The Greens oppose the CPRS not because it is too weak, but because it will point Australia in the wrong direction with little prospect of turning it around in the timeframe within which emissions must peak, says Senator Christine Milne.
Milne: Nobody wants a Ferrari ETS, Minister
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One of the most revealing things that has been said in a very shady debate thus far on the Rudd Government’s emissions trading plans was Minister Wong’s thinly veiled threat to the Greens yesterday, saying: “Some people want it to be a Ferrari, but if you can’t have a Ferrari, would you really have no vehicle at all?” If Wong thinks a Ferrari is desirable, then she clearly doesn’t understand the environmental imperative here. However, she was obviously trying to make two points. Firstly, it is part of her campaign to convince the media and the electorate that her deeply flawed plans are better than nothing and should therefore be accepted. Secondly, she was sending out the subliminal message that the Greens are asking for something which is expensive and out of reach for the vast majority of Australians. The Minister is wrong on both counts and her evasiveness under questioning in the Senate shows that she knows it. That fact that the Minister is now taking such a defensive line reveals that Labor knows it is bleeding support in key constituencies over the issue, as recent EMC and Auspolls have shown. A massive 37% of Labor voters, and 48% of young voters who tend to live in vulnerable inner metro seats, believe that the target should be strengthened. Let’s take this line that something is better than nothing. Firstly, that is deliberately framed around the Government’s preferred view that emissions trading is a silver bullet which, once in effect, can replace every other climate policy setting over time. Emissions trading sets a framework within which other policies work to help reduce emissions and transform the economy, but, in the absence of an ETS, there are still plenty of things we can do. In the context of the global financial meltdown, now is a perfect time to be creating hundreds of thousands of high quality green jobs in manufacturing and services by investing heavily in upgrading the grid for renewable energy, retrofitting every home in the nation with state of the art energy efficiency, rolling out public transport networks and protecting our carbon forest stores. Right now, Minister Wong has two options on the table that she could move on immediately to achieve huge emissions reductions. With the global market evaporating, Tasmania’s forestry sector is in dire economic straits. Instead of bailing them out and propping up unsustainable jobs, the Federal Government can and should step in now to protect forests, including with a restructuring package for those workers who have been dumped on the scrap-heap by the market and retrain them for new and sustainable jobs such as managing those forest carbon stores. With many billions of dollars looking to be invested in the global renewable energy market, now is the perfect time for the Government to sign up to the gross national feed-in tariff bill that I have on the books in the Senate. With that bill, and investment in upgrading to an intelligent electricity grid, Australia could move fast towards a completely decarbonised electricity sector. These issues and many more will now be canvassed by the broad Senate Inquiry that we expect to be referred by the Senate this afternoon. We expect to report back in May on a broad range of options for emissions reduction beyond the emissions trading framework. Of course, because emissions trading does set the framework within which all other climate policies act, if that trading scheme is designed in such a way that it locks out the options for deep cuts in emissions, actively preventing the transformation to a new, green economy, then it will be worse than having no ETS at all. This is not a case of nothing being better than something — it is a case of maintaining hope instead of closing off options for real action. Briefly, it is worth addressing Minister Wong’s subliminal swipe at a strong ETS being costly. The Government’s own Treasury modelling showed that the cost difference between meeting a target of 5% and 25% was so small as to be less than the margin of error. Treasury, against my urging, did not even bother to model the 40%+ emissions reductions that we actually need to achieve, but there is strong evidence that, contrary to the Government’s rhetoric, the harder we work, the cheaper it gets to take action. This is because we learn faster and make fewer ill-thought-out bad investments along the way — investing in lower emissions technologies, for example, instead of leapfrogging straight to zero emissions. That’s a metaphor, really, for this whole debate. Supporting the CPRS as it stands would lead to an array of bad investment decisions, locking in a higher polluting future and making it much more expensive to reduce emissions when we get around to doing so. It is the Government’s plan, handing over so many free permits to polluters that the scheme may not even be self-funding into the future, which is the expensive model. Auctioning all permits and using the revenue wisely to invest in building a zero carbon economy is the frugal model. Minister, nobody wants a Ferrari ETS! We don’t want something that is flash and fancy but gas guzzling, expensive and out of reach. We want a solid, reliable vehicle that will actually do the job effectively and efficiently. We want fleets of hybrid and plug-in electric cars, walking paths and cycleways, trams, buses and trains and, importantly, we want innovation to deliver us the transport of the future. |
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8 Comments
In the context of the Ferrari ETS I think the appropriate analogy for the CPRS is a 72 Kingswood with no motor. It represents thinking that is at least 30 years out of date, and if all other emmision reduction strategies must operate within that framework, we would be better off with a pair of Dunlop Volleys.
