Wong boring everyone to tears with details of flawed CPRS
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Like most parliamentarians, Penny Wong, the Minister for Climate Change, is a climate sceptic. Of course she prefers to use that term to describe those who ignore the overwhelming science about the causes of climate change, but yet she ignores those same scientists when it comes to deciding what to do about climate change. The science says that we need to reduce emissions by about 40% by 2020 if we want even a 50% chance of avoiding dangerous climate change. Wong has ignored that advice in setting the targets for her so-called Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) and in developing Australia’s negotiating position for the upcoming talks at Copenhagen. Imagine the following situation. You observe increasingly worrying changes in your body’s behaviour so you consult a doctor. The doctor diagnoses a serious illness, but assures you that with a long dose of drugs with some nasty side effects, you have a 90% chance of pulling through. You seek a second opinion, which confirms the diagnosis and the prescribed course of treatment. Both doctors remind you that there is some chance that their diagnosis might be wrong and that there is no guarantee that the cure will work. What would you do? Those with an interest in evidence-based medicine would most likely take the pills, wear the side effects and hope for the best. But the sceptics have got two options: ignore the diagnosis or ignore the prescription. When it comes to climate change, Wong is clearly the second kind of sceptic. Imagine walking out of the doctor’s surgery and calling your accountant to help you decide whether to undertake the course of treatment. How much will the treatment cost? How long will you have to spend in hospital? How much money could you earn if you were working instead? What discount rate shall we apply? No doubt some people make decisions in that way, but would you? But Penny Wong isn’t just a science sceptic, she is an economics sceptic. There is no economic case for the billions of taxpayers’ dollars that are to be given to the polluters and arguments about the need to protect our polluters are inconsistent with our longstanding strategy of lowering our trade protection to encourage other countries to follow suit. But the economics of the minister’s approach to climate change are much worse than her generosity with taxpayers’ money when it comes to silencing the polluters. Does anybody remember Sir Nicholas Stern? Stern made it quite clear that the economic costs of doing nothing to tackle climate change are much bigger than the costs of decisive policies to solve it. Of course, some jobs and profits will be lost in the emission-intensive sectors of the economy if we are serious about reducing emissions. That is, supposedly, the whole point. We now find ourselves in the farcical situation of trying to transform ourselves into a low carbon economy without actually changing the behaviour, or the profits, of the biggest polluters. Despite the fact that the climate change minister is ignoring the scientists and ignoring the economists, she does appear to be winning. Recent polls showing a reduction in concern for climate change will have been music to her ears. The strategy of boring everybody to tears with the byzantine detail of the flawed CPRS seems to be working. Rather than being grilled about why her targets ignore the science, why her compensation package ignores the economics and why her scheme design ignores common sense, she has simply been able to talk about the sceptics in the Opposition and her commitment to the passage of the CPRS. Neither of those issues is in doubt, but neither of them is terribly relevant. Fortunately for Penny Wong, the sceptics in the ALP are only influential in cabinet rather than noisy in parliament. But unfortunately for the atmosphere, the political pain of the Opposition is no substitute for a science-based approach to tackling climate change. |
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37 Comments
Like most of the Rudd government’s policies. the CPRS is perfectly designed - perfectly designed to confuse, obfuscate, distract, wedge, and, most importantly, not actually change anything. Rudd and co know that the Australian electorate are a bit timid and/or selfish when it comes to change. If Kevin was to make it onto the next Australian Olympic team, he’d be doing us proud going for gold in the ‘barely treading water’ competition.
Collectively we must be like the patients who smoke in hospital, or workaholics, or a drug addict whose habit is more important than life. The logic for profound change is sound but we’re hooked.
I’m impressed at exactly how the ‘Big Polluters’ pulled this off. Even in the face of overwhelming science, and the economics of acting early, they still managed to get us to pay them to do nothing, with us cleaning up the mess. Brilliant, really.
But how can we explain such apathy?
It must be that wicked John Howard’s fault because…THE SCIENCE IS IN!!!
Evan, help us out…pleeeease.
Copenhagen is in 54 days and time is running out.
