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.
The new Canberra buzzword: anti-non-decoupling
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Remember the de-coupling debate? No not the one on the renewable energy bill, the one about whether Asian economies were no longer dependent on US growth? The anti-decoupling crowd declared victory during the financial crisis as major Asian and SE Asian economies turned up their toes and went into recession despite the absence of the sort of structural problems in their financial sectors witnessed in the US and Europe. Japan, for example, was about as decoupled as a caboose plunging into a ravine along with the rest of the train. Some might now suggest that as far as China is concerned the proclamation of victory was premature. The time may be right for an anti-non-decoupling school of commentary. We now have our very own de-linking debate, in the guise of a discussion about whether the Government’s stimulus should be wound back because the economy is doing so much better than expected. There’s an element of disingenuousness in this debate. We appear to have forgotten the emergency conditions in which both the first and second stimulus packages were crafted. Pull out that 7.30 Report episode from last year when a near-hysterical Kerry O’Brien encouraged Steve Keen to tell us just how many decades of depression we faced and you’ll get the panicked environment policymakers were operating in. To the extent that the economy is doing better than expected, it’s testimony to how right the RBA, Treasury and, yes, Wayne Swan and Kevin Rudd were in their response. But that tumultuous environment that overtook us last year was in its way a reasonably simple policy challenge. Now the challenge, and that of the next two years, is far more complicated. Given that growth in the US, Europe and other developed countries is continuing to be flat or negative, and is unlikely to be more than anaemic for the next year or more, how do Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan — or for that matter Glenn Stevens and the RBA Board — manage the three forces of their own stimulus, that coming from China, and whatever dribbles in from the rest of the world? Remember that we are now into the second stage of the Government’s stimulus package, aimed at educational infrastructure and social housing. The third stage, of investment in major infrastructure, is still in preparation and in any event is widely considered as necessary regardless of economic conditions (a view many share about social housing too, by the way). The second stage has a way to run, well into next year. China, as last night’s $50 billion LNG deal illustrates, is likely to provide a continuing source of external stimulus, and not just on a small scale. This is the sort of deal that provides the context for Ken Henry’s little-reported comment earlier this week that Australia was likely to strongly attract international capital in coming years because we combined the stability and governance of a developed country with the resource base of a developing country. The Gorgon deal with Exxon Mobil illustrates that perfectly. The project, and associated investment, is now very likely to go ahead — there’s no way Peter Garrett won’t find a way to approve it. According to Henry, China in 2008 accounted for 15% of our exports in 2008, a massive figure — especially compared to a decade ago. But sluggish world growth will still be a heavy drag on the Australian economy. So who wants to make the brave call about when policymakers should decide that they should pull back on the one factor they can control — fiscal stimulus — because the two factors beyond their control — China and the rest of the world economy — are giving us sufficient net stimulus — particularly when the stimulus from China is pretty much confined to the resources sector? It’s the toughest policy call since an inexperienced and under-informed Reserve Bank and the Hawke Government tried to manage the eighties boom and produced a savage recession that ruined hundreds of thousands of lives. Maybe tougher than that. How much has Australia de-linked from the rest of the world and linked to China? The policy task doesn’t get easier beyond that. An eventual world recovery will send us right back into the sort of resources boom we were enjoying before the financial crisis. We could’ve handled that one a lot better and the onus will be on whichever Government we have to better manage the fiscal proceeds of the boom and keep improving our regulatory framework across any number of key sectors. The RBA, which is already concerned about — though not predicting — a housing bubble, will have to resolve its position on managing or leaning against asset price booms. And there’s the inconvenient truth that every project like Gorgon is a carbon frolic. LNG is nowhere near as emissions-intensive as coal but it doesn’t have to be to make a substantial addition to Australia’s greenhouse emissions. And in any event, China has predicted it will continue to rely on coal to fuel its rapidly-expanding energy needs despite undertaking quite extraordinary levels of investment in renewable energy, particularly wind, where it will soon be a world leader. Australia is already one of the biggest carbon dealers in the world and this will only increase significantly as our resources-based relationship with China grows. All our economic priorities right now are aimed at ramping up our level of carbon exports, and we will do very well economically out of it. Good luck changing that. |
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16 Comments
Thank you Bernard. I think that any tapering down of carbon emissions needs to be applauded. Interim solutions that are suitable for power plants and cars are even better. Of course we need more of the alternative power technologies to be developed/ refined and rolled out as soon as poss.
LNG is one of these short to medium term solutions that is here now and doesn’t have to prove itself.
Pushing our LNG resource (abroad and in Australia) is far better than doing nothing about coal until the illusory carbon sequestration gizmo gets designed and hooked onto the smoke stacks of everything that burns it; and it may keep those that are flogging nuclear power off the front porch for a little longer.
Afghan poppy farmers have more ethics than
Australian coal franchises
Anti-non-decoupling? Argh! Non-decoupling would bring us back to coupling, so anti-non-decoupling is the same as decoupling…
… And how is burning LNG, which *does* emit carbon, better for reducing carbon emissions than nuclear power, which emits none?
Let’s not get carried away. There is a risk that China is heading into another decline, as noted in a Bloomberg article reprinted in today’s FinReview. The Shanghai sharemarket went down nearly 20% over the past few weeks, although it appears to be up again today. The article quotes two Bank of America analysts writing that this is a worry: “Since China was leading during both the bear market decline and the recovery, this could well be the ‘canary in the coalmine’”.
Neither China nor Australia can keep defying gravity for much longer. Only a revival in US consumer demand can save us, and there is no sign of that happening.
