He’s already been to Melbourne and Sydney, sorry, but Guy Pearse is coming to Brisbane on Thursday, 26 March and Canberra on Wednesday, 1 April to discuss his Quarterly Essay, Quarry Vision: Coal, Climate Change and the End of the Resources Boom
Details of times, places, how to book (please note the small fee in Brisbane) are here.
This is from the blurb:
Australia’s response to climate change must truly baffle outsiders. Why do our leaders pretend that they are leading the world in the battle against global warming? When do environmental risks outweigh economic benefits? Why dig deeper when the rest of the world is looking for alternatives to coal?
This is an essay about “quarry vision,” the belief that Australia’s greatest asset is its mineral and energy resources – coal above all. How has this distorted our national politics and stymied action on climate change? In this powerful essay about the national interest, Guy Pearse dissects the Rudd government’s climate change response: from the Garnaut report to the silver bullet of “clean coal” and beyond. He exposes the shadowy world of the carbon lobbyists; how they think, operate and advance their agenda. He discusses the future of the coal industry and challenges the economic orthodoxy. Quarry vision, he argues, is a trap and a blind faith we can no longer afford.
Here is an interview on the ABC in Melbourne.
I haven’t read the essay yet but I note that he seems to regard the notion of meeting our targets by buying credits in the developing world as a shonky way of going about it. Garnaut says the a tonne of carbon emitted anywhere has the same effect and hence buying such credits is quite legitimate.
Brilliant! He was great in Neighbours
If buying carbon credits from third world countries is Garnaut’s idea for Australia meeting its environment commitments then I have to wonder if and from which web site he bought his degree.
Yeah, I immediately thought of the actor. Very good in ‘Poor Boy’ at the MTC at the moment.
Ta for the heads-up Brian – I’ll be there April 1
Never heard of the actor!
No probs, Dave. I’m not sure I’ll get along in Brisbane.
BilB, I think Garnaut is OK as an economist, actually. I’ve just given him a bit of a spray on his attitude to the science, but he’s incredibly well-informed for some-one who came in late and his position is pretty much a reflection of his terms of reference and the dominant paradigm in the science.
As an economist, he’s an extreme free trader. I worry about credits given to developing countries because of the problem of corruption and inadequate supervision/accountability in many countries. I know that he does too, and I’ve heard him say that if you can’t trust the system then it’s integrity is shot and you are better off with a tax rather than ETS.
I think he yearns for a (more) perfect world, however, and won’t give up on it easily.
Anyone who thinks that handing money to anyone in a third world country for the planting of trees or the burying of carbon in some form/method or another is not going to be a new focus for massive fraud, is unimaginably naive to the level of stupidity. This is not a comment about honesty of people in third world countries, it is a comment about selective ignorance of human dynamics by people in positions of influence. And there is a truckload that I can say about that. Good rant by the way, and you give your Cretaceonic age (my youngest’s new term for Dad) away by knowing what a Bex is. However, Garnaut can wish for a better world for all that he is worth, but anybody with even the faintest ability for future vision knows that what we are into here is desperate clawback of our environmental position. And proposing intellectualy interesting solutions that are, alas, impossible in a real world, is not the future path that the public have paid to find.
Not that it really matters. I have added Mal’e in the Maldives to my list of communities of interest. Mal’e is the carbon canary. Cinque Terre is a survival model.
I caught some of him at Radio National – worth a listen – should be available as a podcast very soon.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/foraradio/
Yes, Dave, I heard it too. Very good. It was a recording of his Melbourne session, interviewed by Peter Mares. I can’t actually imagine that we’ll do better here, to be honest.
BilB, if you know Bex, you know that they were addictive and that in the end they chopped out your kidneys. I didn’t take them much, which is why I’m still here.
But more seriously I tend to agree with the sentiments you express. Yet we are going to have to solve those problems of corruption if there is to be any hope for the forests and land clearing of tropical peat soils etc.
Ultimately, the only way to solve our environmental problems is to get serious about renewable energy and forget about the rantings of polluters. Does anyone know how far the last stimulus package would have gone if it was spent entirely on, say, solar technology? Fair chance it would go a long way, and it only took the government about a week to come up with and enact that.
Exactly, Amypa.
Boy have we had a storm here in Emu Plains. It was heading for Warragamba Dam when I was standing at the door of the factory, right at the moment when lightning struck my TV aerial. Every body moved away from the building after that (I have a dance studio next door and there are usually parents waiting for their kids to finish their sessions). It’s looking a bit black up there on the roof, and there are some bits missing. And, yes, my TV doesn’t work any more.
Its interesting i should read this thread, as my husband was just up in PNG last year and was talking with a local land owner/health worker/aids educator (and former student 15 yrs ago) who is really keen to establish a Heritage or whatever area of some sort on his land to protect it from land clearing etc and asked Fynn for help in moving forward with this. He’d done quite a bit of work getting his ideas together and gave Fynn a bunch of info to look at which we’ve got here. I must confess we’ve been too busy to do much with it since then.
I hadn;t even made any connection with regards to carbons emmissions trading credits , but these comments got me thinking. ( As you know i really dont follow environmental issues too closely – better minds than mine are all over it, so i’m just an loose observer). But, can anyone put me in touch with ppl who may be interested in talking around this?
( YOu can email Mark – he’s got my contact details).
Bilb – i hear you about the corruption issues btw. Lived in a developing country. Certainly a tough issue.
sc, one of Pearse’s criticisms of buying credits in the developing world is that they’ll be so cheap (there is so much forest to save) that there will be no incentive for polluters to reduce emissions.
I’m sorry I’m not good on the practical stuff, but I suspect that there may be organisations offering offsets who might be interested, although I don’t think saving existing forests stand up all that well as genuine offsets.
Great talk. Didn’t see Greg Withers or Kate Jones there.
When in the uncomfortable and dangerous future they are burning effigies of Bligh and Rudd and Ferguson in memory of their pathetic failure to show leadership with anything other than their immediate constituencies’ craven present in mind, they will cite Pearse to explain their anger that “They should have known better, they were told”.
Avid recorded it, intention to upload it somewhere, when they work out how.