Turbull, targets and trading

Malcolm Turnbull has hotted up his attack on the Rudd-Wong emissions trading scheme this morning, with in an interview on AM.

You see, what Mr Rudd has done and this is a characteristic of the Prime Minister, he has completely lost sight of the real objective.

The objective is to reduce Australia’s CO2 emissions. It is not to have an ETS. The object is to reduce emissions and so he’s has come up with an incredibly cumbersome, economically damaging so we are told by industry, ineffectual so we were told by people concerned about climate, Emissions Trading Scheme which seems to disappoint everybody.

There is almost unanimous criticism of it.

I think Turnbull has really hit the nail on the head here. Rudd’s ETS is not going to do anything for the environment. Therefore, it has already failed to achieve the objective. What then is the purpose of having an ETS at all?

Some would argue that the target can be ramped up after 2020. It would be just as easy to put in another soft target in 2020 and continue to do nothing.

It looks like Big Kev’s trading scheme is simply designed to make it look like he’s taking action on climate change, while he sits back in the Lodge with his team of public servants burning the midnight oil putting together committee reports and creating enough hot air to heat St Petersburg.

Meanwhile, Parliament House is consuming electricity by the bucketload. Maybe the government should lead the way and start to tidy up their own house, so that others may see the benefits of the available technology.

On the other hand, maybe we should just focus on convincing China to cut their emissions. After all, they will probably own most of Australia soon enough.

White paper update

Since I have now actually read the white paper, I thought that it would only be fair to make a couple of retractions.

Don’t get me wrong; 5% is a pathetic target and too low. The minimum acceptable target should have been 10/20%, and realistically we could have gone 20% now without worrying about what the rest of the world is doing, and tried to push for a 30% target in Copenhagen with the moral high ground behind us. Always start high in negotiations.

The point is, setting a high target now will stimulate technological advancements in the green sector, setting Australia up to make a lot of money in the next 50 years as the world moves towards a low carbon economy. Whoever moves first will reap the biggest rewards.

The Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme looks quite good, with a few minor cop-outs. Firstly, the price cap is stupid. The higher the price of carbon, the more money the government will receive to reinvest in efficiency, and to return to households. Same deal with not allowing exports of permits: the effect that this would have is essentially bring money into Australia to promote abatement activities and efficiency increases.

The good part of the Scheme is the allocation of EITE permits, based on an industry’s historic average emissions intensity. This has probably got a lot of greenies knickers in a knot, however the way the Scheme is structure still gives the full advantage to businesses who are operating in a more carbon efficient manner over the big polluters. Note that this is in direct contrast to my opinion yesterday, which I espoused without reading the document.

Allocating free permits to the trade-exposed heavy polluting industries prevents these industries from moving overseas and continuing to pollute. Instead, they can stay here, reduce their emissions and make a profit from the sale of their free permits. Companies who do not reduce their emissions will be forced to fork out just like everyone else, so the same incentives will apply to reducing emissions as if they didn’t receive any free permits. I guess to only objection is the fact that the government is essentially handing these guys free money, but then they’ve got $23.5 billion over forward estimates to hand out to everyone else, so we shouldn’t complain too hard.

That’s it for me.

Stilts and Houseboats

Let me preface this by stating that I am not surprised.

Kevin “Copperfield” Rudd has pulled yet another trick out of his bag, juggling some very dubious numbers to make a 5% reduction commitment look like a 41% reduction! At least that’s what Penny Wong was yammering on about on AM this morning. Who put this rabid lunatic in charge of climate change anyway?

Anyway, the Australian Government’s latest Apology Paper details first of all that it’s just too hard to set a target of greater than 5%, before justifying the 5% target against the background of increasing population, and then goes on to canonise the Hawke and Keating Governments for some unexplained reason.

The Wongster’s message this morning was that everyone will have to do their part in contributing towards a low-carbon economy, however Middle Australia will have 120% of their costs given to them in pork-barrel payouts, at convenient moments leading up to the next election.

Furthermore, the big polluters will be given 90% of their costs in pork-barrel payouts, which effectively means that they’ll be paying a maximum of $4/tonne for carbon emissions – less than the current (woeful) price of an NGAC certificate! And the more you pollute, the more you save!

And what’s with limiting the maximum price? What ever happened to the free market? How are renewables going to compete when carbon pollution has a capped price?

Oh yeah, my favourite section: new polluters will get compensated at the same rate as existing polluters! I can build a brown coal-fired plant in 5 years and claim my 90% handout. Genius.

I will rate the white paper under my new two-tiered rating scheme. First of all, the potential to save the world rating:

Secondly, the spin rating:

In conclusion, K-Rudd has provided a great platform for me to launch my new business: Stilts and Houseboats. Bring on the flood!