behind it. The chasm between the amount of coal we’re planning to burn here and in China and the number of possible secure storage sites is so wide it just beggars belief, not to mention the nanobe question I’ve raised repeatedly here without satisfactory response.
Meanwhile, BP Solar and Keppel bite are told to hit the road.
Good post dk.
One point we should distinguish is the effects of the different sorts of special pleading.
Special pleading for free permits doesn’t affect the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, it just represents a transfer of dough to one group of people (Big Carbon) from the rest of us, and will make fixing climate change costlier that it might otherwise have been.
Watered-down targets mean more carbon in the atmosphere.
It’s a lot better outcome for the environment if Big Carbon is bribed enough to shut up (in both senses of the word), than if they get BS non-targets.
Exactly, Robert. If we are herd animals, these bastards are a swarm of mosquitos. We need to quickly evolve the techniques to swat them before they suck us dry.
“A freer market regime” – ???
Isn’t that what’s been happening – for manufacturers of any kind of junk – these past 250 years?
And look where that’s brought us: to the point of no return. Get real.
Ben Eltham @ 2: “I’m sick of the free reign she gets in the media as the go-to quoter…”
Was that “free rein” as in, “nobody stops the horse from going in the wrong direction”
or “free reign” as in, “ruling as a monarch, without having to pay for the privilege”.
Oh hang on…
The struggle to get any sensible action on ‘tackling’ climate change will have to begin with a wholesale, across the board (room), ideological shift. While getting filthy rich flogging clean coal continues to seam a much more glamorous option, I can’t see that happening any time soon.
All we can honestly say we have achieved after many, many months of debate, are a lot of key people baulking at committing to the abstract notion of ’setting targets’ and spending more energy on finding ways to make what is a pretty straightforward need into a complicated, drawn out bun fight where shareholder interests and the health of the economy remain the paramount concerns.
Caroline,
And all we can say after 1 year of this government is that there is more coal being dug up and shipped, oil is much, much cheaper to burn, CO2 targets are still as wobbly and just as likely to be met and more paper being used to make and unmake promises. Still, if the papers end up on shelves somewhere it is a form of sequestration…
I say we give governments 12 months, and then start setting citizen targets without reference to our states, in direct citizen-citizen cosmopolitan action.
i.e. Declare state failure on the issue and reach people-people accords on goals. Embarrass them.
One effect of Ridout – lets call it the Ridout factor – is evidenced in what you hear of Rudd constantly talking about “getting the balance right.” Leaving aside the ‘extremists’ at either end of the GW spectrum which is a respectable statistical move, getting the balance right is probably equivalant to ’steering a middle course’ between Ridout and Garnaut’s 5 – 10% or 550ppm option. It might be good politics but it is lousy science.
Pablo, I think Rudd reckons he’s a Sensible Centrist.
Nothing redundant about Mrs Ridout. 12 months ago at the Bali Climate Change Conference the newly elected Rudd was promising urgent cuts to carbon emissions. I got a hernia waiting for these targets.
Maybe, but her commentary on emissions trading is. The whole point of that post was that he intervention was a complete non-sequitur. We’re already in the dry run she’s proposing.
I am sequestering carbon: lots of fruit trees, fertilise with manure, mulching with peastraw etc.
Not waiting for anyone else.
Or should I wait for the guvment?
Thanks JulieG, the cartoon is very useful — I have made use of it on my blog.