Climate is physical, not political
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At last weekend’s wonderful Byron Writers Festival, politics once again became a central topic. But the burning issue was not the unlikely popularity of Kevin Rudd nor the predictable travails of Malcolm Turnbull, but the far more substantial matter of climate change. Speaker after speaker expressed frustration and disappointment at the lack of action, and their arguments were overwhelmingly endorsed by enthusiastic audiences. Well, they would say that at the Byron Writers Festival, wouldn’t they? But despite the well-funded campaign to convince the populace that the science is not yet settled (The Australian in particular has become a gathering place for hired guns and loonies) the concern extends a lot further than the havens of northern New South Wales. Even in the midst of the economic downturn, public support for an emissions trading system has remained fairly solid; polling in June showed 65% in favour, a majority of nearly two to one. The public is apparently ahead of the politicians in realising that global warming is not just another item on the electoral agenda, it is a clear and present danger which demands an urgent and decisive response. Where most of our politicians have failed us — and to date the Rudd government is no exception — is that they have insisted on treating climate change not as a grim physical reality but as a political problem which can be fixed with a political solution. And political solutions invariably involve delay, negotiation and eventual compromise. Thus the government’s approach has appeared to be that yes, climate change is a worry; it threatens drastic changes to the weather which will include fire, flood, drought, famine, pestilence and death on a huge scale. It will almost certainly lead to huge waves of climate refugees which could precipitate wars on a scale which could threaten the survival of human civilisation. Clearly something needs to be done. But hey, let’s not get carried away. There are other interests involved, like our national advantages as a major coal producer. And after all, the shareholders in the mines and the smelters and the generators all have rights too. So we’ll have to strike a balance. And the balance in its present form means doing not much until it’s too late; and the opposition won’t even accept this gesture. The infuriating part is that most of the angst is unnecessary. Sure, cutting down on the carbon-emitting fossil fuels will cause some short term pain and expense (and I say “will,” not “would”, because sooner or later it’s going to happen whether we like it or not). Electricity bills will rise, though not to a catastrophic extent, and some jobs would be lost. But costs will be easily manageable in an economy like Australia’s, and at the same time new opportunities will be created in more sustainable industries. The oil companies realise this: at least one is already heavily involved in the production of solar cells. And the real point, emphasised in reports by Nicholas Stern in England and Ross Garnaut in Australia, is that the longer we procrastinate, the greater the cost and disruption will be. Malcolm Turnbull claims to be concerned about our children being burdened with debt from Rudd’s stimulus packages; he’s certainly not doing them any favours by delaying action on climate change. And would an increase, even a big increase, in electricity bills really be so devastating anyway? History suggests not. In the last decade the price of oil actually trebled, before peaking (temporarily) in 2008. And we whinged about the cost of filling up the Holden, but we coped: in fact, as you might recall, the economy went through an unprecedented boom. It would be overly optimistic a to assume that the next big energy transition will be quite such an easy ride, but it is certainly overly pessimistic to predict the plummeting in living standards for which the opposition is apparently hoping. But this assumes that rational argument will triumph over the politics of the situation which is in itself a pretty sanguine belief. The coalition, of course, is hopelessly confused about it all but in the end will probably pass Rudd’s scheme; if it doesn’t it will not only be inviting terrible defeat at a double-dissolution election, but will also have repudiated and humiliated its leader. Malcolm Turnbull is already in enough trouble; rejection on such a key issue would certainly make him unelectable. But the Rudd government is far from blameless. It has already muddled and watered down the key recommendations of Ross Garnaut’s 2008 report, which was never all that vigorous to begin with. Now it seems determined to play politics with what is left. The refusal to decouple the legislation for renewable energy quotas from the emissions trading scheme is bloody-mindedness, pure and simple. It is essential to start reducing the power companies’ reliance of coal and oil as quickly as possible. The renewable energy act would require them to get at least twenty percent of their energy from renewables — solar, wind, tide, geothermal, whatever — by 2020. This is a thoroughly useful and desirable measure in its own right and in spite of Penny Wong’s rhetoric it has nothing whatsoever to do with emissions trading. She is using the issue as a wedge, which may or may not be smart politics, but it is lousy policy. The opposition is willing, even eager, to pass the renewable energy act, and it should be encouraged to do so. But worryingly, this is only one example of what seems to be a less than dedicated approach to climate change. Rudd’s economic stimulus package could have been a great opportunity to encourage a move to renewables, through direct grants and improved infrastructure. Instead almost all the infrastructure money went to upgrading roads, rail and ports to facilitate the export of coal to fuel the power stations of Indian and China. And when it came to boosting consumer spending, what did he do? Well, he ran down the subsidy for domestic solar power and gave us each $900 to buy a plasma television set. So much for the greatest moral, social and economic challenge of our generation. We expected better. |
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8 Comments
I agree with everything here Mungo, even like large parts of it, except one. I’m pretty sure BP are (if that’s the oil company you’re referring to) moving out of solar cells. Their plant at Homebush recently changed hands.
The renewable energy act actually requires them to get 20% from Renewable Energy Certificates. Although RECs look like they are units of energy with zero fossil carbon content, they don’t actually require it. For example, bio-ethanol, which may use more fossil diesel than it replaces, qualifies for an REC.
