Tag Archive for 'Penny Wong'

UN climate negotiations - what’s going on?

Published
by
Robert Merkel
3 days, 3 hours ago
in Climate change, Environment and International
. 16 Comments

Poznan looks like a rather pleasant city to visit. That’s handy, because there’s a fair chance that Penny Wong and the rest of the Australian delegation might have some time on their hands. As The Guardian notes in this handy Q&A, the negotiations are in somewhat of a holding pattern while George W. Bush waddles off the damn stage:

So what will happen at Poznan?

Perhaps not much. Countries will be unwilling to commit to anything until they have seen how the new US administration are likely to act on climate. Insiders say that means little genuine progress on agreeing new carbon cuts can be expected until the middle of next year.

Even given that, however, the behaviour of the Australian government in the lead-up to the conference has been worrying. Continue reading ‘UN climate negotiations - what’s going on?’

In politics, don’t ask questions…

Published
by
Robert Merkel
1 month ago
in Climate change, Energy and Environment
. 17 Comments

…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…’

Open Garnaut Review report thread

Published
by
Mark
2 months ago
in Climate change, Economics, Energy, Environment, International and Markets
. 63 Comments

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.

Climate change and electoral politics

Published
by
Mark
2 months, 3 weeks ago
in Climate change, Federal Elections, Industrial Relations, Polls and Sociology
. 18 Comments

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.

Open Garnaut Review Targets and Trajectories thread

Published
by
Mark
3 months ago
in Climate change, Economics, Energy and Environment
. 45 Comments

[Update: {by Kim} Garnaut has recommended a low target - 10% by 2020. Details in the press release here, and the address can be downloaded here. Links to pdfs.]

Ross Garnaut will be at the National Press Club in Canberra today at 12.30pm to release his next report - on Targets and Trajectories.

There’s been a fair degree of speculation around that he will recommend a low target. Bernard Keane wrote in Crikey the other day:

Ross Garnaut’s Supplementary Draft Report to be released on Friday will propose a carbon reduction trajectory based on a 0-15% reduction on 2000 emission levels by 2020, according to sources close to the review. The Report is based on extensive modelling by Treasury and Garnaut’s review team, which has been delayed on several occasions.

Senator Christine Milne at GreensBlog makes the argument that the policy shouldn’t just be seen through the “economic reform” frame, which is squarely where the government has attempted to position it (for a range of reasons - including a previous round of responses to arguments that it lacks a “narrative”). It needs to be recalled that big business is not the only interlocutor in the policy debate, and it was surely significant that a research report from Crosby/Textor of all people released this week suggested that the public wanted to see business make sacrifices to address an urgent issue.

Continue reading ‘Open Garnaut Review Targets and Trajectories thread’

Emissions trading and rent seeking: round two

Published
by
Mark
3 months, 1 week ago
in Climate change, Energy, Environment, Howardia and Markets
. 25 Comments

The Fin Review reported yesterday that a host of resource company execs are descending on Canberra on Friday for a pow wow with Martin Ferguson. Initially this meeting was being presented as a way of circumventing the BCA, who released a doom and gloom laden report last week basically threatening a capital strike. But it’s now clear that it’s nothing of the sort, as Marn’s department have also sent the BCA an invite. Industry sources expressed pleasure at Ferguson’s involvement, telling the Fin that they found him easier to deal with and more amenable to their views than Climate Change Minister Penny Wong. Hardly surprising…

Further reports today (as well as Stephen Mayne’s piece in Crikey) reinforce what was being said yesterday - that the polluters and the “skeptics” are making the running on the business response to the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Green Paper. What looks like being the outcome is, in my view, a default back to the Howard position. Continue reading ‘Emissions trading and rent seeking: round two’

Market based solutions and global warming: how viable for how long?

Published
by
Kim
3 months, 3 weeks ago
in Climate change
. 29 Comments

John Quiggin’s blog is on a temporary hiatus, which is a pity as I’d hoped he’d reproduce his article in the Financial Review today to enable it to reach a wider audience. Gary Sauer-Thompson summarises the gist of the article and offers some analysis of his own. Quiggin suggests that “the state of the Murray-Darling system is an indication of the price of ignoring climate change”. Quiggin argues that it’s been known since the 1980s that there was an urgent need to restore flows to the river system, and that the recent proposals have both been inadequate and indeed unable to be implemented because there simply isn’t enough water. The impact of the drought is such that releasing any flows from upstream - say from Cubbie Station in Queensland - would largely be a futile exercise as it’s estimated that 80% would be lost by evaporation or absorption into the water table. What we’re left with - in the absence of any real ameliating action and non-existent or very low flows into the lower part of the Murray from 2002 onwards - is the current choice between one ecological disaster and another worse one with regard to Lake Albert and Lake Alexandrina near the mouth of the Murray River.

