Much Ado, But Nothing Being Done  

Alan Ramsay at the SMH is less than impressed about the slow pace of actions to reduce carbon emissions - Buckle up for trouble on the green route.

In the BBC series The Blue Planet, David Attenborough's epic documentary on the Earth's oceans first televised seven years ago, he nails us all. That is when Attenborough tells us there is now more carbon dioxide in our atmosphere than at any time "in the last 650,000 years". He rivets our attention even more by saying that we're adding "125 billion tonnes of it every year".

This is the global warming George Bush and John Howard kept telling us wasn't happening. This is the multiplying pollution warming our oceans and killing our future. This is the accelerating climate change "we" have to do "something" about.

To fix it we have to understand it. Almost none of us do. ...

Ross Garnaut's opus is 536 pages. Penny Wong's runs to 518 pages. The Wong green paper also offers a 68-page summary. I don't believe anyone in the Government or the Opposition - the politicians, that is - has read both. Every page. There are staff advisers, an army of bureaucrats and paid "consultants" to do that. And I'll bet pounds to peanuts there isn't a soul in the Canberra press gallery who's read both reports, either. How the rest of you cope, I can only imagine. The political war of words (about carbon emissions, carbon sinks, carbon trading, carbon caps, carbon reduction, compensation, etc) to get your attention is fierce. And it will get ever fiercer.

Yet what you most need to understand is that nothing happens for two years.

That is, the detailed scheme the Rudd Government adopts to reduce carbon pollution won't happen until 2010, just before the next election. That's the scariest bit. Between now and then we get the battle over the Wong green paper, before we get the battle that follows the Rudd white paper.

Green stands for discussion. White stands for decision. Kevin Rudd kept saying all week we'll get the white paper "at the end of the year". Thus, between the white paper and the election, due in November 2010, we are likely get two years of the ugliest of political behaviour from either side.

Senator Milne also has a column in the SMH, saying "if ever our planet needed inspiring leadership, it is now" - Climate won't wait, Mr Rudd.

THE first of Nelson Mandela's eight lessons of leadership is that "Courage is not the absence of fear - it's inspiring others to move beyond it". If ever our planet needed inspiring leadership it is now, as we face the twin threats of climate change and peak oil.

Our leaders need the courage to take the bold, far-sighted action we need if we are to survive this challenge and emerge better off. In perhaps as little as two decades we have to radically transform our society and economy.

We have to rebuild our energy infrastructure with zero emissions renewable energy; upgrade homes, offices and factories to get the same or more output using half as much energy; redesign cities around fast, convenient mass transit and cycleways; and retrain all those workers and communities who currently rely on coal, oil and native forest logging.

Real leaders would acknowledge the challenge but articulate an inspiring vision of reinvigorated industry, of healthier lifestyles, cleaner air and a stable climate. They would seek innovative, thoughtful policy responses that tackle the underlying issues and provide Australians with the hopeful knowledge that they are part of the solution, not part of the problem.

Instead we have a Government and Opposition who are both paralysed with fear - fear of what they think will be the short-term political consequences of taking bold action. Nothing expresses this fearful, defeatist attitude better than the fact that the Government's green paper was entirely focused on compensating anyone who demanded it (and many who didn't).

Let's take petrol. The price is increased with one hand but decreased "cent for cent" with the other. Instead of finding solutions that work through and overcome the obstacles, the Government has deliberately put its foot on the accelerator and the brake at the same time. The wheels are spinning madly, we're burning up fuel, and we're going precisely nowhere.

The same goes for handing out free permits and cash compensation to Australia's biggest and most profitable polluters - the aluminium and coal sectors.

I have long argued that we must make every effort to help people deal with the extra costs pricing pollution will put on them. But unless we offer help that actually reduces people's carbon liability, any compensation payments are a cruel hoax. They might temporarily mask the impact of price rises but they set people up for a big fall when the crunch comes and they are left unprepared. ...

Instead of propping up a coal sector our planet cannot sustain, why not retrain the workforce for the new green-collar jobs we desperately need, helping the roll-out of insulation, solar, wind and geothermal energy, buses and trains? We need to support workers but the corporations who have profited from polluting deserve no more compensation than the asbestos and tobacco industries.

Ross Gittins is the most sanguine of the three, viewing the proposed ETS as not too bad, all things considered - Rudd sails through greenhouse test despite lack of green flagellation.

The Rudd Government is never going to win a medal for political bravery. It's not in the same league as Hawke-Keating Labor. Even so, it's done a better job with its first step towards a carbon pollution reduction scheme than many people accept.

Last week's green paper has been criticised on three fronts. First are industry vested interests intent on scaring the public and the Government into giving them an easier ride than they've been promised. There's no law against rent-seeking, but everything they say should be viewed with scepticism.

The second source of criticism is those media commentators and ordinary citizens who find it hard to believe a scheme that's had so many of its political rough edges smoothed away could actually do much good. How could you spray around so much compensation and still get a worthwhile reduction in greenhouse gas emissions?

The third source of attack comes from the Greens and greenies in general. The Greens may be motivated by a desire to differentiate their product: the more the mainstream parties accept the need for action to halt global warming, the more radical the Greens' policies need to become.

But it's hard to resist the conclusion that, for many greenies, environmentalism has taken the place once occupied by religion. Emitting greenhouse gases is intrinsically sinful and mining coal is a work of the devil. What we need is purification by self-flagellation.

To those who see the Rudd plan as too politically compromised to be a fair dinkum attack on emissions: it's not nearly that bad.

The first point is that, because the Government will be selling emission permits to the highest bidders, it will have plenty of revenue to recycle as compensation and other measures to minimise the cost to the economy of achieving the desired reduction in emissions.

Those households with combined incomes exceeding $150,000 a year will get no compensation; middle-income households will get tax cuts (which they probably would have got in any event) and only low-income households will get genuine compensation in the form of tax cuts at the bottom end and increases in pensions, benefits and allowances.

But if you compensate people for the higher price of fossil fuels, what incentive do you give them to reduce their consumption of those fuels? The incentive that comes from the higher price of fossil fuels relative to all other prices.

The object of the exercise is not to make people poorer, nor is it necessary to make them poorer to induce them to be more economical in their use of the now more expensive fuels.