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November 25, 2009
There is a huge gap between Rudd's rhetoric on the necessity for an ETS to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and decrease the rate of global warming ---- a "fundamental existential question for the future''----and his actions in delivering a revised GPRS. The context here is that it is now virtually impossible to limit global temperature rise to 2C and the decade long delay in acting meant the world would now do well to stabilise warming between 3C and 4C.
What we are witnessing is the politics of buying off the sqwaking opposition to an emissions trading scheme who threaten that the lights might go out. The Rudd/Turnbull ETS primarily supports the coal fired power stations, the emission intensive industry, and a host of other industries. It protects jobs and ensures that coal-fired electricity generators keep producing electricity, but it does little to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, decrease the rate of global warming, and the worsening negative impacts on nation states.
Far from Turnbull staging his own destruction he delivered. He got McFarlane's deal through the shadow cabinet and then the partyroom, even if the latter took him all day to do it. As we learned from Twitter this party room meltdown has deepened and broadened the conservative/liberal divisions in the fractured Liberal Party.
Turnbull has to now get the deal through the Senate by ensuring that Liberal Senators vote in favour of the legislation this week. He needs just 7 votes. That's reason to be confident. Turnbull has crashed through.
Despite McFarlane gaining a host of concessions from Wong and Rudd, this was not enough for the dissenting conservatives who want boss Turnbull's head now. Even though a cap and trade emissions trading scheme is a market mechanism to drive change through price, this minority remains opposed to the Liberal Party becoming relevant to the 21st century. If there is a challenge this week, the backward looking conservatives will lose.
Turnbull has not lost the war - ie, retaining his leadership through to the next election--as Peter van Onselen claims in The Australian. Nor is Turnbull a political dead man walking as Dennis Shanahan claims, since Kevin Andrews as Liberal leader borders on a farce.
The purpose of an emissions trading scheme is to drive change, raising prices to give investors the incentive to replace dirty old plants with cleaner new ones and to replace coal-fired generation with renewable energy (gas and wind energy). If Rudd and Turnbull are driving change from business as usual, while protecting business as usual, then how is Australia going to make the transition to a low carbon economy?
I cannot see the offsets in investment in renewable energy by power generating companies happening. there are too many free permits and not enough auctions. What I see in the Rudd/Turnbull business-as-usual achieving is the increased investment in coal fired power stations. WA government recommissioning two old coal-fired power stations that had been decommissioned; the Victorian Government refurbishing its existing brown coal plants; and the Queensland and NSW Governments building new coal plants.
Secondly, the coal-fired power generators + the major polluters who depend on fossil fuels will make lots of money from selling their free carbon permits whilst households pay for more for their electricity. Cap and trade is a mechanism in delay for the major polluters by buying cheap pollution permits rather than driving change by switching to renewable energy.
Thirdly, carbon trading will only achieve a modest 5% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions whilst giving the major polluters a breathing space to continuing business as usual with it's depends on an over reliance on fossil fuels.
The best that can be said is that cap and trade system is there and it may work more effectively in the future with more auctioning. However, the structural change under this system is dependent on price.Will that reduce green house gas emissions caused by an over reliance on fossil fuels. No. The price mechanism is not enough to make the shift to a low carbon economy.
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The Copenhagan Diagnosis document is sobering especially with respect to sea level rises. It says:
These are big revisions. Isn't Australia's coastal adaptation strategy based on 1 metre sea level rise?