I was citing the huge fund raising behind the GetUp ad (now quickly approaching the $160 000 it would take to get it blanket media coverage) to point out massive discontent over the target and the package behind it. I withheld comment about the content of the ad itself. Strategically, I think it’s much more important to awaken people to the political realities of the CPRS as it stands than put forward some kind of nuanced ethical engagement with the issue. People will seek that out when they realise what’s happened.

Though one strategy I think could work would be to illustrate the mismatch between the ‘assistance’ and the nominal principles of a Labor Government (at least in the olden days). I entirely agree that anyone who thought Kevin Rudd was going to be some kind of Climate Change Messiah really should have been paying attention to his rhetoric. But really, WTF are they doing pissing money onto the balance sheets of multinationals???

“There is of course an irony to the association of the ETS with economic thinking. Yes, the option of trading permits as a way of overcoming an externality has its origins within the profession. But in my experience the drive to the ETS has not been by economists.”

Maybe not professional economist wonks, but the fundamentalist faith in market efficiency is certainly a product of economic thought and provides the common ground for liberal enviro types and traders.

“Provisions to keep coal fired power running under the auspices of ’supply security’. What was wrong with Garnaut’s proposal to provide structural adjustment assistance to the effected communities? This is market fundamentalism in the form of the National Electricity Market whose sole, perverse efficiency is providing Kilowatt hours of power instead of what people actually need: energy services”

The National Electricity Market is a wholesale market for electricity. Electricity retailers buy electricity in bulk from the National Electricity Market and then onsell it to people and organisations. The wholesale market is designed to attempt to meet the demand for electricity in each five minute period at the lowest possible monetary cost by determining how much electricity each generator should produce in each five minutes to meet the overall demand at least cost.

Just want to point out I was trying to be/undermine and I have no relation to them.

Will scrubbers and other pollutant prevention controls become mandatory for stack emissions? Currently many large emitters are only required to have stack emissions analysed every three months – some as little as every twelve months. Smaller operators’ emissions are often greater than large emitters – particularly those who are using untested waste oil as a fuel (not a good way to “recycle” hazardous waste eh?) whose operations are permitted to function with poor combustion technologies.

Some chemicals are not tested at all. Analytical testing is usually performed by NATA accredited laboratories. I’m reminded that when I invite guests to dinner – perhaps every three months too, I go to great lengths to clean the house for my visitors, though often in between dinners, the state of my house could be deemed hazardous!

Therefore, if continuous monitoring is not made mandatory and departments of environment maintain the status quo – that is, the occasional monitoring of ambient air (ground level) for stack emissions, then the ETS will merely be yet another joke – similar to the farcical regulations which have been occurring in this nation for decades and which are responsible for the pitiful state of Australia’s environment and the deplorable condition of its failing ecosystems and in some cases, the potential, total collapse of some, which could be imminent.

Perhaps my questions are too trivial after all, as I have been chastised before “It’s the economy stupid.”

When you saw him interviewed in the lead-up to the election, did you see real engagement in his eyes when he discussed climate change? I didn’t. It was something to be to be managed (largely by other people) while he concentrated on the things that were of more interest to him.

Actually, I thought he seemed most genuinely excited when he was talking about governance and public service reform! I seem to remember saying at the time this was significant – those of us who knew Ruddy in Queensland Labor and the Queensland public sector aren’t surprised.

I posted my last response before I had read you at #16. Just to explain that a bit further, what I would have liked to see in that add a greater appeal to the moral/ethical issues at stake. Presumably if GetUp really wants the public to look at these issues through a different lens than has been the case in the past, it should use something other than traditional political tactics?

On the substance of your post at #16, I gave up on Rudd being something other than managerialist some time ago. It is in his DNA. In fact, he is the perfect PM for the upper echelons of the Canberra bureaucracy. When you saw him interviewed in the lead-up to the election, did you see real engagement in his eyes when he discussed climate change? I didn’t. It was something to be to be managed (largely by other people) while he concentrated on the things that were of more interest to him.

There is of course an irony to the association of the ETS with economic thinking. Yes, the option of trading permits as a way of overcoming an externality has its origins within the profession. But in my experience the drive to the ETS has not been by economists. The majority that I work with favour a carbon tax for the very reasons we have discussed. Indeed, Greg Mankiw, whom I know is not much loved on this blog, has started up a Pigou Club, ostensibly to push the idea that carbon taxes can be efficency enhancing if used to offset other less efficient taxes. In my view, the coalition around emissions trading has come about because it suited two groups – environmentalists that wanted a quantity constraint – and business lobbyists because they knew it would be easier to game than a carbon tax. In anothe irony, the Europeans were initally opposed to emissions trading but were persuaded to do a deal with the US in the Kyoto negotiations. Unfortunately for the environmental movement, they got sold on the ETS on the basis of what it could be,not what it was likely to be….and got screwed in the process…

I fear that it is too late to lobby otherwise…the only thing left to do now is to begin a long, probably unsatisfying campaign for reform….

