THE GRETA THUNBERG HELPLINE:— Mark Humphries (@markhumphries) September 26, 2019
For adults angry at a child. pic.twitter.com/JAtIKyG4Va
Showing posts with label climate change denialists. Show all posts
Showing posts with label climate change denialists. Show all posts
Saturday 28 September 2019
Tweet of the Week
Thursday 26 September 2019
The world is increasingly seeing Australian PM Scott Morrison as running a climate denialist government
When a country is run by rightwing, anti-science, ideological ratbags this is what happens.......
The Guardian, 25 September 2019:
Scott Morrison is increasingly seen as running a “denialist government” that is not serious about finding a global climate solution and uses “greenwash” to meet its emissions commitments, analysts and former diplomats say.
Australian observers in New York said Morrison’s failure to attend a UN climate action summit on Monday despite being in the US, and his apparent rejection of the need for Australia to do more to address its rising greenhouse gas emissions, eroded goodwill for the country on the issue.
While representatives from about 60 nations spoke at the summit, Morrison gave a keynote speech at the Chicago Institute for Global Affairs in which he challenged China to do more heavy lifting on climate change and suggested it should be treated as a “newly developed” economy rather than a developing one.
He said country representatives at the summit were dismissive of Australia’s intentions. Bill Hare, the chief executive and senior scientist of Climate Analytics and a longtime adviser to countries at climate talks, said the UN summit had been “very disappointing” as most larger polluters, including Australia, had failed to meet the secretary general Antonio Guterres’ call to increase commitments, leaving ambitious strides to smaller nations.
“Diplomatic officials from countries that I speak with see Australia as a denialist government,” he said. “It’s just accepted that’s what it is. It is seen as doing its own promotion of coal and natural gas against the science.”
Hare said Morrison’s suggestion China should be doing more on climate, and be treated similarly to the most developed countries, while Australia’s emissions continued to increase year-on-year was a “ridiculous fake argument”.
He said China, the world’s most populous country and biggest annual polluter, was not doing anywhere near enough to tackle the crisis, but was doing more than Australia on many measures. It had national policies in a number of areas – boosting renewable energy, energy efficiency, electric vehicles and efficiency in industry – where Australia did not.
“Is that having enough of an effect in China? No. But will China peak its emissions by the end of the 2020s? Yes,” Hare said.
“Will Australia? There is no evidence that Australia will peak its emissions as far as I’ve seen in any projections that have been published.”.....
A report backed by the world’s major climate science bodies released on the eve of the summit found current plans would lead to a rise in average global temperatures of between 2.9C and 3.4C by 2100, a shift likely to bring catastrophic change across the globe......
Wednesday 25 September 2019
Scott Morrison & Co exceed their previous level of destructive behaviour in the face of climate change
David Rowe, 14 September 2019 |
By the early hours of Tuesday 24 September 2019 coal-burning power stations in eastern Australian mainland states had released over 99 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions into the air this year alone.
Sadly, this comes as no surprise as total all-sector emissions have been steadily rising since the 2013 federal election. Until by September 2016 they had reached 527.2Mt of CO2-e, by September 2017 533.3Mt of CO2-e, by March 2018 535.8Mt of CO2-e, by September 2018 536Mt of CO2-e and by end of March 2019 national greenhouse gas emissions stood at 538.9Mt of CO2-e.
Yet the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison Government is still continuing to carve a destructive path towards increasing the impacts of climate change for every person living in Australia.
The Sydney Morning Herald, 22 September 2019, excerpt:
Sadly, this comes as no surprise as total all-sector emissions have been steadily rising since the 2013 federal election. Until by September 2016 they had reached 527.2Mt of CO2-e, by September 2017 533.3Mt of CO2-e, by March 2018 535.8Mt of CO2-e, by September 2018 536Mt of CO2-e and by end of March 2019 national greenhouse gas emissions stood at 538.9Mt of CO2-e.
Yet the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison Government is still continuing to carve a destructive path towards increasing the impacts of climate change for every person living in Australia.
The Sydney Morning Herald, 22 September 2019, excerpt:
As delegates of the United Nations climate change summit - which Mr Morrison has snubbed - prepare to discuss emission reduction efforts this week, briefing notes obtained under Freedom of Information laws detail the emphasis placed on coal in the government's diplomatic relations.
