Clean Energy Bill Passed Last Week. Sun Still Shines .

Having passed by 74 votes to 72 in the lower house, the Clean Energy Bill's passage into Australian law is assured with the Greens holding the balance of power in the senate.

What a wake of destruction she has left in her path. Four political leaders felled. Prime Ministers John Howard in 2007, Liberal, and Kevin Rudd in 2010, Labor. Howard lost because his 11th hour climate conversion was not believable. Rudd, because he deferred ETS action to appease a ratings slump.

Opposition leaders were not spared.

Support for Brendan Nelson as leader within the Liberal Party had all but collapsed by the end of July 2008, battered by his repeated gaffes on emissions trading and climate change. Malcolm Turnbull took over Liberal leadership late in 2008 prosecuting the case for an emissions trading system. He worked with Rudd's new Labor government and with business to design the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, only to be deposed in the leadership spill engineered by Tony Abbott, November 2009, in protest against Liberal Party support for the ETS.

In the path she followed we see a much altered, more volatile landscape. In 2007 there was overwhelming political support for an ETS, some 90% of the population. Now only about 30% support it. Abbott's personal approval and his party's ratings soared on the back of the carbon tax scare campaign mounted by resources industry front groups and fanned by red hot shock jocks like Alan Jones and Andrew Bolt. Prime Minister Gillard's had sunk to an all time low by the time the Clean Energy Bill 2011 passed.

Yet both these trajectories have altered since the Bill was passed:

The latest Herald/Nielsen poll finds Labor's primary vote has jumped 3 percentage points in a month to 30 per cent, a small increase but psychologically significant because it is the first time since May Labor's first preference vote has been in the 30s.
...
On the downside for the Coalition, Mr Abbott's personal ratings fell to their worst levels since he became leader.

The poll, taken after the government passed the carbon price legislation through the lower house on Wednesday, shows attitudes towards the carbon policy have hardened, with 59 per cent opposed, a 3-point increase since August. Support for a carbon price fell 2 percentage points to 37 per cent. Support for a carbon price among Labor voters has slipped 5 points in two months.
...
Ms Gillard's rating as preferred prime minister rose 4 points to 44 per cent and Mr Abbott's stayed steady at 48 per cent. Ms Gillard's approval rating rose 1 point to 33 per cent while her disapproval was steady at 62 per cent.

Mr Abbott's approval fell 2 percentage points to 41 per cent and his disapproval rose 2 points to 54 per cent.

These are his worst ratings since becoming Opposition Leader on December 1, 2009, and are similar to numbers experienced by Mr Turnbull just before he was deposed. The poll finds 44 per cent of voters back Mr Turnbull as Coalition leader compared with 28 per cent for Mr Abbott and 23 per cent for Mr Hockey.

Mr Turnbull has much stronger support among Greens and Labor voters.

Mr Rudd is preferred as leader by 61 per cent of voters compared with 30 per cent for Ms Gillard. In a match-up against Mr Smith, Mr Rudd leads by 60 per cent to 29 per cent.

In a match-up between Ms Gillard and Mr Smith, Ms Gillard leads by 44 per cent to 40 per cent.

She has wrought her damage, littering political fortunes and polarised public opinion, leaving a long trail of destruction behind, this idea of pricing pollution into energy costs so clean energy becomes commercial. But look up. A week has almost passed and the atmosphere is calming. The sun still shines and soon we'll have tools to control emissions and move economic growth onto a more sustainable path.

We many not be able to give our kids and grand-kids a stable climatic inheritance that was once their birthright, but at least we can bequeath them tools to manage their footprint, and to drive refinement of cheap, clean, green energy.

