Minerals sector win concessions in carbon plan
Updated
The Australian government's climate change legislation is now so politically mired, its unlikely to become law in its current form.
And each day, critics reveal more flaws in the government's approach. The government is now being accused of blatantly misleading Australians with the impression that the Emissions Trading plans will cut domestically-produced greenhouse gases .. when a lot of the cuts will be met by buying permits from developing nations. As a complex debate rages about targets, permits and start-dates, the critics have highlighted a dimension some call carbon imperialism.
Presenter: Linda Mottram
Speakers: Guy Pearse, author of the Quarterly Essay, 'Quarry Vision; Senator Christine Milne, Australian Greens; Richard Denniss, executive director of The Australia Institute
- Listen:
- Windows Media
MOTTRAM: Since its election sixteen months ago, Australia's Labor government has sought to take the high moral ground as a leader in the effort to cut climate damaging greenhouse gas emissions and to transform Australia into a low-carbon economy. Canberra has a plan, and legislation for its plan. But its facing opposition from almost every political quarter, and a hostile Parliamentary inquiry. The scheme's future in its current form, with a start date of next year, is in doubt.
But that's the least of the problems in the view of author and former member of the main Australian conservative party, the Liberals, Guy Pearse.
PEARSE: Most people when they've been listening to the debate and they hear talk of targets by 2020 or 2050 they think it actually relates to emission cuts that Australia makes. In fact, it relates to emission cuts that Australia's paying for.
MOTTRAM: Mr Pearse has published his concerns in Australia's Quarterly Essay, and entitled them Quarry Vision, expanding on his view that the biggest carbon producers in Australia in the minerals and energy sectors have won huge concessions in the debate about cutting emissions.
Guy Pearse spoke to the ABC's Radio National network, explaining that Australia's longer term target of cutting emissions by 60 per cent by 2050, will actually mean no cuts to Australian-produced emissions. And he cites Australian Treasury modelling.
PEARSE: There's a table that shows that by 2050 our actual greenhouse pollution in Australia would range between 400-425 tonnes a year. And if you go back to 1990 levels if you look at our actual greenhouse pollution they're 418 million tonnes so essentially by 2050, Australia's actual emissions are back where they were in 1990. We've really not achieved any deep cuts in greenhouse pollution in Australia.
MOTTRAM: So how is Australia planning to reach its 2050 target? By outsourcing its emissions targets is part of the answer. That means, buying permits .. or more explicitly, paying farmers for example in countries that cut down too many trees, not to cut down those trees.
Economist Richard Denniss is executive director of The Australia Institute, which promotes debate on such issues as climate change.
DENNISS: The Australian government its quite clear in the Treasury modelling is banking on Australia meeting its target more by relying on the efforts of other countries than by domestic Australian reductions.
MOTTRAM: Countries like who?
DENNISS: Countries like PNG, countries like Indonesia. Countries that currently are undertaking a lot of deforestation offer what is hoped to be the cheapest access to these international offsets.
MOTTRAM: The effect will be that Australia could continue to pollute to current levels yet still meet its emissions reduction targets, these critics say. They call it a blatant deception, but a deeply flawed one, first because a lot of nations have the same plan to buy these same scarce, cheap permits, meaning they will probably run out, but also because it avoids responsibility for making the deep emissions cuts climate scientists say are essential to avoid catastrophic climate change.
Another flaw in the scheme critics say is that the government's initial emissions target is very low, a cut of just five per cent.
At recent Senate committee hearings in Canberra, Treasury officials indicated the government intended to meet ten per cent of that five percent by buying permits overseas. Among those questioning the officials was Australian Greens Senator Christine Milne, who is a key player in the current political tussle over the fate of Canberra's proposed emissions trading scheme.
MILNE: If Australia cannot achieve a five per cent reduction on its own, then things are very grim in this country. So going to that overseas option is really a cop-out for Australia and if you take that out to 2050 you'll have an increasing percentage being sourced overseas then the issues around what is the accreditation for those, and issues around carbon imperialism come up.
MOTTRAM: And Senator Milne says its immoral.
MILNE: Australia wants to maintain the destruction of ecosystems here whilst lecturing the rest of the world about what it should do. So it will be seen as basically a position of hypocrisy and it will be seen as acting in bad faith because the Bali road map was a recognition we need to negotiate between 25 and 40 per cent reductions by 2020. Australia has now abandoned that altogether and is trying to cop out at the same time.
