The draft of the CPRS legislation has been released, for your reading pleasure. As I understand it, the draft legislation pretty much exactly mirrors the White Paper, with all its often-discussed flaws.
As to what happens now, today’s Crikey email has a piece by Andrew McIntosh (not online) that contains the first rationale for blocking the CPRS that, to my mind, doesn’t involve hoping for political miracles a couple of years down the track. In the end, Australia’s influence on getting an agreement at Copenhagen will be limited. If there is an agreement, Australia will have a reduction target to meet. If so, something will have to be done, and we won’t have locked ourselves into a bad CPRS first and be left with buying out Big Carbon at enormous cost.
Discuss at your leisure! Interesting links appreciated.
At over 390 odd pages, the CPRS bill is quite complex. At a quick glance, some main points of note are:
450ppm CO2 confirmed (latest science indicates 300ppm for a safe climate future)
60 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from 2000 levels by 2050 (unchanged from 2007 election target).
Between 5 per cent and 15 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from 2000 levels by 2020 (5% committed).
Free permits for Australian emissions units will be issued for net greenhouse gas removals due to reafforestation that occur after the CPRS starts. But no permits issued for protection of existing forests
Coal Fired Electrity – 130.7 million Australian emissions units will be issued amongst eligible power stations on a pro rata basis
Emissions-Intensive Trade-Exposed (EITE) assistance program provides assistance at two rates – 90 per cent and 60 per cent of a historic baseline of emissions per unit of production
In summary; not good at all. No emission reductions here, and no incentives for clean green energy & jobs. The worst polluting industries have got pretty much what they wanted in terms of free permits and subsidies. Now they want a delay too.
I’m unimpressed with the scheme, but ‘for’ passing it on the ground that it at least setting up a mechanism that can reduce emissions later – but with one MAJOR rider: its just not worth passing at all without ‘additionality’ reforms – allowing green consumer CO2 savings to count towards overall reduction targets.
Its too demoralizing, ALP – you’ve got this part W-R-O-N-G. And it needs to change. I would rather see you embarrassed and defeated in the senate than pass it without that one critical change.
LeftyE – in practice how do you separate them out?
For example, a concerned resident decides to install CFLs. They save X kWh of electricity a year meaning that the power generator that supplies them can supply X kWh of extra electricity a year to someone else without having to buy extra CO2 permits (or alternatively produce the energy more efficiently).
Presumably you want the situation where the savings in CO2 emissions that the resident have made by using less electricity are not passed on to the power generator. But how in practice do you track of things like this?
Presumably if this carbon tax is not removing its fair share of carbon then we will come under increasing international pressure to lower and tighten the cap.
So I say go for it…its clear that the LNP are not acting in good faith in this critical area so the Greens ( The Browns? ) have no-where to go.
The Xenomorph is just a common whore.
The Four Corners program Heat on the Hill last night was interesting and relevant. The site has extended interviews with Garnaut, Wong and others, plus heaps of links.
Well I must admit I don’t have a fully detailed plan for that myself, Chris! But I do understand that gross feed-in tariffs around the world require a home-installed device which measures the electricity generated at that home level.
As such, the raw numbers, if you like, and not at all difficult to track and quantify.
And from that point – well, its just a question of whether, and how govt is prepared to make those numbers count.
The obvious one – Id have thought- is to deduct that amount (of national consumer ‘saved’ CO2 emissions) from the quantity of free emissions granted to electricity producers. You might have to do that the following year for accounting purposes, perhaps, but still, it should be done.
Lefty, you’ll find some thinking about how to account for voluntary abatement here
I, too, think its an error not to treat this differently but I could live with it, if it didn’t imply that we have the same responsibility to cut emissions as those companies who are being paid around $7bn to do it.
But this issue’s been done good and proper already on this blog….
Thanks Aussie for the link.
