Pearls and Irritations

Category: Climate

  • Faith in coal.

     

    In my blog of 5 January 2013, ‘A Canary in the Coal Mine’, I said that ‘The future of new thermal coal mines is doubtful. Would any sensible investor take not only the political risk but also the financial risk of investing in new thermal coal mines in Australia?’

    The canary warning is getting louder and louder, even though Tony Abbott tells us that ‘Coal is good for humanity’.

    In an excellent article in the SMH of 18 October 2014, Tony Allard says that Abbott’s faith in coal mining could be wrong – very wrong.

    It refers to companies such as Citigroup, Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Company and Deutsche Bank who stress the decline in the demand for coal and its dubious prospects.  It is not just the ANU that is discussing divestment in fossil fuels.

    Tom Allard’s excellent article can be found at:

    http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/why-abbotts-faith-in-coal-could-be-wrong–very-wrong-20141017-117k1b.html

    John Menadue

  • Philip Kokic, Mark Howden, Steven Crimp. 99.999% certainty humans are driving global warming.

    There is less than 1 chance in 100,000 that global average temperature over the past 60 years would have been as high without human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, our new research shows.

    Published in the journal Climate Risk Management today, our research is the first to quantify the probability of historical changes in global temperatures and examines the links to greenhouse gas emissions using rigorous statistical techniques.

    Our new CSIRO work provides an objective assessment linking global temperature increases to human activity, which points to a close to certain probability exceeding 99.999%.

    Our work extends existing approaches undertaken internationally to detect climate change and attribute it to human or natural causes. The 2013 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fifth Assessment Report provided an expert consensus that:

    It is extremely likely [defined as 95-100% certainty] that more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010 was caused by the anthropogenic [human-caused] increase in greenhouse gas concentrations and other anthropogenic forcings together.

    Decades of extraordinary temperatures

    July 2014 was the 353rd consecutive month in which global land and ocean average surface temperature exceeded the 20th-century monthly average. The last time the global average surface temperature fell below that 20th-century monthly average was in February 1985, as reported by the US-based National Climate Data Center.

    This means that anyone born after February 1985 has not lived a single month where the global temperature was below the long-term average for that month.

    We developed a statistical model that related global temperature to various well-known drivers of temperature variation, including El Niño, solar radiation, volcanic aerosols andgreenhouse gas concentrations. We tested it to make sure it worked on the historical record and then re-ran it with and without the human influence of greenhouse gas emissions.

    Our analysis showed that the probability of getting the same run of warmer-than-average months without the human influence was less than 1 chance in 100,000.

    We do not use physical models of Earth’s climate, but observational data and rigorous statistical analysis, which has the advantage that it provides independent validation of the results.

    Detecting and measuring human influence

    Our research team also explored the chance of relatively short periods of declining global temperature. We found that rather than being an indicator that global warming is not occurring, the observed number of cooling periods in the past 60 years strongly reinforces the case for human influence.

    We identified periods of declining temperature by using a moving 10-year window (1950 to 1959, 1951 to 1960, 1952 to 1961, etc.) through the entire 60-year record. We identified 11 such short time periods where global temperatures declined.

    Our analysis showed that in the absence of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, there would have been more than twice as many periods of short-term cooling than are found in the observed data.

    There was less than 1 chance in 100,000 of observing 11 or fewer such events without the effects of human greenhouse gas emissions.

     The problem and the solution

    Why is this research important? For a start, it might help put to rest some common misunderstandings about there being no link between human activity and the observed, long-term trend of increasing global temperatures.

    Our analysis – as well as the work of many others – shows beyond reasonable doubt that humans are contributing to significant changes in our climate.

    Good risk management is all about identifying the most likely causes of a problem, and then acting to reduce those risks. Some of the projected impacts of climate change can be avoided, reduced or delayed by effective reduction in global net greenhouse gas emissions and by effective adaptation to the changing climate.

    Ignoring the problem is no longer an option. If we are thinking about action to respond to climate change or doing nothing, with a probability exceeding 99.999% that the warming we are seeing is human-induced, we certainly shouldn’t be taking the chance of doing nothing.

    This article was first published in The Conversation on 4 September 2014.

    Philip Kokic is the Senior Statistician at CSIRO, Mark Howden is the Research Scientist, Agriculture Flagship at CSIRO, Steven Crimp is the Senior Research Scientist at CSIRO.

     

  • Mike Steketee. Politics vs Science.

    “THE laws of physics are non-negotiable,” observed Michel Jarraud, secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organisation, this week. https://www.wmo.int/pages/mediacentre/press_releases/pr_1002_en.html

    You wouldn’t think so listening to the often frenzied debate about global warming or, according to Tony Abbott’s senior business adviser Maurice Newman, what is really global cooling http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/were-illprepared-if-the-iceman-cometh/story-e6frg6zo-1227023489894 .

    Jarraud was commenting on the release of the WMO’s annual greenhouse gas bulletin https://www.wmo.int/pages/mediacentre/press_releases/documents/1002_GHG_Bulletin.pdf  , based mainly on data collected by 50 countries. It shows a 34 per cent increase in the warming effect of greenhouse gases between 1990 and 2013. Most of this is attributable to carbon dioxide, atmospheric concentrations of which have risen by 142 per cent since the start of industrialisation in the 18th century, “primarily because of emissions from combustion of fossil fuels and cement production”. The WMO recorded an increase of 2.9 parts per million in 2013 – the largest rise since 1984 – although it added the figure was subject to seasonal and regional variations, such as a changing balance between photosynthesis and respiration or the amount of biomass burned.

    The figures put the best face on things, more or less. The WMO’s bulletin reports on concentrations of greenhouse gases rather than emissions – that is, what remains in the atmosphere after the estimated 25 per cent of emissions that are absorbed by the oceans and a similar amount by the biosphere, particularly plants. That means we are producing around twice as much long-lived greenhouse gases than can be taken up by the earth and the oceans. Moreover, the increasing amounts of CO2 going into the ocean is causing acidification at a rate that “appears unprecedented at least over the last 300 million years”. The consequences are not fully known but include reduced calcification, relied on by corals, molluscs and other organisms.

    Jarraud said the bulletin “provides a scientific base for decision-making. …Pleading ignorance can no longer be an excuse for not acting.”

    So much for the science. Back in the world of politics, where just about anything is negotiable, apparently including the future of the planet, Australia has decided that it has been doing far too much to deal with global warming. The price on carbon emissions has been removed, despite the evidence, both direct and indirect, that it worked. Most of the sharp increase in electricity prices in recent years has been due not to the carbon tax but the cost of upgrading infrastructure – the poles and wires – often unnecessarily because of perverse incentives. But the response from consumers has been exactly what you would expect from a price rise, whatever its origins – they have reduced their demand for electricity. This has been one of the factors in the break since 2010 in the long-term trend towards rising electricity demand. file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/Kate/My%20Documents/Downloads/IP%2014%20Power%20down_0.pdf

    Prices in the electricity market have responded in another way. In the words of the report https://retreview.dpmc.gov.au/ret-review-report-0 of the inquiry established by the Abbott government into the renewable energy target, “analyses suggest that, overall, the RET is exerting some downward pressure on wholesale electricity prices. This is not surprising, given that the RET is increasing the supply of electricity when electricity demand has been falling”.

    Indeed, if the reduction is passed on in lower retail prices, as it should be in a competitive market, and offsets the higher cost of producing renewables, it might be thought of as a positive outcome by a government that hails the reduction in electricity prices brought about by the abolition of the carbon tax. However, the inquiry into the RET, headed by businessman and climate change sceptic Dick Warburton, had another purpose: to find a way of scaling back or eliminating the RET. As a result, the report argued that “artificially” low wholesale electricity prices could distort investment decisions.

    Thankfully, the report did not ignore some other facts, even if it put its own peculiar interpretation on them. Modelling it commissioned found the net impact of the RET on retail prices was small, including into the future. It concluded that the scheme had broadly met its objectives, with output from large scale renewable generators, mainly wind farms, almost doubling and that from small scale systems, mainly solar, already exceeding levels forecast for 2020. The cost of renewables had fallen, particularly for rooftop solar and the small scale renewable industry was becoming commercially viable.

    All this might sound like good news but the report thought otherwise. It found the RET to be a high cost approach to reducing CO2 emissions – $35 to $68 a tonne and $100 to $200 a tonne for small-scale renewables.

    So it is but it depends on the alternatives. At the moment there are none. The Gillard government set the carbon price at $23 a tonne and the international market price has moved much lower since. The report suggests the Abbott government’s direct action policy would produce cheaper abatement than renewables. But that remains to be seen – that is, if the policy is ever implemented in a viable form, given that it currently is blocked in the Senate.

    The government says it remains committed to reducing emissions by 5 per cent from 2000 levels by 2020, although the Climate Change Authority, among others, argues that this is less than required for Australia to meet its fair share of the international effort. The RET is the only remaining significant mechanism for at least heading in the right direction. Its role is to increase the share of emissions-free electricity, not, as the Warburton report argues, to solve the problems facing fossil fuel generators because of falling demand by winding back the RET.

    According to Andrew Blakers, director of the Centre for Sustainable Energy Systems at the Australian Natonal University, Australia could achieve 90 per cent renewable energy by 2040 by replacing coal and gas fired stations that are due to be retired over the coming decades http://theconversation.com/renewable-energy-target-review-experts-respond-31050 . Solutions would need to be found for storing power from wind and solar, given their intermittent nature, but developments in battery technology suggest that this is in prospect. Blakers offers another option that he says would be cheaper: “pumped hydro”, under which water is pumped up to a reservoir when there is spare electricity from renewables and then run downhill through a turbine when needed. http://theconversation.com/how-pushing-water-uphill-can-solve-our-renewable-energy-issues-28196

    In a world that gradually is doing more to address climate change but still not enough to meet the target of limiting warming to 2C, Australia  has become the international laggard, despite being one of the highest producers of greenhouse gases per capita in the world. The International Energy Agency has estimated http://www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication/25recom_2011.pdf  that taking a range of measures merely to improve the efficiency with which we use energy can reduce total global energy consumption by 17 per cent by 2030, making a big contribution towards cutting greenhouse gases.

    But according to an American study http://aceee.org/portal/national-policy/international-scorecard , Australia ranks 10th out of 16 OECD countries in overall energy efficiency and last in transport. Under the Abbott government, it “has dramatically reduced its investment in efficiency and has rolled back its efficiency incentive programs, causing its score to decline.” An example is this year’s budget, which withdrew commonwealth funding of public transport projects and increased it for roads.

    Given the relentless long-term trend towards global warming (memo Maurice Newman: periods of short-term cooling have been declining http://theconversation.com/99-999-certainty-humans-are-driving-global-warming-new-study-29911?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=The%20Weekend%20Conversation%20-%201899&utm_content=The%20Weekend%20Conversation%20-%201899+CID_02ac31e1fe595615139d593549d1aefb&utm_source=campaign_monitor&utm_term=99999%20certainty%20humans%20are%20driving%20global%20warming%20new%20study ), it should be a case of all hands on deck. The opposition already has voted against direct action legislation in the House of Representatives on the grounds that it is a poor substitute for an emissions trading scheme. Perhaps it is but that does not mean the kind of projects that could attract funding under direct action, such as for increased energy efficiency in commercial buildings and industry, reafforestation and improved soil carbon, are not worth doing.  Labor should reverse its position and support the legislation in the Senate.

    As the WMO’s Michel Jarraud put it this week, “we are runnning out of time”.

    This article was first published in The Drum on 12 September, 2014.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • John Menadue–King Coal to be dethroned.

    On May 1 last year I posted “A canary in the coal mine”. It focussed on the growing and wide concern about the damage to the climate caused by coal fired electricity generation. It also drew attention to the action of Jonathon Moylan who sent a hoax email concerning Whitehaven Coal to the ANZ Bank about the risk of investing in coal. The worthy and powerful tut tutted his action but I likened it to the canary in the coal mine warning of danger ahead.

    In the Supreme Court a few days ago. Jonathon Moylan pleaded guilty but it seems unlikely that he will receive a custodial sentence. Good luck to him for acting out his concerns about our planet, the dangers of coal and that the banks should be careful in funding more coal projects

    Only a few days earlier in Texas, Tony Abbott our apparent self-styled “ambassador for coal” said “for many decades at least, coal will continue to fuel human progress as an affordable energy source for wealthy and developed countries alike”

    But the evidence is pointing in the other direction. At the recent midyear climate negotiations in Bonn, an unprecedented 60 countries including Germany called for a total phase out of fossil fuels by 2050 as part of a global agreement on climate change to be concluded in Paris in 2015. If the Paris conference next year is successful the future of coal will be even more bleak than it is now, particularly for steaming coal

    The future of coking coal produced for steel making will be more secure, but not steaming coal. About 13 % of global coal is mined for coking and steel making. Coking coal is about 40% of our total coal exports. The remainder is steaming coal.

    On a global basis 41 % of 0f the world’s electricity is generated by highly polluting steaming coal.

    The International Energy Agency has advised that even if we aim to limit the world temperature rise to only 2 degrees – it could be more in practice – we would have to achieve a reduction of 50 % in the share of global energy from coal by 2035.

