Apart from a need to just write something, anything, before 12 months elapses since I last did, this has been bugging me more and more lately.

Australia has become a fantasy land. Up is down, black is white; climate change doesn’t exist and we best burn more and more of that lovely coal.

Most people are aware there’s 12 new coal-fired electricity generation plants either under construction or in the advanced planning stages around Australia. Another 3 in WA alone, on top of the 2 Bluewaters units recently brought online and the planned joint venture refurbishment of those archaic Muja A and B units.

But it gets better and better.

The CPRS was first one of the worst attempts at public policy in Australian history (paraphrasing Ross Garnaut), then abandoned altogether — along with any pretence of doing a damned thing about climate change in this country — till at least 2013 in a fit of leadership-less, visionless, marginal-voter kowtowing, focus-grouped, polling-driven, debased raw populism that nearly cost Labor government. That’s old news though. And with a minority government pushed by the Greens, the best news for genuine Australian democracy in decades, some form of carbon price is back on the agenda.

That’s federal politics. What about the states? What are they doing to confront the climate threat crushing down on us and kick start a transition to a Smart Country that uses its abundant renewable energy? Going backwards is what.

Queensland’s state rail company, QR, is actually using the fact that it’s the world’s largest hauler of coal freight as a selling point in it’s current (or just expired) public float campaign. Broadly CGI emblazoned on pictures of it’s rolling stock. This can only become a liability to the company in a regulatory context even remotely serious about curtailing coal consumption. Oh, QR is mostly for exports? Even India has recently imposed a tax on coal imports, and that includes Australia. (Nevermind the morals.)

My absolute favourite is this though: the NSW government, in a pathetic and desperate attempt to finally dump their state-owned coal generator assets to the private market, are getting back into the coal mining game so as to provide a guaranteed and cheap supply of coal to these plants — below the real costs of production — because real-pricing of the fuel makes them totally unattractive for buyers. An article in, ugh, that national broadsheet, points out this is a subsidy to private interests on the order of $1b. This on top of overnight slashing the state’s admittedly probably over-generous $0.60/kWh gross RE feed in tariff to just $0.20, a value less than the retail purchase rate.

Meanwhile over west we’re so damn keen to dig up and flog off our gas assets, the Barnett gang want to compulsoraily acquire indigenous lands and force the gas hub on it. Disenfranchising the people and raping the land all over again. The Greens have raised in federal parliament the reality of the horrendous surge in GHG emissions this will all entail.

So. Climate change? Nawww, we don’t do that in Australia. We have coal and gas to dig up and burn or sell (not so much oil left, mind you), while routinely f-cking over the domestic RE industry with obscene stop-start policy, no national carbon price, and no signs whatever of even a slowdown in the rate of growth of our emissions.

Moronic would be a word. And we’re already reaping what we sow.

The NSIDC extent is linked below (this image changes daily).

And similar data from the US-Japan IJIS: although harder to see, you can make out that the 2009 (red) line is indeed the minimum point recorded for November.

So why does this matter? I have to be careful and state that in itself this new minimum means little; variability around the long term mean is expected. But of course the clear trend is a significant decline in that mean value. To my mind this is disconcerting because it must surely imply that Arctic sea ice recovery in the autumn (and winter?) is being impeded by the dramatic temperature increases being witnessed in that region. The more pronounced this becomes the greater the reinforcing positive feedback: less ice means less albedo (reflection) and more exposed dark ocean, which absorbs more incoming solar energy, which increase local temperatures, which melts more ice, and so on.

I’m not in the least qualified to write anything substantial about this; I only wanted to point it out because it struck me as significant, but yet I haven’t even seen it mentioned anywhere other than by David Spratt.