Penny Wong boring? Nooooooo. Really? Such a sweet friendly girl next door type. Such a sweetie, she just keeps on keeping on. The perfect general for the CPRS. What more would a 72% popularity Prime Minister want.
A very nice analogy, Dr Denniss. But of course it is our children’s health that we are risking. Ignoring a doctor’s prescription for one’s own health seems foolish, but in the end we bear the consequences oursleves. Ignoring a doctor’s prescription for one’s children is much worse, and in some circumstances immoral and illegal.
The doctor analogy above is rather misleading and simplistic - climate change presents a classic prisioners dilemma situation where easy answers are not always forthcoming.
Perhaps a better one would be a doctor that suggests to a smoker that she should quit smoking as, if they do not quit, there is good chance she may get lung cancer. However this person works in a bar where smoking is not only allowed but flourshes. As she spends 8 hours in a thick fog of smoke even if she quits smoking she will face the same risk of lung cancer as if she stayed a smoker.
So the bar worker has the choice of quitting smoking and losing all the enjoyment smoking brings, or the logical choice of staying a smoker.
On top of this there is a high chance that medical science will come up with a cure for lung cancer in the near future that will make the whole arguement irrelevant!
And please no smart comments that she should quit her job!
Having just watched Mad Men, it is amazing to find an email from 1960 written by MMCDONO.
Lines like “the logical choice of staying a smoker” could only have been written then.
And back then they might have said that there was “a high chance that medical science will come up with a cure for lung cancer .. in the near future”. (49 years later we are still waiting.)
MMCDONO also thinks that the best analogy is to have us, and not our child, as the subject. In fact neither us nor our child will be the main victim of global warming. The worst impact will be felt by later generations.
No MMCDONO, she shouldn’t have to quit her job, but wouldn’t it make sense for a law to be passed making it illegal to pollute this poor individuals workspace with life endagering pollutants? Even if it threatens the jobs of several others selling the crap.
Sounds like you might be wanting to build a case for not acting until everyone does, but your anology is not a convincing one.
Wong is a content free, amoral, professional lawyer. What do you expect of her?
Ferguson is an content free, particularly amoral, amateur lawer from the unions. What would you expect of him?
Of all of them at least Malcom Turnbull has spoken the truth about his view of climate change. Surprisingly, he’s a lawyer, but there are always exceptions to every rule.
Sure there are numerous holes in my analogy as my closing comment alluded to but there is no doubt it is a closer description of reality than a simplitic case of going to a doctor and getting treatment as the article suggested.
Michael I find it funny that you poke holes in my prediction of a cure for smoking (which by the way is an analogy to a technological solution for global warming eg iron in the ocean type scenario) in the future whereas you so confidently predict:
“MMCDONO also thinks that the best analogy is to have us, and not our child, as the subject. In fact neither us nor our child will be the main victim of global warming. The worst impact will be felt by later generations”
Apologies I guess your crystal ball is better than mine!
An excellent analogy and an excellent comment, thank you.
What I fail to understand is, apart from those people who are actively working for the mining industry-especially the coal industry-stand to gain by denying climate change? Are they perhaps the same people who want unlimited population growth, at any price?
MMCDONO: surely a better analogy than yours, would be the woman I saw outside the Alfred hospital in some sort of special bed. She had had both her legs amputated, one above the knee and one above the knee. What do you think she was doing. Yep, she was smoking. I asked her why she was smoking and she said “Well, I haven’t got anything else to live for, have I?” That, my friend, is the sort of mentality which flourishes amongst the denialists.
Once again, Dr Denniss, an excellent article.
PS “and one below the knee.”
MMCDONO - My crystal ball has been illuminated by the last twenty years of scientific research. Of course it is not perfect, but is the best we can do.
She should quit her job, the smoker and Wong!
Liked the opening about being a sceptic. And the explanation from old crony unionist Wong is this: “Of course, some jobs and profits will be lost in the emission-intensive sectors of the economy if we are serious about reducing emissions.”
An insincere ALP needed to beat work choices, and they invested in any feel good policy that was useful at the time to do that. Work Choices is dead. And the veil is slipping.
