I awoke to Fran Kelly struggling to elicit Richard Denniss’ point about an emissions cap acting as an implicit floor this morning. (Update: TAI Report) Even asking him the same set of questions twice didn’t seem to help. You need to unpack the underlying assumptions of the debate as it’s being conducted in Australia over to understand the beauty of The Australia Institute’s formulation. Continue reading ‘Emissions Caps as (Social) Floors’
Tag Archive for 'carbon pollution reduction scheme'
As Peter Wood notes, the Treasury modeling for the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme contains some rather dodgy assumptions: as he puts it: “There is no way in hell that the international community could accept a 5% reduction from Australia that corresponds to a 550 ppm target, or 15% corresponding to a 510 ppm target. These targets would involve Australia free-riding on other countries emission reductions.” On that basis, you’d have to agree with Peter that Australia’s standard approach to climate change negotiations - attempt to negotiate a position that involves doing as little as possible - is likely to continue.
However, there is a fair bit of good news in the Treasury report. As previously noted, paying developing countries for permits is likely going to be a major source of “our” emissions reductions for some time. I don’t have a huge problem with this; emissions are a global problem, and paying for clean technologies in developing countries is likely to be a win for both us and those developing countries. So getting a deal that ensures the largest pool of permits available for purchase is in Australia’s direct financial interest. But there’s more: the Treasury modeling seems to indicate that it’s not only Australia who benefits from joining a deal now, rather than later. According to Box 5.4 of the Treasury report:
Subsequently, when these developing economies join the global emissions trading scheme, their mitigation costs are higher than if they had joined earlier. A larger part of the economy now has to adjust to the emission price, resulting in larger distortions or allocative efficiency losses in the economy and larger declines in returns to capital.
In contrast, those that join the global trading scheme at or near the beginning receive a relative benefit once all regions join. As a result of the larger declines in returns to capital experienced in delayed-entry economies, early-entry economies receive relatively more investment, leading to higher levels of capital stock.
Continue reading ‘Modelling says: do a deal, and make it a good one’
…unless you already know and like the answers you’re going to get. You’d reckon that the Opposition might have learned its lesson on that. It seems like they might need another one, given their response to the impending release of the Treasury modeling on the economic effects of the ETS:
Mr Robb says the Government must include recent global events before it finalises the scheme in its White Paper by the end of the year.
“We will be demanding that the White Paper is not released until such time as the Government has made some attempt to assess the impact of this financial meltdown around the world,” he said.
Well, the government could have done that, but Robb probably wouldn’t have liked answers when they came back.
Continue reading ‘In politics, don’t ask questions…’
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.
Continue reading ‘Emissions trading still on course for 2010′
Oh dear. Anyone who’s still getting their ‘news’ from SMH needs their head examined:
Subsidy for bulbs wasted:
THE flawed scheme to cut greenhouse gas abatements by giving away lightbulbs has squandered an estimated $60 million of NSW taxpayers’ money, the State Opposition says….An assessment of the scheme by the Opposition has found that NSW Greenhouse Abatement Credits issued by the Government have been largely wasted. It was claimed initially that as many as 80 per cent of the lightbulbs given away were installed. But later surveys found most households never installed them, and that only four out of 10 of the lightbulbs were ever used.
‘Later’ being the operative word there, rather than ‘recently’. The changes to the installation rate occured after an audit in 2006, sending all the businesses operating under the Demand Side Abatement Rule to the wall. Despite insistent pleas for transitional arrangements until a national scheme could be brokered, none was given and around 1000 people lost their jobs in companies like Neco and Easy Being Green. Some forms of structural adjustment are more equal than others…
The real story here is the upcoming ‘Super Saturday’ of by-elections. (Guy Beres has an excellent analysis). Continue reading ‘SMH Death Spiral - Emissions Trading Edition’
One of the new elements in the Garnaut Review’s final report is an analysis of “Transforming rural land use” in chapter 22. It’s a tour of some of the ways in which agricultural and forestry practices might change to increase the amount of carbon sequestered in our forests, woodlands, and our soil. It’s one of the most positive chapters in the entire report; changing the way Australia uses its land offers some enormous opportunities to absorb carbon at relatively low cost.
There’s a lot of possibilities in there; I’ll just pick one. As our vegetarian friends regularly remind us - Andrew Bartlett has pointed the issue out again - one of Australia’s biggest contributors to our greenhouse emissions is the methane-laden burping of our cattle and sheep. One solution would be to join Bartlett and make a mass switch to vegetarianism, or at the very least eat less meat. Or figure out how to stop ruminants producing methane, which is a nice idea but has proved to be rather difficult in practice (and may well involve genetic engineering). Alternatively, we could switch to pork or chicken, the production of which releases far less CO2. But for the truly committed carnivore, nothing replaces the taste of a nice red steak. So, if we can’t stop cows burping, farting, and poohing methane, what do we do?
Australia’s total greenhouse emissions, assuming a 450ppm target and “backstop technology”. Source: Garnaut Review Final Report, Figure 23.6
It’s out today. LP bloggers will have more during the day as it’s digested, but here’s an open thread for instant analysis and commentary. Please also feel free to link in comments to other posts or articles.
By way of preview, a number of climate scientists have released an open letter to Kevin Rudd (text here):
The Garnaut Review concluded that an emission reduction target for Australia of 25% below 1990 levels by 2020 would be an equitable contribution to the international effort required to achieving this outcome. As a group of Australia’s leading climate change scientists, we urge you to adopt this target as the minimum requirement for Australia’s contribution to an effective global climate agreement.
In Crikey yesterday, Bernard Keane contrasted the apocalyptic prophesies of doom emanating from business with the rather lame reality of the government’s proposals to date.
