On Climate Change And The Economy, We're Trapped In An Idiotic Netherworld

The Guardian - Greg Jericho

The shrieks of horror that follow mentions of pricing carbon show politics remains wedded to the belief that economic growth trumps concerns of climate change

‘Climate change is left to the side of the economic debate – and especially so under this government.’ Photograph: Sam Panthaky/AFP/Getty Images

This week was a prime example of how economics and, by extension, politics doesn’t cope very well with the issue of climate change.
The news that Australia economy went backwards in the September quarter was greeted with alarm by politicians and then used as a reason to push their policy barrow. And most of the barrows were piled high with coal.
The treasurer and the prime minister in their press conferences on Wednesday made great mention of the need to keep electricity prices low for the economy to grow.
Malcolm Turnbull especially was in full Tony Abbott 2010 mode out of a desire to cover the silly back flip on the issue of investigating whether or not to introduce an emissions intensity trading scheme.
When asked about the prospect of GDP growth going backwards he immediately responded by suggesting the issue was for Bill Shorten to “explain why he is proposing to increase the price of electricity”.
Never mind that such a scheme would more efficiently price emissions than does the current system, for now we remained trapped in an idiotic netherworld where any mention of pricing carbon (no matter how oblique) must be greeted with shrieks of horror, with the prime minister leading the chorus.
And while you do wonder if Malcolm Turnbull ever looks in the mirror in the morning and asks himself how it all came to this – or whether he first rings Cory Bernardi to ask whether he is allowed to look into the mirror and ask such questions – the broader issue is that this netherworld is one that inherently sees action on climate change as a negative for the economy.
And by contrast, the economic impact of anything that will cause climate change is seen as inherently positive.
The deputy prime minister, Barnaby Joyce, for example, took the decline in the GDP growth as further evidence of why investment in the Adani coal mine was essential.
He argued in favour of a $1bn government loan to build the railway from the proposed mine site to Abbot Point port saying “you need that money to flow. If the loan facilitates this happening or expediting this process then I’ve got no problems with the loan”.
The problem is if you loaned any company $1bn to build something it would also get income flowing, and it also would create jobs – jobs that would not only be less harmful to the environment, but also more likely to exists than the fanciful 10,000 that have been spruiked by both the federal and Queensland governments.
Talk of jobs and growth from mining investment or the cost of jobs and growth from pricing carbon always quickly skips past the reason why anyone would actually wish to price carbon or be against a coal mine.
Climate change is left to the side of the economic debate – and especially so under this government.
The topic was all but ignored in the 2015 intergenerational report, and any concerns about the impact of the Carmichael mine on the local environment due to water use, or the on the Great Barrier Reef, let alone on the climate, are quickly trammelled by those championing economic growth.
The issue is treated similar to how politicians in the past used to flick away suggestions about inequality by arguing that there had to be a trade-off between growth and equality.
Now economists realise that equality actually promotes economic growth, and so too are economists realising that climate change must be considered within economic growth – not as a trade-off, but because the impacts of climate change are so great they must be an essential component of policies geared towards economic growth.
Last month a group of economists including Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, signed “the Stockholm Statement” which seeks to guide policymaking.
The statement notes as one of its core principles that “Environmental Sustainability is a Requirement, Not an Option”.
Earlier this month, former chief economist of the World Bank, and also a signatory of the statement, Professor Kaushik Basu, told me that governments when crafting economic policy makers “should build in right from the start the need to protect the environment to make sure they’re not damaging the climate”.
Professor Basu, who has also worked as an advisor to the Indian government, also dismissed suggestions that economies like India need not worry about climate change. He argued that “there is really no conflict between the interests of the poor and activism on the environmental front”. Indeed he noted that “it is the poor who take the brunt of the bad karma on this – it hits the poor”.
The lack of spine displayed by Malcolm Turnbull this week on carbon pricing and the glee by both the federal and Queensland government towards he Carmichael mine highlight that politics remains wedded to the belief that economic growth trumps concerns of climate change.
Unfortunately such thinking only makes the problem worse.
Viewing investment in a coal mine as the solution is like a smoker suggesting another cigarette at least will alleviate the nicotine withdraw.
This week the Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, argued that “the life of this project will be anywhere between 50 and 60 years. That means generational jobs.”
But given the current trajectory of climate change, those in 60 years will be only shaking their heads in wonder that a politician would be so naive as to talk of economic growth without thinking what that type of growth would do to the planet.