[UPDATE, Nov 17 @ 15:50 WST]

I found an NSIDC news release from November 3rd which discusses the slowing in recovery for October. That slowing was caused by a combination of strong Siberian winds impeding ice formation near the Siberian coast, and warmer winds around the Beaufort Sea blowing over that exposed water. To give a little more context to the yearly sea ice extent, NSIDC produced this image based on the normal daily updates: the grey band shows two standard deviations from the 1979-2000 long term mean. The September minima for 2005, 2009, 2008, and 2007 are quite clearly well below that range; 2005 and 2007 were below in November, but at the time this was produced one would largely have expected 2009 to continue above the 2007 extent, and quite possibly back into the grey band. Well not any more (see above graph). I would say that NSIDC will update this analysis once we get into December.

So I’ve knocked up some charts to make the data simpler to understand.

[When I set out to write this, I thought those changes were basically the DCC's decision. In looking properly at the UNFCCC reporting guidelines, I see that the DCC is just following the reporting requirements. I've hardly looked at any of this in detail, but I can't help but feel that electricity ought to be delineated far more obviously than it is.]

Energy is no longer clearly separated into Stationary energy, Transport, and Fugitive emissions as it has been previously (electricity generation being the major subsector of Stationary energy). Or at least it was previously. The document I obtained from the DCC website in the latter part of 2008, titled ‘National Greenhouse Gas Inventory 2006‘ [2], is not the same as the initial and revised reports to the UNFCCC published there now. And I can find no signs of the earlier document.

The simple chart I was referring to for 2006 data (and the table accompanying it) shows a readily understood sectoral breakdown of emission sources, importantly with percentage-of-total as data labels: this figure on page 1 of [2] (repeated on page 3 as Figure 1, sans labels).

There’s nothing this simple in the 2007 inventory. What’s more, energy is now categorised as  Energy — fuel combustion and Energy — fugitive emissions, so stationary energy and transport are merged into the former [okay, fair enough: that's what UNFCCC requires]. You need to read through the main text body to find mention of stationary energy and the component subsectors. Something as important as electricity generation — at 33.4% of total Australian emissions, the largest single subsector — is only properly discussed in here. The same situation occurs with both the online dataset (which only shows totals for the two energy sub categories) and the detailed summary table on page 24 of [1], which does show the subsectors for each energy sub category. That is:

2007 accounting sectors

In 2007 Energy Industries accounted for 221.84 Mt CO2-e, but you have to go back to the text body to find that electricity generation was 199.5 Mt CO2-e. And in fact, stationary energy is 291.7 Mt CO2-e in total, which would seem to be all fuel combustion subsectors with the exception of transport (itself 78.8 Mt).

More than a little confusing.

I spent what turned out to be a ridiculously large amount of time pulling all this into a spreadsheet and generating the ‘simple’ charts that I feel are needed. Trying to get this information across to lay audiences would be rather poorly served by showing only fuel combustion and fugitive emissions. All data is taken directly from the body text and summary table of [1] and the online dataset available at DCC. Clearly DCC retains copyright over the data herein.

All totals include LULUCF. The source spreadsheet is available from my Dropbox account [great service!]: 2007_inventory_data.xlsx.

The first two charts reproduce the information shown above, using the current accounting sectors, and the previous split of energy into stationary, transport, and fugitive emissions. The final chart shows the subsector breakdown of stationary energy. All charts show percentage-of-total national emissions as data labels.

Figure 1: Australia's greenhouse gas emissions by sector, 2007

Figure 2: Australia's greenhouse gas emissions by sector (showing energy subsectors), 2007

Figure 3: Australia's greenhouse gas emissions in the stationary energy subsector, 2007

However, there was one chart that does mostly present this data. It’s just rather daunting… The figure below is taken from page 14 of one of the accompanying documents to the inventory summary:  ‘Figure 7: Allocation of Greenhouse Gas Emissions by Source, Economic Activity and Greenhouse Gas, Australia, 2007‘ [3, page 14].

[1] Department of Climate Change. 2009. National Greenhouse Gas Inventory accounting for the KYOTO target, May 2009. Commonwealth of Australia.

[2] Department of Climate Change. 2008. National Greenhouse Gas Inventory 2006: Accounting for the Kyoto Target. Commonwealth of Australia.