    Coal may seem a cheap fuel now but it does not carry the cost of the ‘externalities’ it incurs, the damage it does to our environment and health. That is why proper pricing of coal is essential. As the real cost of steaming coal increases the cost of renewables is moving strongly downwards.

    The signs are everywhere that steaming coal pollution must be reduced in favour of less polluting alternatives. Why in the world would Joe Hockey tell us that the wind farms around Canberra are ‘utterly offensive…I think they are blight on the landscape’? Does he prefer dirty and polluting smoke stacks?

    President Obama has taken executive action to mandate a 30 % reduction in carbon emissions from fossil burning power plants by 2030. As Japan restarts its nuclear power plants it will buy less Australian coal. China is committed to reducing power generation from coal. It is a national imperative. European consumption of coal continues to fall with new air pollution requirements from 2016.

    There are reports that Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Credit Agricole and the Bank of Scotland have withdrawn their support for the Abbott Point Coal loader in Queensland. The Bendigo and Adelaide Bank have said that they would not fund coal projects.

    We are also hearing of new coal projects being deferred and many existing mines losing money. Some of this may be short term but the longer term prospects for steaming coal are bleak. In May the Queensland Resources Council said that 10% of coal mines are “in a very precarious state”

    Or as John Hewson has put it “The days of fossil fuels being burnt unabated are over. Investing in these projects is a losing bet” (AFR 11 June 2014)

    More and more pain is coming for steaming coal.

    Minister Greg Hunt told us a few days ago that clean coal is just around the corner with new technology. But we have been hearing that for over 20 years. It is politics designed to try and prop up a declining industry and shows the risk of Direct Action in handing out money to industrial friends and political supporters.

    Tony Abbott says that action on carbon must not be allowed that damages our economy.  He thinks that the planet and our economy are separate.  Just as there will be no jobs in the Murray Darling Basin if we pollute the river so our economy and jobs will be at risk if we do not safeguard our climate and planet. If our planet is severely damaged, as is in prospect, so will our economy and lot more as well.

    Interestingly the Mining Division of the CFMEU whose members jobs at risk is far more constructive about addressing climate than Tony Abbott. The union has consistently supported a price on carbon with appropriate safeguards and compensation.

    We need to stop shoring up industries that are carbon polluting. As Ian McAuley has put it capitalism thrives on change and the opportunity for countries like Australia to modernise the energy sector can be a major driver of change. There are jobs in de commissoning coal fired plants, in building solar and wind plants and the accompanying infrastructure in energy research and development and in making domestic buildings and industrial plants energy efficient. If this isn’t economic activity, what is?

    King coal is not the energy source of the future regardless of what Tony Abbott says. The canary in the coal mine is screeching louder and louder and we had better take notice.

  • Bugger the planet, ignore our children and trash our reputation.

    The repeal of the carbon tax is a political victory for Tony Abbott but it is hard to imagine a worse combination of poor reasoning and bad policy making. It shows little appreciation of economics. It will increase the budget deficit. It shows a mistrust of the market. Tony Abbott’s political legacy will be defined by the repeal of the carbon tax. It is one of the worst examples of policy vandalism in our history.

    As the world’s greatest carbon polluter per capita, we are now probably the only country in the world going backwards on carbon reduction. We will be left with a nonsense called ‘Direct Action’ which Malcolm Turnbull rightly described as a fig leaf when you don’t have a real policy to reduce carbon.

    All the expert advice around the world from the climate scientists and economists is that we have a real problem which is best addressed through a market mechanism – either a carbon tax or an emissions trading scheme. Our own Treasury, Ken Henry, Bernie Fraser and Ross Garnaut, all tell us that the best and cheapest way to reduce carbon pollution is through a market mechanism rather than direct action. Tony Abbott prefers to take the advice on climate change – not of the experts but of Rupert Murdoch and other foolish people.

    Our political system and our political leaders have failed us badly. John Howard reluctantly said in 2007 that he would introduce an emissions trading scheme, but told us later that he really didn’t believe in it but he had to do it because of political pressure. Kevin Rudd’s emissions trading scheme was pursued more in the end to skewer Malcolm Turnbull. It was at the cost of a good policy outcome. When the Liberal Party dumped Malcolm Turnbull for Tony Abbott, Rudd refused to call a double dissolution on the ‘great moral challenge of climate change’. Julia Gillard told us that she would never introduce a carbon tax, and then did just that under pressure from the Greens. Then Tony Abbott, despite having favoured a carbon tax in his Daily Telegraph blog of 2009, played the carbon tax issue like a dog with a bone. No untruth was out of the question. No scare was too great.  He played to the climate sceptics and the extreme right wing of his own party and in the community. As the chair of the G20 in Brisbane later this year, he will do his best to keep climate change off the agenda.

    And then there were the Greens who must bear a huge responsibility for their policy purity that denied us a sensible outcome in 2009. The Greens joined with the Coalition in the Senate to vote down Kevin Rudd’s proposals because they ‘locked in an inadequate 5% target’. Five years later we still have a 5% target with no clear or efficient way to get there. The Greens should hang their heads in shame. They took no risks but kept parading their policy purity. Their hypocrisy continues on one issue after another. Just think asylum seekers when they sided with Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison on critical issues. In parading their self-righteousness the Greens invariably ask for more than is on the table and finish up with nothing. It is often better to hold your nose and make some real progress.

    But in it all, Tony Abbott stands out as the greatest vandal. He warned us about dramatic increases in power prices that the carbon tax would incur. Those scare tactics are turning out to be largely nonsense. The price rises due to carbon tax have been so small that the Australia Bureau of Statistics has had trouble measuring them. There certainly have been increases in electricity prices but they have little to do with the carbon tax. Only 7% of power prices are due to the carbon tax and another 7% is due to various other means to encourage energy saving and use of renewables. The big increase in electricity prices has been the gouging by the state-owned networks in NSW and Qld. On top of this gold plating by the networks which has forced up prices, we are likely to see a doubling of gas prices in the next two years as the domestic price of gas rises to the world price.

    The price increases from the carbon tax have been minimal, the economy has continued to grow and Whyalla has not been wiped off the map.

    And the carbon tax has been doing what it was designed to do in reducing carbon emissions. Only yesterday Frank Jotzo, Director, Centre for Climate Economics and Policy at ANU said in The Conversation

    ‘Carbon emissions in Australia’s national electricity market would have been 11 to 17 million tonnes higher if Australia had not introduced a carbon price. New research using the latest data indicates that the policy was working despite its imminent Senate repeal. Over the first two years of operation of the carbon price (July 2012 to July 2014) carbon emissions were down by 29 million tonnes or 8.2% across the national electricity market compared to the two years prior. The conclusion from our research is that the carbon price has been performing well in its main job; delivering emission cuts in the power sector, which is the largest source of emissions and the sector with the biggest opportunity for cuts.’

    Frank Jotzo adds that the reduction in carbon emissions would have been higher if companies had been confident that the carbon tax was here to stay. With Tony Abbott raising doubts some companies deferred decisions to reduce pollution.

    We are out of step with all other major countries. A month ago China and the UK signed an agreement to work together towards a global framework for combatting climate change. China has emission reduction schemes in six major provinces which will lead to a national scheme. China is the largest investor in renewable energy and coal use is being scaled down. President Obama is pushing ahead with ambitious carbon reduction policies. Ten US states are well ahead in carbon reduction. The Europeans have had an emissions trading scheme since 2005. Commenting on the Abbott government’s decision to abolish the carbon tax, the European Union’s Climate Commissioner said today ‘The EU regrets the repeal of Australia’s carbon pricing mechanism just as new carbon pricing initiatives are emerging all around the world. The EU is convinced that pricing carbon is not only the most cost-effective way to reduce emissions but also the tool to make the economic paradigm shift the world needs.’

    The repeal of the carbon tax will have some short term benefits for business. The chief beneficiaries will be the heavy polluting electricity generators in the La Trobe Valley who burn brown coal. But there will be significant down-sides in the long term. A carbon tax or an emissions trading scheme is essential in both reducing carbon emissions and helping organisations switch to low emissions technology. Companies will not be able to avoid making this transition. The sooner they do it the better. But there will now be fewer incentives for Australian businesses to develop low emissions technology. We will continue to depend on fossil fuels both as a major domestic energy source and an export product.  Tony Abbott prides himself in becoming an ambassador to the world for highly polluting thermal coal.

    Direct Action is not a serious policy. The cost will be higher than a market mechanism. The carbon tax penalised polluters, but Direct Action will be paid by taxpayers as an incentive for polluters to reduce pollution. What an absurd idea! Perhaps Tony Abbott has in mind paying people to give up smoking!

    If the world and Australia are to grow and prosper our polluting industries must decline and industries based on renewable sources of energy must expand. To delay that process is foolhardy…

    Tony Abbott and all Australians will come to rue the decision to abandon the carbon tax and an emissions trading scheme. Politics has won in the short term but at great cost to our future.

    Can Bill Shorten lead us out of this mess? He bears a heavy responsibility

  • Joanne Yates. The G20 and the C20.

    The G20 has become regarded as the premier forum for the promotion of economic cooperation.  It is comprised of 19 nations and the EU and together account for 85% of global GDP, 75% of global trade and two thirds of the global population.  As a consequence, its policy decisions have a significant impact on the well-being and life prospects of all citizens, but particularly on the poorest communities in the world, including those contained within G20 nations themselves.

    The Australian C20 – one of five engagement groups of the G20 and representing a broad cross section of Australian civil society – is charged with the responsibility of bringing to the attention of the G20 leaders meeting in Brisbane in November 2014, the key and pressing concerns of those who comprise civil society in Australia, within G20 nations and other world civil society organisations.

    There are two main elements to the Australian C20’s year-long focus – policy development and advocacy.  Under the leadership of Australian and international co-chairs, the C20’s policy papers were developed via a web-based crowdsourcing platform on four main policy themes (determined as priorities that international outreach and consideration of the G20’s agenda identified as most relevant) to positively influence the G20’s agenda to ensure outcomes address inequality and poverty alleviation.  The C20’s key themes include equity and participation, infrastructure, climate change and resource sustainability, and governance.

    The Australian C20 welcomes the G20’s recognition of the importance of a civil society engagement in its processes and as a critical voice in its policy deliberations.  Civil society has an important and ongoing role to play in translating the G20’s language and architecture into a meaningful narrative to those most affected by its decisions.

    Our C20 summit, attracting 350 Australian and international civil society leaders and representatives was held half way through the year to enhance our opportunities for engagement with key G20 officials at their joint sherpa and deputy finance ministers meeting.  We presented the Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, with our communique the following day (Sunday 22 June), with its 18 recommendations across our four policy themes.  Significantly, there was overwhelming support in calling for climate change to be a stand-alone issue on the G20 agenda.  The C20 strongly believes that the G20 should use its leadership and authority to create the momentum necessary to achieve an ambitious global climate agreement at the UNFCCC 2015 meeting.  There simply cannot be sustainable economic growth without due attention being paid to addressing the urgent ramifications of climate change.

    The C20 is conscious that change can only result from consistency and collaboration across the G20’s broad financial, economic and development agendas as well as deeper engagement from leaders and officials with all the engagement groups on an equal basis.  Where our policies align, we are pursuing outcomes with our colleagues across the other 20s, including business and labour.   This will add to the G20’s long term credibility and the legitimacy of its decisions.

    Throughout the remainder of the year C20 policy leaders will continue to engage with Australian and international G20 officials and leaders about our recommendations to influence outcomes at the leaders summit in November.  We are confident leaders will welcome our interventions and that these will ultimately be reflected in the G20’s 2014 leaders declaration.  The chair of the G20 presents Australia with a unique opportunity to demonstrate its leadership on the world stage, as a nation willing to be ambitious about addressing some of the world’s difficult questions.  This at a time when Australia also sits in the chair of the Security Council, the world is set to determine its collective action on climate change and secure new goals about inclusive, sustainable development.  It is important that we use the chair wisely and with good intent.

    The C20 communique and other information about our work can be found at our website, here.

    Australian C20 members

    The Australian C20 Steering Committee has drawn on the networks, talents, concerns and wisdom of the international as well as Australian civil society in developing its policy approaches and in drafting its recommendations.  Within the context of the G20’s agenda, it is concerned primarily with promoting inclusive and sustainable growth.

    The Australian C20 Steering Committee is comprised of people with diverse backgrounds and experiences. The Australian Government appointed the Members of the Steering Committee in their own right due to their relevant and diverse experiences and talents, and/or because they also lead major Australian civil society organisations.

    The Australian C20 Steering Committee is chaired by Tim Costello, World Vision Australia.

    Other Australian C20 members include:

     

    Cassandra Goldie Deputy Chair, Australian Council of Social Service
    Kelvin Alley Salvation Army
    Joseph Assaf Ethnic Business Awards
    Frank Brennan Australian Catholic University
    Jody Broun Aboriginal Advocate
    Ian Callinan High Court, retired Justice
    Tara Curlewis National Council of Churches of Australia
    Julie McKay Australian National Committee for UN Women
    Dermot O’Gorman WWF
    Rob Moodie Melbourne University
    Marc Purcell Australian Council for International Development
    Bills Scales Swinburne University
    Sally Sinclair National Employment Services Association
    Rauf Soulio Australian Multicultural Council 
    Helen Szoke Oxfam Australia
    Greg Thompson Transparency International Australia
    Joanne Yates Sherpa

     

     

  • The disastrous outcome on climate change and the Greens’ culpability

    As a result of the Clive Palmer intervention, we are now unlikely to have any carbon reduction policy in place. In a few weeks’ time it is likely the Senate will vote down the Carbon Tax, its successor an Emissions Trading Scheme and Direct Action.