After all that has passed, this is a time to savour. For the first time Australia's position in the clean energy race is looking better. We have moved from the back of the peloton to somewhere in the energy-saving middle - ahead of the US, China, India and the developing world, behind the Europeans taking up the front - positioning us for some leadership further down the track.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Tony Abbott supports a carbon tax

It's hard to believe than Tony Abbott ever endorsed a carbon tax, even tacitly, given the ferocity of his sustained attack on Julia Gillard for announcing her government's intention to set a carbon price next year in anticipation of an emission trading system.

But endorse it he did, on page 172 of Battlelines, the book he wrote after the Liberals lost office and before he took over leadership of the opposition in the spill that cost Malcolm Turnbull the top job by a singe vote. The issue was the ETS that Malcolm had fought so hard for.

Tony's words are cautious, but the meaning is clear:

"...many now think that a carbon charge scheme directed at the least environmentally efficient producers would be simpler and fairer than an emissions trading scheme."

The description, "carbon charge scheme" is hilarious, given that he battered Rudd's ETS with his "great big new tax" positioning. The guy means 'carbon tax'; he doesn't mean 'carbon price', as you need to have a price in order to have an ETS.

Given this, and the multiple positions that Abbott has held on climate change, it's quite obvious that Abbott's line of attack on Gillard is rank opportunism. Throw in the hard to ignore fact that the opposition does actually share the same emissions reductions objectives as the Gillard government, and one is left wondering about the Abbott's credibility. No wonder he has worked so hard to paint Julia as a liar. A case of projection, perhaps?

UPDATE:

Crikey has detailed Abbott's many stances on global warming, and included another example of Abbott's endorsement of a carbon tax:

Still, a new tax would be the intelligent skeptic’s way to deal with minimising emissions because it would be much easier than a property right to reduce or to abolish should the justification for it change.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Where do we go from here?

The last three months or so has been somewhat depressing for those hoping for concerted global action on climate change (which is on reason why my blogging has been light). Yet, they have been heady months for what is becoming a powerful climate-skeptic movement.

The relentless amplification of allegations from 'climategate', the damp-squib Copenhagen conference, and the constant attacks on the professionalism of the IPCC have taken a toll on the public support for global warming mitigation measures.

In Australia, Newspoll is documenting that decline:

Good luck if you can read the fine-print. Clicking on the image should give you a bigger one, but not much clearer than The Australian version, from whence it came. But, the point is, while the community is still mostly aware that climate change is happening, a whopping 84% believed so in July 2008 but this figure is down by 11% a little over eighteen months later. The change in the percentage of those ascribing climate change to human influences has not been as great, nevertheless it is moving in the same direction - down.

All while certainty in the scientific community has moved in the opposite direction.

But, the biggest erosion has been in support for the CPRS, and it has been in a greater proportion to the change in belief that climate change is real. Fifteen percent fewer are in favour of a CPRS/ETS than were sixteen months ago, and 13% more are against it. To my mind, that is a consequence of the Rudd government not bothering with selling it to the public, preferring to let the Coalition's previous internal woes dominate the discourse.

Now the Coalition opposition have coalesced under the plain speaking Tony Abbott, and convoluted Kevin has to actually start selling.

While all of this is interesting to watch, the idea that the planet's climate salvation is going to come from the political arena, one that I held for years, grows weaker by the month for me.

I am starting to think that our necessary salvation is going to come from people themselves - from individuals doing what they have to do to reduce their impact. If the 73% of Australians who are concerned each reduced their annual co2 footprint by 1 tonne, the saving would roughly be 16 millions tonnes. Not shabby, when you consider that a coal-fired power station emits roughly about 1.2 million tones of co2 per annum.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

To watch in 2010: Tony Abbott vs Tony Abbott

Happy New Decade to you all... let's hope it is the decade when the world finally takes man-made climate change by the horns, and soothes the savage beast. Science tells us that we don't have much option but to do so.

Anyway, I'm back from brief but restful holidays, so that also means I'm back to watching the big game in town. I am not talking about the cricketing carnage that Pakistan is putting a discombobulated Australian Eleven through, but Tony Abbott's 'cost-free' formulation to gazump global warming, which he promised for February.