Blog’s one thing, but Ozpol’s another. I dont think there’s quite enough noise about on that score – though I trust there will be when the Greens are asked to pass it in the Senate.
I really think the whole ALP position would stink a whole lot less if they did something about additionality. Its not like it would (necessarily) add compliance costs to producers – after all, its electricity they just dont have to produce. It just removes a free kick for them – and lets face, it wasnt a big one anyway.
All round, it seems a peevish demobilising trick born of a wholly unnecessary and rather dull-minded, even habitual conservatism – and thats really going to piss people off.
No suprises – at least not as far as I’ve seen yet – just the formalising of the Carbon Pollution Profitability Protection Scheme.
Summary of the legislation here
LeftyE @ 5 & Aussie Oskar – just counting things like solar PV in a special manner will lead to further distort the incentives for solar PV over energy efficiency schemes like insulation or CFLs. They’re not as sexy, but they’re a lot more cost efficient at reducing emissions than solar cells.
I’ll admit I’m a bit bemused over the objection to residential reductions having an effect under the CPRS. The CPRS has set a cap on emissions – does it really matter if it comes from decreased residential or industrial emissions? They’re still “Australian” emissions – why try to separate them into separate buckets?
However I do agree that the cap level itself should be lower – and that really is the fundamental problem.
Oh damn, back to the drawing board!!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7935159.stm
Maybe it would be better to see this as
( http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7935159.stm )^2
Chris@9: the reason this is important to many of us is that the CPRS as proposed is a joke. As mentioned, it’s more of a carbon pollution profitability guarantee than a reduction scheme. So those of us who accept the science are left grasping at straws like individual action. Given the choice I’d happily see my personal efforts simply make the 80% national reduction easier to achieve, but that’s not on offer.
I guess, that although this policy is virtually useless, we should take comfort in that it only has to help a little bit, because the real reductions were made by the Coalition in their fading moments. The light bulb change was the most significant step forward in Australia’s history of CO2 abatement action. We are really powering forward as a nation. We’ve solved the Murray Darling water problem, we’ve changed our light bulbs, we’ll be putting fluff in our ceilings soon, and now we have put those remaining nasty CO2 emitters on notice that, some day, they will have to stop doing it, what ever it is that they do.
Australian government, making the tough decisions.
While the 5-15% targets are woefully inadequate. Can I remind many here that without the CPRS, we’ll be lucky to return to even 2000 levels by 2020.
Our current trajectory puts on track for 120% emissions by 2020. MRET, insulation rebates, and a few people putting PV panels on roofs will not have a significant dint in that trajectory.
Yes industries have been shielded from the full impacts of the scheme. But the Treasury modelling still indicates that at least one or two brown coal power stations will close by 2020.
5 years of transitional assistance does not make the generators any more profitable after 5 years.
Andrew Mckintosh at ANU also misses the point of the international framework. Once an agreement is in place, parties are meant to show how they will actually meet those reductions.
A lot of countries that have ratified Kyoto, ended up buying Kyoto permits to meet their target cuts because their policies introduced to meet the targets were never going to be enough.
Simply just saying “we have a 5% target” means nothing unless you have someway of getting there. And what makes you think that by having an international agreement that it would prompt say a future Coalition government in doing anything serious to meet that agreement?
The coalition will call for a delay. Greens will call for harder cuts and voluntary action.
The ALP will delay the start date and blame the coaltion. (environmentally it prob doesn’t matter all that much.)
All we can hope for is that Obama weaves his magic later in the year and gets an international agreement of 25% absolute cuts which Rudd can’t refuse. (he would then have to set the CPRS at 15% and the govt buy the remaining permits on Kyoto.)
Well that is interesting, Michael D, that you believe that this policy will cause the shutdown of a whole 2 brown coal power stations by 2020, and that declared targets will require proof. I had a maths lecturer once who would scratch his left ear with his right hand over the top of his head, to demonstrate what going the long way around solving a problem looked like. Well that is what this policy is all about. there are easy and direct ways of solving problems.