Departmental briefing notes provided to Resources Minister Matt Canavan ahead of his official visit to Singapore and India last month canvass the potential to expand Australia's coal exports into Bangladesh - a nation that is among the most vulnerable to the effects of global warning.
The government is seeking to grow its coal exports in overseas markets as it looks to buttress the economic fallout from a deteriorating relationship with China.
Australian Conservation Foundation climate change campaigner Christian Slattery said Australia was "trashing its international reputation because of its addiction to polluting coal''.
“As major importers of Australian coal move to transition to cleaner forms of energy, the Morrison government is doing the coal industry’s bidding, trying to secure new markets," Mr Slattery said.....
Foreign Minister Marise Payne will front the UN climate change summit this week, but will not address delegates - as Australia is among a group of coal-supporting economies singled out as not getting a spot on the list of 63 speakers.
Mr Morrison's snub comes despite him being in the United States on an official visit.
In an email to the Prime Minister ahead of his official visit to Vietnam last month, bureaucrats advise him to push hard for an expansion of Australia's coal exports to the nation, which represented a "growth market".
"We strongly recommend a focus on coal exports to Vietnam as part of the Prime Minister’s planned visit," the email said.
"There is potential for growth in exports to Vietnam to partially mitigate declining exports elsewhere, notably China."
The briefing said coal exports from Australia to Vietnam had more than doubled since the 2017-18 financial year, up from 4,286,390 tonnes or approximately $750 million in value.
A spokeswoman for the Prime Minister said in a statement that the government "promotes all of Australian energy exports in our trade discussions - coal, gas and renewables".
"These exports underpin the Australian economy, delivering billions in revenue to support essential services and support thousands of jobs in regional Australia."
ACF's Mr Slattery said the government "seems intent on selling a 20th century technology to a 21st century world and doing a great deal more climate damage while they are at it".
“Australia’s reported blocking by the UN Secretary-General from speaking at the special climate summit in New York is nothing short of an international embarrassment for a wealthy and developed country that prides itself on being a good international citizen," he said.
Saturday 14 September 2019
Monday 19 August 2019
Macquarie Media & 2GB flog radio shockjock Alan Jones with a limp lettuce
On the morning of Thursday 15 August 78 year-old radio shockjock and climate change denier Alan Jones opened his mouth on air and inappropriately vented concerning New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.
After previously calling her "duplicitous", "gormless", "a clown", "a joke" and "lightweight" he expanded his criticism that morning.
According to Channel 10, Jone's exact words were "“Here she is preaching on global warming and saying that we’ve got to do something about climate change...I just wonder whether Scott Morrison is going to be fully briefed to shove a sock down her throat."
At first Jones refused to backdown from this statement and, misrepresented what he had actually said.
As has happened in the past when Jones was being very self-indulgent, insulting, verbally violent or inciting riot, some advertisers began to to re-consider their support of his breakfast program.
A personal apology was issued late on Friday 16 August 2019.
Then, having only just signed a new contract with Jones last May, Macquarie Media Limited and 2GB Radio flogged Alan Jones with this very limp lettuce:
Statement Image @JoshButler |
Saturday 17 August 2019
Sunday 2 June 2019
Only weeks away from mid 2019 and staring into a future where the full force of climate change prevails and still denialists are being given media air time
Here is one of Australia's own 'professional' climate change denialists who allegedly uses a stage name............
Here is a genuine voice of science and reason (click on thread)........@JoanneNova: Warming is mostly beneficial, especially in Australia. Carbon dioxide feeds plants that are more likely to be drought prone.— Sky News Australia (@SkyNewsAust) May 26, 2019
MORE: https://t.co/ykweMevBOK #outsiders pic.twitter.com/EZrEh7W2d5
My farming family and I are fed up with all the 'climate sceptic' letters published in the @farmweekly. I'm a palaeoclimatologist and this week I spoke up. My letter was printed.. it goes like this (thread):— Joel Pedro (@BBQPossum) May 24, 2019
Labels:
climate change,
climate change denialists,
science
Thursday 30 May 2019
United Nations asked to pass judgement on the impact of Australian Morrison Government's climate change 'denialism'
The Conversation, May 2019:
Climate change threatens
Australia in many different ways, and can devastate rural and urban communities
alike. For Torres Strait Islanders, it’s a crisis that’s washing away their
homes, infrastructure and even
cemeteries.
