Pearls and Irritations

Category: Climate

  • Bruce Duncan. Pope Francis calls for a global economy with a conscience

    In his July trip to Ecuador, Bolivia and Paraguay, some of the poorest countries in Latin America, Pope Francis has voiced the anguish and concerns of millions of people struggling to rise out of severe poverty and marginalisation, yet are “exploited like slaves”.

    Speaking to a crowd of two million people in Santa Cruz on 9 July, Francis attacked a mentality that “has room only for a select few, while it discards all those who are ‘unproductive’, unsuitable or unworthy, since clearly those people don’t ‘add up’.”

    It is a world Francis knows well from his own extensive personal experience in Argentina but also from his role as one of the key figures coordinating the ten-yearly meeting of the bishops of Latin America at Aparecida in Brazil in 2007. Not only did he help Pope Benedict prepare his speeches to that conference, but as then Cardinal Bergoglio, Francis supervised the writing of the 160-page final document, reaffirming the role of the Church in confronting poverty and injustice as an essential part of its mission. This document is a forerunner for Pope Francis’s major statements and policies, including the new encyclical, Laudato Si’: on care for our common home.

    A high point of his visit to Bolivia was his hour-long speech to the two thousand delegates to the Second World meeting of Popular Movements in Santa Cruz on 9 July, when he demanded “real change, structural change” to reform “intolerable” conditions for farm-workers, labourers, communities and the earth itself.  He warned that time “seems to be running out” to save the planet from “perhaps irreversible harm” according to the scientific consensus. “Do we not realise that something is wrong in a world where there are so many farm-workers without land, so many families without a home, so many labourers without rights, so many persons whose dignity is not respected?”

    He condemned the “unfettered pursuit of money” as “the dung of the devil”. When “capital becomes an idol” and “greed for money presides over the entire socioeconomic system”, they ruin society and put “at risk our common home”.

    Francis said he had no “recipe” for a social program or a monopoly on truth, but everyone, governments, popular movements and other social forces had to find a way forward together.

    First he insisted on the moral principle that the economy be at the service of peoples, not people at the service of money. “Let us say NO to an economy of exclusion and inequality, where money rules, rather than service. That economy kills. That economy excludes. That economy destroys Mother Earth.”

    It was not enough to offer a “decent sustenance”, but people needed rights to land, lodging and labour, he said, along with access to education, health care, technologies, art and cultural activities, sports and recreation. “A just economy must create the conditions for everyone to be able to enjoy a childhood without want, to develop their talents when young, to work with full rights” and enjoy a dignified retirement. He insisted this was not utopian thinking, but was possible and ‘an extremely realistic prospect”.

    “Working for a just distribution of the fruits of the earth and human labor is not mere philanthropy. It is a moral obligation. For Christians, the responsibility is even greater: it is a commandment.” He urged the popular movements to strive for “the common good to be achieved in a full and participatory democracy”.

    Secondly, he called for peace and justice internationally, and attacked what he called the “new colonialism”. “At times it appears as the anonymous influence of mammon: corporations, loan agencies, certain ‘free trade’ treaties, and the imposition of measures of ‘austerity’ which always tighten the belt of workers and the poor.” He criticised monopolistic media that “impose alienating forms of consumerism” as “ideological colonialism”.

    To a roar of approval from the crowd, Francis also said that “many sins were committed against the native peoples of America in the name of God.” He called on Catholics to beg forgiveness for these past crimes, and to commit themselves to supporting the struggles of the indigenous peoples of Latin America.

    Thirdly, he lamented that “Our common home is being pillaged, laid waste and harmed with impunity.”  “Cowardice in defending” our common home “is a grave sin.” He said they cannot allow certain global interests “to take over, to dominate states and international organisations, and to continue destroying creation.” “I ask you, in the name of God, to defend Mother Earth.”

    Many commentators have been critical of Pope Francis for these views, and the question is how will he manage when he arrives in New York to address the US Congress on 24 September and the United Nations General Assembly. On the flight back from Latin America, Francis said he would study what his critics had been saying to see what he could learn.

    He will certainly not resile from his call for global responsibility to address the threat of ‘catastrophic’ global warming, as well as urging a revolution of conscience about our moral obligations to the millions of impoverished and excluded people. He will not reject capitalism in principle, since he knows there are many forms of capitalism, some with strong social and communitarian features.

    Nor is the Pope opposed to a type of economic growth needed to lift people out of hunger and poverty, as long as this is done equitably, encourages more modest lifestyles and does not damage the environment for future generations.

    But he is strongly opposed to the neoliberal versions of capitalism, the dominance of financial capital, and the belief that free markets of themselves will resolve most problems of distribution and poverty.

    No one familiar with Catholic social teaching, going back to Pope Leo XIII’s social encyclical On the Condition of the Working Class (Rerum Novarum) of 1891, should be surprised at this. The Church has long taught that the earth is given by God for everyone; the right to private property is not absolute but conditional on benefiting the common good, by maintaining productivity in goods and services for the benefit of all. Since Leo, the Church has consistently urged that property be distributed as widely as possible, so everyone had a share sufficient to provide for their family and for security against sickness and old age.

    The neoliberal ideology, on the other hand, exalts the rights of wealthy individuals over and against the common good, and propagates the extreme inequality that has left millions destitute. Francis is calling for worldwide resistance against this ideology, and for reforms to economic systems and business practice to ensure far more equitable distribution of wealth and opportunity. He will undoubtedly appeal for business leaders and governments to help refashion the global economy so that everyone has a place at the table. He is highlighting the moral imperative to build a more just global economy, an economy with a conscience.

    Bruce Duncan is a Redemptorist priest who lectures in social ethics at Yarra Theological Union within Melbourne’s University of Divinity. He is one of the founders of the ecumenical advocacy network, Social Policy Connections.

  • Bob Debus. A breach of faith on renewable energy.

    Well, this is just getting stupid. We are entitled, after events last week, to ask if the Federal Government has the capacity any longer to act in good faith when the interest of the coal industry is at stake.

    Tony Windsor and Barnaby Joyce, whatever their manifest differences, reflected the opinion of local people, the normal application of the precautionary principle and everyday common sense when they protested last week’s approval of the giant Watermark coal mine immediately adjacent to the aquifers and rich farmland of the Liverpool Plains in northwest New South Wales. In any event, no conditions of approval can prevent the destruction on site of 800 hectares of highly endangered box-gum woodlands, their associated rare bird and animal life.

    Australian scientists were also correct last week to wearily dismiss the ‘embarrassing’ support offered by Dennis Jensen MP and other members of the Liberal Party for the establishment of yet another ‘review’ of climate science. It is certain that no country representative at the UN Climate Change Summit in Paris later this year will be questioning established climate science.

    Indeed international concern about the Australian Governments’ climate policies is increasing and condemnation has been coming from some unexpected quarters for a while now. Lord Deben, a former Thatcher Government Minister and head of the Committee on Climate Change in Britain, said last year that, “Mr Abbott is recklessly endangering our future as he is Australia’s”. A leading advisor to the conservative chancellor of Germany described Tony Abbott’s single-minded promotion of the coal industry as an ‘economic suicide strategy’.

    In the last fortnight an exceptionally broad coalition of Australia’s peak business and social groups have come together to support emissions reductions far deeper than anything proposed so far by the Government. They specifically pointed out that “delayed, unpredictable and piecemeal action will increase the costs and challenges of achieving goals and maximising the opportunities” for doing so.

    Unrepentant, Abbott Government Ministers last week moved to take unpredictable and piecemeal action to undermine an agreement reached only in May, which had the acknowledged purpose of returning some certainty for investment in the renewable energy sector. Here is the background.

    The Abbott Government came to office promising to abolish the demonised Emissions Trading Scheme, actually very similar in substance to the scheme previously proposed by John Howard and in principle advocated by Milton Friedman. Last July it became the only Government anywhere in the world to abolish a carbon-pricing scheme: emissions from electricity generation have begun in consequence to climb again.

    Over 60 countries have established renewable energy targets and the Abbott Opposition promised to maintain Australia’s already established, bipartisan 20% Renewable Energy Target (RET) when it came to office. However, in the event it moved quickly to establish a Review of the RET headed by a well-known climate sceptic, an initiative that caused large-scale investment in renewables to freeze almost entirely. Nevertheless, the Review found that the RET was succeeding in cutting emissions and that it would benefit electricity consumers into the future. That is to say, it was made clear that the only beneficiaries of a reduced RET are coal fired generators.

    The Government however, would not relent. Without coherent explanation it conducted protracted negotiation over 15 months before the Opposition reluctantly agree to legislate a reduction in the RET from 41,000 GWh to 33,000 GWh, held steady until at least 2018. Australia became the only country in the world to have reduced a renewable energy target but it seemed at least that an industry that already employs 20,000 people could at least resume growth in a more certain investment environment. But not so.

    The Gillard Government had established the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) in 2012 for the same purpose: to assist the application of capital ‘through a commercial filter to facilitate increased flows of finance into the clean energy sector, thus preparing and positioning the Australian economy and industry for a cleaner energy future”. The CEFC has typically contributed funds as part of a consortium, encouraging private banks into the field, across a range of technologies, while ensuring a solid return on its own investment. At any other time in Australia’s political history it would have been regarded as a welcome success.

    However, it too is a victim of the clumsy mash up of anti-regulation neoconservative political ideology, technical error, inconsistency and idiosyncratic prejudice with which the Abbott government approaches the world. The Government’s free market ideals have not caused it to curtail massive subsidies to the fossil fuel industry but it did come to office promising to abolish the CEFC: at first making the demonstrably incorrect argument that its activity crowded out private finance. However, the Senate has frustrated its intention.

    Now, unable to delay investment by stalling the RET or abolishing the CEFC, the Treasurer and the Finance Minister are doing what they see, presumably, as the next best strategy to dampen investment in renewables.

    They have instructed the CEFC not to invest in small solar or wind technology, the two areas which are at present most easily rolled out on a large scale and therefore most likely to bring about rapid increase in actual renewable energy production. The government seeks to suggest that the CEFC should be used only for developing emerging technologies, but this is disingenuous.

    The essential point of the CEFC is to increase the amount of capital investment flowing into technology that increases the production and use of renewable energy. The action of the government is calculated to stop it and if anybody has an explanation that does not involve a breach of good faith I’d like to hear it.

    Bob Debus AM was an ALP member of the NSW Parliament and Attorney General, Minister for the Arts and Minister for the Environment. He was also a member of the House of Representatives and Minister for Home Affairs in the Rudd Government.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Max Bourke. Northern Australia – the fantasy continues

    Current Affairs

    The White Paper on Northern Australia. ( www.northernaustralia.dpmc.gov.au accessed June 19, 2015)

    The cover of this Report features, a slightly sick (ironically seems to have a fungal disease), young seedling growing in rich black soil. The seedling well reflects the issue, the black soil does not.

    When white settlers landed in Australia at the end of the 18th century they brought the techniques and understandings they knew from Europe to farming, the climate and the environment. What else could they do? It has taken over 200 years for many Australians, and some clearly still do not, to understand that the climate, soils, landscapes of Australia are profoundly different from Europe or Asia. The recently released “White Paper on Northern Development” June 2015, suggests we still have a long way to go.

    In 1839 the Kew Gardens appointed a plant collector and vegetable gardener who tried growing crops on the Cobourg Peninsula, which sadly failed quite quickly. Since then there has been a long history of hubris about agriculture and development in northern Australia. Boosters almost invariably ignore two major and fundamental problems, soils and temperatures of northern Australia.

    Yes there is a lot of “undeveloped” land there but the dry tropics (most of the region) are largely, lateritic soils in a very, very hot climate. So hot that very few of the crops either westerners or people of Asian background currently eat, can be grown there. There are a few limited exceptions to these generalisations but nothing on the scale that is usually trotted out by the boosters.

    In 1965 Bruce Davidson in his The Northern Myth, traversed many of these issues. Davidson, an economist with CSIRO, was prevented from publishing his work and resigned. But his core arguments persist, that only with heavy government subsidy, could intensive agriculture succeed in northern Australia (such as on research stations) and now even that seems dubious.

    Two extremely well written papers have traversed the issues and both are utterly ignored, not even cited, in the current White Paper. History sadly, and perennially repeats itself.

    In 2002 John Woinarski and Freya Dawson surveyed the sorry tale very well, see reference 3. They worked hard to get to the root causes of the problems mitigating against northern agricultural and forestry development. Reviewing 150 years of agricultural developments in the north they concluded, p 104, “Although these developments have inevitably led to personal and environmental casualties such losses have been deemed bearable in the context of a government drive to dominate or stake a claim on these lands, and the pervasive perception that environmental costs weigh little against the land’s limited value and its excessive extent”.

    In 2009 a superb review of the science of research in the north and its outcomes, was written by Dr Garry Cook of CSIRO (ref 1 below). It is worth reading alone for its photos of Parliamentary Inquiries and other matters over the last 100 years.

    But reviewing the scientific agricultural research over the last 150 years Cook concluded: “At the same time as food and production security concerns are causing growing pressure on the north, there is also growing pressure for land managers to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase carbon sequestration. The outworking of these factors is by no means certain, because they will be driving the system in differing directions. Concerns about food security will create pressure for land clearing and agricultural development, as happened throughout the 20th century, but concern about carbon emissions has already led to changes in tree clearing legislation and limited the ability of land holders to develop land. Climate change itself is likely to increase variability in an already highly variable climate and increase the risk to agricultural enterprises. Currently a growing tide of extinctions and range reductions are affecting native fauna across the north (99). Strategies to ensure their conservation will add further complexity to the outworking of development pressures.”

    The current White Paper appears to totally ignore history. Maybe that is our fate.

    Twenty pages of the document are devoted to listing projects, reports, studies that might, though not necessarily, have some bearing on northern Australia and which are already under way. Either this is padding for the report or an exercise in advanced cynicism!

    Fifteen years ago the author attended a northern Australia research conference in Darwin representing one of the Federal agricultural R&D corporations. Many fine words were said then about “moving Australian R&D to the north”.

