Sir Nicholas Stern has come to Australia to impress on us the urgency of action on climate change, telling the SMH that rich countries should reduce their emissions by 60 to 90% by 2050 and by 30% by 2020.
He believes that “targets are crucial”, pointing out that by 2050 we will be two or three times as rich with vastly increased demands for energy.
Peter Hartcher says that neither Labor nor the Coalition measure up. Stern, he says, would do well to talk over the heads of the politicians to the public who are well ahead of the politicians as serious changes need to be made that “will involve everyone”.
Polluters need to be made to pay, says Stern, so carbon trading schemes or carbon taxes are a first priority for all countries.
Coal is a particular problem. If we adopt the targets Stern suggests we would need to place an embargo on new coal fired power stations that lack carbon capture cababilities.
On â??clean coalâ?? technology Stern urged us to invest heaps with the potential of exporting such technology to the likes of India and China. From PM yesterday:
Australia exports a lot of coal to China. If Australia also developed a very good technology for carbon capture and storage, there’d be an enormous market there, because China understands its role in all this. They have a great deal to lose from climate change, and they know they’re a potential deal breaker.
In those kinds of circumstances, you can do international deals.
Laborâ??s attack on the government included a few new twists. Wayne Swan reckons the Treasurer should:
immediately commission economic modelling into the impact of climate change on future economic prosperity and jobs in Australiaâ??.
The Governmentâ??s attitude is to stress how much of Sternâ??s suggestions they are already doing but to criticize him as an excuse for not committing to Kyoto and not embracing targets etc.
Rudd and Garrett were out launching their Solar Home Plan, a rebate on solar panels on your roof. I stand to be corrected here, but I think it is just an extension of a Government plan that is due to terminate.
Still they are about to have Laborâ??s climate change summit on Saturday, so announcements will inevitably flow. In case you missed it, Rudd told Lawsie recently about his $500 million Green Car Innovation Fund.
Rumour has it that the solar panels thing was to gazump Howard on a climate change announcement. Al Gore said last year that he wanted to reach the point where the main parties in the US were competing on their climate change agendas. In Australia at least it seems weâ??ve definitely reached the tipping point.
Howard has announced he will put $200 million into an international fund to stop illegal deforestation worldwide. I wonder if that includes Queensland?
Sorry forgot the link. [link]
Facing an existential crisis requires emergency lateral thinking… for a libertarian-socialist like me that means checking in on authoritarian-socialism. We may quite readily discount authoritarian-fascism as we just had 10 years of that making matters far worse.
So hi-ho, hi ho its off to ‘Marxmail’ we go. Here sits the Edward deBono of authoritarian-socialism, Louis Proyect in the center of his little web.
And here be genius.
Albania and North Korea represent socialism according to the Marxist brains trust Proyect…and so putting on our lateral thinking cap on we may all visualize the famous photo of North-Korea by night…need I go on?
Proyect for PM because extremism in defence of low light-bills is no vice.
(and I hear that moderation in the pursuit of the finest French cognac is no virtue either)
professor rat, are you on the right thread?
Mick, the anti-logging plan is exciting if it works.
The Stern Review finds deforestation responsible for 18.3% of total emissions. Afforestation only pulls back 1.5% and reforestation 0.5%.
Indonesia is the biggest culprit being responsible for 30% of deforestatioin emissions and Brazil 20%. If $200 m actually makes a difference it must rank as one of the most cost-effective mitigation strategies available.
The problem in Qld was fixed some years ago and the reduction in logging here is pretty much the whole story in Australia meeting Kyoto targets. The problem here is the bureaucratic permissions required if land owners want to manage regrowth.
The Oz has a good article on Labor’s Home Solar Plan, which does seem to be a continuation of the Government plan, but doubling the money.
Paul Kelly has his say plus there’s an editorial that lines up behind Howard and Stern, but not Gore, which means they haven’t read Stern.
