Carbon Price Is Key To Climate Change Battle

Fairfax - Editorial

The Age believes climate change should be at the forefront of policy debates. Photo: Jessica Shapiro

In a letter to The New York Times this week, Australia's newly ensconced ambassador to the United States, Joe Hockey, attempted to refute claims in the newspaper's editorial of March 4 which, rightly, damned the CSIRO's decision to reduce its focus on climate change research. The New York Times called that decision a "deplorable misunderstanding of the importance of basic research into what is arguably the greatest challenge facing the planet".
In his written response, Mr Hockey said the CSIRO "is making a strong contribution to the growing body of international climate change knowledge", and he pointed to continuing research by other institutions, including the National Environmental Science Program and the Bureau of Meteorology.
His response was insipid and beside the point, reflecting the feeble policy approaches of the Abbott and Turnbull governments on climate change matters generally. Mr Hockey sidestepped the fundamental point behind criticism of Australia's funding of science and climate-change strategies, which is that instead of stepping up research and monitoring of climate change indicators and effects, the government is winding back.
Climate change should be at the forefront of policy debates in this country, especially as the nation heads to an election in a few months, yet it seems to have been brushed aside.
As NASA released figures this week showing average global temperatures (land and sea combined) in February were 1.35 degrees above the norm for 1951-1980, Australia's Chief Scientist, Alan Finkel, said the world was "not winning the battle" against climate change. Current efforts seem to be inadequate.
Yet Environment Minister Greg Hunt claims Australia reached "peak emissions" a decade ago, and that the current combination of policies would ensure the nation hit its emissions target of 5 per cent below 2000 levels by 2020. He says this will be the result of the government's emissions reduction fund ($200 million a year to projects intended to help reduce emissions) and its accompanying mechanism that bars big industrial polluters from exceeding historic outputs; plus the renewable energy target (at least 20 per cent of national electricity demands to come from renewable sources by 2020); and improved efficiency standards on vehicles, buildings and so on.
We say this does not go far enough. The matter is more urgent than the government seems to recognise. The Turnbull government, though, is pursuing the Abbott government's minimalist approach.
The Age has long advocated  policies that would discourage or financially dissuade heavy emitters of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide).
We support a market-based mechanism, a price on greenhouse gas emissions that penalises big polluters, as the foundation for a suite of policies that must be implemented if Australia is to make genuinely deep cuts to emissions.
Labor has said it wants Australia to be a leader in renewable energy. It has proposed developing an emissions-trading scheme, a renewable energy goal so that 50 per cent of the nation's energy would come from renewable sources by 2030, as well as a transition to an economy that might rely less on production generated by emissions-intensive industries.
Labor has offered some worthy starting points. We hope they might be developed through mature debate, with reference to the mountain of climate science, and that they are implemented in a bipartisan manner. To that end, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull must step up and show his true colours on climate change, and not be the dupe for conservatives and numbskull denialists.