talk climate lowres
TRANSCRIPT
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itshardtoavoidrising
sea-levels
talkclimatecompiled by the Victorian Climate Action Centre
March 2010
10 lessons redux Hazelwood
carbon tax words that work
rising seas movement strategy
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ardtoavoidrisingsea-levels
CONTENTS
Ten lessons for the climate movement redux 3
Looking forward: looking back (2009) 8
Why the national movement should support
the campaign to close Hazelwood power station 9
Its hard to avoid rising sea levels 11
Is The Greens proposal for a carbon taxour priority? 15
A circuit-breaker 16
Language of a clean energy economy 19
talkclimateThis collection of provocative ideas,
reections and science has been assembled
by the Victorian Climate Action Centre as a
contribution for participants in the second
national Australian Climate Action Summit
held in Canberra in March 2010.
Climate Action Centre
www.climateactioncenre.org
phone 03 9639 3660
Published March 2010
March to Hazelwood power station, September 2009
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10lessonsfortheclimatemove
mentredux
10 lessons for the
climate movementreduxFor the 2009 climate summit, I wrote a short article titled
Looking back - moving forward: ten lessons for the
climate movement (a summary is reproduced on page
8). It attempted to articulate some of the challenges and
opportunities for the community climate movement after
two years of rapid growth in scope and capacity.
A lot has happened since the last summit: the domi-
nance of the debate on the governments carbon-trading
plan, the failed Copenhagen conference, the division
over climate in the Liberal Party and the emergence of
the climate denier Tony Abbot as leader. In many ways
the harsh reality of the terrain in which we are working is
even more stark than it was a year ago, and requires us
to face up to the enormous challenge we face.
Much of the discussion in the 2009 article remains
important. In particular, the emphasis on deep mobilisa-
tion of society as the key to achieving the transformation
we are seeking. If we have learned nothing else in the
last twelve months, it should be that there are no short
cuts. Only by building our political power through
community organising, real alliance building and splitting
of the political and business elite will we have a hope of
achieving our goals.
So here is an attempt to articulate some of the
challenges and further lessons we might draw from the
last year.
1 The need forcommon goalsDiversity is crucial and inherent to successful move-
ments, but movements that are divided generally fail.
We need to wrestle with this paradox if we are to achieve
our aims.
Last year we got comprehensively rolled. While it
was important and correct that we opposed the polluter-
friendly carbon trading scheme, we failed to successfully
communicate why we opposed something that most
people didnt understand in the rst place. BarnabyJoyce had no such trouble, and in the US James Hansen
gained public traction by posing one simple, positive
alternative to cap-and-trade.
We should not be blind to the fact that our lack of
unity as a climate movement (with the Southern Cross
Climate Coalition minesweeping for Labor) meant that
the polluters gained the upper hand and used the failed
trading scheme as a springboard to push back against
the case for urgent action.
This was made worse when the CPRS opponents
failed to consistently articulate opposition to the scheme.
The positive moments the release by the environment
NGOs of an alternative Plan B and the coordinated
actions at MPs ofces by community climate groups
were not backed up with a strategy or ongoing
coordination.
This experience should highlight the importance
of developing a common set of concrete goals for the
climate movement and a positive, united agenda. This
platform cannot simply be set in the abstract, or neces-
sarily a long period in advance, but must be developed
dynamically in the real world with consideration to the
evolving nature, politics and capabilities of the various
forces in the movement.
The carbon tax debate kicked off by The Greens is an
opportunity to develop a strand of that common agenda.
We should use this opportunity to form a common goal
across the whole climate movement of supporting a good
carbon tax plan.
2 TransitionalthinkingThe idea of transition is increasingly popular, but trans-
formations will not happen just because we wish, hope or
even pray for them. A transition will need to be built and
often this will involve small and painful steps. That does
not mean we should lose sight of our big goal or end aim,
but only that successful movements are built through mo-
bilising support for specic concrete actions and wins that
intersect with the existing political terrain and exploit its
contradictions and weaknesses, not through abstractions.So lets demand the impossible, like closing Hazelwood
power station or building a new smart grid, but lets make
the impossible capable of being both imagined and
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theclimatemove
mentredux politically relevant in the here and now so it helps build
the movement. This is what old socialists used to call a
transitional program, linking the current possibilities and
realizable practical gains to the desired future.
3 Climate changeis THE issueAcross the country every weekend thousands of people
are engaged in local sustainability projects, such as bush
regeneration. Thousands more are mobilised and sup-
portive of a range of other conservation issues such as
opposing whaling or campaigning for new national parks.
Many others are engaged in social or human rights issues
of one kind or another. All these issues and problems
have an inherent worth and value.
But are they more important than climate change?
Local habitats are rapidly moving towards the poles
and up mountains, stranding many species. (Eventuallymany of the local weekend conservation projects will be
for nought if there isnt radical emissions mitigation.) This
is the underpinning of what may be the mass destruc-
tion of ecologies, another Great Extinction. Whales, for
example, face the likely collapse of the food chain that
underpins their survival if temperatures rise by 4 degrees,
the Copenhagen outcome. Humanity itself, as a species,
is also at threat. At the very least, billions are at a high
risk of death and great misery.
Given this reality, is it time to be making the case that
climate change is THE issue and that those who do not
place it at the top of their list have their priorities wrong?
Should we, perhaps gently at rst, be pointing this out
to those who would rather save a whale than save the
planet?
4 Harmingthe poor?There is a strange dichotomy in the climate debate. On
the one hand, international aid agencies such as Oxfam
and World Vision increasingly seem to understand the
disastrous consequences of climate change for the
worlds poor. They have engaged with the danger of sea-
level rises for the delta regions of the world, and the threat
to water security from melting glaciers. They have pushed
hard for stronger pollution-reduction targets. And although
at times still locked into the incremental paradigm that
grips most NGOs, they have, more than most, looked
catastrophe in the face and been willing to articulate its
consequences.
On other hand, the welfare lobby that claims to ad-vocate on behalf of Australias poor has not, for the most
part, seen climate change as a threat to those in poverty.
Rather it views climate change mitigation as the danger,
judging from where their resources and advocacy have
been directed. For them, carbon taxes, clean energy pric-
ing and renewable energy targets mean increased prices,
and increased prices must be opposed at all cost.
I am amazed that, with some notable exceptions,
the welfare sector has been blind to what the realities of
climate change will mean for their constituencies. The
ravages of super-droughts and heat waves, bush resand oods, sea level rises and other extreme weather
and economic dislocation will fall disproportionately on
Australias poor. But where are the welfare sector confer-
ences and publications, media releases and submissions
on the impact of climate change on the poor, and calling
for stronger action? Instead, we have had campaigns to
derail feed-in-tariffs and a singular focus on the quarantin-
ing of carbon trading revenue for compensation.
Of course mitigation options have equity implications
that need to be factored into the policy design, but in the
absence of strong advocacy for action on climate change,the welfare sector ends up becoming a tool in the
campaign of the delayers and deniers.
5 Warmingto labourVery few profound policy changes have been won by
social movements in Australia without the involvement of
organised labour. So far we have failed to signicantly in-
volve trade unions in our movement, and particular unions
have been a barrier to action by opposing any attempts to
curtail the coal industry.
The ACTUs approach has been, at best, reduced
to cheer-leading for the Rudd government. This is the
danger of box-ticking alliances that have no little depth or
broad engagement. When, in the end, the ACF was nally
turning against the governments carbon trading plan, its
ACTU ally in the Union Connectors campaign was enlist-
ing its climate delegates to lobby in favour of the Senate
passage of the polluter-friendly CPRS!