Stern is acting like the Otto Niemeyer of the new millenium.
Otto Neimeyer explained.
Terry McCrann has another view.
Hey get this. You know how Rann was crapping on about SA being only one of 3 jurisdictions world wide to sign on to the 60% reductions by 2050 thingy. Turns out that was just a non-binding bloody mission statement basically so he can wander round the V8 Supercars race and the like, with his ‘I signed The Pledge’ badge on. Anyway, yesterday in Parliament he’s introducing the Bill that actually commits his Govt(us?) to practising what he’s been preaching. Have a guess what his mandated target was to be by 2020? Go on have a guess. 30%, 20%, 10%? No, his bill proposed we reduce GG emissions to 1990 levels only, by 2020, presumably so we can get the hang of reducing them down to 40% of 1990 levels over the next 30 years to 2050. Have a guess what the Libs response was to that? They moved an amendment to mandate reduced emissions of 20% by 2020 and got it through with the minors and independents. No way they were gunna let the wanker off the hook with 1990 levels only. Welcome to the politics of GW, which is why coastal RE prices are still climbing ever upwards. I guess when the Nicholas Sterns and Al Gores of this world, stay home to save burning jet fuel and Peter Garrett advocates nuclear power we should all begin to worry.
I believe that attention should also be drawn to Mr Howard’s remarks in Parliament’s question time on Wednesday afternoon concerning Stern’s views. One point made by the PM is that he will make decisions in “the national interest” and that means protecting the jobs and exports of the coal industry.
One could ask the antecedent question: what is the national interest, who determines it, and what are the grounds for justifying the claim that the financial interests of the coal industry (and other fossil fuel industry interests) should be regarded as virtually synonymous with the national interest?
Beyond those questions, it would be helpful if we could have the mantra “the economy” brought to a halt for some critical reflection. The mantra seems to be a thought-stopping device to cancel out debate on whether the coal industry should be made accountable for its pollution, and whether as a nation we should be re-engineering our society’s dependence on fossil fuels. The spectre of lost jobs and lost export earnings is not trivial particularly as human welfare is interlocked with the problem of phasing out coal. However, it is surely appropriate to ask about what positive outcomes there can be by injecting serious incentives and assistance into alternate energy sources. Deutsche-Welle has reported in recent months on the remarkable expansion of employment, products, services and exports in the renewable energy sector with high forecasts for a growing and robust economy. What might ensue in Australia if analagous developments were to unfold?
There is also a moral question that seems to be sidestepped by Mr Howard’s comments. As a First World nation we have deep responsibilities due to the emissions we produce. We also owe it to developing nations to provide a model that is worthy of emulating. The “health” of the biosphere generally is affected by pollution and on the micro-scale our individual and communal health is affected. That is an economic factor that can be speculated on but presumably multiple health problems can be manifested due to pollution (respiratory diseases for instance) and there are the health costs that accrue for treatment. It is not just a matter of losing jobs in one industry or even several industries, there are other critical problems to be taken note of.
However we could take this to another level. Mr Howard’s stance is an isolationist view and encourages an isolationist approach (perhaps analogous to US isolationism in foreign policy after 1919 but unavoidably they were eventually drawn into WW2). We are told that our emissions as a nation only constitutes 1% of the globe’s total output and so any reductions on our part are insignificant. The problem with this reasoning is that it is an attempt to dodge the ethical problem of a global ecology affected by nations individually and collectively. As all contribute to the problem, so all must participate in remedying it. So what we do in a positive way does make a difference.
We could also push the problem of our rate of emissions to another level. What is yielded in emission s on our land mass may be small on the global scale. However we are more than passive bystanders when it comes to the emissions generated by the consumption of our raw materials (e.g. coal) when exported to nations like China. We cannot view emissions in an isolationist manner because of the interlocking nature of the world’s ecology and economies.
