Antinuclear

Interim carbon price would mean a start to action on climate change

We are under no illusions that this solution is perfect. It is clearly a third or fourth best solution. But, unlike the CPRS, there is no way it can hold back climate action.

This deadlock helps no one. The community is denied action on the climate crisis, the business community is denied the investment certainty it craves, the government looks increasingly impotent and the opposition looks like spoilers.

Interim carbon price preferable to time-wasting political stunt Christine Milne: The Australian January 22, 2010 There is a solution to this deadlock, one that Ross Garnaut suggested a year ago in his final report, fully expecting the political difficulties involved in legislating for a full trading scheme. We Greens are now proposing that we adopt the Garnaut suggestion and get Australia moving with this interim carbon pricing scheme. We can then, over the coming two years, discuss the longer-term solutions Australia will need, secure in the knowledge that a carbon price is already in place, helping to unleash innovative and job-creating climate solutions………………

The Greens’ proposal would allocate the same proportion of revenue to householders as under the CPRS, leaving no low or middle-income earner out of pocket. Ideally, as we have long argued, some of the $5 billion this scheme would direct to householders would be invested in making their homes more energy efficient, saving them money while reducing emissions, instead of being pumped straight into wallets. Our proposed reduction of industry support to Garnaut’s recommended levels would put the scheme into the black: $3 billion in surplus over two years, in contrast to the almost $1 billion deficit the CPRS would accrue over that time. This would leave room for a substantial investment in research and development, renewable energy, energy efficiency and public transport, using the scheme’s revenue to support its aims instead of undermining them, as the CPRS’s back-to-front compensation structures would do.

We are under no illusions that this solution is perfect. It is clearly a third or fourth best solution. But, unlike the CPRS, there is no way it can hold back climate action. Where the CPRS is designed to make it as difficult and expensive as possible to strengthen once it is passed, this proposal is designed to be strengthened….http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/interim-carbon-price-preferable-to-time-wasting-political-stunt/story-e6frg6zo-1225822296729

January 22, 2010 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, climate change - global warming, energy, politics, solar | Australia, climate change, climate change - global warming, energy, renewable, reneweable energy, solar