The union movements peak bodies will not play a
more transformative role unless until a block of unions is
built that get the problem and the scale of the required
solutions. To do this, we need to work rst with those
unions that have no interest in blocking change. White
collar and service unions, emergency and health workers,
and building unions all could be part of this block. And
many have a material interest in mitigation actions, such
as improving building and industrial energy efciency.
We have already seen the NTEU and the ETU endorse a
more realistic approach, the LHMU and the ASU engage
with the climate movement, and re ghters really take alead.
We need to seek tactical alliances around particular
events and actions, as we have with the re ghters. This
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10lessonsfortheclimatemove
mentreduxbuilds relationships and condence.
And we need to confront the
green jobs paradigm. Unions have
approached the climate problem like
other industry-restructuring chal-
lenges by seeking to protect jobs
and identify opportunities for new
employment. The climate move-ments response has been to spruik
the green jobs message, while
defensively talking about just transi-
tions.
But climate change cannot and
must be reduced to just an issue
of job security. If we allow this to
happen, we will lose the argument.
For most unions, climate change
and mitigation policies will have little
direct, immediate effect on job levels, so green jobs areirrelevant to them.
Nor should climate change be sold as just another
moral community issue for unions, like the Iraq war or
refugees. We have to communicate that climate change is
an existential problem for all of us, including all workers,
a threat so great that for unions also it is THE issue of our
time.
And when we do talk about jobs, at the very least
we should be talking about clean energy jobs, not green
jobs which is bad messaging (reducing climate to an
environmental concern) and has a partisan avour (vote
for The Greens).
6 Internationalrabbit holeThe Copenhagen conference has nally con-
rmed once and for all the bankruptcy of a
strategy built around outcomes from interna-
tional negotiations.
The Australian climate movement has
sought to leap-frog community mobilisation
by appealing to international responsibility.
So while much of the world recognised that
commitments under Kyoto were a disaster,
in Australia Kyoto was used as a stick with
which to beat the Howard government. But
this strategy reinforced a public view (and
perhaps deluded ourselves) that the interna-
tional process on which Kyoto was built could
save us.
How else do we explain the decision ofthe ACF, Climate Institute and WWF to make
their targets for the governments polluter-
friendly trading scheme dependent on the
outcome of the Copenhagen summit? This strategy is
now in tatters.International negotiations can and should be used by
the movement to speak with one voice
globally, and they can also be an opportunity to message
the problem back into Australia, but they cannot be a
substitute for mobilisation here.
We will never get a worthwhile international agree-
ment until we deepen support for action within the nations
that are party to an agreement. Even something that
looks good on paper will have to be implemented, and
that will need a climate movement capable of pushing for
that change in every big-polluting country.
We should never again allow our positions to be
shackled to the success or otherwise of international
negotiations; we have to build support for a solution on
the power of community concern in Australia.
monbiot on copenhagenI came back from the Copenhagen climate talks depressed for several
reasons, but above all because, listening to the discussions at the citizens
summit, it struck me that we no longer have movements; we have thousands
of people each clamouring to have their own visions adopted. We mightcome together for occasional rallies and marches,but as soon as we start
discussing alternatives, solidarity is shattered by possessive individualism.
Consumerism has changed all of us. Our challenge is now to ght a system
we have internalised.
George Monbiot, After this 60-year feeding frenzy, Earth itself has
become disposable, Guardian, 4 January 2010
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7 Living withdenialWe will never get rid of climate
deniers, at least not before it is
too late, and psychological denial
deepens as the moment of truth
nears. In one sense deniers and
climategate have failed because,
as Paul Gilding noted recently,
over 160 leaders even the
Saudis attended an international
conference on climate change
in December and accepted that
global warming is a real problem.
However, in another sense,
the deniers are gaining ground
and we can no longer continue
the defacto strategy of ignoringthem.
This is not just about a
rational, fact-based debate, and
we cannot win with the facts
alone. The deniers will twist and
turn and throw bombs like the
glacier story and then go on to
something else. They are havoc-
makers and work on an emotional
level based on paranoia and fear
of the unknown (and the state,
and the elite), so our response
needs to be based on emotion
and values too, and on their
credibility. Monbiots repeated assertion that you are a
fraud, backed by just two examples, was telling in his
Lateline debate with Plimer because it turn the debate
about credibility back onto the denier.
We need to tag the deniers for what they are: deniers
not sceptics. Deniers come in many forms, including
serial contrarians, blogging conspiracy theorists, delusion-al crackpots, amateurs and grumpy old men (there are
few women!), particularly from geology and meteorology,
who cannot deal with the fact that the body of professional
knowledge that constituted their identity and their fading
careers has been overturned by new understandings.
And we should say so, and explain to the audience what
is really going on, rather than pretending its just a rational
debate about facts.
And often we also need to respond immediately in
the news cycle to the substance of their claims and use
them as Obama would say as a teaching moment.
For example, the attack on the IPCC claim about glaciers
was an opportunity to tell the full story, but too few in the
climate movement took it up.
8 Armed with peer-reviewed science *(* UK climate camp banner)
The return and return of the climate deniers highlights the
importance of us all being willing to educate and con-
stantly update ourselves about the climate science. It is
and was wrong to ever think that the debate/denial aboutthe science is over. Part of the reason the community is
susceptible to climate deniers is that we have left it to
scientists to communicate the climate science, and they
are not trained communicators, and vary widely in their
capacity to do so. We have a role to play, and people who
are engaged and come to forums genuinely want to know
more about the science and the detail. By increasing the
depth of community understanding of the threat of climate
change, the sway of the deniers and delayers will wane
Yes, it is frightening and often boring to read about
the science of global warming and teach ourselves tocommunicate it, but necessary. As Italian philosopher
Antonio Gramsci said, we need pessimism of the intellect
and optimism of the will.
on framing climate changeGeorge Lakoff, a professor of linguists at the University of California,
Berkeley, and a specialist in framing the way language shapes the way we
think says that the future of climate change legislation depends on the words
used to explain it.
Global warming applies to climate, not weather, and most people dont think
of the difference, and so you shouldnt be talking just about global warming.
You should be talking about the climate crisis. That, I think, is very important
and then you explain what a crisis is. But the people who are in the environ-
mental movement are very bad at communication, and they havent done
that...
...and its very important for the scientists to know that they dont know
anything about communication. Theyre very bad at it. See, the scientists who
study weather dont study cognition. Theyre not cognitive scientists; theyre
climate scientists. Thats understandable, but they dont know that they cant
communicate, and they dont know they need to get some people who know
something about it.
The idea of climate change, actually, was introduced by conservatives,
by Frank Luntz in the 2004 (presidential) campaign. He found that global
warming alarmed people whereas climate change sounded ne. It was just
change, as if it just happened, and people werent responsible. And climate is
a nice word. It sort of gives an image of palm trees and nice climate, as
opposed to hurricanes and, you know, and huge snowstorms and oods...
I think the climate crisis is a much better way to talk about. You want to
say this is crisis. This is a crisis for civilization. Its a crisis for life on Earth.
Source: National Public Radio, 21 February 2010
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Looking back:moving forward(2009)
[Lessons for 2009, abridged from Climate Reader,January 2009, www.carbonequity.info/download.
php?id=12]
1 Changing government does not mean a
change in policy
The honeymoon of the Rudd government on
climate is over; divorce is in the air... Yet the strategy
of most environment NGOs in 200608 seemed to be
one of mobilising the community to elect a Labor
government, and then talk softly to the new govern-ment behind closed doors, rather than continue the
mobilisation...
2 Continuous mobilisation
So our aim must be the continuous mobilisation of the
community. Not turning people on and off like a tap
when an issue or election comes up... We must also
see our efforts to mobilise community as a long-term
project of getting every organisation in a particular
locality to recognise the full implications of climate
change and to put the heat on local MPs until theybecome advocates for the movement, not barriers to
action. We need to create movement resources that
can do this...
