The beauty of a Low Emissions Target as a climate action policy is that, as a kind of lowest common denominator, it means everyone wins — and for that matter loses. (more…)
Category: Climate
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CHRISTIAN DOWNIE. Time for China and Europe to lead, as Trump dumps the Paris climate deal
President Donald Trump’s announcement overnight that he will withdraw the United States from the Paris climate agreement comes as no surprise. (more…)
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CHRISTIAN DOWNIE. If the US can’t make coal clean, what hope is there for Australia?
The Prime Minister’s recent decision to back coal rests on the assumption that it can somehow be made “clean”, or more precisely, that carbon, capture and storage (CCS) technologies can be made to work for coal plants. The problem is that they can’t and the US experience shows why. (more…)
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IAN DUNLOP. The Leaders We Deserve?
Rarely have politicians demonstrated their ignorance of the real risks and opportunities confronting Australia than with the recent utterances of Barnaby Joyce, Matt Canavan and other ministers promoting development of Adani and Galilee Basin coal generally, along with their petulant foot-stamping over Westpac’s decision to restrict funding to new coal projects. Likewise, Bill Shorten sees no problem in supporting Adani. (more…)
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PETER Sainsbury. Crisis … what crisis? Australian government discussion paper downplays climate change
By ratifying the Paris Agreement on climate change in November 2016 the Australian government committed to a target of reducing Australian carbon emissions by 26-28% below 2005 levels by 2030. The government also agreed to review its climate change policies during 2017 to ensure that its policies ‘remain effective in achieving’ the 2030 target and the other commitments in the Paris Agreement. In March 2017 the government released Terms of Reference for the review and a discussion paper ‘Review of climate change policies’ (http://www.environment.gov.au/climate-change/review-climate-change-policies). (more…)
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RICHARD CURTAIN. Good information on outcomes is missing in the Higher Education Reform Package.
The Minister for Education and Training, Senator Simon Birmingham, in the new Higher Education Reform Package released on 1 May, states that ‘Students deserve improved information from which to make an informed choice on the most relevant course of study for them…’. There is much emphasis in the package on reforms to the information provided to students at the front-end of tertiary education but precious little on providing better information on graduate employment outcomes. (more…)
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JOHN MENADUE. A rigged gas market and market failure.
Yesterday, the government announced that it would impose an Australian Domestic Gas Security Mechanism on gas exports from July this year. This will give the government authority to limit companies’ gas exports if they are emptying Australian gas reserves to meet overseas export contracts. Two years ago – I drew attention to the market failure in gas policy. I have reposted below that article of April 28, 2015. John Menadue (more…)
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ROD TIFFEN. The Australian’s Wind Farm Reporting
The National Wind Farm Commissioner, Andrew Dyer, delivered his first annual report on March 31, covering the first 14 months of the agency’s operation since being set up by the Abbott government, with the support of conservative cross-bench senators. The agency has an annual budget of around $650, 000 a year, while Dyer is paid $205,000 for his part-time role.
The Sydney Morning Herald, Guardian and Crikey covered the release with short news stories. The Australian, and I think the other Murdoch dailies, ignored it. (more…)
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It’s time for Labor to think big about policy – a people’s bank!
Tony Abbott is not the only one anticipating a change of government at the next election. Voters across the board are increasingly fed up with the Coalition and there are even signs that some of its most devoted cheer leaders in the media are beginning to give up on it. Dear old Alan Jones has certainly given up on it. So what does Bill Shorten have in store for us if the ALP wins the next election? (more…)
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JULIAN CRIBB. When political fantasy trumps scientific fact
During the 1930s, around ten million Russians and Ukrainians starved to death in a horrific event known as Holodomor. Historians have attributed this disaster in part to the quack theories of Trofim Lysenko, Stalin’s hand-picked boss of Soviet agricultural science. It was the world’s first big case of politics distorting the objectivity of science, for its own ends. (more…)
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MUNGO McCALLUM. Turnbull’s Passage to India.
He may not have landed any concrete results, but he continues to give the myths and legends a good workout.
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ALLAN PATIENCE. The seduction of pessimism.
It seems that the end is nigh of much of what we know and love about our planet as climate change intensifies across the globe. Climate change science is painting a depressingly pessimistic picture of the future. Is there no hope? (more…)
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BOB DOUGLAS. Are humans headed for early extinction?
Observing the national and international political scene, one could be forgiven for believing that all we need to do is promote economic growth and jobs and everything will be okay. We have become besotted with the idea that money and markets will solve all of our problems. Nothing could be further from the truth. Indeed, our commitment to endless economic growth and denial and ignorance of its ecological consequences is an integral part of the problem, which must urgently be addressed if our grandchildren are to survive. (more…)
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GILES PARKINSON. Tide turns as solar, storage costs trump ideologues and incumbents
Looking at the machinations over the proposed Adani coal mine in Queensland’s Galilee Basin this week, or seeing certain Coalition Senators howling at the moon over wind turbine “emissions”, or the Treasurer brandishing a lump of coal in parliament, it is hard to imagine that any sort of progress has been made in Australia in what all but a determined few accept is the inevitable clean energy transition. (more…)
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MUNGO MacCALLUM. Another distraction, but what a distraction.