I demonstrated over here
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2009/02/27/quibbling-at-the-margins-of-the-cprs/#comment-647913
that here was a simple method for replacing most coal power stations by 2030. This ALP policy is highly speculative with regards its impact. No-one can say for sure what its real outcomes will be. Government has guaranteed that in the event of needing to increase C)2 reduction targets, industry will get up to 15 years notice of the change. Read the committee Hansard. That is what makes this policy a national embarassment, in light of news such as the link at comment 10. So what ever acceleration of the problem occurs in the next 15 years, the Australian governemnt will not be able to react.
While Rudd thought it smart politics to sit like piggy in the middle between the left and the right on carbon abatement, on the assumption that the middle position is always the correct one, he now looks a bit of a slack idiot, as the criticisms from both sides gain traction.
What worries me is the future prospect of paying billions in compensation to multinational corporations if we lock ourselves into Wong’s CPRS. Have we learnt nothing from the over-allocation of irrigation licences on the Murray-Darling?
On the other hand, the ABC Radio National “Background Briefing” last Sunday morning was a ripper, discussing the way forward for individual responsibility in renewables (which appears to have been forgotten by a Government in thrall to Big Business), and announcing the ACT as the first state/territory (and possibly the only) to legislate for a Gross Feed-In Tariff.
Congratulations to the People’s Republic of the ACT, and onya Stanhope.
Yes, cheers to the ACT and Stanhope!
In Victoria the government got caught out intentionally deceiving the public – telling bald-faced lies about the costs of a gross tarriff. They claimed it would add $100 per year to consumer bills – when in fact their own modelling said $7 per annum.
Since that deceit was busted by the Age, we’re still waiting for the real reason, Premier Brumby.
Form what I have read of the exposure draft legislation so far it is very similar to the White Paper. A very small difference is that under the White Paper, there will be a transitional price cap for five years starting at $40/tonne, and increasing 5% per year. Under the draft legislation, this has been changed to 7.5% per year.
LeftyE – a gross feed in tarrif is rather regressive policy though. Most of the money goes to the well off who can afford the capital cost of solar PV. Paid for by those who can’t.
A progressive way of doing the same thing would be to just put a levy on electricity bills and use the money to buy solar PV for public housing and the poor. Good for the environment and directly helps reduce energy bills for the disadvantaged.
Or, Chris, you could put a levy on electricity bills* and use the money for the technology that reduces emissions at the lowest cost. This may be wind, geothermal, large-scale solar farms, biogas or planting trees, but it is almost certain that it will not involve rooftop solar panels (or Priuses). Domestic rooftop solar panels are an indulgence for enthusiasts, not a serious part of the technology mix for reducing emissions, and scarce resources should be devoted to the most efficient technologies, not flights of fancy for green show-offs.
* Note that a cap-and-trade scheme effectively does this – it raises the costs to the power companies of supplying coal-fired electricity.
Im for that as well Chris – Id like to councils use rates money to install “public solar”, if you like.
But i think the “regressive subsidy” argument about gross solar tarriff has been proven to be exaggerated. As started, the costs to consumers in ACTUAL govt modelling (as opposed to their public lies) are $7pa.
Id also note that in countries with gross solar tarriff there’s a thriving trade in renting roof space – so income is derived by those who cant afford the tech themsleves. I acknowledge this deosnt help renters – hence my own view about councils pooling rate money for local solar produciton on a larger (and preesumably more efficient) scale than households can afford.
The 5% target is so ridiculous that I’m indulging in the ‘there must be some deeper purpose’ conspiracy theory mindset.
So…what if the ALP deliberately is putting up a stupidly small target, knowing that the Greens won’t accept it, and knowing that the Libs wouldn’t accept a bigger one?
Gives plenty of wiggle room in both directions to achieve a better target.