3 If we are not frightened then no-one else
will be
For a long time there has been a debate in the environ-
ment and now the climate movement about fear ver-
sus hope... But this false dichotomy is often a mask for
conservative positions that seek to maintain a delusion-
al strategy on climate change, which sees advocacy of
small immediately achievable steps as the only ap-
proach that will work... But the desire to propose small
steps that can be easily adopted by government not
only leads to advocacy of solutions that wont solve the
climate problem, but often also prevents the truth about
the real extent of the climate problem being told...
4 Knocking on doors is as important
as climbing smoke-stacks
... there is a danger that a one-sided emphasis on
civil-disobedience actions can substitute for the less
glamorous work of engaging the community. We need
to nd ways to take the urgency of climate change
direct to people in their communities through door
knocking, local events and other direct communications.
...the task is to focus on actions that can mobilise large
numbers in civil disobedience actions, rather than small
heroic groups... Only when we have thousands gath-
ered to sit-in at power stations will such actions move
from the symbolic and become truly powerful...
5 Alliance building is more than box-ticking...alliance building is about being able to mobilise real
political force across diverse sectors, and if that isnt
the power than has been gained by building alliances,
then in the long run they are not worth the paper they
are written on.
6 Propose solutions that will work
... When leading scientists are talking about the safe
zone being 280 to 325 ppm and the need for zero
emissions, why cant the leading climate NGOs get on
board and put the science rst?7 Stop talking about the reef and start
talking about people
To make progress, climate needs to be understood
NOT as an environment sector issue, but as a whole-
of-society problem that is as much about human rights
as anything else. Fundamentally we need to talk more
about the impact on people, not beautiful places...
8 But is it the economy, stupid?
The movement was taken down a rabbit hole partly
of its own making after the election when we allowedthe debate to be about the economic cost of climate
change... The planet cannot be reduced to the
economy.
9 We are activists not policy advisors
There is a danger in all movements of being so close to
an issue that we start to believe that all we need to do
is create and describe a perfect solution and our job is
done. But in reality policy outcomes are never about the
elegance of a solution, but about power...
10 Our movement is and must be global
We cannot solve the problem (just) in Australia and
we do need global action and cooperation. For us
this means creating more global links and coopera-
tion amongst grass-roots movements and continue to
leverage off each others actions... We must look for
opportunities in 2009 to work with groups and networks
locally and internationally which have as a goal the
mobilising of the global community around science-
based demands.
DAMIEN LAWSON
19 January 2009
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whythenationa
lmovementsho
uldsupportthec
ampaigntoclose
hazelwood
why the
national movementshould support thecampaign to close
Hazelwood powerstationWhy should the national movement support the campaign
to replace Hazelwood power station with clean energy?
Because we can grow the movement, communicate
the problem with coal and have an unprecedented win ifwe focus on Australias dirtiest power station.
The biggest single cause of carbon pollution is
burning of coal, so replacing coal with clean energy is the
key to solving the climate problem. Coal also harms our
health. NASA scientist James Hansen estimates over one
million people are killed by coal pollution every year.
Australias dirtiest
Victorias Hazelwood power station is the dirtiest coal-
red power station in Australia, and one of the most
polluting in the developed world. It is outdated technology,
a polluting dinosaur of the industrial age.
Hazelwood is so old and inefcient it produces over
15 per cent of Victorias carbon pollution (over 3 per cent
of Australias pollution) and uses a lot of water, over 1.35
mega-litres per gigawatt hour of electricity produced.
It was due to be closed in 2005, but the Labor State
government extended its life past 2030 by granting Hazel-
wood an extension to its mining licence.
But the owners of Hazelwood UKs International
Power and the Commonwealth Bank (8.2 per cent) have said it could be closed much sooner if the State and
federal governments were willing to pay.
One of the best and fastest way of cutting carbon
pollution in Australia would be to replace Hazelwood with
clean energy alternatives such as investments in ener-
gy efciency, renewable energy and/or gas as a transition
fuel (groups supporting the campaign to replace Hazel-wood have a variety of views on the mix of solutions).
This shift would also keep jobs in the Latrobe
Valley, where Hazelwood is sited, and enable the valley to
become a clean-energy manufacturing hub.
Under the governments carbon-trading plan, Inter-
national Power and other generators would be getting
over seven billion dollars in compensation, but this type
of money should be used to replace power stations, not
keep them open and polluting.
Thats why we need a campaign for the State and
federal government to take up International Powers offer,
and replace Hazelwood now, not in 2030.
Politically and fnancially vulnerable
Closing Hazelwood is a real possibility because of the
convergence of nancial and political contexts.
Hazelwood is widely recognised as the most vulner-
able to future carbon pricing because it burns brown coal
(some of the worlds dirtiest) and is the most inefcient in
the country. This combined with the global nancial crisis
has made the renancing of the companies debts verydifcult.
A recent decision to shift Alcoas aluminium smelting
electricity contracts (20 per cent of Victorias electricity
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lmovementshouldsupportthecampaigntoclose
hazelwood consumption) to another power company from 2016 is
another signicant nancial blow to Hazelwood.
For these reasons International Power has said in
submissions to government that it is open to closing if it is
given adequate compensation.
More importantly the State government is under a lot
of pressure and very defensive about coal.
Last year, when 500 people protested and stormedfences at the power station, the government went on the
back foot. Instead of the usual approach of attacking the
protesters, ministers lined up to say the government was
doing more on renewable energy. Police and the power
company sang from the same song sheet.
In December last year, the climate movement took
only limited action before the government put a decision
on possible coal exports on the back burner until after
the Victorian election, scheduled for 27 November 2010.
The Agereported on 10 December that: A senior govern-
ment source said recent media coverage of the issue hadconcentrated ministerial attention. Education Minister
Bronwyn Pike and Housing Minister Richard Wynne, who
both face a growing green vote in their inner-suburban
electorates, are believed to be among those cabinet
members to have shown interest in the issue recently.
In inner-city Melbourne, Labor is facing the loss of
three to four seats to The Greens. Wynne and Pike both
know they face political death and have been desper-
ately seeking a big green promise from the government.
And the recent Altona By-Election with an 11.7% swing
against Labor has concentrated the minds even further.
Federally, with the emissions trading scheme political-
ly dead, there are opportunities for the movement to also
push for a dramatic action from the Rudd government.
They will be under pressure from the Coalition, who
could beat them to such an announcement. Alan Kohler,
one of Australias most prominent business journalists,
discussed this possibility in Crikey:
The clever, pinpoint focus of the new Coalition policy that
the Shadow Minister for Climate Change, Greg Hunt,
has come up with, was actually lost yesterday amid thewildly incoherent antics of politicians back from holidays
at the start of an election year.
In fact its quite simple: the coalition is proposing to pay
the Latrobe Valley companies to convert from brown coal
to gas. There are a few other ideas tacked on to make it
look like a policy, not a deal, but thats the guts of it.
Its a good idea rst proposed in Business Specta-
tor last November. Im not sure the amount of money
nominated a total of $3.2 billion, with up to $2.55 billion
available for power station conversion will be enough,
but its an opening gambit.
Hunt spelled it out towards the end of yesterdays pressconference when the journalists were nodding off listen-
ing to Tony Abbott, so what he said has been largely
ignored.
He said: One of the large power companies has
provided us with their advice. Because its commercial-
in-condence, they didnt want it released but they
provided us with their advice that they could convert from
coal to gas for $13 per tonne under this system.
