I'm just picturing Tony and Greg spruiking Direct Action to China and the USA, explaining how it works, really getting into the policy detail.
I'm pretty confident Xi and Obama will be left with as much understand as the Australian public had from Tony and Brandis' attempts on explaining metadata and the proposed data retention laws.
THE glow is fading from the US-China climate deal only a day after it was sealed, with Tony Abbott saying Australia’s actions on carbon emissions are more practical and China’s pledge being criticised as a “non-binding charade”.
The Prime Minister dismissed calls to strengthen his Direct Action policy in the wake of the deal, declaring his plan would cut emissions now rather than “something that might happen in 16 years’ time’’.
The deal will step up diplomatic momentum before the Paris climate change talks next year but, although the Chinese commitment to cap its emissions is significant, they will grow dramatically before they peak by 2030. China also agreed to grow the share of renewable energy to 20 per cent of total energy production by the same date.
The US commitment to cut emissions to 26 per cent to 28 per cent below 2005 targets by 2025 is less than its 2011pledge to a pathway for a 30 per cent reduction in 2025 and a 42 per cent reduction in 2030.
Labor and the Greens said the deal meant Australia was being left behind on climate change and Mr Abbott had “egg on his face’’.
But Frontier Economics founder Danny Price said on a like-for-like basis Australia’s exist*ing target of a 5 per cent cut by 2020 “looks comparable to the US effort’’. He said US President Barack Obama had announced a slight reduction in emissions cuts compared with earlier commitments.
With the Republicans in control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate, Mr Obama is seen as having little chance of passing legislation to enact his commitments, forcing him to move by regulation.
The next presidential election, in 2016, becomes critical to the future of any commitments as a Republican president could unwind Obama regulations.
Senator Jim Inhofe, the likely new Republican chairman of the Senate environment and public works committee, described China’s pledge as “hollow and not believable’’ and a “non-binding charade’’.
Research in 2012 by the Pew Centre on Global Climate Change found that, on a like-for-like basis, Australia’s 5 per cent pledge was comparable with those of other leading economies. Its 2020 target is -15 per cent, compared with the US’s -17 per cent, when expressed as a reduction on 2005 levels.
Given Australia’s faster-growing population and when factors such as the US shift away from coal to gas are taken into account, the Australian reduction is greater when compared with a business-as-usual scenario, at 26 per cent against the US’s 18 per cent.
Australia with an estimated GDP growth of 50 per cent between 2005 and 2020 will cut emissions by 15 per cent, compared with a 17 per cent cut by the US with 40 per cent GDP growth over the same period.
Climate Institute chief executive John Connor said the “historic’’ US-China deal highlighted why Australia’s emissions reduction policy needed to go back to a polluter-pays policy.
He said the US-China deal was “reshaping international and economic alignments’’ and “spotlights the ludicrous inadequacy of the emissions reduction fund as a primary pollution policy’’.
“If the ERF is the primary tool to match even US efforts, the government’s proposed ‘safeguard measures’ imposing limits on polluters are going to need to be super strong and renewable energy targets strengthened, otherwise the budget could face a $9 (billion) to $30bn a year slug,” he said.
The Prime Minister said Australia was focused on the “here and now’’ rather than “hypotheticals’’ and he was confident it would reach its 5 per cent target by 2020.
“I’m focusing not on what might happen in 16 years’ time, I’m focusing on what we’re doing now and we’re not talking we’re acting,’’ Mr Abbott said.
Bill Shorten said the government had “egg on their face because the rest of the world is dealing with an issue that Tony Abbott doesn’t want to talk about’’.
Australian Conservation Foundation president Geoff Cousins said the US-China announcement brought the inadequacies of Direct Action into stark relief.
He said Australia needed an emissions reduction target of 30 per cent not 5 per cent.
Minerals Council of Australia chief executive Brendan Pearson said that the International Energy Agency predicted that the world coal trade would grow by 40 per cent by 2040. Chinese coal-fired power production is still predicted to grow to 2040.
From all the rejoicing one might imagine none of the celebrants had actually taken the above bit in, any more than they have the notional nature of the whole announcement.Chinese coal-fired power production is still predicted to grow to 2040.
This is how the Direct Action plan works if you care to read it.
Perhaps we should all wait until 2020 to see if it works......give it a fair go and if it does not work I will be the first to criticize it....that is if I am still around at the time.
http://www.energetics.com.au/getmed...t-Action-Handout_An-overview_-part-1.pdf.aspx
Have any other direct action type plans in other country's worked? can a non market, government funded reduction plan actually work? is that funding sustainable? how do Noalition voters and supporters feel about the 2 billion?
Direct action is a 2 billion dollar plan to achieve nothing, a delaying tactic just like the Aust green house office was for the Howard Govt, they spent 1 Billion dollars on studys, consultation, negotiations and achieved nothing, no GHG reduction at all was realised.