By the way, I can understand some of your frustrations with the scheme, but the need to spell out, inter alia, clearly the reporting and auditing requirements, tax treatment, governance, etc, is the key reason why it is 800 pages long – it is the basis for legislation for hecks sake.

But the backlash we’re seeing now is, to no small degree, against this very process. I have a lot of sympathy for your view (as I’ve read it so far on your comments here) that there is a measured calculus behind all this. But the whole point of outlining this as a failure of governance, rather than government, is to emphasise the contradictions between its processual, ‘event’-ness (climate change needs addressing now) and the inertia and path dependence (behind the Canberra bureaucracy, the theory of emissions trading going back to Coase, and the idea of property rights as the surplus value of one’s exploitation of nature before it spoils according to Locke).

These are extraordinarily deep and difficult processes – which Garnaut quite rightly called diabolical. But, like you, I’m trying to draw attention to the fact that Rudd has just ticked this box as another policy issue – if you watch that Marie Claire interview closely it’s hugely instructive. There’s really no enthusiasm in his eye to engage with this issue substantively. He talks about low wattage lighting and green power but can’t even remember those terms. This is where I believe the term ‘tawdry managerialism’ is entirely apposite.

Unfortunately we’ve been locked into this process of emissions trading for a whole lot of reasons to do with the influence of economic thinking on the political process over the past half century that I feel will be extraordinarily difficult to overcome. If you and I can make people see the elegant efficiency of the carbon tax over this astonishingly cynical private taxation regime for ‘EITEs’ then hurrah to us. Who do we lobby first?

If this is your set of options, then I guess you are saying you don’t hold out much hope. The price cap is sufficiently low, that any attempt to do a) on a large scale would quickly raise the permit price to the cap – at which point firms can purchase permits in unlimited quantities. So, all you will get is the amount of abatement consistent with a carbon price of $40/t.

“The Green Paper noted that emissions monitoring and estimation can take several forms, from the use of observable activity data to estimate emissions, to site-specific sampling, through to direct measurement of emissions. The classes of methodologies available for use under NGERS are set out in the box below.”

“Large emitters (those with obligations under the Scheme for greenhouse gas emissions of 125,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent or more) will be required to have their annual emissions reports audited by an independent third party before submitting them to the Scheme regulator. The Government will consider the need to extend this requirement on the basis of initial experience, developments relating to international linking and the compliance burdens on small entities.
The Scheme regulator will conduct, or require the appointment of external auditors to conduct, external audits using either a risk management approach or on suspicion of non-compliance.”

By the way, I can understand some of your frustrations with the scheme, but the need to spell out, inter alia, clearly the reporting and auditing requirements, tax treatment, governance, etc, is the key reason why it is 800 pages long – it is the basis for legislation for hecks sake. An ETS is a very complicated regulation. To make any regulation that complex work effectively (whether you agree with the design principles themsleves or not) requires being prepared for as many contingencies as possible.

If you wanted something a lot simpler, you could have advocated a carbon tax. That is pretty straightforward – all you need then is a reporting/monitoring/auditing regime to support it. Compensation, if any, could be kept simple by cutting the overall corporate tax rate (which would benefit all incorporated firms), not just large emitters, and income support measures for low income households. Remaining revenue would be recycled into R&D measures.

I believe it’s self reported and audited by a third party. We have a National Measurement Institute whose Director wrote a scathing submission to the Green Paper (I believe it was) on the scant measurement guidelines. I’m not sure whether they’ve been addressed in the White Paper – i’ve been looking at the other issues.

Anyone care to enlighten me?

None of your four choices are satisfactory, but I don’t see any alternatives

I should emphasise that I fully building support community capacity locally (putting solar panels on your surf/cricket club house, etc.) but it has to include a bit of (a) to the extent that people want their efforts recognised nationally and internationally because that’s effectively how these mechanisms have been established. I wasn’t meaning to sound snarky and thanks for the link but the post is, in some ways, the culmination of my immersion in the issue this year.

b) a bloody coup with the emergent carbon elites first against the wall

I’m afraid my long-held belief in non-violence is having severe difficulty in holding me back from embracing this one…. That sinking feeling I had all the way through High & Dry returns every time I contemplate the $3.9bn pa going to the Rio Tintos, et al.

As for option d, the one I know I should be taking instead, I struggle to think of the messages that would cut through sufficiently to Joe Public to kick off the extent of MP harrassment required.

Common sense would suggest that ‘do you realise you’re paying for these corporate bonuses?’ should work. I could even imagine Graham Morris nodding to this one when he considers the power of the ‘I’ve been done over’ feeling in the average punter.

But without access to $squillon/hour Canberra lobbyists, I’m genuinely struggling with my impotence as a humble citizen in the face of the stupidity & cynicism of the CPRS.

I’m prepared to work as hard as is necessary to shift public opinion on this but I wonder how on earth can we actually do it.

One possibility was sent to me by a friend –

the climate change movement has reduced its popular base by haggling over details of a deeply flawed financial solution

but I’d say the leftist rant that contained this single moment of wisdom was probably angling more for option b.