Antinuclear

……….The Group of Seven biggest developed nations declared that the world needed to phase out fossil fuel emissions by the end of this century.

The leaders said their countries supported cutting greenhouse emissions from 2010 levels by 40 to 70 per cent by 2050, and then going further:

“Deep cuts in global greenhouse gas emissions are required with a decarbonisation of the global economy over the course of this century” announced the leaders of the US, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Canada and Italy after their summit in a Bavarian mountain resort.

“They’re not mincing words any more,” says Frank Jotzo, a climate change economist at ANU. “You are seeing high-level political preconditions for stronger domestic policy change.”

In the same week, two things happened in Australia. The Abbott government’s Environment Minister Greg Hunt envisaged Australia joining the same historic transition: “I believe it’s not only possible but likely that Australia will achieve zero-emissions energy by the end of the century” he told me.

And the leader of the Abbott government struck precisely the opposite stance. He appeared to stand in direct opposition to the threshold event of our time.

Tony Abbott said that he was opposed to wind farms. He boasted of cutting Australia’s renewable energy target……….

He said that his aim had been to “reduce the growth rate of this particular sector as much as the current Senate would allow us to do”.

This is remarkable. The former Liberal leader, economist John Hewson, who once employed Abbott as his press secretary, says that Abbott’s comments were “ignorant and irresponsible”.

Hewson these days works on so-called “stranded assets”, energy assets like coal mines that risk becoming uneconomic as the market and regulation moves against them.

Is Australia at risk of becoming a political and economic “stranded asset”? “It’s a risk,” says Hewson, “when the government doesn’t seem to have any strategy for jobs, investment and growth.”

Abbott’s comment will “work to confirm us as the global laggard”.

Even Saudi Arabia has looked history in the eye and seen inevitability. The most fossil fuel-dependent nation on the planet has acknowledged that it’s time to wind up the carbocultural era…….

So the kingdom planned to become a “global power in solar and wind energy”.

What’s going on in Australia?

“We have been living in our own little bubble, and you can’t live in your own little bubble forever,” says the eminent Australian economist Ross Garnaut, author of a major study of the economics of climate change.

As Australia prepares to decide its carbon emissions target for the years 2020-2030, which view will prevail? Hunt’s or Abbott’s?

Countries are declaring their carbon targets in advance of the Paris climate conference in December. Australia has said it will announce its position in mid-July. The cabinet must make a decision soon.

What is Australia’s strategic energy policy? To become the Jurassic Park of the world economy? Or will it exploit its advantages in sun, wind and brainpower to take advantage of the next great energy revolution as the planet enters its seventh energy era?

Shell’s Frank Niele lays out the great sweep of earth’s history as a series of six energy waves to date……………

The accelerating pace of technology is powerfully on the side of the optimists. The price of solar power cells has fallen by a factor of three in the last decade and continues to fall, for instance.

What are the politics for Abbott? The climate sceptics in his Cabinet will argue that they need to protect the coal sector and protect the party’s “base” vote by doing as little as possible to contribute to the global effort.

But this is spurious. The “base” will not switch their votes to Labor or the Greens because of climate change, regardless of what Abbott pledges.

And Abbott has Labor where he wants it on this. Bill Shorten has promised to take a carbon price to the next election. This would allow Abbott to claim that Labor wants to raise electricity prices. No matter how hollow this claim may be, it’s good enough for Abbott’s campaign purposes.

For the sake of the national interest, Australia has to hope that Abbott’s urge to suppress the energy revolution is a passing spasm.

As for protecting coal, Abbott can no more prevent the unfolding energy revolution than one caveman could have held humanity back from discovering the mastery of fire by refusing to strike a flint.

History is afoot. Australia can run with it or be overrun by it. http://www.smh.com.au/comment/tony-abbott-at-odds-with-the-world-on-renewable-energy-and-climate-change-20150612-ghm8ql.html