Nightmare stuff. Imagine how bad it would be the Government had actually proposed a serious effort to reduce our carbon emissions?
As Keane notes in another article, the release of the Treasury modelling today:
should provide a welcome corrective to much of the hysteria generated by modelling commissioned by rentseeking industry groups.
Keane also observes that Garnaut will be talking about adaptation strategies and costs in this report as well.
Note: Related post from dk.au on public opinion, polls and climate change.
Update: The report has now been released and can be downloaded from here.
Update: From Crikey, Bernard Keane on Garnaut at a glance and Clive Hamilton on politics trumping science.
Elsewhere [dk.au]: Barry Brooks is also running an open thread at his blog Climate Dilemma [ht: Peter Wood in comments]
Joshua Gans comments on Chapter 14 (TEEIIs) which he argues is “dramatically superior” to the Green Paper solution of free permits. He also renews his call for border adjustment taxes:
In my opinion, it would be better to bite the bullet and, at least for imports, assess the carbon cost of those imports and tax them. This will get the price signals right and also put pressure on trading partners to put in their own emissions trading schemes so as to avoid that tax.
The obvious retort to John McCain’s faux suspension of his campaign last week was that Presidents should be able to deal with more than one issue at the same time. That’s obviously true, but it’s also a truism which disguises something - politicians think that the public want their focus predominantly on the crucial issue of the moment (and the media reinforces this with its “narrative” obsession).
It might not have escaped folks’ attention that Kevin Rudd minimised his focus on climate change at the UN in favour of the plan he and Gordon Brown cooked up for saving the world’s finances. Rudd himself mentioned that it would be difficult to concentrate world leaders’ attention on climate change. This rhetoric also provided him with some convenient cover for disguising the switch in focus for the justification of his trip as it came under opposition attack. But it does raise the broader question of which way Kevin Rudd will jump on climate change and emissions trading - perhaps more in terms of the international negotiations (which however can’t be separated from the domestic politics, with the whole question of the significance and timing of Australia’s ETS being crucial to the “argy bargy”).
The Lowy Institute Poll being released today might pose some dangers ahead. Continue reading ‘Can politicians walk and chew gum at the same time?’
If this is accurate, it’s the most important thing to come out of Kevin Rudd’s mouth in quite some time:
Kevin Rudd was explaining the benefits of clean coal technology during a meeting with the coal industry today when he said the necessary stabilising point to tackle climate change is an emissions level of 450 parts per million by 2050.
Not because he’s right. 450ppm almost certainly isn’t low enough to stabilise the climate acceptably close to the historical norm. But a 450ppm target is a hell of a lot closer to the mark than Labor has been prepared to go in the past.
And if throwing $100 million of government money at an International Clean Coal Institute is what it takes to make such a target politically palatable, I’d reckon I’d live with that.
Only three weeks after the official close of submissions (many businesses asked for an extension) it looks like we might see a White Paper as soon as the 3rd of October. This suggests the government has a clear idea of the short-medium term trajectories they want to pursue. If the volume of shrill, anti-innovative blackmail sentiment is anything to go by, my guess is that we’ll see yet another ETS that doesn’t do a lot of, well, Carbon Pollution Reducing.
Elsewhere: Peter Browne writes at APO:
A
new[previously reported by Mark] analysis of the attitudes of people who swung to Labor at last year’s election suggests that acting to reduce climate change can be a vote winner – in fact, according to the data, it might be the vote winner. In two quite different surveys [including one where “young people were under-represented in [the] sample”], the single most important issue nominated by vote-changers was global warming. In both cases, it rated ahead of the other issue generally regarded as a vote-changer, industrial relations.
There’s something of a paradox there, because, as I’ve been arguing, Malcolm Turnbull’s best chance at making an impact (beyond the born in a log cabin dingy flat narrative personal stuff) is to move towards the centre, and particularly given his obvious understanding of the issues, move the Coalition towards a responsible position on an ETS. John Hewson, interviewed in today’s Crikey, thinks he could do himself and us all a favour by putting some steel in Rudd’s very weak climate change spine:
What I would hope, I guess, is that Turnbull should take a harder line on climate change. The suggestion from Garnaut that we can start softly, softly, with 10 or 15 per cent for his target in 2020 is nonsense, against the sort of targets Australia has to meet by 2050. In those terms, I think Turnbull should be taking a harder line, pushing Rudd to do more, setting a high jump bar if you like, against which Rudd will be measured and they would have more significant consequences for business.
Business is great at sort of putting off adjustments, whether it was workplace safety or training or any of the other issues that have dominated the last 20 years. They’ve always shirked them. Business response to climate change has been “fine for everybody else, but not us” and really the adjustments have to be made, the big issues have to be addressed and you can’t play catch-up. The whole process is front-end loaded, so I think it will be an interesting debate, if Turnbull goes out there and argues a stronger case in that area and pushes Rudd to do more, but he may just sit back as Brendan Nelson was doing and say “we won’t lead the world” and so it will be an interesting debate.
John Quiggin doesn’t think Turnbull will depart from the current position, based on his ministerial performance and his failure to take any sort of consistent policy position as Shadow Treasurer. Continue reading ‘Big L or small l leader?’
There’s lots more interesting stuff in this report at Australian Policy Online about two exit polls taken at the time of the 2007 federal election (and the AES), but this might be a relevant thing for Kevin Rudd, Penny Wong and the ALP to remember in the context of the emissions trading scheme and international negotiations on climate change response:
Industrial relations and global warming were key issues for the Labor voters who took part in all three polls, with two of the polls revealing that global warming was the prime concern among voters who changed their vote between the 2004 and 2007 elections.
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