Now we want to check that, but the oldest and least
efcient of the power providers has said to us that under
the governments ETS were just not going to be able
to afford the capital to transition because we will bestruggling just to survive Under this theyve said that
if our balance sheets are clear and theres an incentive
to change from coal to gas, this is very attractive and we
are more likely rather than less likely to change under
this system.
This adds momentum to the coalition of environment and
community groups in Victoria who are building the cam-
paign for the State and federal governments to commit to
replace Hazelwood power station with clean energy by
2012. This will be a key election test for the federal and
State Labor governments.As yet The Greens have not announced their Victo-
rian election key promises. Clear and unambiguous sup-
port for the replacement of Hazelwood would help them
make the ground they need in the inner-city seats. If they
dont have a clear message they face being left behind by
the community campaign.
Real chance or a win
We will be organising in the community, door-knocking
key electorates, talking in the media and lobbying politi-
cians over the next six months to make this the key issuein marginal seats.
We will be saying we dont want empty promises to
tackle global warming, but a real timetable for action to
replace Australias dirtiest power station.
There is a real chance of success. On March 2, The
Agereported The ALP is understood to be keen on an
announcement about Hazelwood ahead of the November
state election.
But our campaign has greater chance of success if
there is work done around the country to pressure the
federal government to also act on Hazelwood. The na-
tional movement could hold a day of action on Hazelwood
with protests at MP ofces or the Commonwealth Bank
(minority shareholder), and include the demand to close
Hazelwood in other lobbying of the federal government.
Closing a coal power station before its life is up would
be unprecedented in Australia and would have an impact
around the world. It would undermine investments in new
coal power and create real political momentum for the
big changes we urgently need to properly tackle climate
change.
TAEGEN EDWARDS, Yarra Climate Action Now
DAMIEN LAWSON, Climate Action Centre
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itshardtoavoidrising
sea-levels
its hard to avoid
rising sea levelsLocal and state governments are in trouble trying to work
out what to do about sea-level rises and planning laws,
making it an effective issue to further engage with the
public.
We dont have to sell the topic, its already a hot
potato. There are court cases and administrative appeals
and local election campaigns about the issue; developers
and real estate agents are moaning; and local residents
are confused about whether they want low estimates for
likely sea-level rises (to keep property values up) or high
estimates (so that migitation works will be done to stop
ooding). And people dont want to buy and build where
future sea-surges will ood houses and degrade land.
There is local community concern and activism on
the issue from coast to coast:
Vulnerable house owners in Byron Bay ght the
council to build barriers at the expense of public
beaches, but studies show a sea wall built in one spot
is likely to transfer erosion to another;
The risk of rising sea levels has put an end to plans
for residential development at Victorias Port Fairy
after an advisory committee told the State govern-
ment that the sand-dune development should not go
ahead, and other cases are being contested;
At Old Bar on the NSW mid-north coast, landowners
threaten to sue council as houses are condemned
as unsafe because sea surges are eating into sand
dunes on which the residences are built; The South Australian Supreme Court rules that
predicted sea level rises are a valid reason to reject
beachfront housing developments in a subdivision on
Yorke Peninsula, with cases in other States;
Under pressure from land-owners along 90 Mile
Beach, the Wellington Shire in East Gippsland says it
is not responsible for preventing construction in areas
vulnerable to rising sea levels, as councillors overturn
a planning panel recommendation to prevent
construction in low-lying coastal areas;
On the other hand, Pittwater council is looking at
planning for sea-level rises beyond the benchmarks
set by the State government, because they may be
too low; and
It is one of four Sydney councils calling for consist-
ency in government guidelines, saying the variations
(State government sea-level estimates of 0.9 metres
by 2100, but the federal gure is 1.1 metre) leaves
the councils at risk of legal action.
State governments dont want to ring alarm bells by talk-
ing about the bad possibilities (the opposite approach
they take to bushres), but they risk huge litigation costs
if a planning standard is set too low, and building is
permitted where it can later be shown the state has been
negligent in ignoring the available scientic evidence.
And local councils, although subject to State government
planning guidelines, dont want to be sued in the future
for allowing developments and buildings where they were
clearly inappropriate.
The climate movement should intervene in this public
debate to highlight the concrete impacts of the climate
crisis and the failure of government to act responsibly.
Dierent standards
Recently the NSW Government set a planning bench-
mark for sea levels of 0.9 metres by 2100. In Victoria it
is 0.8 metres based on recommendations of the (since
abolished) Victorian Coastal Council, but the state is now
looking at scenarios for 1.1 and 1.4 metres. In South Aus-
tralia the benchmark is 1 metre, and the federal govern-
ment is basing its predicted impacts (247,600 individual
buildings valued at $63 billion could be damaged or lost,while major infrastructure, including Sydney and Bris-
bane airports, are at risk of being ooded by increasingly
damaging storms) on a 1.1-metre sea level rise by 2100.
While these differing standards indicate confusion, and
may also be a legal mineeld, they are all too low.
The November 2009 issue of Science Update 2009
published by CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology
reported that current estimates of sea-level rise range
from 0.50 metre to over 2 metres by 2100. A federal
government report (1) authored by Prof. Will Steffen says
that: Sea-level rise larger than the 0.51.0 metre range
perhaps towards 1.5 metre ... cannot be ruled out. There
is still considerable uncertainty surrounding estimates
of future sea-level rise. Nearly all of these uncertainties,
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itsh
ardtoavoidrisingsea-levels
however, operate in one direction, towards higher rather
than lower estimates. And the outcomes of the March
2009 Copenhagen climate science conference (2) give
an estimate of 0.751.9 metres by 2100, based on peer-
reviewed research (3).So if up to two metres is acknowledged, why set plan-
ning guidelines around one metre? Just after the federal
government released its sea-level report (4) last year,
Senator Wong told ABC Insiders on 15 April that 1.1
metres .is about the upper end of the risk (empha-
sis added). This was an untruth. What the report actually
says is: Recent research, presented at the Copenhagen
climate congress in March 2009, projected sea-level rise
from 0.75 to 1.90 metres relative to 1990, with 1.11.2
metres the mid-range of the projection. Based on this
recent science 1.1 metres was selectedas a plausible
value for sea-level rise for this risk assessment
(emphasis added).
This is not risk management, but betting against the
laws of nature. It seems that plausible value is a weasel-
word for mid-range! But we dont base our re prepar-
edness on a mid-range plausible value. A safety-rst
approach means we plan for the worst possible outcome,
which all levels of government are clearly failing to do.
At the March 2010 Australian Coastal Councils
Conference Dr John Church, who is Australias pre-emi-nent expert, said sea levels will rise by close to a metre by
the end of the century no matter what the world does to
combat climate change, but warned [that] things could get
much worse if rising air and ocean temperatures caused a
massive ice sheet covering Greenland so big it could, by
itself, lift sea levels by seven metres to melt. (5).
An upper boundary to 2100
As the worlds oceans warm, they expand and sea-levels
rise, but how quickly the loss of polar ice sheets will add
to the rise is difcult to estimate, principally because ice-
sheet and sea-ice dynamics are not sufciently well un-
derstood, and they are subject to non-linear (rapid and un-
expected) changes, such as is now occurring with Arctic
sea-ice. The estimate of the 2007 IPCC report of about a
half-metre sea-level rise by 2100 is now too conservative.
The general scientic view is now for a rise of 12 metres,
but higher levels of 3-5 metres cannot be excluded.
The IPCC 2007 report was conservative
because it failed to factor in some melting of the Green-
land and Antarctic ice sheets. Yet the question is no
longer whether the Greenland and West Antarctic icesheets are losing mass (they are!), but if and when they
pass tipping points for large, irreversible ice mass loss,
and how fast that will occur.
