Posts Tagged ‘politics’
A carbon price is back on the drawing board in Canberra. Julia Gillard’s (supposedly) multi-party committee is exploring options right now. But unless you are particularly optimistic, or are suffering short-term memory loss regarding Labor’s last inspiring attempt to get some legislation passed, its hard to see a scheme being in place before 2013.
I say supposedly multi-party, because members of the committee will be drawn from “those who are committed to tackling climate change and who acknowledge that effectively reducing carbon pollution by 2020 will require a carbon price”, which doesn’t include the Nationals or the Liberals.
Its not entirely clear if the opposition’s opposition to the committee is because climate change is “crap” or because they don’t accept the premise that pricing carbon is the way to go. Sophie Mirabella called it a “marxist plot” on Q&A, which gives us a reasonable insight into the Coalition’s point of view.
Meanwhile, I was inspired by this poster from a mass political rally in the US recently.
In stark contrast to the bad politics and bad science in the Australian parliament, the US has moved forward and it’s equivalent to our CPRS legislation passed the lower house yesterday.
If you want to read more, there are lots of news reports. It’s also the subject of Barrack Obama’s weekly address to the US nation:
“[We] have seen other countries realize a critical truth: the nation that leads in the creation of a clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the 21st century global economy. […] Now my call to every Senator, as well as to every American, is this: We cannot be afraid of the future. And we must not be prisoners of the past. Don’t believe the misinformation out there […]”.
The Labour party has been pushing for a vote on the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, not because they think it will pass, but because they know it will be defeated.
As Tim Colbert said in The Age: “The Government supports its emissions trading scheme, but would like to see it defeated when it comes before the Senate this week. The Opposition opposes the scheme, but will be doing its utmost to ensure that it is not defeated. The Greens support emissions trading, but want to vote to defeat this version of it. As for the Senate independents, no newspaper article could adequately summarise their positions.”
The one chance the government had to provide some certainty before the Copenhagen Climate Summit was try and trigger an early election, which it can do if its legislation is defeated twice by the Senate. This now seems unlikely.
Earlier this week Senator Stephen Parry was successful in getting debate on the legislation delayed. Liberal Senator Nick Minchin justified their position by saying that “the government should defer consideration of this bill on the triple grounds that it does not have a start date for two years, that for Australia to legislate in advance of Copenhagen is utterly irresponsible and reckless, and that to advance this legislation prior to the United States legislating, the world’s biggest emitter of anthropogenic CO2, is ridiculous and reckless.”
Greens Senator Bob Brown tried to call out the Coalition for their filibustering, saying: “One way or another, the government is on a mission to get to Copenhagen with a determination from Australia, which it should expect out of the Senate. There should be a result. […] What we are getting to here is boring procedural cat-and-mouse play for a political interest which is all to do with the next election and not with the future of this nation, and that is not good enough.”
National Party Senator Barnaby Joyce was much clearer about the Coalition’s strategy saying “I want this debate to go for as long as possible. Call that a filibuster, call it what you want, call it your aunt Mary, I will debate this thing until there is not a breath left in me.”
The vote hinged on the support of the two independent senators. Senator Steve Fielding supported the delay, which is unsurprising given he is Australia’s latest and most famous climate change skeptic.
Senator Nick Xenephon, who is a climate change believer, also supported the delay asking for more time to model alternatives and the impacts on Australia’s economy of deeper cuts.
This is also being commented on in the International media. Meanwhile the US Climate Bill is set to be voted on. Barrack Obama expressed his support for their Climate Bill saying it “will finally spark a clean energy transformation that will reduce our dependence on foreign oil and confront the carbon pollution that threatens our planet.”
It doesn’t look like our own clean energy transformation is coming any time soon.
This is the subject of an interesting conference that finished in London last week. There have been some very thought provoking discussions going on and it strikes me again that the public debate in the UK is much more progressive then here in Australia. For example, here is Terry Leahy, the CEO of Tesco, talking about the importance of consumers in the transition to a low-carbon economy:
