The Senate debate about the CPRS is getting close, and with views as diverse as those of Steve Fielding and Bob Brown it’s likely to be a cracker. Unfortunately, while there might be plenty of heat in the debate, whether the CPRS gets up or not will make no difference to global temperatures.
That fact has nothing to do with the tired observation that Australia only accounts for 1.5 per cent of world emissions. When you realise that there are 192 countries in the world, which entitles you to around half a per cent each, 1.5 per cent is actually quite an achievement. And when you factor in that we account for only 22 million of the world’s 6.7 billion people you get a clear picture of just how good at polluting we Australians really are.
The reason that the passage of the CPRS will have no impact on the world’s emissions is simpler than that. The fact is, the CPRS is irrelevant. It is irrelevant to the level of Australia’s emissions in 2020, and it is irrelevant to the world’s emissions in 2020. Both of these levels will be determined at Copenhagen or soon after. The treaty that comes out of Copenhagen will make no mention of the CPRS or its pathetic targets. Why Malcolm Turnbull would stake his leadership on something so meaningless defies logic.
So if the CPRS is so pointless, what’s all the fuss about? Unfortunately, it’s the old story of money, with a little bit of spin thrown in. But before analysing the farce surrounding the CPRS, let’s remove some misconceptions first.
The first thing that needs to be cleared up is that the CPRS targets have got nothing to do with the targets for Australia that will come out of the Copenhagen negotiations. As with Kyoto, Copenhagen will result in a series of different targets for different countries. Australia’s target will be determined by international arm twisting. Our negotiators will be in there arguing for the kind of pathetic targets to be found in the CPRS while other countries will be trying to drag us into the range supported by the civilised countries. The end result will be driven by diplomacy, not the passage of domestic legislation.
The second misunderstanding is that Copenhagen is about creating an international emissions trading scheme. It’s not. It’s about setting targets for countries to meet. How they meet them is up to them. Individual countries can implement domestic emissions trading schemes if they want to but they are also free to have a carbon tax or introduce Stalinist command and control policies. Countries who want to pollute more than their entitlement can trade with countries who want to pollute less. But Copenhagen is about developing targets for countries, not telling them how they should get there.
Thirdly, the world doesn’t give a damn whether the CPRS is passed or not. In Australia we are often told that the passage of the CPRS is somehow central to keeping the whole international push to tackle climate change on track. Without the CPRS the whole thing might crumble. Yeah right. The big countries will sort it out between themselves, the only issue for Australia is which side are we running cover for.
So again, what is all the fuss surrounding the CPRS about?
Let’s start with the money. Once Australia agrees to binding international targets at Copenhagen then something is going to have to change in Australia. Either we can reduce our emissions or we can spend a lot of money buying permits from other counties. The big polluters don’t want to do either as both would cost them money. What the CPRS does is give the big polluters certainty – certainty that they can keep polluting, certainty that they will get lots of compensation, and certainty that the carbon price won’t rise above $40 per tonne.
The point that has been missed in the Australian debate is that if the deal out of Copenhagen means Australia has to reduce emissions, but the CPRS has already assured the big polluters that they don’t have to lower their emissions, then something will have to give. That something will be the Australian taxpayer. If we are silly enough to give the big polluters ‘certainty’ while uncertainty about the outcome at Copenhagen remains then it will be the taxpayer who has to make up the difference. The taxpayer will have to pick up the tab for buying billions of dollars worth of credits from other counties while the CPRS gives a ‘right’ to the big polluters to carry on increasing their pollution.
You can see why the polluters are keen on rushing the scheme through.
And now for the spin. The Treasury modelling of the CPRS tells you all you really need to know about the CPRS. First, Australia’s domestic emissions will be no lower in 2019 than they were in 2008. Second, the carbon price will be so low that no coal fired power stations will be forced to close down. Third, all of the ‘reduction’ in emissions will come from importing permits from other counties.
Put simply the CPRS talks a good game, but it just doesn’t deliver.
The ‘clean energy revolution’ associated with the CPRS does not result in the closure of a single coal fired power station. The ‘transformation’ of the Australian economy does not even include higher petrol prices. And the ‘international leadership’ shown by Australia includes one of the least ambitious emission reduction targets in the developed world.
I can think of lots of reasons why Malcolm Turnbull might not want the leadership of the Coalition, but his party’s hostility to the CPRS wouldn’t be one of them.
Dr Richard Denniss is Executive Director of The Australia Institute www.tai.org.au.
27 thoughts on “The CPRS is pointless. It’s Copenhagen that counts”
Duncan Farrow
October 6, 2009 at 7:37 pmLots of discussion, ideas, CPRS, carbon tax and other elaborate meta-schemes to reduce carbon emissions. Seems to me that a political/economic solution is not around the corner for all the hot air expended on them.
