WorleyParsons’ PR coup last week indicated a thirst for big interventions into an otherwise rather bleak energy policy landscape1. The ~$100k feasibility study regurgitated by the MSM (and analysed by Robert here) was, as Brian alluded to, chump change from their handsome profiteering from Canada crapping all over its Kyoto commitments under the Harper Government. It remains to be seen whether WP actually capitalises on its good press and goes ahead with the projects, or simply banks the warm and fuzzies and continues its search for business opportunities elsewhere. If the projects do progress beyond the speculative phase, it would raise some interesting questions around the diversification of a business like theirs into solar (rather than, for example, consolidating its interests in various carbon intensive fields). Continue reading ‘How to live with emissions?’
Two particular stories stand out: (1) Australia’s main carbon capture collective, CO2CRC, flagged the need for an additional $300m to keep the ball rolling on their research; and, (2) In a move which underlines their uninsurability, Parliament moved on legislation to protect Carbon Capture and Storage projects should they leak (or damage lifeforms we have little to no understanding of) ↩[back]
Weak. Pick up the phone now and call up a Green Power provider ’cause the government has bought into the electricity generation and ‘trade exposed’ industry blackmail about blackouts and ‘moving offshore.’ Lenore Taylor and the guy from Australian Science nailed it in questions: if they’re true blue about lobbying for a truly global agreement they should call these bluffs or follow the UK’s lead and start formalising some supply chain pollution controls. For the record, all of the $500m supposedly earmarked for renewables will be going to Coal and today’s signals are that the Rudd Government’s travesty of renewables policies continues fatuous.
Lots of smart people discussing new and old media here at Luna Park. Check out the twitter feed on #fom08 for commentary. More to follow when I get to a proper keyboard. (this is from my mobile)
Today, Garnaut on Tour hit Sydney. The highlight of an otherwise rambling 40 minute set of riffs was the good professor’s intervention into the talking point of the moment:
“We’ve suggested Australia should play its full part in a global mitigation effort… I note there’s been a lot of discussion since the report came out that Australia should not be a leader well I can assure people who don’t want Australia to be leader. There are 25 countries in Europe that have gone well beyond us, there are some states in the US that [are more populous] and have taken action, so for those who don’t want Australia to be a leader, you’ve got your wish.”
In the meantime, Turnbull propagates a rather out of date world where unilateralism is noblegood bad and border tax adjustments are Teh Great Taboo. Or something.
Fresh updates from the world of emissions trading:
* GetUp has a new petition: Climate Need Not Corporate Greed. The premise is simple: call a spade a spade and make emissions trading actually impact emissions rather than just transfer $$$ to polluting industries. Also worth signing because it may be leverage against a tendency to overallocate that has been a consistent problem that previous cap and trade schemes such as US Markets in SO2, BP’s internal scheme and the EU ETS have had to come to terms with.
* The BBC Reports that a plan for national Personal Carbon Trading for the UK, arguably one of the most ambitious, complex and comprehensive Neoliberal projects in recent times, has been shelved. DEFRA research into the proposals to give every adult in the UK a personal ‘allowance’ included interviews with 92 people. The money quote is one for all the national psycho-social historians, “Just straight away it reminds me of going back to the war and rationing.”
* NSW Govt has announced it plans to join HSBC, NAB, Coldplay et al by becoming carbon neutral by 2020. The plan will include state-run operations like police, hospitals, schools, and power-stations. It looks like most of the emissions reductions will be made by eating koala buying carbon offsets rather than making significant changes to BAU.
Michael Molitor gave a public lecture last night at UNSW, where he now holds an adjunct professorship with the Climate Change Research Centre between appointments as a ‘Carbon Manager’ for PriceWaterhouseCooper. The talk was entitled Climate Change: ‘Show Me The Money’, which is the famous line from Tom Cruise’s character in Jerry Maguire - so when Molitor spoke passionately of the ‘Governor of NSW’, I was thankful that there were no couches onstage. Though, to be fair, the event showcased a fascinating, eclectic and sometimes contradictory mix of bravado-filled insights on the problem of climate change from someone on the inner circle of business elites. The message was familiar enough - that we aren’t moving quickly enough for the scale of the problem - his analysis, however, was somewhat less conventional.