    The party that is chiefly responsible for this fiasco is the Greens. The same is true of its holier-than-thou approach on asylum seekers, but I will leave that for another day.

    I set out my views on the enormous damage that the Greens have done in my post of September 2 last year ‘Holier than thou … but with disastrous results’. That blog is reposted below. As Gough Whitlam put it in a different context ‘Only the impotent are pure’. The Greens have been giving us policy purity in truckloads, but on a sensible policy on climate change they have given us ‘a big fat nothing’.

    That quote is from an article today by Phillip Coorey in the AFR, page 55. The article is headed ‘Green opportunism leaves carbon policy at zero’.

    Coorey writes

    ‘The only mainstream party never to have taken a risk, never to have put any skin in the game and never to have lost a vote [over climate change] is the Greens. Throughout the entire eight year saga they have chained themselves to the altar of policy purity and watched others suffer for their ideals. The result is a big fat nothing. … Because they believed the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme introduced by Rudd to be inadequate, they voted it down twice. The second time was the day after Abbott knocked off Turnbull. Liberal senators Judith Troeth and Sue Boyce realising the need to establish a foothold for carbon pricing, crossed the floor to vote with Labor. The Greens helped the Coalition kill it. … Even when Labor was dying last year and Abbott was at the gate of the lodge, vowing the carbon tax would be the first policy put against the wall and shot, the Greens attacked Rudd for cowardice when he announced … that if he was elected the fixed price would move to a much lower European linked floating price on July 1 2014, one year earlier than scheduled.

    As I mentioned in my blog of September 2 last year, the defeat of Rudd’s CPRS brought on an acrimonious and divisive debate and a denial of the science of climate change. As a result public support for a carbon tax on an Emissions Trading Scheme has plunged from 75% in 2007 to less than 40%. The Greens cannot wash their hands of this debacle. They triggered it in the Senate.

    Whether on climate change or asylum seekers, Australia is paying a heavy price for the Greens’ policy purity. They have played into Tony Abbott’s hands.

    But for the Greens an ETS would have been done and dusted five years ago.

  • Tony Abbott’s negotiating skills.

    With the unpredictable and confusing state of the new Senate, Tony Abbott will have his negotiating skills tested. So far negotiating skills have not been part of his political success.

    Thanks to the Palmer United Party and five other  cross-benchers in the Senate from July 1, the situation could become even more chaotic than the House of Representatives was after the 2010 election- a situation that Tony Abbott did his best to make even more chaotic.

    If Tony Abbott had revealed good negotiating skills, he may have been the prime minister after the line-ball election result in 2010. But it turned out that Julia Gillard won hands-down in persuading Tony Windsor and Robb Oakeshott to support an ALP government. Tony Abbott was no match for Julia Gillard in winning over the Independents.

    Will he do any better with the senators after July 1?

    In the new Senate the Coalition will have 33 seats, the ALP 25 seats, the Greens ten seats, with ‘others’ having eight seats. If the ALP and the Greens oppose legislation, the Coalition will need the support of six out of the other eight senators.

    These eight ‘other senators’ are a very mixed bag. Three are from the Palmer United Party. There is one independent, Nick Xenophon; one from the Democratic Labor Party, John Madigan; one from the Liberal Democratic Party, David Leyonhjelm; one from Family First, Bob Day. And one from the celebrated Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party, Ricky Muir.

    But Tony Abbott doesn’t have a good record of compromising and doing deals. In his recently published memoirs ‘The Independent Member for Lyne’, Rob Oakeshott is quite critical of Tony Abbott’s negotiating skills. He points to this in many ways. In his memoirs he says

    • ‘I am now both curious and frustrated by Tony Abbot’s negotiating style or lack of it … The door is always open, the mood is always civil, but nothing is progressing. He always indicates he is available if required, but doesn’t pursue anything.’
    • ‘Abbott has all but run dead in the first 15 days of negotiation.’
    • Oakeshott says that he doubted Abbott’s genuineness and sincerity about running a three-year term. He says that his intuition was later confirmed when Bronwyn Bishop told Sky News in October 2012 ‘Of course we would have gone to another election.’
    • ‘For reasons I couldn’t understand, I felt Tony Abbott hadn’t even been trying throughout the entire process to date.’
    • The sincerity of Tony Abbott’s offer ‘just doesn’t feel real’.
    • ‘I was pissed off’ with Tony Abbott.
    • He described Tony Abbott as ‘the master of negativity we’d all come to know’.
    • Abbott laid his cards on the table ‘Climate change and the NBN are non-negotiable – Look, if you want to support one or both of these issues, go with the other mob.’

    Will Tony Abbott do better this time with the Senate? He needs to learn a lot.

    He has apparently written to all the eight cross-bench senators and the micro-party leaders requesting meetings. Apparently the letter said that he is not going to be held hostage and that he expects the parliament to respect his mandate on the carbon and mining taxes and pass his budget. The AFR journalist Phillip Coorey suggests that the same old Tony Abbott is still at work. Coorey said ‘This week [Senator] Madigan was scathing, telling this column he had received a letter from Tony Abbott but he did not believe that Abbott was serious about wanting to engage.’

    On top of the doubts about Tony Abbott’s negotiating skills we now have the unpredictable Clive Palmer and his bombshell on climate change.

    Tony Abbott’s representative in the Senate is Eric Abetz who is not known for his finesse and mediating skills. Before the last election Abetz said that asylum-seekers living in the community should be named and shamed like paedophiles.

    After July 1, the Senate is really going to test Tony Abbott’s negotiating skills.

  • Is Tony Abbott still a climate change denier?

    Tony Abbott claimed on his recent overseas trip that he takes human induced climate change “very seriously” Or was it just a diversion before his meeting with President Obama who does take the issue seriously.

    I hope he is no longer a climate change denier but I have my doubts.  I suspect it is mainly window dressing with no serious new understanding of the urgency of the issue and what further action must be taken.

    There are several reasons for my doubt.

    • He has not outlined in any serious way why he now takes the issue “very seriously” It has been a one liner and nothing more with no explanation or elaboration. His key supporters still want to relegate science to the dark ages.
    • He keeps saying that any action to cut greenhouse gases should not “clobber the economy” But if the climate is seriously damaged as seems likely by carbon pollution then our economy will also be seriously damaged. Or as it is colloquially put there will be “no jobs on a dead planet”, like there will be no jobs on a polluted or dying Murray River. Where appropriate we need to intervene to wind back our old and polluting economy and in its place encourage a new economy based on new energy-renewables, wind and solar. That is the best way to stop our economy being clobbered. It is the way capitalism renews itself, not clinging to the old that threatens the future of our planet and our future economy but embracing necessary change.
    • Tony Abbott is also ignoring his Chief Scientist Professor Ian Chubb who told us in February this year that the scientific evidence for human induced global warming is so overwhelming that those who reject it are usually forced to impugn the messenger with stupid expressions like “group think” or silly arguments that global warming is a “delusion”

    But other tests of Tony Abbott’s seriousness about climate change are what he does on the issue and the company he keeps. As Professor Rod Tiffen in the following extracts from Inside Story of 5 June 2014 points out the actions of Tony Abbott and the company he keeps are cause for concern.  John Menadue

    “Whether or not Abbott really does believe in anthropogenic climate change, it is “extraordinary,” according to Professor Ross Garnaut, that the four business leaders the government has appointed to senior advisory roles – Dick Warburton on the inquiry into renewable energy, David Murray on the financial system inquiry, Maurice Newman to chair the PM’s Business Advisory Council, and Tony Shepherd to head the Commission of Audit – all share a strong view that the science on climate change is wrong.

    Since the election, writes leading business journalist Giles Parkinson, the government has sought to close or reduce funding to many of the agencies whose work relates to climate change. Its first, and highly symbolic, move was to disband the Climate Commission, whose main purpose was to communicate facts about climate change to the public.

    Its next target, the Climate Change Authority, might prove more difficult to get rid of. As a statutory agency established by parliament, it can’t simply be closed. “The CCA was intended to be a non-partisan, expert body,” wrote New Matilda’s Ben Eltham, “a little like the Reserve Bank or the Productivity Commission, that would review the best available scientific and economic evidence and recommend a consensus position on Australia’s carbon reduction targets.” When it handed down its report on how Australia should address global warming – by cutting emissions to 19 per cent below 2000 levels by 2020 – environment minister Greg Hunt didn’t hold any sort of event to mark the report’s release. He simply issued a media release, full of misleading statistics and claims, whose key point was to rehash Coalition criticisms of Labor’s carbon tax.

    Earlier, the Climate Change Authority’s review of Labor’s renewable energy scheme had concluded that the current targets should be kept. Although it had the statutory obligation to undertake the next review, the government moved quickly to appoint its own inquiry. Its members included a climate change denier, a fossil-fuel lobbyist and the former head of a coal-and-gas generation company, all with an “antipathy to renewable energy,” according to Parkinson.

    Environmentalists’ fears that this inquiry was set up to reach a predetermined conclusion were strengthened by the government’s rapid moves to cut funding in this area. The budget recommended the abolition of the $3.1 billion Australian Renewable Energy Agency, or ARENA, an institution formed to help bring new technologies into production and deployment, and to fund Australia’s world-leading solar research. While it retained funding to meet its existing contracts, it had almost no funds to enter into any new agreements. Abolishing ARENA requires Senate approval.

    The most tangible effect of these measures is to dampen activity in the area. But they will also minimise the flow of information about climate change and policy responses. The government’s resolve even extends to organisational names: the Australian Cleantech Competition was renamed Australian Technologies Competition, and the words climate, clean energy, or clean tech are considered non grata.

    Unusually, Australia was not represented at ministerial level at the UN climate summit in Warsaw in November, which was working towards the global agreement to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. Australia’s recent performance and changes drew some criticism at the meeting. The government also decided not to send a representative to the World Bank–supported Partnership for Market Readiness assembly, despite the fact that Australia had previously co-chaired three assemblies. Some EU diplomats have criticised Australia for “not including environment issues on the G20 conference it is hosting later this year,” reported Parkinson.”

    – See more at: http://inside.org.au/the-abbott-governments-war-on-transparency/#sthash.k0nLtgsq.dpuf

    I suspect that Tony Abbott has not changed his mind on climate change.

    Professor Tiffen is Emeritus Professor of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney

  • Walter Hamilton. Fractured News from Fukushima.

    It’s raining in Fukushima.

    Since radioactive contamination from the crippled nuclear power plant is spread mainly by introduced water, even a routine weather bulletin has more-than-usual significance. The annual tsuyu, or rainy season, is in full swing in Japan. Fukushima prefecture normally receives 250 millimetres of rain in June-July, and every drop adds to the burden of the disaster.

    More than three years after the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami, it is difficult to form a reliable overview of how the nuclear accident is unfolding, its long-term effects on public health, and progress in making the site and surrounding areas safe. Information is released piecemeal fashion from various sources: Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO); national government agencies; separate local authorities; regulators; and non-government monitors. There is no single, unbiased source plotting progress comprehensively against consistent terms of reference and using plain language. The mainstream media also seem incapable of addressing the information gaps and unanswered questions. What follows, therefore, is necessarily a partial impression.

    For all intents and purposes, the decontamination and decommissioning of the four damaged nuclear reactors at Fukushima has yet to begin. Despite heroic efforts, the task has actually increased in size and complexity, rather than reduced, since March 2011. Debris may have been removed, cooling systems stabilised, structures reinforced and plans drawn up for the 30-40 year decommissioning process, but one critical factor remains out of control. By the end of next March, the amount of contaminated water being held on site, much of it highly radioactive, will have reached 800,000 tonnes­­––not counting leakages from storage tanks and containment vessels that continue to bedevil operations.

    Materials failure at inaccessible points is a constant threat. In one case, a leak of up to 1.5 tonnes of water per hour from the containment vessel of a reactor (which must be kept topped up for cooling purposes), detected last November, was only recently traced to its source with the aid of a robotic camera. The scale of the problem defies a simple solution. For instance, a new leak was found some days ago in a rainwater storage tank that had not been patrolled for three months. There are hundreds of such tanks.

    TEPCO’s latest strategy for reducing one of the main sources of new contamination––rain run-off and groundwater movement––is to install metal rods driven 30 metres into the ground to create a frozen perimeter around the plant 1.5 kilometres in circumference. The project, begun recently, will take six months and cost the public purse US$330 million. If it works––and nothing on this scale has been tried before––the big freeze will be maintained until at least fiscal 2020. Some commentators, however, fear it may exacerbate a subsidence problem said to be posing a separate risk to the reactor buildings.

    TEPCO, working with a variety of Japanese and foreign firms, continues to deploy newly developed robotic devices in parts of the facility where radioactivity levels are impossibly high for human activity. While technically impressive, the robots’ real rate of progress in performing tasks of assessing damage and sucking up radioactive dust is not clear from the TEPCO press releases.

