While the government is wedded to its better but still insufficient 2030 emissions reduction target, its climate bill is stepping in the right direction. It will reestablish a Climate Change Authority (CCA) to “provide advice on any new or updated emissions reduction targets”, in the words of Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen, at least every five years. But decision-making about pursuing those targets will remain with politicians.
It’s a simplified version of the climate bill Zali Steggall brought to Parliament during the last term, including an annual statement to Parliament on progress towards meeting targets.
Bowen says “decision-making on national targets should and will remain with the government of the day”. If Treasurer Jim Chalmers has said that decision-making on interest rates should and will be with the government of the day, he’d be howled down — it’s now orthodoxy that monetary policy is too important to be left to politicians. The Reserve Bank doesn’t “advise” on the appropriate interest rate level, it sets them — because we don’t trust politicians to do it.
There’s no conceivable reason why the same logic doesn’t apply to emissions reduction targets. If anything, the need is even greater to eliminate politicians from the process of determining how quickly we need to decarbonise.
Nonetheless, Bowen’s bill reestablishes an independent source of advice on emissions targets — one the Coalition naturally moved to silence the moment it was elected in 2013. The five-year minimum is far too little: the CCA should be reporting at least every three years. Watching the northern hemisphere burn and much of the east coast here flood suggests a two-year minimum might be more appropriate — something the Greens and teal independents can push for as it goes through Parliament.
The benefit for Labor of a restored CCA is that it can furnish a reason to lift its 2030 target ahead of the next election, on the basis that an independent, evidence-based assessment suggests more urgent action is needed — which it is. The only risk is that the CCA might be neutered by poor appointments by either the current or a future government — remember the Coalition, farcically, put fossil fuel executive Grant King on its gutted Climate Change Authority. Like all appointments, that process should itself be made independent via reforms to the government appointment process, involving the advertising of positions against public criteria and independent assessment panels vetting candidates.
The outstanding issue remains the government’s willingness to approve new fossil fuel projects. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese briefly clung to the Coalition’s line that good old Aussie coal is somehow magically cleaner than filthy foreigners’ coal — a claim entirely discredited. But last night on 7.30, he unveiled a new talking point: that the United Nations bases climate policy on where emissions are produced — Japan isn’t held to account for the emissions of Japanese vehicles in Australia. It’s a nice line, but it’s disingenuous and ignores the laws of physics; the atmosphere doesn’t care where CO2 emissions are generated, and you can’t bookkeep global warming away.
Albanese also said that fossil fuel exports produce tax revenue that helps pay for schools and hospitals. That’s true for the exporters that pay tax, but not true for the big gas exporters — Chevron, Shell, Woodside, Santos, Origin — who pay little tax and no petroleum rent resource tax on the tens of billions they earn from our fossil fuels. His argument would hold more water if he repaired the badly broken tax regime that allows these climate criminals to profit from our resources without paying us.
Even so, domestically, the climate bill is a big step forward. It can be improved significantly, but it’s a good start to fixing a decade of disaster.
‘If we don’t sell it, others will’ is the rationale of the smack dealer.
It also shows a depressing lack of joined-up thinking.
Shutting off fossil fuel project options puts public pressure on resource companies which has two major strategic benefits.
Firstly, it increases the risk for these companies and has an effect on their cost of capital, which has a long-term impact on what investments they want to take on.
Secondly and more importantly, it increases public understanding that this is an existential crisis and the expansion plans for fossil fuel companies are incompatible with a stable climate, which ultimately undermines their social licence.
Timid, disappointing and to a point dishonest. But, as you say, it’s a start. However, its akin t0 filling a glass of water to fight an inferno engulfing your house. Why is it politicians are so fearful of urgency?
Reports from the CCA will be most effective if they are annual and public. Being released on an anniversary date allows activists and politicians to manoeuvre into position to enact the next year of our reductions. The authority of the CCA must rest on its independence and technical expertise. What we do not want is the terms of reference limiting what the CCA will report. In particular, they should be keeping a watching brief on the evolution of noncarbon power worldwide, including the imminence of mass produced nuclear.
Is that the same “mass-produced nuclear” that has been “imminent” since it was first floated in 1954?…………
Since then it has always been “ten years away”.
Finest snake-oil.
Yes, straight from the Mickey Mouse Club’s “Tomorrow Land” with the promise of “electricity too cheap to meter”!
Roger should use a picture of his official Mouse Ears beside his handle.
Thucydides asks, if mass production of nuclear reactors was always possible, why didn’t it happen? In short, it hasn’t had a free market. In contrast, in the military of the nuclear nations, serial production of reactors for nuclear submarines has been successful. Inside Russia, the VVER series has continued production and are now found throughout Eastern Europe and various developing countries. In France, the M310 series has provided the bulk of their electric generation, and now exported to China its descendants are now providing much of China’s nuclear electricity. With further Chinese evolution, it will provide their main export line. In America Big Coal has been the main suppression. However the Democrats are now backing nuclear against coal to the point that factory production of small reactors is now underway. Look for their trademark, “Nuscale” as their first version rolls out later this decade.
Why start with something insufficient, when something that will actually work is doable?
Note too his frequent (and borrowed from the coalition) line that the coal will just be supplied from elsewhere if we exit the market.
Maybe so, but as the sanctions on russia prove – it will be at a higher price for buyers who will then (if market mechanisms are to be beleived) look elsewhere for their energy generation.
The ALP’s 43% reduction target will not work, if we persist with just that till 2050. However, there is no need for it to be kept as the target until 2050, unless enough voters put the Coalition back in power in 2025. I doubt that the Australian public will be so indifferent to the future world that our children and grandchildren must live in later this century that they would do that. Instead, they will send a progressive majority back to parliament in 2025. The ALP can put up a 2035 target that implies that we can do what we should do by 2030.
Nor is Adam Bandt right to say that Australia cannot open new coal or gas projects without ruining our chance to keep warming below 1.5 degrees C by 2050. If that claim were correct, then the world will not be able to keep warming down because other countries will be opening new coal and gas projects. If Australia will ruin the world’s chances, then so will India, China and the Congo.
What is true is that we can keep warming below 1.5 degrees at minimum cost only if we don’t open new coal or gas projects, if an industry report is correct. This will be best for keeping warming down but it is not absolutely necessary, unless it is already too late, as some, for various reasons, already claim.
The ALP’s limited target might cost more than the best possible replacement of fossil fuels but that makes it less than ideal not unacceptable. That limited target is what they promised at the election. We should let them keep their promise, even if another promise might have been better.
What the Greens could best pursue is the goal of withdrawing all government fossil fuel subsidies and pressuring state or territory governments to withdraw their subsidies. If this will mean that the Beetaloo Basin gas fracking project will not go ahead, then that will be all for the good.
I had very low hopes for Albo and his Government. Given his announcements re coal/gas projects, I wish I could say I wasn’t disappointed. But as a certain ex-PM once said, climate change is the biggest issue facing the world – and last time I looked, Australia was still part of that. His view that if Japan/Korea/China burns our fossil fuels we aren’t responsible for the resultant rise in greenhouse gases is not dissimilar to the view that Winchester et al are not responsible in any way for the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians in the USA every year. Sell the nutjobs assault rifles and be surprised that they’re used to murder people? Sell coal and gas to trading partners and be surprised that the Pacific Islands are drowning? C’mon, Albo, you’re supposed to be better than ScuMo!