    In 2009 the Commonwealth Government produced another report, “Sustainable Development in Northern Australia” (ref 2). In the conclusion to that paper it was stated:

    “The north is not a vacant land. It needs to be actively managed for resilience and sustainability, based on a contemporary and informed understanding of the complexities of the landscape and its people. Contrary to popular belief, water resources in the north are neither unlimited, nor wasted. Equally, the potential for northern Australia to become a ‘food bowl’ is not supported by evidence.” Joe Ross, 2009, Chair Northern Australia Taskforce.

     

    Max Bourke AM has a background in agricultural research and public administration. As well he has been Chairman of one of Australia’s largest farming investment businesses and manager of the New Crops programs for the Rural Industry Research and Development Corporation. He has spent much time in Northern Australia in various roles.

    Refs:

    1.Cook, G “ Historical perspectives on land use development in northern Australia: with emphasis on the Northern Territory, Northern Australia Land and Water Science Review full report October 2009

    1. “Sustainable development in Northern Australia”. Northern Australia Land and Water Task Force. Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government, 2009
    2. Woinarski, J.C.Z., and Dawson, F. (2002).Limitless lands and limited knowledge: coping with uncertainty and ignorance in northern Australia. Ecology, Uncertainty and Policy: managing ecosystems for sustainability. (eds J.W. Handmer, T.W. Norton & S.R. Dovers) (Prentice-Hall.)

  • Bruce Duncan. Pope Francis on avoiding environmental catastrophe

    Current Affairs

    Popes write social encyclicals in times of social crisis or at great turning points in history. Pope Francis’s Laudato Si is no exception. He sees the world facing unprecedented twin crises: from climate change; and unresolved issues of global hunger and poverty, resulting in growing conflict, violence and displacement of peoples. ‘Peace, justice and the preservation of creation are three absolutely interconnected themes’ (# 92).

    ‘We are faced not with two separate crises, one environmental and the other social, but rather one complex crisis which is both social and environmental’, and we need to combat poverty, restore dignity to the excluded and protect nature (#139).

    Francis insists on the urgency of these matters. ‘Doomsday predictions can no longer be met with irony or disdain. We may well be leaving to coming generation debris, desolation and filth.’ Our contemporary consumption and waste ‘can only precipitate catastrophes’. (#161).

    Francis does not pull his punches on the effects of climate change, warning of imminent catastrophe unless the world acts urgently to reduce greenhouse gases. He laments that the world lacks leadership and it is ‘remarkable how weak international political responses have been (#54).’ He says that ‘our common home is falling into serious disrepair.. He sees signs that ‘things are now reaching a breaking point’. ‘There are regions now at high risk and aside from all doomsday predictions, the present world system is certainly unsustainable’ (#61).

    The high hopes of making rapid inroads against hunger and poverty with the Millennium Development Goals have only been partly realised, and Francis is using the encyclical to support more determined efforts through the UN Sustainable Development Goals. But efforts to eradicate hunger and poverty are being compromised by the effects of climate change, which are bearing most heavily on the poor.

    The looming environmental threats remind the world as never before that we are all in this together, that there is such a thing as the ‘common good’. This is a call for ‘all hands on deck’, that everyone is involved in a common responsibility to reduce our ‘footprint’ on the planet, living more frugally, with less waste and certainly less extravagance.

    ‘Reducing greenhouse gases requires honesty, courage and responsibility, above all on the part of those countries which are more powerful and pollute the most.’ (169). He warns that even systems of ‘carbon credits’ could be used ‘as a ploy which permits maintaining the excessive consumption of some countries and sectors.’ (#171).

    But the encyclical is not a science paper. He accepts the overwhelming consensus among climate scientists that global warming is a real threat, indeed an unprecedented emergency, with disastrous consequences likely in agriculture, from declining water resources and from rising sea levels.

    Inequality

    Underlying the document is the Pope’s critique of the astonishing inequality within and between countries, stemming from an economic system based on competitive individualism: ‘we should be particularly indignant at the enormous inequalities in our midst, whereby we continue to tolerate some considering themselves more worthy than others.’ (#90).

    He criticises powerful sectional interests which strive to maximise profits in the short term and can often shape or corrupt economic policies to suit their own narrow goals. ‘Their behaviour shows that for them maximizing profits is enough. Yet by itself the market cannot guarantee integral human development and social inclusion.’ (#109). He rejects the mindset that allows ‘the invisible forces of the market to regulate the economy, and consider their impact on society and nature as collateral damage.’ (#123).

    Without using the term neoliberal economics, that is clearly his target, which Francis blames for channelling fabulous wealth into the hands of a small minority while leaving vast numbers struggling in acute poverty. He rejects ‘a magical conception of the market, which would suggest that problems can be solved simply by an increase in the profits of companies and individuals.’ (#190).

    He blames an exaggerated free-market ideology for the corrosion of ethical standards in international finance and business corporations that resulted in the global financial crisis.

    ‘Saving banks at any cost, making the public pay the price, foregoing a firm commitment to reviewing and reforming the entire system only reaffirms the absolute power of a financial system’ which can only give rise to new crises (#189).

    He is critical of the type of development which is overly driven by technology, as if it could resolve the problems facing the planet without ‘a development in human responsibility, values and conscience.’ (#105). ‘Put simply, it is a matter of redefining our notion of progress. A technological and economic development which does not leave in its wake a better world and an integrally higher quality of life cannot be considered progress. Frequently, in fact, people’s quality of life actually diminishes’ (#194).

    Dialogue with believers and non-believers alike

    The Pope has framed his encyclical within the hymn to creation of St Francis, a profound and joyous song of wonder and amazement before the great Mystery of life and the world with all its many marvellous creatures. St Francis felt intensely the presence of what we call God in every aspect of his world.

    The Pope is drawing from this a new way of communicating across religious and philosophical boundaries about the sense of Mystery we all share. This can evoke a sense of thankfulness and respect for every living thing, of deep reverence for such treasures. He is drawing on a spirituality which is ancient and traditional, but also open to people of all faiths or of none.

    Dialogue is a foundational word for the Pope. He is not trying to dictate politics or specific solutions, but calling for a global dialogue, involving especially those with specific expertise about what needs to be done. He learnt from his own mistakes as a priest that listening involves not just understanding the words people use, but an effort to go behind the words to appreciate the pain in their hearts and the goodness they are yearning for.

    He believes everyone has something to contribute and a right to be heard in matters which concern them, especially in economic change and development, so that the poor are not just pawns of the rich or powerful, or cast aside as useless. The Pope draws from his own experience that even very poor people in slums can have happy and meaningful lives, though their material resources may be slim, because of the quality of their relationships and sense of community. Nevertheless, he wants everyone to have decent living conditions, secure housing and work, education and reasonable life opportunities (#222).

    Underlying the encyclical is the ‘see, judge, act’ methodology he used when he summarised the conference of the bishops of Latin American at Aparecida in 2007. He wants the new encyclical to lead to action, not just in international forums, but by everyone in their own circumstances. He gives instances of how people can live more simply, reducing their use of energy and resources. These are not trivial matters. He wishes to show that we all need to find ways to live more simply (#211). Pope Francis favours the empowerment of individuals and groups, to take initiatives and to organise together, such as in cooperatives, or in small-scale farming and production (#129, 179).

    Conclusion

    The encyclical’s message about the urgent moral dimensions of our present crisis are not entirely new, as both Popes John Paul and Benedict also drew attention to the mounting ecological dangers. But it is unprecedented that a pope has devoted an entire encyclical to this issue, which he links in with the Church’s longer tradition of social teaching, especially its critique of ‘economic liberalism’ or what we would now refer to as neoliberalism.

    Though some parts of the document are written in Francis’s clear and popular style, others have written various sections, especially Cardinal Turkson and his team at the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, along with the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, both have which have been consulting extensively with leading international experts in economics, climate science and the environment.

    The Pope regrets that international agreements have not recognised the ‘urgency of the challenges’; but though ‘the post-industrial period may well be remembered as one of the most irresponsible in history’, there are reasons to hope (#165).

    He is calling for a commitment by everyone to living responsibly so that others can live a fulfilling and happy life. We should be striving ‘boldly and responsibility to promote a sustainable and equitable development within the context of a broader concept of quality of life.’ (#192).

    Father Bruce Duncan CSsR is one of the founders of the advocacy group, Social Policy Connections, and Director of the Yarra Institute for Religion and Social Policy in Melbourne.

  • Robert Manne. Papal Encyclical and Cardinal Pell

    Current Affairs

    In The Monthly on 31 October 2011, Robert Manne recalled the efforts of Cardinal George Pell to discredit the case of those who were concerned about climate change. Cardinal Pell said that Robert Manne was following fashionable opinion on the subject. Extracts from Robert Manne’s article follow below. John Menadue. 

    In the Sydney Morning Herald of October 28, Eugene Robinson, a columnist with the Washington Post, reported the findings of the most comprehensive study of the Earth’s temperature ever undertaken. The study had been conducted by the Professor of Physics at University of California, Berkeley, Richard Muller. His team had collated 1.6 billion temperature readings. Interestingly, Muller had begun his study as a climate change “sceptic”, mocking Michael Mann’s “hockey stick” graph; sympathetic to those responsible for hacking the University of East Anglia ‘Climategate’ emails. The “denialists” were confident that Muller’s study would produce results favourable to their cause. Muller even received a grant of $150,000 from the great sponsors of US denialism, the fossil fuel industry-based Koch brothers. As it turned out, however, the study confirmed earlier findings. Since the 1950s the Earth’s temperature has indeed risen by about 1°C.  Muller argued in the Wall Street Journal: “When we began our study, we felt that sceptics had raised legitimate issues, and we didn’t know what we’d find. Our results turned out to be close to those published by prior groups.” He concluded: “You should not be a sceptic, at least not any longer.” Of course these results were immediately contested. Muller was once a climate change sceptic. His new enemies are climate change denialists. Nothing illustrates the distinction between climate change scepticism and denialism more neatly than the differences that are presently opening up between Muller and his critics.

    Although the Australian is owned by the same corporation as the Wall Street Journal it chose not to publish Muller’s seminal opinion piece. Instead, on October 27, it published a somewhat less significant article by that well known climate scientist Cardinal George Pell. The article revealed that Pell presently regards himself as an authority on climate change. He informed his readers that, unlike him, many politicians had not investigated what he called “the primary evidence”. Had they done so they would have learned, as he had, about the inadequacies of both the “evidence” and the “explanations” being offered by the climate scientists with regard to global warming. Pell expressed strong disagreement with something I had written. “Recently”, he argued, “Robert Manne, following fashionable opinion, wrote that ‘the science is truly settled’ on the fundamental theory of climate change; global warming is happening; it is primarily caused by the emission of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide; and it is certain to have profound effects in the future.” Pell complained about the fact that I appealed to something called “‘the consensual view among qualified scientists’”. For him, such an appeal was “a cop out, a way of avoiding the basic issues…” Indeed, to write of the core conclusions of the climate scientists as “settled science” or as the “consensual view” represented what he called “a category error, scientifically and philosophically.”

    There are many ways of demonstrating the existence of this scientific core consensus, about whose non-existence the Cardinal seems to me entirely wrong. One obvious way is to provide a brief account of some of the statements released by some of the world’s most important scientific academies in recent years.

    In 2007, the presidents of the Science Academies of Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, United Kingdom and the United States published a common statement. In part it read: “[C]limate change is happening …[A]nthropogenic warming is influencing many physical and biological systems. Average global temperatures increased by 0.74°C between 1906-2005 and a further increase of 0.2°C to 0.4°C in the next twenty years is expected. Further consequences are therefore inevitable, for example from losses of polar ice and sea-level rise.” In October 2009, the presidents of eighteen relevant scientific associations in the United States, led by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, signed a joint letteraddressed to every member of the US Senate. “Observations throughout the world make it clear that climate change is occurring, and rigorous scientific research demonstrates that the greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are the primary driver. These conclusions are based on multiple lines of evidence, and contrary assertions are inconsistent with an objective assessment of the vast body of peer-reviewed science.” And in November 2009 in the United Kingdom, the Met Centre, Hadley Office; the Natural Environment Research Council; and the Royal Societyreleased a joint statement. “Climate scientists from the United Kingdom and across the world are in overwhelming agreement about the evidence of climate change, driven by human input of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.” The meaning of these statements seems clear.

    The existence of a core scientific consensus on human-induced climate change has also been proven by surveys of climate scientists. The results have been published in three recent academic articles each using a different methodology. In Science in December 2004 Naomi Oreskes published an article that showed that of the 928 peer-reviewed articles published in relevant scientific journals between 1993 and 2003, not one “disagreed with the consensus position” on the reality of anthropogenic climate change.  In 2009 Doran et al in EOS, The Transactions of the American Geophysical Union, asked 3146 Earth scientists whether they thought human activity was “a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures”. While only 77% of non-climatologists thought it was, among the climatologists who published in the field of climate science, 97.4% agreed. In 2010 in PNAS, The Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences of the United States, Anderegg et al conducted a survey of the peer-reviewed articles of 1372 climate scientists who had signed public statement either for or against action on climate change. Their conclusion? “97%-98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field support the tenets of anthropogenic climate change outlined in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.” The conclusion to be drawn from these academic studies is clear. About 97% of climate scientists actively publishing in peer reviewed journals support the idea that global warming is happening and that it is primarily caused by human activity. If that does not constitute a scientific consensus I am at a loss to know what would. Yet Cardinal Pell characterises all of this as something as frivolous and as politically determined as “fashionable opinion”.

