Will Howard be alive to trade carbon?

Yesterday winter officially began in Australia, yet here I am still wearing me favourite t-shirt and blogging away in me favourite grundies. You, dear reader, should consider yourself seriously honoured.

So it is with a certain sense of irony that I witness that our prime global warming denialist, Prime Minister John Howard, release his Report on the Task Group on Emissions Trading into such an under-dressed climate. While his unprecedented acknowledgement of the need for emissions trading is a radical departure from his previous stances, and a welcome one, it is still hard to throw off those nagging doubts sparked by those within own party referring to him as The Lying Rodent.

ANALYSIS OF THE REPORT OF PRIME MINISTER HOWARD’S
TASK GROUP ON EMISSIONS TRADING

by Wadard

1. The PM's terms of reference are biased towards sustaining coal and uranium exports.

“Australia enjoys major competitive advantages through the possession of large reserves of fossil fuels and uranium. In assessing Australia’s further contribution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, these advantages must be preserved.
Against this background the Task Group will be asked to advise on the nature and design of a workable global emissions trading system in which Australia would be able to participate. The Task Group will advise and report on additional steps that might be taken, in Australia, consistent with the goal of establishing such a system."

2. Some of the submissions by interested parties are confidential, that is, not publicly available for scrutiny.

Why so? Is transparency not important? The list of 'non-confidential' submitting parties is here:

3. The Task Group Committee comprises of senior bureaucrats, mainly economists, and fossil-fuel industry representatives, not scientists or renewable energy experts.

The Bureaucrats:
David Borthwick – Economist and former member of the Office of the Prime Minister; Ken Henry - Secretary to the Treasury in 2005; Michael L’Estrange - secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade; Mark Patterson - the chairman of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (2001).

The Fossil Fuel & Industry Representatives:
Peter Coates - coal miner Xstrata; Tony Concannon - International Power managing director; Chris Lynch - BHP Billiton executive director; John Marlay - Alumina Chief Executive; Margaret Jackson - chairwoman of Qantas; John Stewart - National Australia Bank.

So honestly - do I really need to take this analysis further?

If the godfathers of the local Mafia and the Yakusa, the snakeheads of the Chinese Triads, as well as the financial manager from the Al Qaeda in Afghanistan opium franchise, their Russian Crime Syndicate partners, and the Columbian Cocaine Cartels were all brought together at the taxpayers' expense to form a working group to develop a framework to combat drug trafficking, and they sought submissions from the Banditos, Nomads and Hells Angels motorbike gangs, amongst others, would you read their report with confidence or amusement?

Well, that's how I feel about this task force's report, which you can download here and judge for yourself. Let me know what you think.

I don't like being so cynical, but Howard's track record in the integrity stakes makes Judas look like Jesus. I may be wrong to be so dismissive; it's just that they want to wait to 2012 to kick-off their carbon trading. That's five years away; Given Howard's advanced age I wonder whether he is having a lend of us all?

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Still the Lucky Country

Somewhere along the way over these last ten years, I lost that feeling that comes with buying into to the sentiment that Australia is the Lucky Country. I felt we had surrendered the title in Kyoto. But c'mon ozzy, how spoilt rotten am I? It's not like we're the really unlucky country.

I looked up how much we had worth in energy resources:

Coal

We have 73 billion tonnes of identified in situ black coal resources, enough to last over 200 years at current rates of export, according to the Australian Coal Association. That is $A4.9 trillion worth. A tidy nest-egg.

In 2005 we exported 30% of the world's coal. And 30% of the global resultant carbon dioxide emissions. Not so cool. It's a bit like crapping in your nest.

Anyway...

Before returning to upbeat, I do want to point out that it is this externalised cost that we have to factor in - the coal we export today that comes back to us in debilitated climate in our 50th annual reporting cycle. The Stern Report reckons that unchecked rates of carbon dioxide emissions will set our global economy back by 25% by then.

Using this measure our coal nest-egg is really only worth $3.6 trillion.

Still. That's good. Maybe not quite up there with the big swinging dicks, but certainly "relaxed and comfortable". Mission accomplished down under.

Uranium

Call me old fashioned... I think we should be keeping all our uranium reserves our own bloody secret, not telling India and China how much we have! Indian army: 890,000 active troops, ranking at #3. Chinese army: 1.7 million active troops, ranking at #1. Australian army: 54,000 active troops, ranking #68. Think I am chicken, punk? No. of countries in this picture that posess nuclear weapons: 2. Do you think one of those two is us?

Shhhhh.Walk around quietly, hide the size of your stick. Don't sell sticks.

Not a fair treatment of the subject of uranium? Ok, here are more serious estimates:

Australia boasts something like 40% of the world's uranium, or 28% of recoverable reserves depending whose statistics you read.

