We can vote down the CPRS and still save the planet
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With the Right, Left and most of the Centre now calling for Penny Wong’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) to be abandoned or fundamentally altered, it looks increasingly likely the legislation will be defeated in the Senate. This has led some to express concern about what this means for reducing Australia’s emissions and whether the death of the CPRS is a recipe for no action at all. Lenore Taylor of the Australian summed up this sentiment in an article in February, when she wrote that “if conservationists think sabotaging that scheme is going to lead to a tougher one anytime in the foreseeable future, they’re making a very risky judgment”. Is she right? If the Coalition and the Greens tear down the CPRS legislation, is the Rudd Government relieved of the obligation to reduce Australia’s emissions? The short answer is no. Whether or not the CPRS legislation is passed by Parliament, the primary determinant of the trajectory of Australia’s emissions over the next decade is likely to be the international agreement that comes out of Copenhagen later this year. The existing international climate regime established under the Kyoto Protocol is effectively a cap-and-trade scheme. It sets a limit on emissions amongst developed countries and allows trading of emission units between countries to encourage least cost abatement. This model looks like it will be carried forward into the second commitment period, which should start in 2012-13. The most contentious issues are which countries should be required to take on binding abatement targets and what form the targets should take. Assuming the international negotiations do not collapse, under the Copenhagen agreement, Australia will be obliged to take on an emission reduction commitment (or abatement target). This target will determine what Australia’s net emissions must be for the second commitment period. In the event that Australia’s emissions exceed the target, it will be required to purchase assigned amount units (or other qualifying international units) from other countries to fulfill its international obligations. The role of the CPRS under this framework is to ensure Australia meets its international obligations in a cost-effective way. The environmental impacts of the scheme and any complimentary government measures will effectively be set under the Copenhagen agreement. All that is left is to determine how Australia meets the emission targets. We can cut emissions in an economically efficient manner by utilising market forces to find the cheapest abatement options, or we can do it inefficiently by trying to pick winners and shielding big polluters from the impetus for reform. The Government has opted for the latter. It has then compounded its problems by restricting Australia’s abatement targets for 2020 to between 5-15% below 2000 levels — light years away from a proportionate contribution to avoiding dangerous climate change. This is explains why opposition to the CPRS does not equate to support for doing nothing. Australia will still be bound by the emission reduction commitment under the Copenhagen agreement. If the Government gets its way, the commitment will be weak, but that has nothing to do with whether the CPRS lives or dies in Parliament. The Rudd Government’s proposed climate policy is both environmentally ineffective and economically inefficient. The Australian public has been offered the unappetising combination of weak targets and a high cost of achieving them. Given this, why would anyone support the CPRS? Blocking the CPRS will prevent the Government from ‘locking in’ these outcomes and leave the door open to more cost-effective climate solutions. |
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9 Comments
Am I surprised? Notwithstanding whether global warming is worth the effort, the government proposals to allow the big polluters to keep on polluting, is typical of government sucking up to its mates both in the union movement and the board room.
The real problem here is that the government will not acquaint the individual voter with the consequences of carbon reduction. These are more expensive energy and a lower standard of living. Whilst you can sell the rosy upside of of environmental purity, no air-conditioning, walking to work, (if you have a job), cold winters and less food variety are difficult to sell to the me too generation stop
Accordingly we will have a lot of rhetoric and no effective action. Having got into government we will now have a trail of broken promises, half truths, obfuscation and downright political bastardry masquerading as policy implementation. Turn on the bullshit meter.
Sadly I’m coming to the conclusion that governmental institutions here and world wide are incapabable of dealing with the climate change issue…… Most of us, including the politicians who claim to represent us, claim to want to protect the environment , until that is, it comes at a cost….. Be it in loss of profits, cost to jobs, or changes to life style…..We humans are just to arrogant and conditioned to believe we exist in a bubble called the economy….I sincerely hope that people in other parts of the world and their governments bring a different a attitude to the meeting in Copenhagen…..I have my doubts….Eventually it will be mother nature, Gaia, call it what you will, that will settle the ledger, restore a balance….Which probably means their wont be as many of Us around in future….Oh suffer the little children, grand children and great grand children.