The starting point is putting a price on carbon – some form of emissions trading policy. But this is total anathema to the coalition party room – worse even than negative gearing. (more…)
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TIM COLEBATCH. Old coal, no new gas: how to generate an electricity crisis.
We need to set a timetable to reduce emissions from electricity generation, which now contributes a third of Australia’s greenhouse gases – and, by and large, the third that will be easiest and cheapest to reduce. We need price mechanisms to drive it.
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GILES PARKINSON. How AEMO’s new boss will reform Australia’s energy vision.
Audrey Zibelman, the new chief executive of the Australian Energy Market Operator, has been in the job for little over a week, but is already making her mark, signalling the biggest shift in energy management philosophy in a generation. (more…)
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The Australian does it again, and again, and again.
Media Watch on 27 March 2017 described the unprofessional behaviour of the Australian and journalist Graham Lloyd over the reporting of the bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef. The Media Watch story follows. (more…)
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JOHN MENADUE. The terrorism threat here is because our troops are over there.
Compared to other risks, we have little to fear from terrorism. In the last two decades only three people in Australia have died from terrorism. But there is a ‘vividness’ bias in terrorism because it stands out in our minds. Importantly, a lot of politicians, businesses, stand to gain from exaggerating the terrorist threat. It is also easy news for our failing and lazy media. This is a repost from 14 February 2017. (more…)
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TIM COLEBATCH. Why gas prices went sky-high, and what governments need to do about it
There is an overwhelming consensus that the centrepiece should be an emissions intensity scheme, as proposed by the draft Finkel report, by the government’s handpicked Climate Change Authority, and by electricity generators and big users alike. This would give the energy industry a clear, bipartisan timetable to reduce emissions, enabling it to plan and invest with confidence. (more…)
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PETER BROOKS and JOHN WILLOUGHBY. A call for doctors to take a stand on the Adani Carmichael coal mine
The comprehensive investigation, published as The Adani Files (adanifiles.com.au), provides a litany of stories of pollution, failed clean-ups of damaged environments, and allegations of corruption and of abuse of workers. (more…)
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GEORGE BROWNING. The non-existent Australian government energy policy.
It has been clear for some time that the normal capitalist approach of privatising everything does not work in relation to energy. (more…)
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IAN McAULEY. The National Electricity Market: What happens when economists get involved with electricity
John Menadue has asked me to write about the National Electricity Market – the NEM. I should be qualified to do that: my first degree and my first years of professional work were in electrical engineering and in my later professional work I taught public economics. Who could be better qualified? But let me apologise to the readers of John’s blog: I’m not up to the task because I cannot make sense of the NEM. (more…)
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ALAN KOHLER. Hello, Elon? It’s Malcolm.
“Cannon-Brookes! That man’s an absolute nuisance. He’s been causing Arthur problems with our 457 visa plans, and now he’s trying to mess up the nice little wedge we’ve got going with Shorten and Weatherill over renewables and blackouts in Adelaide.” (more…)
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LESLEY HUGHES. Angry summers are the new normal. Our climate is on steroids.
The occurrence of the extreme summer experienced in NSW, for example, was at least 50 times more likely than would have been the case without climate change. (more…)
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JOHN MENADUE. A little bit of honesty would go a long way in energy policy.
We really do need some honesty from the media on energy policy. The fact is that Coalition policies have failed for at least eight years and are largely responsible for our pending crisis. Media cover-ups for failed Coalition policies will not change that fact.
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WAYNE SWAN. Coalition energy policy.
It’s a lost decade we couldn’t afford on climate change and energy policy – but when the consequences are felt in years and decades to come, it’s incumbent upon us all not to forget the political opportunists and charlatans who led us down this path. (more…)
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ROSS GITTINS. Outlook for Australian politics and government in 2017.
The area of economic reform where the government’s performance has been most egregious is on policy to ease our transition to a low-carbon economy and honour our commitments at the Paris conference. Leaving aside Abbott’s role in our policy regression, Turnbull’s disservice to the nation was to swear off introducing a carbon intensity scheme. (more…)
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IAN VERRENDER. Coal-fired generators have no future in Australia.
From an economic perspective, it would be far more efficient to eliminate subsidies altogether and to put a price on carbon that reflected its true cost. Private investors then would be able to choose which technology was most efficient. (more…)
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MUNGO MacCALLUM. Malcolm Turnbull on climate change and coal.
Unfortunately the storms and the heat waves are making it clear to reluctant voters that climate change is not going to disappear. Sooner or later the message will filter through even to the recalcitrants of the coalition. But by then it may be too late for Turnbull – and, for that matter, the rest of us. (more…)