After all, in most cases, something is better than nothing. But not it seems in Australia, when it comes to Climate Change policy. After many months of wrangling and deal-broking, the Labor government and the opposition have finally delivered a proposal which it would seem is actually "Worse than nothing". The original ETS (Emissions Trading Scheme) was seriously flawed. It is always worrying when an interviewer poses a question to a politician about some proposed legislation and they preface their reply with the phrase ...
Well ... To put it simply ...
To put it simply? I suppose that means the legislation is not simple?
Why do the proponents have to put it simply in order to explain it? Why not start just out simple? Have any of them heard of KISS? Because by the time legislation emerges from the gauntlet of political compromise and negotiation through which it must pass, even a simple proposition ends up being complex.
And in the case of the ETS, it was never simple. Even for someone well-informed and reasonably well-educated, the mechanics of the "cap and trade" scheme are difficult to grasp. It was always going to be difficult to estimate the amount of carbon emissions, difficult to regulate, and difficult to "trade" what is after-all a by-product of "living". It was bad enough in its original format. And when it is watered-down even further it became worse. Proponents have now added the farcical concession of giving away the permits in the "start-up phase".
The ETS has now become almost incomprehensible. The monstrosity that we end up with seems to be a long-winded, cumbersome pseudo market-based scheme dreamed up by the same people who gave us futures markets, derivatives, collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps. In its original form, it was complex and convoluted. Now the legislation currently before the Senate, the CPRS (Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme) is considerably worse. Not only will it fail to reduce emissions, for the same reasons that the original ETS would fail, but it will cost us a lot more money! Not content with giving away the permits, the targets have been watered down even further and now amazingly there is even more money being offered as compensation to high-carbon industries for not doing anything!
The proposed abomination will fail to reduce emissions. It would be a considerable burden upon taxpayers. It would, however be a benefit for bankers, stock-brokers, lawyers, bureaucrats, other participants in the unreal economy and the very people presently getting rich by burning fossil fuels.
Surely that is "worse than nothing"?
Carbon Dioxide is not really a pollutant. It is something that all of us from humans down to the humblest aerobic microbe produce when we "breathe". As a natural by-product of ecosystems, carbon dioxide forms an integral part of the carbon cycle. However another integral part of that cycle is the depositing of "fixed" carbon in soils and at the bottom of oceans and lakes. That is a process that has been going on for billions of years, or as long as there has been photosynthesis. The vast carbon cycle has been churning along since photosynthesis began and living systems have formed a type of equilibrium with the process. In the past few hundred years, a relatively short time in the overall scheme, our species has dug up some of that fossil carbon and put it back into the atmosphere,
The addition of that extra fossil carbon has created an imbalance in the carbon cycle. And that imbalance is disrupting our ocean and atmospheric environments.The disruption will probably become more intense if we persist in digging up and burning fossil carbon. The wealth accumulated by fossil carbon enterprises is now being used to lobby governments and to advocate "business as usual". And that lobbying is mainly responsible for the rise of a new breed of lemming, the climate change deniers and sceptics.
However, denial will soon be impossible. In Victoria, last summer, we experienced the worst bushfires ever. And they occurred on the hottest day ever recorded in the state, after the most severe extended heat wave ever. The once mighty river which in former times divided Victoria from New South Wales, and which once had paddle steamers, is now a rotting, muddy, saline trickle. The once green and lush dairy pastures of Victoria are now a brown tinderbox. Water supplies for Southern cities have dwindled to record lows. And more ominous for the coming summer has been record spring time temperatures in South Australia and Victoria and two (new) "catastrophic" fire alerts. The uncharacteristic November heat has been punctuated with wild almost "tropical" storms, providing an impressive demonstration that something significant is happening to the climate in this region. Australia is now a climate change basket case. It is the place where people might come to see just what the future could be for them if they don't do something soon.
Of course all of that is just anecdotal evidence! But it is one hell of an anecdote. And soon the deniers' position will become untenable.
Nevertheless it seems that a major player in the Australian political landscape, the Liberal Party, has become a refuge for deniers and sceptics. From within the upper-echelons of the Liberals, climate change deniers and sceptics having seized control of the party, have now formed an unholy alliance with pragmatists. It is true that pragmatists have genuine concerns about the potentially damaging and ineffective CPRS that has emerged from the labyrinthine negotiations between both political parties. But the sceptics are committed to a climate sceptic Jihad, and they are willing to sacrifice themselves and their party for their misplaced faith.
And so, for all the wrong reasons, there seems a chance that Australia will be spared this hideous legislation.
If that is so, it will be a good result for Australia. However it may be bad for the Liberal party. If they are foolish enough to elect a "climate change sceptic" as their leader, the party is doomed. If the Liberal Party's collective self-destruct instinct leads them to explode en masse like pack of deluded fundamentalist suicide bombers, it is to be hoped that something resembling an opposition political party will arise from the smouldering ashes to challenge the government. Or would it be too much to hope that the Greens could become an effective opposition?
In any case a viable political party in Australia will have to have a policy about climate change.
And if we are fortunate enough to escape from the hideous sucking maw of the Labor CPRS (Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme), it is to be hoped that the government will give some serious consideration to some simple and effective measures to start re-engineering our economy to to become carbon negative.
Even though the political fortunes of the Labor party and the prime minister seem to be riding high, it is difficult to see how such an obviously flawed proposal could be presented to the public as a serious election policy, without insulting their collective intelligence. If the climate change problem is only half as serious as the prime minster says it is (and in fact it is a lot worse), Labor will have to a lot better then the half-baked, unconvincing load of old tripe presumably cooked up bankers, financiers and bureaucrats in a back-room at the turn of the century.
One very effective measure might be a "carbon tax". But it would only effective it was simple. One possible simple proposal might go as follows:
- Applying the carbon tax to all fossil fuels in the domestic market. Despite the bullshit from the fossil lobby to the effect that we should all stop breathing and prevent our cattle from farting so that they can get on with "business as usual", it is fossil carbon that is the problem. And despite the alarm about running short of (easily accessible) oil, there is still a lot of fossil carbon that could be dug up. It should be taxed.
- Absolutely no exemptions. Time eventually wears away all such resolutions. But if you don't start simple, you have no hope of making it more simple. It will definitely become complex. You can bank on it.
- Structure the tax so that it raises the same revenue as the GST, which it replaces!. That would effective silence critics who say "we can't afford it", since we already pay a tax on most of our Goods and Services.
- Modify the existing GST collection mechanism to collect and distribute revenue from the tax. That would avoid expensive and burdensome re-engineering of accounting and taxation infra-structure.
All of that would make an reasonable start. It would not significantly effect exports, and it would allow people to structure their spending options according to their own budgets. Of course there are all those other "nice" things to do like planting trees, discouraging cows from farting, saving water, and helping poor folks with their electricity bills. But all of that could be done in the fullness of time. If the over-all effect is the same as the GST, it is more or less revenue neutral. It would allow consumers to "focus" their spending. Best of all it offers the opportunity for a "Tax Holiday" for goods or services completely devoid of "fossil carbon".
The only people who would oppose such a policy would be the powerful vested interests who already make a lot of money out of fossil carbon.
And the only political that would propose such a change would be one that was genuinely trying to encourage re-engineering of the economy rather than "play" politics.
So I guess for those reasons we won't see anything resembling it.
In the meantime, if the Liberal party don't come to their sense, we may not be seeing them for much longer either.