    Pell is not only wrong to deny the existence of a core consensus among the qualified climate scientists about global warming and its human cause. He is also wrong to believe that laypeople, like himself (and me), can arrive through uninstructed reasoning or speculation at our own conclusions about climate science. Commonsense ought to tell us that those without the requisite training or understanding have no rational alternative but to accept the conclusions of the scientists. In this area of highly sophisticated science, as in so many other similar examples, as Clive Hamilton once wisely put it, our problem is not what to believe but who. This situation of course is not without serious potential problem. If the climate scientists were divided on the core questions of climate change, laypeople would simply have no way of knowing what to believe. Fortunately, however, the scientists are not divided. They accept the fact of a rise in the temperature of the Earth in recent decades; the role played by human activity in that temperature rise through the burning of fossil fuels; and, in general, the kinds of grave potential danger posed. While concerning the precise pace at which the different outcomes of climate change will occur in the future there is no scientific consensus, on these core questions, consensus among the climate scientists undoubtedly exists. Consensus, of course, is not the same as unanimity.

    If Cardinal Pell believed he was able, through intuition, to understand particle physics better than the particle physicists or evolutionary biology better than the evolutionary biologists, his hubristic self-confidence would be merely absurd. He is however living at a time when fossil fuel corporations and other vested interests are seeking to create public confusion about the likely impact of increasing greenhouse gas emissions and when people are searching rather desperately for rationalisations that will allow them, in good conscience, to preserve their way of life by denying the need for radical action to reduce emissions from the burning of fossil fuels. Climate scientists are telling us that the future for humans and other species is imperilled. In combination with the current deluge of similar pieces by the expanding army of climate change denialists, Pell’s pronouncements have influence on public opinion and thus the potential to do real harm. In my view, he has used the authority bestowed upon him by high office in the Roman Catholic Church imprudently and irresponsibly.

    Cardinal Pell apparently believes that someone like himself – without scientific training; without scientific publications; without the capacity to read and understand academic scientific literature; without even the capacity to pass a first year university examination in one of the relevant climate science academic disciplines – is in a position to disregard the conclusions of 97% of climate scientists actively publishing in peer-reviewed journals which have been supported by the world’s major scientific academies. In denying the existence of a consensus among the climate scientists on core questions, and in arguing that laypeople without scientific understanding or expertise can come to their own conclusions on global warming, as if it were all merely a matter of opinion, Pell has committed what he might call a category error but which I prefer to call a cardinal mistake.

    Robert Manne is Emeritus Professor and Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow at La Trobe University and has twice been voted Australia’s leading public intellectual. He is the author of Left, Right, Left: Political Essays, 1977–2005 and Making Trouble. 

     

    In the Papal Encyclical on Climate Change, Pope Francis writes at paragraph 217

    It must be said that some committed and prayerful Christians, with the excuse of realism and pragmatism, tend to ridicule expressions of concern for the environment. Others are passive; they choose not to change their habits and thus become inconsistent. So what they all need is an ‘ecological conversion’, whereby the effects of their encounter with Jesus Christ becomes evident in their relationship with the world around them.

    I wonder if Cardinal Pell takes Pope Francis’ comment to heart.

    I will post a following blog by Father Bruce Duncan on the Pope’s Encyclical ‘Laudato Si’.

    John Menadue.

     

     

  • Bruce Duncan. Pope Francis and the Abbott government

    Current Affairs

     Pope Francis has repeatedly called for greater social and economic equity in the world, and reiterated the critique of neoliberal economics very strongly. Now he is about to issue an encyclical, the highest form of Church teaching, on the need to reduce carbon emissions and global warming. What will our pollies make of this, especially Catholics in the Coalition government?

    Many observers are deeply puzzled by Abbott’s metamorphosis from being lampooned as ‘Captain Catholic’ into an advocate of neoliberal policies. What has happened to the man who called BA Santamaria one of his mentors?

    Whatever about Santamaria’s politics, he was strenuously opposed to neoliberalism, and all his life argued for the more equitable distribution of wealth and property, believing that this would spur a more responsible democracy, resulting in the wide dispersal of political power through cooperatives and forms of economic democracy.

    Pope Francis has renewed the moral critique of economics and politics. He has highlighted the Church’s opposition to neoliberalism, as it is termed today, which exaggerates the role of market mechanisms and minimises considerations of equity, social justice and fairness.

    Stigliz’s critique of neoliberalism

    Among the many leading economists advising the Vatican has been Joseph E Stiglitz, former chief economist at the World Bank. Stiglitz has warned repeatedly about the danger from the astonishing concentration of wealth in the United States, resulting in the impoverishment of millions. He blamed the ideology of neoliberalism for this, with its naïve view of markets disguising massive rent-seeking, political corruption and manipulation of governments by powerful special interests, including in supposed free-trade agreements drawn up in secret negotiations.

    In his latest book, The Great Divide: Unequal Societies and what we can do about them, Stiglitz again pointed out that the top 1 percent of Americans take nearly a quarter of the nation’s income each year, and control 40 percent of the wealth, leaving almost a quarter of US children under five living in poverty (p. 88, 303).

    By comparison, in 2012 the top 10 percent of Australian earners took home 29.7 percent of Australian income, the highest on record, according to a report from the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research in May.

    Stiglitz called for “significant investments in education, a more progressive tax system, and a tax on financial speculation” (p. 392). In his view, “trickledown economics was totally wrong.” (p.415).

    To increase social equity globally, he supported proposals to include a ninth goal in the Sustainable Development Agenda: to reduce inequality so that by 2030 in no country would the top 10 percent of the population have post-tax income greater than the post-transfer income of the bottom 40 percent (p. 291).

    Following a visit to Australia, Stiglitz warned that the Abbott government did not seem to understand the basic dynamics of “deregulation and liberalization” that were driving increasing inequality and concentrating wealth in the hands of a few. Stiglitz was particularly concerned about the defunding of Australian research and universities. (p. 355-56).

    Pope Francis and Ban Ki-moon on climate change and inequality

    This June Francis will release his encyclical calling for urgent action to tackle climate change, challenging the views of climate deniers and highlighting the issue as a decisive one for Australia as it backslides on emissions’ reduction.

    After meeting the Pope in late April this year, the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon opened a Vatican conference on environment issues and their impact on poorer countries, with many leading development experts present, including Jeffrey Sachs, who helped coordinate the UN Millennium Development Goals.

    Ban said that religious leaders did not claim to be scientists, but could help mobilise the political will to address climate change. “The most vulnerable must be foremost in our thoughts this year as governments construct a global response to climate change and a new framework for sustainable development.”

    He warned that we are “on course for a rise of 4-5 degrees Celsius”, and concluded: “We are the first generation that can end poverty, and the last generation that can avoid the worst impacts of climate change. Future generations will judge us harshly if we fail to uphold our moral and historical responsibilities.”

    Climate change is one of the six main topics for the UN Special Summit in New York in September 2015. Pope Francis will address the United Nations on the first day of this Summit on 25 September, presumably reiterating the main points of the new encyclical, stressing the moral responsibility to redress global warming and eradicate hunger and extreme poverty.

    Our perplexing short-sightedness

    Is Australia pulling its weight in this critical moment, which could well be a catastrophic turning point in the history of humanity? Certainly not on managing climate change, as Pope Francis will indirectly remind us.

    And how about our contribution to eliminating hunger and the worst forms of poverty? The Coalition government has slashed our overseas aid budget savagely, driving our aid from its current 0.32% of GNI to its lowest level at 0.22% of GNI by 2016-17, less than half of what Australia gave in 1971-72 as a proportion of GNI. In the 2014 budget, aid was cut by $7.6 billion over four years, comprising a fifth of all budget savings. In December, another cut followed of $3.7 billion over four years. And to the surprise of Australia’s Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop, another $1 billion disappeared from the 2015-16 budget, reducing Australia’s aid commitment to less than $4 billion a year. By 2017-18, Australia’s aid will fall to 0.82% of government expenditure.

    Australians may rue the day we turned our backs on the needs of our neighbours. Australia’s RAMSI intervention in the Solomon Islands cost about $2.6 billion. Imagine what a failed state in Papua New Guinea or other nearby states would cost. We spend billions of dollars on border protection; we lock up some 1700 asylum seekers on remote Nauru and Manus Island at a cost of over $475,000 a year for each person; yet we refuse to see that improving stability and living conditions in poorer countries is the most humane and constructive approach, and that it is definitely in our national interest, not least because it offers a decent way to manage refugee and migration issues in the long term.

    Let’s hope that the Pope’s encyclical will help the blind to see.

    Fr Bruce Duncan CSsR is one of the founders of the advocacy group, Social Policy Connections, and Director of the Yarra Institute for Religion and Social Policy in Melbourne. This article first appeared in the Social Policy Connections newsletter on 2 June 2015.

  • Peter Christoff. On these numbers, Australia’s emissions auction won’t get the job done.

    Last Thursday, the Abbott government announced the results of its first reverse auction of emissions-reduction projects. Using A$660 million drawn from the A$2.55 billion Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF), the government has purchased 47.3 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, as a first step towards reducing greenhouse emissions under its Direct Action plan.

    Federal environment minister Greg Hunt proclaimed the auction to be a “stunning result”, claiming that the ERF alone will get the government to achieve its existing Kyoto target.

    The Australian newspaper’s triumphant front page headline hailed the outcome as a “direct hit on carbon target”, with national affairs editor Sid Maher writing:

    The Abbott government has claimed vindication for its Direct Action policy, saying the first auction in the scheme has put Australia on track to “more than meet” its carbon-reduction target at a “fraction of the cost” of the carbon tax.

    But how effective has this first auction really been, and what might we expect in the future?

    Maths and myths

    Closer scrutiny of the package of contracts is impossible at this stage, and some of the answers won’t be clear until the projects begin to deliver (or not) emissions reductions over time. Even so, there are plenty of grounds for concern.

    Part of the answer comes down to crude arithmetic and some rather dry number-crunching. Once all factors are taken into account, Australia needs to cut its CO2 emissions by 236 million tonnes to meet its official target, agreed under the Kyoto Protocol, of cutting emissions by 5% below 2000 levels by 2020.

    Let’s assume, for argument’s sake, the going rate for carbon emissions will remain at the average of almost A$14 per tonne of CO2 paid in this first reverse auction. If so, the A$1.89 billion remaining in the ERF’s coffers will buy another 135 million tonnes of emissions.

    Assuming all the 47.3 million tonnes bought in the first auction are delivered, and the price per tonne of carbon remains the same, then the total emissions reduction bought by the ERF will be around 182 million tonnes of CO2. This is 54 million tonnes (or about 23%) short of Australia’s overall target.

    Source, Author provided
    Click to enlarge

    However it is likely that this first auction has picked most of the “low-hanging fruit” – emissions-reduction projects that are easy or cheap to implement or already under way. In future, the number of “emissions-reduction-ready projects” may decline, and the cost per tonne of emissions reductions increase. If the average price rises in subsequent auctions – or if Australian energy use and emissions continue to grow – the overall shortfall will increase still further.

    Devil in the detail

    The story doesn’t end there. The auction’s 107 participants have varying deadlines for delivering their projects. Surprisingly, only 1.5% of the contracts (by volume of CO2 to be reduced) are set to end within 3-5 years, within the target deadline of 2020. Meanwhile, 40% of emissions reductions are set to be delivered over seven years, and the remaining 58% over ten years.

    It’s hard to know when many of the contracted projects will produce their cuts. Without access to the detail of specific contracts, it is hard to assess when each contract will “mature”. About half the contracts (again, by volume of CO2) are “forest protection” projects. These can be assumed to deliver results immediately. A further 15% are vegetation regeneration and soil carbon projects, which also are likely to come “online” pretty quickly.

    But some 35% are industrial schemes – projects to capture waste methane from landfills or piggeries – which may take one or two years to become fully operational and start delivering results. If so, this could mean that these projects will contribute more emissions reductions towards the end of their contracts than at the start. In other words, emissions reduction from industrial projects is likely to be lower before 2020 than a simple annualised estimate would allow. (It’s also worth noting that no major emitters in the energy and resource sectors are among the successful first-round bidders.)

    The best we can do here is estimate the annual abatement promised by each project across the lifetime of its contract. This indicates that only 28 million tonnes of emissions – around 60% of the 47.3 million tonnes lauded as the outcome of this first auction – will be have been cut by 2020.

    Unfortunately, our shortfall just increased to 73 million tonnes, or to 30% short of Australia’s overall target.

    Are these really emissions reductions?

    Last, and not least, there is the issue of the “quality” of the emissions savings. Almost half of the projects (by emissions volume) involve “forest protection”. These are rural projects, mainly related to the previous Carbon Farming Initiative (now subsumed into the ERF), which generate carbon credits by paying farmers to stop the destruction of native vegetation for which clearing permits had already been issued (so-called “avoided deforestation”) or to enhance sequestration of carbon in soil and vegetation.

    Most people paying superficial attention to the workings of the ERF would expect public money to be spent on cutting “real emissions”, for instance by moving our industries onto renewable energy sources, rather on paying rent to rural landowners to avoid activities that may release emissions in the future. Useful though these projects are, one wonders whether they should constitute the core and bulk of Australia’s flagship climate policy.

    All up, on the evidence so far, Minister Hunt has greatly overstated the auction’s achievements. If this is to be the main mechanism used during the remaining five and half years before the 2020 emissions target deadline, then – short of economic downturn and a dip in emissions from the energy sector – Australia won’t meet, let alone exceed, even its very weak 5% reduction target.

    The ERF would need well over A$3 billion to buy all the emissions needed to meet Australia’s present target. And that is not to mention the parallel debate about whether Australia needs to adopt tougher targets.

    Moreover, the ERF’s reverse auction approach seems incapable of driving a national transition to renewable energy or encouraging substantial emissions-reducing activities by major industrial emitters. It is certainly unable to meet more ambitious post-2020 targets, of the sort recommended by the Climate Change Authority, which are the minimum that will be required if Australia is to do its fair share in combating global warming in the future.

    Peter Christoff is Associate Professor at University of Melbourne. This article first appeared in The Conversation on 27 April 2015.

  • Mark Triffitt and Travers McLeod. Hidden crisis of liberal democracy.

    A “burning platform” with big, tangible impacts on our everyday lives is often the tipping point for concerted action. We call these crises.

    Think of the G20’s actions in the wake of the global financial crisis or the global response to 9/11. Both events left governments and decision-makers with no choice but to act.

    Then there are the hidden crises. These are usually not a single, explosive event, rather a pattern of events whose impacts are difficult to connect.