Copyright of FNArena

Coal will last us 200 years. Australia has enough uranium to last... well, one global newclear war, really. In economics this is known as a trade externality, and in the military, as blowback.

Solar energy

All I can find on Google is this quote, which I believe to be accurate since Dr Davis Mills told it to Kerry O'Brien on the 7:30 Report tonight:

The amount of solar energy hitting Australia in one summer day is about half the total annual global energy use! Prof. Martin Green

In 2004 the worldwide energy consumption of the human race was estimated as 15 TW by the United States Energy Information Administration.^[1](TW=10¹² Watts). We export 30% of the the world's coal at $24.5 billion per annum. Coal provides 3.5 TW annual energy globally. Extrapolating out, the world's coal market is worth $81.7 billion p.a., and the world's total energy bill (minus externalities) is worth four times that at $326.8 billion in coal terms.

My rock-climbing logic gets me to this heady summit -- the amount of solar energy hitting Australia is worth about $163.4 billion, with no externalities, in one summer day!

Ah, that lucky country feeling is starting to come back again. As if we couldn't harness the solar energy if we set our minds to it? We are so bloody ingenious a nation that we give away our best civilising innovations and innovators, mainly to California. Like the blackbox flight recorder, the car-radio, and the refrigerator.

And, Dr David Mills.

Global Warning Climate Change Environment Science CO2 Carbon Sink Earth Australia Kyoto Energy

Greenhouse Mafia runs Aussie government policy

Fossil fuel industry lobbyists writing government greenhouse policy. The nation's leading climate scientists censored at the behest of political masters. Only in America.

Wrong mate. It is happening here. ABC's Four Corners has aired amazing revelations by whistleblower Dr Guy Pearse, Speechwriter to the Environment Minister 1997-2000, that paint a picture of how industry lobbyists, calling themselves greenhouse "mafia", have burrowed deep into the government policy machine to successfully hijack greenhouse policy. In the same program Janine Cohen interviews Dr Graeme Pearman, Former CSIRO Climate Director, who claims that he has been prevented from speaking out on scientific matters adverse to the government's greenhouse policies, and that he is not the only one.

If all this is true, the implications are unsettling in the least. What is big coal and the government hiding?

Dr Guy Pearse joined the Liberal Party at a young age, has worked for Senator Hill and Senator McDonald and a range of state and federal MPs and has been encouraged to pursue his ambitions in politics himself. He also does consultancy work and lobbying for the energy sector. It is these blue ribbon credentials that makes his allegations more explosive:

Q. Now why have you decided to speak out and break Liberal Party solidarity?

A. I'm speaking out because ah I've spent seven years finding out about an issue and I don't think that with a clear conscience I could continue without saying something. One of the things I decided quite early when I joined the Liberal Party or I observed quite early was that the Labor Party tended to have ownership of the environment as a policy area and I felt very strongly that it was an area that they need not have ownership of and that the Liberal Party could do better. I think the Liberal Party has done a lot better since I joined in the late 80s and I'm very proud of a lot of the things that that we've done, um both under my former boss Senator Hill's stewardship and subsequent to that.

Q. So why are you talking now then?

A. I'm talking now because while I'm very proud of a lot of the things that the party has done on environment policy, ah I think climate change is an exception, um and having spent seven years ah writing a PhD and researching the issue and ah it's a very complex one and most people don't have the time to get across it, having found out what I've now found out, I find it impossible to continue with a clear conscience without speaking out.

Q. In a nutshell, what have you found out?

A. Well really I've discovered why ah Australian policy, greenhouse policy is being driven by the mining and energy sectors, ah which I thought was curious along the way, given that they have such a small contribution to the economy. Um in 1900 the commodities generated 30 per cent of our GDP and our employment. Ah today that's more like eight per cent. The mining and energy sectors only generate about two per cent of our jobs.

Q. So are you saying they have a disproportionate amount of influence?

A. That's right and I've found this very curious ah from the beginning of my PhD work and initially I set out to look at another question, which was why other sectors of the economy were playing such a small role and this had become apparent to me in my work for Senator Hill. But in discovering the answer to why some sections of business were so quiet, I couldn't help but discover the story behind the influence of the mining and energy industry - the fossil fuel lobby effectively.

Senator Robert Hill was the environment minister who played hard at the Kyoto conference and came back with some great targets for Australia to achieve (from an economic development perspective) and a good position from which to ratify the Kyoto protocol. He argued that Australia's large rainforests and vegetative biomass function as large carbon sink and this should be taken into account in setting the targets. But we didn't ratify and Dr Guy Pearse says he has since researched why, and how this came to be.

