It seems that even the business lobby thinks that the the Liberal Party’s continued bleating for the delay in ETS introduction – the latest excuse, as pointed out by Ken at Surfdom being the credit crunch – isn’t a great idea. From the Oz:
“If the Government pulled the plug and delayed the system now, the level of uncertainty would be even more difficult to deal with,” said Maria Tarrant from the Business Council of Australia.
“It is critically important for business to know exactly what the Government is planning and if they pulled back now it would be highly problematic, but the economic situation makes it even more important that it gets the design of the scheme right.”
Minerals Council of Australia chief executive Mitch Hooke said a “delay would just add to the uncertainty. All of my concerns can be addressed by the Government getting the design, the framework right.
It seems like the government is holding its nerve, at least on the timing of the ETS. Good for them, but you’d wonder if the economic conditions are going to scare the government into giving the carbon lobby what they really want – a “measured policy framework”, in other words, an ETS with such weak targets it doesn’t actually force them to reduce carbon emissions. There’s already evidence of backsliding globally – for instance, the EU is preparing to hand out a bunch of extra free permits to industry (essentially shifting the cost back onto everyone else, but anyway…). Here’s hoping, somewhat folornly, for some courage from Rudd and co.
More broadly, the financial gyrations of the past couple of weeks, and the government response to them, show that political leaders can move swiftly, and globally, to act in response to a crisis. Now all that’s required is to get it established in their minds – not only here, but in laggard countries like the United States – that climate change represents a greater challenge still.
Good post Robert.
It’s worth noting that the first RGGI auction saw a clearing price of $3.07 a tonne. That, to be frank, makes it a f&cking pointless gesture.
DK: I’ve managed to multi-post this. Could you repeat your comment in the new post above? I’m closing comments here.
Belay that, I’ve deleted the other post. Continue on as before…
Of course, a higher CO2 price will encourage innovation – which will make bolder countries the economic winners in the long run.
Not that I hold out much hope of common sense prevailing in the face of the most bankrupt short-termism!
dk, what’s the penalty price if you need to surrender RGGI permits but don’t have them?
In a creepy moment at the last election, Tim Flannery seemed to go out of his way to reassure voters that Malcolm Trunbull could be trusted on global warming.
I’m sure it was helpful in Trunbull winning his seat, but we now see the depth of Turnbull’s commitment to the environment – he’s calling for a delay for the ETS.
Flannery should now come out and state clearly that he was wrong and that Trunbull can’t be trusted on these issues. The seriousness of the issue and basic intellectual integrity demand it.
There’s a lesson in all this. There is no such thing as a moderate Liberal. Some feeble-minded progressives had vague feelings that maybe Peter Costello was “socially progressive” (whatever that means) because he joined the reconciliation march over the Harbour Bridge. Squishy progressives can be gullible, always trying to see the best in people – even people like Trunbull who joined the post-Tampa, post-Iraq Liberal Party.
Despite the trendy gloss, it takes only the slightest tug on the leash by big business and the majority hard-right faction to bring Turnbull back into line.
Sacha, I believe it’s a multiple of the permit price.
But the point is that an ETS is just one way of getting us from point A to point B. The problem is that they’ve been susceptible to political tampering more than the straight forward approaches because they’re so opaque and esoteric. The ideological fervor with which they’ve been pursued is just cringeworthy.
RGGI has not learned from the EU in this sense
The level of the penalty may be an important driver for investment.
What are the more straightforward approaches that are less susceptible to political tampering?
For info…
Here’s a link to an article by George Monbiot in The Guardian (14 October)
This stock collapse is petty when compared to the nature crunch
And a link to another relevant article in The Guardian (14 October)
Global fund ‘could pay owners to keep rainforests safe’
• Relatively cheap way to cut CO2 says report to PM
• Plan could reduce poverty in developing countries
And for those interested in contraction and convergence here’s a link to an article in Adelaide’s Independent Weekly (3 October)
Australia’s greenhouse timebomb
If you’re going to put a bit of money into “pump priming”, why not direct some to plumbers, electricians and builders to install anew or retro-fit solar hot water, solar photovoltaic, small wind generators, etc.? Short-term “pump priming” and long-term benefits.