    As such it takes time to bring to the surface the underlying cause and have it widely recognised as a crisis. It takes even more time to convince decision-makers to act.

    Climate change is an obvious example of this knowledge-action gap.

    For most of its “life” as a policy issue, climate change was perceived as an intangible – hard to define, connect and quantify. It was even harder to convince the public and policy-makers to respond.

    Seminal developments over the past decade have changed all that. Scientific consensus, volatile weather patterns leading to observable security, economic and environmental impacts, as well as global awareness campaigns, have persuaded new stakeholders, including the US military and Bank of England, to move into the action camp.

    Yet the evolution of climate change as an issue has exposed the least obvious crisis of the 21st century: our system of democratic governance.

    It is on the tip of our tongue every time we speak of the difficulties in resolving climate change – our frustration with the lack of future-focused, coherent action. But we rarely articulate it.

    So it remains largely hidden – and therefore largely off the agenda for action and change.

    In what ways is liberal democracy failing?

    Specifically, the failure to tackle climate change speaks to an overall failure of our liberal democratic system to:

    • deliver competent, future-focused policy that can guide and give context to the pressing need for action on core challenges

    • reconcile expert knowledge and community opinion to deal with the big issues of our age

    • gain and sustain long-term consensus on what is often complex policy action to deal with these issues

    • achieve effective action by devolving power to local communities or projecting solutions across borders through transnational collaboration.

    Climate change is the sharpest manifestation of an entirely new order of policy challenges that confront and confound democracies around the world.

    These include cybersecurity, corporate profit-shifting, deepening inequality, porous borders and the movements of people and money that spill through them.

    Yet the crisis of liberal democracy remains intangible. This is because we prefer to blame the idiosyncrasies of leaders and bad leadership, rather than the system itself and its growing pattern of policy gridlock and dysfunction.

    In the process, we overlook the fact that our delivery mechanism of democracy – liberal democracy – evolved out of a pre-21st century world. It was a world where the speed, scale and complexity of policy were of a dramatically lower order.

    So in a globalised, digitally saturated world no longer bound by speed limits, our hands are tied by political and policy machinery, like parliaments, designed to synchronise with the 20th century’s comparatively languid rhythms of decision-making.

    In a world of hyper-diversity, this “machine” is engineered to churn out responses to complex challenges within one-size-fits-all templates and packaged slogans.

    Moreover, it is largely monopolised by political parties and career politicians. They seek to choreograph the 21st-century policy world with an unimaginative two-step of 20th-century ideologies and allegiances.

    Creative coalitions and values that reflect today’s world are, as a result, largely absent.

    All this should tell us why the consensus-creating and policy-making institutions liberal democracy relies upon for action and legitimacy risk becoming a case study of failure.

    It is also why those who inhabit what is, in effect, an old-fashioned democracy “factory” retreat into the adversarial, the short-term and the sloganistic. These are the blinkers that allow them to shut their eyes to disruption and insist there is no underlying crisis.

    What can be done to overcome this crisis?

    Successfully tackling climate change and other big policy challenges depends on making tangible the intangible crisis of liberal democracy.

    It means understanding that liberal democracy’s governance machinery – and the static, siloed policy responses generated by such democracies – is no longer fit for purpose.

    It means coming up with disruptive solutions – like coalitions of countries, cities and companies to tackle climate change – that re-align this machinery with the new order of scale, complexity and speed that defines our 21st-century world.

    Long-term solutions to fix the crisis in democratic governance in Australia might include:

    • More deliberative systems that directly engage citizens and deepen debate. Such systems would work to capture and grow long-term vision, values and objectives – rather than static perceptions of incremental policy decisions made for tactical reasons.

    • Expert and citizen panels that are genuinely intergenerational and cross-sectoral. Their composition should favour younger generations and ensure the baby boomer generation cedes some control over what it leaves to the next.

    • Granting more decision-making power to institutions independent of the government of the day, but still accountable to parliaments (such as the Parliamentary Budget Office or Infrastructure Australia). This would increase the capacity of policy planning and decision processes to have staying power beyond individual political cycles.

    • Enabling the appointment of some ministers from outside the parliament. This would allow experienced hands – experts at the top of their game – to lead a portfolio while remaining accountable to the parliament.

    • Synchronising state and federal electoral terms (to be a minimum of four years), with state and federal elections to take place at two-year intervals. This would allow the meshing of short, medium and long-term planning, complete with clear milestones.

    Some of these ideas might work. Some might not. But persisting with a system that seems increasingly incapable of managing the most pressing issues of our age is not an option.

    Climate change is symptomatic of, and accelerates, the crisis across our liberal democratic systems. We cannot fix one problem without resolving the other.

    Mark Triffitt is Lecturer, Public Policy at University of Melbourne.
    Travers McLeod is Honorary Fellow in the School of Social and Political Sciences at University of Melbourne.
    This article was first published in The Conversation on 22 April 2015.

     

     

  • John Menadue. The price we are paying for the Greens.

    The recent successes of the Greens in state elections in Victoria and NSW show us how populist nonsense can succeed at least in the short term. It has also shown the failure of the ALP to counter the threat of the Greens.

    There are two major issues on which the policies of the Greens have brought disastrous results for Australia. When it really mattered on climate change and asylum seekers, they sided with Tony Abbott.

    The Greens literally shed tears over the plight of asylum seekers. But they must bear a heavy responsibility for what we now see on Manus and Nauru.

    In the Senate the Greens sided with Tony Abbott against the arrangement with Malaysia, which, whilst not ideal, would have been a useful first step in curbing boat arrivals. That arrangement with Malaysia was negotiated with the understanding and broad support of UNHCR. Not only did the Greens side with Tony Abbott opposing amendments to the Migration Act to allow the arrangement with Malaysia to proceed, they embarked on an unscrupulous bashing campaign of Malaysia.

    With the collapse of the Malaysian arrangement boat arrivals in Australia increased dramatically. The result was Manus and Nauru. The Greens cannot be absolved for their populism and the consequences we now see on Manus and Nauru.

    The Greens must also accept major responsibility for the collapse in public support for effective action on climate change. In collaboration with the Coalition in the Senate they opposed the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme of the first Rudd Government. If the Greens had supported the Rudd Government’s CPRS in the Senate, the issue of climate change would not have been fully ‘done and dusted’ but we would be in a far better position on climate change than we are today. As a result of the Greens joining with Tony Abbott in the Senate we have no Emissions Trading Scheme, no carbon tax and a fig leaf of a policy called ‘Direct Action’.

    The Greens have inflicted disastrous damage to Australia on both climate change and asylum seekers. Their sabotage on both has set back real reform and decent policies.

  • Government White Paper on Energy – the good, the bad and the ugly.

    In the Australian Financial Review on 15 April, Ross Garnaut comments about the Abbott Government’s Energy White Paper. He says that by failing to take global warming seriously, the White Paper discourages solar power, encourages doomed coal investment, hobbles the RET and misses the chance to raise petrol taxes.  John Menadue.

    See link to article below:

    http://afr.com/opinion/columns/abbott-governments-energy-white-paper-fails-to-face-reality-20150414-1mkroh

  • John Menadue. Cars are killing our cities.

    At almost every election, we are being wooed with stories of more freeways to accommodated more and more cars. It is self-defeating. In our public infrastructure we waste more money on roads than on anything else. As I have argued in my re-post below, there are a whole range of policy issues that we must address to curb the growing volume of cars and the damage that they are doing to our cities.  We refuse to embrace it, but we will be forced to consider congestion taxes to limit road use.

    In the current NSW state election, the Liberal Party is proposing as a centrepiece of its policy, a WestConnex Stage 3 development, a toll road in western Sydney. The NSW government claims that this toll road will carry 120,000 each day by 2031. Unfortunately, Australia has a history of over-predicting the usage of toll roads. As Michiel Bliemer in The Conversation … see following link … points out that ‘The patronage of the Sydney cross-city tunnel was estimated to be almost 90,000 cars per day by June 2006. The actual number of cars using this tunnel was only 34,000 per day. Toll revenues were therefore much lower than predicted, leading to a bankruptcy after 16 months. Similar over optimistic predictions were made for the Lane Cove tunnel in Sydney and for Brisbane’s Clem7 tunnel and the Airport Link, which also had financial problems’.

    Governments and road builders have a direct interest in over-stating the value of toll roads and investment in roads. See link to Michiel Bliemer’s article in The Conversation below.

    http://theconversation.com/why-fewer-drivers-are-likely-to-use-westconnex-than-predicted-38286

    Re-post from 20/11/2013.

    Congestion and pollution are killing our cities. The automobile is so convenient for all of us that we put aside the enormous problems that the automobile is creating. This is not just a problem for the industrialised and wealthy western countries. It is a problem for developing countries as they upgrade from bicycles to motor cycles and then to cars.

    A constant message that we all generally endorse is that public transport, particularly trains in various forms, are the answer. But it is likely to be only a partial answer. Cities like London and Paris have excellent metros or underground public transport systems, but road congestion is still horrific and it is getting worse.

    Some hard-headed political decisions will have to be made about automobile congestion and that will involve decisions to curb the use of cars in our cities. This will not please the very powerful motoring lobby. It won’t please Tony Abbott who wants to build more roads as a major plank in upgrading infra-structure.

    One inevitable decision would be severely restrict any more new freeways… Such an approach would have to be accompanied by a congestion tax with the revenue hypothecated to public transport. With a congestion tax system the higher the level of congestion the higher the rate of tax. It would provide a clear incentive/penalty for motorists not to travel at peak times.

    I just cannot see our cities surviving without congestion taxes to limit the number of cars. With such congestion taxes, we will all be forced to make decisions whether our use of the car/van is worth it, whether for private or business purposes.

    We will also need to address other options to reduce the number of cars on the road including increased sales taxes, registration fees and the fuel excise. In almost every respect these imposts are much lower in Australia. In Denmark the sales tax on motor vehicles is 143%, in Finland 53%, the Netherlands 48% and Sweden 30%.  In Australia it is 10%

    One feature of most European cities is that their cars are much smaller than ours. That reduces both congestion and pollution. To take a local example, a Toyota Hilux 4×4 emits on average 4.6 tonnes of CO2 each year compared with a Toyota Corolla of 2.3 tonnes of CO2 each year. These larger cars not only pollute more and congest our roads, but also dominate parking facilities.

    We can’t keep putting off the debate about limiting the growth of cars in our cities. They are making city life more and more difficult and unsustainable. Public transport is only part of the solution. We have to limit cars on the road. Only in quite exceptional reasons should any more freeways be built. It is a vicious circle with more freeways encouraging more car use and really only shifting the bottlenecks.

    We need to break free from our own addiction to the car and the power of the vested interests in the motor lobby.

    We need to limit cars on the roads at peak times as well as building public metro systems. Paris and London show us that we need to do both

    When the Mayor of London directly tackled the gridlock on London’s roads many years ago he gained wide support.

  • Joseph Stiglitz on the Trans Pacific Partnership.

    At a community meeting in New York Joseph Stiglitz drew attention to the risks of TPP. He referred to the secrecy about the whole proposal. He said that TPP ‘is much worse than a blank cheque about trade’. He added that TPP ‘would not only become the law of the land, but every other law would have to adapt to it … and our Congress would have given up all authority in those areas – the environment, worker safety, consumer safety, and even the economy’. For full report of this meeting, see link below.  John Menadue

    In The Times

     

  • Amanda Tattersall. Community organising aims to win back civil society’s rightful place.

    In the wake of the Second World War, Karl Polanyi wrote that the public arena is made up of three interconnected sectors: the market, government and civil society. He argued that democracy thrives when these three are in balance. If only that were the case today. Since the late 1980s, the global influence of the market sector has increased and, at the same time, civil society has decreased.

    This can be felt every day in Australia’s cities. We see it in declining investment in community infrastructure – everything from a lack of public transport to unaffordable housing. First in Sydney, then in other Australian cities, as well as across the world, civil society organisations – like churches, schools, unions, community and religious organisations – are rebuilding the power of civil society using community organising.

    Community organising is a way of working that trains and builds citizen leaders inside community-based organisations. Community organisers argue that in order to fix our cities we need to fix our democracy. That means we need to build strong and vibrant civil society organisations that act for the common good.

    Chicago-born Saul Alinsky was the grandfather of community organising. He first organised immigrants and industrial workers into a diverse coalition named the Back of the Yards Neighbourhood Council in the late 1930s. Alinksy created the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) to spread this success.

    Today, community organising coalitions can be found in more than 60 cities in countries around the world, including the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany and Australia.

    The Sydney experience

    The Sydney Alliance translated community organising to Australia. The alliance was built slowly between 2007 and 2011, with a focus on one-to-one meetings across a remarkably diverse array of partners. These include the Catholic Church, the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, the Cancer Council, the Uniting Church, Arab Council and the nurses’ union, among others. Partner organisations fund the Sydney Alliance and supply the people who lead it. These leaders are supported by a small team of community organisers.

    Community organising borrows from traditions as diverse as Catholic social teaching, the Jewish self-help tradition and union action. The alliance’s extensive community organising training uses texts as diverse as the Bible and Greek philosophy, then mixes those traditions with the experiences of social coalitions like Sydney’s Green Bans movement and modern-day heroes like Gandhi.

    The alliance’s first campaigns were local. The first victory was in Liverpool, in south-western Sydney, where community leaders from religious, union and community organisations advocated for the creation of ‘15-minute drop-off zones’ outside six medical centres in Liverpool City.

    In Glebe, churches and unions teamed up with the Glebe Youth Service to create local jobs for young indigenous men and women living in Glebe’s public housing estate. In 2013, this culminated in a 350-person assembly where Mirvac CEO John Carfi agreed to create an apprenticeship program for local men and women at the Harold Park Housing Development.

    With the 2015 NSW state election looming, the alliance spent 2013 running listening campaigns across the city. This work produced our election agenda, which was launched on March 26 at Sydney Town Hall. About 1500 leaders from the alliance’s 49 partner organisations came together to commit to running public campaigns that could improve transport, housing and job opportunities.

