Election 2016: Real Climate Change Demands Real Solutions

Sydney Morning Herald - Editorial

The common link between Labor's plans and Direct Action shows Australia now has the seeds of a bipartisan approach. All that remains is for Malcolm Turnbull to silence the deniers and stop the scare campaigns. Mr Shorten should seek out like-minded Coalition partners, too.

The share of coal in our power generation is increasing. Photo: Michele Mossop

It suits Labor to keep climate change under the election radar, given the party's well-based fear of a 2013-style scare campaign. The Coalition has already wheeled out the "carbon tax mark II" and "massive energy tax" lines amid questionable claims that Labor's policy will hike electricity prices.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, however, doesn't want to focus on global warming either. He knows the issue reminds voters of the rift between his "climate science is settled" colleagues and the climate sceptics who coalesce around former leader Tony Abbott.
What's more, Mr Turnbull knows that the government's expensive Direct Action plan that uses taxpayer funds to pay polluters to reduce emissions will have to become a price-based scheme – akin to Labor's policy – to be a credible long-term solution.
But try as they might, neither party can avoid global warming.
Symbolically, the Cape Grim climate monitoring site in north-western Tasmania could record its first baseline reading of 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere within 10 days. Once that marker is passed, scientists say it is unlikely to go back. That would be a reliable indicator of the effect of burning of fossil fuels and clearing land.
Practically, disturbing photographs are emerging of coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef – in part due to the runoff from coal mines and warmer waters. The Solomon Islands is losing islands to rising sea levels and even the unseasonably warm autumnal days are a niggling reminder of the issue.
Yes, the Turnbull government has reversed some of Mr Abbott's attacks on climate agencies, and committed to the global fight. Mr Turnbull has also made Direct Action adaptable to higher targets.
Yet emissions from the eastern states electricity grid are still rising. The share of coal in our power generation is increasing. And even prominent officials at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration are warning against any cuts to Australian research into climate change.
No-one outside the government believes Direct Action in its current form can meet our global commitments.
Labor's response is a 45 per cent reduction in emissions by 2030 based on 2005 levels. This is more than the government's 26-28 per cent promise in Paris in December and pledge to raise targets only in tandem with the global community.
Labor hopes to curb vehicle emissions and have cleaner power stations pay dirty brown-coal ones to shut down. For a few years big polluters across the economy would have to buy cheap international permits if they exceeded a cap on emissions. For the longer term, Labor would talk to unions and business about creating an economy-wide emissions trading scheme from 2020.
Yes, Labor would protect some local manufacturers and cut funds from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency.
But Labor also offers an ambitious, and some say risky, target of having 50 per cent of Australia's electricity generated from renewable sources by 2030, with the added bonus of more green jobs. The Coalition has reduced the renewable energy target to 23 per cent by 2020.
Given the hefty cost of shifting to more renewables, Labor needs to reduce the price risk for consumers. The solution is to force generators to operate more cleanly or pay a penalty – in effect ensuring the cleanest plants have an economic advantage.
Such a system is just like the safeguards mechanism in Mr Turnbull's Direct Action policy. To stop some polluters boosting emissions even as others are paid to reduce theirs, Direct Action sets a base level for pollution. The trick comes in 2017 when a review of the safeguards can gradually require the emitters to pollute less. If they cannot, they will need to buy permits off cleaner producers, thereby creating a price on Australian pollution without jacking up power bills. Liberal Party modelling assumes this shift to a market-based scheme like Labor's. The alternative is for Direct Action to pay polluters many billions more dollars to clean up their acts.
The common link between Labor's plans and Mr Turnbull's is crucial. Australia now has the seeds of a bipartisan approach to climate change. All that remains is for Mr Turnbull to silence the deniers and stop the scare campaigns. Mr Shorten should seek out like-minded Coalition partners, too. As we argued in December, this election must focus on finding the polices that work most efficiently to meet increasingly difficult and costly targets.