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….