Australia, Welcome To Your New Climate Change Policy

Fairfax -  Jacqueline Maley

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson visited the Great Barrier Reef a fortnight ago, with two of her fellow senators – Malcolm "I respect the Jews" Roberts, a man whose climate change denial is so intricate you need a PhD to understand it; and poor Brian Burston, who didn't join his colleagues for a snorkel because they couldn't find a wetsuit to fit him.
It appears no invitation was extended to fellow One Nation senator Rod Culleton, who is enjoying his legal adventures far too much for his leader's liking. They left the limelight-hogger back down south.

Pauline Hanson's Great Barrier grief
ABC's 7.30 joins One Nation leader Pauline Hanson during a snorkelling tour of the Great Barrier Reef as the senator and her party attempt to disprove the effects of climate change. Vision courtesy ABC.
Finally the spotlight was back where it should be – on Hanson, who donned a wetsuit, inspected the coral in the waters off Great Keppel Island, and declared the reef ship-shape.
She could see no bleached coral, and the water, alleged by climate activists to be too hot, felt exactly as warm as it should.

One Nation Senator Pauline Hanson assesses some coral near Great Keppel Island. Photo: AAP

"We are being controlled by the UN and these agreements that have been done for people's self interest and where they are driving our nation as a sovereignty and the economics of the whole lot," Hanson told the gathered media.
Doesn't make a lot of sense, does it?
Australia, welcome to your new climate change policy.
This week has seen Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull take fright, yet again, at the right wing of his party, at the mere mention of a carbon pricing scheme.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull had promised to review the Coalition's climate policies. Photo: Andrew Meares

Literally its mention.
And this mere mention wasn't a scare that crept up on anyone – Turnbull went to the election promising to review the Coalition's climate policies, and on Monday Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg said a climate pricing scheme might be touched upon as being part of that review.
This is a review that might, as its most terrifying result, lead to a discussion paper.
Run for the hills!

"We are edging towards the land of the radical, where policy-making is as fantastical as a go-nowhere boat trip over a bleached-out coral reef."

Malcolm did, leaving his Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg exposed and alone on the wide open plains of reasonable policy-making processes.
Since rejecting the prospect a carbon pricing scheme even being considered, Turnbull has hidden behind the mantra that his government will do nothing to push up electricity prices.
Most experts say that pushing up electricity prices is precisely what the rejection of a carbon pricing system will ultimately do, but no matter.
This way the Prime Minister can play to the respectable retail politics of anxiety over living costs, but also give discreet cover to the climate change deniers, and hopefully staunch the votes many in the Coalition fear will bleed to One Nation at the next election.
Last week Turnbull riffed in Parliament about so-called post-truth politics, at the expense of the Labor opposition.
This week he averted his gaze from the advice of its own agencies, the business lobby and the science community, to insist that the best way to meet emissions targets is not through a carbon pricing scheme.
The Prime Minister is in danger of turning into Brian Burston – he won't quite climb into a wetsuit and get in the water with the climate change deniers, but he's certainly along for the ride.
Since the shock (to many but not all) result of the US presidential election, there has been much hand-wringing among the so-called elite media about whether Australia will catch the same virus.
People regularly cite Australia's economic strength and our egalitarianism as reasons why emotion-driven, fact-free and angry populism will not flourish here as it is flourishing in other Western democracies.
But research recently published by a University of Melbourne academic, Roberto Stefan Foa, and his former Harvard colleague Yascha Mounk, shows that our democratic consensus is fragile too.
The pair has been researching the attitudes of people in so-called "consolidated" democracies, to the conventions and institutions that comprise those democracies.
They have found a disturbing trend – over time, in all the liberal democracies including Australia, open-ness to the idea of military rule has grown, the number of people who think a democratic system is "bad" has grown, support for the concept of civil rights is less, and fewer people express an interest in politics. This trend is especially pronounced in young people, so-called Millennials.
In these conditions, populist politicians gain traction by appealing to emotion and bypassing fact altogether.
These politicians outrage the "elites", precisely because they don't adhere to the values of liberal democracy, which roll all the way back to the Enlightenment. They are playing "our" game but they won't accept the rules we wrote. They don't value rationalism over emotion. They don't abide by the norms so many of us thought (or hoped) were settled, and in this sense they are radical.
And when you have a Prime Minister who refuses facts as squarely as Turnbull did this week, despite being educated, intelligent and on record as knowing those facts better than most people, we are edging towards the land of the radical, where policy-making is as fantastical as a go-nowhere boat trip over a bleached-out coral reef.