New satellite data shows that both Greenland and
Antarctica are losing ice mass at an accelerating rate (6).
Arctic sea-ice in summer is in a death spiral according
to Dr Mark Serreze, head of the US National Snow and
Ice Date Centre (7); as it becomes thinner (8) and as its
volume continues to decrease, the data suggests total
summer sea-ice loss in the next three to ten years (9)
[See chart, page 13].As NASAs James Hansen notes in his recently
published book, Storms of my Grandchildren: It is dif-
cult to imagine how the Greenland ice sheet could survive
if Arctic sea ice is lost entirely in the warm season (page
164).
So how fast? One recent study (10) found that a
2-metre sea-level rise was the upper bound on how much
ice could physically be lost from Greenland and Antarc-
tica this century, but this was based on assumptions that
all ice shelves would remain intact, but in fact many are
already retreating (11). And a 2009 study by Siddall et
al. which suggested a sea-level rise of only 782 cms to
2100, and which was criticised as being too conservative,
has just been withdrawn due to technical errors (12).
On the other hand, recent research (13) examining
the paleoclimate record shows sea-level rises of 3 metres
in 50 years due to the rapid melting of ice sheets 120,000
years ago, when climate conditions very similar to today.
Mike Kearney, of the University of Maryland, said its
within the realm of possibility that global warming will
trigger a sudden collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet,which could lead to a rapid increase in sea levels like that
predicted by the study.
And recent Antarctic ice-core studies of the Pliocene
over the last 14 million years (14) have led Timothy Naish
of Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand to
conclude: We know that [when] CO2 was around 400 or
450 parts per million in the atmosphere...there was no ice
sheet on West Antarctica...Thats where were almost at
now.
Then on 13 January this year, New Scientistpub-
lished a story (15) about calculations that the Pine Island
glacier (PIG) in the West Antarctic has likely passed its
tipping point, with estimates that this one glacier alone
could add a quarter of a metre to sea levels by 2100.
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itshardtoavoidrising
sea-levels
Richard Hindmarsh of the British Antarctic Survey
says PIG could disappear entirely, and if Thwaites
glacier, which sits alongside PIG, also retreats, PIGs
grounding line could retreat even further back to a second
crest, causing sea levels to rise by 52 centimetres. The
modelling suggests Thwaites glacier has also passed its
tipping point. Pine Island and Thwaites drain about 40 per
cent of the West Antarctic ice Sheet into the sea and arethe key to its future.
And now comes a new report in Science(16) that an
undersea ridge that may have once helped slow the loss
of the Pine Island Glacier is no longer doing so:
An unmanned autonomous submarine has discovered
a sea-oor ridge that may have been the last hope for
stopping the now-accelerating retreat of the Pine Island
Glacier, a crumbling keystone of the West Antarctic Ice
Sheet. The ridge appears to have once protected the
glacier, but no more. The submarine found the glacier
oating well off the ridge and warmer, ice-melting water
passing over the ridge and farther under the ice. And no
survey, underwater or airborne, has found another such
glacier-preserving obstacle for the next 250 kilometers
landward.
Several years ago, the experienced climate science
journalist Fred Pearce reported geologist Richard Alley
as saying there is a possibility that the West Antarctic ice
sheet could collapse and raise sea levels by 6 yards [5.5
metres] this century, leading Pearce to conclude that the
Pine Island Glacier is primed for runaway destruction.
The evidence is now heading his way, and suggestingthat 0.8 or 1.1 metres is a risk-averse foundation for sea-
level rise planning and policy-making is now way behind
the times. James Hansen said three years ago that he
would bet a thousand dollars to a donut that his esti-
mate of a 5-metre rise by 2100 (based on recent climate
history) would be closer to the mark that the 2007 IPCC
gure of less than a metre, and the grim reality is that he
is likely to be right given the worlds continued failed to
sharply mitigate.
Sea level rises in the long runIt was thought that long-term climate feedbacks would
only kick in on century to millenia time-scales, but they
are on the cards right now. Will Steffen, in his recent
report for the federal government (17), notes that:
Long-term feedbacks in the climate system may be
starting to develop now; the most important of these
include dynamical processes in the large polar ice
sheets, and the behaviour of natural carbon sinks and
potential new natural sources of carbon, such as the
carbon stored in the permafrost of the northern high lati-
tudes. Once thresholds in ice sheet and carbon cycle dy-namics are crossed, such processes cannot be stopped
or reversed by human intervention, and will lead to more
severe and ultimately irreversible climate change from
the perspective of human timeframes.
Given the catastrophic failure to date of global climate
policy-making (Copenhagen outcome: a 4-degree warmer
world by 2100), big sea-level rises are on the way for the
sorts of temperature increases now on the table. NASAs
James Hansen wrote in New Scientiston 25 July 2007
that:
Oxygen isotopes in the deep-ocean fossil plankton
known as foraminifera reveal that the Earth was last 2C
to 3C warmer around 3 million years ago, with carbon
Arctic sea-ice loss: ice volume projections and observations
Modelled monthly mean sea-ice volume (blue line) over the Arctic Ocean for the period 19792004. Green line is the mean model ice volumefor 19791995. Stars show minimum OctoberNovember values from the model (blue) and observational estimates (magenta: Kwok andCunnihgham 2008; cyan: Kwok et al. 2009). Read and black striped lines: calculated (NPS/K08 and NPS/K09) linear trend through 19952007.Blue dashed line: model trend through 19952004. Projecting the trend into the future indicates that autumn could be ice-free between 2011and 2016 (Maslowski, 2009). Purple line: An unknown minimum amount of ice volume expected to survive summer melt beyond that time.PAPRERS: Kwok, R., and G. F. Cunningham (2008), ICESat over Arctic sea ice: Estimation of snow depth and ice thickness, J. Geophys.Res., 113, C08010, doi:10.1029/2008JC004753. Kwok, R., G. F. Cunningham, M. Wensnahan, I. Rigor, H. J. Zwally, and D. Yi (2009), Thinningand volume loss of the Arctic Ocean sea ice cover: 20032008, J. Geophys.Res., 114, C07005, doi:10.1029/2009JC005312. Maslowski, W.,J. Clement Kinney, J. Jakacki, Toward Prediction of Environmental Arctic Change, Computing in Science and Engineering, vol. 9, no. 6, pp.29-34, Nov./Dec.2007, doi:10.1109/MCSE.2007.125. Maslowski, W., State and Future Projections of Arctic Sea Ice, Changes of the GreenlandCryosphere Workshop and the Arctic Freshwater Budget International Symposium, Nuuk, Greenland, 25-27 August, 2009.Source: freshnor.dmi.dk/handout_freshnor.pdf
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itsh
ardtoavoidrisingsea-levels dioxide levels of perhaps 350
to 450 parts per million. It was
a dramatically different planet
then, with no Arctic sea-ice in
the warm seasons and sea
level about 25 meters higher,
give or take 10 meters.
And we are now almost at
400 parts per million! The simple
fact that seems to evade policy-
makers is that sea-level rises
measured in tens of metres are
in the pipeline for current green-
house levels.
Even more compelling, Pro-
fessor Eelco Rohling of University
of Southampton says: Even if
we would curb all CO2 emissions
today, and stabilise at the modern
level (387 parts per million by
volume), then our natural relationship suggests that sea
level would continue to rise to about 25 metres above the
present, based on his research (18).
These predictions t a simple but alarming pattern evi-
dent in the climate history. During the last ice age 20,000
years ago temperatures were 56 degrees cooler and
sea levels 120 metres lower. If human emissions continue
along their current path, global temperatures will be 4-5
degrees warmer, enough to eventually melt all the polar
ice caps and push sea levels 70 metres higher than today,as was the case in the Oligocene, 30 million years ago.
