New Matilda’s Guide to Greg Hunt’s Climate Nonsense
A Simple Guide To Understanding Greg Hunt’s ‘Nonsense’ Carbon Con, New Matilda 26 Apr 15 More than a decade in, Australia still doesn’t have a credible carbon abatement policy. Thom Mitchell explains.
Environment Minister Greg Hunt is doing a stellar job of muddying the rising, warming waters which threaten to submerge the government’s “inadequate” climate policies, but experts say his claims are “quite outrageously misleading”.
After half a decade of rhetoric the government’s Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF), the centre-piece of its ‘Direct Action’ climate policy, has faced its first real test.
The initial round of ‘reverse auctions’, which involve paying polluters to reduce emissions, was held on Thursday and Hunt has made quite a show of planting the LNP flag in the dead body of Labor’s carbon tax.
Hunt’s most compelling claim is that Labor’s carbon tax “reduced emissions at over $1,300 per tonne [while] the Emissions Reduction Fund auction price averages $13.95 per tonne”.
“The most important thing to get straight in terms of misinformation and misleading comments there yesterday was Minister Hunt’s assertion that the carbon price was $1,300 per tonne,” Professor Frank Jotzo said.
“That’s about as wrong as you can possibly get it,” he said.
The real price was in the 20-odd dollar range, and if the carbon tax had been allowed to develop into an emissions trading scheme, which it would’ve by now, the price would be linked to the European system which is trading at around the $10 mark.Hunt’s other glaring omission is that while the Coalition’s policy is a cost, the carbon tax raised revenue.
“Now you have taxpayers’ money being used to pay for emission reductions rather than money coming in to the federal budget from emissions and you have a government that makes you want to forget that taxes need to be raised or other government spending cut,” Professor Jotzo said.
As John Connor, the CEO of the Climate Institute, put it, Hunt’s price comparisons are like “comparing apples and fridges”.
Gujji Muthuswamy from Monash University chose the more conventional “apples and oranges,” but you get the point.
What the government has actually done is spend $660 million of taxpayers’ funds buying 47 million tonnes of carbon abatement.
In contrast, Professor Jotzo’s Australian National University study on the emissions reductions directly attributable to the carbon price in the electricity sector alone found that it had achieved an abatement of between 11 and 17 million tonnes over its two year life, while raising around $6 billion in revenue.
The Climate Institute had estimated that the carbon tax – which would already be a fully-fledged emissions trading scheme – would have achieved something in the order of a 15 per cent emissions reduction by 2020.
Under the ERF, there’s no guarantee the government will even make the five per cent reduction on 2000 emissions levels it has committed to achieving by 2020.
The Climate Change Authority – which was set up to advise the government on emissions reductions targets – has suggested a 19 per cent reduction by 2020 is necessary.
But according to Connor, under the ERF “there’s no independent modelling which shows that we can achieve even what is an inadequate and increasingly irrelevant [five per cent] target”.
Minister Hunt claims the government will “easily” achieve the target, but few experts agree……….
After the auction, the safeguard mechanism, and the Energy White Paper there’s no confidence for anyone that we have a credible climate policy on the books right now.” https://newmatilda.com/2015/04/25/simple-guide-understanding-greg-hunt%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%98nonsense%E2%80%99-carbon-con#sthash.o29JuElT.dpuf
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