Are we ready for a dose of Prof Garnaut’s climate change medicine?
One wonders if the Rudd Government is, given the way they’ve been distancing themselves from the man they appointed last year. But a few people are. Business Council of Australia president Greg Gailey gave an eminently sensible speech yesterday about the need to get emissions trading right.
“Australia has a real opportunity to achieve better social, economic and environmental outcomes based on higher productivity – and carbon productivity in particular… the government can lead the way in the implementation of a credible and successful national ETS that provides an example of what can be achieved for other countries to follow.”
This is the head of the BCA talking, remember.
He also warned businesses against exaggerating the negative impacts of an ETS. One suspects that there’ll be plenty who won’t heed that call.
There’s already a long line of stakeholders either bidding for the right to be excused from all this climate change stuff or receive compensation. We’re calling it Rentseekers’r’Us and Crikey will be keeping track of who is trying to wriggle out of their ETS obligations and why.
And if you think the Coalition is running a scare campaign on an ETS, have a look at some of the rhetoric starting to come from the power industry. The Energy Supply Association was today warning of “arbitrary destruction of shareholder wealth through a dramatic change in government policy, which raises questions about sovereign risk.”
Sovereign risk? Hello? How long have you mob known about climate change? You used obfuscation and dodgy science to delay action on it for over a decade. Even the previous Government committed to an ETS. The only risk to shareholder wealth is from boards and management that pretended they could avoid climate change forever.
The Oz also quotes Transfield Services chairman Tony Shepherd warning of an “Enron-type collapse” and the loss of five years of economic growth. You forgot the plague of frogs and the deaths of the first-born, Tony.
National Generators Forum director John Boshier is quoted in the AFR as telling Garnaut to stick to climate change rather than discuss what compensation industry should — or in the case of the power industry — shouldn’t get. And individual electricity company executives have been pushing for exemption or compensation for a while. They’ve been backed by greenhouse denialist and NSW Treasurer Michael “Get F-cked” Costa, who is trying to sell some gamey coal-based power assets.
This is just the start. As with the GST, there’ll be constant procession of industries forecasting doom if they have to comply with the new taxation arrangements. Strangely, since the introduction of the GST, the economy appears to have done OK. Peter Costello, in one of his few significant achievements as Treasurer, understood the basic logic that the purer the new taxation arrangements, the better they would be — not the other way around. And if there are any people to be compensated, it is individuals — on low or fixed incomes — not companies.
Let’s see if Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan can match Costello and hold the line against special interests.
Regarding the constant claims raised that TEEII’s will move their operations offshore to the nett detriment of the Australian economy. Last night the claim was made in respect of the alumina refinery here in Queensland. This refinery is the recipient of massively subsidized electricity – the exact details of just how cheap are kept secret. For them to relocate they need to find another cheap supply of energy, in an economically, geologically and politically stable country. The choices for countries that meet all of these requirements were always a bit limited. Now with inflation, energy shortages, food shortages, and massive demand for energy from the whole planet – isn’t it pretty much the case that the Queensland alumina refinery is already in just about the best place it could find anyway?
And a spokesperson for the energy generators invokes a year-end solvency test and auditor concerns to support a claim for compensation. “Directors would be obliged to look at the ongoing solvency and see a massive financial impairment caused by a loss of value of 80 or 90 per cent”.
The international response to climate change was launched in 1992, at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, with the signing of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.
It is reasonable to expect that at some time during the intervening 15 years when looking at this same ongoing solvency issue, these Directors should have considered making a provision in their accounts for this “sudden and unexpected” dimunition in value. Doing so would have been an appropriate exercise of their fiduciary duty.
Failing to do so is due to either ignorance or arrogance. Neither of these deserve compensation.
Transfield Services chairman Tony Shepherd warning of an “Enron-type collapse”. So, if I’m reading this right, what Tony is saying is that the power generators are bunch of lying, cheating shysters like those chaps who ran Enron. Correct?
“..obfuscation and dodgy science..” Well talk about the pot calling the kettle black( or should I say ‘hot) This is amazing stufff, as the ‘Warmists’ combine fear mongering, impending doom, voodoo economics and even scripture to cajole the masses into accepting a massive drop in their living standards.
With the past decade showing a drop in global temperature and after record cold northern winters the Warmists are insisting that all is on track for Armaggedon.
What is really amazing is how business leaders, like scientists, who express scepticism/dissent are going to be ” kept track of” by Crikey and the “Green police” ( Bernard’s dog, Woof, is specially trained )
The economics is mind numbing. We are effectively going to dramatically reduce the value of assets that the NSW government ( and Opposition ) tell us they need to sell in order to raise capital to build more coal fired power stations otherwise, as Morris Iemma has said more than once, ” the lights go out”. But , hey, the ‘Warmists’ are expert candle makers.
And of course, India and China, building an average of 1-2 coal fired power stations/ week to drive their economies forward are going to watch, spell-bound, as we drive ours backwards and suddenly the ‘light’ of conversion will dawn and they’ll say, collectively of course, we’re going in the wrong direction!
Let’s go the same way as those brilliant, prinicipled Aussies!
You got that 99!. Please, just lower the ‘cone of silence’ while a scream a little!
Interesting take on the climate change alarmists such as Keane by Bret Stephens in The Wall Street Journal: Global Warming as Mass Neurosis July 1, 2008; http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121486841811817591.html
I hasten to add that I concur that anthropogenic global warming is probably real and should be responded to globally now in a rational and inclusive manner, however the ‘real climate threat’ is the one of fear and intimidation rained down on us by so many commentators like Keane, Hamilton and Flannery. The irony is that such grandstanding will probably hinder the environmental cause not help.
The biblical ‘apocalypse’ used by Keane and so many others is addressed by Stephens in the reference cited.