Paul Winn is our Forests and Climate Campaigner. Here is what he had to say about Prime Minister Rudd dumping the CPRS.
Last year Kevin Rudd was quoted as saying ‘No responsible government confronted with the evidence delivered by the 4000 scientists associated with the International Panel could in conscience choose not to act’. So the announcement by Kevin Rudd to shelve the CPRS until 2013 was in his words, unconscionable.
While Australia desperately needs a price on carbon to drive renewable energy and reduce greenhouse emissions, Rudd’s CPRS (Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme) was fatally flawed, being both inefficient and ineffective.
The wildly excessive compensation handouts to polluting industries made it an expensive solution while the appallingly low targets and the ability of polluting industries to purchase unlimited international offsets would have made it largely ineffective in reducing Australia’s growing greenhouse gas pollution. For these reasons, Greenpeace did not support its introduction and argued for it to be redrafted. Rudd’s response to criticism is, however, to run away from the debate and shelve his climate policy centrepiece.
Rudd’s announcement may spell an ominous sign that Federal Labor is turning its back on climate change mitigation, and certainly shows spineless political ineptitude, however it does allow for an emissions trading system (ETS) to be designed that would actually apply a cost to carbon pollution.
Rather than an elaborate scheme to subsidise polluting industries, an ETS should act to provide a competitive advantage to renewable technology and drive down its cost as uptake increases. It should also provide substantial financial flows to government for renewable industry development and a just transition for effected workers in industries heavily reliant on fossil fuels.
But what is to be done while a new ETS is designed? The Greens have supported the proposal of Professor Ross Garnaut to have a provisional carbon price that would act to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and provide a leg-up for low carbon technologies while a new ETS is drafted and implemented. This is currently the best short-term solution to Rudd’s climate policy fiasco, and one that could be introduced alongside the current tax reform agenda.
The vast majority of Australians still believe that Rudd should act swiftly and decisively to tackle greenhouse gas emissions, even without an international agreement. So will Kevin Rudd own up to his moral responsibility and the make the hard decisions required to help protect Australia from further climate impacts, or will he go down in history as a political weakling unable to lead his country through the climate policy morass we now find ourselves in?