Person on a pension gets $1500 spending money PLUS a (larger?) subsidy on a bit of renewable energy equipment for their home.
Landlords get immediate tax rebate on installing such at rental properties [treat it as an essential maintenance cost, not as a capital imporovement made at a whim?]
Augment Landcare tree planting with “green corps” long-term unemployed persons. Yes, it’s been tried……
With a bit of imagination, the pump primimg can have longer term benefits, small and piecemeal though they may be…. the subsidsy schemes ALREADY exist, no huge lead time on this kind of proposal
I’m sure other LP posters will outdo me in clever suggestions.
intereting report released by NSW Parliament recently: the ability of renewable energy to serve as baseload.
Yes, quite interesting.
I’m rather skeptical of the “biomass from crop residues” thing. For one, isn’t that where our second-generation ethanol is going to come from? More seriously, those crop residues are very widely distributed, particularly in Australia. How much is it going to cost to ship that stuff to power stations?
There’s actually a nice collision of conflicting policies happening with some woody biomass from forests (both planted and natural). Due to an ETS, the input costs of the highly trade exposed pulp and paper industry will go through the roof (acknowledged in the CPRS Green Paper) – this is an energy intensive industry (though efficient by world standards), quite possibly unviable both here and in Japan (assuming they have an ETS). Suddenly we have rather a lot of woodchips either going to China and Indonesia (not the best solution) or in need of disposal another way – how about burning or distilling them?
Wot you said Ambigulous.
The Greens got ridiculed in many circles for having a costed policy of bringing in energy efficiency measures for each household, which they had costing $22 billion over (I think) 10 years and actually paying for itself not only out of the ETS but with householders contributing back but without raising their energy bills.
Now imagine if rather than giving them a once-off freebie the Rudd gov’t had done something like this with most of that $10 bill, benefitting not just pensioners, god bless ‘em, but all the other disadvantaged in our community first by retrofiting their houses (rental included) with insulation and solar hot water etc. Not only would it reduce their energy bills which would give them more money to spend, and increase their quality of life, but it would have been a major stimulus for trade training institutions, existing tradies, regional economies as well as major cities etc.
I just despair at the seemingly complete absence of vision on the part of both major parties, to actually see that heading towards a low – to sero carbon economy is actually a massive nation- and private investment building opportunity. I listen to snippets of Obama talking about re-opening closed factories in depressed parts of the USA to retrain local workers to build solar & wind energy systems etc., and wonder why the hell we don’t have a leader smart enough to see we can do that and so much more with the much vaunted surplus.
Myriad: the problem with such a plan is that it doesn’t provide the immediate stimulus to the economy that dumping a truckload of cash does.
Not that spending money on green infrastructure is bad, but it’s a long-term project, not a short-term one.
The particular aspect of the Rudd plan that should have been diverted to a low-carbon subsidy is the housing industry bit.
it’s not essentially long-term if the solar panels etc are in stock
Ambigulous: we’re still talking a year, maybe two, for the program to gear up enough to make a substantial difference to the economy.
The idea is to stimulate the economy now.
Thanks for that wilful – it’s blogging at its best when people point out interesting stuff like that.
And that’s not a bad idea Ambigulous – why not fire off an email to Peter Garrett? If the purse strings are being loosened you never know your luck.
FDR’s public works program had lasting benefits after America recovered. And all those roads and bridges came in handy when America had to move millions of troops around during the war. Why not something similar with the environment? We would have created new industries and new green-collar jobs when the economy picks up.
….and Penny Wong, of course.
OK, GB.
Futher to my post # 9…
For those people interested in opportunities to significantly reduce global emissions by reducing global deforestation, here’s a link to the Downing Street web page providing details on “Gordon Brown launches Eliasch Review” http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page17171 This web-page includes a link to the Eliasch Review and background papers.