Links

• Government's 'lack of spine' will increase prices: adviser
• Malcolm Turnbull crumbles and rules out carbon price
• Time for some transparency on the carbon emissions front
• Seven energy charts that will cheer and frighten you

We'll All Be Worse Off For Malcolm Turnbull's Climate Policy Fail

Fairfax - Phillip Coorey


Not happy, Mal!

Malcolm Turnbull still seethes over what Labor did to him on Medicare during the election campaign.
Labor's inflated claims that the government planned to privatise universal health care were devastatingly effective. Turnbull frequently describes the campaign as the first incursion into Australia of post-truth politics - telling a bold-faced lie and getting away with it.
In reality, it was the Coalition under Tony Abbott which first made post-truth politics an art form in this country with its hyperbolic attacks on carbon pricing.
Turnbull was a passive observer as Abbott, Barnaby Joyce and others made inflated claims about the impact of "the great big tax on everything". It worked so well it became the template for Labor's Mediscare campaign.

One of the few people in the Coalition with any intellectual honesty is the man who fuelled the trouble - Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi. Alex Ellinghausen

This week, the chicanery caught up with the Coalition when Turnbull, his Energy and Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg and the government in general fell victim to the hyperbole all had helped nurture over the years.
In doing so, the Prime Minister's credibility took a massive blow and consumers and businesses were condemned to a future of second-best energy policy.
Politically, the government surrendered one of its most potent attack lines of recent years - that Labor stood for higher power prices. It has been an epic disaster.
Ironically, one of the few people in the Coalition with any intellectual honesty is the man who fuelled the trouble - Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi.
The South Australian firebrand doesn't believe in man-made climate change and, therefore, sees no need to have any emissions reductions targets, let alone policies to reach them. Simply, he is happy to keep burning brown coal to generate electricity because that is the cheapest form of energy.

The government has condemned Australia to a second-best energy policy and surrendered one of its most potent Labor attack lines. Peter Nicholson

But for the vast majority of his colleagues, this week's policy surrender locks in the Coalition to meeting the 2030 target of reducing emissions by 26 per cent-to-28 per cent on 2005 levels, while not being allowed to use the mechanism that all the experts say would have the least impact on the economy, power prices and security of supply.
That is an emissions intensity scheme in the electricity sector in which generators would be penalised only if they breached a baseline limit. Cleaner emitters who stayed below the baseline would not pay anything and would receive free credits which they could to trade to bigger polluters.
The whole idea is to shift baseload supply towards gas until renewable energy becomes reliable enough. It was in August 2015 that then Prime Minister Tony Abbott, alongside Julie Bishop and then-environment minster Greg Hunt announced the 2030 targets and put in train this transition.
At a press conference, they announced their climate change policy would be reviewed in 2017 to find ways to meet those targets.

Because the government is so scared of its own tail, it reacted by rejecting the very mechanism not only recommended by the experts, but one that had been created surreptitiously by Hunt and which was to be developed into a de facto EIS. Andrew Meares

Their fig-leaf policy of direct action, cobbled together over the summer of 2009-2010 out of fear Kevin Rudd would call a double-dissolution election on climate change in early 2010, involved hoiking money out of the budget to pay people to lower emissions.
This was clearly unsustainable over the longer-term, both financially and environmentally. More so now that the budged is mired in deficit.
Back in August 2015, Hunt had Abbott agree the review, to be conducted in 2017, would examine post-2020 the purchase of cheap permits from developing nations as a way of helping meet the 2030 targets.
Because Abbott was so averse to anything that resembled a market mechanism, he agreed reluctantly.
He said he would rather try first to achieve emissions cuts domestically "rather than get them from other countries".
Otherwise, Hunt and Abbott said one-third of the post-2020 reductions would rely on a continuation of direct action. This would cost $200 million a year, or $2 billion over the decade straight out of the budget, but direct action would also include "safeguards" which is a market mechanism to ensure emitters stay under a declining emissions cap or pay a penalty.
Sound familiar?
The safeguards mechanism developed by Hunt, right under Abbott's nose, was the draft version of the Emissions Intensity Scheme on the electricity sector that Turnbull killed with a sledgehammer this week after Frydenberg alluded to having a look at the idea as part of the policy review, and Bernardi and Co pounced.
Therefore it was of no surprise in government this week that chief scientist Alan Finkel, along with a joint report by the Australian Energy Market Commission and the Australian Energy Market Operator, all concluded the government would not meet the 2030 targets on current policy settings and an EIS had to be the central plank of post-2020 policy.
The other two options - expanding the mandated use of renewable energy or regulating the closure of coal-fired power, would have a greater impact on the economy, create higher power prices and lead to more blackouts.
Not even Abbott, back in 2015, promised the 2030 targets could be achieved without an impact on prices or the budget.
"This is certainly not without cost but the costs are manageable,"he said.
But the Coalition rebels have since regressed, saying now there should be no cost.
And because the government is so scared of its own tail, it reacted by rejecting the very mechanism not only recommended by the experts, but one that had been created surreptitiously by Hunt and which was to be developed into a de facto EIS.
And one that ticks every box with regard to the government's key promise to meet the 2030 targets while keeping prices down and the lights on.
Labor, which promised an EIS at the last election, is now the party of lower prices.
Everyone is jumping ugly on Frydenberg because he said on Monday, after releasing the terms of reference for the review, that the EIS was worthy of consideration.
Front-running by ministers is not allowed. He was ripped a new one on Tuesday night in cabinet.
He was meant to clam up and allow the policy to be developed by stealth and consensus and then sprung on the backbench and the broader public.
The same internal criticism was made of Scott Morrison when he spruiked increasing the GST.
Now Frydenberg has the monumental policy task of mapping out an energy transition path while his hands are tied. And we'll all be worse off for it.

