While much of the media continues to perpetuate the fake “Morrison inching toward climate action” narrative, last night’s budget confirms how committed the government is to backing its fossil fuel donors and how little it is doing on climate action.
The government had already announced its new handout for fossil fuel companies that pay the Coalition hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in donations: $263 million to be given to fossil fuel companies for the fraud of carbon capture and storage projects. But the budget papers revealed more giveaways to the fossil fuel sector. According to the Australian Conservation Foundation, the government will also hand $58.6 million to the gas industry for gas infrastructure and storage, as well as over $200 million to upgrade Northern Territory roads near gas projects.
There’s some funding for a battery project, less than $50 million, but otherwise renewables don’t feature in the budget. The only significant funding for climate-related action is $210 million for an Australian Climate Service “to help Australia better anticipate, manage and adapt to the impacts of natural disasters and changing climates”. The government will also provide a $10 billion government guarantee to the Australian Reinsurance Pool Corporation — originally set up to provide insurance coverage for terrorism attacks — “in support of administering a reinsurance pool for cyclones and related flooding”.
That’s the government’s response to the growing problem that insurance companies are refusing to provide coverage in northern Australia due to the growing frequency of floods and cyclones caused by climate change. The reinsurance pool is intended to be cost-neutral over time, according to the budget papers. But it’s still classed a risk to the budget in the future.
So climate action in the budget is limited to adaptation measures: better weather reports and more insurance for disasters caused by climate change. Actual climate action to prevent climate change is missing. This is the new denialist mantra in action: it’s too late to stop climate change, we’re just going to have to adapt to it as best we can.
Meanwhile, much bigger handouts continue to the fossil fuel industry causing it.
Not quite a green new deal. More like a brown stain deal.
The stain is the Coalition for Coal
The Morrisin sh.t show got their fellow coal crooks headed up by the Brandis tame SG Stephen O’Donoghue to argue in a court filing appeal … ‘that it is not responsible for the future of the country’s children. Appealing a decision that found Environment Minister Sussan Ley had a duty of care to young people affected by climate change.
The Brandis tame token solicitor general argued:
“The primary judge erred in finding that the minister owed a duty to take reasonable care … to avoid causing personal injury or death to persons who were under 18 years of age … arising from emissions of carbon dioxide.”
So there you have it, the Coalition has no duty of care for Austrlians only their largely foreign owned non tax paying fossil fuel mates and donors.
Well at least they are now doing something positive. Small steps but something.
My observations convince me that Climate Change is not preventable any more. It will reach disaster proportions and affect human life. Probably eliminate human and many other species existence.
All that can be done now is to minimise the effects and hold out as long as we can.
It’s going to be a very miserable slide down to oblivion for all.
It is NOT “denialist mantra in action:” – it is reality that has been known and calibrated since the permafrost began thawing, 20-30yrs ago.
The methane being released in ever increasing volumes mean that “…it’s too late to stop climate change, we’re just going to have to adapt to it as best we can.”
Those warm’n’fuzzy, green tree huggers at the IMF, World Bank et al know that.
Those other arch environmentalists such as Munich/ZurichRE now charge reinsurance premiums for some risks that approach 50% so the $10B for the Australian Reinsurance Pool Corporation is a flea on a gnat compared to the costs of recent bush fires & floods which will seem minor in the very near future.
Unlike ALL other developed western countries and virtually every other nation, we have the skills, the demographic and the SPACE to adapt.
All we lack is the political will.
Say goodnight, Gracie.
It is true that the world community cannot reasonably hope to stabilize the global temperature to +1.5C anymore due to politics, and even a +2C rise is likely, despite the likely consequences such as fish stocks and crop yields dropping significantly.
Where we are now though is still in a time that fossil fuel companies are still determined to sell their products regardless, and have for at least 30 years ruthlessly pursued highly effective strategies to accomplish that goal.
With complete denial restricted in 2021 to a shrinking pool of uneducated, another tool for Big FF is to try and induce despair or at least apathetic fatalism so people don’t bother even fighting.
People must bear in mind however that stopping every 0.1C rise in temperature will have very significant differences in livability over 20, 50, 100 years.
Climate scientists have found it is likely that if the world is bought to a (true) net zero, the temperature will quickly stabilize.
That I suggest is worth fighting for.
Is the Australian government’s current funding mix an “apathetic fatalism” w.r.t funds for adaption, but only a tiny amount for RE/ storage/ clean transport?
You will all have your own opinion on this, however I can say other nations have developed policies that have and will make significant differences. Perhaps one day we will follow them.
The fact remains: even if we all agree man-made climate change is real, vested fossil interests will reject the necessary transition steps UNLESS they receive compensation for loss of well-paying fossil jobs. That’s why the ALP is conflicted.
And private sector free markets themselves are another barrier, since they require consumers to stump up the costs of the transition (via various carbon pricing mechanisms), so that renewables companies can make a profit during the decades’ long transition.
Therefore, nationalization of global electricity production is the only viable alternative, so that rich and poor (citizens and nations) alike will participate in, and be equally affected by, the required global resources re-allocation, outside of “invisible hand” profit-driven markets.
[Note: Biden is already demanding China reduce its growth in order to reduce its emissions – despite US per capita emissions double that of China!].
Hence the correct solution is: global transition to green funded by BIS money printing (ie, via the ‘central bank of central banks’) . Of course main-streamers like Danny Price scream “opportunity costs” (and shriek “world government ” …) but there is no such thing as “opportunity costs”, if indeed we are cooking the planet by burning fossil fuels, AND we only have limited time to deal with the problem.
Australia has increased subsidies for fossil fuels by 48 per cent since signing the Paris Agreement.
This is more than any other country in the G20.
It represents about $52 billion.
But no money from the Morrison Sheet Show for purpose built quarantine facilities, or buying pfizer when offered last year.
So the overarching assessment of this Budget is that it utterly repudiates the Govt’s central tenet of fiscal rectitude. With Labor left floundering.
But it’s a deep dig – completely beyond the MSM – to find even a mention that Australia’s criminal inaction on our biggest threat is unchanged. And that our state capture by fossil fuel interests continues, with more govt support for fossil fuel industries.
Thanks Bernard for setting the record straight.