We do have a responsibility to set targets and to enforce such targets as binding at law rather than offer them as voluntary things that it might nice to aim for. As an advanced nation state our moral burden is perhaps even greater than for under-developed and developing nations. We have ridden the first crest of excess and abundance to our own advantage, and as active participants in the industrial and technological revolutions we have a corresponding duty to be leaders not late imitators or sloppy last minute reactors to ecological emergencies.
We also have a responsbility toward future generations who will be bequeathed a biosphere impacted by our current behaviour. Mr Howard likes to tout the virtues of Australian democracy as one that other nations could be envious of and emulate. It would be helpful then if Mr Howard could have the courage and foresight to do likewise in responding in a positive way to climate change problems. Instead of the “fear factor” he generates about lost jobs (ironic given that the same concerns and interventions have been absent when Ansett, HIH and other bodies have collapsed), it would be great if he could pour resources into research and development of renewable energy rather than holding on to an entrenched addiction to limited fossil fuel reserves. Unfortunately his economic rationalist philosophy mitigates against such courageous and visionary policies.
An Australian Government policy to reduce old growth logging in other countries is such a rank hypocrisy that I have to doubt anyone will be willing to lay their hands on the money.
As for broader environmental policies – well, both the Government and the Opposition are running with the ‘not at the cost of jobs’ line, but neither of them seem to be giving a moment’s consideration that a much bigger economy than Australia – ie California – has put in place legislative and other measures to address environmental issues in the firm and well-founded belief that there are more jobs to be had in developing new and greener industries than maintaining the same old way of doing things.
Sigh. Oh! for some actual vision …
Ratty’s body language when meeting Stern (as shown on the news last night) was interesting. Looked like he was backing away from engagement. Chair a fair distance from the table, and his posture looked like he wanted to stand up and walk away. Denialism in action!
Yep, Kim, you can’t get too close to these guys or you might catch something.
If Gore came to town again, I wonder whether Ratty would see him.
I might be mistaken, but I don’t remember seeing Turnbull in the meeting. Costello, yes.
The new conventional wisdom is we need to reduce emissions to 40% of 1990 levels right? If we don’t says Stern then GW will likely cost around 20% of global GDP. OTOH we can do it at a cost of only 1% of GDP. My question to you all is do you believe that 1% bit? I don’t, simply because if it was that easy I reckon we’d have done it by now. So if Stern is deluded in this what else is he (really all the science and economics he summarises)deluded about? In the meantime the coastal RE market reckons Stern and Co are completely delusional.
Who writes the PM’s stuff. In parliament yesterday he had the gaul to say “History is littered with examples of where nations have over reacted to presumed threats, only to their great long term disadvantage” in relation to the climate change debate. Yet all rational experts seem to agree that we are facing real crisis. However, re Iraq and the whole GWOT little johnny has done nothing except over-react. Geeeeesh!
I am reminded of the joke about the free market economist who walked past a $100 bill lying on the footpath without picking it up. When asked why he hadn’t picked it up, he said that it wasn’t real. When asked why he thought it wasn’t real, he said “Because if it was real somebody would have picked it up by now!”
This forests announcement demonstrates once again why Howard’s position goes down so badly and why his attitude is undermining progress towards global agreements on climate.
Once again, Howard is trying to get developing nations to agree to something he himself refuses to do at home. The developing nations are well within their rights to say, as they do, go get your own house in order before you come lecturing us.
Importantly, this is not simply confined to the whole forests issue itself. Yes, it’s hypocritical of Howard to try to stop logging in PNG and Indonesia without doing so in Tassie and Victoria. But it goes beyond that to the very heart of Howard’s climate stance.
It’s about radical economic restructuring. Howard won’t tackle coal in Australia because he won’t risk the massive changes that would bring.
But what Howard is proposing would entail just such massive, radical economic restructuring for PNG, much of whose economy depends on currently illegal logging. And similar for various of the other developing nations who’d be targetted by this plan.