    An operation that seems to be going well is the much-discussed one to remove and secure spent fuel rods from inside Reactor No. 4, which was off-line at the time of the accident. The delicate procedure began last November, and as of 9 June a total of 1,034 of the 1,533 fuel rods had been lifted out and transported to a ‘common pool’ storage facility nearby. Because of damage to the fuel rod assemblies, the task of removal, also being undertaken by remotely-control grabbing and lifting devices, is slow and arduous. Exposure of any one of the four-metre long rods to the air could have catastrophic results. It’s assumed that the most severely damaged assemblies have yet to be dealt with.

    Another enormous challenge is the removal of radioactive isotopes from the 400 tonnes of contaminated water accumulating each day on the site. A primary system is being used to extract the Cesium-134 and 137, but a secondary system, needed to remove Strontium-90, has been plagued by problems since its installation in October 2012. The radioactive water eats away the treatment system’s Teflon gaskets.

    Outside the nuclear plant, 81,000 people in 10 municipalities are still directly affected by evacuation orders. How long it will take to make these ‘no-go’ areas habitable again is uncertain (indeed 40% of former residents say they have no intention of ever returning). Since last October, special decontamination efforts have been focused on seven places inside the evacuation zone: washing roads and buildings, removing vegetation and topsoil, etcetera. As a result, considerable reduction in radioactivity was observed, but the average level remained ten times higher than acceptable for human health.

    The huge volume of soil and other radioactive waste dug up since 2011 is much more than authorities have been able to store away from population centres. In some cases, large bags of contaminated material remain in people’s backyards, with no indication when, if ever, they’ll be collected.

    The various health consequences associated with the disaster––from stress-related deaths to high-level contamination of workers involved in the cleanup––are difficult to fully assess. Time will reveal more. The national government insists that Fukushima is not a health risk, and it recently gave approval for rice production to resume in the prefecture (though only 2% of the pre-disaster acreage was planted this year).

    Fishing is still banned in waters off Fukushima due to the presence of elevated levels of radioactive isotopes. Cesium levels in the sea near the plant rose to calamitous levels in the immediate aftermath of the accident. Although they soon fell to a level close to the standard considered safe by Japanese authorities, they have stabilised there rather than fallen further, indicating that radioactive material continues to enter the Pacific Ocean from the site. While Cesium exists as a soluble salt and does not accumulate in bio-systems, Strontium-90 does, by displacing calcium in bones, and is of greater concern to some marine scientists.

    Local governments in affected areas continue to test children for possible thyroid damage. Certain findings point to an elevated incidence of thyroid disease. In one town, follow-up checks have been prescribed for about a quarter of the children on the basis of an initial screening.

    The World Health Organisation has not updated its February 2013 Health Risk Assessment from the Fukushima accident. Based on recorded exposures, the WHO report concluded that any disease effects would remain ‘below detectable levels’ in the general population. It predicted a ‘relative high increase’ (up to 70%) in the lifetime risk of thyroid cancer among females in the vicinity of the nuclear plant exposed as infants. For all solid cancers a maximum relative increase of 4% was estimated for the population living near the plant. Among the hundreds of workers engaged in the emergency response, the WHO report estimated a 20% increased risk of thyroid cancer for the youngest team-members.

    Though the Ministry of Health releases regular ‘all-clear’ bulletins on the results of testing of foodstuffs and drinking water, this information is mainly in the form of raw data and can be difficult for a layperson to interpret.

    No deaths directly attributable to radiation exposure have been verified. On the other hand, according to a survey published in March by the Asahi newspaper, Fukushima prefecture had recorded more deaths (1,660) due to ‘physical and psychological fatigue’ since the accident than were directly caused by the earthquake and tsunami––with more than 80% of the deaths occurring among residents forced out of the evacuation zone. In the absence of a legal standard for attributing such fatalities to the disaster, compensation claims are heading into the courts.

    Japan’s national television news programs have given up regular daily, even weekly coverage, of the problems associated with the disaster. As a story, it has slipped into the background of public consciousness except for those living in the most affected areas.

    But any of us can look at a weather map. And it’s still raining in Fukushima.

     

    Walter Hamilton is currently in Tokyo.

     

     

  • John Menadue. Get ready for El Nino, Tony

    The late Senator Moynihan from New York famously said that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but no one is entitled to their own facts. Tony Abbott and Greg Hunt along with Alan Jones and Andrew Bolt have strong opinions on climate change that are not based on facts.

    If El Nino develops as presently indicated, Tony Abbott and Greg Hunt will tell us that its severity has nothing to do with global warming. Yet the facts tell us otherwise about the relationship between El Nino and global warming.

    In their political opportunism over the carbon tax, Tony Abbott and Greg Hunt have done our children and our planet a great disservice. The carbon tax is good policy but handled in a most politically inept way. But when will Messrs Abbott and Hunt tell us that they have got in wrong on global warming – that it is a serious problem and must be addressed with strong leadership and courage. And by the way, where is Malcolm Turnbull on climate change and global warming? He is nowhere to be found.

    On May 8 the Climate Prediction Centre and the International Research Institute for Climate and Society in their monthly report said that the chance that El Nino will develop in Australia has a probability of 80%. It is likely to occur during our late autumn and early winter this year. This group of scientists remained non-committal on the strength of El Nino, preferring to wait for another month. They did suggest however that the next El Nino could be severe.

    Previous El Ninos, particularly the Super El Ninos in 1982 and 1997, led to major disruptions of fishing and agriculture, severe bushfires and high death rates. And science tells us there is a link between global warming and El Ninos.

    • On 28 October last year the UNSW Climate Change Research Centre (CCRC) said

     “Our research suggests in a warming world we are likely to see more extremes of El Nino and La Nina events which over the past decade in Australia have been related to extreme flooding, persistent droughts and dangerous fire seasons.”

    • On 11 November 2013, CCRC said “Unusual El Ninos, like those that led to the extraordinary Super El Nino years of 1982 and 1997 will occur twice as often under even modest global warming scenarios.”
    • On 20 January this year, CCRC said “Extreme weather events fuelled by unusually strong El Ninos such as the 1983 heatwave that led to the Ash Wednesday bushfires in Australia are likely to double in number as our planet warms.”

    It is a case of ‘watch this space’. According to the experts, there is an 80% chance of El Nino occurring later this year. It may be a very severe El Nino. It is also clear that global warming is increasing the risk of severe El Ninos.

    Are Tony Abbott and Greg Hunt ready to explain the next El Nino and its relationship to global warming? The Coalition budget is premised on a set of optimistic economic assumptions concerning growth, trade and employment, which are based particularly on our agricultural and mineral production.

    We should keep a close eye on El Nino and what scientists tell us in the next few months. They tell us that El Nino could fizzle, but the probability of that occurring is low. We already know that at present Eastern Australia is drier and hotter than usual.

    El Nino may put global warming and climate change back on the political agenda in a way that Tony Abbott and Greg Hunt never expected.

     

  • John Menadue. Increasing the petrol tax is good policy.

    It may not be good short-term politics for the Abbott Government but it will be of long-term benefit to Australia if we lift the excise on petrol which has been frozen since 2001.

    The motor industry will protest. It should be faced down, just as we should have faced down the mining lobby when it was being asked to make a fair return to the public for its depletion of our national endowments.

    Our petrol prices are amongst the lowest in the world. That results in less revenue for the government, reduced fuel efficiency, increased congestion in our cities and more carbon pollution. I have reposted below a blog that I posted on November 20 last year ‘Cars are killing our cities’.

    In the December quarter 2013 our petrol prices were the fourth lowest amongst the 28 OECD countries. Only Canada, US and Mexico had lower prices. Our diesel prices were the sixth lowest amongst OECD countries.

    The action of John Howard in 2001 in freezing the indexation of fuel excise has cost us about $24 billion in cumulative losses of revenue. It has also been a contributor to the long term structural budget deficit we face. The IMF has made it clear that the Howard Governments were the major contributors to the structural deficit and not the Rudd/Gillard Governments. The Howard Government decision to freeze the indexation of the fuel excise and more importantly the income tax reductions year after year during the mining boom, were the major contributors to the structural deficit we now face. Unfortunately the Rudd/Gillard Governments didn’t act quickly enough. For example the Henry Tax Review recommended an end to the freezing of the fuel excise but the Rudd/Gillard Governments took no action.

    The increase in fuel prices does make good budgetary sense. As Dr Paul Burke from the ANU has pointed out, allowing the excise to rise with inflation could generate enough revenue to fund Gonski.

    Higher fuel prices will also encourage people to purchase smaller and more fuel efficient cars. As Dr Burke has pointed out ‘Higher fuel prices lead to consumers using less petrol and also consumers deciding to purchase cars that are more fuel-efficient’. He added that we are probably using about 3% more petrol as a result of the Howard Government’s decision in 2001.

    It would be a mistake if Tony Abbott decides to try to placate the motor lobby by building more roads. That will just increase the damage. We need more and better public transport rather than more roads and cars. We need to break free from the addiction we all have to the car and the power of the motor lobby. Cars are destroying our cities and damaging our planet.

    The Abbott Government decision on fuel excise looks like being a sensible and good start for a whole range of reasons. Can road congestion taxes be next!

    Repost: Cars are killing our cities.

    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.

  • John Menadue. The new squatters on public land.

    More alienation of public space.

    In my blog yesterday, I referred to the alienation of public space in Barangaroo and proposed for the Sydney Botanic Gardens.  Today there are reports that Wentworth Park, which is Crown Land, will be developed as a billion dollar residential complex. In a letter to the SMH we are told how Wentworth Park was originally described as ‘the second most beautiful park in Sydney after the Botanic Gardens’. It had lakes, beautiful gardens and a cricket pitch. Unfortunately, it was then converted to a greyhound race track, but elements of the park were still preserved for community use. Even that limited community use is now threatened. It is another example of how our ‘public commons’ is alienated and eroded step by step.  John Menadue.

    Repost of yesterday’s blog

    In my blog of March 11, 2013, reposted below, I outlined the historic encroachment of private interests on our ‘public commons’ – the land and facilities we share as public citizens.

    This encroachment is continuing apace, and not just by the shooters in national parks.

    In Sydney, at present there are two glaring examples of how the new squatters are moving onto public land.

    The first is Barangaroo. Without due process and with political influence writ large, the public commons at Barangaroo has been dramatically reduced in favour of commercial interests. The original plan was to keep about half of the site, including the whole 1.4 km waterfront, as inalienable public land. That has been junked in favour of James Packer’s six-star casino to bring in ‘high rollers’. James Packer is all about gambling. What a tawdry business he offers us. He says he wants to bring in wealthy gamblers from Asia and elsewhere. Paul Keating supported James Packer in this enclosure of our commons. Out has gone the park at the southern end of the site and in its place we have 180,000 square metres of commercial space.

    The original architect of Barangaroo, Philip Thalis, put this invasion of our commons in the following way ‘The vibrant public space envisaged seven years ago has shrunk to become basically an enclave of privilege and exclusion’.

    The other Sydney example of squatter encroachment on public land involves the Sydney Botanic Gardens. For many years part of the gardens has been alienated for four months each year for opera and cinema. Wealthy patrons and wealthy sponsors have been the main beneficiaries. But this isn’t enough for the new squatters. The Botanic Gardens and the Domain Trust have released a master plan for the parks to be developed with cafes, an $80 million hotel and year-round concerts. Paul Keating has rightly called it a desecration of the hallowed grounds bequeathed by Governors Phillip and Macquarie.

    In both Barangaroo and the Botanic gardens, private greed is taking over our public commons and weak politicians are letting it happen. The Murdoch press once again remains mute when the public interest is at stake.

    Steadily and step by step our public commons is being eroded. It won’t be the last time the new squatters want to take over more of our public commons.

    Repost of ‘Shooters – the new squatters on public land’, March 13, 2013.

    In the 18th and 19th Century, wealthy and privileged landowners in England passed Enclosure Acts forcing serfs and the poor off common land which they had used  for centuries to supplement their meagre incomes. About 20% of land in England was enclosed, forcing the poor into squalor in the new industrial cities.

    We followed suit in Australia in the 19th Century with ‘squatters’, mainly from the upper echelons of colonial society, occupying large tracks of crown land to graze livestock. Over time, this pastoral occupation of the ‘commons’ and the dispossession of indigenous people was enshrined in law and enforced by the police. Many indigenous people were murdered while trying to protect their ‘commons’. Few squatters were prosecuted.

    History tells us that we need to be very careful about the powerful who want to take possession and erode our public ‘commons’. It happens slowly, almost imperceptibly, often without our knowledge or understanding of what is at stake.  And it is not just about getting shooters out of national parks or protecting waterfront land without public tender. Councils often carelessly allow commercial interests to encroach on public parks, botanic gardens and beaches. Clean air and water are also important parts of our public “commons” and must be protected against polluters.

    We owe a great debt to foresighted citizens and governments who in the past established public ‘commons’, like national parks, for the enjoyment of all. We need to be careful about the new squatters who want to erode our public ‘commons’.

    John Menadue

  • John Menadue. The Carbon Tax and Flat-Earthers.

    Despite all the political rhetoric and hysteria, the evidence is mounting almost daily that the carbon tax is largely working as planned and that its impact on electricity prices is quite small, particularly compared with the ‘network costs’, the poles and wires, which have been the main drivers of increased electricity prices.