Links

• As climate disaster looms, Malcolm Turnbull needs to stop appeasing and start leading
• The day the Australian economy ran out of luck (if only temporarily)
• Are workers right to be sceptical about productivity improvements?
• Markets are predicting an end to interest rates cuts. But markets can get it wrong
• It's time to focus on the redistribution of wealth to poorer workers

New Legal Opinion And Business Roundtable On Climate Risks And Directors’ Duties

Centre For Policy Development

CPD has released a new legal opinion on the extent to which Australian corporate law permits (and indeed requires) company directors to take climate change into account when making decisions about company strategy, performance and risk disclosure. The opinion was commissioned by CPD in partnership with the Future Business Council, and provided by Noel Hutley SC and Sebastian Hartford-Davis on instruction from Sarah Barker and Maged Girgis of Minter Ellison Lawyers. CPD and FBC convened a high-level business roundtable in Melbourne on 21 October to discuss the opinion and its far-reaching implications for boards and directors.

Legal opinion: directors’ duties and climate risk
The legal opinion shows that the bar for directors is rising as the links between social and environmental factors and financial risks and performance come into sharp focus. It demonstrates that directors who fail to consider the impact of foreseeable climate change risks on their business properly could be held personally liable for breaching the duty of due care and diligence they owe to their companies.
Key findings of the opinion include:

• Climate change risks would be regarded as foreseeable by courts, and relevant to a director’s duty of care and diligence to the extent that those risks intersect with the interests of the company (for example, by presenting corporate opportunity or risks to the company or its business model).

• Company directors are not legally restricted from taking into account climate change and related economic, environmental and social sustainability risks, where those risks are, or may be, material to the interests of the company.

• Company directors certainly can, and in some cases should be considering the impact on their business of climate change risks – and that directors who fail to do so now could be found liable for breaching their duty of care and diligence in the future.

In Mr Hutley’s view, “it is likely to be only a matter of time before we see litigation against a director who has failed to perceive, disclose or take steps in relation to a foreseeable climate-related risk that can be demonstrated to have caused harm to a company.”

---

Key documents and media coverage 

Legal opinion by Noel Hutley SC

Media release: Australian company directors must consider and disclose climate change risks to escape liability for breach of duty

Agenda and participant list for the CBD-FBC roundtable

‘Paris Agreement a watershed moment for corporate Australia‘ Adele Ferguson, Australian Financial Review

‘Business leaders heed warning on climate change risks‘ Damon Kitney, The Australian

‘Company directors to face penalties for ignoring climate‘ Jessica Irvine, The Age/SMH

‘Directors ignore climate risks at their own peril‘ Bryan Horrigan, Australian Financial Review

‘The Paris climate agreement is a game-changer – and business risks being left behind‘ Sam Mostyn, The Guardian

‘Company directors can be held legally liable for ignoring the risks from climate change‘ Sam Hurley, Travers McLeod and John Wiseman, The Conversation

‘Big changes looming across the world but Australian’s could be left behind‘ Charis Chang, Daily Telegraph

‘Australian business woefully underprepared for climate change post Paris‘ Julian Vincent, The Age/SMH

---

This legal analysis reaffirms that directors are permitted to take a wide range of considerations into account when deciding what is in the best interests of a company, rather than focusing solely on immediate shareholder value maximisation. This includes climate risks and a range of other environmental, social and governance issues that influence the near and long-term performance of companies and of wider economy.
By exploring directors’ duties and sustainability through the prism of climate risk, we are seeking to highlight how crucial it is to elevate these issues to the boardroom level – and open up a constructive conversation about the skills, tools and strategies directors and boards need to improve sustainability risk management and disclosure. Encouraging and supporting directors to have proper regard to these issues is a key step towards ensuring that business is geared towards creating sustainable, long-term value and building an economy that recognises the interrelated economic, social, human and environmental drivers of prosperity and wellbeing.

