{"id":6336,"date":"2013-07-17T21:34:39","date_gmt":"2013-07-17T11:34:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nofibs.com.au\/?p=6336"},"modified":"2022-05-02T00:27:08","modified_gmt":"2022-05-01T14:27:08","slug":"new-climate-change-policy-play-georgefwoods-reports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/new-climate-change-policy-play-georgefwoods-reports\/","title":{"rendered":"New climate change policy play: @georgefwoods reports"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Click to enlarge – Source: http:\/\/climateactiontracker.org\/assets\/CAT-Infographic-20111211.pdf<\/p><\/div>\n

By Georgina Woods<\/a><\/p>\n

17 July 2013<\/p>\n

The announcement this week that Australia would move one year early to its emissions trading scheme – and make budget cuts to pay for it – has cleared the stage for the election to be fought on climate change, but not in the way that our political parties may be expecting.<\/p>\n

The Government will pay for the move to float the carbon price with a combination of measures, including winding back a fossil fuel subsidy long criticised by environment groups, scaling back generous payments to coal-fired power stations, and a reduction in funds for the fledgling Biodiversity Fund and the Clean Technology Fund. There are mixed views about these steps and we can only hope that means commentators, politicians and the public will have to actually start thinking about climate change again, rather than just reacting and sloganeering.<\/p>\n

For the last four years, political and public discussion about climate change and the action Australia should take to mitigate it has been impeded by hyperbole and polemic. There are examples of this on all \u201csides\u201d of the climate change policy complex. The Greens\u2019 described the 2009 Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme as \u201cworse than nothing,\u201d despite having a very clear idea about just how bad \u201cnothing\u201d is when it comes to climate change mitigation. Coalition front benchers infamously joined a protest themed \u201caxe the tax\u201d at Parliament House in 2010, and have relentlessly misrepresented the carbon price mechanism, and its impacts, for three tortuous years. But Christine Milne\u2019s accusation that Rudd is a \u201cfake\u201d for moving earlier to emissions trading can also be read as an attempt to keep the climate change picture in primary colours. The Greens have claimed the mantle of being \u201cthe only party\u201d that is serious about climate change, and do not seem keen to relinquish it.<\/p>\n

It is true, of course, that Australia under the current Government has not done enough to tackle climate change. The black spots in this week\u2019s budget savings announcement from the environmental perspective are the loss of $213 million previously allocated to the Biodiversity Fund, $162 million from the Clean Technology Program and $143 million from the Carbon Farming Futures Program. In addition, the Government\u2019s own fact sheet on the changes admits that emissions-intensive trade-exposed industries (EITES), which (for now) get generous assistance under the Clean Energy Act 2011<\/i> to prevent \u201ccarbon leakage,\u201d will go from paying around $2 per tonne of carbon under the fixed price, to around $0.50 per tonne if the floating price were payable at the level the market is at currently. The Climate Change Minister confirmed at the Townsville press conference that these industries will be better off under the change.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, the two biggest contributions to the budget savings announced by Rudd, Bowen and Butler are reforms to fringe benefits tax for cars (a saving of $1.8 billion over forward estimates) and closing the Energy Security Fund two years early (saving $770 million over forward estimates). Both of these are measures that climate change advocates and environment groups have reasonably demanded for some time. Further savings are made by reducing Coal Sector Jobs package allocation next year by $186 million and deferring $200 million of funding from the Carbon Capture and Storage program. Coal mining does not, despite the best efforts of the Australian Coal Association and the Minerals Council, qualify for EITEs assistance. As a consolation prize, the Government created the Coal Sector Jobs package and committed to handing out $982 million to the industry over five years. With around $240 million of this spent, and $186 million reduced from it as per this week\u2019s announcement, there’s still more than half a billion dollars of taxpayers money going to be thrown at the coal industry to help them “transition.”<\/p>\n

If we think about the carbon price as Australia\u2019s first<\/i> climate change policy challenge, then the earlier launch of emissions trading means the election campaign can start to address the two next big challenges\u00a0 Australia has to meet: setting an emissions reduction target of at least 25% by 2020, and tackling our biggest contribution to climate change – \u00a0our coal export industry. The Climate Change Authority<\/a> is due to provide a draft recommendation for Australia\u2019s first set of pollution caps under the ETS and our 2020 target not long after the federal election. The party or parties that win Government at this year\u2019s election will be there when the new global climate treaty is finalised in Paris in 2015, which is also the year that global emissions need to peak if we are to prevent global warming going above two degrees. With hundreds of thousands already suffering the impacts of climate change, and in the wake of our angry summer, the polemicist posing of 2009-2012 is not acceptable from any political party or representative.<\/p>\n

\"Greenpeace--Passing-Point-o\"

Greenpeace Report: The Point of No Return<\/p><\/div>\n

One of the implications of moving to an emissions trading scheme is that it will require Australia to look outward at the rest of the world when it talks about climate change and greenhouse gas emissions. We will not be able to get by recycling old lies about the rest of the world\u2019s action on climate change. It will start to matter that Europe exceeded its emissions reduction target for the first Kyoto commitment period, that emissions in the US have declined more rapidly than Europe\u2019s since 2005<\/a>,that demand for thermal coal from China is rapidly dropping, and that our two biggest markets for export coal, South Korea and Japan, are implementing climate change policies.<\/p>\n

Finally, with a more international perspective, Australia may be moved to put in place a plan to hasten the end of our coal export industry. It is our biggest contribution to climate change, and a globally significant source of emissions<\/a>. The International Energy Agency has estimated that coal demand globally must peak and decline from 2016 onward if we’re to meet the very challenging target of limiting global warming to below 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels. The Climate Commission has confirmed that 80% of fossil fuel reserves must not be exploited if we are to meet this goal. What Australia needs is action to help coal-dependent communities cope with the coal and climate shocks that are coming in the next term of Government. In the last year, according to numbers frequently cited by coal urgers<\/a>, around 10,000 jobs have been lost in the coal industry. Over that same period, $240 million has been distributed<\/a> to the coal industry under the \u201cCoal Sector Jobs Package\u201d \u2026 to save jobs?<\/p>\n

The coal industry has increased production volumes and taken hundreds of millions of dollars from Australian tax-payers at the same time that it has been shedding jobs and its terms of trade have dramatically declined. Western Australian Premier Colin Barnett has referred to the current shocks in the coal industry as “structural decline<\/a>” and Prime Minister Rudd last week acknowledged that Australia’s economy is at a cross-over point, where it needs to diversity away from energy resource exports. We are also seeing rapid changes in policy and action from China that will burst Australian coal export bubbles. The age of coal is coming to an end. The question for Australia is, will it end quickly enough to keep global warming to below two degrees, and will our coal dependent communities have the support they need to get out of coal and back into sustainable industries?<\/p>\n

The reality is that Australia has committed to being part of keeping global warming to below two degrees, and that all political parties have endorsed this goal. We\u2019ve delayed too long in bringing down greenhouse pollution as a country and more broadly, as a community of nations to the point where that goal will now be extraordinarily difficult to meet. After the last three years of vitriol, all of our politicians, not to mention the business community, have to stop the grandstanding and start seriously cooperating to achieve it, the Labor Party included. Every one of us, whether we\u2019re Labor, Liberal, National, Green or apolitical, must work to make sure this is the case.<\/p>\n

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Read More:<\/p>\n

A new Greenpeace report:\u00a0Point of No Return<\/em>
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