Assume, for example, that the Greens and the cross benches demand 20% or more. The ALP votes for, Libs against.
The ALP can then tell the business community that they didn’t have any choice, what could they do? those nasty Green people.
The bottom line here is that the ALP knew from the start that anything they came up with would be opposed from both sides, so that must have been in their calculations.
The worst case scenario, of course, is that the Libs support Labor and 5% stays – but I can’t see that happening.
What Required said.
I agree that rooftop PV is unlikely to be the power source of the future. (I’m also more than happy to take the money and install one at the ridiculously cheap price that the subsidy makes possible.
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I think that one benefit they do/will have, however, is that I strongly suspect that people with a rooftop PV will be more actively involved in monitoring and moderating their demand than people who just draw from the grid, regardless of how low the emissions are at the other end of the line.
mehitabel, 5%-by-2020 is what Australia will do even if the rest of the world “does nothing”. What that really means is “if there fails to be a global agreement at Copenhagen”. But if that happens, the world won’t literally be doing nothing – we’ll just have ad-hoc actions and partial agreements, and a slow second attempt at a global agreement.
15%-by-2020 is supposed to be the upper bound on what we will do as part of a global agreement. (As I understand it, the government’s position is that if we enter into an agreement requiring deeper domestic cuts from Australia, the government will purchase extra emissions permits from overseas to restore the de-facto supply to the promised level.)
Also, 5%-by-2020 is more than it sounds because that is 5% off 1990 levels. We are already at 108% of 1990, so relative to where we are now, a “5%” cut is actually a 12% cut (95/108 =approx 88%). It is actually commensurate with the long-range targets that Labor brought to the 2007 election, which were in turn commensurate with the sort of actions then being considered in Europe. It’s just that, once you become better informed, such targets still seem to tolerate intolerable levels of climate change, and that a more reasonable target is (as the Australian Greens advocate) carbon neutrality (i.e. 100% reductions) by mid-century. But then you fall afoul of the economics.
My impression from the Treasury modelling is that emissions cuts much deeper than 15% led to economic contraction. The modelling encompassed scenarios called “CPRS -5″ and “CPRS -15″; it would certainly be interesting if, in the course of this Senate inquiry, we were to see the outcomes of CPRS -25 and CPRS -40 scenarios, i.e. scenarios corresponding to the lower and upper bounds of the IPCC-recommended range of 2020 targets for developed countries. Ironically, thanks to the world recession, we are actually in for major economic contraction anyway. The hope in all the major parties seems to be that if we can just fix the financial crisis – get the banks lending again – then we can resume the high-growth mode which characterized the world economy for most of this decade. I have to wonder how true that is; I find it interesting that the bubble burst just a year or two after world oil production reached a plateau. The latest scenario, from peak-oil circles, for future oil prices is a sawtooth curve, in which they shoot up again once high growth resumes, and then fall again once high prices kill growth again.
What I really want to emphasize is that advocacy of deep cuts is going to require discussion of the economic consequences, as uncertain as the economic future may appear to be. It is in fact conceivable that people would consent to a significant drop in the standard of living if the alternative is catastrophe. Alternatively, they might agree to deep cuts if they can be shown to be not as expensive as they appear to be; or they might agree to shallow cuts now and a research program meant to make deep cuts affordable later. But it is not going to be enough just to say “100% renewable energy” and “green jobs for the economy of the future”, and that is pretty much all that green groups are able to say at this stage. For any government to adopt *those* policies, it will need to have some specific idea of how to get baseload power from renewable energy, and it will need to know the short-term consequences of the new all-green economy.