Allan, I don’t believe Andrew’s position is cynical at all, quite the opposite, in fact.
I think he is merely defending the Greens for rejecting a bill that makes no sense — other than justifying my regret for my vote late in ‘07 — rather than taking what little scraps this new government have decided to throw to those concerned about the state of the environment or wish to have promises fu*king honoured
Enacting the CPRS legislation will not result in Australia turning up to Copenhagen with a strong or a credible emissions reduction target, but rather add weight to the phrase ‘same sh*t, different day’.
Richard ‘SnuffleUpaGus’ McGuire. Now you’re getting it. We are like voles I studied as part of the concept of island biogeography in the eighties. Selfish gene and all that. Boom and bust. It’s in the programme.
We will expand until we bust. Some know it alls will get about a nanosecond to say I told you so and then PAAARP, it will be over like a Black Saturday firestorm, handshake with 1000C. It’s absurd in a gallows humour sort of way. Come to think of it, it was the convicts who really did invent gallows humour so bashed and deprived they could sense the blessed release from a life of hell.
That’s some trip those convicts were on. No took Snuffleupagus seriously either: Poor thing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aloysius_Snuffleupagus
I’m going bush in about a month, building a bushfire bunker, going to enjoy a bit of nature before it all winds up.
Thanks for the reference Tom…. I’m just not exactly sure what your point was.
One of the key arguments from the green side of this debate has been that if Australia turns up at Copenhagen conference without credible (ie strong) emissions reduction targets then getting a meaningful global outcome will be that much harder, if not impossible.
Now you want to have your cake and eat it too by saying “It doesn’t matter if we vote down the CPRS and Australia turns up at Copenhagen with no coherent plan at all for dealing with GHG emissions - we’ll just have to go along with what the rest of the world will (apparently) decide anyway” Seems almost as cynical a position to take as the one you’re accusing the Government of taking, Andrew.
Any pay to pollute scheme is a joke!
The guy with the most money gets to do the most polluting.
How does this save the planet?
There has to be another way surely. I could care less that the Wong Rudd scheme is a fizzer.
Actually on a more serious note, it reminds of the Republic - an own goal through half measures.
Or worse still Keating in 1996 when the ngo greens blacklisted the ALP over wanton forest destruction and we all know what that led to. 11 years of John Howard. He’s gone, Green Party are here for real, and Turnbull is a better look than Costello.
But who really knows. It’s getting pretty fraught all over the shop.
I note Andrew doesn’t articulate what an acceptable form of CPRS would look like and how the process of radically re-shaping the Australian economy to a low carbon alternative would work. Such ideals look great in broad brush strokes - all of us happily strolling to our info-tech workplaces (because they won’t be maufacturing, driving trucks or shovelling coal) down streets lined with eco-friendly passive solar houses. On their way can wave to their neighbours industriuosly toiling in the neighbourhood permaculture plot and pause to admire the new regional low-emmission bio-fuel electricity plant which powers local public infrastructure like hybrid buses and redesigned enviro-friendly hospitals, schools and shopping centres. I guess the poor people must have gone somewhere else. Perhaps they were sequestered.
You can be as self-righteous as you like but lots of people need to be employed AND not underwater. As usual, poor people are going to suffer disproportionately in the quest to stop global warming. These impacts need to be moderated if social unrest or insurrection is to be avoided.
Can it be done? I dunno. But I do know politics is the art of the possible. Do you really expect the Government to develop a scheme of such purity that would ensure it was turfed out in a double dissolution election in about October? Witness Workchoices and the Liberals. I’d like to see Andrew, Christine Milne and Bob Brown (for whom I have great respect) address the practical aspects of getting from here to there without driving poor people to the wall and I’d also like them to tell me what the first step should look like.