08/12/2016

Government Accused Of Forcing Up Power Prices Through Climate Backdown

Fairfax - Adam Morton | Heath Aston

The government faces accusations that it is forcing up electricity prices and reducing energy reliability after abandoning a plan to even consider a climate scheme that experts say could have tackled both.
In a torturous press conference, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull confirmed that the government had been forced into a U-turn on climate-change policy less than 48 hours after releasing details for a policy review next year.

No carbon tax or emissions trading 
Speculation the government might adopt a carbon intensity trading scheme leads to a clarification from Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. Courtesy ABC News 24.

After two days of vocal criticism from several Coalition backbenchers, the government dropped plans for the review to consider an emissions intensity scheme for the electricity sector - a form of carbon pricing - to help it meet its climate targets.
Mr Turnbull denied such a scheme had ever been part of the review. "We will not be imposing a carbon tax and we will not be imposing an emissions trading scheme, however it is called," he said.
Prime minister Malcolm Turnbull at the Sydney Fish Markets on Wednesday. Photo: Mick Tsikas
It  came as EnergyAustralia – the country's second biggest greenhouse gas emitter – announced on Wednesday plans to spend $1.5 billion on solar and wind projects.
Asked whether Environment and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg had the imprimatur of the Prime Minister's Office when he told journalists it would be considered, Mr Turnbull said: "If you want to ask questions about what another minister said, you should address them to him."
Mr Frydenberg subsequently also denied an emissions intensity scheme had ever been on the table, despite having told Fairfax Media and the ABC that the review would look at it.
Mr Turnbull said the government would never increase the cost of energy for Australian families and businesses.
But Frontier Economics chief Danny Price, who advised Mr Turnbull on an emissions intensity scheme as far back as 2009 and who the government last year appointed to the Climate Change Authority board, said the government had turned its back on an option that would have reduced prices.
He said an emissions intensity scheme would improve reliability by helping the electricity industry plan for the closure of existing ageing coal plants by investing in cleaner stations.
"This shows a lack of spine. The policy vacuum that it leaves will be filled by policies that will do exactly what they are trying to avoid," Mr Price said.
"By doing this, it means they are the party of increasing electricity prices and reduced energy security."
Grattan Institute energy program director Tony Wood said an emissions intensity scheme should not be called a carbon tax because it did not raise revenue. He said any policy to cut emissions would have a cost, but those opposing such a scheme were creating more uncertainty and higher prices.
An emissions intensity scheme would set a baseline figure for how much carbon dioxide a power station could emit for every unit of power generated, penalising those who breached their limit and rewarding cleaner models that emitted less with free credits.
Bodies to have recommended an emissions intensity scheme on cost grounds include Energy Networks Australia and the CSIRO.
Energy and business leaders who have called for a bipartisan plan for the future of the electricity system as it shifts to cleaner forms of generation.
Australia Energy Council chief Matthew Warren, representing most electricity generators, declined to comment directly on the about-face, but reiterated substantial policy change was needed.
"The electricity system is visibly deteriorating. It is a system that requires multi-billion-dollar investments and is paralysed because of uncertainty, and until that is resolved, it will continue to deteriorate," Mr Warren said.
Outspoken Liberal backbencher Cory Bernardi welcomed the government backdown. "It was a clear attempt to reintroduce a price on hot air to satisfy the extreme greens and others seduced by the socialist alarmism of anthropogenic climate change," he said.
Opposition leader Bill Shorten said Mr Turnbull was a "weak fellow" who had cave into internal from the Coalition right-wing. "He doesn't believe in anything except saving his job," he said.