CPD-FBC Business Roundtable on Directors’ Duties, Climate Risk and Sustainability
To begin that conversation, CPD and FBC convened over 30 senior business leaders, fund managers, legal experts and regulators to discuss the implications of the legal opinion at a business roundtable co-hosted by Minter Ellison Lawyers in Melbourne on 21 October. The roundtable, conducted on a Chatham House basis, considered the legal opinion and also heard from former Bank of England Executive Director Dr Paul Fisher, who highlighted how financial market participants and regulators internationally are stepping up their efforts to understand and respond to climate-related risks.
Participants included senior representatives from CBA, ANZ, BlackRock, Deutsche Bank, Aurizon, ASIC and APRA, leaders from some of Australia’s largest fund managers, and special guests former High Court Justice Kenneth Hayne AC QC and Shadow Attorney General Mark Dreyfus QC.

Dr Paul Fisher (left) addresses the roundtable

(Left to right) Participants Garry Weaven, Ed John and Lisa Nichols

Key conclusions and next steps
Participants at the roundtable emphasised the importance of the legal opinion, and agreed that many Australian companies are particularly exposed to the physical, transition and liability risks posted by climate change. While many boards and directors are already actively considering these issues, the discussion highlighted the challenges many faced in terms of managing and disclosing sustainability-related risks at the level of sophistication increasingly being demanded by regulators and markets. Possible responses included greater investment in risk analysis and integrated reporting; a focus on technical support and consolidating measurement of sustainability-related risks; diversifying voices at the board table; embracing transparency and disclosure of all risks rather than just those specified by regulators; and stepping up concerted public advocacy on these issues on chairs, directors and regulators.
Following the constructive discussion at the roundtable, we will continue our policy work on these issues in coming months, with a focus on three priorities:

• Increasing awareness in the director community of the importance of properly considering climate change and other sustainability risks – including, but by no means solely, to avoid possible breaches of directors’ duties.

• Encouraging regulators to raise expectations about proper management and disclosure of environmental, social and governance risks, by providing clearer guidance on disclosure requirements and by stepping up supervision and stress testing for systemic sustainability-related risks or shocks.

• Promoting constructive engagement by business leaders on long-term policy challenges, to support policies that can avert the need for sharper and riskier adjustments to inevitable trends and challenges like climate change.

Quotes from roundtable participants:

We need to somehow put aside all the political considerations about whether people believe in climate change or whether its man-made. A lot of that is now irrelevant. This is a hard-headed commercial business risk issue, particularly for firms in the financial sector, which they need to be taking into account…
You don’t need to believe that climate change is man made, you just need to believe that governments are going to do something about it – which they are. Previously people have said climate change is going to take a long time to come through – 30, 50 years, plenty of time to take action. But of course, financial markets are forward-looking, and as news accumulates they tend to jump and overshoot. The risk that we see, and that Mark Carney has been talking about, is that you get a sudden repricing of assets across the board in relation to news on climate – and that could generate financial stability concerns.

Dr Paul Fisher, former Executive Director of the Bank of England 

The roundtable was significant because of the quality of people in the room, the calibre of the legal opinion, and the collective recognition that climate and sustainability risks are becoming more pressing for directors, fund managers and regulators. Directors now have little choice but to understand how important climate change and sustainability risks are for them personally and for their companies, and act accordingly. 
 Many forward-looking directors and executives have started grappling with this. There is only upside if everyone else gets up to speed, but we don’t have much time. Boards must ensure they have the targets, skills and processes in place to identify, disclose and respond to these risks – not just for legal or environmental reasons, but because the market demands we do so. One part of that equation is having a diverse set of voices around the table. Another part is working together so we can ask the right questions and get better answers. The roundtable and legal opinion have kickstarted the right conversation about how Australian directors, investors and regulators can be better prepared and show greater leadership as the issues come into sharper focus. 