Carr is talking nukes. Rudd is tub thumping on boat arrivals. Lowy Institute is pooh poohing there is even an electoral imperative in a poll.
Go Science (aka PM Kevin ‘science’ Rudd). The di was cast when Garrett was sidelined having served his purpose, 2 years ago.
If you want to reference game theory, I suggest you google for “_repeated_ prisoners dilemma” - although you do not directly benefit from your own actions, indirectly you do, because your actions influence other’s actions.
nice try Ben, but I don’t believe that repeated prisoners dilemma applies to being locked up in 5o years time - a timesacale over which global warming might be thought to have an effect.
The science behind global warming is by its nature predictive, a dangerous thing when it comes to complex systems. However, one would have to be a fool not to listen to the experts who spend their lives on the subject. But to say that later generations Michael will pay the price of our actions is big call! What price exactly are they paying? Sure it may be a few degrees hotter but in the absense of the gulfstream stopping it would be a big call to forecast that the quality of life in 50 years will be worse than it is now. Gold Coast anyone? Sign me up!
MMCDONO - Either you are just having fun baiting people, or I suggest that you spend some time reading to learn what is being predicated.
MMcDono, have you looked at the impact of a ‘few’ degrees hotter?
The CPRS policy has always been to first get a foot in the door and then to increase the reduction of emissions as everyone becomes used to the idea. Unfortunately this has been stymied by an at best bloody minded coalition and by the Greens who have deliberately misinterpreted this process for electoral gain. I used to vote green but will not do so again because of this.
Paul, while I hope you’re right, what evidence is there for this stance?
The problem with softer targets now is that they mean harder targets later, where later isn’t a lot later.
Paul, you’ve got to be joking!???? I’m not a Green member but they are certainly the only ones putting pressure on the Government to be realistic, enviromentally and economically. The ALP is haunted by short sighted unionists, don’t shoot the messenger please. BTW what party doesn’t interpret for electoral gain?
Look, sceptic is not a dirty word! It’s the way it’s being used that is. The basis of science uses scepticism at its core. Also belief is a word that we should not be using about science.
“…have you looked at the impact of a ‘few’ degrees hotter?…”
Unlikely.
No evidence to support your ‘theory’ there.
More likely to be a few degrees cooler.
Maybe you can explain why global average temperatures have not increased since 2001 despite increasing CO2 levels?
Or are you a global cooling denier as well?
I genuinely can’t believe you keep trotting this crap out; aren’t you getting RSI?
“Maybe you can explain why global average temperatures have not increased since 2001 despite increasing CO2 levels?”
I can answer that Most Peculiar Mama! If you take 1998 as you starting point Global temperatures decreased in the early part of this decade. That is because 1998 was the hottest year so far on record.
If you go back and start from any point earlier than 1998 the clear picture emerges
that temperatures are climbing alarmingly and this is in sync with carbon build up in the atmosphere.
I like MMCDONO’s analogy. I came across something similar in, I think it was “Freakonomics” by Levitt and Dubner:
Why is the Mediterranean Sea much more polluted than Lake Tahoe? (I’m not sure if those were the examples used, but similar.) If a country decided to stop polluting a body of water that it shared with many other countries, it would incur 100% of the costs of but only a fraction of the benefits of doing so. The US gets all of the costs and all of the benefits of not polluting Lake Tahoe.
The global carbon whatever is more like the Mediterranean Sea than Lake Tahoe.
@James McDonald: In other words, “There are things we can do, but they aren’t worth doing”. http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/10/16/first-dog-on-the-moon-424/
You could say the same thing about CFCs, and some people did.
But peer pressure can be a wonderful thing.
The costs of Global Warming exceed the costs of polluting the Mediterranean and they fall on nations that are prepared and able to lean on us if we keep dragging our feet.
@James McDonald:
In other words, “There are things we can do, but they aren’t worth doing”. [See Friday’s First Dog.]
You could say the same thing about CFCs, and some people did.
But peer pressure can be a wonderful thing.
The costs of Global Warming exceed the costs of polluting the Mediterranean and they fall on nations that are prepared and able to exert peer pressure.
This isn’t just about our emissions.
