June 2009
Good politics pointless policy
While it may not have been the government’s intention, it looks like the most potent symbol associated with the CPRS might be the Senate uniting to vote it down. The likely delay in implementing an effective scheme is a source of much regret for people who have called for urgent action for many years. But
March 2009
Wong must cap and slice
The CPRS in its current form is deeply flawed. If the government wants to see the legislation passed, it is going to have to amend its proposal. In order to take advantage of every additional emissions reduction and allow every concerned citizen to make a direct contribution, the government needs to convert its ‘cap and
February 2009
An idea whose time never came
It is often said that there is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come. But it seems that in the case of Minister Wong’s version of emissions trading, the so called Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS), there is nothing more pitiful than an idea whose time never actually came. The targets are
Left and right agree carbon tax is better
The CPRS is looking more and more like a hotted up second hand car. It sounded good in the advertisement, had all the fancy bits added on and looked really shiny and ready to go. Unfortunately the closer you look at it, the less reliable it gets. It might not be as fancy, but an
Making life easier for emitters
The unfortunate reality is that, having waited a decade for a government to express a willingness to do something about climate change, we are now faced with a choice between a policy that locks us into failure by dictating that emissions in Australia cannot fall by more than five per cent and abandoning the CPRS
June 2008
Turn Green Switch Now for a Fresh Burst of Energy
Not only can current jobs be adapted to green jobs, Australian engineers who now go to Europe, California or China might be lured home. Eventually, every job needs to be a green job: every industry will need to readjust to the reality of climate change and play their part in cutting Australia’s emissions. At best,
January 2008
Garnaut loses the plot
Ross Garnaut, who will report in June to the Rudd Government on its emissions trading system, is a former trade economist now spending a lot of time thinking about how to prevent powerful industries undermining the Government’s plans. He has come up with a radical solution. Let’s have one target, a carbon budget aimed at
November 2007
Hamilton: Rudd at Bali and Beyond
The science is becoming more alarming by the month, and so are the impacts of global warming itself. The demand for decisive action can only intensify over the next three years; it will require far-sighted policies to bring about a wholesale transformation of the nation’s energy economy, a structural change on a par with that
September 2007
Aviation and global warming: a change in the air?
Comments this week by Federal Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull suggest that the Government is beginning to realise the incompatibility between endless growth in the aviation sector and the prevention of dangerous climate change. Even if Australia adopts a lower target of 60% reductions by 2050, as the Labor Party has proposed, aviation could still gobble
Hidden doom of climate change
The Prime Minister, various ministers and the fossil fuel lobby have for years claimed that cutting emissions would be economically ruinous, cause massive job losses and destroy our international competitiveness. None of these claims is backed by credible evidence and can easily be shown to be false.
March 2007
Cooking the greenhouse books
The Government dismissed the Institute’s report, claiming we don’t understand the Kyoto accounting rules and didn’t make adjustments for differences in methods. These claims are false (and are addressed in a paper available on the Institute’s website). Even if they were correct, the fact remains that NCAS is a black box: its data are not
January 2007
Climate change initiatives are just so much soufflae
The Government needs to overcome its ideological prejudice against all things environmental. Its conservative voter base will, if it hasn’t already. They realise that the effects of climate change will be felt in their lifetime and that material prosperity must go hand-in-hand with sound environmental stewardship.
December 2006
Lack of political will leads to problems for Earth
Back in 1999, the Government overhauled the original Commonwealth environment laws that were introduced by the Whitlam Labor government. The old laws needed updating and the Government obliged, creating the loftily titled Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. While an improvement on the original laws, the EPBC Act has proven to be a failure, largely
November 2006
Dressing windows while the globe burns
The recent rush of activity around climate change has led some to suggest that the Federal Government has finally got the message on the perils of global warming, but history indicates such optimism is misplaced. The Government’s announcements of the past month are just more of the window-dressing and stalling tactics that we have had
Churches could hold key to salvation for the Left
Giving free rein to the market very often leads to an erosion of moral values””the work we have done on youth and pornography and on the sexualisation of children is an illustration of that. So here’s a real contradiction in the heart of conservative politicians; it astonishes me that a moral hard-liner like Tony Abbott
August 2006
A trump card in the nuclear power play
Green consumerism such as that advocated by Tim Flannery privatises responsibility for environmental decline, shifting blame from elected governments and industry onto the shoulders of individual citizens. The cause of climate change becomes the responsibility of “all of us”, which, in effect, means nobody. It is obvious why a government that wants to do nothing
June 2006
Cheating our way towards Kyoto
In the last minutes of the 1997 Kyoto conference on climate change, Australia extracted a vital concession by insisting that countries be allowed to include emissions from land clearing in their greenhouse accounting. The Government knew that land clearing had declined sharply since the accepted base year of 1990, so even before the ink was
May 2006
Farming the wind getting bad press
Community opposition to wind farms is heavily influenced by a network of anti-environmental activists, some with links to the fossil fuel and nuclear industries. This helps to explain why apparently independent local opposition groups reproduce the same misinformation and distortions about wind power. The truth is that most wind farm opponents don’t like the look
April 2006
How a minister buckled in the face of a mob of locals
The Howard Government has made a mockery of the environment and heritage portfolio, turning it into little more than a pork-barrel buffet. But who would have thought that things would stoop to the level where the federal Environment Minister would use environment laws against the environment. This is precisely what occurred on Wednesday when the
General Enquiries
Emily Bird Office Manager
mail@australiainstitute.org.au
Media Enquiries
Glenn Connley Senior Media Advisor
glenn.connley@australiainstitute.org.au