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Putting American Climate Denial To Good Use

Fairfax - Julian Cribb*

In an interview with Fox News, Donald Trump's newly appointed chief of staff, the Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus, confirmed that the official stance of the Trump White House will be that climate science is a "bunch of bunk".
An analysis published in The Washington Post found that America's failure to pull its weight on climate mitigation could boost world temperatures by +2.3 to +2.5 degrees by 2050, depending on whether the rest of the world holds the line agreed to at Paris COP 21, or whether other countries (like Australia, for example) take it as a pretext to backslide on their commitment to present and future generations.
President-elect Donald Trump with his new chief of staff Reince Priebus. Photo: AP
Stripped of political persiflage, the Trump position – as articulated by Priebus and the growing gang of climate deniers appointed to hold office under Trump – is that tens of millions of humans must die to protect the shareholder value of a handful of crumbling US resources corporates who refuse to enter the 21st century and prefer to stick with the 19th and 20th.
According to a World Health Organisation 2016 report "An estimated 12.6 million people died as a result of living or working in an unhealthy environment in 2012 – nearly one in four of total global deaths". Those unhealthy environments mostly consist of air, water, food and furnishings polluted by toxins sourced from the petrochemical and coal industries. In China and India, on average, 4000 people die daily from air pollution alone. Around a third of the world's rising cancer rates are now attributed to chemical exposures, as are the rising waves of autism, reproductive dysfunction and mental disease.
And this doesn't begin to include the numbers who will perish in the famines, wars and weather disasters that will accompany accelerating climate change.
So, including their impact on the global climate, fossil fuels are now claiming lives at a substantially higher rate than did World War II (about 7 million a year). It follows that a decision by the new American leadership to promote fossil fuel use, instead of replacing it with cleaner, safer and more sustainable forms of energy amounts to a declaration of war on humanity as a whole – and one that will, unavoidably, come at the cost of tens of millions of lives.
The same argument applies to the hollow, insincere, foot-dragging policies of Australian political leaders on climate and renewables: many are perfectly willing to sacrifice human lives for the sake of a few cosy coal company sinecures after political retirement. Like asbestos, they are hoping the long industrial chains between the primary sources of pollution and its victims will, for a time, obscure the trail of ultimate responsibility. But, eventually, there will be a Nuremberg.
In the meantime, the world has the interesting issue of how to deal with an America many of us thought of as a friend, ally and benefactor – and which now displays all the potential for becoming a rogue state worse by far than North Korea, in terms of the damage it can inflict on humanity.
The simplest and most elegant solution is the one powerfully articulated by Donald Trump during the election campaign when he declared that Mexico should pay for building his border wall, to keep the tide of emigrants out of the US.
If America wants to damage the world's climate, destabilise the planet and cause havoc to the health of its citizens by promoting toxic energy solutions, then it is only fair that America should pay to clean up the mess it creates and compensate the victims.
The logical answer is for signatories to COP 21 to agree to impose a multilateral carbon tax on the trade (goods and services) of any country that abandons its agreement.
A tax that would pay for all the climate mitigation, reafforestation, water and food security measures, new energy research and especially, for the building of vast new renewable energy plants around the world.
That way, America's coal, oil, gas and shale sector can be made to fund the rise of its competitors – and bankroll the transition to a clean, sustainable world. Since they have devoted recent decades to amassing fortunes at the expense of farmers, native peoples, blue-collar workers and the middle classes of the world, it would be Shakespearean justice to spend those fortunes on improving global wellbeing in this way. If the carbon levy was big enough, it could even be used to end world poverty ...
The aim of a carbon levy on US trade is not to hurt the tens of millions of sensible, caring Americans who don't swallow the Trump nonsense, nor the tens of thousands of ethical American businesses who are already committed to climate action. It is to add steel to their arm and might to their lobby in their effort to compel their country's leaders to abandon this self-defeating course.
Yes, a carbon levy would be a form of sanction. Just like the sanctions America itself supported against apartheid South Africa, Iran, Libya, Cuba and many others. Do such measures work? Well, they certainly appear to – or people wouldn't keep imposing them. They certainly strengthen opposition movements within the sanctioned country. And in America, land of the dollar, money speaks louder than ideals.
The carbon levy should not only be on American-sourced goods and services, but also on products of multinational companies founded or substantially based in the US. That includes Apple, Microsoft, Coca-cola, Continental Grain etc. Oh, and don't forget the US arms industry either – they seem to have the ear of the Trumpists. It could be imposed multilaterally, but in the meantime bilaterally will do. If enough countries impose a carbon levy it will be a sign to Washington that we're serious.
At the same time the carbon levy could be suspended for the "goodies" of the US economy – Elon Musk's electric cars and batteries, for example or solar firms Verengo, SolarCity and SunPower. This would send a clear market signal about what products the world prefers, which ever-agile US commerce would be quick to exploit.
So let's all play the Mexican Wall game back to Mr Trump and his cronies. For the sake of all our grandkids.
Thanks, Donald, for another great business idea!