Our best hope is that the science is wrong otherwise we’re f**ked.
Sadly, the science is holding up despite the barrage of vested interest attacks.
AR
October 6, 2009 at 7:49 pmDennis’ outline seems cogent & credible to me. Bring on an energy tax, pure & simple but it should feed into every other activity in society. The GST was supposed to replace other taxes but, because of political pusillanimity (of the Oz Dem leader – cursed be her name which, thankfully I’ve forgotten), not to say states’ GREED, it didn’t.
Make petrol/diesel $10 per litre and tax coal at $100 per tonne in power stations and watch society shift its priorities, voluntary or perforces, and quarantine the consolidated revenue to fund alternative energy.
“Who dies with the most toys, wins” is the dumbest credo ever spawned by the forces of darkness but it still guides the majority of the population. Those who stepped out of the system 40/30/20 or even 10 years ago have long wondered when the faeces would interface with the air movement devices. It won’t be .ong now.
james12
October 6, 2009 at 8:15 pmDennis,
The CPRS is important. Its the mechanism by which we will achieve any cut we sign up to internationally. Without a mechanism agreeing to a cut is an empty promise. Both are as necessary as each other.
And whats more, the CPRS targets aren’t ‘pathetic’, its actually a cut of 5-25% on levels we had about 10 years ago depending on what the international agreement is. the 5% is only the cut if theres no decent international agreement and we go it alone. Keeping in mind our emissions have 1. Increased since 10 yrs ago, 2. our population is continuing to rise (and our emissions with it), the 5% cut is not as ‘pathetic’ as it might first appear. It must be compared to what would have otherwise happened if we continue as we are, which is a huge increase on 2000 levels by 2020.
Ramble
October 6, 2009 at 9:23 pmCPRS is nonsense. Peter Walsh sums it up all too nicely:
President’s Report 2009
Peter Walsh
The Kyoto junkies’ creed is that rising levels of atmospheric CO2 caused by burning fossil fuels will, unless this is reversed very quickly, lead to runaway global warming which inter alia will destroy the Great Barrier Reef and threaten life on Earth. They proclaim this doctrine to be a scientific certainty.
The fact that the planet has known much higher levels of CO2, twice in historical time and at least eight times in geological time blows away all the scientific certainty and is therefore ignored. Nobody knows for certain what caused previous warming events, but it certainly had nothing to do with burning fossil fuels. And the two historical events during the Roman and Medieval periods were accompanied by a warmer and wetter world and higher levels of human welfare, is rigorously ignored by climate catastrophists, and their media cheer squads, and by the self serving IPCC. It is almost beyond belief that this repudiation of real science and evidence has been uncritically swallowed by the self proclaimed ‘Intellectual Elite’.
A prominent journalist previously regarded as balanced and competent published in August an opinion piece which said:
“Turnbull is under assault from Labor as well as the climate change ideological right wing because he spearheads a national centrist stance that backs an emissions trading scheme and wants to make a contest over models, not over climate change belief”. (The Australian August 12 2009).
Paul Kelly did however make, accidentally perhaps, a very important point: The Kyoto junkies wallow in belief but ignore factual evidence. Until they change any national Government should spurn their disastrous advice.
The veneer of the Enlightenment is very thin and fragile.
In the late 1980s Global Warming became a favourite topic for the ‘chattering classes’ who recognised it as a viable excuse for sabotaging the economy.
‘Global Warming’ has since morphed into ‘Climate Change’. Why? Because the Earth has been cooling for nearly 10 years. The emphasis therefore was moved by opponents of economic growth to Climate Change which, because it is more nebulous, offered more opportunities for activists to peddle their junk science and terrify the masses.
Led by the ABC the media obliged and brainwashed the people to the extent that anyone who questions the Junk Science is branded a ‘denialist’, the moral equivalent of those who deny Hitler’s Holocaust. Climate change activist Clive Hamilton of the Australia Institute has demanded these denialists be charged and put on trial. Hamilton is no fan of liberal democracy.
I confess to being a denialist from the beginning, not because I have any scientific expertise, but because the Vikings grew cereal crops in Greenland for several centuries. The climate then had to be much warmer than it has been since about 1500AD. In geological time there have been at least eight or more warm periods none of which were caused by burning fossil fuels and boosting the CO2 in the atmosphere.
Climate change zealots become denialists by claiming the Medieval Warm Period was an aberration confined to the North Atlantic. As usual, no evidence is produced to prop up their claims. Any evidence which contradicts their global warming—sorry climate change—hypothesis is ignored.
These ‘denialists’ dominate the International Panel on Climate Change—the IPCC.
Twenty years ago a very senior Australian Public Servant had been, during his career, Secretary of two core Departments, and also served overseas and had also been exposed to the mindset of the (mostly) Third World careerists attached to various Agencies of the United Nations.
