Antinuclear

Just a few months ago, the newly constituted and Republican-dominated US Senate was asked to vote on a motion that “human activity significantly contributes to climate change”.

They voted against it. By a slim majority, 50-49,  the senior conservative legislators in US Congress collectively declared that, well, climate science is crap.

In Australia’s ruling Coalition, that view is noisily shared by Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s closest advisers, such as Maurice “it’s all a UN plot” Newman and Dick “I’m not a climate sceptic, I just don’t accept the science”Warburton, and of course some rogue members of Parliament such as Barnaby“it’s cold down here” Joyce.

Abbott, the man who made the climate science “is absolute crap” phrase his own, doesn’t like to repeat it so much in public these days. Indeed, he has in environment minister Greg Hunt a man whose principal role seems to be Minister for Saying That The Coalition Really Takes Climate Change Seriously, despite its policies that suggest the opposite.

The budget handed down on Tuesday night by Treasurer Joe “I don’t like wind turbines” Hockey continues the recent trend of Coalition policy documents that sweeps the idea that Australia should be acting — urgently or otherwise — on climate action under the carpet.

The energy white paper, and even the discussion paper on emission reduction targets, assumed that the world would continue on, business as usual, and do nothing more to reduce emissions from a trajectory that will precipitate warming by an average of 4 degrees — a scary outcome, scientists say, for many and particularly Australia.

There is hardly any mention of climate change in the budget documents, apart from the Coalition’s continued determination to remove the phrase from the government’s lexicon, and to dismantle the remaining initiatives of Labor’s clean energy package, presumably when (and if) it wins the election in late 2016/17.

The budget papers confirm that spending for the $10 billion Clean Energy Finance Corporation and the Climate Change Authority will be halted in fiscal 2016/17. Perversely, the CCA gains an extra year, presumably to conduct the nth review of the renewable energy target that the Coalition promised just a month ago it wouldn’t do. That uncertainty will continue to undermine investment in large-scale renewables in Australia.

The Australian Renewable Energy Agency — which funds emerging technologies such as wave energy, solar and storage, and off-grid systems — will also be absorbed back into the department and defunded.

Climate research is cut again, with the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility added to the list of climate and clean energy agencies to be wound up in 2017.

The only major spending on climate is the controversial Emissions Reduction Fund, the centerpiece of Direct Action, which still has another $1.7 million to spend on purchasing abatement from polluters, but no particular target to meet. Hunt insists that Australia will meet its 5% reduction target, but no one else believes him.

The Green Army gets a $179 million kick along to pick up litter and do other worthy things that a conservative regards as environmental. …….http://www.crikey.com.au/2015/05/13/budget-losers-climate-agencies-up-in-smoke/