EcoRadio

Category: Climate chaos

The atmosphere is to the earth as a layer of varnish is to a desktop globe. It is thin, fragile and essential for preserving the items on the surface.150 years of burning fossil fuel have overloaded the atmosphere to the point where the earth is ill. It now has a fever. Read the detailed article, Soothing Gaia’s Fever for an evocative account of that analogy. The items listed here detail progress on coordinating 6.5 billion people in the most critical project undertaken by humanity. 

  • Emisssions trading stand-off presses election trigger

     

    Mr Turnbull said that Labor’s scheme should meanwhile be subject to another inquiry, this time by the Productivity Commission. But the Government flatly rejected the call and said it would put its scheme to a vote in June as scheduled.

    A double dissolution can only take place if a bill is rejected twice by the Senate, three months apart.

    If the bill is defeated or deferred next month, it will count as the first rejection. Labor could put the bill up again in October, and if it were again defeated or deferred, the Government would have a trigger for an election.

    The Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, accused Mr Turnbull of a failure of leadership by constantly putting off a decision on whether to placate right-wing Liberals and the National Party .

    “What we have here is a series of excuses to underpin the fact that the Leader of the Opposition has not had the courage to take on the climate change sceptics in his party,” Mr Rudd said. The same attitude had cost Brendan Nelson the leadership of the Liberal Party, he said.

    Mr Turnbull said Labor’s scheme was flawed and would cost jobs. Given its start date had been delayed a year until 2011, there was no urgent need to pass the legislation before the Copenhagen conference in December, when other nations would state their intentions and the US model would be highly influential, he said.

    “For the sake of six months let’s get this right. Let’s not sacrifice jobs on the altar of Kevin Rudd’s vanity.”

    Labor’s scheme aims to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 to between 5 and 25 per cent below their 2000 levels.

    As compromises for delay, Mr Turnbull offered the Coalition’s support for those targets to give the Government some bargaining power at Copenhagen. He also proposed a voluntary carbon trading scheme to start in January, in which companies and individuals could start trading permits. Any offsets could be banked against a future emissions trading scheme.

    Mr Turnbull said the Coalition would vote against Labor’s scheme in June if its push for a deferral was defeated.

    That was the most likely scenario yesterday after the independent senator Nick Xenophon, whose vote is crucial, refused to back the Coalition’s deferral.

    Senator Xenophon also opposes the scheme but said he supported a delay only until August, when Parliament returns from the winter break. That was enough time for parties to negotiate changes, he said.

    Senator Xenophon said he would vote down Labor’s scheme in June if his deferral option was defeated. “I don’t think we can justify a delay until after Copenhagen,” he said. Nor did he support the Coalition push for Australia to adopt the US model because the two nations had different economies.

    The Family First senator, Steve Fielding, backed the Coalition, but the Greens opposed a delay – they want to vote against the scheme as soon as possible because they believe it does not cut emissions hard enough. “[It] is dead in the water and it will not pass this year,” a Greens senator, Christine Milne, said.

    The prospect of an early election was discussed in the Coalition party room yesterday but it was decided to call the Government’s bluff.

    A report by the Productivity Commission has found spending on government programs tackling climate change will amount to $23.6 billion over the next five years.

  • Council climate change program axed for no good reason

     
    “While the National Clean Coal Fund is set to receive $366 million over the next four years, support for local government transformation is to be abruptly slashed at the end of next month.
     
    “No account has been made for the long term benefits of a program that allows councils to model low carbon footprint behaviour to their community.
     
    “Based on the flimsiest of evidence, the program has been deemed to not be cost effective.
     
    “The Rudd government has failed to acknowledged that the Cities for Climate Protection program enables councils to provide leadership to their community.
     
    “With the federal government’s carbon trading scheme going nowhere and the Rees government fixated on burning more coal, councils had become the best chance of leading the community to lower carbon footprints.
     
    “Municipalities around NSW will be left without the support to complete their milestones.
     
    “Ending the program now is wasteful and damaging to the future of climate change mitigation.
     
    “The Rees government should not sit on its hands while Cities for Climate Protection folds.
     
    “For less than $1.5 million a year, they could ensure that communities around NSW continue to benefit from local government action on climate change,” Dr Kaye said.
     
    For more information:       John Kaye 0407 195 455
     
    See http://www.smh.com.au/environment/funding-for-climate-change-initiative-axed-20090526-bm7u.html for the full story.
     

  • CPRS’s imminent demise is opportunity for real climate action

     

    “The Coalition’s move for delay will kill this bill, so it’s time to move
    on with serious action to create jobs and reduce emissions.

    “The Greens are now stepping up our campaign for a gross feed-in tariff
    for renewable energy, for investment in energy efficiency and an
    intelligent grid, for forest protection and for a roll-out of public
    transport and cyclepaths.

    “There is no excuse for holding Australia back from the jobs boom that a
    transition to zero emissions will deliver.

    “It would be easy for the Government to move straight away with its
    renewable energy target as well as the Greens’ more ambitious feed-in
    tariff bill.

    “The Government must now begin discussions with the Greens to develop an
    environmentally robust and economically efficient emissions trading
    scheme.”

    The Government has refused to negotiate to green up the CPRS, preferring
    instead to court the Coalition by making it even less environmentally
    effective and more economically inefficient. The Greens will oppose this
    fundamentally flawed legislation.

    “The Greens oppose the CPRS as it would fail to protect the climate and
    fail to transform the economy into the zero emissions powerhouse it can
    and must become.

    “The Continue Polluting Regardless Scheme would undermine the Copenhagen
    negotiations by giving other countries an excuse to lower their level of
    ambition.

    “The Continue Polluting Regardless Scheme would pay over $16 billion to
    polluters instead of helping the community reduce their impact on the
    climate.

    “The Continue Polluting Regardless Scheme would sandbag the old, polluting
    economy, instead of bringing on the transformation to a 21st century zero
    emissions powerhouse.

    “The CPRS’s imminent demise is the best opportunity for real climate
    action Australia has had since the election of the Rudd Government.”

    ———-
    CAWG Mailing List
    <cawg@lists.nsw.greens.org.au>

  • Nationals, Greens vow to block ETS

     

    ‘Once people realise just how cynical the government has been behind the scenes they will understand why it’s essential … to vote it down,’ Greens senator Christine Milne told reporters in Canberra on Monday.

    Without her party’s support, Labor will be forced to rely on opposition votes to secure its climate change bills passage through parliament.

    The Liberals have flagged they want the legislation deferred until after global climate change talks in Copenhagen later this year and the Nationals don’t want a bar of it at all.

    ‘What we have now got is (Opposition Leader) Malcolm Turnbull, in trying to keep them together, delaying having to make a decision on it until after Copenhagen,’ Senator Milne said.

    The Greens say they won’t support a legislative delay.

    ‘What we want to do is get a vote on this as soon as possible: it’s bad legislation.’

    Veteran Nationals senator Ron Boswell, a fierce opponent of emissions trading, admitted the legislation had the power to divide the coalition.

    ‘The National party won’t be supporting it,’ he said.

    ‘Whether it drives a stake through the coalition … is a question for the future.’

    It would be cowardly for the Nationals to back away from their long-standing position on emissions trading because the party was scared of causing coalition disunity.

    ‘If you run away from things that are so reprehensible, so destroying and you vote for them, then that in my opinion is cowardice,’ Senator Boswell said.

    The coalition parties are expected to hammer out a more formal response during a joint parties meeting in Canberra on Tuesday.

    But the Nationals are in no mood to back the legislation, saying the government needs to go back to the drawing board.

    ‘Our position is: No,’ Nationals Senate leader Barnaby Joyce told ABC Radio when asked whether his party would back the planned scheme.

     

  • Greens move for action,not delay.on climate

     

    “The CPRS’s unrealistically conditional 25% is Australia once again
    thumbing its nose at the global community, requiring strong action from
    everyone else but refusing to take it on at home. A motion from the Senate
    would give the Government a much more positive message to take to
    Copenhagen.

    “The tens of thousands of jobs in renewable energy waiting to be created
    would be delivered by the Government fulfilling its election promise to
    lift the renewable energy target. Why is the legislation to do that still
    being delayed?

    “Instead of holding back a jobs boom with the failed CPRS, let’s get
    moving straight away with the Government’s renewable energy target and the
    Greens’ more ambitious feed-in tariff bill.”

    The Greens oppose the CPRS because:
    •       It locks in at least $16 billion in corporate polluter welfare in the
    first five years alone instead of investing now in helping the community
    reduce emissions;
    •       It locks out the option of Australia agreeing to an ambitious target in
    Copenhagen, dragging down the chances of an ambitious global agreement and
    undermining the chances of protecting the climate;
    •       It locks out the chances of a swift transformation of the Australian
    economy, with a low target driving short-sighted and unwise investments;
    and
    •       It locks out bold community action, encouraging apathy in the face of a
    crisis.

    “The Continue Polluting Regardless Scheme is an agreement to fail on
    climate change and an agreement to fail in transforming the economy. Its
    only possible impact domestically and globally is to drag down our level
    of ambition.

    “Transforming Australia into a zero carbon powerhouse would create at
    least 800,000 jobs, but the CPRS would lock out the potential to create
    more than a handful.

    “Study after study has shown that a serious plan to transform Australia
    into a carbon neutral powerhouse would create a jobs boom, but a weak
    target and $16 billion in handouts to the biggest and noisiest polluters
    can only lock out that boom and deliver barely a trickle.”

     

  • Renewable energy’s 26.000 new jobs

     

    The competing jobs predictions come as the federal Coalition prepares to push for a delay in parliamentary consideration of the emissions trading scheme until after the UN conference in Copenhagen in December, on the basis of its potential impact on employment.

    But, as reported in The Weekend Australian, it is likely that one option to be put to shadow cabinet and the Coalition partyroom this week will be to offer to negotiate a bipartisan position with the Government on the emission reduction targets the Government should consider as part of any new international agreement, while delaying the emissions trading legislation. The Greens and senators Nick Xenophon and Steve Fielding have not dismissed the possibility of a delay.

    The Coalition has said it could support emissions-reduction targets at least as strong as the 5 to 25 per cent of 2000 levels advocated by the Government by regulating on energy efficiency measures and storing carbon in vegetation and soils, alongside an emissions trading scheme.

    Opposition emissions trading spokesman Andrew Robb told the Victorian Liberal Party state council yesterday that the Government’s scheme was “in no shape to be passed and the vote must be deferred until after Copenhagen”, when Australia could assess the promises made by trading competitors.

    The Business Council of Australia and other business groups have backed the Government’s argument that the legislation needs to be passed now in the interests of investment certainty.

    Treasury modelling for the Government found the emissions trading scheme would have only a small net effect on total employment in the long term, but heavy industry has warned of the upheaval that could be caused as the economy adjusts to the new cost on carbon.

    The research released by The Climate Institute, commissioned from energy sector consultants McLennan Magasanik Associates (MMA), found the states to benefit most from clean energy project proposals were NSW (4921 jobs) South Australia (4586) and Victoria (4346).

    The planned projects – including geothermal, wind, solar, biomass and wave power – would predominantly benefit regional areas. By far the biggest investments are planned for wind power projects, followed by geothermal.

    “This research shows that if climate change and renewable energy legislation passes through parliament without being weakened, it will help drive the industrial shift that can put Australia at the front of a global energy boom which already employs more people worldwide than those directly employed in oil and gas,” Climate Institute chief executive John Connor said.

    Mr Robb said the Government should delay its legislation until it had assessed the short-term impacts on employment in different sectors of the economy.

    “If passed in its current form, the biggest structural change in our history would be more a product of blind faith and pig-headedness than rigorous analysis,” he said.