    The proposed solutions included:

     

    The alliance will hold a campaign of suburban assemblies in Sutherland-St George, Western Sydney, North Shore and Nepean. The campaign will climax with a 3000-person Accountability Assembly – most likely at the Opera House. The NSW premier will be invited to tell the assembly what he has done to progress each of these issues after 100 days in office.

    Making leaders and building relationships

    The Sydney Alliance is an advocacy organisation with a difference. Its primary purpose is to help thousands of community members develop into community leaders. We say leaders are made not born: the alliance provides training, teams and mentoring that can gently and intentionally support people from all walks of life to take on leadership roles in public life.

    The alliance is creating remarkable relationships between Muslims and Christians, unionists and Catholics, schools and synagogues. It is also breathing new life into those organisations, by providing them with a means to not just talk about the things that worry them but do something about it. A similar organisation is growing in Brisbane called the Queensland Community Alliance. There is also interest in community organising in places as diverse as Adelaide, Melbourne, Auckland and Newcastle. Civil society may have its work cut out for it, but in Sydney and Australia it is making a comeback.

    Amanda Tattersall is the founding director of the Sydney Alliance, a coalition of religious organisations, unions, educational organisations and community organisations.  She has published Power in Coalition, the first international comparison of how coalitions are built.  She has an Arts/Law Degree with Honours, and the University Medal for Law at University of Technology Sydney. She was President of the National Union of Students, co-founder of Labor for Refugees (and for a time a member of the ALP), and completed her PhD both at the University of Sydney and as a fellow at Cornell University.

    This article was part of a series published by Australia 21. The series was entitled ‘Who speaks for and protects the public interest in Australia?’ See www.australia21.org.au. 

  • Peter Cosier. A healthy environment and a productive economy

    Over the next 12 months, the Commonwealth is going to lead discussion on two major areas of reform: to the roles and responsibilities of the Commonwealth and states in the Australian Federation, and reforms to the Australian taxation system.

    At the same time we have an adversarial battle raging across Australia between the environment and the economy.  Despite the significant advances in environmental policy of recent decades – national water reform, land clearing controls, a price on carbon – the public dialogue in recent years has increasingly shifted to a position that we must now sacrifice the environment to pursue a growing economy.

    The result is the winding back of water reform; the repeal of the ETS and constant attacks on the renewable energy target; the approval of thousands of coal seam gas bores across the landscape without a proper assessment of their long term cumulative impact on groundwater, prime agricultural land or biodiversity; the Commonwealth seeking to give away their responsibility to protect matters of national environmental significance; and in the recent budget, very significant cuts to environmental programs.

    This dramatic, myopic shift in environmental policy flies in the face of science and it flies in the face of good economics because, in the long run, degradation of our natural capital will come at an enormous economic cost to the community and business.

    The Federation reforms, tax reforms and the environment-economy debate are seen as separate, when in reality they are fundamentally linked.  They are linked because, in the long run, we can’t have a prosperous society if we continue to pollute our environment and degrade our natural capital.

    Whilst there are thousands of examples across Australia every day, where individuals, communities and businesses do strive to live sustainably – water conservation, solar panels, recycling – too often despite our best intentions, the long-term conservation of our natural capital has lost out to short-term commercial benefits.

    The consequence is that as a nation, we are taking more from our environment than its natural systems can replenish and that by any definition is unsustainable.

    These are huge issues, and if we are to deal with them we need a very different vision for Australia: a practical, forward-looking vision that embraces long term changes to the way we manage Australia.

    So how do we bring the economy and the environment together?

    The Wentworth Group believe that five interconnected, long-term economic and institutional reforms would create a healthier environment and a more productive economy:

    1. Fixing our reactive land and water use planning systems by putting in place regional scale plans that address the cumulative impacts of development on the environment and the long-term robustness of the economy.

    Modernising our planning systems would also make our towns and cities more sustainable in waste management, water efficiency, lowering emissions, improving amenity and reducing risks from natural disasters.

    1. Using markets to finance conservation by removing subsidies that pollute the environment and instead create economic incentives for business and consumers to conserve our natural capital.

    We do this by eliminating fossil fuel subsidies; setting a long-term emissions reduction target supported by rational market mechanisms; and introducing an equitable, broad-based land tax to pay farmers, indigenous communities and other landholders to transform the way we manage the Australian landscape.

    1. Conserving natural capital and turning around the systemic decline in biodiversity by closing the gaps in our national system of public and private reserves, connecting these across the landscape, and committing resources to a long-term plan to conserve our endangered native plants, animals and ecosystems.

    There is no technical or economic reason why Australia cannot restore viable populations of the vast majority of Australia’s threatened species and ecosystems.

    1. Regionalising the management of Australia’s natural resources so that investment decisions are underpinned by an understanding of how landscapes function.

    We are not proposing a fourth tier of government.  What we are advocating is that governments pioneer a new era of managing the Australian environment by working together, and with communities and industries, at a regional scale.

    1. Create environmental accounts: To do any of this we need to put in place regional scale, national environmental accounts that monitor the condition of our environmental assets, so that people can make better-informed decisions to support a healthy and productive Australia.

    These are significant reforms.  They are long-term, interconnected and transformational, both in the way we manage the Federation and the way the taxation system interacts with the economy and the environment.

    We live in an extraordinary country.  Our natural heritage is truly breathtaking.  Australia is enjoying a remarkable 23 years of uninterrupted economic growth.  There is no reason why the Australia of today cannot grow the economy, create jobs and maintain a healthy environment.

    But we have to stop kidding ourselves that the short term decision-making that is pervading our land use decisions today is not having a negative long term impact on our environment and on our economy.

    And we’ve got to stop kidding ourselves that the small handful of people who are responsible for managing Australia’s land and water resources have anything like the resources to do it without financial support from the rest of the community.

    On several occasions in the past, Australian governments, businesses, communities and individuals have responded creatively and energetically to environmental challenges, with positive outcomes for the health of the environment and economic productivity.  This has to be another such occasion.

    Our best chance of success is always when government does these things because our community demands it of them.

    People, businesses and civil society need to be active participants in the reforms to Australia’s Federation and taxation system so that we do create a productive economy that conserves our natural capital for the long haul.

    If we do, it will take us on a pathway where a healthy environment becomes a natural by-product of a stronger economy – a partner to economic growth, rather than a competitor.

    The Wentworth Groups Blueprint for a Healthy Environment and a Productive Economy can be accessed at www.wentworthgroup.org.

     

    Peter Cosier, Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists

  • Graeme Pearman. Managing climate change: in whose interest?  

    The role of greenhouse gases in determining the temperature of the Earth has been known since the first half of the 19th century and in recent decades observations have shown clearly that human activities are changing the levels of these gases in the atmosphere. The science community has articulated the broad consequences of this for more than three decades.

    Yet in Australia the period from the late 1980s to the present has been characterised by a trend from an internationally leading and proactive approach to an approach that puts Australia in danger of incurring political and economic sanctions reflecting our growing pariah status. Maria Taylor has suggested this trend reflects a shift in cultural values including, important in the context of this volume, the demise of the ‘public interest’. Environmental leadership by the Hawke government has been overtaken by a dominant commitment to the neo liberal economic ideology. Sections of the media also played a role in communicating the new narrative about the irreplaceability of fossil fuels and a general scepticism about the science of climate change.

    To some it is evident that climate-change policy was designed to promote action to support key industries. This cultural change has had enormous implications for Australian life: the sectoral balance of the economy; employment, working hours and conditions; family life; volunteerism; attention to domestic and international welfare and environmental issues; and so on. Many now question whether as a result of being ‘wealthier’ we are happier and more secure, and whether the benefits have been equitably shared in the public good. Yet rigorous examination of these wider consequences is missing.

    Humans, all of us, find it necessary to have personal views of the nature of the world in order to operate on a daily basis. To a large extent we can do little more than construct this view from what our parents told us, our culture, our religion, our education, advertisements and at times from what those whom we admire have told us. These are constructed views of the world.

    The problem is that these are largely based on myth and rarely formulated from rigorously determined information. President Kennedy said the ‘great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.’

    A greater reliance on ideological, often mythical, imperatives has lowered attention to evidence-based decision-making, a regression towards the times prior to the Age of Enlightenment. There has been a decline of investment in science and its representation in governments, and an expansion of the mindless view that science’s role in modern society is about product development and financial reward. This ignores the substantial value of building a deeper understanding of the world we live in, the natural environment, the operation of societies and limitations of our own humanity. It ignores investment in the power to anticipate and set goals for a future world that we consciously wish to achieve.

    Climate change is about modification of the global environment well beyond the strategic view of businesses. Concern for its potential impact on future generations and the natural ecosystems has limited power in the operation of the markets and market choice. Further, the impact of a changed climate may occur through largely explicable effects on agriculture, water resources and security, but also through disruption of the complex and dynamical nature of ecosystems in a way we cannot at this stage anticipate. The point is that the potential consequences have serious implications for the public good, now and into the future.

    Climate change is already impacting on concerns over energy futures and policy. There are many cases where this is poorly understood in the sense of its impact on the wider public good. For example, a recently announced discovery of a Cooper Basin gas reserve suggests its exploitation would ‘result in 60 to 120 trillion cubic feet of gas’. This is equivalent to 6.6 thousand million tonnes of CO2 or 11 times the current annual release of carbon dioxide from Australia. If exploited its release might occur over a decade or more and its spread may perhaps be international. But this one enterprise would represent about 83 per cent of the estimated Australian long-term ‘allocation’ of emissions as its part in the global effort to give a 75 per cent chance of keeping climate change near to 2oC into the future (8,400 Mt CO2 from 2013-50).

    Additionally, natural gas is methane that as a greenhouse gas is effectively about 34 times more powerful than CO2. Recent satellite imagery of North American tight geological formations suggests that leakage rates could be of order 10 per cent. The ‘greenhouse emissions’ advantage of gas over oil or coal is lost for any leakage of more than 3 per cent.

    The point here is who is to decide whether the exploitation of such gas resources, and many have been identified, is in the public interest? There would clearly be positive impacts on energy supplies, trade and employment. On the other hand there are potential negative impacts on our contribution to the reduction of global emissions and on alternative land-uses. There are risks related to the methane leakage issue and disruption to societies related to the transient nature of the businesses. Who will bear the cost of exposure to potentially stranded assets and the downside of biased or narrowly focused risk assessment? This is to say nothing of the questions about who really owns these resources in the first place and how benefits should accrue for all. Surely these are not questions for the energy companies or the energy sector alone.

    Governments have a responsibility to encourage entrepreneurialism and the economic benefits that may ensue from such resource exploitation. But we also expect governments to weigh these benefits in light of the public Interest. The federal government’s Energy Green Paper shows influences of ideological and sectoral views on energy futures that are perhaps understandable given the responsible department, but these may not be in the wider interests of the community. Thus a serious rethink is required to address how best to deal with complex, multi-factorial and strategic issues related to the public good given our modern, largely sectoralised, society.

    The view that economic imperatives should not dominate policy will be no more easily ‘sold’ than the need for action on climate change. It represents a challenge to prevalent ideologies and narrow corporate interests and a broad interpretation of what constitutes human wellbeing and welfare (in time and essence) that has fallen out of favour. As recently stated in an Age Editorial, ‘…. human society is built on the idea that the many are one. This is not socialism or communism, but humanism. Too often self interest and ideology, manifested in business and political, crash against this ideal.’

     

    Graeme Pearman AM retired from CSIRO in 2004 after 33 years of service including 10 years as Chief of the Division of Atmospheric Research. He pioneered studies of the global carbon cycle, fundamental to anticipating future climate change, and over-sighted the development of an Australian capacity in climate modelling and impact assessment. He operates a consultancy on climate science, energy futures, the impact of human and societal behaviour and sustainability. He is an Adjunct Senior Research Fellow at Monash University.

    This article was published recently, with many others, by Australia 21. The subject of the series was ‘Who speaks for and protects the public interest in Australia?’  www.australia21.org.au 

     

  • Max Corden. Bring Back the Carbon Tax? 

     Mr Hockey has invited the Australian public to join in a conversation about the economy and budget issues. Here is my mildly radical contribution.

    There are two strong reasons for bringing back the carbon tax.

    Tony Abbott, when Leader of the Opposition, promised to repeal the carbon tax brought in by Prime Minister Julie Gillard.  And he has fulfilled his promise. Congratulations. Now circumstances have changed: the budget deficit and public debt have turned out to be important problems in the eyes of the Government because of the somewhat unexpected decline in export prices.  So Mr. Abbott or his successor as Prime Minister would be justified in re-imposing this tax. This is the first reason: the revenue from a carbon tax could make a significant contribution to dealing with the deficit problem. Of course, it would not be enough, and, as is well known, other measures or reforms to generate revenue for the government are available and are certainly needed.

    The second reason for restoring the carbon tax I shall discuss later. First, let us take a closer look at this tax, both as a burden and as a revenue raiser. 

    The Carbon Tax as a Burden

    Mr Abbott certainly convinced his fellow Australians that this tax would be a burden. So, I have taken a close look at his two key speeches, one in September 2011 when the bill to launch the tax was before Parliament and the other in July 2014 when the tax was repealed.

    In his view this was “just another big new tax.” But one could add that all taxes impose burdens or costs somewhere, whether on companies or individuals. One might reflect that, in current circumstances, because of the budget problem, a “big new tax,” and perhaps more than one, is just what doctor Hockey ordered.

    The carbon tax was paid by numerous businesses, but this did not mean that they carried the final “burden”. Mostly they would have passed it on to their customers, both households and businesses. Essentially it might be regarded as a fossil energy tax. When the tax was repealed Mr Abbott stated that households would benefit on average by $ 550 a year, with gas prices to fall by 7% and electricity prices by 9%.  His much-repeated and persuasive message was that the carbon tax raised the cost of living and this was “toxic” and “has been hurting ordinary people”. I suspect that his strong opposition to the tax was influenced more by the complaints of producers of emissions-intensive products – especially in the coal industry – than by complaints from average citizens. He also argued that a tax that raised energy prices would have led to job losses.

