Category: Climate

  • Climate change – If only!

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

    The three leaders agreed on three particular pledges

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Climate change will be written on his epitaph.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Policy areas to be canvassed

    Economic policy

    Fixing the budget

    Taxation

    Federalism

    Productivity

    Job creation and participation

    Foreign policy

    Security, both military and soft power.

    Health

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

    Transport and infrastructure

    Population/migration/refugees

    Welfare priorities

    Retirement incomes

    Indigenous affairs

    Communications and the Arts

    Environment and climate change

    Inequality

    Role of government including tackling corruption and bad behaviour

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

    Terrorism and internal security whilst protecting of our freedoms

     

  • John Menadue. Tony Abbott at the National Press Club

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • John Menadue. Postcard from Denmark on the Nordic Success

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

     

     

  • John Menadue. Getting back on the front foot.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    The tide is turning on climate change.

  • Australia is worst performing industrial country on climate change.

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

    For the report in The Guardian, see link below.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • John Menadue. Move over Joe Hockey

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Renewable energy investment.

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

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

  • Tony Abbott and the G20

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

    (more…)

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

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

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

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

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

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

    The big turnaround

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    But is it all enough?

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

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

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

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

    Australia snookered

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

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

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

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

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

  • 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

    ​

    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.