Sam Mostyn, Chair of Citigroup Australia

“I was impressed to see such high level representation at the round table from investors, corporate leadership, academia and the legal world, reflecting a recognition of the pervasive nature of climate change risk. The very practical focus on the foreseeability of climate change risk, not just physical but also transitional and regulatory, and the implication of this for me as a director right now, made me think about this issue afresh. A timely and compelling reminder that it is my duty as a director to review the steps being taken now by my companies to identify, assess, disclose and mitigate climate change risk.  
This is not a recipe to abandon energy intensive and resource industries but neither is it a matter to push off to the future.  The question to me as a director from investors and from the courts (heaven forbid) will not be whether I considered climate change risk but how I did so.  I need to be able to answer that question appropriately.”  

Russell Caplan, Director of Aurizon and former Chair of Shell Australia

---

CPD would like to thank all those who participated in the roundtable and in providing the legal advice, with special thanks to Noel Hutley SC, opinion co-author Sebastian Hartford-Davis, instructing solicitor Sarah Barker of Minter Ellison and our partners at the Future Business Council.

Links

• Breaking the tragedy of the horizon – climate change and financial stability
• Phase I Report of FSB Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures
• Adapting portfolios to climate change
• Directors personal liability for corporate inaction on climate change
• The Next Boom

Climate Change Means Workdays Need To Change During Heatwaves, Public Health Official Warns

ABC News - Simon Royal

Work changes will be needed as climate extremes increase, a public health official warns. (ABC News: Margaret Burin)

Workplace changes will be needed to deal with more severe heatwaves and other impacts of climate change, a public health official has warned.

With scientists predicting more frequent and intense heatwaves across south-east Australia, professor of public health at the University of Adelaide, Peng Bi, said work practices would need to adapt.

"During a heatwave, the 38-hour, nine-to-five week may not be the best thing, or the most healthy way to work," he said.

He said occupational health and safety laws needed a review to accommodate the changing climate.
"I reckon some regulations should be set up to get employers to pay [fresh] attention to the occupational health and safety of their employees," he said.
Professor Bi said Australian heatwaves were more likely to kill people than other weather extremes such as storms.
"Heatwave kills people more than the combination of all other natural disasters," he said.
After a 2009 heatwave, SA Health found ambulance callouts rose by 16 per cent and hospital emergency department admissions for heat-related illnesses were 14 times the average.

Swift burials during heatwave
One of the worst periods of extreme heat for south-east Australia, back in 1939, remains record-breaking for one Adelaide family business, Alfred James Funerals.
A record for the number of people the firm buried at that time has not been eclipsed to this day.
Managing director Graham James recalled the busy period.

"During the heatwave we handled 39 funerals in nine days, so it was double the normal level, " he said.

Alfred James Funerals managing director Graham James looks back at 1939 records. (ABC News: Michael Clements)

In  an era before refrigeration was common, he said burials happened swiftly.
"It's really like 'die today, bury tomorrow'," he said.
"That was the way things were done in those days.
"According to our records, on two occasions during the heatwave people who'd died in the morning were buried later that day."
Senior weather forecaster John Nairn said Australians needed to adapt to heatwaves as they grew in severity.
"We have to start talking about the impacts of these events," he said.
Mr Nairn cited American experience as a guide.
"The national weather service in America has been forecasting big natural hazard events quite well for a long time, but they are not seeing sufficient change in the way the community is getting benefits from those forecasts," he said.
"So we have to learn how to communicate this to people at a level where they start taking action that is more meaningful."