The failure to take
action on this crisis has
led a group of Torres Strait Islanders to
lodge a climate change case with the United Nations Human Rights
Committee against the Australian federal government.
It’s the
first time the Australian government has been taken to the UN for
their failure to take action on climate change. And its the first time people
living on a low lying island have taken action against any government.
This case – and other
parallel cases – demonstrate that climate change is “fundamentally a human rights issue”,
with First Nations most vulnerable to the brunt of a changing climate.
The group of Torres
Strait Islanders lodging this appeal argue that the Australian government has
failed to take adequate action on climate change. They allege that the re-elected
Coalition government has not only steered Australia off track in meeting globally
agreed emissionsreductions, but has set us on course for climate
catastrophe.
In doing so, Torres
Strait Islanders argue that the government has failed to uphold human
rights obligations and violated their rights to culture, family and
life.
This case is a show of
defiance in the face of Australia’s years of political inertia and turmoil over
climate change.
It is the first time
people living on a low-lying island – acutely vulnerable in the face of rising
sea levels – have brought action against a government. But it may also be a
sign of things to come, as more small island nations face impending climate
change threats…..
The
Guardian, 13 May 2019:
The complaint will
assert that the Morrison government has failed to take adequate action to
reduce emissions or pursue proper adaptation measures on the islands and, as a
consequence, has failed fundamental human rights obligations to Torres Strait
Islander people.
One of the complainants,
sixth-generation Warraber man, Kabay Tamu, said in a statement: “When erosion
happens, and the lands get taken away by the seas, it’s like a piece of us that
gets taken with it – a piece of our heart, a piece of our body. That’s why it
has an effect on us. Not only the islands but us, as people.
“We have a sacred site
here, which we are connected to spiritually. And disconnecting people from the
land, and from the spirits of the land, is devastating.
“It’s devastating to even imagine that my
grandchildren or my great-grandchildren being forced to leave because of the
effects that are out of our hands.
“We’re currently seeing
the effects of climate change on our islands daily, with rising seas, tidal
surges, coastal erosion and inundation of our communities.”
The non-profit
coordinating the complaint by the Torres Strait Islanders says this will be the
first climate change litigation brought against the Australian government based
on a human rights complaint, and also the first legal action worldwide brought
by inhabitants of low-lying islands against a nation state.
Lawyers with environmental law
non-profit ClientEarth, are representing the islanders, with support from
British-based barristers.
The UN Human Rights
Committee is a body of 18 legal experts that sits in Geneva. The committee
monitors compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights.
The complainants are
alleging that Australia has violated article 27, the right to culture; article
17, the right to be free from arbitrary interference with privacy, family and
home; and article 6, the right to life.
According to briefing
material supplied by ClientEarth, the complaint alleges these rights have been
violated both by Australia’s insufficient
greenhouse gas mitigation targets and plans, and by its failure to
fund adequate
coastal defence and resilience measures on the islands, such as
seawalls.
Lawyers for the
islanders allege that the catastrophic nature of the predicted future impacts
of climate change on the Torres Strait
Islands, including the total submergence of ancestral homelands, is a
sufficiently severe impact as to constitute a violation of the rights to
culture, family and life.
The islanders want the
government to commit at least $20m for emergency measures such as seawalls, as
requested by local authorities, and sustained investment in long-term adaptation
measures to ensure the islands can continue to be inhabited.
They want a commitment
to reduce emissions by at least 65% below 2005 levels by 2030 and going net
zero before 2050 and a phase out of thermal coal, both for domestic electricity
generation and export markets....
Wednesday 3 April 2019
Est. 32 per cent of Australian farmers still haven't come to grips with the reality of climate change
ABC News, 31 March 2019:
When the Reserve Bank
announced recently that it was factoring climate change into interest rate
calculations, it underlined a mainstream acceptance of potential impacts for a
warming planet.
Climate change now had
economic consequences.
But resistance to the
premise of human-induced climate change still rages, including in regional and rural
communities, which often are the very communities already feeling its effects.