    All this seemed very persuasive. The persuasion was reinforced by the fact that earlier – essentially from 2007 to 2010 – electricity prices had risen sharply for other reasons, essentially to pay for the high costs of excessive investment in networks (poles and wires). In many minds those price rises were mixed up with the expected effect of the carbon tax. 

    Where did the Revenue go?

    Now, there is something very odd. In his two speeches Mr Abbott never refers to the government revenue that was raised because of the carbon tax. Did the tax not have any beneficial effects for households or businesses to compensate for the directly adverse effects of the higher prices of energy?  Where did this revenue go?

    In fact, some of it was used to compensate firms that competed in international markets while a substantial part compensated low income households through reductions in their income tax. The latter was an important element of the Gillard programme. What was taken out of the income stream by the carbon tax at one point was put back by the compensation at another point. If there were job losses at one end, there would be job gains at the other. Furthermore, reducing income tax, at least in the low income ranges, would increase the incentives to seek work, a highly desirable economic effect. Possibly some of the revenue led to greater government spending which benefited households. By ignoring all these offsetting revenue effects Mr Abbott was able to conclude that the carbon tax had a severely adverse effect on incomes and employment. Did he really believe this?

    At this point one might ask: what was the point of the whole exercise when funds are taken out of the economy at one end and put back at the other. The answer seems obvious. The carbon tax would produce market inducements that reduced harmful emissions of greenhouse gases. Of course, if one does not believe that climate change is a problem, or that Australia could make any difference, the whole business seems pointless. And if one assumes that nothing happens to the revenue, the tax would seem not just pointless but harmful.

    Use the Revenue to reduce the Deficit?

    Let me come back to my proposal that the carbon tax be reinstated. This time the whole of the gross revenue might be used to reduce the budget deficit. It would not finance increased government spending. How much money would be available? According to official estimates, in the first two years of operation the carbon tax raised $15.4 billion in gross revenue

    If the carbon tax revenue actually reduces the budget deficit without compensating tax or spending changes elsewhere the benefit would then be in the future (when debt is lower than otherwise) while the return of the “big new tax” would indeed impose a present cost. Mr Hockey would then get his deeply desired budget improvement and Mr Abbott could keep on complaining about the big new tax.

    But Mr Hockey would have to think about the current macroeconomic implications of improving the budget balance through higher taxes, possibly combined with reduced government spending. This would reduce total national spending (aggregate demand) and thus increase unemployment. In that case one would hope that the Reserve Bank of Australia would compensate by stimulating the economy through monetary policy, which in turn would induce depreciation of the exchange rate and thus make Australian industries more internationally competitive.

    Why Climate Change Matters

    Climate change is a world problem.  Those who believe that it is not really a problem are unlikely to be reading The Conversation, but if by strange chance they are among my readers, they should stop here. But, also, there are “realists” who do not deny climate change but who argue that Australia generates such a small proportion of the world’s harmful carbon emissions that we cannot make any difference anyway. So, why bother about a carbon tax? Here I wish to go beyond this view. We can make a difference, and, above all, it is in our interest that we do. The basic point is that we may not be able to directly affect world climate on our own, but it certainly will affect us, so we must try and affect the future world climate through influencing collective action among many countries.

    We would be affected adversely by climate change, and possibly are already. This effect could be severe. Therefore we should certainly try to make a difference.

    How would we be adversely affected?

    (a) First there is the direct effect on Australia, and especially its coastline. All the details can be obtained from CSIRO documents. Likely effects include reduced rainfall in southern Australia, more extreme fire weather, adverse effects on the Great Barrier Reef, on coastal populations, and so on. Particularly important for Australia are increasing heatwaves.  (Heatwaves have killed more Australians than all other natural hazards combined).

    Apparently we would be more adversely affected than any other developed country. In view of this, it is just amazing that our government has such a sceptical attitude to climate change compared to governments of many other countries.

    (b) Second, there is an important effect perhaps neglected by an inward-looking population. The rise of the sea level in association with severe weather events is likely to have a serious impact on islands and island countries. And there are many of these in our region, above all Indonesia with many of its population of 250 million people highly vulnerable, and, of course, the Pacific Islands. We may eventually have to cope with floods of climate refugees.

    What we must do in our Interest: the second Reason for returning to the Carbon Tax

    The moral is that for selfish reasons we need to use our maximum diplomatic influence to encourage other countries – and particularly the United States, but many others as well – to take the necessary measures to drastically moderate or avoid climate change. And we can only do this if we set an example ourselves. A restoration of the carbon tax would be the first step. Furthermore, our government should actively campaign for world-wide measures to mitigate or avoid climate change, and also finance appropriate research. In other words, in the national interest the government should completely reverse its current stance. Our current captain, no doubt well meaning, is steering the ship in the wrong direction.

    The simple immediate measure would be our return to the carbon tax. Of course, eventually this might evolve into an Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). In both cases carbon emissions will be discouraged and the government will receive revenue.

     

    A very readable explanation of all the issues is in Ross Garnaut, The Garnaut Review 2011: Australia in the Global Response to Climate Change, Cambridge University Press 2011. See also John Quiggin et al, Carbon Pricing: Early Experience and Future Prospects, Edward Elgar, 2014, and John Freebairn, “ Carbon Price versus Subsidies to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions,” Economic Papers, vol. 33, September 2014, pp 233-42.

    Max Corden is Professorial Fellow in the Department of Economics at University of Melbourne. This article was first published in The Conversation on 5 March 2015.

     

     

  • John Menadue. Is there intergenerational theft?

    Yes – there certainly is, but not in the ways that Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey suggest.

    In his National Press Club speech on February 2, Tony Abbott said ‘Reducing the deficit is the fair thing to do because it ends the intergenerational theft against our children and grand-children.’

    Joe Hockey has also been talking up issues of intergenerational theft in preparation for the release of the fourth Intergenerational Report (IGR).  He says we will ‘fall off our chairs’ when we see the numbers in the report. Apparently the government plans an advertising campaign to tell us how serious the problem is of our ageing population and the economic consequences.

    Joe Hockey’s rhetoric is designed to resurrect his failed sound bite about debt and deficits. Unfortunately for him, the public is not listening to his message that the budget needs to be brought into balance. We have turned off because of his and Tony Abbott’s wild exaggeration on debt and deficits, and the obvious unfairness of his 2014 budget.

    But we do have an intergenerational problem. There are several contributing factors.

    The first and by far the most important is climate change. My generation is failing to take this problem seriously. Our failures will bring major problems, even calamity for our grand-children. Global warming has major impacts – rising temperatures, changes in rainfall patterns, drier and hotter summers, more bushfires, fewer but more destructive cyclones, rising sea levels, and destruction of icons like the Great Barrier Reef. This is an intergenerational threat on an enormous scale. The Abbott government has done less than almost any government in the developed world to address the Damocles sword of climate change that is hanging over our grand-children’s future. The Abbott government has dismantled almost every program to tackle climate change.

    On the economic front the Abbott government has refused to tackle the issues that give privileges to older generations like mine.

    Superannuation tax concessions cost the taxpayer about $32 billion p.a. and rising rapidly to almost $50 billion by 2017-18. This generous middle-class welfare benefits older generations. We don’t even have to pay tax on superannuation income once we turn 60. This is intergenerational theft. The Abbott government like its predecessors is dodging the issue. Vested interests in the superannuation sector and particularly the four major banks with their large superannuation subsidiaries are doing their best to protect the wealthy and the aged.  The unfair privileges for older Australians like me are being protected.

    Older and wealthy people are putting their money into investor housing to get a tax advantage through negative gearing. The estimated tax loss of this is $7 billion p.a. Over 60% of bank loans for housing is for investor loans. Is it any surprise that first-home buyers – my grandchildren’s generation – are finding it extremely difficult to buy a house; something that my generation took for granted. A student asked the Reserve Bank Governor, Glen Stevens, at Club Central, Hurstville, ‘How am I ever going to afford a house?’.  We are engaging in intergenerational theft.

    The discount on the Capital Gains Tax is largely at the expense of younger generations

    Then there is the Abbott government’s proposal that we hear about so much from Christopher Pyne that will load up students with enormous debt in the future. Intergenerational theft!

    The Abbott government proposes to penalise the unemployed, mainly young people, by denying them unemployment benefits for a period.

    Now we learn that the government and the opposition are refusing to entertain any idea of including the home in the means test for the aged pension. Once again, the older generation like mine, will benefit, with many senior taxpayers with large and expensive mansions drawing the aged pension or aged pension concessions.

    We do have a problem with the privileges that my generation enjoys. The scales are being steadily loaded against my grand-children’s generation.

    Climate change is the most critical way in which we are refusing to acknowledge the rights of younger generations. We look like handing on to them a planet that is under serious threat.

  • Climate change – If only!

    Last Saturday David Cameron, the British PM, Nick Clegg, the Deputy PM and Leader of the Liberal Democrats, and Ed Milliband, Leader of the British Labour Party, signed a joint pledge on climate change.

    The three leaders agreed on three particular pledges

    • ‘To seek a fair, strong, legally binding, global climate deal which limits temperature rises to below 2 degrees centigrade.’
    • ‘To work together, across party lines to agree carbon budgets’
    • ‘To accelerate the transition to a competitive, energy efficient low carbon economy and to end the use of unabated coal for power generation.’

    If only Tony Abbott, Bill Shorten, Christine Milne and Clive Palmer could come to a similar deal!

    I have not seen this reported in any Australian mainstream media.

    For more information on this encouraging deal in the UK see link to the Guardian below.

    http://gu.com/p/45ng5/sbl

  • John Menadue.  Climate change and the rise and demise of Tony Abbott.

    Opposition to climate change was the vehicle for Tony Abbott to rise to the leadership of the Liberal Party. It is now making a major factor in his demise as Prime Minister.

    Tony Abbott regarded climate change as ‘absolute crap’ and in December 2009 he rallied the support of the  right wing of the Liberal Party led my Nick Minchin to overthrow Malcolm Turnbull as the leader. His victory margin was one vote. Malcolm Turnbull had been negotiating with Kevin Rudd for a bipartisan commitment on an emissions trading scheme.

    But with the leadership in his grasp and with the media and climate sceptics supporting him, Tony Abbott seized on the carbon tax and did what he does best, attack.

    We have never seen such a wrecking ball campaign on such an important issue as climate change and the associated carbon tax. He was joined in his exaggerated campaign against the carbon tax and climate change by News Corp and numerous right-wing ideologues posing as serious business people.

    This campaign was highly successful and in government he attacked every arm of government associated with climate change. But the ground was slowly moving around the world as one scientific report after another confirmed the growing threat of climate change induced particularly by coal-fired electricity generation. Even though the ground was moving, Tony Abbott continued to talk about ‘king coal’ and how the world would have to rely on coal for the rest of this century.

    Then came President Obama to the G20 meeting in Brisbane in November last year. This meeting of the twenty most powerful economies in the world was hoped to be a crowning success for its Chair, Tony Abbott. But it was not to be.

    Before arrival in Brisbane, Barack Obama had announced in Beijing an historic climate change agreement with the Chinese President. But there was more to come. Barack Obama took the platform at the University of Queensland and told the world that Tony Abbott was failing on climate change. Politely and clearly President Obama affirmed the science on climate change that Tony Abbott was denying.  He said that Australia faced longer droughts and more bushfires. He added that the incredible national glory of the Great Barrier Reef was threatened. He spoke of the increased production of carbon emissions and demanded that all countries step up and do more both nationally and internationally on climate change.

    Tony Abbott had tried to keep climate change off the G20 agenda. He failed. His PR people, including Julie Bishop, did what Tony Abbott does best – attack. They attacked our principal ally the US for daring to say these things in Australia about climate change.

    Lenore Taylor in The Guardian of 13 February 2015 put it this way. ‘An authoritarian leader’s need to attack, even annihilate critics can also be devastatingly self-defeating. Tony Abbott and senior ministers were deeply angry at Barack Obama’s show-stealing climate change speech during the G20 and in true authoritarian style launched an extraordinary onslaught on an ally. They briefed multiple News Ltd columnists to that effect, including graphic accounts of how they rang up afterwards and yelled at State Department officials for failing to give a “heads up” that the president was going to “dump on” the Prime Minister. Julie Bishop said the President clearly hadn’t read a briefing on all the excellent things Australia is doing to protect the Great Barrier Reef. Andrew Robb said the President had been misinformed.’

    The denial of climate change and the campaign against a carbon tax to reduce carbon emissions was a central factor in projecting Tony Abbott into the Lodge. But now our principal ally was telling him that he was wrong. President Obama catalysed for all that Tony Abbot was not only denying the science on climate change but that he was out of step with the world.

    In the opinion polls Tony Abbott had some minor recovery in the lead up to the G20 in November last year. From then on his personal and his party’s standing have slumped dramatically.

    Many factors, including personality, have played a part in Tony Abbott’s demise, but there is no doubt that climate change which facilitated his rise is the most substantial influence in his demise.

    Climate change will be written on his epitaph.

  • John Menadue. Fairness, Opportunity and Security – Filling the policy vacuum

    I sense that there is great public concern that both the government and opposition keep playing the political and personal game at the expense of informed public discussion of important policy issues.

    We have become concerned about the trustworthiness of our political, business and media elite. Insiders and vested interests are undermining the public interest. Money is unduly influencing political decisions. There is gridlock on important issues like climate change and taxation.

    After a near death experience Tony Abbott has said the he is open to new thinking and ways of governing. ‘Good government begins today’  Time will tell. Bill Shorten has said that 2015 will be the year of ideas. I hope so.

    In this blog over the next few months I will be posting a series of articles on important policy issues. I posted a three parter on health policy on January 27, 28 and 29.

    There will be range of contributors.Some  have contributed in the past to this blog

    Each of the policy articles will be about 2000 words. They will not be “pie in the sky’ but realistic, given our political and financial constraints.