Q. Describe what you did for Senator Robert Hill.

A. I was Senator Hill's speech writer ah from about beginning of 1997 until the end of 99, ah which covered the Kyoto conference periods, so in that time there was a lot of emphasis on climate change as an issue as the Government was formulating its position in the lead up to Kyoto and then afterwards so Kyoto protocol and climate change more broadly made up a pretty large proportion of my work at the time.

Q. And did you enjoy working in that area?

A. I certainly did. As I said I long ago decided that environment policy was an area of great opportunity for the Liberal Party, ah and climate change is obviously the most important of the environmental issues facing Australia and the world and that's well acknowledged so it was a great time to be involved in one of the top priority issues and also for me Senator Hill had been a mentor for many years um and it was a wonderful opportunity to work for him and I regard very highly the achievements he had in this area. Getting through the Kyoto target that he negotiated was a magnificent achievement.

Q. Do you think however in some respects he was undermined by the fossil fuel industry?

A. Well the proof's in the pudding I suppose and history would show that he was heavily undermined and ultimately the government ah changed its mind on its ratification of the Kyoto protocol, which he'd worked so hard to negotiate. The work that I've done, it shows conclusively not just that he was undermined but how he was undermined.

Q. And how was he undermined?

A. Well the members of what we now refer to as the greenhouse mafia, and that's their own label for themselves, they bragged in my research about how they undermined Senator Hill ah through the government processes, the relevant cabinet committees and so on.

Q. Now during your time with Senator Hill, you became aware of a small but very powerful group of industry players. Who were they and how influential were they?

A. During my time with Senator Hill my interest in this issue, the question that I was most interested in was why some sections of the economy that seemed to me to have a glaring interest in climate change were silent on the issue and why the ah diary appointments were tended to be dominated by ah a very small section of the economy, particularly the fossil fuel lobby. That was the question that I wanted to investigate and what started out as a fairly innocent academic enquiry, you couldn't help but answer that question without discovering that in fact this small group of fossil fuel industry lobbyists had a highly disproportionate impact on government policy and so whilst I was looking at this other aspect of climate change, it became very apparent that that wasn't the main game.

We all know how this Liberal Government is tight, and how they have locked down the bureaucracy we pay for to the point that if anyone says something inconsistent about or contrary to government policy, it makes a headline. Fossil industry lobbyists feel no such restrictions.

Q. And of course you received amazing access to some industry insiders too.

A. That's right, that's right. That was, I was quite surprised in a way how openly people spoke. One of the things that if you're involved in greenhouse policy here in Canberra you'd know is that there's a high degree of self censorship in the bureaucracy because people have their jobs at risk if they say something that's inconsistent with government policy so they tend not to speak out. What amazed me when I interviewed industry association bosses was that not only were they willing to speak out but they were quite happy to brag about their role in running government greenhouse policy.

Q. What sort of things did they brag about?

A. They tended to ah say that they, because of their previous involvement in government departments, mainly the industry department but other departments as well, before coming out and running industry associations and often playing musical chairs between those associations. They had an incredible corporate knowledge of government policy going back for a generation or so they tended to brag about how much more they knew about government policy than the government. Ah they talked about knowing where all the skeletons were buried.

Q. What did that mean?

A. Well you'd have to ask them but I suspect it meant that ah if they didn't get their way, they knew what buttons to push to embarrass the government.

Q. Blackmail.

A. I wouldn't call it that, you might.

It seems that the fossil fuel industry has organised itself a nice little pincer movement in impacting government policy.

Q. Now if we could just talk about those industry players, did they keep close associations with their former colleagues in the department?

A. The industry association bosses that I'm talking about came from branches within government departments here in Canberra, and often in lobbying the Government on greenhouse policy from their industry association, they were dealing with former colleagues. Often those colleagues had worked under them ah when they had worked in the department, so that was the type of relationship that existed, and there was clear evidence in - the interviews that I conducted that they continued to play a strong role in preparing/advising their former colleagues on the briefs and cabinet submissions that they would send up to their ministers on greenhouse policy.

Q. So they were afforded special privileges because of their past employment.

A. It would appear that they were give incredible access ah to the government process. A number of them mentioned to me that they felt that perhaps since their departure there had been a decline in the skill level in those relevant branches of the departments and that because of their lack of knowledge about previous history, and about a current policy that there was an opening for them then to go in and help them prepare policy for government. So you ended up with this unique situation, a circular situation where the advice that the government was receiving from its bureaucrats was almost identical to the advice they were receiving from industry associations because effectively the same people were writing it.

So that is how it is done. My tax dollars at work, undermining my child's future. Lovely. You can find the links to the transcript of Dr Guy Pearse's interview and the interview with Dr Graeme Pearman here.

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