All this implies that the cabinet decision today to spend an additional $50 million on purchasing water rights in the northern basin is futile. It really just compensates those irrigators whose allocations were the problem in the past for the rents foregone. It also suggest The Greens are also wrong in suggesting that there is a lifeline from releasing flows which would prove to be insufficient.

Quiggin concludes:

The desparate choices now facing us with respect to the Murray-Darling basin are a small indication of what we will face if the world fails to act quickly to control emissions of carbon dioxide and slow the rate of global warming. Sooner or later the necessity for action will become undeniable, but by then the relatively easy options available now will have been forclosed.

Instead of market-friendly options like emissions trading, we will be looking at command-and-control measures like the water restrictions now prevailing in most Australian cities. As far as the environment goes, the kind of triage operations now being applied to the icon sites of the Murray will be routine. Some vital ecosystems will be saved, at the cost of abandoning others.

Continue reading ‘Market based solutions and global warming: how viable for how long?’

And the hero of the narrative is…

Published
by
Kim
3 months, 4 weeks ago
in Media and Politics
. 18 Comments

As a bit of a follow up to the post on PJK’s various bomb throwing exercises (that - as you may recall - was the business he said he was in many years ago), I wanted to note two things.

The first is the lamentable habit Rudd has retained of retail politics Howard style. So we get grabs on the tv news every night of what Rudd thinks about x y and z - many of which have zip to do with the job of being PM. Let’s not forget the excuse for bringing the Beazer down - mixing Rove McManus and Karl Rove up. Perhaps the twenty something whiz kids Inside Kevin08 have a better grasp of pop culture, but would you really trust KRudd to comment on the political pop culture story of the week - Paris Hilton? Maybe the dude got where he is today in part because he was on breakfast telly and FM radio all the time, but isn’t there some truth to what Keating says about not just the dignity of the office but also trivialising the Prime Ministerial voice? When the Orstrayan public becomes less enamoured of Kevvy than we are at the moment, could it be that we’ll be as uninterested in what he has to say about economic policy as what he thinks of the last cricket result or all those many many many artistic and intertube-ish threats to teh kiddies? (Which probably - incidentally - needlessly alienates part of his support base without really gaining him much…)

Secondly, there’s a very sensible piece by Bernard Keane in today’s Crikey on the narrative thing. It repays reading in full but there’s one bit I wanted to highlight.

Continue reading ‘And the hero of the narrative is…’

Liberal media lunacy III

Published
by
Kim
4 months, 1 week ago
in Climate change, Disasters, Economics, Energy, Environment, Ethics, Media, Politics, Science and Sociology
. 32 Comments

While it’s reasonable to ask, as Lyn at Public Opinion does, whether tracing every twist and turn of the opposition’s twisted trajectory towards some sort of agreed position on an emissions trading scheme, is to pay too much attention to a “policy cycle of sometimes less than 24 hours [which stretches] the notion of novelty a little far.” However, it could also be suggested that the interest lies in watching the moment that a “media narrative” switches, and as with the Costello crud, observing the process of constructing one, as a few bits and pieces of disconnected nonsense get tied together by assorted columnists and reporters and woven into a new thread that will then become - hey presto! - conventional wisdom, dignified as such on Sundays by the usual Insider suspects. You can shine a light on the way the press gallery mob do “the wisdom of crowds each other” by building a story arc, which then shapes the way the story is moved on.

Continue reading ‘Liberal media lunacy III’

Liberal lunacy II

Published
by
Mark
4 months, 2 weeks ago
in Climate change, Energy, Environment, Howardia, Markets and Media
. 58 Comments

Brendan Nelson’s office is denying reports - discussed on an earlier post - that he will be having a “showdown” with Malcolm Turnbull and Greg Hunt over the Coalition’s stance on emissions trading.

Some were reporting yesterday that Nelson would next week “take on” Malcolm Turnbull over climate change. His office claims that is “nonsense” and, given his tenuous hold on the leadership, it does seem unlikely he would be seeking a showdown with anyone. But he and Turnbull are “consulting”, which suggests he is trying to inch the party as far as he can towards a more sceptical line, in a bid to keep everyone happy.

However, Nelson is apparently “negotiating” with Turnbull to “harden” the Coalition’s position, and in an attempt to keep the denialists in his ranks happy, came out with this gem:

Now Nelson’s rhetoric is sounding more sceptical again. “I see there is an emerging body of scientific opinion which questions the role of carbon in all of this, but I’m strongly of the view that we give the planet the benefit of the doubt,” he said yesterday.