Now this is not to say that the plan should be dismissed out of hand. If it is possible to stop illegal logging across the planet, that’d be marvelous, from a biodiversity and human rights perspective, let alone climate. I suspect that there are more sensitive ways of doing this than what Howard plans. But that’s another question.
But the point needs to be brought home here. Howard refuses to make the changes in our economy that would reduce global emissions. But he’s gung-ho about forcing such changes on our far poorer neighbours.
Or perhaps Paul he worked for the Central Bank and thought there’s plenty more where that came from?
Observa: Australia’s current GDP is roughly 850 billion AUD, according to the CIA’s world factbook. Our electricity production (at wholesale prices, which is the only part affected by climate change) is worth about 7 billion AUD. Let’s make the calculation easy and say 8.5 billion AUD, giving us 1% of the economy. Double the cost of electricity to make that non-emitting (in my view an overestimate for sequestration, nuclear, wind, and possibly geothermal) and we’re talking an extra 1% of GDP devoted to power production.
Yes, this is an oversimplified back-of-the-envelope calculation, but indicative. Energy is actually a pretty small sector of the economy.
By the way, the solar home plan is a stunt. You could get far bigger cuts in emissions for the same price if the government simply bought more of its power from renewable energy suppliers on the open market.
Robert, yes, I think the solar thing is a publicity stunt.
I listened to Question time today. Rudd asked a whole series of questions about carbon trading and targets. Howard seemed to handle them easily at first, but by the end the result was:
1. Howard seemed to think that if you reduced emissions by 30% you would have to reduce energy usage by 30%.
2. Howard made it clear he would only do climate change if we could afford it, specifically making clear that he was the coal miners’ friend.
3. When confronted by Rudd quoting a Business Council briefing paper which saw the reef in trouble and impacting on tourism, plus stream flows reducing by 15% and adverse impacts on agriculture, Howard made it clear that he would stick with the coal miners.
4. It was clear that he had far less appreciation of what was going on than business.
Still he said we needed his steady hand on the tiller. A pity about the blindfold.
Oh, BTW, Howard thinks markets aren’t and can’t be created by governments.
Robert that is an excellent calculus on costs that has common sense appeal. McCrann makes a big deal of discount rate calculations in the Stern Review. As I understand it Quiggin thinks Stern got it pretty right, but some other economists disagree.
I think human ingenuity is vastly underestimated by the gloom merchants. Howard quotes an ABARE report, which I recall as notorious for calculating only one side of the ledger.
tim and others, yes hypocrisy reigns supreme on the deforestation initiative. The World Today had an interesting segment about DNA tracers being used to make sure the logs all came from approved places.
Howard is irrelevant now. I wonder why he even takes questions on the Global Warming subject. Everybody knows he’s yesterday’s hero.
I’m gonna buy him a retirement present. Post it up to Sydney, so that when he’s got the slippers on next year, he can read a bumper pack of The Weather Makers, The Revenge of Gaia and An Inconvenient Truth.
Not that I’ve read them. Shit, this stuff? You can learn from your hair-dresser.
Robert,
In my state we’ve got another couple of gas power plants on the drawing board. Electricity is one thing and in the absence of nuclear, that leaves a bloody big fingers crossed for renewables and unproven geothermal and sequestered fossils, assuming those 60% reductions. Forget that for a moment and when you’re next filling your car think 60% less in your tank, let alone the fossil fuels tied up in the thing you’re filling up and wearing out. Now I know we can get whole families on Honda stepthrus like Indos, but is it really gunna happen? As for changing a few light bulbs and planting a few more trees, what can I really say? 60% reductions in fossil fuel use, sixty per cent, SIXTY BLOODY PER CENT!!!!!!
Observa, our next car is going to be a hybrid. The next after that may be fully electric, or run on compressed air, powered, I hope, from a decarbonised grid.
Observa, I reckon (just gut instinct) that you’re quite right that the 1% figure is mythical – but I also suspect the costs are higher than 20%, across the planet.