    But the flat-earthers in the government and News Ltd refuse to face the facts. They have run one dishonest campaign after another on the carbon tax, then pink batts and then the education revolution. We are paying an extraordinarily heavy price for the abuse of power by the Murdoch media in the dishonest and partisan campaigns they run. Are they all as ignorant as Rupert Murdoch’s favourite editor Rebekah Brooks who told a London court this week that she didn’t know that phone tapping was illegal!

    Just recall the extremist and exaggerated language of Tony Abbott in association with News Ltd on the carbon tax.

    • Whyalla will be wiped off the map.
    • Julia Gillard is trying to close down Gladstone.
    • The carbon tax is socialism masquerading as environmentalism.
    • It is a ‘great new tax on everything’.
    • The impact of the tax will be ‘almost unimaginable’

    It says something about the corruption of public debate that Tony Abbott’s campaign with News Ltd’s backing was successful. It was based on fiction and not fact.

    In October last year, one year after the introduction of the carbon tax, the impact on the CPI was almost undetectable. Treasury had estimated that a $23 per tonne emission tax would result in an increase of $9.90 in the cost of living for an average household. It turned out that the impact was even less than the Treasury has forecast.

    Earlier this week Michael West in the SMH on February 24 drew attention to the work of the Energy, Economics and Management Group at the University of Qld. These researchers found that network costs and retail costs which included the profit margin of energy retailers made up 62% of NSW residential electricity prices in 2013. The carbon tax made up only 10% of prices.

    In comparing increases in electricity prices in NSW and Qld between 2007 and 2013, the University of Qld Group found that price increases per kWh were due to the following.

    • Network costs – +7c
    • Retail costs, including profit margin – +2/3c
    • Green schemes, including carbon tax and renewable energy target, – less than 3C

    Generating costs were relatively stable over the period.

    The main increase in prices has been due to the ‘gold plating’ of the networks and the price-gouging by retailers along with large executive bonuses. Green schemes including the carbon tax have a much smaller impact – about 25% of the total increase in prices.

    Michael West put it this way. ‘Tony Abbott [must recognise] that it is not the carbon tax and renewable energy costs that are primarily responsible for energy hikes. The culprit is network costs and state governments that are making a killing’.

    Last week in Sydney the IMF chief, Christine Lagard, said that ‘environmental degradation’ [carbon pollution] was an external cost to the economy that had to be priced. She said that these ‘externalities’ must have a price. Almost every economist will tell us that a tax on ‘externalities’ like a carbon tax is much preferred to Direct Action that the Abbott Government is adopting.

    Tony Abbott has done enormous damage to good policy making to curb carbon pollution and global warming. The flat-earthers have so far won the day in Australia. But surely it cannot last. Is the Australian public so gullible to put up with these scare campaigns on the carbon tax? The flat-earthers in the coalition and News Ltd have done a great disservice to Australia.

    On top of this Tony Abbott is now hemming himself in with people who reject the overwhelming scientific evidence. The head of Tony Abbott’s business advisory group Maurice Newman and Dick Warburton the head of the review of the Renewable Energy Target both think that climate science is “group think”. Newman goes even further and describes climate science as a “scientific delusion”

    When will all this nonsense stop?

    For the sake of our children and grandchildren the flat-earthers must be strongly opposed

     

  • John Menadue. Opinion and fact on climate change.

    Tony Abbott keeps telling us that climate change is not a factor in the current drought in eastern Australia. Last October he ruled out climate change as a factor in October’s early season bushfires in the Blue Mountains.

    He keeps giving us opinions when the facts, supported by overwhelming scientific research, tell us that Australia is already experiencing more frequent and more intensive heatwaves, and that we can expect the number of hot days to continue to increase. He said that the climate change will not be a factor in the drought aid package he will announce soon. That aid package should take into account climate change and the necessity for marginal farmers on marginal land to find other occupations.

    Tony Abbott’s confusion of opinion and fact reminds me of the comment made by the late Senator Daniel Moynihan that ‘Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but no-one is entitled to their own facts’.

    Reputable people and reliable organisations are all pointing to the challenge that climate change presents to Australian agriculture.

    CSIRO says ‘forecasts show Australia will have to cope with less rainfall, longer dry periods and struggling crops’. (ABC News 15 January 2013). Mark Howden from CSIRO’s Climate Adaption Flagship Program tells us that ‘Increases in temperature … and decreases in rainfall will increase drought periods and increase dry spells’. (ABC News 3 February 2013). Steve Crimp, a Senior Research Scientist at CSIRO says that southern Australia faces ‘warmer and dryer conditions’. (ABC 3 February 2013).

    The Garnaut Climate Change Review said ‘Climate change is likely to affect agricultural production through changes in water availability, water quality and temperatures. Crop production is likely to be affected directly by changes in average rainfall and temperatures, in distribution of rainfall during the year and in rainfall variability. The productivity of livestock industries will be influenced by the changes in the quantity and quality of available pasture, as well as by the effects of temperature increases on livestock. … A range of studies indicate that grain protein contents are likely to fall in response to combined climate and carbon dioxide changes. There could be substantial protein losses … which would lower prices.’(p129)

    The Department of Environment of the Australian Government reported last year on “Climate Change Impacts in Australia” which included the impact on agriculture.

    • For NSW it said that ‘potential changes in climate may reduce productivity and output in agricultural industries in the medium to long term through higher temperatures, reduced rainfall and extreme weather events.’ It predicts possible falls in agricultural production in NSW by 2030 of 8.4% for wheat, 8.1% for sheep meat and 5.5% for dairy.(p35)
    • In respect of Queensland this report says ‘Future productivity growth in agriculture may be affected by climate change in the medium to long term…’ It mentions that ABARE estimates possible production declines by 2030 of 19% for beef and 12% for sugar (p45).
    • The report says in respect of WA, ‘By 2070 south-west WA is likely to experience yield reductions in wheat. Cropping may become non-viable at the dry margins with strong warming and significant reductions in rainfall.’ The report highlights that wheat production could decline by 9% by 2030 with similar declines for sheep meat.(p34)
    • For SA the report says ‘Since 1997 SA’s agricultural regions have experienced a marked decline in growing season rainfall. This decline is mostly due to a drying trend in autumn and to a lesser extent in winter. … Overall the trend in annual rainfall since 1950 shows a decline across the agricultural region. … Rising temperatures are likely to have a major influence on wine grapes bringing the harvest forward by a month and yielding lower quality grapes. … ‘(p35)

    In 2011 CSIRO published a report by Chris Stokes and Mark Howden on “Adapting agriculture to climate change” They say ‘The Australian climate is already changing and these changes have a measurable impact on primary production as the drying of the Murray Darling basin and the wheat belt bear witness” (p85) They add “ areas of farming that are economically marginal today are among the most vulnerable to climate change; here impacts are most likely to exceed the regions adaptive capacity, stressing their communities, farming systems and natural resources. Such areas include outer wheat belt zones subject to drying, warmer dairying or fruit growing areas, or irrigation communities whose water resources are in decline-all areas where quite small changes in climate can have quite large economic and social consequences”

    Tony Abbott refuses to face these facts.

    At the same time US Secretary of State John Kerry calls climate change “a weapon of mass destruction” and the IMF calls on Australia as the Chair of the G20 to show leadership on the issue

    What is just as remarkable is that the National Party which claims to represent farmers and country people is as quiet as mice in the haystack on climate change. The National Party relies on people like Gina Reinhart for financial support. It ignores the long-term interests of its own farming constituency by following the climate sceptics in the Liberal Party.

    No group in Australia is as vulnerable to climate change as Australian farmers. Historically they have shown themselves very good at adapting to change but they are not helped by the lack of leadership by the National Party.

  • Is Pope Francis a Marxist?

    On 16 December last year, Eureka Street carried an article by Neil Ormerod about Pope Francis and his economic, social and political message. That article can be found on the link below.  John Menadue

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    http://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article.aspx?aeid=38645#.Us8a9j0XBt8.email

  • More on pink batts. Guest blogger: Dr Michael Keating

    I would like to add a further comment to your post on 3 January on the Pink Batts.

    First, I would further contest the evidence that this scheme was poorly conceived and badly implemented. On this point it should be noted that the Auditor General’s finding that 29 per cent of 13808 completed jobs had minor or serious problems was based on a departmental survey, which suggests that the government was following up. Furthermore the survey was not wholly random and as the Auditor General noted this particular finding constituted only weak evidence. Later evidence showed that of  44,300 inspections, again not randomly chosen, only 3215 led to rectifications being required – a rate of around 7 per cent, which does not seem to me to be particularly high for the building industry.

    The other major concern arose out of the death of four installers. Leaving aside the fact that regulation of health and safety is a responsibility of the States and employers it should be noted that one fatality was caused by a pre-existing electrical fault; another electrocuted installer was employed by an electrician; and a third death occurred when a contractor elected to work in oppressive heat. In addition, the Commonwealth required more of contractors than most States as it required installers to agree to employees holding a nationally recognised occupational health and safety certificate demonstrating that “the holder is competent to work safely in the construction industry”.  To the extent that there was a failure of health and safety it would seem to reflect a general failure of health and safety regulation in the building industry and not a failure of this particular program.

    Second, the other important aspect that I would like to raise is why did the Rudd and Gillard Governments decide to throw in the towel and not defend the program? I suggest that it was their decision to stay silent and not respond to the criticisms that has now given the HIS program such a bad reputation, and has come at a considerable cost to their own reputations. I think that it was this decision to stay silent, when a substantial defence was possible, that is deserving of further exploration by those who are interested in how our political system is working these days.

    Dr Michael Keating AC was formerly Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet 1991-96. 

     

  • There goes the neighbourhood. John Menadue

    It used to be thought that the intrusion of new ethnic communities into established Anglo-areas was destroying the neighbourhood.

    Now it is increasingly the excesses of wealth that are doing the damage.

    James Packer spent millions to buy and then bulldoze three houses to make room for his Sydney fortress. In the three year process, he inflicted noise, congestion and dust over the local residents whilst he lived quietly elsewhere.

    But it didn’t make for happiness and wellbeing. The marriage lasted only three months in the new $50 million pile which Erica Packer described as ‘like living in a shopping centre’. Family relations are not helped if one has to communicate by intercom.

    But in varying degrees this opulence and excess is destroying many neighbourhoods. Data commissioned by the Australian Bureau of Statistics by CommSec shows that the average floor area of new homes stood at 214.1 m2. in the 9 months to March 2011. The average floor area of new freestanding houses stood at 243.6 m2.

    The US has traditionally had the biggest homes in the world. But new homes in Australia are now around 10% bigger than in the US.

    Not just in James Packer’s area has it become increasingly common for two or more houses to be flattened to make room for a mega-pile. Even on these larger blocks, major excavation is necessary to accommodate 3 or 4 cars. A home theatre, sauna room, cabana gymnasium and lifts are musts. And of course – nanny rooms. A private swimming pool, sometimes underground, is desirable, even if there is one of the best beaches in the world within a few minutes walk.  Roller doors are essential to avoid eye-contact with other residents. Will draw bridges be next! The result is sterile streets where human contact is the exception.  In waterfront mansions the attractive front faces the water. The ugly rear is reserved for the neighbours.Any problem with pesky neighbours is handled by a member of staff or a lawyer.

    Wealthy newcomers are attracted to the neighborliness and village nature of many areas but then proceed to methodically destroy what initially attracted them.

    Some councils try to oppose this grandiosity but they don’t have the resources to combat a phalanx of celebrity architects, lawyers and “public relations” people. Some are also obviously concerned that if they reject gross over development it will lead to expensive legal appeals.

    Why is it that people indulge themselves in such fantasy at the expense of others? As Elizabeth Farrelly in the SMH put it ‘no-one can make excess look good’. Boris Pasternak hit the nail on the head when he commented in respect of pre-Soviet Russia that ‘only the superfluous is vulgar’.

    A great deal of what we are building is destroying human relationships. The more ostentatious and vulgar the built environment, the more it destroys neighborhoods.

    And one in two hundred people in Australia are homeless every night.

    Wealth doesn’t necessarily bring vulgarity and bad taste, but we are getting more and more of it.  Perhaps an inheritance and wealth tax would help curb this excess. I am not confident that an improvement in taste is likely.

     

     

  • Lagging the field on climate change. John Menadue

    Across the world there are clear signs that the tide is turning with acceptance of the reality of climate change, that humans are the cause and that we need to address the problem.

    But not in Australia.  We keep acting like King Canute against the tide.