His assessment was that most people who work in UN Agencies are seduced by the UN First World lifestyle which their own Third World countries cannot afford. They become defenders of all the United Nations sub-branches and agencies, whether they are functional or dysfunctional, corrupt or clean. (And in keeping with the all stick together culture, the IPCC chief came from a Third World country).
The IPCC record is disgraceful, even by UN standards. It habitually concocts evidence to prop up its predetermined conclusions.
A few examples:
The Mann ‘hockey stick’ graph sloped gently downwards for nine hundred years but rose sharply at the beginning of the 20th Century, a dramatic change which was attributed to increasing CO2 emissions. The authors of this graph refused to hand over the data behind their conclusions until forced to by the US Congress. When the data was subjected to expert scrutiny it was shown that the hockey stick was a fraud. The computer programmes which produced the hockey stick result produced the same hockey stick when supplied with random numbers. When this was revealed the fraudulent graph eventually disappeared from all IPC publications. No explanation or apology was provided.
In recent years the global warmers have repeatedly claimed that atmospheric CO2 was approaching a catastrophic ‘tipping point’ leading to ‘runaway’ greenhouse gases which would destroy the planet as we know it. That is not just a barefaced lie, it stands truth on its head. Every additional unit of CO2 has less impact than every previous unit, because it is measured on a logarithmic scale.
The IPCC has adopted the practice of listing among the scientists who support the IPCC’s conclusions, scientists who are strongly opposed to those conclusions. Perhaps the most scandalous was the case of Dr Paul Reiter, one of the world’s leading experts on tropical diseases and malaria in particular. The IPCC claimed that increasing global temperatures would increase the incidence of malaria and other mosquito-driven diseases. Reiter, in commenting on these claims prior to publication, pointed out that these claims were nonsensical and should not be made. The IPCC ignored his criticisms and went ahead with its claims, but at the same time listed Paul Reiter as one of the authorities supporting them. Reiter demanded that the IPCC delete his name from their list of authorities. They ignored him. Only when he threatened legal action did they finally delete his name.
Much the same treatment was meted out to Dr Chris Landsea, a leading American expert on cyclones and hurricanes. Part of the IPCC storyline is that global warming has led to increasing hurricane activity and loss of property. The re–insurance industry has bought this story and has become an active rent-seeker in the global warming cart. There is no connection between hurricanes and CO2 concentrations, none; but Dr Landsea also had to threaten legal action to get his name removed.
The IPCC and its cheer squad debauches language in a manner of the pigs in George Orwell’s Animal Farm. The pigs were the smartest and most self serving of all the animals. Sheep were the most stupid. In the early days of Animal Farm the evil pig Napoleon taught the sheep to baa aha ha out ‘two legs good, four legs bettaah haa’. When the pigs decided to wear dinner suits and walk on their hind legs, Napoleon taught the sheep to baa ha haa out ‘four legs good, two legs bet aar ha’.
The Rudd Government’s spin doctors have picked up the technique, labelling the Government’s planned (and disastrous if it is implemented) Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. Thus, carbon dioxide, a trace gas without which there would be no life on Earth, morphs into a ‘pollutant’.
The Kyoto junkies, as part of their brainwashing programme, assert that renewable energy, solar and wind, are suitable for base load power. That is another bare faced lie because the Sun shines far less than 50% of the time, and the wind does not always blow. The only reliable alternative for base load power is nuclear. It will be more expensive, but it would do the job. And of course a motley collection of ignorant zealots will demand that nuclear power be banned entirely, and gutless politicians will probably comply.
Al Gore, champion charlatan of ‘global warming’ and ‘climate change’ will probably approve. He lives in two or three MacMansions which require a huge volume of electricity to supply the air conditioners. He also flies around the globe in his private jet aircraft. He offers no apology for the self indulgent consumption of energy. He claims he offsets it all by buying ‘carbon credits’.
About five centuries ago assorted Popes sold ‘indulgences’ to the wealthy and powerful. This allowed them to live in perpetual sin without endangering their immortal souls. To the best of my knowledge, those who say climate change is the greatest moral issue of the twenty-first century have not censured Gore for his profligate waste of fossil fuels or his self serving humbuggery. If I was a religious man, I would thank God in my prayers for ensuring Gore failed to get the Presidency.
It is almost beyond ‘reasonable doubt’ that the Kyoto hypothesis is a hoax, for which the Rudd Government and Turnbull Opposition have fallen. They do not acknowledge either that in historical time Vikings grew cereal crops in Greenland or that the geological history records many prolonged warm and cold periods when atmospheric CO2 was much higher than it is now.
In a rational world the response would be to wait for at least another decade to see whether the present global cooling period continues.