Many older people still recall the 1939 heatwave's intensity. (Supplied)

Links

• Australia to fall short of climate targets, leaked Finkel report says
• Electricity industry pushes for carbon price to aid clean energy transition
• Cost of bushfires in NSW, ACT 'to double by 2050'
• Low-income students bring solar power to the people
• Ten years of backflips over emissions trading

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

Households To Power Up To Half Australia, Zero Emissions Within Reach: CSIRO

Fairfax - Adam Morton

As the Coalition backs away from a pledge to consider a climate change policy that the energy industry says it needs, a new study is projecting a rapidly growing mass electricity generator for Australia in the decades ahead: the public.
Consumers using rooftop solar panels and batteries will produce between a third and half of Australia's electricity by mid-century if the right policies are introduced, according to a roadmap from the CSIRO and power and gas transmission body Energy Networks Australia.

Bernardi fumes over carbon trading scheme
Coalition MPs voice their displeasure on the government's climate review including an emissions intensity scheme for electricity generators. Vision courtesy ABC News 24

The two-year analysis also found an emissions intensity scheme for the electricity sector - a form of carbon trading that was to be considered by a government climate policy review until that plan was abandoned on Tuesday afternoon - would be the cheapest way to cut carbon dioxide emissions.
It suggests it could save customers $200 a year by 2030, while helping create a reliable electricity grid with zero emissions by 2050.
Energy Networks chief John Bradley said a low-cost shift to zero emissions would depend on a national climate and energy plan with bipartisan support.
"By contrast, carbon policy which could change dramatically at every election, or differs in every state, is a recipe for a high-cost and less secure electricity service," Mr Bradley said.
His call for the Coalition and Labor to come together on climate policy echoes that made by bodies representing energy generators and major industrial companies.
The Electricity Network Transformation Roadmap forecasts that up to 10 million households and small businesses would have solar panels, battery storage, smart homes and electric vehicles if pricing and incentives were changed to better reflect demand. This would "transform the grid into a platform more like the internet, where customers can trade and share energy".

As many as one in five homes now have rooftop solar systems. Photo: Fairfax Media

It recommends an emissions intensity scheme for power stations be introduced by 2020, following a similar call by the Climate Change Authority, now dominated by Coalition-appointed board members.
On Tuesday, Environment and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg backed away from saying the government would consider this sort of scheme as part of a wide-ranging departmental review of climate policy next year. A handful of Coalition backbenchers, including Cory Bernardi and Craig Kelly, had called for any form of carbon pricing to be rejected.

Illustration: Ron Tandberg. 

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull earlier said he had never supported a carbon tax - which the emissions intensity scheme is not - and stressed the climate review was "business as usual".
"It's part of the policy we took to the election in 2013 and 2016 and, indeed, we took to the election in 2010. This is business as usual," he said.
Opposition leader Bill Shorten said Labor would examine whatever the government proposed, but predicted the Prime Minister would buckle to MPs opposed to action on climate change to avoid "civil war". Labor promised an intensity scheme as part of its climate policies before this year's federal election.
An 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 that breached their limit and rewarding cleaner models that emitted less with free credits.
The report found thermal plants, including coal and gas fossil fuels, would be critical in balancing intermittent renewable energy in the years ahead, but would eventually be replaced by technologies using battery storage and biomass.
Getting there would present significant technical, economic and regulatory challenges. It would transform the system away from its original design - large centralised power stations - to a much more decentralised network.
It said a coordinated plan for 2050 could:

• Make average annual household bills $414 less than they otherwise would have been.
• Cut network costs to consumers by 30 per cent.
• Avoid $16 billion in spending on poles and wires.
• Lead to customers with solar panels, battery storage and electric vehicles earning $2.5 billion a year from network businesses.

The roadmap comes ahead of the Friday release of an interim report into electricity reliability led by chief scientist Alan Finkel, commissioned after South Australia suffered a statewide blackout in September.

Links

• Coalition conservatives furious over climate review
• Power prices, energy security, emissions cuts - and carbon pricing - on the table in climate review
• What's really going wrong with electricity?