*Julian Cribb is a science writer and author of 'Surviving the 21st Century'

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What An Extraordinary, Gutless Capitulation By Josh Frydenberg

The Guardian - 

‘Josh Frydenberg has gone in the space of 24 hours from saying quite clearly the government would consider an emissions intensity trading scheme for the electricity sector to trying to pretend he said no such thing.’ Photograph: Bloomberg via Getty Images
What an extraordinary capitulation.
Just 24 hours of controversy from entirely predictable quarters and a carefully calibrated process to try to engineer a truce in Australia’s utterly wretched climate politics has been all but abandoned by its architects.
Josh Frydenberg has gone in the space of 24 hours from saying quite clearly the government would consider an emissions intensity trading scheme for the electricity sector to trying to pretend he said no such thing.
The retreat is, frankly, unseemly.
Actually, the retreat is more than unseemly, it’s pathetic – and the consequences of it stretch far beyond yet another apparent failure to do what needs to be done to ensure our economy makes an orderly transition to the carbon-constrained world that the Turnbull government willingly accepted when it signed Australia up to the Paris international climate agreement this time 12 months ago.
Forget the intricacies of the climate policy debate – the government through this botched process has again revealed its true nature to the public.
Yet again the Turnbull government has shown the voting public that it is a divided, roiling, rudderless, chaotic and gutless political outfit, locked into a cycle of chasing its own tail, jumping nervously at shadows.
It doesn’t matter whether or not you are intrinsically a fan of governments embarking on rational policy solutions to vexed public policy problems, whether you accept the science of climate change or whether you don’t, this particular episode chalks up yet another episode in government as chaos theory.
The government now presents to the public as an outfit completely devoid of organising principle, careening to try to stay ahead of the next imbroglio, not because of any external pressure, or ferocious rent seeking by powerful special interests, or slick politics by the opposition – but because everything is about the metastasizing internals.
At the end of the political year, the government looks like a bunch of people clinging to their jobs, and doing whatever it takes to keep clinging to them – or if they are not doing that, they are trying to engineer the downfall of others, week after week, issue after issue.
Sensible people in the government would of course tell you this process of reviewing the manifestly inadequate Direct Action policy was doomed from the start – that it would be impossible to engineer a rational climate policy, one which reduced emissions at the least cost to taxpayers, and steer it successfully through this particular Coalition party room.
Sensible people would say this process was always going to degenerate into a battle of straw men and a proxy war about leadership.
They are doubtless correct in that assessment.
This is, after all, the group of people who elevated something as inoffensive as a market-based mechanism to the status of mass moral panic and a national thought crime.
That’s a collective trance of pure stupid that is very hard to break out of.
Sensible government people would also tell you that the review of Direct Action is still afoot, and it will hear a bunch of arguments in favour of evidence-based policy from business, from the energy sector, from environment groups – arguments that might be able to carry some weight over the next 12 months.
Right now, that’s a very big might.
Right now, the conclusion looks inescapable.
On climate policy the Coalition has backed itself into a tight corner of its own making – and it shows no sign of finding the courage, the steadiness or the integrity to try to manage its way out.

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