That however would prevent our ‘Dear Leader’ and others from fulfilling their adolescent fantasies—saving the plant by reducing carbon emissions by 25 per cent by 2020 and by 60 per cent by late 2050. The mechanism for doing this is a Carbon Emissions Trading Scheme.
That is the worst possible option, because such schemes cannot be honestly audited.
That is why they appeal in Australia to the same sort of spivs who set up the present global recession—the Freddy Macs, Fannie Mays, and their imitators with their ‘securitisation’ and fraudulent trading systems which wiped out any equity. Such a Carbon Trading system will make historical frauds like the South Sea Bubble and Tulip Bulb Boom seem benign.
The alternative energy rent seekers are already demanding a captive market for a mandatory renewable energy component plus capital subsidies and operating subsidies.
A tax on carbon is a much simpler and more efficient means of reducing CO2 emissions. It would be paid by a small number of firms, electricity suppliers, petroleum suppliers and aluminium smelters1 etc who would pass the tax on to their consumers. The number of firms directly paying the tax would be relatively small, administrative cost low, and evasion almost impossible.
Last, but by no means least, it will provide a much better exit strategy when the Kyoto hypothesis is recognised to be the fraud that it is. The tax could simply be abolished. There will be a structural hangover, but mild in comparison with abolishing a deeply entrenched and corrupt Carbon Trading Scheme.
1. Actually they wouldn’t pay because aluminium smelters would be exported to Third World countries.
jack jones
October 6, 2009 at 10:51 pmGood grief! I knew Peter Walsh was a cranky old bugger, but I had no idea how far out he was on the wacky scale when it comes to denialism.
I have now come to the view that we need to trash the CPRS largely for the reasons Mr Dennis states. I’m buggered if I’m going to be subsidising every huge carbon polluting coporation under an ETS that simply rewards them. I fear that the point on Copenhagen is well made, I expect that it will make a pathetic target decision, but to the extent that it even remotely stretches Australia’s current position we’ll all be paying through the nose to buy large companies out of any pressure, probably via dodgy overseas offsets or something.
I just hope that in poleaxing it the political pressure continues to build to actually do something significant here in Aust but who knows given current opposition mentalness and current government business as usual-ness. Here’s hoping Greens at least get balance of power in the Senate at the next election and can somehow horse-trade that into some more strategic moves on greenhouse abatement. Failing that can we please just make sure that twerp Fielding doesn’t get back in, he really needs to find another hobby!
Mark Duffett
October 6, 2009 at 11:23 pm@MartinCJones er, yes, I did know, that’s why I referred to Hamilton as Denniss’ predecessor (i.e. as exec director of the Australia Institute). And it was mainly their styles I was talking about; I found Denniss much more cogent and less over-the-top, and all the more convincing for it. Not to mention that Denniss’ opinion (notwithstanding the subtlety of his differences with Hamilton) more closely resembles my own.
james12
October 7, 2009 at 1:24 amoh dear Ramble. not another world is cooling for 10 years claim. You might as well be arguing. yesterday was 21C today is 20, we’re all going to freeze by next month. It makes about as much sense. A couple of outlier extremely hot years about 10 years ago and people think the world is cooling.
Maybe if we have a heat wave tomorrow and then it goes away that argument will work too. The world’s been cooling since last week they’ll all say.
Climate change deniers need to understand the difference between WEATHER and CLIMATE.
tee
October 7, 2009 at 2:14 amDoctor:
You really have no idea what you’re talking about.
We’re not a big “polluter” in the sense that you make us out to be. You’re either a propagandizing liar or a nincompoop to say that. We have various industries here that are high in emissions because we have an absolute advantage that use a high energy content, such as aluminum. Mining and semi processed mining materials contains high energy content. If we gave up all these industries some other country like China would take it up and they would invariably be far more polluting in terms of the global envelope.
You also refer to our power companies as big polluters. Every time you flick on a switch you’re the one polluting , not them. So man-up do the right thing and fess up to your own polluting habits instead of blaming others, as it would be the courageous thing to do. I won’t be holding my breath though.
James Bennett
October 7, 2009 at 9:17 amI think TEE is on the right track and has come up with a winning CPRS .
All climate change soldiers ( of which there seem to be significant majority ) need to do is reduce their own ‘ carbon-dioxide footprint ‘ ( i know it’s normally called a carbon footprint but i think that’s actually a different substance.) by say 50% .
This will make up for the minority of us apathists who do nothing but will still reduce demand from from those big polluting power stations, fuel companies etc enough to save the world.
As TEE says it’s the individual end user that can control energy usage so go to it our saviours.
Stop writing about it – get cold,hungry and stationary and Save Mankind..
You know we’re worth it.
Kit
October 7, 2009 at 9:42 amJames, I think the Clive Hamilton article which Mark Duffitt pointed to is worth a read. It may may you re-think individual action.