Following months of relentless criticism, the Government were forced last week to announce change to the proposed emissions trading scheme. Unsurprisingly, most business groups welcomed the changes while environmentalists, with a few notable exceptions, slammed it. The opposition continued to take their role literally despite the Government addressing virtually all of the concerns they had raised.Since the White Paper was released to widespread condemnation in December last year, there has been a debate about whether the scheme would get ‘browned down’ in order to win support from a Coalition riddled with climate change skeptics, or ‘greened up’ if the Government was forced to negotiate with the Greens and independents.
The move last week was a step towards the coalition. From an environmental point of view, it was hard to see how the Carbon Pollution Scheme could get much worse, but it has. The largest polluters will be given even more free permits, the scheme will be delayed (effectively for 2 years) and the price on carbon capped at only $10/tonne for the first year. The trade off, in order to win support from some parts of the environmental lobby, was to increase the potential maximum emissions reduction target from 15 to 25% cuts by 2020. It was a case of one step forward, one step back. Meanwhile the bottom line emissions reduction target remains a paltry 5%.
The increased upper end of the target range brings the Governments position up into the well know ‘Bali range’ of 25-40% cuts that is widely regarded as the credible range for developed countries to participate effectively in the international climate negotiations leading up to the all important Copenhagen meeting in December.
While any increase in targets is a step in the right direction, the risk is that it is illusory because the 25% target comes with very strict conditions. Bernard Keanne from Crikey described it as being like saying “Free for pensioners if accompanied by both grandparents”.
And if the world reached a global agreement as strong as the one outlined in the criteria, Australia’s contribution should be a lot higher than 25%.
National emissions reduction targets are, of course, not only based on science but also on politics and concepts of equity – of responsibility, capacity and vulnerability. As one of the largest per capita emitters in the world, we have a clear responsibility. As one of the richest countries in the world, we have both responsibility and capacity. And as one of the countries likely to be most effected by climate change, we have a real vulnerability.
The range of 25-40% cuts is based on an estimate from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of what is required to have a 50% change of stabilising global temperatures at 2 to 2.4 degrees above pre-industrial levels.
Anyone who reads the science closely will know that even 2 degrees means a climate catastrophe. We currently are at an average temperature of roughly 0.8 degrees celcius above the pre-industrial era and the best estimate is that we are already locked in to a further 0.5 degrees of warming.
This is already too much. The arctic summer ice is melting at an unprecedented rate – much faster than predicted. A few years ago it was estimated that Arctic summer ice may be gone by mid century, now some scientists are predicting that the arctic could be ice free in summer within the next 3 or 4 years. If this happens it is likely to trigger positive feedback and further increased temperatures in the arctic as a result of the albedo effect.
So if the range of 25-40% cuts by 2020 is not enough, where should we be aiming? Greenpeace believe that a rich and vulnerable country like Australia should commit to 50% cuts by 2020 as part of a global deal, and that we should aim to get to zero emissions as soon as possible.
While the announcement last week at least puts Australia into the credible range for the negotiations, it is still not good enough. And, quite simply, you can’t negotiate with the biosphere on emissions reduction targets – it just doesn’t work.
Rather than embracing a low carbon future, our leaders continue to cling to the past. The extra concessions made to the big polluters in return for supporting an already badly designed Carbon Pollution Scheme, mean that Australia will not have to make serious changes to our industrial economy anytime soon.
Even with a 25% target, up to 5% of the 25% could be bought by the Government on the international carbon market. Add to that the fact that the Carbon Pollution Scheme would allow 100% trading of permits on the international market and you remove a large part of the incentive for Australian industry to make the structural transition to a low carbon economy. We’ll most likely just be offsetting our emissions through carbon forestry projects in Indonesia or Papual New Guinea.
Yes protecting forests is an important part of the climate change solution, but if we are really going to solve the climate crisis, we also need to transform our energy economy to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy. This means we need to make the hard decisions to create structural change. The good news is that this provides a once in a generation opportunity to create new jobs. The bad news is that it required political leadership that is sorely lacking.
It is clear that both major parties are failing on climate. Politics as usual is failing. If we are going to turn things around, we are going to need a people’s movement the likes of which the world has never seen. Get involved.