    • The Abbott Government is proposing to abolish the carbon tax which is the most credible measure we have in place in Australia to reduce CO2 emissions. The OECD has just released a report ‘Effective Carbon Prices’. The report concludes that ‘carbon taxes and emissions trading systems are the most effective way to reduce emissions and should be at the centre of government efforts to tackle climate change’.
    • Years ago Tony Abbott told us that the science of global warming is ‘crap’. His mentor, John Howard, continued in the same vein when he told a London group of climate change sceptics only last week that those expressing concern about climate change were ‘alarmist’ and ‘zealots’. He added that ‘one religion is enough’. In a remarkable admission he went on to say his “dalliance with an emissions trading system (in 2007) was purely political.” What!!
    • Those other political soul mates of Tony Abbott, Rupert Murdoch and Maurice Newman were reported in the AFR of 7 November 2013 as follows: “Maurice, Tony Abbott’s favourite businessman said that the 17-year stasis on climate change – it’s like a religion.  Rupert replied that it’s more than a religion, it’s become a cult. Maurice Newman responded that the science is clearly wrong”.
    • In my blog of 6 November, I pointed out that independent research shows that News Limited papers were giving heavily slanted reportage in favour of the climate sceptics.
    • The UN climate change chief, Christiana Figueres, highlighted a couple of weeks ago the link between climate change and bush fires. Tony Abbott told us that she was ‘talking through her hat’.
    • The government has before it a fig-leaf of a “policy” called Direct Action, but Tony Abbott has told us that even if the policy does not achieve the 5% emissions reduction in emissions by 2020 that no more money will be forthcoming.
    • The Campbell Government in Queensland has flagged reductions in coal royalties in the Galilee Basin which could double Australia’s coal production and dramatically increase global carbon pollution.
    • The Australian Government has refused to send a minister to the Warsaw Climate Summit this week. This is the first opportunity for the Abbott Government to attend a UN climate change negotiation.

    The evidence of climate change scepticism by the Abbott Government and key supporters could not be clearer. But Australia is acting against the overwhelming tide of scientific evidence and action by countries that are now beginning to take seriously the threat of climate change.

    • The latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has expressed even stronger support to the science consensus that carbon emissions are the cause of climate change and that human beings are responsible.
    • China, the world’s largest emitter has pledged to reduce the carbon intensity of its economy by 40% to 45% by 2020. Japan, ROK and the UK have all committed to emission reductions of at least 25% by 2020. Both the federal and state governments in the US are taking determined action.
    • Pope Francis is planning a major encyclical on the environment which is expected to focus on climate change.
    • A group of 70 global investors with more than $3 trillion of assets has asked fuel and power companies to critically examine the major pollution problems that coal-fired plants present.
    • The letters editor of the Los Angeles Times has decided not to publish letters from climate sceptics. He said on 8 October last month that ‘Scientists have provided ample evidence that human activity is indeed linked to climate change. Just last month the IPCC, a body made up of the world’s top climate scientists, said it was 95% certain that fossil fuel burning humans are driving global warming. The debate right now isn’t whether this evidence exists (clearly it does) but what this evidence means for us. Simply put, I do my best to keep errors of fact off the letters page; when one does run, a correction is published. Saying “There is no sign humans have caused climate change” is not stating an opinion. It’s asserting a factual inaccuracy.’ I wonder when News Ltd editors will follow suit!!

    In my blog of 6 November I drew attention to the study by the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism at UTS. It said that ‘Nearly all the sceptic articles [on climate change] in this study were published by News Corp. … The Australian press is a world leader in the promotion of [climate change] scepticism. … Andrew Bolt is a major contributor to advancing climate scepticism in Australia.’

    Rupert Murdoch’s independent and courageous editors would tell us that they make their own decisions about coverage in their newspapers. But they have an uncanny ability to reflect what Rupert Murdoch says on climate change and almost every other subject.

    What principled and professional leadership we have on climate change – Rupert Murdoch, Tony Abbott and Maurice Newman!

  • Yes we can – zero carbon emissions within 10 years in Australia. Guest blogger: Ann Long

    On Wednesday 6th November Kiama’s Ss Peter and Paul Social Justice Group, together with Transition Towns Kiama, hosted a presentation by Gillian King from Beyond Zero Emissions, which explained a fully costed blue-print for Australia’s transition to 100% renewable energy.

    Beyond Zero Emissions (BZE), a not-for-profit research and education organisation, together with the University of Melbourne’s Energy Research Institute, developed the Zero Carbon Australia Stationary Energy Plan. 

    The Plan was launched in 2010 and was fully costed, at $8.00 per household per week, with implementation over 10 years. The plan details the commercially available renewable energy technology plus the infrastructure that would be needed to replace all fossil fuel generated electricity in Australia within 10 years.  The plan depends on 3 components: – 12 Concentrated Solar Thermal Power Stations, Wind Turbine sources and improved infrastructure using High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) to transport current over long distances.

    With the publication of the most recent Report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concern about our carbon emissions has increased and action is urgent.

    The latest policy report from the World Wildlife Fund – Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change, defines Australia’s “carbon budget”.  WWF – Australia commissioned “Ecofys” to assess what would be a reasonable and credible contribution from Australia towards the international goal of limiting global warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius. Expressed as a “carbon budget” Australia has “spent” two thirds of its carbon emission allocation for the period 2013 to 2100.  With business as usual Australia will have spent the lot within a decade.

    Australia’s existing unconditional goal of reducing emissions by 5% below 2000 levels by 2020 falls far short of a credible contribution.  Contrary to often stated opinion that “Australia must not do anything until big polluting countries move” China, the world’s largest emitter, and Australia’s largest trading partner, has agreed to reduce the emissions intensity of its economy by 40-45% by 2020.  Other countries, Japan, South Korea and the UK have all committed to emission reduction targets of 25% or more below 2000 levels by 2020.  Germany has set a target of 45% reduction in emissions below 1990 levels by 2020 and 95% by 2050.  Germany is not famous for its long bouts of solar exposure!  The Zero Carbon Australia Stationary Energy Plan provides a way forward for Australia to reduce its carbon emissions by at least 25% by 2020.  The Plan also details job provision, essential as our trading partners reduce their demand for and importation of fossil fuels.

    Australia has a natural advantage in sources of renewable energy and can position itself as a global renewable energy power for future prosperity, at the same time ensuring national energy security.  Abundant solar energy falling on Australia’s centre could prove to be Australia’s greatest resource.

    Once again nuclear power is being raised.  It is not renewable, more expensive, and would take longer to implement than the proposed The Zero Carbon Australia Stationary Energy Plan

    There is increasing anxiety within the local community about Coal Seam Gas Extraction (CSG).  The 100% renewable energy plan provides a constructive way forward for the community to support alternative policies, avoiding CSG.

    The plan is clear, affordable and doable.  It needs commitment from our policy makers with community backing.

    The Kiama Social Justice Group and Transition Towns’ goal was to provide accurate information for the community and a knowledge base for the community to argue the case with the policy makers for a carbon emission free Australia.

    The Kiama meeting was advertised widely – in local newspapers, through ecumenical groups, Landcare groups, the small farms network and in the local businesses of Kiama, Gerringong and Berry.  The Federal MP Ann Sudmalis, and the state MP Gareth Ward were invited but were unable to attend.  The Mayor of Kiama was away and 2 Kiama Councillors did attend.

    Agnotology is the study of the cultural production of ignorance and doubt.  The outcomes of deliberate cultivation of ignorance and doubt are alive and well in our community.  “The Merchants of Doubt” (Oreskes and Conway) details the powerful vested interests at work in attempting to ensure that little action is taken about climate change.  They have described how some of the same organisations and people, who were part of the tobacco companies’ campaign, are around again in this campaign of creating doubt about the science of climate change.  The Illawarra is home to coal mining and the steel works, so change is threatening to both companies and employees.

    Still, 72 people turned up to the meeting.  The group was surprising for its enthusiasm and engagement.  The formal presentation was followed by another hour of questions and discussion and finally a short summary of some local power generation initiatives.

    There was lamentation that there were few “young” persons present and a general despair about what to do next.  Many in the group will turn out for CLIMATE CATCH UP on 17th November.

    There seems to still be reluctance for some to write or visit their local state and federal representatives.

    Is the next move a series of deputations?

     

     

     

  • Climate change as portrayed in ten major Australian newspapers. John Menadue

    Last week the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism at the University of Technology, Sydney released a report on the above subject. It highlighted, amongst other things the unprofessional performance and influence of News Ltd publications in shaping the public debate in favour of the sceptics of climate change.

    This is despite the overwhelming consensus by eminent world scientists as expressed particularly in the UN’s 5th  Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change report just released, The panel said that it was increasingly confident that climate change was occurring and that it was now 95% confident that this was due to human activity.

    The campaign by News Ltd publications stands oddly with what Rupert Murdoch boasted to the Lowy Institute last week “that you can’t have free democracy if you don’t have a free media that can provide vital and independent information to the people and that we believe in providing the public with access to quality content”

    Some would say that he is “talking through his hat”. But see the following extracts from the ACIJ report and make up your own mind about “quality content” The full report can be found on the website of the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism, University of Technology, Sydney.

    The findings of this report should be of concern to all those who accept the findings of climate scientists. …this study establishes that a large number of Australians received very little information through their mainstream print/online media of any kind about the findings of climate scientists over the sample period. There was an overall decline in coverage between 2011 and 2012. The West Australian and Northern Territory newspapers carried particularly low levels of coverage. Levels of coverage were higher in Fairfax publications The Age and Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian …

    The most significant finding is that nearly a third of all articles referencing climate science published by ten Australian newspapers during three months in 2011 and 2012 did not accept the consensus scientific evidence that human beings are the main contributors to global warming. Given the extremely strong consensus about this evidence, this finding presents a major challenge for media accountability in Australia. This conclusion fits with recent research by the Reuters Institute for Journalism which showed that in a six country comparison Australia had both the most articles in absolute terms and the highest percentage of articles with sceptic sources in them, ahead of the United States, the United Kingdom, France. The other two countries Norway and India had almost no sceptic sources in their media coverage.

    The high levels of scepticism in Australia in part reflect our status as the country with the most concentrated newspaper industry in the developed world. News Corp controls 65% of daily and national newspaper circulation. In the state capitals of Adelaide, Brisbane, Darwin and Hobart, it controls the only newspaper. While the influence of newspapers is waning, online versions of the same publications publish content similar to the print versions, although presented differently. This content continues to play a strong role is setting the news agenda for broadcast media.

    Nearly all of the sceptic articles in this study were published by News Corp. So it seems safe to argue that News Corps’ dominance is a major reason why the Australian press is a world leader in the promotion of scepticism.

    According to this study, Andrew Bolt, who recommends the sacking of journalists who consistently report the consensus position, is a major contributor to advancing climate scepticism in Australia. His individual role and that of other sceptic columnists should not distract from the decisions of corporate managers and editors who hire and heavily promote these columnists. While some of these editors claim to accept the consensus position they accord him the power to promote scathing critiques of climate scientists and other media that accept the consensus position. Scepticism is not only the product of opinion writers, however: as this study shows news selection, editing and reporting practices and the use of sources also embed sceptical positions.

    While media ownership plays an important role, not all News Corp publications are equal in their promotion of climate science scepticism. During the period of this study, Hobart’s The Mercury and Brisbane’s The Courier Mail did not promote scepticism. Since Brisbane editorial director David Fagan left News Corp in June 2013, The Courier Mail has begun to publish Andrew Bolt’s columns including a number of sceptic ones about climate change.

    The sample periods of part one and two of this research overlap but are not the same. This means that a synchronised comparative analysis of the coverage of carbon policy and of climate science cannot be made. It is clear, however, that news crop coverage of climate science is consistent with the dominant editorial stance of its publications towards political policy and action on climate change.

    … Fairfax media publications The Age and SMH were fairly even-handed or ‘balanced’ in their coverage of the Gillard government’s carbon policy with 57% positive articles outweighing 43% negative articles. As this study shows the Fairfax media reports climate science from the perspective of the consensus position. Their journalistic approach reflects the weight of scientific opinion as it would normally apply to scientific subjects.

    News Corp on the other hand was very negative towards the policy. Negative articles (82%) across News Ltd publications far outweighed positive (18%) article. This indicated a very strong stance against the carbon policy adopted by the government. The News Corp publications that were the most negative towards the policy also reflect the highest levels of scepticism. Their approach to climate science appears to reflect their political position in relation to calls for government intervention to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

    Some blame scientists for their failures to communicate their findings in accessible ways. But this can, at best, be only part of the reason why climate science is covered so poorly. Journalism is about finding the story, not expecting it always to be packaged in advance.

    This is not to suggest that a serious lack of resources is not interfering in the capacity of journalists to report adequately on climate change. The failure of old paper-based models of print journalism, the concentration of the print media in the hands of two main companies which share resources and reporters across mastheads, and the economic and political goals of the owners of corporate media are all relevant. These factors contribute to a situation in which science news-breaking stories are used to fill gaps as they arise, but in which longer term follow-up of issues is less likely. In this under-resourced situation, journalists are also more likely to edit a press release or a wire story generated elsewhere than to generate the news story themselves.

    There were plenty of examples in our study of strong, high quality climate science journalism in 2011 and 2012.

    But none of these worthwhile approaches solve one of the most worrying conclusions of this research, which is that an information gulf between different audiences and regions is widening in Australia. The resolution of that problem will have to address the concentration of media ownership in this country, a concentration that is largely responsible for the active production of ignorance and confusion on one of the most important issues confronting Australia.

    With  Rupert Murdoch  abusing the power that goes with the concentration of newspaper ownership in Australia it is not surprising ,according to Essential Research that 36% of Australians and 51% of Liberal/National voters do not believe that global warming is occurring and that it is due to human activity.

    We are witnessing an abuse of media power on an issue vital to Australia’s and the world’s future. It could hardly be more serious.