Links

• The men behind the Coalition's climate policy
• Cheap permits 'option on the table' to meet 2030 climate target
• Industry had better argue its energy case with the federal government

Trump Transition Team For Energy Department Seeks Names Of Employees Involved In Climate Meetings

Washington Post - Steven Mufson | Juliet Eilperin

Chinese President Xi Jinping shakes hands with President Obama and U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon during a joint ratification of the Paris climate change agreement ceremony in Hangzhou, China, on Sept. 3. (How Hwee Young/Reuters)

The Trump transition team has issued a list of 74 questions for the Energy Department, asking agency officials to identify which department employees and contractors have worked on forging an international climate pact as well as domestic efforts to cut the nation’s carbon output.
The questionnaire requests a list of those individuals who have taken part in international climate talks over the past five years and “which programs within DOE are essential to meeting the goals of President Obama’s Climate Action Plan.”
Trump and his team have vowed to dismantle specific aspects of Obama’s climate policies. The questionnaire, which one Energy Department official described as unusually “intrusive” and a matter for departmental lawyers, has raised concern that the Trump transition team was trying to figure out how to target the people, including civil servants, who have helped implement policies under Obama.
Thousands of scientists have signed petitions calling on the president-elect and his team to respect scientific integrity and refrain from singling out individual researchers whose work might conflict with the new administration’s policy goals. This potential clash could prompt a major schism within the federal government, with many career officials waging a battle against incoming political appointees.
Trump’s transition team did not respond to a request for comment. White House deputy press secretary Eric Schultz told reporters that he could not speak to the questionnaire directly, saying, “If you have questions about activity that the president-elect’s team is doing, you should check in with them and try and figure out why they’re doing it.”
But Schultz added, “All I can tell you is that President Obama is enormously proud of the work of civil servants and federal workers across the administration, that over the past eight years they’ve worked to make this country stronger. And they don’t do so out a sense of great pay or because the hours are great. They do so out of a sense of patriotism. And the president’s proud of their record.”
The questionnaire was first reported by Bloomberg News. The Post has obtained its own a copy of both the initial document as well as one with some of the agency’s replies filled in, in addition to confirmation from other people in the department.
The document spanned a broad area of Energy Department activities, including its loan program, its technology research program, responses to Congress, estimates of offshore wind and cleanup of uranium at a site once used by the military for weapons research. In many cases, the inquiries meshed with the priorities of conservative groups such as the Heritage Foundation, which held a meeting on energy and environment issues in Washington on Thursday, as well as priorities outlined in a recent fundraising pitch sent by the American Energy Alliance (AEA), a wing of the Institute for Energy Research.
Thomas Pyle, who heads AEA, leads Trump’s Energy Department transition team. In a recent fundraising pitch, Pyle wrote supporters, “After eight years of the Obama administration’s divisive energy and environmental policies, the American people have voted for a change — a big change. We expect the Trump administration will adopt pro-energy and pro-market policies — much different than the Obama administration’s top-down government approach.”
One question zeroed in on the issue of the “social cost of carbon,” a way of calculating the consequences of greenhouse gas emissions. The transition team asked for a list of department employees or contractors who attended interagency meetings, the dates of the meetings, and emails and other materials associated with them.
The social cost of carbon is a metric that calculates the cost to society of emitting a ton of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. The Obama administration has used this tool to try to calculate the benefits of regulations and initiatives that lead to lower greenhouse gas emissions.
At Thursday’s Heritage meeting, senior fellow David Kreutzer — who is a member of Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency transition team — attacked the idea of using the social cost of carbon during the regulatory process.
Another question appeared to delve deeply into the mechanisms behind scientific tools called “integrated assessment models,” which scientists use to forecast future changes to the climate and energy system. It also asked what the Energy Department considers to be “the proper equilibrium climate sensitivity,” which is a way that climate researchers calculate how much the planet will eventually warm, depending upon the amount of greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere.
“My guess is that they’re trying to undermine the credibility of the science that DOE has produced, particularly in the field of climate science,” said Rob Jackson, a Stanford climate and energy researcher, in response to the question about the Integrated Assessment Models.