Paul Daley pings Abbott's dilemma in today's SMH :

It seems most unlikely at this stage that the Government will win sufficient support for the legislation when it is again presented to Parliament next month.

Between now and then Abbott must formulate a policy to reduce Australia's carbon production that is not based on the emissions trading model he so opposes.

It's no easy task. He must convince voters that the Liberals under a big-C conservative leader such as himself can be genuine advocates for “green” measures to reduce our carbon output. Such green measures, of course, depend largely on heavy regulation – and government regulation is the enemy of both progressive and conservative Liberal-ism.

On human-made climate change – about which Abbott is something of an avowed sceptic – he is proposing what one Liberal colleague describes as “a type of progressive conservatism”. The Government will come out all guns blazing to discredit whatever policy he unveils as an alternative to the carbon reduction scheme come February.

Abbott's climate change policy will, however, be primarily about contrasting himself with both Rudd and the Government.

So we see here how Abbott is his own worst intellectual enemy, a conundrum of confused contradictions:

He belittles the government's proposed emission trading system by wrongfully calling the proposed free-market mechanism a "Great Big New Tax". Yet the only other effective way to conceivably achieve carbon emissions containment is via a Great Big New Tax of the kind proposed by NASA's James Hansen in his letter to the Obamas.

As the article states, Abbot would need to impose onerous legislation on business and the general population in order to achieve his cost-free containment, in contradiction to the stated principles of the party of small government. To draw up his scheme, People Skills has already hinted that he intends to pilfer the green ideas from Malcolm Turnbull, the man he deposed... for his green ideas. The man who once considered joining the priesthood now reduces peer-review science to a "green religion", and reckons his salvation will come from our farmers who are going to bio-sequester carbon in their soils.

I am so confused that I can't decide whether Anthony Abbott is a clod or a sod.

Perhaps the pathology of Abbot's illogic helps us explain how he has now painted himself into his colourful corner as he waits for February's bell: if, as he claims, "climate change is crap", then wtf is he doing coining a policy to combat it?

No explanation there, unless you now see that Abbott's famed grasp merely extends to media grabs; that our pugilistic Mad Monk is the Pontiff of Populism, not sound policy.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Joyce hoist on his own petard

One of the most useful sayings that French, that fabulous language, has given us is 'hoist on his own petard' - to be blown up by your own bomb (pronounced 'bembh' for ze Pink Panther fans).

Petard also handily translates to 'fart' -- the same noise emanating from Malcolm Turnbull's opposition backbench whenever he tried to push the Coalition's promised bipartisan message on climate change action. One of the main culprits was the National's climate change denier-in-chief, Barnaby Joyce, and for his noisy efforts in the plot to install Tony Abbot as the new opposition leader in his recent climate denier coup, he has been promoted to the shadow cabinet.

You would think Barnaby would now conduct himself with polite restraint, but no. He wasted no time farting in the general direction of China, and America, only to be told by Abbot to now stop his public emissions.

Ironically, one of the best outcomes of promoting Barnaby to the front bench, is that he may finally prevented from airing his more off-tune, odorous odium.

UPDATE - it ain't gonna work out...

Phillip Coorey on the dillema facing the retail Liberal party:

Joyce rose with the full imprimatur of Minchin and Abbott but he drove a hard bargain. He wanted the key portfolio and demanded the shadow ministry be expanded by one so his entry did not result in a fellow National being punted. There are 14 Nationals in Parliament - nine MPs and five senators. Nationals make up 15 per cent of the Coalition caucus and 20 per cent of its shadow cabinet.

If the idea of promoting Joyce was to get him into the tent to curb his excesses, it failed miserably in week one.

....

There will be no reining in of Joyce. As he told the Herald on Tuesday: "It's not as though you have a personality transplant when you go into cabinet."

Being a practical peoples, I think Australians would just settle for a brain-transplant.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy