Greens may vote for ETS in Senate

21 January, 2010 by

Troeth and Boyce: you'd better not…

The Courier Mail is reporting that the Greens may soften their policy on the ETS to enable them to vote with the Government when it returns to the Senate in February:

Leader Bob Brown will be in Canberra this week will announce a new, softer environmental policy [kind of defeats the object of the Greens, really – Ed] – just 13 days before the Government’s twice-defeated Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme is reintroduced into Parliament.

The Greens and the office for Climate Change Minister Penny Wong are expected to meet to discuss the offer in coming days.

The Courier-Mail understands Senator Brown and deputy leader Christine Milne will offer an interim proposal to get an emissions trading scheme off the ground, under a deal designed to catapult the Greens back into the political debate.

It is believed the Greens’ proposal will closely follow the Government’s legislation but would allow for stronger greenhouse gas targets as circumstances change.

The Greens argue the Government’s scheme is problematic because the legislation makes it too hard to toughen targets once it is operational.

Meanwhile, The Courier-Mail can reveal that outgoing Victorian Liberal senator Judith Troeth and Queensland Liberal senator Sue Boyce, who both crossed the floor to vote for the scheme last year, have not ruled out again siding with Labor.

…

The Government would need the five Greens plus two others to pass the legislation in the Senate.

If Troeth and Boyce cross the floor, enabling the ETS to pass with the Greens support, they should be expelled from the Liberal party immediately (and then banished to the dingiest, darkest corner of the planet).

Read it here.

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ETS: Electricity prices to double within two years

1 January, 2010 by

Minchin: stunned

… and treble by 2024. All thanks to the ETS. Fortunate, then, that it will never make it into law:

New modelling by the Government’s energy market operator reveals the wholesale price of electricity will rise from $30 per megawatt hour in 2010 to about $100 by 2024.

In a national transmission report released before Christmas, the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) predicts the price will double to $60 per megawatt hour by 2012.

The wholesale price makes up less than half of the final bill that reaches each customer, who also pays distribution costs.

The AEMO modelling is based on Treasury’s carbon price estimates under the proposed emissions trading scheme, which from next year will force big polluters to pay for their emissions. [Er, well it would if it was actually law yet – Ed]

Opposition energy spokesman Nick Minchin yesterday accused the Rudd Government of trying to hide the real costs of tackling climate change.

“I think Australians will be stunned to learn that their power bills could more than triple as a result of Mr Rudd’s climate change policies,” Senator Minchin said.

Read it here.

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Abbott: ETS is a "slush fund"

31 December, 2009 by

Slush fund

Tony Abbott has picked up the point made here yesterday, that the ETS will simply redistribute wealth with no benefit to the climate:

Speaking after the Government said Treasury modelling showed low-income households would get an average of $610 in cash compensation but would only experience price rises of $420, Mr Abbott questioned the purpose of the scheme.

”When the Government starts talking about 120 per cent compensation for some people, it gives rise to the understandable suspicion that the ETS is not about the environment, it’s really about a political slush fund.”

Mr Abbott called on the Government to release the modelling behind its claims. A Government spokesman said the analysis was based on October 2008 Treasury modelling and updated to reflect the lower carbon price forecast in November’s Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook.

While it released some detail on the impact on low-income households, the Government has held back on similar information for wealthier households.

Not in the least bit surprised. Taxing the rich is traditional Labor policy.

Read it here.

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Fantasy: ETS will make people better off!

30 December, 2009 by

Shifting it around for no reason

Yes, that’s the line being spun by Peter Garrett, who claims that despite the ETS increasing living costs for everyone, nearly 3 million households will be better off thanks to the government’s compensation plan:

Mr Garrett [Garrett? On climate? Where’s Penny? – Ed] said the scheme would raise the average cost of living for low-income households by $420 a year, while their compensation would add up to $610.

In addition to the average $190 gains for low-income households, 97 per cent of middle-income households would receive at least some form of direct cash assistance and half of them would be fully compensated.

“The opposition have spread misinformation around about the Rudd government’s efforts to tackle climate change, but the fact is lower and middle-income households will be compensated by the government for the expected price rises under the scheme,” Mr Garrett said.

The government has been forced on the defensive by the Opposition Leader’s assault on the ETS. As Mr Abbott said on a Sydney radio station just before Christmas: “There is a real people power revolt against this big new tax and it is being led, in many cases, not by traditional Liberals but by traditional Labor voters — blue-collar workers in industries like coal mining who know their jobs will be much less safe if Mr Rudd has his way and brings this in.” (source)

But even the Sydney Morning Herald can see through it:

According to the Government’s figures, however, about half of all middle-income households will be financially worse off under the scheme, even with the compensation package in place. (source)

All this scheme does is move money around for no purpose, with most Australians still worse off – let’s not forget, the ETS will do nothing whatsoever for the climate, whether locally or globally. So basically, this is a transfer of wealth from rich to poor with no discernible benefit for the climate, in other words: socialism by the back door.

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Grocery industry "backs Coalition on ETS"

28 December, 2009 by

5% increase at least

The grocery industry has rubbished the government’s forecasts on price increases, claiming that they will rise far more than predicted:

THE grocery industry has sided with the Coalition’s claim the Rudd government’s emissions trading scheme will be a big tax.

Environment Minister Peter Garrett said yesterday that claims by the Australian Food and Grocery Council that food prices would be pushed up by 5 per cent overstated the reality by seven times.

“The Treasury modelling found that in 2013, the average price impact of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme on food bills will be around $68 a year — less than 1 per cent of household food bills,” Mr Garrett said.

However, the council chief executive Kate Carnell said this was not realistic, given the role of electricity in the processed food supply chain. “The average shopping basket is about $200 a week, so the government’s modelling suggests a barely 0.5 per cent increase off the back of increases in electricity prices of 20 to 40 per cent. That is not even vaguely credible in a manufacturing industry,” she said.

Read it here.

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Terry McCrann – Let's face it: the ETS is dead

26 December, 2009 by

Dead as a…

The only people who don’t know this already appear to be Kevin Rudd and Penny Wong, getting ready to re-introduce it to Parliament in February, despite the world having moved on. Copenhagen has shown that the desire to cripple economies with “carbon reduction” plans is virtually non-existent, and with Tony Abbott at the helm of the Coalition, there isn’t the slightest possibility of it getting through:

While an argument could have been mounted before Copenhagen for moving towards an ETS, that is not possible after the chaos in doleful Hamlet’s hometown that produced the “China solution”.

There will be no global agreement to cut emissions of carbon dioxide.

Formally, it was “Chindia” — China and India. But China is the elephant in that pairing. And in any event, nothing that President Barack Obama might have promised in Copenhagen was ever going to be endorsed by the US Senate, as it has to be.

While we wouldn’t have quite seen a replay of the 95-0 vote that rejected the Kyoto Treaty in 1997, there is zero prospect of the US adopting either binding CO2 emission targets or a cap-and-trade policy, their name for an ETS.

So we have a situation post-Copenhagen, where the two countries that between them are responsible for nearly half of all global emissions of CO2 are not committed to cutting emissions, far less binding targets. And more pointedly, they won’t have an ETS.

Read it here.

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Copenhagen: Rudd's same old story on ETS

23 December, 2009 by

Did it happen?

It’s as if the disaster that was Copenhagen never happened. Kevin Rudd has vowed to press on with the ETS exactly as before, same targets, same timetable, despite the fact that Copenhagen achieved virtually nothing. Finally speaking publicly for the first time since his return from No-Hopenhagen, the rhetoric is unchanged:

KEVIN Rudd has ruled out any change in the government’s emission-reduction targets as business exploits the uncertainty following the Copenhagen conference to press for a review of Labor’s climate change strategy.