[3] Department of Climate Change. 2009. National Inventory by Economic Sector. Commonwealth of Australia.

I think Denniss’ expression of this reality of the CPRS as proposed was a reasonably novel perspective. The fact that it represents a ceiling as well as a floor for abatement is not something I’d really seen stated explicitly before. But it’s not a flaw of the CPRS per se, it’s how any ETS works. In fact, in many ways it’s kind of the point.

Why?

Well because by putting a price on carbon (internalising them externalities), you are sending a signal to consumers of goods that are produced in ways that generate greenhouse gases. That signal — use less of these products; or substitute for products that generate less (or no) GHGs in their production process. So adding insulation to your home or purchasing rooftop solar PV (both great things) are really an expected response to that signal. In this case responding to the higher costs of fossil-generated electricity (or natural gas, for heating). Stimulating such changes is a major part of what an ETS is intended to do.

It is true that if you reduce your electricity consumption by installing PV and improving overall energy efficiency you make it ‘easier’ for players (other polluters). That’s because if you use less then there is now a larger proportion of the original to be consumed somewhere else. Somewhat perversely, if you don’t reduce your consumption (or, ahem, even increased it…) then more electricity would need to be generated and if it continues to come from fossil fuels then those electricity generators will either have to genuinely abate (eg, invest in renewables), or they will have to acquire more permits, which drives up the permit price. Higher permit price means it’s tougher on those other polluters.

But the key factor in all of that is the level of the overall emission cap. If it’s, say, insultingly, pitifully low — as the CPRS is heading for — then no-one needs to abate much and the permit price won’t be very high (hell, it might even trend to zero with a decent Renewable Energy Target operating in parallel). So when this happens, those voluntary actions are much more likely to be significant — so significant that they could make it even easier for the main polluting interests, amazing though that is,  than the ETS itself.

And so the truly important facet of any ETS, both in terms of actual environmental efficacy — you know, the reason we’re here: abating GHG emissions — and in terms of redressing the floor=ceiling issue, is to set a meaningful cap in the first place. If the CPRS did that, then voluntarism would really not be a problem.

Oh, and want to offset, force emission reductions, etc? Buy a permit and retire it. If they let us.

So that would be no ETS — no carbon price — and no RET despite being elected on a platform promising strong action in both regards.

I personally think it’s becoming increasingly likely that we are going to a double-dissolution. The Greens will never support the CPRS even remotely close to it’s current form (see Christine’s poignant words of wisdom) and I can’t see how either the Coalition nor Labor can back down from their entrenched positions. And of course now we’ve got Fielding being duped by those bastions of scientific objectivity, The Heartland Institute. (Still, probably wasn’t a tough sell.)

How can the CPRS bill get up before 2010 at this rate? And if the RET bill isn’t changed, that ship sinks too.

Not that I’m saying anything insightful here; I’m mostly just demonstrating I’m still kicking…

Personally, I used to think emission trading was a wonderful idea. Now I think it’s just so open to gaming, manipulation, and fraud (‘offsets’ anyone?) that the reality is hopelessly compromised…

I won’t bother linking to the storm of condemnation of the Australian Rudd government’s betrayal that is the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. I might write up my own take on the White Paper when I can control the rage enough to read it.

But here’s a letter to our Prime Minister Rudd in protest. I will send it on to a few other politicians for good measure. Of course I know it won’t change anything directly, but every voice counts. As Greenpeace say, what would you tell your children?

Prime Minister,
Words can barely express my dismay and outrage at your government’s grossly inadequate greenhouse gas emission reduction targets. With every passing month the climate science becomes more dire, more urgent. Evidence is rapidly building that a target of even 450ppm CO2-eq will not be sufficient to avoid catastrophic climate change, unleashing positive feedback mechanisms such as the melting of the Arctic sea ice and massive methane fluxes from melting Arctic tundra and permafrost. The loss of the Greenland ice sheet — and attendant 5-7m rise in sea levels — will be only one result. The science is firming around a necessary target of 350ppm, as Al Gore pointed out at Poznan. Yet your government sets targets of 5-15% that do almost nothing to address this urgent reality; even at 15% for a 450ppm target Australia is shamefully short of acting responsibly. This is not what our national interest and the Australian people demand!

