Tag Archive for 'Ross Garnaut'

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.
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Emissions vs. Allocations

Published
by
Robert Merkel
2 months ago
in Climate change, Energy and Environment
. 20 Comments

figure_23point6.gif

Australia’s total greenhouse emissions, assuming a 450ppm target and “backstop technology”. Source: Garnaut Review Final Report, Figure 23.6

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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.

Garnaut responds (in part)

Published
by
Robert Merkel
2 months, 3 weeks ago
in Climate change and Economics
. 19 Comments

Ross Garnaut has responded to some of the criticism by scientists and environmentalists of the suggested targets in his latest report, with an open letter.

In it, he repeats that he thinks that more aggressive carbon cuts, of the kind required for a 450ppm stabilization target, are desirable. However, he expands on his reasons for doubting that it will be achieved:

With regret, I note that no developed country or group of countries has indicated a willingness to cut emissions by 2020 to the extent implied by the 450ppm target. The European Union comes closest but even its 30 per cent conditional offer (relative to 1990) falls short of the 36 per cent that would be required of it under the 450 agreement (Table 5.4 of the Draft Report). Garnaut Climate Change Review Canada’s target is instructive: its current 2020 commitment would translate, we estimate, to a reduction of 10 per cent over 2000 levels, less than would be required of it in a 550 let alone a 450 world.

In another example, the US Presidential candidate commitments for 2050, if translated into 2020 targets with a starting point of 2012 convert into reduction commitments of around 10-15 per cent over 2000, again consistent with a 550 rather than a 450 agreement. (Similar targets are given or implied by various US climate change bills.)

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Garnaut targets, lesson #2 - international linkage

Published
by
Robert Merkel
2 months, 4 weeks ago
in Climate change, Economics, Markets and Trade
. 22 Comments

Watching Insiders today, I heard lots on the latest Garnaut report. Sadly, there seems little evidence that anybody (notably including Brendan Nelson) has bothered to read it in detail. Nobody seems to have grasped, for instance, that Garnaut is arguing for a fundamentally different type of target allocation - per-capita targets, rather than absolute targets that suit countries with declining populations like most of Europe.

But there’s another point that doesn’t seem to have permeated into Insiders‘ non-random sample of the commentariat (with the exception of Brian Toohey). If you look at the press release, it seems that a 10% cut in absolute emissions by 2020 (a 30% cut per head of population) as part of a global agreement, will cost us less than a 5% cut (25% per capita) without one. What’s going on?

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Where did Garnaut’s targets come from?

Published
by
Robert Merkel
3 months ago
in Climate change, Economics, Environment, International and Markets
. 14 Comments

There’s been a lot of criticism of the emissions targets suggested in the Garnaut Review’s supplementary modelling report. But there hasn’t been a great deal of explanation as to how he came up with them, which might be useful to make slightly more sophisticated critiques. In that light, here’s my attempt to explain where his targets comes from.

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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.

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Weitzman’s approach to low-probability, high-impact climate outcomes

Published
by
Brian
4 months, 2 weeks ago
in Climate change, Disasters and Economics
. 18 Comments

There, gentle reader, I have avoided using the term ‘catastrophe’ so that strong messages are appropriately wrapped. Martin Weitzman himself has been more forthright by titling his paper On Modeling and interpreting the Economics of Catastrophic Climate Change. But then he has written 45 pages of mostly econospeak, which carries a different kind of fright. Not existential, but bad enough. Much of it is impenetrable to ordinary mortals. With the help of a couple of interpreters I’ll try to render his message understandable. Anyway this is what I took from Weitzman.

1. Doubling atmospheric CO2 carries a small but unacceptable risk of catastrophic climate change.

2. By catastrophic he means an outcome that threatens civilisation as we know it. We simply can’t ignore the risk. It must be attended to.

3. In the face of truly catastrophic risk the normal practice adopted by economists of applying standard cost-benefit analysis is “wrong, unhelpful, and a dead-end” (from
Kevin Ummel, one of my interpreters). We should do whatever it takes.

4. The uncertainties that give rise to this risk are not the result of inadequate science. Rather they are inherent in the climate system itself.

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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.

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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.

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Emissions Trading Green Paper thread (& links post)

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

Climate Change Minister Penny Wong will be releasing the government’s Emissions Trading Green Paper today at the National Press Club. The Minister’s address can be seen on ABC1 at 12.30pm. The Green Paper will fill in some of the blanks left remaining after the release of the Garnaut Review’s interim report last week. No doubt it will also set the tone for the developing political debate over the next few months, and a key to how that debate will proceed politically is a poll by Essential Media [link to pdf] which suggests that the Coalition’s “wait for the world” message (if indeed that is their message!) is the wrong one.

As to the substance of the Green Paper, Crikey has set out a number of benchmarks by which the policy could be evaluated. These, of course, are open to debate, and indeed it’s worth recalling that the whole purpose of a Green Paper is to stimulate debate and consultation while signalling the parameters in which the government wants to shape policy.

No doubt there will be substantive contributions here and throughout the blogosphere and the media later on today (and links in the thread are most welcome), but you’re also most welcome to start discussing the Green Paper right now!

Relevant links over the fold.

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