Gordon Brown notes that:
It’s great that Brown is showing leadership on tackling deforestation.
The Norwegians are already world leaders in addressing this issue. They recently announced that they are allocating 1% of their gross national income towards international development cooperation. http://www.regjeringen.no/en/dep/ud/press/News/2008/b_development.html?id=531086
They are “giving priority to the rainforest, education, and women’s rights and gender equality in the international development budget”.http://www.regjeringen.no/en/dep/ud/press/News/2008/b_rainforest.html?id=531091
In particular, a total of NOK 3 billion is being allocated towards Norway’s International Climate and Forest Initiative in their 2009 budget. I’m not very good with figures and exchange rates, but I think that’s about $A700 million for 2009. Makes Australia’s $200 million International Forest Carbon Initiative (spread over four years) look a bit paltry…
Norway is a major oil exporter, so I suppose providing high levels of funding to avoid global deforestation is a practical and beneficial way of offsetting the environmental damage caused by their oil.
As a major coal exporter and domestic user, I wonder if Australia will follow Norway’s lead, and increase our funding to fight global deforestation in next year’s budget? After all, as the deeply flawed Kyoto Protocol deliberately excluded protection for forests, forests need all the help they can get until (or if?) a new (and hopefully effective) climate change and environment agreement is finalised.
While we have to reduce our domestic emissions (which currently contribute approx. 1% to global emissions), providing additional funding to avoid deforestation is a positive way to offset our emissions, significantly decrease global emissions and also provide income for developing countries.
I’ve left a post at #22 (with links) if somebody wouldn’t mind extracting it from the spaminator…
Thanks for that Elizabeth. Not sure why you bolded the exclusion of forests from Kyoto as if there was some evil plan. LULUCF was in Kyoto, due to Australia. Not sure how we could have at the time dealt with it more comprehensively.
Robert, I know that’s what passes for logic in government circles for why they are dumping $1o bill into the economy for Christmas – we all know & understand I think that they are responding in large part of the spreading panic in retail circles about declining spending. Of course all the genuinely hard up pensioners I know will be spending it on medical bills, house repairs and other such luxuries, not throwing it around on the grandkids necessarily.
The $1k per child to familes on tax benefit (a), well you can only hope that some use it to pay down their spiralling credit card debt and even get out of it, because individual consumer debt is just as much a cause for the retail slow down, or at least it bloody well should be!
It’s still stupidity on a stick, rather akin to throwing petrol on a fire – it will ‘stimulate’ it for a few seconds, and then it’s gone, spent.
the most egrigious measure of course is the doubling of the first home owners payment. I can understand and somewhat support the increase for those actually building new homes, but there’s so been so much discussion on how the first home owner’s grant contributed to the property market bubble & concomitant rental crisis, why you’d want to add to that completely escapes me. It’s also false to argue that this measure will increase spending now too. That money could easily have been put towards a solar hot water heater for every household starting with the most disadvantaged, and had just as much stimulus effect AND have cut GhG emissions.
Let’s face it, the $10 billion is politics, not policy.
that should be ‘responding to’ not ‘of’, sorry
wilful @ 24, what Australia and others achieved in Kyoto was a definition of LULUCF which allowed national accounting systems to completely ignore emissions from logging where the definition of the land use does not change. In other words, what can be termed “degradation”, or even “selective logging of native forests”, can be completely left off the national carbon accounts. We only have to admit to the carbon if the land us changes from “forest” to “grazing”, for example. Or, “grazing” to “plantation”.
In this way, Australia claims a massive net positive carbon balance from our forestry industries thanks to the general cessation of land-clearing and the growth of plantations, but completely ignoring the vast quantities of carbon lost from continued old growth logging in Tasmania and Victoria.
This is partly what the REDD (reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation) process in the international negotiations is currently attempting to fix. It is pretty clear that the next global agreement will not allow the same dodgy accounting as Kyoto has allowed.