It would take only a slight modification of the Act to require the implied fossil energy content to be discounted before acknowledging an REC. Even as it stands at the moment, the Act does not require “renewable energy” to come from a renewing source, only that it does not explicitly contain fossil fuel. It wouldn’t take much to include nuclear in your “whatever”.
Mungo, I’m a real fan from way back, but I don’t think you, or anyone else backing a sudden transition away from fossil fuels, have realistically modelled the economic consequences and the pain that would be suffered. Once you start factoring in widespread power cuts after the La Trobe Valley generators stop maintaining their coal-fired power stations it starts to look like the sort of situation that leads to governments losing power (sic!). To enforce these kinds of changes based on somebody’s computer models of climate, a notoriously complex and chaotic system, is the sort of ‘courageous’ decision that any politican in the world will back off from.
People say they are in favour, but just watch that change when the real consequences start flowing.
For some of us this is not about the politics, but precisly about ‘rational argument’.
Mungo, Australian coal exports mostly fuel steel smelters in Korea and Japan, with a smaller amount going to power stations in those countries and a tiny portion going to smelters in China (where our coking coal is a superior product to what can be obtained locally).
Coal-fired power stations in India and China are fuelled (almost?) entirely from domestic sources, which are cheaper than imports. Neither country yet suffers any shortage of thermal coal, though China is projected to in coming decades.
MichaelT, natural-gas-fired electricity generators are cheaper to build and run, and have much lower carbon emissions than coal-fired ones. Gas-fired generators are also much more amenable to being turned off or ‘down’ in response to decreased demand for their power — thus making them an ideal partner for investment in demand-side efficiency and, of course, a much more cost-effective backup for intermittent renewables than old base-load coal-fired behemoths.
A vastly underexploited energy market in Australia is for cogeneration — the production of electricity from clean fuel such as gas wherever industrial process heat is also required, thus getting >90% thermal efficiency from the fuel burned to produce electricity, as opposed to the <30% from dirty old coal-fired central thermal power stations or <40% from even the most efficient central generators. Smaller-scale cogen installations can exploit even the demand for air-conditioning in urban environments, turning ‘waste heat’ into cool buildings and at the same time increasing the reliability of the urban electricity grid. Generators on this scale are in wide use in countries such as the USA and Japan, and benefit from the scale economy of mass-production.
A carbon emissions price imposed on the electricity industry will increase electricity prices, boost the total revenues flowing through the industry, and divert investment from coal towards gas-fired power stations and cogeneration as well as towards renewable electricity. There will be no need to fear power cuts from the retirement of our oldest power stations.
Yes, these are good points, Jonathan. But I still think we don’t know enough about the transitional costs of increasing the price of electricity.
As an example of how modern use of power station waste heat is, consider Battersea Power Station which, until shut down (for oil generation -sic!!) in the thatcherite 80s,
The BEAST ate the rest of my comment - Battersea Power station warmed all of (better-off homes of Chelsea, most of the mansion flats in Pimlico and a significant proportion of the council housing of Wandsworth, over 10,000 homes in all. FOR FREE. That was 75 years ago.
Actually it should, for Australia, be much more about the economic than either the physical or the political. We know perfectly well what the political result will be. A hopeless ETS - by anyone’s standards - will eventually be passed unamended so there won’t be a double dissolution trigger. (Unamended because Rudd knows how hopeless the ETS is and how little difference a deal with the Opposition would make to its uselessness so there is no incentive for him not to remember that 65% of voters still say, whatever they would think if they had to vote on the issue, they favour the ETS. He might as well give himself a chance of an early double dissolution election).
As to the physical, and the science thereof, you are to be commended, as a bien pensant like David de Kretser, the Governor of Victoria (who is at least some sort of scientist, if nothing relevant) in being willing to stake your reputation on something you are totally unqualified to form an opinion on. There are plenty of respectable scientists of the highest credentials who are far from sure that increasing output of anthropogenic CO2 will be seen to have any large effects on global warming once the role of evaporation, precipitation and other ocean related effects are properly understood. As for tipping points, several have already been reached according to the likes of Tim Flannery and others with no relevant scientific qualifications but, in the absence of explanation for much greater climate changes in the past than are now in prospect (eg. decline of the first Indus civilisation), failure of the Egyptian Old Kingdom and drying out of the Sahara, drying up of the Great Lakes, why should one be impressed by the modelers of the dynamic chaos that is the climate and weather. We can’t even forecast Global Financial Crises……
And, if there is a problem, what is the best thing Australia can do about it? Surely not produce something as basic as electricity by means which are twice as expensive (and even more - far more in the case of wind and photovoltaic solar) when our cheap power is so important, directly but mostly indirectly, to our current expectations of self-indulgence, not to mention our expectation that someone else’s taxes will pay for Mum’s second and third hip replacements and her long term care with Alzheimer’s.
Surely Mungo you are not one of those fantasists who talks of Australia setting an example, or a super fantasist who believes someone might be impressed enough by it to follow it. Surely you don’t think China or India or the US are going to respond to our preaching.
What a pity that such a witty writer, so shrewd in assessing politicians’ motivations, should relapse into being a typically innumerate and economically illiterate journo. You still have the IQ points Mungo: please use them.