"When you look at
the results of different surveys going back a few years, farmers were four
times more likely than the national average to be climate change deniers,"
said Professor Mark Howden, director at the ANU's Climate Change Institute.
"That was about 32
per cent versus about 8 per cent for the population average."
So, why do so many
people in regional and rural areas not believe in climate change?
ABC Central West's
Curious project put that question to some experts, who say the answer has more
to do with human nature than scientific reasoning.
Professor Matthew
Hornsey from the University of Queensland has dedicated his academic career to
understanding why people reject apparently reasonable messages.
"The metaphor
that's used in my papers is around what we call cognitive scientists versus
cognitive lawyers," he said.
"What we hope
people do when they interpret science is that they weigh it up in an
independent way and reach a conclusion.
"But in real life,
people behave more like lawyers, where they have a particular outcome that they
have in mind and then they selectively interpret the evidence in a way that
prosecutes the outcome they want to reach.
"So you selectively expose yourself to
information, you selectively critique the information, you selectively remember
the information in a way that reinforces what your gut is telling you."
This is known as
motivated reasoning — and online news source algorithms and social forums are
only enabling the phenomenon, allowing for further information curation for the
individual…..
Professor Hornsey says
there is another force fanning the flames of distrust between the scientific
and non-scientific communities.
"One thing that can
be said without huge amounts of controversy is that there is a relationship
between political conservatism and climate scepticism in Australia," he
said.
To better understand
this, the professor's research took him to 27 countries and found that for two-thirds
of these, there was no relationship between being politically conservative and
a climate science sceptic.
But Australia's
relationship between the two trailed only the United States in strength of
connection, he said.
"What we were
seeing was the greater the per-capita carbon emissions of a country, the
greater that relationship between climate scepticism and conservatism."
Professor Hornsey argues
that per-capita carbon emissions is an indicator for fossil fuel reliance,
which in turn creates greater stakes for the vested interests at play.
"When the stakes
are high and the vested interests from the fossil fuel community are enormous,
you see funded campaigns of misinformation, coaching conservatives what to
think about climate change," he said.
"That gets picked up by conservative media and
you get this orchestrated, very consistent, cohesive campaign of misinformation
to send the signal that the science is not yet in."…..
Professor Hornsey
believes current discourse can make farmers feel as though they are at the
centre of an overwhelming societal problem, triggering further psychological
rejection of the science.
"I feel sorry for
farmers around the climate change issue, because this is a problem that has
been caused collectively.
"Farmers are only a small part of the problem but
they are going to be a huge part of the solution, so I think they feel put
upon.
"They feel like
they are constantly being lectured about their need to make sacrifices to adapt
to a set of circumstances that are largely out of their control."
In 2010, in response to
a drought policy review panel, the Commonwealth initiated a pilot of drought
reform measures in Western Australia.
John Noonan from Curtin
University led the program, which went on to have staggering success in
converting not only participating farmers' attitudes to climate science, but
also in restructuring their farm management models in response to a changing
climate.
"First of all, when
talking with farmers, we didn't call it the drought pilot — we used the name
Farm Resilience Program," Mr Noonan said.
"If you go in to beat people up and have a
climate change conversation, you get nowhere.
"We got the farmers
to have conversations about changing rainfall patterns and continuing dry
spells, rather than us telling them what to do.
"And they told us
everything that we needed them to tell us for us to reflect that back to them
and say, 'Well, actually, that's climate change'.
"If you take a very
left-brain, very scientific approach to these matters, you are going nowhere,
and what we used was very right-brain, very heart and gut-driven — and it
worked."
Mr Evans agrees,
underscoring the deeply personal connection farmers have to the land, its role
in their business approach, and why the message must be managed psychologically
rather than scientifically.
"Ultimately, for a
farmer to confront the reality that this new climate might be permanent,
requires them to go through the five stages of grief: denial, anger,
bargaining, depression and acceptance."
Tuesday 2 April 2019
Morrison Government still refusing to tackle rising greenhouse gas emissions
The
Guardian, 31 March 2019:
Cuts to carbon emissions
from vehicle efficiency standards have been left out of government projections
for meeting Australia’s Paris climate commitments, indicating the policy has
been shelved.
