Tony Abbott’s plan to reduce Australia’s carbon emissions by at least 5% by 2020 — the only sure commitment on climate change we know about given Abbott’s flip-flopping yesterday — will depend pretty much on just how stupid he thinks voters are.
In walking away from any economic tool for reducing emissions — turning his back on an emissions trading scheme, coalition policy since early 2007, and ruling out a carbon tax — Abbott has headed off the economically-sensible reservation and into the verdant fields of left-wing policy prescriptions: regulation or a huge increase in government spending.
And this is supposedly the party of small government and deregulation, attacking the market-based approach advocated by the ALP (and, to be fair, many Liberal MPs).
The new coalition approach to climate change, whenever it emerges, will be based on furphies, tricks and outright lies. It cannot be otherwise because, in rejecting either an ETS or a carbon tax, Abbott has removed from consideration any sensible policy prescriptions.
Malcolm Turnbull flirted with biosequestration, arguing that along with better land management, it had real potential to store carbon and increase agricultural productivity. But he never suggested it was some sort of magic bullet that would fix climate change, and it formed part of an emissions trading scheme, which could actually provide financial incentives to encourage farmers to undertake the investment needed to get biochar going. That was the basis for the concession the government made on agriculture, enabling farmers to generate carbon credits while being exempt from the scheme.
But even then it will take so long to ramp up it couldn’t make a major contribution to emissions reductions for decades.
But without an ETS or carbon tax, where’s the incentive to get anyone to do anything different to what they’re doing now?
Well, there’s always regulation, imposing altered land management practices on the agricultural sector.
We know perfectly well that won’t happen. In fact, the Nationals are still trying to roll back legislation prohibiting land clearing, which is the only thing that has prevented Australia’s emissions from going well over its Kyoto target. In April, Barnaby Joyce called land-clearing laws “plain theft”.
If the Nationals had their way, broad-scale land clearing would resume, making land management part of the climate change problem, not part of the solution.
Can you imagine an Abbott shadow Cabinet, especially one with Barnaby Joyce in it, voting to impose any regulation on agriculture?
Which leaves taxpayers to pay farmers to alter their land management practices.
You can see where this is going and why Nationals such as John Williams are so excited by the move away from an ETS. The obvious approach is massive handouts to the agricultural sector, which is the raison d‘être of the Nationals.
Given the sheer scale needed to achieve any significant biosequestration, we’re talking billions of dollars. The Vaile-era Regional Rorts program would look trifling in comparison.
For that matter, it would be almost as bad as the vast handouts to polluters proposed by the government.
Given the straitened fiscal circumstances and the coalition’s alleged commitment to restoring the Budget to 25% of GDP, one wonders quite where the money for such incentives will come from. There’s no CPRS pot of money to raid under the Abbott plan.
“I don’t pretend it’s cost-free but some will be self-financing,” was the bizarre quote from Abbott last night.
Amazingly, it seems that the coalition is actually intending to come up with a climate action policy that will be even less effective than Penny Wong’s, a feat of policy stupidity that seemed impossible just a few short days ago.
There’s always the nuclear option — a term that could aptly describe Abbott’s own leadership — but even assuming an Abbott government would stump out the billions needed to start building nuclear reactors, it wouldn’t make a dent on Australian emissions before the 2020s or later.
Expect lots of plausible-sounding numbers when Abbott releases his policy in the new year. If every farmers does x, over y years, that’s z million tonnes of carbon taken out of the atmosphere — equivalent to eleventy million cars off the road. If soil carbon can be increased by x%, that will absorb y billion tonnes, equivalent to the entire country’s emissions over a z months. Etc etc etc.
But it will all be fiction, policy fiction crafted by a bloke who doesn’t really think there’s a problem anyway. The question is, will voters fall for it?
No, they won’t because Abbott is far from being a political magician. Once Gillard especially gets the chance to get up close with Abbott and methodically slice and dice Abbott’s nonsense for the edification of the electorate Abbott will be a grinning political carcase.
This is where this article falls flat on it’s face…there isn’t a problem and the problem Abbott faces now with voters is convincing them that the truth is there is no need to spend $billions on something that will not make one bit of difference to the climate if it is warming or not. Confusing isn’t it? Climategate has exposed this fraud and i hope Abbott exposes it even further before this irresponsible Government destroys the lives of hard working Australians for nothing! -10c yesterday in Northern China, yep they believe in Global Warming up there…not!
JOHNFROMPLANETEARTH, your demented weather reports from across the globe have nothing to do with climate change. Day to day weather has no relevance to climate change and your contributions have no relevance to reality whatsoever.
What planet is John from? This earth?
Visit the Kiribus Islands and talk to them about the increasing tidal movements that are destroying their soil with sea salt. Go to the artic ice in mid summer (each year, for the past 30 and the next 10), and observe the shrinking of that ice. Watch ice dropping from Antartica in unprecendented quantities. Things are not the same.
Get outside mate, and open your eyes.
But I get it… you want to stay loyal to your party or politicians you support. So they must have it right …now at least. Or you don’t want to pay a few hunded dollars a year more for electricity… I get it…. It will cost us to do our part to be a part of the solution and not the problem… but it will cost us all a lot lot more if no one does anything.
I would rather hitch my wagon with the overwhelming body of expert scientific opinion than with the handful of quoted critics. If I had cancer, I would be doing what the majority of scientific experts in that field recommended. If I want to improve the use of my soil, I take the advice of the majority of expert opinion in the field.
Even for Crikey, this article is just outrageous intelligentsia fear mongering. I have no idea whether Tony Abbott will produce sensible climate policy or not. Neither does Bernard Keane. But give Abbott a chance to produce something and then we can have a discussion on fact rather than fiction! The real problem for the climate change lobby is that a declining percentage of developed world populations now accept their case. And in a democracy, that’s a real problem.