While the inclusion of LULUCF and the weird accounting framework were decided at Kyoto, some of the details (like the definition of a forest, which includes a forest that has just been logged, or a “forest” of palm plantations) are based on the Marrakech accords, negotiated at COP 7 in 2001.
Thanks for the link to the Eliasch Review, Elizabeth. It looks like a good summary of present thinking on REDD. One thing that concerns me about most approaches to REDD so far is that they seem to base some sort of baseline on present levels of deforestation. The risk is that there will be huge perverse incentives to engage in deforestation now, because that could lead to a higher baseline. There is also a risk that not all participants would consider this approach to be fair, because it rewards countries and entities with present high levels of deforestation. I think a better way of providing rents to developing countries for their forests is needed, and that deforestation should have the same marginal cost with new approaches. We also need to address deforestation and degradation in developed countries as well.
The Monbiot article is referring to news reports about the TEEB Report on the economics of ecosystems and biodiversity. Looks very interesting indeed.
Tim Hollo #27
Tim, thanks for your insights re Kyoto, LULUCF, Australia, REDD etc.
I understand you are with the Greens, but you used to be with Greenpeace – is that correct?
According to Amazon forest expert, Philip Fearnside, conservation groups such as Greenpeace International, WWF International, Birdlife International and Friends of the Earth International opposed inclusion of avoided deforestation in the Kyoto Protocol.
I assume you are familiar with Fearnside’s paper on this topic: Saving tropical forests as a global warming countermeasure: An issue that divides the environmental movement (Published in 2001.)
In his paper Fearnside argues that:
Fearnside suggests that:
You can almost feel Fearnside’s desperation when he notes:
Tim, do you think it was a good idea to exclude forest protection from the Kyoto Protocol?
It’s depressing to think about the millions of hectares of rainforest that have been destroyed in recent years with no mechanism in the Kyoto Protocol, “the only game in town”, to protect them. And of course the fact that “developing countries” such as Indonesia and Brazil had no emission targets didn’t help things either…
Good ol’ Kyoto, eh? So beloved of environmentalists everywhere… Of course, I don’t claim to be an expert in these matters, I’m just a lowly amateur with an interest in rainforest protection, but I think Kyoto was an utter disaster and that this tortuously complicated and ineffective agreement has actually been responsible for increasing global environmental damage. It is a matter of some irritation to me that we get so little critical analysis of Kyoto in the media. If this useless agreement is going to be used as the basis for any future climate change / environment agreement, we can look forward to another dismal failure.
I see recently that WWF International has had a change of heart and that it has ended “contentious debate (and) will now support effort to fight climate change by saving rainforests”:
WWF might have moved on but apparently Greenpeace don’t agree, because according to this Bloomberg article which refers to the Eliasch Review, Greenpeace are determined to take a pessimistic view:
While I have my own reservations about the mechanisms that might be used to protect forests (I prefer the idea of an “international global fund” – I’m wary of emissions trading and private entrepreneurs…), I think it is astonishing that Greenpeace are maintaining their negative stance on forests.
I’ve been interested in the problem of rainforest destruction problem for a couple of years now (my experiences are detailed in the LP rainforest-emissions thread.) I don’t remember the Greens being particular champions of global rainforest protection either, which I found rather odd…
What do you think about global rainforest protection Tim?
I left a comment (with links) at # 29 in response to Tim Hollo at # 27 if somebody wouldn’t mind fishing it out of the spaminator…
[Done ~ tigtog]
Tim, I believe you are wrong about your assumptions about how much old growth logging occurs, and what the net emissions profile of the Australian industry really is. Of course, have your way, stop Australian logging. What do buildings get made of then? What are books printed on then? Concrete and tropical timbers respectively. Good one!
Peter Wood @ #28
Peter, re your concern about “deforestation now”.
You might be interested in this recent article (14 November) in The Times by Nicholas Stern about Prince Charles’ Rainforest Project: Give the rainforests our word and bond
Here’s a couple of quotes:
and
If you haven’t already come across it, here’s the link to the project website if you want to look out for the upcoming report: Prince’s Rainforest Project