Blogging politics, culture, sociology and life from Brisvegas
Kevin Rudd writes for The Australian:
THE science tells us that continued high levels of carbon pollution have led to global warming and if the world continues on a business-as-usual trajectory the consequences for us all will be significant. The economics tells us that the cost of responsible action is much less than if we as a planet fail to act on climate change now. The longer we delay, the higher the cost.
If the ranks of columnists, pollies and industry shills lining up in battle formation to trash Ross Garnaut were thinking he was some sort of milquetoast retiring academic and policy wonk, who’d roll over in the face of the media noise machine, they’ve evidently made the wrong assumption. In fact, Garnaut seems to be doing his level best to keep the Rudd government from wobbling.
Garnaut’s retort to Michael Costa’s op/ed has the temerity to mention the elephant in the (Macquarie Street) room:
“The New South Wales [Treasurer] is a well known denier of the science,” he said.
In his article this morning, Costa called for “a sensible debate on important issues”. Decrying Garnaut as a “Chicken Little”, Costa himself painted all sorts of apocalyptic scenarios if dirty coal producers aren’t compensated.
Costa calls for “dispassionate” analysis. This from someone whose self interest - as the Treasurer responsible for the sale of electricity “assets” in a crumbling government - couldn’t be more blatant.
A fortnight ago, after the characters at The Opposition Organ went into full on attack mode, confecting a picture of governmental chaos and evil spin from Kevin Rudd and his minions, we could witness the construction of one of those “media narratives” we’re constantly told by… the media… are so important. Last year we saw the then Government Gazette go into brain explosion mode, trying desperately to shore up the foundations of the then media narrative - that Howard was a political genius blah blah with a veritable plague of rabbits concealed in his Akubra. That was a bridge too far. Because it showed the narrative dissipating before our eyes as the effort being put into walling it off from reality was too painfully evident. Something similar is happening this year, with the cracks very indiscreetly showing, as the beleaguered “political class” of punditocrats effectively bemoan their lack of influence by letting a few too many cats out of the bag while trying to sew up the rips in the fabric of their dreams.
So we had Andrew “Insider” Bolt, who recently “celebrated” ten years of his column by “toot[ing] [sic] [his] own triumphs [sic]” (the link is to Grodscorp’s fisking not to Bolta’s auto-Birthday party), claiming - how embarrassment! - that it was journalists who swung the Gippsland by-election (the link goes to the post at LP not to Bolt’s blog). On Saturday, we had Christopher Pearson joining his News Limited colleague Glenn Milne in touting the saviour like potential of Peter Costello - the “man of the future”, we’re told! Although he apparently has “no malice” for Brendan Nelson, what’s one of the factors that Pearson cites as demonstrating that Nelson is doomed?
Partly it’s a case of not having won over the press gallery.
Yep, that’s the reason why Nelson bombs in the polls. Must be all those journos who live in Gippsland being over-sampled. I actually suspect Costello’s smart enough not to believe this nonsense, though I also imagine he takes the flattery in the spirit with which it’s given. Continue reading ‘Good spin and bad spin and media narratives (and the Garnaut Report)’
This post isn’t quite as long as I thought it might be, and I think that’s a good thing. There’s no doubt the Garnaut Report [link to pdf] is seriously big as well as eminently serious, and I suspect a lot of the blogosphere’s climate change wonks are waiting to digest it rather than rushing in to write insta-commentary. Although the report is a very serious piece of policy work, its release is also a political event par excellence, and taking the time to understand the report’s arguments and proposals is a template that could usefully be applied to other big political happenings - including but not limited to the Budget - even if it goes against the grain of the 24/7 media cycle. It’s also worth noting that these sort of issues really lend themselves to the power of aggregating distributed knowledge - given the number of seriously informed people out there participating in the climate change debate - and therefore the comments threads are possibly more important than some of the posts themselves - which informed the approach we took at LP on Friday by posting an open thread.
So, what has the blogosphere had to say about the Garnaut Climate Change Review interim Report? Continue reading ‘Garnaut: the blogosphere reacts’
Update: For anyone having trouble getting to the Garnaut Review website, which obviously failed to anticipate the amount of traffic that would be heading its way, the report can be downloaded from the SMH. In pdf form, huge file.