What’s more, the per capita argument is pure sophistry for the simple and obvious reason that Australia already has the invidious dishonour of being the highest emitter per capita in the industrialised world; indeed, more than double that of the EU. Even a 41% reduction from such a high per capita base would see us remain more than double, let alone approach an actual sustainable and just per capita rate. And if the rest of the world shifts to per capita calculations, Australia would fare even worse in any international negotiations. Let’s not forget that global population is projected to reach some 9 billion by 2050. What counts is the level of emissions to our collective atmosphere, not fanciful accounting to make a minor reduction appear as anything but. The world will see this absurdity for what it is: weak spin of a weak target.

Last week, Prime Minister, you announced $500m for expansion of rail infrastructure servicing Australian coal exports. This just beggars belief. Such actions underscore a world view that is unable to envision an Australia separate from the mining and export of fossil fuels. I can only imagine that this would be based on the assumption of carbon capture and sequestration. This end-of-pipe dream fantasy does not yet and may never exist. Even if CCS does function, it fundamentally fails to address the underlying cause of GHG emissions, instead burying them underground and in so doing imposing a permanent risk of storage failure and a consequent permanent liability on future generations. Rather than expanding an industry at the very heart of climate change, this money should be spent on infrastructure that serves all Australians and that moves us toward a sustainable future. For example: expansion of general rail freight infrastructure; helping to fund the pressing need for a massive increase in effective public transport capacity; or a consolidated programme to extend electricity grids to sites of strong renewable energy resource availability.

And then there are the billions to be given to our worst polluters in the form of free permits and direct financial assistance, especially to coal-fired electricity generators. This breathtaking transfer of public wealth to the very companies that cause the bulk of Australian emissions, with no real obligation on them to change behaviour, is unconscionable, outrageous, and utterly unacceptable. Garnaut made clear that any calls for compensation have no sound basis and no precedent in this country; others have pointed out that claims stemming from ‘investor confidence’ have the matter entirely backwards, penalising those who have made responsible investment decisions. The coal and other fossil fuel lobbies have known GHG mitigation was coming since at least the Rio Declaration in 1992. Your government now proposes to perpetuate these industries while simultaneously ignoring and marginalising clean energy and other sustainable alternatives. And a 5% target means that what carbon price signal does exist will be so weak that fossil fuels will only become further entrenched when we urgently need the exact opposite.

These public monies should be invested in energy efficiency programmes, in facilitating a wholesale structural transition of our energy infrastructure toward renewable alternatives, in retraining and reskilling coal workers for sustainable ‘green collar’ jobs in the best interests of us all. Study after study shows that there are dramatically more jobs to be had in these nascent industries than in the current fossil fuel legacy. The incoming Obama administration in the US is set to implement a Green New Deal, including significant funding of renewable energy infrastructure, yet you squander this opportunity by continuing to prop up fossil fuel interests, yet again marginalising Australia’s truly vast renewable energy resources. It is in these renewable resources, and the technologies and services we can build around them, that our national interest lays: in a sustainable and healthy future for society, our economy, and our environment.

Prime Minister, you claim that your government accepts the science and accepts the need to act. Your government was elected with a mandate for strong action on climate change. Yet your actions say quite the opposite: you have manifestly failed to deliver on that mandate. There is no ‘balance’ to be had between the demands of our planet’s climate system and the narrow self interest of the vocal minority of Australia’s businesses represented by the fossil fuel lobby. There is no compromise to be struck for the immutable reason that the climate system simply does not negotiate, Prime Minister.

