“Be the trouble you wish to see in the world,” read Lee’s t-shirt yesterday as he stood in front of the 500-odd people gathered at the People’s Climate Action summit in Canberra. During the day, participants had broken up into sessions to debate various issues and come up with proposals for the whole group.
Lee was reporting back from the network group, which was discussing how to connect, in a more coordinated way, the hundreds of local climate action groups in communities around Australia. These are the folk who spent last year doorknocking, talking to their neighbours in shopping centres, writing letters to the editor, and meeting with their MPs to voice their concerns on climate change. These are the people who perhaps felt the most utterly betrayed by Kevin Rudd’s weak 5% by 2020 carbon reduction target.
It is uniquely challenging to bring together hundreds of local climate groups, who all care about the same issue but have vastly differing backgrounds, perspectives, and ways of working. And with such a large and diverse group, it is the most difficult facilitation task that I’ve ever seen.
It’s a huge exercise in participatory democracy, and in a sense highlights the enormous problem we are facing in climate politics: the hundreds of people here who are all passionate climate activists find it so difficult to agree on visions, objectives, and tactics. This being the case, then how can we as an entire Australian community, and then as a global community, form consensus on how to solve climate change.
In the third session on campaign strategy the debates of the past day and a half start to crystallise into debates over wording. One of the big issues is of course around the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme – it’s just so bad that there is a broad consensus that as a grassroots movement, we should do everything we can to make sure it doesn’t pass. This is interesting. It is the same anti-CPRS position of the Coalition – although, of course, for different reasons. The big elephant in the room for me, then, is…what next? If we don’t get a CPRS, what can we expect in its place both from the Government and the Opposition?
There’s another debate on whether the network’s objectives should mention the UN Climate Negotiations in Copenhagen in December this year. Is the UN Process ever able to deal with climate change in an adequate way? So far, it hasn’t proven that it has the ability to do so. But scientists are saying we have less than 10 years now, to solve this crisis, and I don’t think we’re going to get another global governance body in that time. And I don’t think we have structures existing apart from governments (unless we’re talking about Multinational Corporations) who have the ability to build all the wind turbines, invest in the solar panels, set up the public transport systems and spearhead the entire fundamental transition we need in our economy and our society to reduce greenhouse gases at the emergency speed we need. So do we ignore the UN, or try to get a global climate deal within its obviously flawed structures. I suppose it’s the fundamental age-old question in social movements; the only thing being different now is that we have a deadline of a planet coming very close to climate tipping points.
One of the most interesting aspects of this gathering is seeing the way that younger, mostly student, activists are interacting with older people who are members of the local climate groups. These people are mostly middle-aged, middle-class women and the looks on their faces as they go through the consensus process that student activists are so used to range from disbelief and frustration, to empowerment.
This is the end of the 2nd day of the summit. We have one more to go before the big protest out the front of Parliament House on Tuesday morning at 8am.
14 Comments
I first heard that statement that “we have less than 10 years, now” about 5 years ago. In the intervening period the evidence comes in, every day, that things are worse than we imagined and it is all happening faster than predicted. These dopey politicians seem to think that taking action is optional, and that we can waste as much time as we like, dribbling and babbling nonsense while doing nothing. Last I heard we have already passed a major tipping point. Climate disruption has come and it is irreversible and it will get worse. The only thing left to determine is how bad it gets.
Getting a trading scheme setup and moving is essential. Even if there were to be no real cuts in the first few years, getting the apparatus going is required. The legislation is flawed and awful and the idea of compensating industry makes some people nauseous. But its better than nothing. It at least begins to send a carbon price signal through to end users (a muted signal to EITE’s). There will be a financial advantage from reducing emissions.
Without a robust system and a carbon price signal there will be no commercialization of innovation. I know of at least one technology in the scaling/commercialization phase with the potential to reduce australia’s emissions by 4-5% at a carbon price of around $10. This can probably be deployed on less than a 10 year timescale. There are many sectors where there will be changes once carbon has a price (an example from the water industry is BHPs operations in Sydney that reduced water usage by 90%, until there was a shortage there was never any reason to, overall I think the change was quite low cost).
It is always possible to toughen up the targets later (although admittedly difficult). Individual action proving that reducing emissions can be done at low cost, will make tougher targets in the future much more likely to be politically (electorally) palatable. This is really a public education campaign (which should come from government, but they take too long and are captive to lobbying, also its a bit unpopular to criticize the extravagant wasteful lifestyle most people lead so government is scared to tell voters how it is).
My three suggested strategies:
1) Buy carbon permits, stockpile (or voluntary surrender). This is the only way an individual can actually reduce our national emissions.
2) Explain simply how individuals can reduce their emissions. Explain how many $$$ this will save them when we have a $50 carbon price.
3) Branch stack the major political parties. The major parties (Lib and Lab) have surprising small memberships. If you can get enough people to sign up I’m pretty sure you can influence pre-selection of candidates. Starting a new party is futile, the greens already own the environment vote and its about 10%.
