AUSTRALIA’S PROPOSED CARBON EMISSION REDUCTION SCHEME WILL HAVE NO EFFECT ON GLOBAL WARMING

It would be mad to legislate before Copenhagen, but will Turnbull dare face a double dissolution?

THAT somewhat shop-soiled global warming proselytiser, Al Gore, has challenged Kevin Rudd to show leadership by legislating his Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme before the Copenhagen climate talks in December. Not much of a challenge, since that is exactly what he wants to do.

To try to build a sense of urgency the Prime Minister has started a countdown to Copenhagen, where a post-Kyoto global framework for dealing with global warming (now conveniently referred to as climate change after a decade of cooling set in) is supposed to be agreed.

At a press conference in L'Aquila, Italy, last Friday Rudd repeated several times that "the clock is already ticking on climate change" and warned there were less than 150 days to go "before the delegations of the world assemble in Copenhagen in December to determine an outcome which will reflect what we do for decades ahead".

If the outcome of the G8 meeting in L'Aquila is any guide, then the outcome at Copenhagen won't see us doing much at all. Rudd himself has told us an agreement is unlikely, even if he didn't mean his candid assessment to become public. Yet he wants the Senate to pass his carbon reduction scheme into law in August.

Following his leader, on Tuesday the Acting Minister for Climate Change, former ACTU secretary Greg Combet, put out a press release launching a Countdown to Climate Change Vote clock on the ALP's website, telling us that in 30 days one of the most important votes in recent times would take place in the Australian parliament.

Combet declared: "Malcolm Turnbull has 30 days to 'reject the climate change sceptic's excuses'." (Watch the apostrophe, Greg, is there really only one?) Why?

It is a silly gimmick, but behind it lies a serious issue.

The last thing parliament should do if it really has Australia's national interest in mind is pass the Rudd government's flawed emissions trading scheme into law in August. Although the start of the scheme has been put off until July 1, 2011, because of the global financial crisis (a delay Rudd had earlier described as reckless and irresponsible), passing it into law next month would mean Australia would be moving ahead of any other country in its legislated commitment to carbon reduction. This would be an unwise and economically damaging thing to do.

The idea that Australia passing legislation before the December meeting would have a significant effect on what happens in Copenhagen is nonsense, although Gore and Rudd would like us to believe otherwise. The world already knows what we intend to do. The government submitted details of its present policy to the relevant UN working groups when it was revised in May.

And this submission gives a good reason for us delaying until we know what other countries - particularly, but not only, the US, China and India - are doing.

"Australian Treasury analysis shows that Australia faces high economic costs relative to most other developed countries, due to our large share of emissions and energy-intensive industries and a dominance of low-cost coal in electricity generation," it says.

The opposition's Andrew Robb, shadow minister assisting Turnbull on emissions design, gives another good reason for delay. Robb has been in the US talking to congressional committee members, business and other organisations about the Waxman-Markey climate change bill that was recently passed by a small majority in the US lower house.

Robb told The Australian yesterday that the US bill had key differences compared with the Rudd government's carbon reduction scheme, all of which would put Australia at a disadvantage compared with the US. He said it is expected the Waxman-Markey bill will be further watered down in the Senate and may not pass at all.

The Minerals Council of Australia also has raised concerns about the different approaches being followed by the US and Australia, including much higher and earlier costs imposed on industry in Australia. According to the council, the Rudd scheme will cost the minerals sector $10 billion in the first five years, including $5bn from the coal sector. The US coalmining industry will face no emissions permit costs, nor will the coal industry in Europe.

The Minerals Council isn't the only one worried.

So is Queensland Premier Anna Bligh, who has written to Combet raising a series of concerns about the effect of the Rudd scheme on Queensland's coal sector, and she is not the only premier worried about the impact of the scheme.

All of which amounts to a powerful case for waiting until after Copenhagen and fundamentally rethinking the Rudd government's policy. As does the fact the world will be dependent on coal for electricity generation for a long time to come, despite hysterical calls to shut down the industry from climate change campaigners such as NASA's James Hansen, who calls coal-fired power stations factories of death.

Rudd is aware of these problems and has an answer, his Carbon Capture and Storage Institute, which was given an international launch at the G8 meeting by US President Barack Obama. The problem is that while a good idea in principle, carbon capture and storage technology, which involves trapping CO2 from power stations and storing it underground, faces some formidable obstacles in practice.

A disturbing list of these was set out in the letters page of this newspaper on Tuesday by Ivan Kennedy of the University of Sydney, who warned it was unlikely its objectives could be met at an economic cost, if at all. In March The Economist published an article also sceptical of the feasibility of carbon capture and storage.

Even so, after the risible G8 outcome and the likely failure at Copenhagen, technological solutions and improving efficiency of energy use seem a much more feasible path than any cap and trade global framework for emissions control. Rudd needs to go back to the drawing board.

An immediate concern is whether Turnbull can hold his nerve and oppose the Rudd carbon bill in the Senate. After the Utegate fiasco he looks nervous

enough to vote through a blank cheque rather than face a double-dissolution election.

Article from:  The Australian