While ice-sheets can take long periods of centuries
and more to disintegrate, the conclusion is unavoidable:
On average, each one-degree temperature rise will in
the long run increase sea-levels by 1520 metres.
On average, the coast line retreats 100 metres for
every 1 metre of sea level rise. The Insurance Council
says 425,000 Australian addresses less than 4 metres
above sea level and within 3 km of shoreline are vul-
nerable this century. Already houses and property in
Australia are being abandoned. Much of our infrastructure
and many of the worlds largest cities are on the coast and
huge river deltas are densely-populated farming lands.
Climate scientist prof. Konrad Steffen says A one-
meter sea-level rise by 2100... will affect up to 600 million
people. And Sir Nicholas Stern says rising sea-levels will
result in forced migrations: Youd see hundreds of millions
people, probably billions of people who would have to
move and (probably) cause conict around the world
(for) decades or centuries.
DAVID SPRATT
Notes1. Climate change 2009: Faster change & more serious risks,Department of Climate Change, May 20092. Synthesis report: Climate change - Global risks, challengesand decisions, Copenhagen, March 2009, International Allianceof Research Universities, June 2009, www.climatecongress.ku.dk3. Vermeer and Rahmstorf, Global sea level linked to globaltemperature, PNAS, 7 December 20094. Climate change risks to Australias coast: A frst pass nationalassessment, Department of Climate Change, April 20095. Rising sea levels put us at risk, Northern Star, 3 March 2010,http://www.northernstar.com.au/story/2010/03/03/its-a-sea-
change-our-coast-could-well-do-without6. Velicogna, Increasing rates of ice mass loss from theGreenland and Antarctic ice sheets revealed in GRACE, GRL36:195037. www.grist.org/.../exclusive-new-nsidc-director-explains-the-death-spiral-of-arctic-ice-brushe8. Kwok & Rothrock, Decline in Arctic sea ice thickness fromsubmarine and ICESat records: 1958-2008, GRL 36:155019. The freshwater budget of the Nordic Seas, freshnor.dmi.dk/handout_freshnor.pdf10. Pfeffer, Harper et al, Kinematic constraints on glacier contri-butions to 21st-century sea-level rise, Science321:1340-4311. Climate change melts Antarctic ice shelves: USGS, Debo-rah Zabarenko, Reuters, 22 February 2010,http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61L5OH20100222;Coastal-Change and Glaciological Map o the Palmer Land Area,Antarctica: 1947 - 2009, US Geological Survey, http://pubs.usgs.gov/imap/i-2600-c/12. Climate scientists withdraw journal claims of rising sealevels, David Adam, Guardian, 21 February 2010, http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/21/sea-level-geoscience-retract-siddall13. Blanchon et al., Rapid sea-level rise and reef-stepping at theclose of the last interglacial highstand, Nature458:881-8414. Naish, Powell et al, Obliquity-paced Pliocene West Antarcticice sheet oscillations, Nature458: 32215. Katz and Worster, Stability of ice-sheet grounding lines,PRSA, 13 January 201016. Kerr, Antarctic Glacier Off Its Leash, Science327:40917. Climate change 2009: Faster change & more serious risks,Department of Climate Change, May 200918. Rohling, Grant et al., ,Antarctic temperature and global sealevel closely coupled over the past ve glacial cycles, NatureGeoscience, 21 June 2009
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isacarbontaxo
urpriority?
is the greens
proposal for a carbontax our priority?On 21 January, The Greens proposed a levy on pollut-
ers or carbon price/tax to break the Senate deadlock on
climate change. The Greens are currently negotiating with
the government on the plan.
Over 30 local community climate groups have thrown
their support behind the Greens plan, in a statementreleased in February:
Neither Kevin Rudd nor Tony Abbotts policy can deliver
a safe climate.
It is time for Plan B, starting with the Greens xed
carbon price.
Australia needs a new direction if we are to urgently
tackle the climate crisis.
Labors Carbon Pollution Reduction scheme is failed
policy, it gives too much compensation to the big pollut-
ers and relies on overseas credits on the international
carbon market to produce a reduction in emissions. Itwould lock in a high polluting economy.
The Coalitions policy is no better, it also hands out
money to the big polluters and relies on techniques to
increase soil carbon to produce most of its claimed
carbon dioxide reductions. We need to increase the
planets capacity to absorb carbon and keep coal in the
ground, not one or the other.
While a carbon price is only a small part of driving the
necessary transformation to a zero-carbon economy, the
Greens plan to set a two year carbon price could get the
ball rolling on real carbon reductions in Australia.
We call on all parties in the Parliament to back the
Greens proposal and get moving on a transition to a
safe climate.
[See www.climateactioncentre.org/climategroups%20
carbon%20price%20statement for list of signatories.]
National and State wide environment groups including
Australian Conservation Foundation, Greenpeace, Envi-
ronment Victoria, Nature Conservation Council of NSW
and Friends of the Earth have also welcomed the plan.
GetUp is looking at a campaign for a carbon levy also.
What is the Greens proposal? It is for a stand-
alone carbon levy of $23 a tonne commencing 1 July
2011, increasing to $24 from 1 July 2012, and after
that escalating at CPI plus 4 per cent a year. It would
be reviewed after two years but the proposed legislation
would be ongoing (no sunset clause), so the levy would
continue unless revoked or amended (as is the case with
all legislation).Greens Senator Christine Milne said that once the
interim scheme was implemented: We can then discuss
the longer term solutions Australia will need over the
coming two years, secure in the knowledge that a carbon
price is already in place, helping to unleash
innovative and job-creating climate solutions. [It seems
The Greens position, as reected in their Safe Climate
bills, is that a good emission trading scheme is better
than a carbon tax, but a carbon tax is better than a bad
ETS, such as Labors proposed CPRS.]
The Greens say their plan would generate $5 billion
to compensate households, with the same amount for
renewable energy and energy efciency. There would be
no compensation for domestically-consumed production
and limited exemptions (20% of emissions) for emissions-
intensive, trade-exposed industries.
Is a price on carbon eective in cutting
emissions? A carbon price seems necessary, but
not suffcient. Its of limited use for liquid fuels/transport
because there are at present few technological alterna-tives, and petrol prices are inelastic. This means a large
increase in price produces only a small drop in demand.
[It would require a carbon tax of around $500/tonne to
double the price of petrol!]
But for electricity generation, a price of $23 a tonne
ramping up towards $40 in a decade is enough to make
renewables (especially wind) more than competitive now,
and more so with innovation. As energy consultants keep
on saying, a price in this range will kill off investment in
coal-red power stations now, and drive investment in-
stead towards renewable energy. This change will start as
soon as it is understood that the price is coming: even the
possibility of the CPRS with a low price held back NSW
from announcing new coal-red power stations.
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isacarbontaxourpriority?
The current policies of the major parties in the federal
Parliament are not actually intended to do anything
signicant about climate change. I see them both as
elaborate deceptions designed specically to bafe the
public by creating the illusion of doing something; and
wedging the opposite side of politics.
The Greens proposal for a carbon tax is a very
clever circuit breaker that allows the government to
save face and initiate a transition into a more sensi-ble policy direction. Like it or not, we need a price on
carbon.
One of the things the climate movement has
missed in hammering home its (quite justied) opposi-
tion to the CPRS was the important disclaimer that no
single policy is going to get us there. We are dealing
with a completely unprecedented challenge and while
many of us feel very comfortable with the evidence on
the urgency of the problem, the reality is we dont have
enough detail on what particular suite of policies we
need to turn around rapidly escalating climate change.
