According to the AFR, it is all Trump’s fault:
As Donald Trump given Malcolm Turnbull international cover to backtrack on climate change policy?
At the same time the government this week was signalling its intention to abandon a clean energy target, President Trump was dumping Barack Obama’s limits on carbon emissions from power plants.
You may not see Turnbull invoking an unpopular Trump as his rationale for a lighter regulatory approach on climate change and there are certainly broader issues at play such as Australia’s self-inflicted energy price crisis.
But it’s a fair bet the climate change sceptical US President has also helped change the conversation in Australia.
Honestly, we have our fair share of loons without Mr Trump’s help. Yesterday we had Abbott the Fruit Loop:
Labor, the Greens and climate change activists have rounded on Tony Abbott for a “loopy” London speech in which the former prime minister suggested temperature rises caused by climate change could be beneficial because “far more people die in cold snaps”.
Political allies and friends of the former leader went to ground on Tuesday following the incendiary speech to the sceptic Global Warming Policy Forum, which is the latest in a series of dramatic interventions from Mr Abbott into the energy debate, including a recent warning that he could cross the floor rather than vote for a clean energy target.
Today we have Gary Banks and Fred Hilmer the mad scientists:
Two of Australia’s most respected economic reformers have urged the government to scale back its commitment to the Paris emissions-reduction agreement and revive a market-based mechanism to curb greenhouse gases, suggesting the renewable energy target is damaging the country’s competitiveness.
…“The notion that there’s a trade-off, that we can’t have it all, that there’s no free lunch, that’s not been made clear to the public,” Professor Banks said. “In fact when you look at it, we’ve ruled out all the least-cost ways of transitioning to a low-emission economy … we’ve ruled out nuclear and essentially ruled out gas too.
…He and Professor Banks are both frustrated with state bans on gas exploration. “I can’t believe the problems (with fracking) are all that real; otherwise the US would be committing suicide,” Professor Hilmer said.
…He suggested claims about the capacity of new batteries to store renewable energy had been exaggerated. “We need a blackout in South Australia when the new battery is going,” he said. “You can look at the sun shining and say renewable energy is cheap but it doesn’t solve storage. These huge batteries — half an hour’s power for Adelaide, or not even.”
…“We have to go back to start to look at whether we’ve signed up to something that for our economy is too tough,” Professor Banks said.
“Not only are we choosing to transition to low emissions at a high cost, which is the RET or RET Mark II, we’re doing it over a compressed timeframe.”
We all know the carbon price was better but it’s clear that neither of these men understand the market failure underway in the gas market. Fracking won’t fix it (though I support it with other measures). They don’t understand storage, either, given the Musk battery is only an infinitesimal beginning to where this is headed. They don’t even understand nuclear, which is very expensive without public subsidy just as they call for an end to public subsidy. Recall that on our numbers, renewable plus battery will be cheaper than coal by the early 2020s. It’s already cheaper than nuclear:
Storage, decentralisation and demand management are going to explode. See the Herald Sun today:
VICTORIANS will be paid to turn down airconditioners during extreme heat or at times of peak power demand in an effort to avoid large-scale blackouts this summer.
This strategic “demand management” approach to power use — already widely used overseas — will be one of the measures taken to keep the lights on in Victoria.
Australia’s energy market operator revealed this week that both Victoria and South Australia needed to take urgent measures to avoid an increased risk of energy shortfalls in the coming months.
Under the plan, Victorian households and businesses would be able to volunteer to use less energy, for a discount on their bill, when the national power grid is under stress.
Meanwhile, the states have stolen the very policy that Do-nothing Malcolm has repudiated:
Queensland, South Australia, Victoria and the ACT will push ahead with the design of a clean energy target despite the Turnbull government’s signal it will retreat from the proposal, as the Coalition faces the prospect of an election showdown on climate policy.
While government sources yesterday speculated a final position on the CET could be delivered within weeks, Bill Shorten seized on the apparent retreat to target Malcolm Turnbull’s authority by claiming Tony Abbott was “still calling the shots”.
“Turnbull’s just simply too weak to take him on,” the Opposition Leader said. “Turnbull is paralysed by fear of infighting in the Liberal Party and he can’t do anything meaningful, meanwhile Australia has an energy price crisis and an energy supply crisis.”
Speaking at a global warming policy forum in London, Mr Abbott revived his previous scepticism of climate change science by arguing global warming was “probably doing good” and likening environmentalists to “primitives” who killed goats to “appease the volcano gods”.
While Labor MPs tried to link the shift away from a CET to Mr Abbott’s ongoing policy activism, the move was welcomed by the Coalition backbench, with Nationals senator Matt Canavan arguing the modelling behind the CET by Chief Scientist Alan Finkel was “rubbery at best”.
NSW Liberal MP Craig Kelly also backed Mr Abbott’s warning for Australia not to become captured by a “post-Christian theology” dominated by green “dogma”. “No matter what we do here in Australia with our emissions, it’s not going to change the weather; it’s not going to change the temperature of the globe; it’s not going to prevent bad storms,” he told Sky News.
A CET would be improvement on the RET given it would be tech agnostic. But it’s obviously still pretty crazy having this cross-purposed policy going in all directions across different states. Then again, what choice is there with Do-nothing Malcolm?
Capping us off “Mad” Maurice Newman says the RET is for Nazis:
German author Sebastian Haffner kept a secret journal in the 1930s in which he wrote: “There are few things as odd as the calm, superior indifference with which I and those like me watched the beginnings of the Nazi revolution in Germany, as if from a box at the theatre.”
Like today, it was easier to accept the lived realities and adapt to them than to resist. When your and your organisation’s future are linked to being on one political side, you pay close attention to the new doctrines. It shapes your behaviour. Haffner calls this “sheepish submissiveness”. “There was not a single example of energetic defence, of courage or principle. There was only panic, flight, and desertion,” he wrote.
It may be melodramatic to draw parallels between 1930s Germany and contemporary Australia. But there is no denying Canberra is warming to a culture of enforcement. And freedom’s champions are few. Today, all economic actions are seen through a political prism. The leadership of both parties is rapidly finding the allure of command more appealing than markets. And, like those in Haffner’s box, we miss how this is affecting our own freedoms. Meanwhile, the political class uses capitalist prosperity to underwrite our social decay.
There’s a lot more in other media but that’s enough for today. People are mad.