The Prime Minister declared there was no way the government would agree to a target for cuts in excess of 25 per cent, as the Greens had been urging.

“Australia will do no more and no less than the rest of the world,” he said.

Mr Rudd said the government would stick to its target of reducing emissions by a minimum of 5 per cent by 2020, with the possibility of the target being increased to between 15 and 25 per cent depending upon what action other nations take.

He blamed opposition from developing countries for the failure of the Copenhagen talks to reach a comprehensive agreement, although he declined to specifically criticise the Chinese.

He said the final deal at Copenhagen had, for the first time, set a target of reducing world temperatures by 2C, which all nations said they would aim to achieve, with an agreed system of national and international monitoring. (source)

Not only that, but AGL has labelled the administration of the other plank of the emissions reduction plan, the renewable energy target, a “fraud”:

AGL threatened not to invest in alternative energy forms until the Government addressed a collapse in the price of certificates designed to encourage investment.

The threat highlights the risks hanging over $30 billion of expected investment needed to reach a target of obtaining 20 per cent of power from renewable sources by 2020.

The managing director of AGL, Michael Fraser, said the Government’s approach was a fraud that threatened the industry’s ability to meet the target.

To encourage investment, energy companies receive renewable energy certificates in return for building green power stations. But the value of these certificates has almost halved, from near $60 to about $30 since the Government began issuing them to consumers who install solar hot water systems and other products that do not generate power.

Because of the price fall, Mr Fraser said, plans to build the $800 million Macarthur wind farm in Victoria were under enormous pressure. The project is expected to create 500 jobs during construction and Mr Fraser said up to seven other wind farms being considered were also under threat.

The only new wind farms AGL would definitely build were those required under contracts to supply power to desalination plants for the Victorian and South Australian governments.

”Beyond that, you simply won’t see us invest until this issue gets resolved,” Mr Fraser said. (source)

Ouch. And the Copenhagen blame game is really in full swing, especially in The Guardian, under the headline “How do I know China wrecked the Copenhagen deal? I was in the room”:

Copenhagen was a disaster. That much is agreed. But the truth about what actually happened is in danger of being lost amid the spin and inevitable mutual recriminations. The truth is this: China wrecked the talks, intentionally humiliated Barack Obama, and insisted on an awful “deal” so western leaders would walk away carrying the blame. How do I know this? Because I was in the room and saw it happen.

China’s strategy was simple: block the open negotiations for two weeks, and then ensure that the closed-door deal made it look as if the west had failed the world’s poor once again. And sure enough, the aid agencies, civil society movements and environmental groups all took the bait. The failure was “the inevitable result of rich countries refusing adequately and fairly to shoulder their overwhelming responsibility”, said Christian Aid. “Rich countries have bullied developing nations,” fumed Friends of the Earth International.

All very predictable, but the complete opposite of the truth. (source)

Setting things up nicely for even less progress in 2010.

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Abbott: 5% CO2 reduction is enough

22 December, 2009 by

Australia's contribution

Enough (possibly) to satisfy a part of the “we must do something” camp, and little enough (just) to satisfy the “we mustn’t wreck our economy” camp:

Australia should target a carbon cut of only five per cent following the international failure to agree on emission limits at the Copenhagen talks, the federal opposition says.

Opposition leader Tony Abbott has written to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to ask him to conduct new modelling on the impact of a go-it-alone emissions trading scheme in Australia, in the wake of the weak outcome at the Copenhagen summit.

He then wants a national debate on the issue.

“All of the previous modelling, much of which is 15 months out of date anyway, was based on the assumption that other countries would have an emissions trading scheme or something like it,” Mr Abbott told reporters in the NSW Blue Mountains on Tuesday.

“After Copenhagen, we know that this is not the case. New modelling needs to be done to show what the effect of a go-it-alone emissions trading scheme would have on Australian industries and on Australian jobs.”