Sure, scientists differ about the degree and speed of global warming, but if it is not caused by carbon, why on earth are we contemplating support for an emissions trading scheme at all?

Quite. And that difference is between more catastrophic and slightly less catastrophic outlooks. Continue reading ‘Liberal lunacy II’

Liberal lunacy

Published
by
Mark
4 months, 2 weeks ago
in Climate change, Energy, Environment, Markets and Media
. 47 Comments

Tim Watts has posted at Tree of Knowledge on Andrew Bolt’s claim that the forces of the hardline right in the Liberal Party are planning to monster Malcolm Turnbull and Greg Hunt and push for an oppositional stance to the Rudd Government’s emissions trading scheme. Brendan Nelson’s latest confused comments about delaying the ETS might be some confirmation of this, but on the other hand Nelson’s line on climate change is a moveable feast at the best of times, and Turnbull was singing from the same song sheet today. Watts is no doubt right that such a stance would be political stupidity on the part of the opposition, but it’s just as likely that the story represents wishful thinking on Bolt’s part, obsessed as he is with climate change denialism. However, nutty calls from the Nats for a Royal Commission to examine the science certainly do highlight the continuing divisions within the Coalition.

Continue reading ‘Liberal lunacy’

ETS or business welfare?

Published
by
Mark
4 months, 2 weeks ago
in Climate change, Economics, Energy and Environment
. 32 Comments

Peter Martin has an excellent column today pointing out what’s wrong with the dollops of dollars which are to be handed out to polluters under the Rudd government’s “Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme”.

Australia’s existing coal-fired power stations won’t need the compensation anyway. They will be able to pass on the extra cost of the emission permits. They will be encouraged to. It is how the scheme is meant to work.

Eventually the higher price of power will prod some of us to use less of it, and eventually wind and commercial solar power generators will become competitive against coal because they won’t to buy emission permits.

Martin effortlessly and elegantly skewers the arguments for compensation.

He also refers to the GST. It’s interesting that this whole exercise has been framed as “economic reform” and compared so often to the GST. It would seem that it’s that template and that framing which has given overt permission for a rent-seekers’ paradise, and as Martin argues, has created the extraordinary situation where the profits of pollution are essentially being treated as property rights.

Continue reading ‘ETS or business welfare?’

He’s from Queensland and he’s here to help cave in before the debate starts

Published
by
Mark
4 months, 3 weeks ago
in Climate change, Economics, Energy, Environment, Markets and Polls
. Closed

This was my response to the argument that Kevin Rudd’s Emissions Trading Scheme Green Paper was a fine piece of pragmatic politics: Continue reading ‘He’s from Queensland and he’s here to help cave in before the debate starts’

The World’s Top Emitter

Published
by
Kim
4 months, 3 weeks ago
in Activism, Climate change, Developing world, Economics, Energy, Environment, Foreign Elections, Foreign policy, International, Markets and USA
. Closed

It sounds like some dumb reality tv show, doesn’t it? But we all know who didn’t get voted out of the house.

As almost everyone in the world knows, it’s election year in America.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (don’t ask, you already know the answer!) might be in trouble. Iraq might be - kinda, sorta - an election issue. But if - like me - you’re following the American Election via either the blogosphere or (oh noes!) the MSM, you’d notice a huge disconnect between how big an issue climate change is here, and how totally miniscule it is in the U S of A.

I hope Al Gore might have something to say at the Democratic Convention.

But that might not occur. And even if it does, and that and all the Arnie stuff aside, it’s going to be pretty much a side issue. Lord only knows what we can do, but those of us who, like me, are Democrats Overseas, might consider a bit of lobbying. But we might think as well about remembering that climate change is a global issue, and trying to get the Australian government to use whatever leverage it has to get it treated as such. Continue reading ‘The World’s Top Emitter’

Bait and switch

Published
by
Mark
4 months, 3 weeks ago
in Climate change, Economics, Energy, Environment and Markets
. Closed

dk.au’s quite right that from a policy angle, the ETS Green Paper is highly problematic. In the short term, politically, obviously what Kevin Rudd is doing is stealing Malcolm Turnbull’s clothes on petrol, adopting his proposal of an excise cut. This snookers the Libs on petrol, but then, they were hardly getting any political traction on that issue anyway. It’s a missed opportunity in more senses than one - it plays to the populist narrative and avoids the much more important task of communicating why an ETS - and a rigorous ETS - is necessary. You can’t do short term populism and long term policy at the same time. Ross Garnaut made that point effectively last week. The government might have done well to take note.

More broadly, I think the context for this is that Labor is looking to cut the Greens out of the Senate equation on emissions trading. Continue reading ‘Bait and switch’