     

  • A back-flip on the carbon tax. John Menadue

    A number of my friends were impressed with the recent public debate between Bill Shorten and Anthony Albanese. They told me that they had expressed an interest online to join or rejoin the ALP after many years absence. Without exception they now say that they will not pursue their membership enquiry until the parliamentary wing of the Labor Party decides to stick with the carbon tax. In short, they were all asking the same old question ‘what does Labor stand for?’

    At the last election the ALP promised that it would move quickly from the carbon tax to an emissions trading scheme. That was understandable and commendable. But if Labor cooperates in the repeal of the carbon tax, all that will remain in the public domain on climate change is Direct Action. This so-called carbon pollution policy is flimsy. It is really a pretext for a policy.

    The ALP should cling to the policy it presented at the last election, end the carbon tax but only if it is replaced by an Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS).

    It was not that the policy on the carbon tax was wrong. All the problems surrounding the carbon tax for the previous government were political – a broken promise, gross political exaggeration by Tony Abbott and a compliant Murdoch media.

    In my blog of 24 October “The Carbon Tax- policy and politics” I pointed out that the carbon tax is working to reduce carbon pollution and clearly the wild exaggerations of Tony Abbott have not come to pass. As Peter Martin in the SMH has put it, the carbon tax has become part of the furniture. We should leave it alone unless there is something better. And certainly Direct Action is not something better; it is far worse.

    At the same time we are hearing about the possibility of the ALP doing a back-flip on the carbon tax, the Fairfax media has surveyed 35 of Australia’s most eminent economists on the subject. Thirty out of the 35 favoured the carbon tax evolving into an ETS.

    BT Financial’s Chris Caton said that any economist who did not opt for an ETS should hand his degree back. The renowned Australian economist Justin Wolfers said that ‘Direct Action” would involve more economic disruption but have a lesser environmental payoff than a trading scheme under which big emitters have to pay for their emissions.’ Professor John Freebairn of the Melbourne University said ‘Placing a price on greenhouse gas emissions pollution, either by a tax or by an emissions trading scheme, is the least cost way to reduce pollution.’ Rob Henderson, the senior economist at NAB, said ‘If I had to make a choice between pricing carbon and having bureaucrats allocating permits, then I’m going to go for the market mechanism every time.’

    Until the business sector went politically partisan in the lead-up to the last election, numerous business leaders supported a carbon tax and/or an ETS. Marius Kloppers then the CEO of BHP Billiton, called for a ‘mosaic of initiatives’ to tackle global warming, including a combination of a carbon tax and a limited ETS. He was backed by the then Business Council of Australia President, Graham Bradley.

    In its 2011 submission to the Clean Energy Future legislation, Westpac said that it welcomed legislation ‘to introduce a price on carbon within a market framework’. AGL supported the introduction of a ‘least-cost market mechanism’. Grant King of Origin Energy was asked ‘are you in favour of having a carbon price or not?’ King responded ‘Well, the short answer to that question is yes’.

    At the same time that the ALP is thinking of doing a back-flip on the carbon tax, Tony Abbott made another sophisticated and intellectual contribution to the climate-change debate. He told the readers of the Washington Post that the carbon tax is ‘socialism masquerading as environmentalism’. But some of his conservative heroes are strong supporters of market means to reduce carbon pollution. Angela Merkel, probably the most prominent conservative leader in the world, believes that polluters should pay for the damage they create. She favours putting a price or tax on greenhouse gas pollution. Another favourite of Tony Abbott’s, the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, has told us ‘The market is an effective way to [get control of global emissions]’.

    Those other key international institutions, the World Bank, the IMF and the OECD, have all endorsed putting a price on pollution.

    Where does Tony Abbott get his learning on climate change? Greg Hunt gets it from Wikipedia. Tony Abbott seems to get it from Lord Monkton and Cardinal George Pell. He must also rely heavily on his Kirribilli think tank-Miranda Devine, Piers Akerman, Gerard Henderson, Paul Kelly, Denis Shanahan, Janet Albrechtson and Andrew Bolt.

    Out of all this, let’s hope that the ALP doesn’t do another back-flip on the reduction of carbon pollution. It should hold to the carbon tax until a better option can be put in place – an ETS. If the carbon tax is repealed and we only have Direct Action in the field, we would not have a credible national policy to reduce carbon pollution.

    Will Labor abandon yet again its convictions on climate change!

     

  • The Carbon Tax – Policy and Politics. John Menadue

    There are good policy and political reasons why the ALP should oppose the repeal of the carbon tax.

    The carbon tax is designed to reduce carbon pollution. That fact is continually ignored by those who talk wildly about the tax rather than what it is designed to do. In any event, the tax is working and is not producing the ‘almost unimaginable’ destruction that Tony Abbott predicted. Gladstone has not been closed down and Whyalla has not been wiped off the map. The tax had a relatively small impact on prices when it was introduced but it is now accepted as very much part of our everyday life.

    The September CPI figures released yesterday show an overall increase in prices of 1.2% for the September quarter and 2.2% for the year. It was all relatively benign. Water and sewerage costs rose by 9.9% in the quarter, fuel by 7.5%, council rates and charges by 7.9%, international holidays by 6.1% and gas prices by 4.8%. Electricity costs trailed near the back of the field for increases at 4.4%. That doesn’t sound like ‘almost unimaginable” destruction and chaos. Furthermore, even the relatively small increases in electricity charges have been due, not to the carbon tax, but much more to the ‘gold plating’ of poles and wires by the electricity utilities.

    As Peter Martin in the SMH has pointed out, the Coalition has maintained that repeal of the carbon tax would save households $550 a year. This Coalition estimate is based on the scaling up of Treasury estimates for increases in prices due to the tax. Insofar as the increase in prices will be much less than expected, the savings to households will also be less.

    It is also clear that the carbon tax is achieving what it set out to do – curbing electricity and gas consumption. Household spending on electricity and gas is now down 3%.

    The carbon tax is designed to change the pattern of investments. A move to renewable energy and  less polluting power generation  depends on the carbon tax to discourage polluting industries..It is highly unlikely that the Government will be able to achieve the Renewable Energy Target of 41,000GwH by 2020 without the carbon tax.

    So leaving the tax in place would be good policy. It is causing minimal problems despite Tony Abbott’s extravagance. Furthermore the unravelling of the carbon tax would be onerous for business which has written the tax into its energy supply contracts. It is also possible that in the repeal of the tax, the Government might have to pay $4 billion in assistance to industry with the wind back of the free permits.

    On the political front there is a clear lesson that chopping and changing on carbon reduction schemes can be fatal for political leaders. Malcolm Turnbull attempted to hold the Coalition to putting a price on carbon. He failed. And Tony Abbott became the leader because Joe Hockey, the Liberal Party’s first choice to replace Malcolm Turnbull, refused to abandon his support for a carbon price.

    Then the Greens sided with the Coalition to defeat the Rudd Government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme in the Senate. If the Greens had supported this legislation, Australia would be well on the way to sensible carbon reduction policies and programs. It would have been “all over red rover.” Instead, the sanctimonious Greens helped provoke a divisive and destructive debate on carbon which has been at the expense of good policy. The Greens have a lot to answer for on this issue as well as for their “policy purity” on asylum seekers.

    With the failure of Rudd’s CPRS, and the failure of the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference, Kevin Rudd lost his way and his confidence. He was dumped.

    Then in February 2011, and in order to lock in the Greens to her minority government, Julia Gillard announced that she would put a price on carbon. She never politically  recovered, not that the policy was wrong but she had clearly gone back on a promise and did not effectively explain why.

    My sense is that Labor supporters would be appalled if Bill Shorten retreated now on the ALP policy to retain the carbon tax and then move to an emissions trading scheme. There has been too much chopping and changing. Surely he sees the price that both Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard paid for walking away from well established and well considered policies.

    Global warming is real and a market-based mechanism is superior to the inept ‘direct action’ policy which will be introduced by the Coalition. To achieve a 5% reduction in carbon pollution, it will cost far more than the carbon tax or an emissions trading scheme. Direct action is a confected and inefficient program designed to pretend that the Coalition is serious about global warming. It is very hard to understand how the Liberal Party which says it believes in markets could propose such a non-market scheme. It has much more to do with politics than good policy. The Coalition would serve Australia better if it spent a proportion of the ‘direct action’ funds to buy carbon credits from developing countries. Carbon pollution is a global problem. It has no respect for national boundaries.

    With an early summer in parts of eastern Australia, we are seeing the extreme weather and the bushfires which we have been warned about as a direct consequence of global warming. The need for us to seriously address global warming is with us every day. Scientific reports, one after another, warn us of the consequences of global warming unless we all take action to reduce carbon pollution.

    But what about the ‘mandate’ which Tony Abbott claims for the abolition of the carbon tax? What the election confirmed was the right of the Coalition to form a government. It was not a referendum on a whole clutch of policies.  On September 7, we had a general election. We did not have a referendum on the carbon tax or a double dissolution election on the carbon tax.

    Let’s try and hold to the carbon tax and then move to an emissions trading scheme. That would be the best policy.  I suggest it would also be good politics for the ALP, that despite all of its political mistakes, does take more seriously than the Coalition, the threat of global warming .Its supporters would feel let down if Bill Shorten turned tail on climate change.

     

  • Bushfires and climate change. John Menadue

    Last week, the Environment Minister, Greg Hunt, was really trying to tell us that black is white.  He attacked Adam Brandt who had said that the bushfires in NSW were part of a pattern of more extreme weather caused by climate change.  Brandt added that the government should not embark on dismantling sensible policies to limit global warming. What Brandt said was entirely consistent with the very strong advice that we have been receiving for many years from the best climate scientists in the world about weather changes.

    Having an indefensible policy called ‘Direct Action’ on climate change; Minister Hunt turned to political invective and attacked Adam Brandt for ‘politicising’ the bushfire tragedy. The Minister obviously decided that his “direct action” couldn’t sensibly be defended so he turned to filling the news cycle with political spin and nonsense by attacking Adam Brandt. Incidentally, Malcolm Turnbull, who lost his position as leader of the Liberal Party for espousing sensible marked based emission policies has told us quite clearly that he regards ‘direct action’ as a fig leaf when you don’t really have a policy.

    What Adam Brandt was saying is, I believe, at the top of the mind for a very large number of Australians. Is our weather becoming much more extreme? The evidence is increasingly pointing in that direction. Commenting on Minister Hunt’s political invective, the CEO of the Climate Institute, John Connor, said that it was time to face up to the growing risks of severe events such as bushfires owing to climate change. He said ‘Now is the time for a sensible debate’. But nothing sensible came from Greg Hunt.

    The Australian Climate Commission report ‘The Critical Decade 2013’ has just reported on the very worrying trends. It said

    • 70% of Australia experienced severe heatwaves across late December 2012 and January 2013. Temperature records were set in every state and territory. January 7, 2013 was the hottest ever average Australian maximum temperature.
    • Between 1973 and 2000, 16 out of 38 weather stations across Australia showed a significant increase in the Forest Fire Danger Index.
    • One quarter of the way through the Critical Decade, many consequences of climate change are already evident and the risks of further climate change are better understood.
    • 2000 to 2009 was the hottest decade since records began.
    • Global changes in rainfall have been observed, including in Australia.
    • The longer term regional drying trends over the south-west and south-east (of Australia) continued.
    • Increased heat is also causing significant global changes in snow and ice.
    • As expected, with the warming ocean and loss of land-based ice, the sea level is rising.
    • Climate change is likely to continue to affect Australians in a number of ways including: rising temperatures and more hot days; GREATER RISK OF BUSHFIRES; increased frequency and severity of extreme weather events including heavy rainfall and drought; and sea-level rise leading to more coastal flooding and erosion.

    The science on climate change is not conclusive but all the evidence and information points to the fact that we are embarking on a much more carbon intensive world and that that problem is mounting year by year.  This has been confirmed yet again last month by the fifth United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. More than 600 of the world’s top scientists contributed to the report.  There were 50,000 contributors to the report and exhaustive peer review. The IPCC report concluded that there was now a 95% probability that humans are responsible for global warning. It pointed to rising sea levels, rising temperatures and greater variability in weather patterns. Minister Hunt says he accepts the IPCC findings but then does a complete about face and resumes his police war.

    The greatest risk that we could take would be to ignore the possible calamity for the planet and our children. These serious prospects deserve a much more serious response than we have had from Greg Hunt and his leader, Tony Abbott, who have been playing politics hard and fast and successfully on climate change for years.  They are leading us down a dangerous cull ds sac.

    My concern is not just the abdication of responsibility by Tony Abbott and Greg Hunt but they have misled so many people and particularly their own supporters. In polling on October 1 this month, Essential Research found that 51 % of Liberal/ National voters did not believe in climate change. They believed that we were just witnessing normal fluctuations in the wold’s climate.

    I am stunned and alarmed by such poll findings. Surely so many Liberal/National voters can’t be such slow learners. Are they such party loyalists that they have allowed Tont Abbott to close their minds? Are they that partisan? Is it that they won’t allow any facts to threaten their comfortable life style?

    History will not judge kindly the way that Tony Abbott and Greg Hunt are playing politics with a looming danger. Our wondrous and delicate planet is on a dangerous trajectory and humans are the cause of the problem. We also have solutions in our hands. But ethical and wise leadership is essential. We have not got it at the moment.

