It’s been an interesting week. Wayne Swan managed to keep a straight face when he cancelled the Parliamentary Inquiry that he had called only a week earlier, on the basis that it had ‘become politicised’. Now the Government is under pressure from all sides over it’s proposed Emissions Trading Scheme. The Coalition, desperate to deflect attention away from their internal problems, are trying to position themselves as both protectors of polluting business and saviours of the climate. It’s a hard tightrope to walk and is why the Government are getting themselves into trouble in the first place.
Wong today attacked the environmental movement for being ‘economically and environmentally irresponsible’. She’s obviously feeling a bit defensive about the fact that pretty much everyone in the country who cares about climate change thinks the scheme is a complete failure. The problem that she and Kevin Rudd face is that they are trying desperately to look like they are showing leadership on climate change without actually making any of the difficult decisions to cut emissions.
It’s really not that complicated. The biggest contributor to greenhouse pollution is the burning of fossil fuels. It follows, fairly obviously, that to cut emissions we need to stop burning fossil fuels. This of course is politically difficult for the Government and the Coalition to sanction, so they are outcompeting each other to come up with ludicrous policies that will create the impression of action while obfuscating the ongoing growth of the coal, oil and gas industries.
The Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme is a classic Heath Robinson – an unnecessarily complex and implausible contraption. Turnbull is desperately trying to come up with his own unique and complex accounting scheme based on the same design criteria of creating the illusion of action while allowing fossil fuel use to expand.
The root of the problem of course is that the big polluters have captured the political process. BHP, Xstrata, Woodside, Anglo and the other members of the ‘greenhouse mafia’ are essentially holding our future to ransom. The engineering challenge of replacing coal power with renewable energy is relatively straightforward in comparison to the political challenge of overcoming the vested interests of the fossil fuel lobby.
The good thing is that most Australians aren’t stupid and they know when they are being sold a pup. If the CPRS makes it through the senate, it will probably still fail the crucial test of public opinion unless it sees a major overhaul on the way through.
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Warning Imperfect metaphor approaching
Any carbon emissions above the sustainable baseline (close to, but not quite zero), is basically like borrowing money. If you borrow more now, you can borrow less later and you have to pay interest in the meantime. There are also unintended side-effects, like increased droughts in the southern states and more severe storms in the north. In the long term future when we return to balance, we are unlikely to pay back the full amount, instead we will be left with a permanently scarred environment.
Its much easier to work out what your borrowing limit is if you know what interest rates will be in the future. Similarly with climate change, if we knew what the exact safe limit was, we could plot a perfect trajectory. Failing that, we guess.
The current government is taking the line of guessing a bit low (borrow a bit much), hang on to power and let the next guy deal with the problem.
I’m not saying that the CPRS is perfect, but I wish people would appreciate its potential a little more.
An ETS is the best way to reduce emissions for several reasons:
a country can set a desired level of emissions (be they high or low) (therefore its functional);
the government is the one with the capacity and ability to decide upon that level (therefore its democratic);
an ETS creates an infrastructure for emission reduction (therefore its enduring);
it is enshrined in a treaty used in other countries so emission reduction can be interlinked (therefore it is a truly global approach); and
despite their posturing, business supports it because it allows them the flexibility to reduce emission at least cost (therefore it will work).
It is true that the 5% is pathetic target, but that’s a political point – if anyone who believes in emission reductions thinks that imposing a tax (which would likely be a great deal less than $25/tonne of carbon) would be better please consider this:
business is very well versed in tax “minimisation” (therefore its weak);
it can be withdrawn at any time by any administration (democratic but very fragile);
It cannot ensure any carbon reduction, not one tonne (possibly useless).
We have committed to a 15% reduction if there is a global agreement. However, equipped with an infrastructure like what is being created with the CPRS Australia can be confident that for the next 50 years we will be well placed to inexpensively reduce our emissions.
We should not be arguing over whether an ETS is a good way to reduce emissions, we should be ensuring that we lead the way with an effective global superstructure which will finally disconnect economic growth from emission growth.