The questionnaire also appeared to take aim at the national laboratories, which operate with a high degree of independence but which are part of the Energy Department. The questionnaire asked for a list of the top 20 salaried employees of the labs, the labs’ peer-reviewed publications over the past three years, a list of their professional society memberships, affiliations, and the websites they maintain or contribute to “during work hours.”
The transition team list also asked how to keep open aging nuclear power plants, restart the controversial Yucca mountain nuclear waste site shelved by Obama, and support the licensing of small modular reactors.
It included 15 questions for the Energy Information Administration, some of them routine but some questioning the way the agency uses data about energy production.
The questions called to mind past cases of conflicts between Republican administrations and federal agency scientists, on the environment and other matters.
In Ronald Reagan’s first term, Anne Gorsuch was appointed to head the Environmental Protection Agency amid a major push for regulatory rollback. But after Gorsuch resigned amid controversy in 1983, Congress opened investigations into supposed “hit lists” at the agency used to track the views of members of scientific advisory boards, according to contemporary press reports.
During the George W. Bush administration, meanwhile, there were complaints that scientific documents had been edited to raise doubts about the science of climate change, and that researchers had been prevented from speaking openly to the media and sharing their expertise.
In late 2010, the Obama administration issued government-wide “scientific integrity” guidelines aimed at shielding federal scientists from political interference, part of an effort to distinguish itself from the George W. Bush administration. The four-page memo, written by John Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, included a prohibition against agency leaders or public affairs officers asking or demanding federal scientists to alter or suppress their findings. It also instructed agencies to “involve science and technology experts where appropriate” in order to craft “policymaking of the highest integrity.”
Energy Department officials have not yet decided how to respond to the questions targeting the agency’s climate activities, according to federal officials who asked not to be identified to discuss internal deliberations.
“With some of these questions, it feels more like an inquisition than a question, in terms of going after career employees who have been here through Bush years to Clinton, and up to now,” said one current Energy Department employee. “All of a sudden you have questions that feel more like a congressional investigation than an actual probing of how the Department of Energy does its job.”
Michael Halpern, deputy director of the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Center for Science and Democracy, called the memo’s demand that Energy officials identify specific employees “alarming.”
“If the Trump administration is already singling out scientists for doing their jobs, the scientific community is right to be worried about what his administration will do in office. What’s next? Trump administration officials holding up lists of ‘known climatologists’ and urging the public to go after them?” Halpern asked.
He added that lawmakers have attacked executive branch scientists in the past for doing “work they find inconvenient. It seems that they are about to get accomplices in the Department of Energy. But don’t expect the federal workforce to simply roll over. The new administration will find thousands of federal workers who still believe in their departmental mission and will work hard to resist attacks on their peers. Scientists outside government are standing by to expose these actions and fight back.”
Christine McEntee, the executive director of the American Geophysical Union, a large membership society of Earth scientists, added in response to the questionnaire that “we don’t know at AGU the intent of all these questions, but if you look at them without knowing that intent, they are raising alarm for us.”
McEntee said that in general when it comes to politics and science under Trump, “we’re hearing a lot from members, they’re quite concerned.” At the American Geophysical Union fall meeting in San Francisco this December, where over 20,000 scientists gather annually, there will be sessions on the consequences of the election for science and also giving publicly funded scientists legal advice on how to respond to requests for their communications, she said.
The Trump transition team meetings with Energy Department officials so far have excluded political appointees, one current official said.
At the Defense Department, Trump transition personnel are having multiple meetings a day with Pentagon personnel, but in some cases have asked Obama administration political appointees not to attend those meetings, officials there said.

Links

• Pruitt, Trump’s EPA pick, has both sides of climate divide girding for a major fight
• The staggering economic cost of air pollution
• Amidst funding fears, NASA announces another climate research mission
• Trump names Scott Pruitt, Oklahoma attorney general suing EPA on climate change, to head the EPA
• It’s likely Earth’s hottest year on record — and some people are already talking about global cooling
• Indonesia just made a huge move to protect the climate