Or again, consider another significant proposition coming from people serious about climate, which is that we must shut down the coal industry. I have yet to see any discussion of what the people who currently *import* our coal would do, if Australia ceased to export it. There are many other countries with coal reserves, Indonesia for example. The plausible consequence is that an Australian moratorium would simply lead in the short term to increased coal-mining in other countries – a novel form of “carbon leakage” (which usually refers to a decline in *domestic* Australian emissions being countered by an increase elsewhere, as unregulated emissions-intensive industries overseas displace the newly-expensive emissions-constrained Australian industries). So at the very least, a sensible coal strategy would seem to require a compact between importers and exporters, to cooperate on the move towards clean energy. At the moment that focuses on clean coal, but in theory such a compact could also involve outright substitution of other energy sources for coal.
My ultimate point here is that the policy we have from Labor is not, as so many people seem to think, a matter of sacrificing the future of the planet for the sake of industry profits. The real compromise has been between sustainability and general prosperity. It is time to start being up-front about what the costs of deep cuts are going to be for society at large. Those cuts will have to be made eventually, but maybe they can be made in ways which produce a net gain. But we can’t know that until we talk seriously about the consequences, and that means moving beyond the heroic-advocacy stage of climate politics. I’m hoping that the resurrected inquiry into emissions trading will help to get us there.
Required @ 20 – I agree, was just suggesting an alternative that still did solar PV (since its so popular) that was not regressive.
LeftyE @ 21 – public solar is interesting, but on that scale I’d rather the councils concentrated on schemes which give better return (CO2 emission reduction) on the dollar.
MartinB @ 24 – I think that would be true under net rather than gross tarif schemes. The net based schemes encourage people to actually make the power available for others to use rather than consuming it themselves *and then* getting paid for it as well! How odd is that!
With a gross tariff scheme they can turn up the a/c in the afternoon and still get paid very well for power they never make available to anyone else. With a net tariff scheme I think they should be paid the spot price for power though rather than a multiple of the retail price, which again encourages the supply of power when the grid really needs it.
One hidden benefit of solar on the roof is grid size and stability. The more local generation there is the less grid you need.
One corollary of this is that the smarter your charging/payment system is the more complex the billing system needs to be, with consequently increased cost and likelihood of failure. It can be cheaper for everyone to have a simpler system that is theoretically “unfair” (scare quotes because if fair=more expensive for everyone, that’s hardly fair).
As far as costing the deeper cuts goes, I suspect that one issue is that the uncertainty drowns out the data. What jobs will be created, by whom and where, for one. Then there’s the need to include Greenland and Antarctica in the sea level calculations when they’re always left out because no-one has any idea (that strongly affects the size of Australia, and how much expensive real estate we have left). So while the direct cost of 50% cuts is probably calculable, the flow-on effects… not so much.
yes (to many, above), and my comments above go for any sort of renewable energy (public action should be factored in to reductions).
Its just that solar tends to have the added political value of mobilising people at the household/ popular level. Thats shouldnt be underestimated ie this is not simply a technical task, about greatest efficiency per dollar – its also a political one about giving people a stake inc hange, and letting it count.
because there are entry cost issues – I support public solar. The flesh it out – the idea would be that any council generated solar would subsidise all power bills in the area – entering the grid at that community level.
I would point out that aside from perhaps wind – the “entry costs” for other renewables at a household level are probably higher.
Adding to Martin’s point, which I agree with – I also like the power stability factor of home solar. In VIC, we tend to lose grid power on the hottest days; the days solar is at max generation.
I think we’ll end up with a neighbourhood by neighbourhood – if not house by house – approach to energy supply – and possibly water as well.
In the end this is more efficient on a number of levels, as any transportation of anything, whether it be water or power, means losses along the way.
But it requires a new kind of thinking about the supply of essential services, with government encouraging and supporting local approaches, and individuals working out for themselves what their needs are and how best to supply them.
A couple of other points – APAC had a broadcast a couple of days ago (I have referred to it elsewhere) on climate change, with the opening speaker saying that we need cuts of more like 60%, which he regarded as impossible.
He also made the point (which I already had taken on board) that, even if we cut all emissions tomorrow, we have bought into climate change of some extent, which will last decades before any mitigating factors kick in.
