Go Greener, Australia

For the last two days, I’ve been struggling over what to write about the Rudd government’s Green Paper on how they’re going to tackle climate change. I’ve got very conflicting feelings about it!

Pros:

• Well, it’s better than nothing. No, seriously, I’d rather have this emissions trading scheme than nothing at all. It should at least slow emissions instead of letting them accelerate.
• They’re not giving away money to the nuclear power industry.
• All industries except agriculture have been included.

Cons:

• 1/3 of permits to be given away for free? What’s the point of putting a price on pollution if you’re going to let some corporations do it for free? And the freebies are for the worst polluters, not the cleanest: the second-worst polluters would have an incentive to increase their emissions so they could get the freebies too.
• It relies so heavily on clean coal. They are really banking on this technology being able to save us. What if they’re wrong? We’ll have spent billions of dollars on sequestration research for no benefit at all, when we could’ve spent that money on (already working) renewables technology or public transport.
• Agriculture is still in the “too hard” basket.

Other commentary is available online from:

The Greens’ Senator Milne
“…the Government has put its foot on the brake and accelerator at the same time.”

Bernard Keane at Crikey
“Labor was elected, in part, because of its commitment to getting serious about climate change. Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?”

Ben Eltham at New Matilda
“At least making big carbon exporters pay permits would distribute some of their vast wealth back to the public. Instead we’re actually subsidising them.”

Still, it’s only a Green Paper for discussion, not legislation up for vote in the Senate. It seems that the corporations have already had their input into the policy, so now it’s our turn. We have to put pressure on the government to do the right thing: no freebies for polluters. They’ve had long enough to figure out which way the (increasingly hot and dry) wind was blowing; they should have been better prepared. If they want to emit greenhouse gases, they’ve got to pay the rest of us for the damage it will cause, instead of coasting along as if they had nothing to do with it.

It looks like the Rudd government is going to go with the weakest emissions trading scheme they can get away with. So what do you think about it? What action can we take to improve on this before it becomes actual policy? How can we let them know that the bare minimum isn’t good enough?