I beg you to abandon this tragedy of a White Paper in favour of what our people, our country, and our planet urgently requires, Prime Minister. Set targets of between 25-40% by 2020, at minimum, and invest in a true structural transition for Australia away from a sclerotic world view that sees no role for us outside of the fossil fuel industries. Commit your government to a Green New Deal that finally recognises our vast natural renewable resources and our opportunity to be world leaders in renewable energy and other sustainable technologies and services. Commit your government to the meaningful climate change action that you were elected to deliver.

Justin Wood, BSc, BAppSc Energy Studies, MSc Renewable Energy Policy

The WAEC has just updated their website with the Ocean Reef results.

Winning candidate was the Liberal’s Albert Jacob after the third preference distribution, with 54.42% of the two-party preferred vote to the ALP’s Louise Durack on 45.58%.

I came in third with 10.42% of the primary vote and 11.94% on preferences after the second distribution. Interestingly, fully one THIRD of my voters preferrenced Liberal over Labor (my How To Vote suggested Labor #2). I also received 31% of Family First preferences after the second distribution, which is probably even more of a surprise.

So, alas, even with 5 Green MLCs a minority government will have control of both houses of parliament thanks to a party with 4.9% of the primary vote.

There’s something seriously wrong with our ‘representative’ democracy when the Greens (or anyone else) poll 11.7% and have no direct influence in government policy.

I’m not suggesting we should have a controlling stake, but should the Nationals? Their locus of power is basically the agricultural region. And again, I’m not against that at all: the regions do need a real voice in parliament, and personally I support securing mining royalties for use in rural and regional WA; those mineral resources are owned by the people, and all the people, after all. My point is what of the 11.7% of the population who directly voted Greens [1]? Where is their representation?

There are a great many details I freely admit I don’t know when it comes to our democratic system, but I can’t help but feel that proportional representation should be applied in the lower house as well. Government would become much ‘harder’ because the traditional, adversarial power blocs simply wouldn’t work any more; our elected representatives would have to actually collaborate to get anything done. I want to see full deliberative democracy as the end goal, but surely proportional representation is more democratic than this minority government mess? And yes, I realise that the same would have been true of a Labor + Nats outcome — I only saw that as the lesser of two evils (more amenable to being steered in the right direction), not a desirable state.

To my mind the Liberals have almost nothing to offer by way of policy; they will almost certainly remove any fetters on wholesale unsustainable exploitation of WA’s mineral and oil & gas resources; I cannot imagine they will continue, much less expand, any push for public transport investment or mitigation of oil vulnerability; I have almost no hope they will act in any useful sense to mitigate climate change or remove the systemic barriers to renewable energy; Barnett seems unable to lose his fanciful modernist dreams of some sort of pipeline/canal to somewhere; we can expect to see GE crops befoul the agricultural region and seriously damage any sustainable, organic farming (including export value); and we all know their stance on uranium mining…

Absolutely gutted.

***

Just going from this speculative piece in The West online: http://www.thewest.com.au/default.aspx?MenuID=77&ContentID=97613

Talk about bitter sweet.

No Liberals-based travesty of a government — and even with 4 MLCs (instead of 5) the Greens would have balance of power in the upper house — but ‘…the door could be ajar to a change in Labor policy which may involve the royalties from uranium mining being spent on Aboriginal issues’.

Is a Labor + Nationals gov at least the better of two evils? I think it must be, given Libs + Nats minority gov would mean we lose balance of power and the Libs’ door is already well and truly wide-open for uranium mining. I know of other members who think a Libs gov would be the better outcome purely because they would be exposed as the idea-less fools that they are, but personally I think 3-4 years is too onerous a price to pay for that mass-realisation…

“When 12 normal people say it is legitimate for a direct action group to shut down a coal-fired power station because of the harm it does to our planet then where does that leave government energy policy?”

Good news for once!

And commentary on the implications of this for UK government polices — and around the world — from John Vidal:

… the signals which this gives out for climate change protestors, and goverments around the world, is very very clear: coal is dirty, coal is dangerous, and it is now, seemingly, legal to target it [my transcript from the audio]