We need to accept and sell the message that a
suite of policies is what is needed, and by rolling out
many different initiatives we will learn what works. But
we havent got time to try them one by one.
So a carbon tax is important, and it is a better
choice than the CPRS. A carbon tax:
creates an incentive to reduce emissions;
is simpler and more transparent than emissions
trading;
provides a reward for more long term (and higher)
structural changes, while the ETS just encourages
low-cost reductions;
provides a steady ow of revenue for governments
to direct to lower the costs of further emission
reductions (or direct investment into zero emission
technologies);
provides more price certainty for business than
emissions trading;
doesnt create any issues with voluntary action so
individual reductions still count;
sets no upper limit on emission reductions,unlike an ETS, which creates a ceiling (beyond
which emissions will not occur) but also a oor for
emissions reductions.
And a tax will be more efcient economically. A 2008
study from the US Congressional Budget Ofce found
that on economic efciency measures, the net benets
of a tax were roughly ve times that of a cap and trade
(ETS), with reductions achieved at a fraction of the cost
(1).
But in addition to establishing the right targets and
putting a price on carbon, there are many concurrenttasks, including:
* developing strong regulatory standards for energy
efciency for buildings
* regulation of transport emissions
* restoring carbon sinks through reafforestation;
* smart grids and smart meters
* regulation of waste (e.g. cradle to grave obligations,
and mandatory recycling)
* initiatives to improve climate literacy, and so on.
Of course we must also throw in investment in
education to skill people for new green jobs (and
to transition from old brown ones) and invest in
research (for innovation + evaluation). Certainly the
great big policy package what is required, which will
mean lots of different policy tools, and these may
vary across sectors.
We must also remove the current perverse
incentives that work in opposition to these goals,
particularly the $10 billion that is currently provided
in subsidies to fossil fuel industries in Australia.
I think the Greens proposal is nifty politics andsensible policy. The introduction of carbon price will
always need to be staggered and $23 is enough to
start the ball rolling and start to make existing tech-
nologies like solar thermal and wind more viable.
It doesnt allow for any offsets and it will generate
much needed revenue to direct into green initiatives,
which are all good things. I think it deserves support.
FIONA ARMSTRONG
1. Congressional Budget Ofce, Policy Options for Re-ducing CO2 Emissions, February 2008. www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/89xx/doc8934/toc.htm
A circuit-breaker
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isacarbontaxo
urpriority?As well, a carbon tax now can help undermine the
push for carbon capture and storage, because as well
as the additional 40-50% cost of this technology, CCS
would not scrub all carbon dioxide from emissions, so it
would be hit by a carbon tax as well.
A carbon tax is not the full answer, but it doesnt
preclude the many other things that need to be done
and it raises revenue that makes some other actions(direct investment, feed-in tariffs, energy efciency)
easier to fund.
Arent we just responding to someones elses
agenda? Yes, the nature of politics at the moment is
that we dont set the agenda as much as we would wish
(looking back at 2009, did we really set the agenda at
all?), and so our attention is often drawn to organising in
response to those issues that are already in the public
light and being talked about regularly in parliament,
the media and the community. We are more likely to beheard when we participate in a conversation that has
already started.
The problem comes if we simply respond on their
terms, rather than also pushing the terms of the debate
towards our territory. And there are other, less publicly-
recognised, but strategically important, issues which we
seek to move to the top of the public agenda by
mobilising broad support for them.
The recent public agenda on climate has been
dominated by Labors CPRS (dying, if not dead in its
present form), the Nationals opposition to it and Abbots
alternative plan (which will result in increased emis-
sions), and the circuitbreaker proposed by The Greens
of a carbon tax. Recently, climate denial, stuff-ups on
green loans, energy efciency (for the wrong reasons,
thanks to Garrett), and Wongs massacre of the RET
have also gained public attention, unfortunately more so
than renewables and replacing coal.
But the big three Abbotts plan versus the CPRS,
or a carbon tax will likely be prominent in the next
few months debate, with the parties and lobbies alsolaunching new proposals as the election approaches.
Should we intervene in this current public debate by
actively supporting a carbon tax? There are three
possible reasons: its a good idea; it is a platform to push
stronger proposals; and/or building support for good
Greens policies so that they start to win lower house
seats is strategically important, because until Labor
materially fears The Greens and others with stronger
climate action policies, their agenda of appeasing the
big polluters will not change.
Wont the tax be bastardised in negotations
and end up being a dud? Of course that possibil-
ity is an occupational hazard with everything in politics,
and support for a carbon tax should be premised on
sound foundations, which should not be compromised.
But if you only support something when you are 100 per
cent satised that you are going to get exactly the result
you want before you start, you may end up doing a lot of
sitting around.
The effectiveness of any policy depends on the intent
and motivations of the government implementing it, andthat depends on the broader balances of forces in the
society and how keenly governments feel the pressure
and/or reect the views of the climate movement and
lobby. Ditto whether the polluter pays or not.
Isnt this still creating a carbon market? A
carbon tax/price in not an ETS and it is not the CPRS.
With a proper carbon tax, there is no market in pollu-
tion rights, no nancial speculation on permit prices, no
purchase of scam offsets (through the CDM, rainforest
credits and other mechanisms) as an excuse not to cutdomestic emissions, banks cannot trade in permits, there
is not the disincentive to voluntary action, and it does not
create a oor on emissions.
Wont a carbon tax increase energy prices or
poorer people? Yes, but some of the revenue can be
used for compensation, as is the case in The Greens
proposal. Energy efciency programmes can also help
reduce energy costs. However we also need to recog-
nise that coal and gas-red electricity is cheap because
its price fails to account for its pollution that is killing the
planet. [Not that the pollution can simply be reduced to a
monetary price!] There is a question of equity, but keep-
ing the price abnormally low for coal-red power is also
an inter-generational equity question.
Isnt the price too low to be eective? It needs
in the end to be much higher, but $23 a tonne and rising
would straight away change a lot of investment decisions,
especially once it was understood the price was there
to stay for the long term. Under The Greens proposal, itwould get to around $40 in a decade. In 1991, Sweden
imposed the worlds rst carbon tax at $US100 a tonne
and today is one of the four most competitive economies.
Arent there better ways to cut emissions?
When all is said and done, there are only a limited
number of ways to reduce emissions, principally:
pricing mechanisms, which can be a tax on carbon
pollution so that these technologies become more
expensive than the low-pollution alternatives; and/or
subsidies (negative taxes) such as feed-in tariffs and
direct subsidies for investment;
regulations which outlaw certain emissions, technolo-
gies or processes;
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18 talkclimate March 2010 climateactioncentre.org
isacarbontaxourpriority? investing in innovation and scaling up alternative
technologies so they they become price competitive
with fossil fuels; and direct government investment in
the safe, clean-energy technologies; and
encouraging behavioural change.
A carbon tax does not preclude any of the other actions,
and can generate revenue to support them.
What about eed-in taris or paying people
to store carbon in soils? These mechanisms also
involve carbon pricing. Instead of taxing the carbon pol-
lution, they provide a subsidy to engage in actions that
reduce carbon dioxide levels (storing carbon in soil) or a
subsidy to produce clean energy (feed-in tariff). Thus they
are a negative carbon tax which subsidies the pollution
not emitted, rather than putting a price on pollution which
is emitted.
But arent carbon markets bad? A carbon market(trading in the commodity known as carbon pollution
rights or permits, such as the CPRS) is very different from
putting a carbon tax. A carbon tax does not create trade-
able emission permits at all, it simply prices pollution at a
point in the production process.
But isnt a price on carbon a market
mechanism? Yes, and a few people say they are
opposed to market mechanisms (and hence using taxes
to change market prices) in principle. Sure, the world
would be a different place without commodity and capital
markets, but thats not the reality within which we must
make big changes now. The climate system will be long-
past big tipping points if we simply wait to abolish the free
market before acting decisively.