This won’t woke. Pre-selection is not purely at the discretion of local branches, at least with Labor. The national and state executives either contribute 50% of the vote or can overrule it as they like.
I think the Greens vote has a cap, but it’s not 10%. It was 12% at the recent WA election and in several Western Suburbs in Sydney and 16% at the even more recent ACT elections.
“Apolitical” climate advocacy groups are great things, but if you want to get involved in the political side of it there’s not much point joining the majors, for the above reason. The Greens have the policies, the image and the message. But they need people to help them spread those things.
*Won’t work, not won’t woke.
“the same anti-CPRS position of the Coalition”
The Coalition doesn’t have a position yet – they’re waiting for an assessment of the CPRS by their economic consultants. Yes, Turnbull badmouths the government’s policies, but it remains to be seen what stance he will actually adopt in parliament.
The UN is far from being the only avenue of intergovernmental cooperation. Earlier this year Joseph Romm in the US was skeptical that a cap-and-trade bill could be passed there in time for Copenhagen, and instead urged the creation of a grand deal with China. Now people are saying that the bill might get through in time after all, but the point remains that bilateral and multilateral deals among the big powers would have the potential for enormous impact even if the UN process went nowhere. Though what is more likely is that such deals will instead *determine* the outcome of the UN process.
Personally I am pro-CPRS and I hope it passes. It is a system which can do the job, which we are ready to implement, and which is capable of linking up with the efforts of other countries, providing the essential international dimension. It is a framework and a common language capable of uniting the myriad local and sectoral efforts needed. It has the flexibility of presupposing nothing about *how* emissions reductions will be achieved. Once it is in place, everything is possible.
If the idea of carbon trading were somehow to be politically discredited in Australia, I suppose one could start over again with the idea of carbon taxes. But I see no intrinsic advantage to the carbon-tax approach and thus no advantage to sabotaging the creation of a carbon-trading system.
How do you define “the job”? If you mean “Cut Australia’s emissions to sustainable levels and show international leadership on the issue” then no, it doesn’t.
The intrinsic advantage that a carbon tax has over and above carbon trading is that it is almost imposable to cheat. That is the first, a second is that a carbon tax is easier to implement, a third is that it is more transparent. The immediate effect of a carbon tax would be the decreased competitive advantage that coal generated electricity now enjoys. If this tax were used to subsidise non carbon polluting electricity generation these generators would be built and for generations to come electricity would become ever cheaper.
The coalition will fall over themselves to support the carbon trading model as proposed by Rudd. The Greens should not support it and instead advocate a carbon tax because as it stands the carbon trading scheme will only generate an immense amount of innovation on how to cheat it.
Oz: “If you mean “Cut Australia’s emissions to sustainable levels and show international leadership on the issue” then no, it doesn’t [do the job].”
As a system, the CPRS is not defined by a particular set of targets and trajectories. They will not appear in the principal legislation, but in secondary legislation (see White Paper section 10.5.1).
Even the announced trajectory to 2020 is not inconsistent with strong mitigation. Consider the global emissions trajectory recently championed by the Worldwatch Institute. Its defining feature is that the world becomes carbon-neutral by 2050 and mildly carbon-negative thereafter. From that perspective, it’s not Australia’s 2020 target which is problematic, it’s the 2050 target of a 60% reduction.
Compensation to the coal generating industry will have minimal effect on their long-term generation. Its a cash handout for 5 years, thats it. They get paid for capacity security, not generation volume.
Even before that time the marginal generation cost will see the full carbon price. If lower cost generation emerges, coal will reduce generation volumes and still pocket the money.
I know for many people of green persuasion the idea of money going to coal generators makes their skin crawl. Ultimately its the cost of doing business. This is not a 5 year issue, its a 50+ year issue. The transition is going to be expensive and the burden will mostly fall on the middle class.
Imagine road transport was full privatized on a 50+ year contract. Then the government decides to ban private cars. It can be perceived as very unfair to leave investors (such as superannuation funds) with a stranded asset, because government changed the rules. It creates a more uncertain (expensive) investment environment if the government can’t be trusted by investors not to screw them down the track.
Ultimately consumer behavior has to change. One effective way to bring that about is a price signal. If electricity doubles in price, it makes a lot more sense to insulate my house and double glaze. You can’t change everyone’s behavior with a moral argument (people are really selfish), however almost everyone responds to a price signal.
Yes. Except this is not going to occur, as households are going to be compensated above the rise in prices.
“Except this is not going to occur, as households are going to be compensated above the rise in prices.”
My annual electricity bill goes from $1000 to $2000. I get $1200 tax cut. Do you think that I won’t notice my bill going through the roof? If I halve my consumption I now save $1000 a year, not $500.
People have enough money to not change habits and just pay the rise (this is crucial for pensioners/unemployed who are less likely to change habits). But the cost as a % of total income has increased significantly, especially for the middle class. The potential savings are much larger in $$ terms. Suddenly paying extra for a fridge that uses 30% less power makes sense over much shorter timescales.