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May 20, 2011
It appears that the Gillard Government believes that a carbon price alone is enough for deploying renewable energy at scale that would shift the Australian economy to a low carbon one. It is doubtful that a large amount of the proposed carbon price revenue will be allocated to clean technology projects as well as for household compensation.
The debate on how to reduce greenhouse emissions from coal fired power energy generation is starting to become serious. It is starting moving beyond the slogans, deception and handouts in a context where the Liberals smell a big victory at the next election.
Policy issues are coming to the fore and the political party's policies to address the greenhouse emission issue are starting to be publicly evaluated. For instance, on Lateline Malcolm Turnbull described the Coalition's position on reducing emissions with offsets (such as biofuels, soil treatments and reforestation) rather than restricting Australia's carbon emissions with clarity. He then critically assessed it.
Turnbull said:
the Coalition, as you know, no longer supports an emissions trading scheme or a - what you would call a market-based mechanism for putting a price on carbon. ...The Coalition's policy, as laid out by Tony Abbott and Greg Hunt, involves spending taxpayers' money, taking out of the budget, so many billions of dollars, to pay farmer in particular ...the way it works is that the taxpayer - the taxpayers' money would be used to buy carbon offsets from farmers, so that as industry pollutes, the Government would then spend taxpayers' dollars to buy carbon offsets to offset that pollution...It is a policy where... the Government does pick winners, there's no doubt about that, where the Government does spend taxpayers' money to pay for investments to offset the emissions by industry.
Turnbull, in his imitable style, then went onto comment on the politics of the Coalition's policy, in a way that could be called telling the truth. He outlined the advantages and disadvantages in a way that would not enthuse his Liberal party colleagues.
He says that:
as a long-term mechanism of cutting carbon emissions, in a very substantial way to the levels that the scientists are telling us we need to do by mid-century to avoid dangerous climate change, then a direct action policy where the Government - where industry was able to freely pollute, if you like, and the Government was just spending more and more taxpayers' money to offset it, that would become a very expensive charge on the budget in the years ahead.
However, the scheme has two virtues from the point of view of Tony Abbott and Greg Hunt:
One is that it can be easily terminated. If in fact climate change is proved to be not real, which some people obviously believe - I don't. If you believe climate change is going to be proved to be unreal, then a scheme like that can be brought to an end... Or if you believe that there is not going to be any global action and that the rest of the world will just say, "It's all too hard and we'll just let the planet get hotter and hotter," and, you know, heaven help our future generations - if you take that rather grim, fatalistic view of the future and you want to abandon all activity, a scheme like that is easier to stop.
Turnbull's commentary is a pretty effective in showing the limitations of the Coalition's climate change policy. The limitations are so great that Turnbull has repudiated the policy.
Where to now then? Is pricing carbon all that is needed to help shift the Australian economy to a low carbon one? In the interview Turnbull talked about the coming technological revolution which is going to be similar to the information or the industrial revolution. That means big investments in clean energy. How do we achieve that?
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"It is moving beyond the slogans deception and handouts"
Tony Abbott is now saying that pricing carbon (a carbon tax ) would mean an end to Weet-Bix.