If you really thought all carbon prices were bad, then
the rst thing you would need to do to be consistent would
be to argue that the current excise on petrol should be
removed, because for all practical purposes, it is a carbon
tax too. A feed-in tariff is also a market (negative tax)
mechanism, and judging from the experience in Europe,it works. Corporate tax is also a market mechanism (it
changes the rate of return in capital markets), but few
beyond big business think it should be cut or abolished.
Cant we just regulate emissions out o
existence? Some people say there should not be a
price on carbon and it should be regulated out of exist-
ence. But you can only progressively regulate certain
technologies out of existence once there are replacement
technologies and sources of energy. So how do you get
the new technologies built, when their current cost is
greater that the current fossil fuel systems? At the
moment, the options are through price mechanisms
(RETs/RECs which have prices) and using subsidiessuch as feed-in tariffs and/or tax concessions (also price
mechanisms). If these are also out because one is op-
posed to pricing mechanisms, what you left with is the
state directly investing and building the whole system.
Thats one proposition, but in the current political climate,
whats the chances of that alone (as opposed to a suite of
measures?) actually being realised in the near term?
In an economy with markets and prices, the simple
reality is that by making something scarce (prohibition/
regulation/rationing) tends to increase its price, whether
on the black market or a legal market for the rationedgood (as the experience of war rationing shows). We
cant easily get away from a relationship between the
supply and demand for carbon pollution and the price
on it. For example, if you use administrative measure to
ration everyone to fewer litres of petrol that they presently
on average use, what would happen to the black market
price? It goes up!
Why not campaign or total, direct government
investment in renewables instead? Yes we need
that as well, at a scale that isnt on the political radar yet,
but it is silly to counterpose one to the other. Saying we
need an action that is off the mainstream agenda and
is unlikely to be implemented at scale in the near term
(massive state investment in the tens of billions of dollars
annually) is no reason not to support a proposal for a
carbon tax that can drive down emissions, and is on the
political radar, and has a chance of being implemented
relatively soon.
In the end, the question is whether a carbon price
helps the transition to the new economy and the newenergy system, or not, and whether we can develop the
political power to drive a broader agenda.
DAVID SPRATT
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climateactioncentre.org talkclimate March 2010 19
itshardtoavoidrising
sea-levels
lan
guage
ofa
cle
anene
rgy
economy
The slides at right are extracted from
a presentation by Republican pollster
Frank Luntz called The Language of
a Clean Energy Economy. While the
ndings are for the USA, some may
have useful resonances for Australia.
Heres the backgound: GOP pollster
Frank Luntz used to be famous for
advising Bush in 2002 to focus on
the lack of scientic certainty in the
debate about global warming. Fast for-
ward eight years and now hes jumped
the fence, well, sort of. Hes helping
the Environmental Defense Fund help
gure out how to talk to the American
people about global warming in a way
that makes them care about it. Luntzsreport, The Language of a Clean
Energy Economy, says generally
Americans do believe the environment
is worseningthat the quality of our
air, water and general environment
is deteriorated over the last decade.
Ditto for the quality of the worlds en-
vironment. Turns out Americans want
action on climate change but not for
the reasons they have heard over the
years. How To Sell A Climate Change Bill
to Americans, Eliene Zimmerman,
TrueSlant.com, 23 January 2010
9 2009 The Word Doctors
www.theworddoctors.com
Carbon NeutralShould be Eliminated from your Vocabulary
People want companies to focus on greater energy efficiency and a
healthier environment not on being carbon neutral
Total
Greater energy efficiency 47%
A healthier environment 41%
A cleaner environment 32%
Reduced energy consumption 29%
Greater environmental stewardship 24%
Becoming carbon neutral 12%
None of them it is a waste of time 8%
If a company was genuinely interested in energy
and environmental issues, which of the followingdo you MOST want them to focus on?(Choose 2, Combined Answers)
12 2009 The Word Doctors
www.theworddoctors.com
57%
23%
20%It doesnt matter if
there is or isnt
climate change. It
is still in Americas
best interest to
develop new sourcesof energy that are
clean reliable,
efficient and safe
The cost of doing nothing of continuing to use dirty,
unsafe energy is actually far more expensive than
taking smart, effective action now.
Slightly higher
energy costs today
are worth the
investment if they
lead to more
affordable, more
efficient and cleanerenergy down the
road
Which of the following paragraphs about energy costs
gives you the most favorable impression?
Regardless of Beliefs About Climate Change
Its Still the RIGHT TIME to ACT
19 2009 The Word Doctors
www.theworddoctors.com
Total
Imagine a future where energy in the U.S. is abundant,affordable, and clean. Imagine feeling secure knowing that our nation can produce its
own energy instead of relying on Middle Eastern oil. Imagine an economic boom that
creates high-paying, permanent American jobs. We dont have to imagine it clean,
safe energy already exists. All we have to do is use it. So lets start. Now.
60%
Using dirty energy like that from coal-fired power plants is like eating greasy food at every meal It works as fuel, but its damaging to our
health in many ways. The longer we feed our economy with unhealthy energy, the
sooner well begin to experience the painful side-effects. Just as there are healthier
ways to feed our bodies that will help ensure we live long, productive lives, so too are
there healthier ways to feed our economy and the sooner we switch to clean, durable
energy the better.
20%
We see the visible damage to the environment
because of dirty energy every day. Climate swings. Tsunamis across the globe.Hurricane Katrina right here on American soil. More children sick with asthma. Polar
Ice caps melting. These arent assumptions. They are facts. Investing in cleaner,
safer, more secure energy now will cost a few cents more a day, but if we dont,
imagine the consequences.
19%
Positive Language Wins EVERY TIME
Which of the following paragraphs about energy would most convince you
that we need to do something about dirty energy NOW?
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itsh
ardtoavoidrisingsea-levels
21 2009 The Word Doctors
www.theworddoctors.com
TotalOpinion
Elite
Reliable Technology 36% 29%
Efficient Technology 31% 24%
Green Technology 27% 25%
Sustainable Technology 24% 33%
Clean Technology 17% 16%
Intelligent Technology 16% 16%
Cutting Edge Technology 15% 21%
Smart Technology 14% 17%
Advanced Technology 12% 11%
Ground Breaking Technology 9% 9%
When it comes to American technology,
which do you want most? (Choose 2, Combined Answers)
People want technology to be Practical
Total Opinion Elite DEM GOP
American Jobs 53% 52% 50% 61%
Permanent Jobs 41% 39% 45% 31%
High Paying Jobs 38% 41% 31% 44%
Skilled Jobs 32% 29% 37% 24%
Future-ProofJobs 8% 11% 8% 10%
Green Jobs 6% 6% 10% 2%
Union Jobs 2% 1% 3% 1%High Tech Jobs 1% - 1% 2%
American, American, American
23 2009 The Word Doctors
www.theworddoctors.com
And thats if the scientists are wrong.
If the scientists are right, we get all of those things, and begin to
solve what could be the most catastrophic environmental problem
that any of us have ever faced.
Thats a pretty good bet to make -- because its a No Regrets
strategy. It doesnt mean its easy. But it means if we do it, and do itright, we get all of those benefits out of this policy approach.
We think thats why its the right thing to do.
WORDS TO USE
If we do it right, we get cleaner air.
We get less dependence on fossil fuels
and enhanced national security.
We get more innovation in our economy.
More jobs, and more sustainable jobs.
It avoided dogma and
didnt try to scare us.
-Participant
lan
guage
ofa
cleanene
rgy
eco
nomy