This is a cogent and solid argument that the government really does need to deal with. Thank you Christine for providing such clear and well researched examples and suggestions… and for providing not one iota of ammunition for the usual main-stream put-down of the Greens - i.e. impractical and ideologically blinkered.
Agreed John. If Christine can keep nailing it with such relentless logic it’s only a matter of time before it will really start to worry both the major parties.
Apologies to Christine Milne…Andrew Robb’s new friend.
Sorry my remarks above were intended for Paul Gilding’s article and I put them here by mistake. I have put them in the correct place now.
The New York Times might be impressed but I’m not. We all have a tendency to view the world through our own discipline but Paul seems to do this almost exclusively. He also seems to have swallowed a mind- numbing dose of systems theory. It can be very useful but it is not divine.
I am always sceptical of a solution which involves some sort of over-arching total control. The best we can hope to do is help set some rules at the edges. The alternative is more like something Fred Nile might come up with, or perhaps someone suffering from the John Pilger syndrome: the sky is falling in and they are all crooks.
We need to consult many disciplines to get viable answers. For example check some economists’ solutions to these sorts of problems as well. One in particular which would be useful is the concept of negative externalities and how these can be internalised to create greater responsibility in business and in consumers. Kevin Rudd, to his credit, has started doing this. He has even talked about doing it with risk.
Some other advice from the sphere of the economist( which I have to confess is my bias): it is useful when looking at these sorts of problems not to view resources as finite things. Assume they change over time, depending on how we decide to use them, how we conceive them and availability, among a myriad of other variables. Assume a resource can be a concept, a person, or a mode of thinking. Assume new useful resources can be discovered in abundance. I don’t just mean ones that already exist like those in the ground.
We are changing very fast now and not all change is catastrophic. Arguing that reducing per capita income is a possible solution is unhelpful. Higher per capita income does not necessarily have to lead to higher pollution even if current models may show that. It is also the hope of the future, providing more spare resources to research and tackle our problems. Our waffle would not be possible if we had to be out hunting for food.
I think Senator Christine Milne needs an ‘analogy checker’.
Quote: ” Secondly, she was sending out the subliminal message that the Greens are asking for something which is expensive and out of reach for the vast majority of Australians.”
I think Minister Wong was drawing an analogy between the SPEED of the Ferrari and the SPEED of the projected ETS emission reductions. She is commenting that the Greens (and other independents) want the reductions QUICKER than the Government has delivered.
Thus her further statement that the vehicle that the government has delivered was better than “no vehicle at all”.
‘NO vehicle as all’ is what we would be left with, if the government left it up to the Greens to enact legislation dealing with climate change. Senator Christine Milne just can’t get her head around this ‘democracy’ thing. The Greens first need to win considerable support from the electorate for their policy platforms BEFORE they can expect to have them adopted into law.
I wish them luck, but Senator Christine Milne’s claim that Minister Wong’s statement should be interpreted as a “thinly veiled threat” to drop the ETS scheme is politically naive.
The government has never threatened to drop the ETS legislation to my knowledge. “No vehicle at all’ is what we shall have (at least until the next federal election) if the Greens block the government’s program in the Senate.
They won’t, it would be political suicide.
I think that the only ” subliminal message” that Senator Christine Milne is hearing, is in her head.
I’m probably a bit late with this comment, but I’ll carry on.
I agree with the whole thrust of the argument whole heartedly, but chose a technical detail to quibble over.
I’m not convinced on the merits of a feed in tarriff. I would like it explained to me why it is better for the Government to invest in a feed in tarriff than to invest the same money in centralised grid size solar plants.
The economies of scale of massively decentralised generation are hopeless. Every house gets an inverter. Eeryone gets a reverse power meter. Everyone uses solar PV, which is much more expensive and resource intensive than solar thermal.
The empowerment of having a panel at home is probably worth something. Ditto the incentive to reduce home usage (feed in is only paid on the balance of import/export electricity). But, I don’t think these outweigh the benefits of centralised grid power. In terms of dollars per unit Renewable Energy, centralised wins hands down. in terms of dollars per unit “Government is seen to being doing something’, panels for individuals is far more valuable.
EB
Sorry Tom, not John.