Your pint about coastal real estate markets isn’t actually the gotcha that you seem to think it is (since you repeat it so often). So people are idiots who can’t foresee the future – what a shock. I most assuredly wouldn’t be buying land in the Gold Coast or Gippsland Lakes.
Wilful makes a good point. I’m not sure about the accuracy of Stern’s 1% – although I still remain to be convinced that human ingenuity can’t be harnessed to allow us to do it with net economic benefit.
However, I find Stern’s 20% very hard to swallow indeed. It is ludicrously conservative. He’s happy to see us stabilise emissions at 550ppm, even though his own graphs show that that gives us a 50% chance of reaching 3C warming – well above the danger level of 2C when feedback loops start to kick in.
If we do head towards 500ppm, and 3C warming or more comes to pass, you can wave at 20% costs to the global economy as it zips past, carried by melt-water from the Antarctic and Greenland…
The PM has propable read the critique of Stern in World Economics Vol 7. No 4 Oct / Dec 2006 issue and decided to keep Stern at arms lenght.
Because Stern is the golden haired AGW boy at the moment dosn’t necessarily making him right. Just look at what the World Bank, his previous employer, has done over the years.
Next car will be powered by Hydrogen generated by PV panels on the house
Time spent in traffic spewing my personal contribution of carbon to the problem allows me to ponder that we are having a debate on cclimate change and GW at the same time we are acknowledging 200 years since the end of slavery.
There were some economic rationalists and slave-trade “realists” of that day who thought the end of slavery would constitute the end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it.
Economies, it was predicted, would collapse and it would darkness and gnashing of teeth….. but somehow a post-slavery world perservered.
Similarly the abolition of child labour and the introduction of universal sufferage were sure to prompt End Times collapse.
Now climate change “realists” are saying we cannot survive if we dont protect and coddle the coal industry.
Bollocks.
Embrace solar power – China’s richest man has – a man who is an Aussie resident who is using technology developed in Oz.
Of course, the knockers here said the technology would never work and it offered all sorts of barriers to adoption. He just got on and did it.
Best place for coal and uranium is in the ground. ALL focus, funding and research in all countries should be directed to advancing solar power.
GM Holden just spent $1 billion dollars in Oz revamping the bloody Commodore, FFS. What a travesty. If only just half that had been directed toward solar power research. ……….
GM Holden just spent $1 billion dollars in Oz revamping the bloody Commodore, FFS. What a travesty. If only just half that had been directed toward solar power research. ……….
People buy Holden Commodores.
There is plenty of solar technology around already, the technology isn’t the issue, it is the upfront cost. To outfit my house with solar panels to take care of my energy needs would be 50K USD. I noticed there are some energy companies appearing in the US where you lease the solar panels from them, and pay them a monthly amount. Which is one way of dealing with the large upfront cost. Not too far different a business model from the cell phone companies and ISPs.
Putting solar panels on your house is 4 the birds. Can’t believe Rudd is rolling out a rebate for it. The money should go to centralised solar power generation. Think big. Think efficiency. Stop thinking small is beautiful. Small is for needle-craft and jam. Big is for outrageous harnessing of the forces of physics like electricity generation.
No more mucking around. We are the 6.5 billion. Sorry to break it to the libertarian dreamers but we are a plague species. We have no rights. Just dire needs.
“Indonesia is the biggest culprit being responsible for 30% of deforestatioin emissions and Brazil 20%. If $200 m actually makes a difference it must rank as one of the most cost-effective mitigation strategies available”
Laugh..oh stop its hurting…does anyone really think that the money would do go into anything but more high end homes in Jakarta and Singapore..
Its not the money but the will (or want) and thats something Indonesia’s elite don’t have…What sacrifice a few dollars for someone I don’t even know?? Are you kidding?
Oigal, I daresay you are right. Someone on the radio today pointed out that we haven’t even made the import of illegally logged timber illegal.