    Hopefully, the ALP will not give way on the carbon tax unless it is satisfied that there is a better policy in place to combat the clear signs of climate change.

    On the particular issue of bushfires, let us not get distracted by the relatively minor issue of hazard reduction. That should be addressed, but we are facing a much more significant and possibly catastrophic problem, global climate change.

  • Facing the future. Guest blogger: Prof. Stephen Leeder

    Facing the future in a world where black swan events change everything.

    When considering what we may be facing with a new federal government in Australia, a wise starting point would be a conversation with Nassim Nicholas Taleb, he of the Black Swan theory.

    Taleb has written extensively, using the discovery of black swans in a world that did not believe they existed as his metaphor, about the impact of unpredictable game-changing events. Such events (9/11, the tsunami that led to the Fukushima catastrophe, the internet) change the course of history but we do not see them coming.

    According to Wikipedia, Black Swan events have the following characteristics:

    1. The event is a surprise (to the observer).
    2. The event has a major effect.
    3. After the first recorded instance of the event, it is rationalized by hindsight, as if it could have been expected; that is, the relevant data were available but [not processed in a way that enabled us to prevent it].

    So perhaps the best that we can do in thinking about what we are facing is to acknowledge that the big things that will shape our history over the next 3-6 years are not predictable.  An epidemic, an earthquake, a nuclear war, a tipping point in climate change that kills all the fish, a crazy person on a rampage with a gun, the discovery of a cure for cancer or dementia – no-one can say.

    In the meantime of course there is a high measure of predictability about our daily lives.  Tony Abbott will continue to conduct his business with intelligence, discipline, an ascetic athleticism, a trenchant debater’s criticism of opponents and a demand for loyalty in his ranks.  He may well manifest a religious concern for the plight of the poor. Think three years in a seminary and then think three years as prime minister.  The differences are unlikely to be profound.  None of us really change much over time.

    Tony Abbott is on record as having little sympathy for those with mental illness, questioning whether what is commonly called mental illness is not a cute name for weakness of character.  He may have moved beyond this caricature: we shall see.

    Stopping the boats and abolishing the carbon tax are core promises.  The first will only be achieved by a more sophisticated and nuanced approach than having the Australian navy intervene.  Settling the xenophobic paranoia whipped up over this matter will take time.  Carbon has a bad history in Australia.  Maybe a Black Swan event is necessary for our nation to address climate change seriously.

    In relation to health care, little has been said to indicate what the new national policies will be.  The challenges – older people, more chronic disease, more technology, more need for national prevention programs, and more resources for general practice – are mainly managerial and only secondarily political, though of course the capacity for faulty politics to stuff things up in health care is substantial.

    The previous government embarked upon a program of change to the health care system as described recently in a blog by John Dwyer.  As he argued, however, much remains to be done to better align the provision of care with the health needs of Australians.  This is especially so in relation to the care of those who have serious and continuing illness who require care from hospitals, general practitioners, community health staff, specialists in the community and home care.  The joining up of these care modalities is best done from a community base and while progress has been made, we lag far behind international best practice.

    The preventive agenda, never enthusiastically endorsed by the conservative side of politics, has much work to do with the disastrous epidemic of obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.  To address this effectively will require the engagement of the food industry, curbs on our alcohol consumption, revised plans for urban design and much more.  A retreat into assigning responsibility entirely to the individual for lifestyle behaviour and food and beverage choices is unacceptable and silly.  We have done well with a long struggle over tobacco, especially during the past six years, and much more needs to be done across portfolios to address the huge health problems associated with over- and inappropriate consumption of processed foods. Tony, are you listening please?

    We can only wait and see what Mr. Abbott et al. have in mind.  Black Swan events can change everything in a trice.

    In summary, the predictable aspects of the future can be discerned in the character of the principal players and the political context in which they are operating.  But it is the big, unpredictable events that will shape our history. Let’s hope they are good ones that create new opportunities!

     

  • The election – punishing bad behaviour. John Menadue

    One thing the election did was to explode the perceived wisdom that if the economy was doing well, governments are seldom voted out. But the Rudd Government was.

    As I have written in earlier blogs.

    • The Australian economy, by almost any measure is one of the best performing and managed in the world.
    • Our material stand of living is continuing to rise at a rate of about 2.5% p.a.
    • Only two days ago, The Herald – Lateral Economics Wellbeing Index showed that our ‘wellbeing’ rose by 7% last financial year. The index measures not only changes in income but also knowhow, environment, health, inequality and job-satisfaction.

    But there were other factors at work in the election.

    • The public clearly chose to punish bad political and personal behaviour by the ALP – the ousting of Kevin Rudd by Julia Gillard, his undermining of her and then her overthrow. Division is political death.
    • There were obviously concerns about the flakiness of Kevin Rudd.
    • The ALP campaign was ad hoc and chaotic. There was one thought bubble after another. It lacked a consistent theme based on the values and principles that most people thought the ALP stood for – like fairness, decency and equal opportunity.
    • Kevin Rudd and Chris Bowen were no more successful than Julia Gillard and Wayne Swan in persuading the public of the government’s good record on the economy. Chris Bowen now has two consecutive ministerial failures in his c.v. – Immigration and Treasury.
    • The swing against the ALP in NSW showed that the public did not accept that the ALP in that state had been cleaned up. It could only have been achieved by sacking the whole branch.
    • The easy-ride by the media of Tony Abbott’s policies and the bullying campaign by Murdoch seems to have had an effect. The ALP mistakes, and there were many, were highlighted particularly by the Murdoch media and the coalition was given an easy ride.

    The coalition waged a very successful political campaign with very little substantial policy. Tony Abbott’s campaign over four years has been attack dog style- brutal, dishonest, but effective.

    • We were told that we had a debt crisis and a budget emergency, but it now turns out that that was all phoney talk. Tony Abbott has pledged instead a reduction in taxes, e.g. carbon tax, and increases in spending, e.g. parental leave. There is a fundamental inconsistency in what Tony Abbott has been telling us for years and in what he now proposes to do.
    • Tony Abbott offers us stability after the apparent chaos of the hung parliament. But in terms of legislation and participation by independents, the last parliament was probably one of the most successful for a long time. In the last few days of the campaign Tony Abbott has told us that if his carbon tax legislation repeal is not passed by the Senate, there will be another election. That doesn’t sound like stability!
    • Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison have quite deliberately whipped up xenophobic, racist and anti-Muslim sentiment.

    My concern is that on two key issues, climate change and asylum seekers, the election has taken us backwards.

    In his first term, Kevin Rudd said that climate change was the greatest moral challenge of our generation. He was correct. He introduced the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme but it was defeated in the Senate by the coalition and the sanctimonious Greens. Then Kevin Rudd dropped the ball and Tony Abbott has kicked it into touch ever since.

    In the hung parliament, a deal with the Greens and other independents was necessary. The carbon tax was the result. That tax has delivered valuable results, despite the pain inflicted on Julia Gillard. In his brief second period as Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd announced that a future Labor government would move to a market-based carbon emissions scheme – the same type of scheme that was proposed by John Howard many years ago.

    Tony Abbott has opposed any meaningful program to reduce global warming. In an off-guard moment he said that global warming is ‘crap’. He then adopted his absurd ‘Direct Action’ scheme to reduce carbon pollution. This was a smoke-screen to divert attention whilst he relentlessly attacked the carbon tax. Malcolm Turnbull has described Direct Action as nonsense, a fig-leaf to provide cover when you don’t have a credible policy. But now it seems that Tony Abbot is even retreating from Direct Action.  He said that the coalition would be spending ‘no more and no less’ than it has committed to Direct Action, even if it doesn’t achieve the 5% emission reduction target by 2020 as promised. Almost every expert says that direct action will not work and it will be extremely expensive.

    Our grandchildren are going to pay a heavy price for our generation’s failure to address the issue of climate change. Month by month the scientific evidence is overwhelming that global warming is occurring and that humans are the cause. The experience of almost all of us, whether in record August temperatures, storms, droughts or cyclones  points in the same direction as the scientific evidence. Climate change is occurring. This is a great moral and environment challenge for which our generation is avoiding its stewardship responsibilities.

    We have also now reached the nadir on boat arrivals. Our slippery slide on this issue started in 2001 with Tampa and children-overboard. Since then the Liberals have been unscrupulously but successfully setting traps for the ALP. The Liberal Party in Opposition did not want boats to stop. The more boats that came the better the politics for them. That is why the Liberals sided with the Greens to block the amending of the Migration Act in the Senate which would have enabled implementation of the agreement with Malaysia. Boat arrivals have increased dramatically since that time. In world terms the numbers are not large, but it became a political plaything for the Liberal party.

    It won’t be easy and it will take time, but we must find a way to change the conversation on asylum seekers and refugees. It is not just an Australian problem. It is a major and serious global problem. Unfortunately John Howard, Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison have successfully drawn the ALP into the quagmire they have created.

    Lord Acton said that power corrupts. Power also reveals. It revealed a lot about Kevin Rudd. What will it reveal about Tony Abbott?

  • National Party fails farmers. John Menadue

    Warren Truss and Barnaby Joyce have allowed the National Party to be dragged along at the heels of the Liberal Party on climate change and other issues. What was it that Tony Abbott said about climate change being ‘bullshit’? Australian farmers particularly in Western Australia are now paying the price of failed leadership by the National Party.

    Last week the government announced measures to assist distressed farmers who face drought, a strong dollar and other difficulties. Particular mention was made of farmers in the south-west of Western Australia.

    Evidence keeps coming that the drought in Western Australia is more than a normal drought – it is man-made and the result of climate change. Consider the evidence and views of the experts on this question.

    • The Australian Climate Commission said very recently ‘Western Australia, particularly the south-west, is vulnerable to climate change. Rainfall patterns in WA have changed over the last forty years. There is significant evidence that climate change has contributed to the marked drying trend in the south-west of the state. This has had serious implications for urban water supplies and agriculture. Sea levels along the west coast of Australia have been rising at more than double the global average. With a significant part of the population living in coastal cities and towns, rising sea levels pose significant risks … ‘.
    • Professor Ross Kingwell of the University of Western Australia’s School of Agricultural and Resource Economics said in the Australian Financial Review on May 1 2013 that ‘in the 1900s the (south-west) region enjoyed a wet year about one out of every two years. This has diminished significantly since the 1970’s”.
    • A senior climatologist at the Bureau of Meteorology, Blair Trewin, told the AFR that ‘The biggest driver in the rainfall declines is long-term climate change.’
    • Dr Wenju Cai, a research scientist at CSIRO, said that the long-term deprival of rain in WA’s south-west represents one of the strongest examples anywhere in the world of the impact of human induced climate change on a region.

    Australia has always had to deal with drought. But it is now becoming clear that climate change is playing an increasing and long-term role in affecting the livelihood of many farmers, particularly in WA. I wonder what questions farmers are asking Warren Truss and Barnaby Joyce about their failure to join in a national and international effort to minimise global warming. If only they had done that instead of playing politics on the issue we would all have made more progress.

    John Menadue

     

  • A canary in the coal mine. John Menadue

    When environmental activist, Jonathon Moylan, sent a hoax email concerning Whitehaven Coal to the ANZ in January this year, there was outrage and tut-tutting by business journalists about his action.

    A few months later, it is becoming clear that the future of new thermal coal mines is doubtful. Australian resource companies have let over-optimism skew their investment decisions.

    Would any sensible investor take not only the political risk but also the financial risk of investing in new thermal coal mines in Australia?

    The case for continuing investment in coking coal for steel making remains strong, but not for coal to produce electricity. The case against thermal coal is growing.

    • The Australian Climate Commission this month reported that ‘levels of greenhouse gasses from the combustion of fossil fuels have increased almost 40% since the beginning of the industrial revolution, causing the earth’s surface to warm significantly. … All weather events are now occurring in a global climate system that is warming and moister than it was 50 years ago. This has loaded the dice towards more frequent and more severe extreme weather events’.
    • Professor Ross Garnaut warned recently that China was moving away from coal electricity generation to a new, less resource intensive phase of growth which would trigger a plunge in Australian mining investment. Last year, China bought 20% of Australia’s thermal coal exports worth $3 billion.
    • European consumption of coal has fallen to below 2007 levels and will fall further when new air pollution requirements apply from 2016.
    • The US Energy Information Administration shows that coal output in 2016 is likely to be lower than in 1990. Many US power companies using thermal coal have been shut down since 2009.
    • Bloomberg reported in February that Australia is unlikely to build new coal-fired power stations because of tumbling prices for renewable energy and the rising cost of finance for emission intensive fuels.
    • As a result of the Fukashima disaster Japan will need more thermal coal in the short term. But the Abe Government will progressively restart its nuclear reactors which have been closed since the disaster. These restarts will result in reduced output from coal-fired generators. Before the disaster about 25% of Japan’s power production was from nuclear energy.
    • The Climate and Health Alliance in Australia, in referring to a review by health experts at the University of Illinois said ‘the review adds to a suite of papers that point to the effects on human health of electricity generation from coal’

    Belatedly, we should acknowledge that Jonathon Moylan was telling us something about the future. The canary in the mine was more on the ball than those business economists who criticised him for his irresponsible behaviour.

    John Menadue