Last Hours narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio.
The deniers/liars wont like this one...11 minutes of fact, science, history and expert opinion.
~
[video=youtube_share;2bRrg96UtMc]http://youtu.be/2bRrg96UtMc[/video]
Clap...Clap...Clap.....What a very clever fabrication presented by good actors and no doubt well paid to do it.
Di Caprio is a good GREENIE mate of Al Gore and Ban-ki-Moon, and no doubt DiCaprio has large sums of money invested in Gore's ETS which he has been trying set up in about 40 different countries....these blokes are con artists to say the least and are only interested in the money they can make out of it.
If you believe in the total contents of that presentation, then all I can say is you must still believe in Santa Claus.
Of course there are many naive people who will swallow this misinformation but anyone with an ounce of brain will think differently.
Clap...Clap...Clap.....What a very clever fabrication presented by good actors and no doubt well paid to do it.
Di Caprio is a good GREENIE mate of Al Gore and Ban-ki-Moon, and no doubt DiCaprio has large sums of money invested in Gore's ETS which he has been trying set up in about 40 different countries....these blokes are con artists to say the least and are only interested in the money they can make out of it.
If you believe in the total contents of that presentation, then all I can say is you must still believe in Santa Claus.
Of course there are many naive people who will swallow this misinformation but anyone with an ounce of brain will think differently.
And there you have it - denial.
And there you have it - denial.
Not sure if this has been mentioned before, but purely from a political perspective, I find it very odd that our supposedly righter wing party is proposing government intervention, whereas our supposed left is propounding a market-based solution.
And yet, the right wingers on here support direct action, and the left wingers support a market based strategy? What's going on
Surely, assuming we want to do something about carbon dioxide, we would all agree that along the market to determine the best way to do so is better? Apparently not...
From my personal position, I don't want anything done, untill it actually coincides with and alignes with a global plan that the major emmiters agree to.
The view that we shouldn't do something unless others do, because we can't make a difference alone, jars with me. It's that inertia that allowed Nazism to carry on for so long - and the eventual collective will and resistance that allowed it to be toppled.
Similarly, Berlin just celebrated the fall of the Berlin wall. It was many seemingly small and inconsequential events that occurred before that which led to that highly significant event. It's a shame that Hungary and the Czech Republic aren't recognised as much as they should be.
Regardless, the big polluters ARE doing more. We're the single biggest polluter per capita in the world.
What would you like the major emitters to agree to in order for Australia to undertake any action? Do you think that the Australian Government has the right to operate and negotiate on a global plane (with a straight face), despite having an attitude of 'we won't do anything until you do'?
herzy, how was it reasonable for Australia to significantly disadvantage our business community with a carbon tax at such a high price, when most of our trading partners were not doing anything remotely similar?The view that we shouldn't do something unless others do, because we can't make a difference alone, jars with me. It's that inertia that allowed Nazism to carry on for so long - and the eventual collective will and resistance that allowed it to be toppled.
Similarly, Berlin just celebrated the fall of the Berlin wall. It was many seemingly small and inconsequential events that occurred before that which led to that highly significant event. It's a shame that Hungary and the Czech Republic aren't recognised as much as they should be.
Regardless, the big polluters ARE doing more. We're the single biggest polluter per capita in the world.
What would you like the major emitters to agree to in order for Australia to undertake any action? Do you think that the Australian Government has the right to operate and negotiate on a global plane (with a straight face), despite having an attitude of 'we won't do anything until you do'?
herzy, how was it reasonable for Australia to significantly disadvantage our business community with a carbon tax at such a high price, when most of our trading partners were not doing anything remotely similar?
In taking what perhaps is a moral stand (if you accept K. Rudd's assertion that 'climate change is the greatest moral challenge of our time' yada yada, it's not realistic to dismiss the economic factors.
As sptrawler suggests, if the whole world were to come to an agreement on an international trading scheme or whatever, then Australia could participate without specifically penalising our industry. Goodness knows, our economy doesn't need any impediments.
I've largely tuned out of the whole discussion but have been struck by the frenzy of excitement engendered by the joint announcement by USA and China, none of which is anything more than aspiration at this stage.
Isn't the claim of Australia being the biggest per capita polluter (jeez, I'm sick of that expression especially after it's repeatedly uttered along with photos of just steam rising ) including all our exports of coal, iron ore etc rather than the implied suggestion that we Australians are personally out-polluting other countries. Just a look at the skies over China makes this a bit hard to believe.
I didn't intend to tell anyone that they should do anything. Sorry if you took it that way sptrawler.
I'm not perfect, and of course am a consumer - but I don't drive, minimise my meat intake, and don't see how much more I can feasibly do to reduce my carbon footprint at this time.
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