If this is so, the question should not just be what we are doing on the mitigation front, but how much we are investing (or should invest) into adaption.
Does the policy do anything to prevent this happening? If we adopt the current CPRS will we need to buy out carbon licenses in order to get an increased target? Why is there no sunset clause on the permits? Shouldn’t subsidies to big energy users be transitional? We giving property rights to polluters that we’ll have to buy back later.
We (in NSW) hear our state government telling us they can’t implement good policy because a contract a predecessor signed means they can’t afford to buy out a private partner. We need to avoid this, even if it means no improvement before Copenhagen
The decreased reliance on the grid is an interesting angle. If I understand the situation correctly where electricity infrastructure has been privatised the sale of the grid infrastructure has been separated from the generators. So theoretically if there are large savings to be made, there should be an incentive for the infrastructure owners to subsidise home PV installations to reduce the load on the grid during peak times.
And just to nitpick – solar PV installations don’t do as well in really hot weather (really want cool but very sunny weather for the best efficiency) and I suspect that the solar generation peak leads demand peak by a few hours.
Yes, but you need a solar system which includes battery backup. Our has this, and functions when the grid goes down. Most grid interactive systems don’t have battery backup. When the grid goes down, they shut down too and don’t power the house.
On the negative side, batteries are expensive, require maintenance and a more expensive inverter.
People say “solar panels cost too much” but my understanding is that peak power output when the grid is near capacity is very expensive for retailers to buy. I don’t know the exact figures, but it could be 100 times the retail rate. If solar producers got paid this it would pay off their investment quick smart. And as LeftyE points out – this would reduce grid failures and brown outs to due overload.
And more solar (large scale and domestic mix) would mean we avoid the 400m+ cost of a new polluting coal fired power station, and gas power stations too for that matter.
Yep, i think that’s important Peterc – surely household solar reduces the quantity of “baseload” we’re ultimately trying to replace. I also think much of the “costs” argument will remain quite suspect until a. we’re comparing prices over 5 or 10 years, as solar would cheaper over life cycle; and b. the comparative figures for different energy production includes the cost cleaning up the CO2 produced. Coal gets a free ride there – id like to see a Kw unit price with cleaning bill on it, then we’ll see who’s competitive.
And anyway – are we all getting $900 to buy useless crap at Harvey Normans? WHy isnt buying solar panels helping teh economy too?
Agreed. Coal gets a “free” ride. But there is not such thing as a free lunch. These factories of death are killing the planet, and the CPRS will safeguard their polluting future, enshrining their free permits to pollute as property rights.
Harvey Norman will sell you an 8kW wall air conditioner. These should be banned, or priced according to the pollution they generate. This is what is killing the grid, and the more people buy the sicker the grid gets. Of course the when the grid browns out due to overload, they stop working . . .
We would be much better off if people spent 30K on a solar system than a luxury car, a swimming pool, or a whole of home cooling system. This is where many thousands of green jobs can be created, if only we had the political will to do so.
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Unfortunately the Greenhouse Mafia is just as influential under the Rudd Government as it was under the Howard government. I expected this, but am nonetheless very disappointed. I had hoped for better.
If the government only does the bidding of industry I think it is now time for a campaign to switch of the water and power grids. Once they see their customers and profits disappearing they will have to respond. Currently, they only feed our addictions.
And hence, I would suggest peterc – the covert, dishonest, and systematic attempts at all levels of govt to take all levers out of public hands.
On my reading, the only way the current federal (CPRS) and state (net tariffs) policy settings make sense is as attempts to reduce the power of consumers to drive any changes.
They’re locking it up with govt, and producers. Taking out the x factor of consumer preference out of it – in case it strips polluters of profits over time.
In the process, curiously, they are as much demarketising the problem as they claim to marketise it. We’re getting a technological and economic cartel agreement to ward off redundancy. If only the stenotype and steam engine industries had been this organised! All those type setters , jolly cap-wearing engineers and coal -shovellers WOULDNT HAVE LOST THEIR JOBS MR RUDD!