The ‘good news’ began with the observation that our ‘carbon productivity’, that is, our economic outputs from machines relative to their spewing waste into the global carbon dump has actually been increasing over time. Continue reading ‘Molitor@UNSW’
SMH Reports that the WWF and Climate Institute will join the CFMEU and Coal Industry to promote clean coal funding by governments
“If it’s going to work we need to know quickly. If it’s not going to work we need to know even more quickly,” Mr Bourne said. “If it’s never tested we are have deep problems on a world wide basis.”
As an aside, it’s hard to know whether there is actually a World Wildlife Fund funding, y’know, Wildlife behind the hyper-managed brand these days. They seem more concerned with planting vacuous stories in The Age about vacuous people publicising that they’ll be switching their lights off or getting photo ops with Telstra’s fanciful, Futurist exercises in potential reality-displacement.
What’s immediately concerning about Bourne’s statement is the implicitly Whiggish invocation of a ‘test’ that will resolve disputes about the place of carbon sequestration in the policy mix, presumably by speaking for Nature itself. If the last four decades of Science Studies research have taught us anything, it’s that testing does not magically resolve hypotheses. The best you can hope for on the boundaries of technoscience is some kind of closure. Continue reading ‘Annals of Naive Science, Episode 12938/WWF’
While the merits of bringing the externalities of our more ancient sins into an economic frame are up for debate, the marketability of voluntarily offsetting certain modern excesses is becoming increasingly clear. Enter GM Holden, importers of Saab. Last year’s ‘Grrrrreen’ campaign which ran in newspapers, magazines and billboards comprised of statements like ‘Every Saab is green, Carbon emissions neutral across the entire Saab range’. And it has now attracted the ire of the ACCC, to the surprise of Holden - if the first comment at this prdisasters.com post is any indication.
Whilst much of today’s media space devoted to last night’s ‘debate’ was consumed by certain outlets finding some political spine after a little pseudo-invertebrate was uprooted, there was one announcement that’s worth a closer look. If you’ve been following the debates about how best to price carbon, Howard’s claim in the debate last night to auction permits might have sounded like he was making good on the rhetoric of ‘not picking winners.’ The whole point of a market is to allocate property licenses to dump carbon with the greatest efficiency. The American experience, moreso than the Australian one, with auctioning spectrum in the mid 1990s was hailed as a success in these terms. Then Vice President Al Gore claiming at the time ‘now we are using the auctions to put the licences in the hands of those who value them the most.’1 And with US$23bn in permits raised between 1994 and 1997, companies recruited the best rational choice economists they could to shape the market, as Francesco Guala has documented in great detail.
Many of the well publicized problems with the EU Emissions Trading Scheme stem from a refusal to leave market mechanics to decide allocation and allow special pleading from big polluters. Germany, for example, attempted to second guess the outcomes of the market by widely allocating free permits with disastrous results. The net effect of the first round of the scheme has been to transfer many billions of Euro from coffers to power companies in the form of windfall profits. In effect, it was a major tax.
However, as Henry Farrell points out at CT with regard to the recent Nobel Prize for Economics, there are endemic problems with claims like these.[back]
Nuclear waste disposal is a democratic problem par excellence, not least because of the dizzying timescales involved. Whose voices should count? What are the facts and how can they be separated from values? A country’s public sphere and legal system have ultimate bearing on the settlement of these questions. In the USA, top-down, technocratic optimism continues apace. Continue reading ‘Nuclear waste redux’
Another day at the office. News Ltd runs a press release for BHP Billiton as news. In an email to his contact at said office, PR manager Chris Lynch’s assistant expressed the difficulties the firm faces when confronted with modern norms like objective journalism:
“This is a very significant challenge for the globe going forward and we want to play our part,” Mr Lynch told a seminar in Melbourne last week.
In his spare time, Mr Lynch dabbles in anachronisms:
Mr Lynch sits on the Prime Minister’s emissions trading task group, which is due to hand down its final report at the end of this month.
Larvatus Prodeo is an Australian group blog which discusses politics, sociology, culture, life, religion and science from a left of centre perspective. more»
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