All this supports the view of ultra-Bears such as the US forecaster Harry Dent and our own Steve Keen (who you refer to above), who predict another wave downwards.
Meski
Your argumentation technique is somewhat ‘sleight of hand’.
Carbon reduction wasn’t the subject or predicate of my last sentence where I regrettably mentioned nuclear power. Interim solutions would be best if they turn the trend in carbon dioxide in right direction - downwards, until you or your nuclear science team get around to working out how to ship, secure and store (or sequester) the immensely toxic waste that nuclear power threatens us with. Or else (isn’t it obvious?) we could be jumping out of the coal fired frying pan and into a nuclear wasteland where food, reproduction and many other things that are important to us are lost.
Michael T - I agree, but what level? Do we really have to revive US Consumer demand to previous levels or something a little more modest?
‘Evidently’
Your argumentation technique is somewhat ‘facile’.
Bob Hawke: “The fact is that Australia has some of the geologically safest places in the world to act as a repository for nuclear waste.”
As of 2005, nuclear power provided 2.1% of the world’s energy and 15% of the world’s electricity, with the U.S., France, and Japan together accounting for 56.5% of nuclear generated electricity. In 2007, the IAEA reported there were 439 nuclear power reactors in operation in the world, operating in 31 countries.
The world’s first commercial nuclear power station, Calder Hall in Sellafield, England was opened in 1956 with an initial capacity of 50 MW (later 200 MW).The first commercial nuclear generator to become operational in the United States was the Shippingport Reactor (Pennsylvania, December, 1957)
Jamesk
read!
“until you or your nuclear science team get around to working out how to ship, secure and store (or sequester) the immensely toxic waste that nuclear power threatens us with”
and read! “I regrettably mentioned nuclear power”
because individual nations do suspect things does that make it OK for others to do it, or do it some more?
I am so facile because I think long term. huh?
Evidently says “isn’t it obvious?”
Er….. no.
The reason nuclear power is not more prevalent in the world is because of economics in the face of cheap coal and gas not as you self righteously imagine.
Jamesk
This article is not about nuclear, but as you insist on hijacking the agenda.
With regard to when I said “we could be jumping out of the coal fired frying pan and into a nuclear wasteland where food, reproduction and many other things that are important to us are lost.” re: one of those things important to us, check this out from the guardian a few months ago.
Toxic link: the WHO and the IAEA
A 50-year-old agreement with the IAEA has effectively gagged the WHO from telling the truth about the health risks of radiation. Oliver Tickell, guardian.co.uk, Thursday 28 May 2009 08.00
“…research was presented indicating that as many as a million children across Europe and Asia may have died in the womb as a result of radiation from Chernobyl, as well as hundreds of thousands of others exposed to radiation fallout, backing up earlier findings published by the ECRR in Chernobyl 20 Years On: Health Effects of the Chernobyl Accident. Delegates heard that the standard risk models for radiation risk published by the International Committee on Radiological Protection (ICRP), and accepted by WHO, underestimate the health impacts of low levels of internal radiation by between 100 and 1,000 times – consistent with the ECRR’s own 2003 model of radiological risk (The Health Effects of Ionising Radiation Exposure at Low Doses and Low Dose Rates for Radiation Protection Purposes: Regulators’ Edition).
Let us hope that none of the other 439 power stations have any containment problems until we find safe ways of handling this highly toxic stuff. To many the thought of building more nuclear power stations until that time is vile short-termism and puts the expense, risk and technical burden of maintaining highly toxic waste off onto multiple future generations.
As Bernard says, we are already one of the biggest carbon dealers in the world, so I guess it isn’t much of a slide down to nuclear pimp? Now which of us is the facile chap?
‘Evidently’ is being outrageously dishonest and petulant.
I called you out on your original arrogant and ignorant post.
You have not answered the criticism, but you deflect and make proselytising diatribes to the imaginary criticisms that you’d like to think I made.
Each of your subsequent posts has also been arrogant and ignorant and indeed personally abusive.
The arguments against nuclear power in first world countries are economic, storage and safety.
In first world Western nations the arguments against on safety are much more difficult to sustain.
The strongest argument against, on economic grounds, is diminishing with carbon taxation and diminishing petroleum resources with a concomitant increase in the price of fuel.
Unfortunately, it would seem that is not just your argument that’s facile……
Evidently, you were the one that linked coal nuclear and LNG with carbon reduction, in mentioning carbon sequestration, so I see no particular sleight of hand in my argument. If carbon sequestration is going to work, it will be needed for gas-fired systems as well as coal. But not for nuclear fission systems. Nuclear fission shouldn’t be a long term solution, anyway.
MESKI and JAMESK you seem to be agreeing with yourself.
Just because you call me facile, arrogant, ignorant, abusive, outrageously dishonest, petulent, self righteous who is proselytising diatribes to imaginary criticisms, does not make your arguments more sound. Check my posts, not once have I called you a name, to my mind that makes my points stand up unchallenged, as you have played the man not the ball. It appears you haven’t understood the subtlety required for sound debate on these issues so you have loudly disqualified yourself.
What, you want me to *disagree* with myself?
And where did I call you “facile, arrogant, ignorant, abusive, outrageously dishonest, petulent, self righteous” ?? I’d like to see a quote of where I did that. Perhaps I’d like to, but so far I’ve refrained.
In case you’re implying we’re the same person, you’re 100% wrong on that. I’ve disagreed With JamesK before, and likely will again. Sorry about that, James. :^)
I’ll never give up on you Meski.
Please know that is possible to come over from the Dark Side
All that’s required is open-mindedness