We are amongst the most vulnerable of countries. Unchecked Global Warming is going to cost us dearly.
One way to reduce (not eliminate) that cost is to put pressure on other emitters, something we have the wherewithal to do, so long as we are speaking from the ‘high moral ground’. That is, so long as our own carbon emissions are heading in the right direction.
You can look to morality, or you can look to self-interest. On this occasion, they both give the same answer.
PS. I posted a shorter version of this earlier today, with a link to the first dog cartoon I mentioned. As I should have realised would happen, that post is awaiting moderation. My apologies for repeating myself should it appear tomorrow.
2 other giant elephants in the room: whatever we do, the rest of the world is increasingly likely to move, so if we carry on protecting our polluters, we will suddenly have our dependency on coal exports ended cold turkey (coal turkey, I almost wrote). The other: check the oil price (I track it in the sidebar on my blog http://opinion-nation.blogspot.com/). Whatever we do about climate change, cheap oil is gone for good. If we do not work seriously on transitioning to a clean energy economy we will end up a broke third world country.
As for this:
both major natural drivers of temperature, ENSO and the solar cycle (the latter in the deepest minimum for nearly 100 years http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/03sep_sunspots.htm) have been pointing sharply down the last 2 years. Natural drivers should have put us last year at or near a 100-year low. Instead, last year’s worldwide temperature average was close to an all-time high (since the instrument record began). Why don’t we still hear all those claims of how the sun is the sole driver of climate variation?
The denial position that global warming means every year must be hotter than the last is best described as BS. The long-term trend is around 0.2 degrees per decade. Natural factors can easily result in a change that big in one year. The difference is the natural factors are short-term and cancel out of you average over a long enough period. CO_2 driven change is not a short-term effect, and jumps out from the data if you look at it over a long enough period that natural variability smooths out. Climate is defined as the average over 30 years, not the year to year average for this reason.
CFCs is an example where the substitute was *relatively* easy. (hydrocarbon propellant, etc)
Substituting CO2 out is orders of magnitude harder, and more costly (rebuilding power stations, finding an alternative for transport fuel…)
Continued…
Carbon taxing isn’t an answer. It’s akin to the RC church selling indulgences to rich people so they can ‘legitimately’ commit sins.
Carbon taxing is a much better system than trading permits. Of course the tax needs to be adjusted over time.
Emitting carbon is a sin, once which we will continue to do for the next few years, but we need to do less. So this rather different from a RC style sin where stopping the sin completely is possible.
In my view the best solution is permits that can only be bought and sold from the Government. Permits sold back to the Government are just money refunded, so no speculation is possible. The price of the permits at any time is set by a bidding process (eg if you sell 1000 permits, the price for each permit is the very most someone is prepared to pay for the last permit).
My system would also NOT allow any international trading of permits.
Importers would have to buy permits for the CO2 emitted in making the import, and exporters would not have to buy Australian permits for goods they exported.
Money raised by selling permits would be used to subsides building new green energy, better public transport, and helping people to do things to reduce their emissions.
Problem solved
The problem with carbon taxing is it implies that it is ok to emit carbons, and the industries that do that and pay the tax are going to pass it on to their respective consumers anyway. The RC church probably thought/thinks that the money they raised from indulgences was put to good use too. I have reservations about tax schemes not being eliminated when no longer needed, IOW, they become a subsidy for some industry groups.
In another thread I proposed that the balance to a Bolt denial would be a proposal for Australia to reduce its emissions to only 80% of 1990 levels within 2 years.
Even under this proposal it allows us to emit 80% of our 1990 levels in two years.
The idea of any system where the polluter pays (ie tax or permits) is that the costs are handed down to the customer. As well as the polluter having an incentive to cut emissions (and thus reduce product cost), the consumer has an incentive to reduce their usage of the product, or to look for alternatives.
(edit)
EVAN BEAVER: For what it’s worth, I think he/she/it is employed by one of the big coal mining companies. As to the RSI part of it. It’s probably special software with all of the key phrases linked to different letters. Frightening isn’t it? All the more so when she is probably the one who is feeding Andrew Bolt with all his carefully tailored tripe.