The office of the
transport minister, Michael McCormack, said the government had not made a
decision on “how or when” standards to cut carbon pollution from vehicles might
be implemented.
After almost five years
of submissions a spokesman said the government “is not going to rush into a
regulatory solution” with regards to vehicle emissions.
New data shows
Australia’s emissions from transport are soaring and projected to be 82% higher
in 2030 than they were in 1990.
Australia lags behind
the rest of the world in setting vehicle efficiency standards, with most
countries in the OECD adopting policies to reduce emissions and improve the
efficiency of cars.
The ministerial forum on
vehicle emissions was set up under the Turnbull government in 2015, and
stakeholders are frustrated at the lack of progress.
Fact sheets produced by
the government that set out how it intends to reach Australia’s emissions
reduction targets under the Paris agreement suggest any policy on vehicle
emissions standards has been abandoned.
In 2015, the government
produced a
graph indicating it expected to achieve cuts of about 100m tonnes
between 2020 and 2030 through vehicle emissions standards.
The government’s latest
climate package contains no mention of this, and projects only about
10m tonnes of abatement through an electric vehicle strategy, with no reference
to vehicle emissions standards....
Thursday 28 February 2019
While Scott Morrison is trying to convince the electorate he now believes in climate change one of the denialists in his government is trying to erase it from school textbooks
There is Australian Prime Minister and Liberal MP for Cook since 2007 Scott Morrison fronting the media trying to convince sceptical voters that he and his government are now fully behind the need to tackle climate change.
However also talking to media is Liberal MP for Hughes since 2010 Craig Kelly doing his level best to undermine the current round political propaganda by calling for a rewrite of both climate science and history.
His climate change denying argument is far from unique.
Sometime around 1904 in far-off England a probably homesick second-generation Australian called Isobel Marion Dorothea Mackellar penned a six stanza poem called The Core Of My Heart aka My Country. This poem has been subverted by climate change deniers into a ‘proof’ that climate change is not real and is not happening right now.
Here Mr. Kelly citing all he can remember from the second stanza………
The
Guardian, 26
February 2019:
The publisher of a NSW
year-10 history book has rejected complaints from the federal Liberal
backbencher Craig Kelly that it misrepresents facts about climate change.
Kelly took issue with
the characterisation of climate change in the textbook Pearson
History New South Wales.
Kelly has written to the
NSW education minister, Rob Stokes, saying the book’s description of Tony
Abbott as a climate change denier was “an offensive slur equating it with
Holocaust deniers”, the
Daily Telegraph reported.
The book says: “Climate
change is noticeable in Australia, with more extreme frequent weather events
such as the 2002-06
drought or the 2010-11 Queensland floods.”
“That is simply an
inaccurate statement that is in a school history book,” Kelly told
parliament’s federation
chamber last week.
“What chance do we have
of forming the best policies in this nation to deal with fire, floods and
drought if we have children being misled by incorrect information in our
history books?”
He quoted Dorothea
Mackellar’s poem My Country to argue contemporary natural disasters are nothing
out of the ordinary: “I love a sunburnt country, a land of sweeping plains, of
ragged mountain ranges, of droughts and flooding rains,” the poem says.
“We need to understand
that we live in that same country that Dorothea Mackellar wrote about over a
hundred years ago,” Kelly said.
“That is why we need to
prepare and help people recover from their resources instead of wasting money
pretending that we can change the weather.”
The Australian Bureau of
Meterology says “one of
the greatest impacts of climate variability and climate change occurs through
changes in the frequency and severity of extreme events.”
It describes the 2011
Brisbane floods as the
second-highest flood level of the last 100 years, after January 1974.
The bureau and CSIRO’s
latest State of the Climate report said Australia
was experiencing more extreme heat, longer fire seasons, rising oceans and more
marine heatwaves, consistent with a changing climate.......
Saturday 2 February 2019
Tweets of the Week
The heat is so extreme in Australia that roads are literally melting, bats are falling from trees, and over 1 million fish have dies to the extreme temperatures.— Mike Hudema (@MikeHudema) January 29, 2019
The climate crisis is here, the question is will we do what it takes to address it.#ActOnClimate pic.twitter.com/rY79xDOeES
Labels:
climate change,
climate change denialists
Monday 28 January 2019
Climate change denialism is alive and apparently thriving in 2019
One would
expect this dodgy co-sponsorship from the likes of Facebook Inc, but Google and
Microsoft do surprise.