Spot on. This actually contrary to the whole premise of a participatory democracy. The “local members” we vote for disappear into the amoebic blob of “the party” and simply refer letters and suggestions from constituents to the dead letter office Minister Penny Wong – who pathologically cannot answer any question.
We can’t get reductions in profligate usage of water and power while there are massive corporate and government interests in protecting and growing their profits.
So we need to nationalise water and power.
Ditto for public transport. The only thing they spend much money on are bullshit ticket systems and paramilitary ticket officers (some of whom behave like thugs) – both of which are for “protecting profits”. Meanwhile, trains are packed beyong safe limits – if you are lucky enough to get one to squeeze onto. It is either too hot, too cold, too wet or too warm for them to all run. Bottom line is collapsing infrastructure and rolling stock.
So we need to nationalise public transport too.
We don’t seem to have a government any more, just a bunch of Tin Men and Tin Women flogging their wares.
And the Victorian Government and the privatised coal and power industries got rid of may thousands of jobs over the last two decades.
Their sheer hypocrisy in bleating about jobs is astounding.
I guest that is what the Hollowmen and corporate PR departments are there for. The bigger the lie, the more believable it is.
I am almost disappointed beyond words with Penny Wong. You expect Rudd to lack the political courage to do what is required, but if the environment had an advaocate with passion and commitment we would have a far better result.
Instead we have a career politician just like any other. Idiot that I am, I expected more from her.
I think we’re getting somewhere here – to the political economy of all this. These polluting industries are in fact redundant on sustainability grounds, and government’s job is to manage the transition.
The kindest interpretation is that is like the Murray – give em water rights so they earn something when inevitably do sell up, and then they wont cause so many political headaches when they walk out into the snow.
The unkind interpretation is that they are redundancy-proofing redundant industries, and making us pay for it.
Which just leads us back to common sense of the carbon tax again. OK free marketeers, lets get real. Lets limit the role of government to making industries pay for the actual costs of their pollution (Carbon tax) – and then let the market rip, as they say. Create a level playing field.
Watch industry run a mile from that prospect. There’s nothing a “captain of industry’ fears more than competition!
I reckon some folk would be astounded at how uncompetitive these old energy techs were if they actually paid their own production costs for a change. The bludgers have had it too good for too long!
A little bit of light diversionary reading for those wading through the 390 pages of the draft legislation document.
http://www.marklynas.org/2007/4/23/six-steps-to-hell-summary-of-six-degrees-as-published-in-the-guardian
Some of you people should listen up to what Mitch Hook is saying. He says that the CPRS is a crock. That it will cost us our jobs; wreck our economy and cause carbon leakage which actually damages the environment more!!
Mitch Hook. A bloke who’s got the guts to call it like it is.
Mitch Hooke … wasn’t he that knuckle-dragger from the coal industry on 4 Corners the other night? Yeah, he’s a credible source …
I think an individual carbon ration for everyone on the planet could be the go. This would go some of the way to addressing world poverty as those from poor very low carbon economies would be treated equally, and be able to sell their rations to us profligate carbon users.
This could be coupled with a punitive tax on purchase of excess rations by heavy consumers/polluters.
Taxes on their own will be rorted and avoided by the clever, like the gutted CPRS.
Transitions Towns is also a great local community initiative to reclaim community control and build resiliency for a low carbon and peak oil future.
Something the carbon lobby (industry and government) is just not doing.
There needs to be a sense of historical equity.
Although some of the developing countries are now becoming large emitters, the CO2 that is in the atmosphere now is almost entirely the product of industrialised countries, and from which they have profited enormously. The corrollary of this is that while all countries have an obligation to limit emissions into the future, countries like Australia have the ethical obligation to have stricter limits, or greater remediation.