FYI | Jun 01 2007
By Greg Peel
The prime minister’s task force on a carbon trading scheme for Australia – made up of government officials, representatives of Australia’s largest polluters, and no environmentalists – has had months to ponder and advise on how a scheme might work, what sort of targets should be set and just how much a tonne of carbon should be worth. Talk is that the prime minister will release details of the findings this morning, but if ABC radio reports are accurate, there is little to look forward to.
The task force has suggested Australia will have to go it alone, which is no surprise. An international system is still a distant hope and it is unlikely APEC will do more than chat soberly about the problem in Sydney in September. A scheme would take four years to implement, the task force noted.
It recommended a cap-and-trade system, which is no surprise given (a) this is what everyone else uses to date and (b) the prime minister had already ruled out a carbon tax.
As to what a tonne of carbon should be worth under the system, well that’s for the market to decide. Of course, the value of a tonne will be a function of the emission reduction target.
What emission reduction target was recommended? As far as we know – none. The task force merely suggested the government take "a cautious approach" to setting one. The setting of a goal should be done with "great care and more research". Back to you Johnny.
A statement yesterday by ALP shadow environment spokesman Peter Garret was also predictable, suggesting it unlikely that the prime minister will act with any urgency on climate change and that Labor would move to set up a carbon trading scheme by 2010. What Labor does have on it’s side is a scheme already agreed upon by all state ministers, who are of course all Labor.
Given the return handball of a report the task force has provided, its hard to see how the prime minister could react quickly anyway. Unless this morning reveals some more specific detail.
In the meantime, George Bush has announced that he will urge the G8 members at an upcoming summit to join a new global framework on climate change reduction once the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012. Another rapid response. Bush intends to include new serial polluters on the block – such as China and India – into a new framework. It was their lenient treatment under Kyoto that prevented the US from ratifying the agreement. When Kyoto was framed, China, for one, was still considered a developing nation worthy of exemptions. It is now rapidly on path to pass the US as the world’s biggest greenhouse contributor.
Bush expects Europe to come in on the deal in 2012 as well. That’s all well and good, except that Europe already has a EU-wide carbon trading scheme in operation, which has been refined over the last couple of years after initial problems stemming largely from an overabundance of free carbon credit handouts. There is no way the US would join such a scheme, of course. It intends only to lead.
As to what Bush’s actual emission reduction plans are, well it’s all motherhood statements so far.