Mother Jones, 22 January 2019:
Google, Facebook, and
Microsoft have publicly acknowledged the dangers of global warming, but last
week they all sponsored a conference that promoted climate change
denial to young libertarians.
All three tech companies
were sponsors of LibertyCon,
the annual convention of the libertarian group Students for Liberty, which took
place in Washington, DC. Google was a platinum sponsor, ponying up $25,000, and
Facebook and Microsoft each contributed $10,000 as gold sponsors. The donations
put the tech companies in the top tier of the event’s backers. But the
donations also put the firms in company with some of the event’s other
sponsors, which included three groups known for their work attacking climate
change science and trying to undermine efforts to reduce carbon emissions.
Among the most notable
was the CO2 Coalition, a group founded in 2015 to spread
the “good news” about a greenhouse gas whose increase in the atmosphere is
linked to potentially catastrophic climate change. The coalition is funded by conservative foundations that have backed other climate
change denial efforts. These include the Mercer Family Foundation, which
in recent years has donated hundreds of thousands of
dollars to
right-wing think tanks engaged in climate change denialism, and the
Charles Koch Institute, the charitable arm of one of the brothers behind Koch
Industries, the oil and gas behemoth.
In the LibertyCon
exhibit hall, the CO2 Coalition handed out brochures that said its goal is to
“explain how our lives and our planet Earth will be improved by additional
atmospheric carbon dioxide.” One brochure claimed that “more carbon
dioxide will help everyone, including future generations of our families” and
that the “recent increase in CO2 levels has had a measurable, positive effect
on plant life,” apparently because the greenhouse gas will make plants grow
faster.
In a Saturday
presentation, Caleb Rossiter, a retired statistics professor and a
member of the coalition, gave a presentation titled “Let’s Talk About Not
Talking: Should There Be ‘No Debate’ that Industrial Carbon Dioxide is Causing
Climate Catastrophe?” In his presentation, Rossiter told the assembled students
that the impact of climate change on weather patterns has been vastly
exaggerated. “There has been no increase in storms, in intensity or frequency,”
he said. “The data don’t show a worrisome trend.”
He insisted that when he
hears the news that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are rising, “I’m
cheering!” That’s because, he said, carbon dioxide “is a fertilizer” that has
made Africa greener and increased food production there, reducing human misery.
Rossiter also claimed
that carbon dioxide emissions correlate with wealth and that the greenhouse gas
“improves life expectancy” because poor countries that start burning fossil
fuels have a more consistent power supply and can then clean up their water.
“I’m happy when carbon dioxide is up, because it means poverty is down,” he
declared.
“I come not to bury your
carbon but to praise it,” he concluded.....
Thursday 3 January 2019
The Liberal Party of Australia: fighting to suppress climate science & avoiding responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions since 1996
The
Age, 1
January 2019:
The Howard government
was urged more than 20 years ago to consider an emissions trading scheme, while
its signature plans to deal with Australia's greenhouse gas emissions were
considered by its own departments to be merely aimed at deflecting global
criticism.
As the Morrison government continues to fight a
debilitating internal battle over how to deal with climate change, previously
secret papers from the 1990s reveal a suite of major government
departments said the most effective and efficient way to deal with greenhouse
gases was to impose a carbon price.
Cabinet papers from 1996
and 1997 released on Tuesday by the National Archives reveal the beginnings of
the Howard government's drawn-out response to the threat posed by rising
greenhouse gas emissions and the way some of those issues are still playing out
in the Morrison government…….
Government departments
headed by Prime Minister and Cabinet, Treasury and Foreign Affairs fleshed out
the details of a series of proposals backed by the government in September 1997
in a bid to deal with Australia's emissions.
The co-ordinating
document produced by the departments, which were aiming to finalise a package
discussed at cabinet earlier in the month, made clear the bureaucracy did not
believe the government's plans would go nearly far enough in cutting emissions
but may be sufficient to deflect international criticism.
"None of the
packages presented here would achieve the stabilisation of emissions at 1990
levels," they said.