    It is planned that these policy articles will be published in a book by ATF Press in October/November this year

    Policy areas to be canvassed

    Economic policy

    Fixing the budget

    Taxation

    Federalism

    Productivity

    Job creation and participation

    Foreign policy

    Security, both military and soft power.

    Health

     Development of our human capital in the fields of education, science, research and development and innovation.

    Transport and infrastructure

    Population/migration/refugees

    Welfare priorities

    Retirement incomes

    Indigenous affairs

    Communications and the Arts

    Environment and climate change

    Inequality

    Role of government including tackling corruption and bad behaviour

    Democratic renewal – the lack of trust in government and the hollowing out of our political parties.

    Terrorism and internal security whilst protecting of our freedoms

     

  • John Menadue. Tony Abbott at the National Press Club

    In his speech today, Tony Abbott recycled many of his one-liners that we heard at the last election. Let’s examine several of them.

    First, he said that his government was a low-taxing government and that it would reduce the budget deficit by reducing spending, rather than increasing taxes. But the most recent mid-year economic forecast shows that tax receipts are increasing substantially as a result of allowing budget creep as people move into higher income tax brackets. Government receipts/taxation are projected to increase by 2% from 22.8% of GDP in 2012-13 to 24.8% in 2017-18. Further the coalition said it would reduce debt. At the end of 2013 actual net debt was $178 b. The Department of Finance tell us that at the end of 2014  the net debt was $239 b, an increase of $61 b or 35%

    Tony Abbott said that he would stop the boats. But despite being told about the success of this ‘signature policy’ and the uncritical response of the media, the facts are that Tony Abbott did not stop the boats. What started the reduction in boat arrivals  was the announcement by Kevin Rudd on 19 July 2013, two months before the last election, that any new boat arrivals would be processed offshore and if found to be refugees, would not be settled in Australia. That was the real game changer, not Operation Sovereign Borders and the turn backs of a few boats to Indonesia.The number of people arriving by boat in July 2013 was 4,145. It fell substantially to 837 by the time the Abbott Government took power. The downward trend began in July 2013, two months before Tony Abbott came to power.

    As part of a dishonest and exaggerated scare campaign, Tony Abbott said that he would abolish the carbon tax. He did. But now without a carbon tax or an emissions trading scheme, we have no credible policy in place to address the growing threat of climate change. If Malcolm Turnbull comes back as leader an emissions trading scheme will be quickly back on the agenda.

    Tony Abbott said that he would abolish the mining tax. And he did – and Australia is much worse off as a result. Giant international mining companies like Glencore are paying very little company tax at all. Is that good economic management and is it fair?

    In his press club speech, Tony Abbott said that his government was on track in the building of roads. But many of the roads he claims to be building are really recycled projects from the previous government which Anthony Albanese had announced. In any event, we don’t need more roads for the reasons I have written about in this blog. We need to invest in new public urban rail systems.

    In his press club address, Tony Abbott complained about the Senate. Certainly the Senate has refused to pass some key government budget items, but that has been because the Senate came to the view, which I generally agree with, that many of the government’s budget proposals were unfair. Furthermore, Tony Abbott now prefers that we forget that at the last election he said that he would not hesitate to take the parliament to a double-dissolution if it was necessary to tame the Senate and the ALP. We have heard nothing more about this threat if the senate continues to misbehave. The media has completely forgotten this threat or was it a promise.

    One liners may be effective in opposition and at election time but they don’t usually make for good policy.

  • John Menadue. Postcard from Denmark on the Nordic Success

    For holiday reading, you may be interested in this repost.

    I have been interested for many years in the economic and social success of the Nordic countries, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway. Together they have a population of about 26 million.

    But what triggered my recent interest and decision to visit Denmark was the sheer pleasure of watching several Danish TV series –Borgen, The Killing, The Bridge. They are the best TV series that I have seen in years and far superior to the tosh that we often get from the US and sometimes from the UK. The Danish film industry receives government finance, but more importantly the Danes have invested heavily in human capital and the talent shows in these TV series. Portrayal of a country’s cultural life is important for the country to understand itself better. But in the case of Danish films, I have found them attractive enough to come and visit Copenhagen and spend some tourist dollars. Although I should say that Copenhagen is expensive.

    In 2012, the World Economic Forum and several related agencies ranked the four Nordic countries the best performing in the world. The ratings covered global competitiveness, ease of doing business, global innovation, corruption perception, human development and prosperity. Whilst the Nordics ranked 1 to 4 in the world, Australia ranked number 12.

    Last year The Economist, a conservative magazine, published a special survey of ‘The next supermodel’. The Nordics were the supermodel. It said ‘If you had to be reborn anywhere in the world as a person with average talents and income, you would want to be a Viking. The Nordics cluster at the top of league tables of everything from economic competitiveness to social health to happiness. They have avoided both southern Europe’s economic sclerosis and America’s extreme inequality. Development theorists have taken to calling successful modernisation “getting to Denmark”.’

    It added ‘The Nordics also offer something for the progressive Left by proving that it is possible to combine competitive capitalism with a large state; they employ 30% of their workforce in the public sector compared with an OECD average of 15%. They are stout free-traders who resist the temptation to intervene even to protect iconic companies. Sweden let Saab go bankrupt and Volvo is now owned by China’s Geely. But they also focus on the long-term – most obviously through Norway’s ($US884billion) sovereign wealth fund and they look for ways to temper capitalism’s harsher effects. Denmark, for instance, has a system of “flexicurity” that makes it easier for employers to sack people, but provides support and training for the unemployed. Finland organises venture capital networks.’

    The Nordics have traditionally had high taxes and high welfare spending along with strong economic growth and low unemployment. But the global financial crisis and membership of the European Union has forced readjustment and reform to reduce taxes and welfare spending.

    These changes are broadly supported by all the major parties. But the sales tax on new cars is still 180%. There are also heavy fuel and parking charges. This shows up in Copenhagen where it is one of the few major cities in the world not being strangled by cars. On the road you have to watch out for bicycles as much as cars. The 25% VAT includes food and restaurants.

    Taxes generally are amongst the highest in the world but the community seems broadly to accept them because it is confident that the government will spend the tax money for worthwhile purposes and with equity.

    In Denmark there are two or three strong parties and four or five other significant parties. No party has won an outright majority since 1901. No single party has formed a government alone since 1982. With multi parties, negotiation and compromise is essential. The record shows that new governments maintain the thrust of previous government policies although making changes around the edges.

    Capitalism is given a fairly free hand and there is acceptance that firms will go bust. But the Danes and others go all out to protect the most valuable resource, their human capital. People who lose their jobs through structural change are given good income support and meaningful retraining.

    The Danes have excellent schools and government funded and free health care. They root out corruption and rent seekers. If only we would do the same! Denmark has one of the most liberal labor markets in Europe with a very high rate of social mobility. In information technology and the internet they are ahead of most. 79% of eligible men work and 72% of eligible women work. Child care is readily available. The Danish gross government debt as a proportion of GDP is well below the US and Europe.

    In Denmark there is a strong tradition of different classes getting along with each other which is not surprising with such a small population (5 million) and a strong neighbour like Germany to the south.

    The absolutist monarchy took serious note of the French Revolution and decided that their survival depended on not resisting democracy and living modestly. Politicians think that it is smarter to be seen riding a bike to work rather than using a government limousine.

    The Nordic model is still work in progress with many changes necessary with I suspect more means testing. But they have probably reached the future ahead of others and are grappling with problems that others will face in the years ahead.

    The major stain on public life in Denmark, as it is with so many other countries in Europe, and even in far-away Australia, is the xenophobic attacks against refugees and migrants by political conservatives. Only last weekend in neighbouring Sweden the anti-immigration party, Sweden Democratic, polled 13% of the vote.

    In my next postcard from Denmark, I will try to describe why the Nordics and Denmark in particular have been so successful, despite high taxes, generous social services and more recently, significant increases in refugees at least compared with the size of their populations.

    Obviously organisation is easier in countries with small populations, but I suspect that the most important reason for Denmark’s success is good government. The Danish people see government not as a dead hand or the purveyor of red tape, but very largely an enabler of opportunity and freedom.

     

     

  • John Menadue. Getting back on the front foot.

    The tide is turning on climate change. It is going out on Tony Abbott and Rupert Murdoch. They will never admit it but the efforts of the Rudd and Gillard Governments will be vindicated.

    It is time for the ALP to really go onto its front foot on climate change. In recent months they have been extraordinarily quiet. It is not good enough to rely on the failures of the Abbott Government. The ALP needs to develop and prosecute its own policies.

    People in South Australia must be extremely worried about recent bushfires and now predicted heavy rainfalls. But we are hearing little from the ALP about climate change. The Opposition’s Shadow Minister for The Environment, Climate Change and Water, Mark Butler, comes from South Australia.

    The evidence on the dangers of climate change is mounting almost daily. Australians are feeling and sensing that weather patterns are changing significantly. The climate change deniers, like Tony Abbott, Alan Jones, Maurice Newman, Dick Warburton and Rupert Murdoch, will surely find that their denial has been unwise and damaging to our national interest.

    Tony Abbott tells us that one of his great political successes has been the abolition of the carbon tax. His opposition to the tax was one of his ‘signature policies’. Increasingly we are coming to see that he has misled us. The carbon tax and the associated emissions trading scheme were necessary and good policies.

    The evidence on climate change is mounting month after month after month.

    Last week the Australian Bureau of Meteorology told us (see link here) http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/annual/aus/

    • 2013 was our warmest year since records began in 1910. 2014 was our third warmest year. The 2014 spring was the warmest on record. Our mean average temperature in 2014 was 0.91 degrees above the 1961-1990 average.
    • Globally, 2014 may be the warmest year on record. No year since 1985 has observed a below average global mean temperature and all of the ten warmest years have occurred since 1998.
    • In Australia there was near average rainfall in 2014, but it was dry in the East and along the West coast.
    • Sea surface temperatures have remained high around Australia, with all five years between 2010 and 2014 within the eight warmest years on record.
    • There was extreme heat and significant warm spells.
    • There were significant bush fires, particularly in early spring.

    Despite Tony Abbott and Rupert Murdoch and the deniers, public opinion is shifting. In a survey released in 2014 the Lowy Institute showed the first increase in public concern over climate change in six years.  Almost two thirds of respondents said the government should be giving leadership on climate change.

    The international climate change conference in Peru late last year showed an increasing willingness by countries to take action on climate change.

    Despite attempts by Tony Abbott to sideline climate change at the G20 meeting in Brisbane, the presidents of the US and China signed a major agreement to combat climate change.

    In the fifth report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s most eminent climate scientists overwhelmingly agreed that climate change is a serious and developing problem.

    Pope Francis will weigh in in a few months’ time with the first ever Vatican teaching on climate change.

    But here, the Australian Government is rolling out its pay the polluter Direct Action Plan and trying to wind back the renewal energy target.

    Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce in October last year outlined his plans on competitiveness in agriculture and how farmers needed to adapt to climate variability. But there was no mention of climate change. This is quite remarkable as there is probably no group in Australia that is likely to be more affected by climate change than Australian farmers. But tagging along behind the Liberal Party for the sake of a few ministerial posts, the National Party is failing to provide effective leadership for rural Australia.

    The tide is turning on climate change.

  • Australia is worst performing industrial country on climate change.

    For the Lima Conference on Climate Change that has just begun, a report by the think-tank Germanwatch and Climate Action Network Europe examined the 58 emitters of greenhouse gasses in the world, and about 90% of all energy-related emissions. The report named Australia as the worst performing industrial country in the world on climate change. We have now replaced Canada as the worst performing industrial country. The report author told The Guardian, which has published this story ‘It is interesting that the bottom six countries in the ranking – Russia, Iran, Canada, Kazakhstan, Australia and Saudi Arabia – all have a lot of fossil fuel resources. It is a curse.The fossil fuel lobbies in these countries are strong. In Australia they stopped what were some very good carbon laws.’

    For the report in The Guardian, see link below.

    http://gu.com/p/44xha/sbl

  • John Menadue. Our Environment Minister is not going to Lima

    Almost all countries will have their climate change or environment ministers at the UN Climate Change Conference which commences this week in Lima, Peru. This conference is in preparation for the crucial conference on climate change in Paris next year.

    But our Environment Minister, Greg Hunt, will not be there. Tony Abbott is sending his Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop, but is also sending Andrew Robb, our Trade Minister to keep an eye on her. It is reported that Julie Bishop went ‘bananas’ over this insult to her.

    News reports suggest that Tony Abbott had no intention of sending  a minister to Lima. Julie Bishop asked for approval to go and was refused. When she asked a second time approval was given but only on the condition that Andrew Robb went with her. How very odd!

    But clearly Tony Abbott has major doubts about the reliability of Greg Hunt on climate change. As Michelle Grattan put it The Conversation on 3 December 2014, ‘In 2008 when the Coalition was committed to an emissions trading scheme, Shadow Treasurer Turnbull, Hunt, the environment spokesman and Bishop, the deputy Liberal leader, oppose Nelson’s desire to link an ETS to when the big emitters took action rather than to a specific date. In 2009 when Turnbull was leader, climate spokesman Robb … spectacularly repudiated Turnbull’s proposed compromise with the Rudd Government to get Labor’s ETS through parliament. Robb’s dramatic intervention, made during a long party room meeting on the highly contested issue, was a devastating blow to Turnbull’s leadership, which was under pressure over this stand on the ETS and his non-consultative style. Robb has documented the story in his book” Black Dog Days”. Turnbull quickly lost his job and Abbott became leader.’

    We have seen a consistent pattern by the Coalition in opposition and now in government to dismantle and defund almost attempts that have been made to address the threat which climate change presents to our planet.

    Even this week the NSW and ACT governments combined with researchers at the University of NSW’ Climate Change Research Centre, which predicted increasing hot days, longer dry spells, increased fire danger and fewer wet days.

    The science is trending overwhelmingly in one direction; that action on climate change is essential. But still the Abbott Government obfuscates and dissembles, even refusing to send the Environment Minister to the critical meeting in Lima.

  • John Menadue. Move over Joe Hockey

    The Julie Bishop media blitz continues. But will it flame out like the media blitz of her namesake, Bronwyn Bishop who was also touted by the media as a possible Liberal leader over a decade ago. Like Julie Bishop now and Bronwyn Bishop then, they had amazing free runs in the media. But in the end substance and not style wins out.

    And on substantial issues as I have mentioned in my earlier blogs, there is little of real achievement… There have been record cuts in overseas development aid, Ebola delays, needlessly provoking China over its island dispute with Japan, failure to achieve real outcomes on MH17 and of course, most recently, playing party politics with the President of the US over climate change.

    Since Joe Hockey hit the hurdle with his first budget, Julie Bishop has obviously seen an opening. The media posturing is so obvious – a range of interviews from Harpers, Vanity Fair and Peter Hartcher in the SMH. There was a round of media interviews in New York which was ideal to project her role as Chair of the Security Council. And of course there was media interest in her jogging in Beijing and elsewhere. She has clearly been impressed by the media which John Howard attracted with his early morning walks and Tony Abbott’s bike riding. But there is not much substance in jogging. She probably decided that shirt-fronting the President of the US would bring her brownie points with her increasingly nervous colleagues and with the electorate.

    Her attack on Tanya Plibersek in yesterday’s SMH also reflects this media drive. It hard to understand how she thinks that flirting with Kevin Rudd adds to her foreign policy credentials. If anything she might consider retracting what she said about Kevin Rudd’s campaign for an Australian seat on the Security Council.  ‘There really has been no justification for the benefits that will accrue to Australia for pursuing a seat [on the Security Council] at this time.’ How ironic that she now projects herself as the Chair of the Security Council that she was so critical of a short time ago. How Julie Bishop also thinks that Tanya Plibersek would benefit by a briefing from her is hard to grasp. Most people would think that a briefing from foreign policy and intelligence specialists, which she received, would be much more useful.

    But what Julie Bishop will be most remembered for is her attack on President Obama to burnish her tough person image as the logical successor to Tony Abbott if opinion polls keep trending down against the Coalition.

    The Coalition was not expecting President Obama’s speech in Brisbane or the deal that President Obama made with President Xi. The Coalition clearly feels badly hurt by the position the US has taken.

    Our Foreign Minister and the government however should not have been surprised. The signs were everywhere that the Obama administration was tiring of the Australian Government’s position on climate change.

    Tony Abbott was due to meet President Obama for their first meeting at the APEC Summit in Bali only a month after Tony Abbott was elected. But President Obama could not attend and was represented by his Secretary of State, John Kerry. On good advice, I understand that John Kerry was not impressed with Tony Abbott on climate change. He asked officials ‘Where does Prime Minister Abbott get this stuff from on climate change?’

    In the AFR yesterday, John Kehoe, its correspondent in Washington spells out very clearly that the Australian Government had been warned about what was coming up in the lift on climate change. Kehoe referred to a speech that John Podesta, President Obama’s climate change policy architect had made. Podesta had been pivotal in President Obama’s landmark deal with China. Kehoe reported that in July this year in a speech ‘to senior Americans and Australians including Finance Minister Mathias Cormann and Opposition Leader Bill Shorten, Podesta bemoaned Australia’s lack of climate policy. After the abolition of a carbon price, attendees say Podesta told the audience the Australian Government did not have a credible climate policy in place, adding he felt he should be honest with Australian friends.’

    According to Kehoe the issue was also spelled out plainly by Caroline Atkinson who was President Obama’s ‘G20 sherpa’ and national security adviser for international economics. Kehoe reported ‘Not once but twice in the lead up to the G20, Atkinson publicly told Washington audiences full of Australian government officials that the US expected to have a proper discussion on climate at the G20. She even suggested that other countries would team up against Abbott to make it happen. For those in Canberra blindsided by Obama damaging Abbott on climate change, they overlooked signals the White House had been sending for months.’

    There is clearly no excuse for Julie Bishop’s ignorance or surprise in what was in train. A minister who was on the ball would not be blindsided like this.

    In recent days we have had The Australian carrying stories designed to help the government in its predicament on climate change. Could we think of it doing anything else! The Australian suggested that Tony Abbott led the pack in standing up against President Obama on climate change in and around the G20. This is patently nonsense and special pleading. The reverse was the case with not only President Obama but Prime Ministers Cameron and Merkel, and President Hollande, and maybe others ringing the carbon change bell on our Prime Minister.

    The relentless media campaign by Julie Bishop tells us a lot about the problems unfolding in the Liberal Party, Julie Bishop’s personal aspirations and how the under resourced Australian media can be so easily manipulated and distracted by personality and celebrity at the expense of examination of policy.

    It is also becoming clear that the government has nowhere to go on climate change, except in reverse.

  • Geoff Hiscock. Cleaning up the coal energy pillar a central task for Modi and Abbott

    Narendra Modi and Tony Abbott explicitly defined energy as a “central pillar” of the India-Australia economic relationship in their joint statement this week.

    That’s a good sign, but if they want to make a truly significant contribution to the long-term economic and social benefit of India and Australia, then they need to deliver forcefully and quickly on the commitment they made to work together on clean coal technology.

    An emphasis on utility-scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects in India would be a good place to start. With 1.93 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions last year (5.5 per cent of the global total), India does not yet match China’s massive 9.52 billion tonnes (27.1 per cent), but it is headed in the same direction and by 2025 could be the world’s biggest coal importer.  Much of that coal will come from Australia.

    India has a large domestic coal industry, but it relies heavily on imported coal for its energy needs from Indonesia, Australia, South Africa and Kazakhstan. If the Modi-Abbott embrace holds true, then Australia is going to be an increasingly important energy supplier for India, both in thermal coal and liquefied natural gas (LNG).

    Modi told his Australian audience that he wanted all Indians to have access to electricity generated in a way that “does not cause our glaciers to melt.”  While the opponents of coal see that as the go sign for renewables, the reality is that coal is not going to disappear from India’s energy equation any time soon. It now generates 60 per cent of Indian electricity, and while that share may fall to 50 per cent between 2025 and 2030, the actual volume of coal consumed will not decline, because most of India suffers from a power supply shortage.  Modi’s home state of Gujarat is one of the few parts of India with a power surplus – a result of Modi’s pro-business policies and his encouragement of groups such as Adani and Tata to build large coal-fired power stations there. He has also given strong backing to the solar power industry

    But even with a substantial investment in domestic oil and gas, LNG imports, nuclear, hydro, solar and wind power, Modi knows that India will have to rely on coal-fired power stations for its electricity and industrial needs for years to come. It simply lacks the infrastructure, the smart technology, the time and the money to move too far from coal too soon.  To say that coal globally is in structural decline ignores the development aspirations of a multitude of nations.  India, for example, is still way behind China on the development path, and as many as 300 million of its 1.3 billion people lack access to the affordable, reliable power that coal can deliver.

    The world has known for decades that coal carries a heavy environmental price – Europe and the US in the 1950s, Japan in the 1970s and China in the 2010s all bear the scars of coal-fired air pollution. But just as suphur dioxide has been cleaned from smoke stack emissions, so too can carbon dioxide be removed if the political will exists and the price to pay is deemed palatable. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) typically reduces a power plant’s efficiency by 8 to 10 per cent, according to the International Energy Agency. For India, just as it is for China, the big challenge is to maximise the efficiency of new coal-fired power stations to offset the losses that go with CCS.  The latest ultra-supercritical power stations have efficiency ratings of 44 per cent or better. Unfortunately, too many of the power plants built in Asia in the last two decades have still been in the subcritical range, with efficiency ratings of 28-38 per cent. The factors that determine a plant’s efficiency (apart from the quality of the coal and water) are pressure and temperature, and the ability of components such as boilers and turbine blades to withstand higher pressures and temperatures,

    This is where Australian expertise in metallurgy, in power plant design, and in scrubbing carbon out of coal could be of great benefit to India, both economically and environmentally.  Increased washing of coal to improve efficiency, de-watering, steam-cleaning of flue gases and the use of a range of CCS options covering combustion, pulverisation and gas conversion are being tested around the world in demonstration plants and pilot projects. There is an urgent need to apply these carbon-cleaning measures to full-sized coal-fired power stations. That is starting to happen in North America through utility-scale CCS projects such as Boundary Dam in Canada and Petra Nova in the US, and will most probably happen in China from about 2016 onwards.

    Early last year, New Delhi-based The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) published a scoping study on the potential for CCS to mitigate India’s greenhouse gas emissions.  It pointed to a number of Indian CCS research projects in energy, petrochemicals and metals, in cooperation with countries such as Norway and the United States.  It said the barriers to CCS in India included the lack of accurate geological storage site data, the extra cost involved in using CCS, the “demonstration stage” nature of the technology and a lack of knowledge and capability among policy makers and regulators.  Other factors were financial risk for investors, lack of skilled labour and infrastructure, legal issues over land use, water contamination, CO2 leakage, and the cost- efficiency trade-off in retrofitting power plants with CCS measures.

    It concluded that India’s top development priority was to provide electricity to all at affordable prices. Nonetheless, it said CCS work should continue with “sustained efforts … required towards capacity development of different stakeholders.”

    The TERI report identifies the sort of work that needs to be done in India before CCS gets moving. Modi and Abbott should ensure the momentum generated by this week’s energy embrace does not get wasted.

    Geoff Hiscock writes on international business and is the author of “Earth Wars: The Battle for Global Resources,” published by Wiley.

  • Renewable energy investment.

    A key feature of the President Obama/President Xi communique is their commitment to substantially reduce carbon pollution. There was little mention of an emissions trading scheme or putting a price on carbon. The emphasis was on developing renewable energy as an alternative source of energy to fossil fuels.  Emphasis was given to development of solar, wind and nuclear power. But in Australia, our government in attacking the established renewable energy targets has caused great confusion and damage in investment plans. As a result, renewable energy investment in Australia dropped 70% in the past year.  See the link below to the  report from the Climate Council which was published in The Conversation on 10 November.  John Menadue.

    http://gu.com/p/436ym/sbl

  • Tony Abbott and the G20

    In the media in the past few days we have been overwhelmed by stories and photo opportunities from the G20 in Brisbane. It will take some time to sort out fact from spin. I have set out below some comments and opinions from observers. It provides a useful but only partial account by observers of the G20. I have not included any comments from News Corp publications. News Corp’s support of the government is entirely predictable.

    (more…)

  • Peter Christoff. US-China climate deal: at last, a real game-changer.

    The new US-China climate deal is a game-changer.

    The United States, the world’s biggest historical emitter of greenhouse gases, has pledged to cut emissions by 26-28% by 2025 relative to 2005 levels, while China, the current biggest emitter, has promised to peak its emissions by no later than 2030.

    The agreement between the world’s two biggest greenhouse gas emitters is part of preparations for the United Nations negotiations in Paris next year, where the rest of the world will attempt to hammer out a meaningful deal to limit emissions.

    It is a significant step forward. Back in 2009, the keenly anticipated UN climate conference in Copenhagen failed, largely because of a standoff between the two states.

    Their inability to collaborate and to reach a level of mutual recognition of each other’s capacities and limits before the conference was a major contributor to the meeting’s chaotic close and weak, non-binding outcome.

    The big turnaround

    This time, things seem different. Both states have recognised their responsibility to show leadership on the climate issue.

    China’s pledge to peak its emissions by 2030 indicates that it is now willing to assume a leadership role in international climate negotiations – a role commensurate with its global economic importance, with its status as the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter, and as a country that would be devastated by accelerating climate change.

    China’s proposed target – the first time it has agreed to stop growing its emissions in absolute terms – points to a willingness to shift towards a post-carbon economy.

    It is also a pragmatic response to the social and political challenges posed by dangerous levels of domestic air pollution, caused in part by dirty industrialisation and the use of fossil fuels, in its major cities.

    Meanwhile, US President Barack Obama’s pledge effectively throws down the gauntlet to the newly Republican-controlled Congress.

    The US Climate Action Plan has been Obama’s main policy for meeting the previous target of 17% below 2005 levels by 2020, which he announced at Copenhagen.

    But Obama has been unable to legislate to establish a national emissions trading scheme in support of the existing US target or of tougher goals.

    Nevertheless, even in the absence of such a scheme, US emissions have dropped significantly because of the global financial crisis and its economic aftermath in the United States, the development and uptake of new gas sources, and the use of existing regulatory measures.

    In 2012, US emissions were 10% below 2005 levels and the United States seems likely to achieve its 2020 target, despite the recent upswing following several years of emissions decline.

    The new US target of 26-28% below 2005 by 2025 increases the pressure the country is putting on itself to perform and reform. The joint announcement also forces Congress to recognise that China believes that its economic competitiveness – and its challenge to the United States’ economic dominance – will not be harmed even by rapid decarbonisation.

    This knowledge should reinforce Obama’s push for better and more aggressive emissions-reduction measures, enshrined in domestic law, that will also help to modernise the American economy.

    But is it all enough?

    That’s the good news. Now for the not-so-good news.

    These commitments will frame the levels of ambition required of other states at Paris next year. Climate modellers will no doubt now be rushing to determine what these new commitments, if delivered successfully, will mean for combating global warming.

    The US and Chinese cuts, significant though they are, will not be enough to limit the total increase in the atmospheric carbon dioxide unless other states engage in truly radical reductions.

    In other words, global emissions are likely to continue to grow, probably until 2030, which will make it impossible to hold global warming below the world’s agreed limit of 2C above pre-industrial levels.

    Australia snookered

    Nevertheless, this announcement means that laggard states like Australia can no longer hide behind the fiction that major developing economies like China are unprepared to make serious efforts to cut their emissions.

    It further embarrasses Australia in its attempt to keep climate change off the agenda at the meeting of the G20 next week.

    It increases the pressure on Australia to bring substantial target commitments to the table in Paris in 2015 – something the Abbott government is presently resisting vigorously.

    And it strongly suggests that the Abbott government’s longed-for coal export boom will, as many have predicted, turn out to be an illusion.

    Peter Christoff is the Associate Professor at University of Melbourne. This article first appeared in today’s The Conversation.