28/02/2019

The Government Thinks We’re Idiots And Is Not Serious About Reducing Emissions

The Guardian - 

Tackling climate change is tough and Scott Morrison’s latest policy is an insult
We don’t need this current putrid policy from the government. Photograph: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images 
After Scott Morrison’s announcement of his new climate change policy we know two things – the government still thinks we’re idiots, and they are still not serious about reducing emissions.
I guess we should be grateful that at least the government now realises it needs to look as if it gives a damn about reducing emissions, because for a while they couldn’t even be bothered to do that.
But stuff it. I’m done with giving out prizes for pretence. I’m done with being satisfied with something not even worthy of being called a fourth-best policy. I’m done with the lies.
Do not for one second think this is a policy designed to reduce emissions. It is a political Band-Aid while the actual wound to our economy from its greenhouse gas dependency is open and festering.
It is a fraud, and not even a new one.
It’s the same bulldust that the Liberal National party has been selling the public for nigh on a decade with a different badge. Gone is the Emissions Reduction Fund; say hello to the “Climate Solutions Fund”.
This fund of $2bn over 10 years is not just a rebranding of Tony Abbot’s Direct Action, it is actually a diminishment of it. At $200m a year on average it is less than half the money a year that was spent on Direct Action – a policy that was so laughably bad that a government with any level of shame would quietly have dumped it and pretended it never happened.
Yet, here we are. Nine years after Lenore Taylor ripped apart the Liberal party’s policy of reliance on “soil magic”, we have the prime minister still thinking such measures of carbon sequestration are worth pursuing and will achieve anything close to what is required.
But before we go further, let’s bring out the graphs again.
First the one showing annual greenhouse gas emissions going back to 2004. You’ve seen it before, it shows that yes, a price on carbon reduces emissions:



The next one shows the most recent projections for our emissions. These are the government’s own figures. And they show we are a long way from being on target to reduce emissions by either 26% or 28% below 2005 levels:



So we have that reality, but the prime minister says we will meet the target “in a canter”. Why? Because our target will also include “carryover credits” which comes from exceeding our Kyoto reduction commitment.
That might be defensible if our Kyoto commitment did not already include some dodgy work involving the counting of land use, land-use change and forestry, which allowed us to reach our target even if we actually increased our emissions.
It means we are using dodgy counting of previous dodgy counting to meet our targets.
The University of Melbourne’s Dylan McConnell estimates over half of the reduction will come via this trick accounting method, while 15% will come via “technology improvements and other sources of abatement” which is code for, “dunno, but here’s hoping someone does something good, in spite of our efforts”.
But you don’t really need to be told the ins and outs of this policy. You know it is a terrible joke on us all – the suggestion that we can do what is needed on climate change by spending a mere $200m a year.
With annual GDP of around $1,950bn, that represents just 0.01% this year, and because our GDP will grow, by 2030, $200m will be a mere 0.006% of GDP.
Now let us look at our emissions compared with other nations in the OECD:



Yes, the United States emits a lot more than we do, but when you look at per capita and per GDP you see how integral greenhouse gas emissions are to our economy. Australia is basically the most carbon-dependent economy in the OECD.
Yet the government would have you believe it can all be done painlessly. Just write a cheque for a mere $200m a year – less than is spent on SBS each year, and we’re done?
Do you really think that governments around the world have been avoiding action on climate change for the past three decades because they would have to spend this pathetic amount?
If that was all that was needed, we wouldn’t even be worrying. It would have been done.
The reality is cutting emissions is going to be tough. We are finally paying the bill for 200 years of gorging on carbon for free; and the bill is large.
We need to be honest about this. If it was easy – anywhere near as easy as what Scott Morrison or Tony Abbott or Josh Frydenberg would have you believe – it would have already been done. The reason it hasn’t is because it is bloody hard.
But it needs to happen and I have a few graphs to illustrate why.
First, the average annual temperature over the past 60 years:



Remember when all the climate-change deniers (for deniers they are) said 1998 was the hottest year and the planet had not warmed since then? Well the temperature anomaly of the past five years have averaged almost 40% more than what was reached in that year.
What if we extrapolated out the 20-year trend since 1998 into the future? If we use an absurdly conservative linear trend we reach 2C above pre-industrial levels by 2066 – just 47 years time.
But if we use a more realistic exponential trend line, we get there by 2049. A point at which my 15-year-old daughter would be the same age I am now:



Enough with the lies and fraudulent policy. It is beyond time for politicians to be honest with us. Action on climate change will be tough, and we need to stop pretending it can be done with ease.
What we don’t need is this current putrid policy from the government. They have shown they cannot get serious about the issue; it’s time they got out of the way.

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