"Rather, they are
aimed at deflecting criticism that Australia is not fully committed to reducing
its emissions."
The departments costed a
series of proposals which would ultimately become part of the government's
official response to climate change.
These included a focus
on tree plantations, encouragement for businesses to slice their emissions, the
introduction of ethanol into petrol and subsidies to boost investment in
renewable energy.
They noted Australia had
a "poor international reputation for driving fuel efficient cars",
arguing significant gains could be made by improving the nation's car
fleet.
Building codes, reform
of the energy market and investment in climate research were all encouraged.
But the departments,
which acknowledged the government's opposition to a price signal, said these
would ultimately be expensive initiatives which would not deliver a real impact
on the nation's overall emissions profile.
"The most effective
way to reduce emissions would be to combine significant price signals (either
general or sectoral increases in taxes on greenhouse producing activities),
information so firms and individuals can reduce greenhouse production,
opportunities to invest in carbon sinks and some degree of compulsion to
address areas where markets cannot be made to work effectively," they
said.
"It is generally
agreed that reductions will not happen without significant persuasion,
incentives or leadership from government."
In late 2006, Mr Howard
announced a panel would investigate an emissions trading scheme. Both the
Howard government and the Kevin Rudd-led ALP would take a trading scheme policy
to the following year's election.
But in 1997, the
government's most esteemed departments told cabinet it should consider an ETS
even if the results of the study were kept hidden from the public.
"A study of
possible emissions trading mechanisms and regulations would help position
Australia in the event that emissions trading is introduced
internationally," they said.
"This study would
not be for public announcement since it may not help our international
negotiating position if it became public knowledge."....
The
Guardian, 1
January 2018:
In June 1996, cabinet
agreed that “Australia’s overall objective in climate change negotiations
should be to safeguard our national trade and economic interests while
advancing compatible outcomes that are environmentally and economically
effective”.
While Australia
recognised “the need for effective global action on climate change”, it vowed
to pursue an international agreement that “does not contain targets which are
legally binding” and argued for differentiated, rather than uniform, reduction
targets.
The then environment
minister, Robert Hill, reported to cabinet that for the first time the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scientific report had said that the
balance of scientific evidence supported the view that the changes in climate
and greenhouse gas concentrations were due to human activity.
Small island states were
proposing a 20% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions from 1990 levels by 2005.
While other time frames were being discussed, all were potentially problematic
for Australia because of its carbon-intensive economy.
Hill told the cabinet
that modelling showed Australia’s emissions from the energy sector – accounting
for half of national emissions – were projected to be 30% above 1990 levels by
2010…..
The consternation grew
further by mid-1997. A joint submission to cabinet warned of the prospect of an
“EU–US bilateral understanding for progressing climate change” at a forthcoming
G7 summit…..
The cabinet actively
considered walking away from Kyoto altogether.
It was facing publishing
its future emissions as part of the Kyoto process but modelling was now showing
that emissions from the energy sector would be 40% to 50% above 1990 levels by
2010…
The cabinet also agreed
in July to establish a climate change taskforce to advance Australia’s domestic
greenhouse gas strategies, to strengthen its bargaining stance. One option to
be explored was “domestic and international emissions trading”.
In the following months,
Treasury modelled various measures for reducing domestic emissions.
The memorandum warned
that none of its scenarios would cap carbon emissions at 1990 levels but would
achieve potential cuts of 22%.
And so began Australia’s
long and tortured debate over carbon trading schemes.
A proposal was put
forward by the Australian Greenhouse Office in 2000, but was scuttled in
cabinet; another came forward in 2003, but was vetoed by Howard.
Finally, in the dying
days of his government in December 2006, Howard announced an emissions trading
scheme, after bureaucrats convinced him it was the most efficient way to meet
Australia’s commitments.
BACKGROUND
National Archives of Australia, 1996 and 1997 – Keating
and Howard governments, Cabinet
Papers, released 1 January 2018.
The Howard Government fight against taking responsibility for Australia's own domestic greenhouse gas missions.....
See: https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/NAAMedia/ShowImage.aspx?B=32709070&T=PDF. My apologies for not posting this document but current slow upload times have meant that I cannot yet display this document here.
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