I have no doubt some of our resident regular climate change bloggers will be offering some commentary when it’s released, and the contents digested, but here’s a thread for anyone who wants to discuss the interim Garnaut Report in the interim. It’s out at 12.30am, and I imagine it will be viewable at the Garnaut Review’s website. I think everyone would agree that it’s a most significant event, particularly since, as reported earlier this week, it would appear that Kevin Rudd will make his climate change response the signature issue of this term.
Peter Martin explains the process:
As protesters locked themselves onto a conveyor belt at Loy Yang power station in protest, those of us listening to the ABC heard Tony Eastley intone these words:
With the Garnaut report due out tomorrow and an emissions trading scheme to be introduced by 2010, building a coal-fired power station may not be high on many peoples’ agendas.
But the Victorian Government has just approved the building of a new brown coal plant in the Latrobe Valley.
While we wait with feverish anticipation (or at least I do) for Garnaut and what he has to say about emissions trading, the government has released a new discussion paper about its other major greenhouse mitigation effort in the energy sector - the Mandatory Renewable Energy Target (MRET) scheme. If you’re concerned about the development of renewable energy technology, this is the one to pay attention to.
Some of the details of the proposed schemes are presented in the discussion paper; one key question is whether “banking and borrowing” permits encourages too much building of renewable energy installations, too early. You might assume that building as much renewable capacity as possible, as early as possible, is a good thing, but there’s a complicating factor; there’s a concern that this discourages the development of emerging technologies (solar thermal, wave energy, and the like are good examples) and will instead lead to more and more installations of “mature” renewable technologies. That, of course, means more and more terrestrial wind power, which as has been discussed at length on LP has severe limitations at dealing with fluctuations in wind speeds.
But perhaps the most interesting thing in the discussion paper is the ultimate fate of the MRET. The more laissez-faire economic types don’t like the MRET. Essentially, it presupposes a particular path to getting emissions down - renewable energy - when there may well be much lower-cost options available, such as conservation, emissions cuts in non-energy sectors, cleaner fossil fuel consumption, and so on. However, the argument in favour of the MRET is that renewable energy technology needs a leg-up to get established; effectively, the MRET subsidises developing and getting the kinks out of these technologies, leading to a better overall outcome than just letting emissions trading rip on its own. But that poses a question of its own - for how long should we keep subsidizing renewables before we let them compete on their merits?
With the draft Garnaut Review report to be released on Friday, there’s lots of fevered speculation about what it might contain, and what it might mean. The Australian managed a big beat-up on nuclear power a few days ago. Bob Carr’s views on nuclear power (however sympathetic I am to them) have been public pretty much since he left office. Much more important right now - given Labor policy on nuclear power won’t change for at least the next term - is the question of what the emissions trading will and won’t cover.
The general view - and the one put in Garnaut’s discussion papers - is that we should generally try and cover as much of our total emissions under the scheme, as quickly as we can. But two of the Australian plogosphere’s favourite econobloggers - Joshua Gans and John Quiggin - have made a slightly contrary case in a submission to Garnaut (which you can download from here).
One of Helen Caldicott’s favourite quotes is that “in essence, a nuclear reactor is just a very sophisticated and dangerous way to boil water”. And - leaving aside the question of danger for a moment - she’s right. Every nuclear power station, and virtually every coal-fired power station, currently in operation does just that. In the process, huge amounts of water are used, and much of it goes straight up the cooling tower. But it’s not often appreciated why this is so. So, in the hope of explaining some of the science and engineering behind turning heat into electricity, I bring you a quick primer on the heat engine.
Continue reading ‘LP science - heat engines and thermal efficiency’
As a follow up to my post yesterday on the Liberals’ revived climate change denialism and the the fear campaign they’re running, I thought I’d point to a couple of interesting signs of the times. Tim Watts at Tree of Knowledge thinks the Libs have taken a leaf from the Canadian Conservatives’ book - the Tories in Canada are running a campaign against Liberal opposition leader Stephane Dion’s support for an emissions trading policy. It’s all couched in terms of “new taxes” and “driving up the price of everything” by putting a… wait for it… tax on petrol. The ads, which you can preview at this woefully designed website, are said by Watts to be going up in petrol stations.