A 5% cut is nothing more than a gesture, however, as it equates to about seven hundredths of one percent of global emissions… so apart from showing “solidarity” with the rest of the world, it will achieve nothing (even if you believe that CO2 is the only dial on the climate, which, by the way, it isn’t).

Read it here.

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Rudd's ETS quandary

22 December, 2009 by

A bit like the ETS

Thanks to the weak-as-water outcome from Copenhagen, the ETS is sunk. Kevin Rudd’s desire to arrive at Copenhagen with a trophy has scuppered any possible chance of the two errors in four words “Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme”. Just think about it for a minute. If Rudd had not been so stubborn and vain, and agreed to wait until after Copenhagen to try to pass the ETS, Malcolm Turnbull would still be leader of the Opposition (god help us), and there would have been bipartisan support for it. Rudd may have been able to get it through after Copenhagen with Turnbull onside.

But now? No chance. With Tony Abbott at the helm, the Coalition wouldn’t pass it in a billion years, and the only option for the government is to accede to the wishes of the Greens, who are now arguing for 25% – 40% cuts by 2020:

The federal government should start negotiating with the Australian Greens if it wants parliament to pass its plan to tackle climate change, party leader Bob Brown says.

Despite the Copenhagen summit’s failure to deliver strong cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, Labor maintains it will re-introduce legislation setting up its carbon pollution reduction scheme (CPRS), or emissions trading scheme, to the lower house in February.

…

The Greens want to see Labor’s ETS include a 25 to 40 per cent target, which Senator Brown said would help the government fulfil its international obligation.

“They have to now move to targets that would keep global warming below two degrees, and that is where the Greens have been aiming,” he said. (source)

What international obligation is that, Bob? Remember, Copenhagen resulted in no international obligations – just a wish list, that the US and China have probably already forgotten about. As Terry McCrann says, 40% is really 60% per capita by the time you get to 2020, which would send Australia’s economy back to the Dark Ages, which is what we must assume the Greens want for the Australian people. Because people are very low on the Greens’ list of priorities.

It would be suicidal for Rudd to climb into bed with the Greens on this, so he’ll just have to get used to it: the ETS is sunk.

UPDATE: Not surprisingly, Penny Wong has already ruled out any deal with the Greens:

“The reality is that the Greens have taken a position, in relation to targets, that the Government was not able to negotiate on,” Senator Wong said.

“They indicated they did not wish to have a negotiation unless the Government was prepared to put targets of 25 to 40 per cent on the table. That is not the Government’s policy, that is not the Government’s position.

“We don’t believe that is a responsible way forward.” (source)

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Climate madness from Ross Garnaut

21 December, 2009 by

Pontificating…

Ross Garnaut hangs around like a bad smell, pontificating on climate matters when nobody really gives a toss (a bit like Malcolm Turnbull, in fact), and his latest announcement suggests Australia commit to a 25% emissions reduction by 2020:

Professor Ross Garnaut told The Australian Online today that such a goal [2˚C warming] would require Australia to embrace the top end of the [government’s] target.

“Well that’s the 450 parts per million. If the world really was on the path to delivering that that would be a 25 per cent target in Australia by 2020 and 90 per cent by 2050,” he said.

However, he said the Prime Minister would have to wait until he discovered what the world was doing before he committed to such a target.

“I think we’ve got to wait. The wise thing is to wait and talk to others,” he said.

So we have to cut 25% by 2020, but at the same time wait until we see what the world is doing? And even if you can look past that inconsistency, you have to ask, what difference does it make to global emissions if Australia cuts by 5%, or 25% or 100%? Answer: nothing. Anything we do is just a gesture, and a pointless one at that.

And if you can look past that, then you have to ask why they think 450 ppm will guarantee only a 2˚C rise in temperature. The sun didn’t take part at Copenhagen, neither did the oceans, nor the clouds, nor volcanoes, nor cosmic rays, nor the solar system, so I wonder what they all think of this tiny, annoying surface irritant on the planet (i.e. humans) deciding what its climate will be in 2050?

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