Given Nelson’s populism/desperation on the Fuel Excise Cut, no doubt we can expect to see the same from the Coalition. There will come a time when the electoral value of climate change credentials will have to go head to head with back pocket concerns and the above is not an encouraging vision of the future. Whatever the substance of the response to the Garnaut report, the Government is going to have to engage in some pretty serious ground work in preparing the public for any adverse impacts….
Another report suggests that time may have already come. Continue reading ‘I blame Canada’
In Question Time yesterday, Kevin Rudd accused the Coalition of kicking off a “fear campaign” on climate change. He’s right, according to Crikey’s Bernard Keane, who writes:
The party of greenhouse denialism is back in town.
You can read Keane’s analysis here.
Greens Senator Christine Milne also writes on this topic in today’s Crikey, commenting on deliberate distortions of the Climate Institute’s discussion paper on energy affordability and emissions trading. [Update: Christine Milne’s article has now been posted at GreensBlog.]
Graph from ABARE
Tim Dunlop notes that the commodities boom is far from over, and in fact that its pace is set to pick up next financial year.
One of the first actions taken by the Blair Labour government in the UK (back in the days when Gordon Brown had a bit of a clue) was to impose a windfall profits tax on privatised utilities to fund social infrastructure. Writing in the Fin Review today, Andrew Leigh thinks we might well consider something similar to cushion ourselves against the possibility of a future recession:
Few issues require such careful political management as a windfall tax. But implemented properly, it is possible to imagine that such a tax could be both economically responsible and in line with fundamental Australian values. Why not raise a little more from our lottery-winning miners today, and squirrel it away for the next recession?
I think that’s an excellent idea, and Leigh makes a good case for it. Continue reading ‘Ensuring prosperity beyond the mining boom’
There’s plenty of coal in the world. This is where to find it by country. We are also using more and more of it. In fact, according to BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy just out coal was the big winner in as an energy source in 2007.
Across the world energy consumption rose by 2.4% with China accounting for a half of the increase in the year 2007 and India a third. The energy source with the biggest increase was coal at 4.5%, with China leading the way. China gets 70% of its primary energy from coal and increased its coal consumption by 8%. Coal showed the fastest growth amongst the fossil fuels for the fifth year in a row.
This is a worry.
Continue reading ‘Coal and Germany big winners in energy use’
Jeff Kennett was notorious for his dislike of inquiries, particularly royal commissions. But there was one that even he had to commission immediately, when the Longford gas plant suffered an explosion in September 1998, killing two people and shutting down Victoria’s natural gas supply system for nearly three weeks. I remember it well, living on-campus at Melbourne University at the time. It was three weeks of barbecues, and boiling kettles to have a bath. More pertinently, it also shut down much of Victorian industry, from dairies to car manufacturers.
Now, it seems that Western Australia is suffering something similar. An explosion on a gas plant at Varanus Island, a tiny speck of land off the coast somewhere near Karratha, has reduced Western Australia’s domestic gas supply by 30%, and will likely take three months to fix.
The WA Liberal Party has, predictably, called for a royal commission into the crisis, focussing on the role of the various state government regulators in monitoring the Varanus Island gas plant. Personally, I reckon that might be asking a secondary question.
There’s been evidence, previously reported on LP, that demand for petroleum is dropping substantially in the United States. But, unfortunately, there aren’t any public, timely statistics on Australia’s total fuel usage that I’ve seen yet. But Steven Long at PM has dug up an interesting proxy for it: total petroleum imports, which are sinking like a stone, despite a gradual declining trend in Australia’s domestic petroleum production. From the transcript of the report:
CRAIG JAMES: What we saw in May is that the amount of petroleum that we’ve imported 28 per cent lower than what it was a year ago.
Thais is the biggest fall that we’ve seen in over four years. And it certainly shows that the higher prices are having an impact on people’s behaviours.
STEPHEN LONG: And disabuses people of the notion that basically demand for petrol was non-elastic that people kept on demanding petrol no matter what the price.?
CRAIG JAMES: Well that’s right. It certainly has hit people right squarely between the eyes this time around. Most consumers, motorists would have been used to seeing a $1.40 at the petrol sign boards, but all of a sudden it becomes a $1.50 or $1.55.
Continue reading ‘Fuel demand is elastic - Australian edition’
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