Monthly Archives: December 2014

Politics & Government, Social Science and Society

Hockey: dark strategy or a muddle?

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Some of each, I think.

In one sense the MYEFO (Mid-year Economic and Fiscal outlook) statement was not so bad. The bottom line is $10 billion worse and the budget will reach a surplus a year later, in 2019 instead of 2018. Ross Gittens gives Hockey a tick for not panicking.

Yet the MYEFO assumes that the Senate will co-operate in the new year and pass all those lovely cuts to higher education and welfare benefits along with other measures like the GP visits co-payment scheme.

Laura Tingle finds little to show that the Government has a clue on what to do about the collapse in revenue from the terms of trade and long-term fiscal consolidation. It’s blindingly obvious that we need to pay more tax, but the Government has taken the soft option of soaking the unseen poor by taking $3.7 billion from foreign aid.

Ben Eltham in an excellent budget review finds the Coalition’s economic policy “hopelessly confused”.

Last week Ian McAuley took a look at the Government’s economic strategies, which he finds based on three planks:

The first plank, revealed in the 2014 Budget, is an attempt to tilt income distribution towards the already well-off. The idea is that, given enough breaks, the rich will save and invest, providing employment for everyone else.

It’s a policy based on heroic assumptions about how the rich behave, most notably an assumption that rich people are rich because they are clever and industrious. Suffice to say that this was the disastrous approach known as “supply side economics” or “Reaganonomics” in America in the 1980s. If it stimulates any employment it is likely to be among workers in BMW car plants in Bavaria and real-estate agents in Sydney’s north shore.

The Australia Institute’s report The budget’s hidden gender agenda points out that this also favours men over women.

The second plank is about sustaining material living standards as long as possible on the back of the resource boom.

The benefits of the resources boom have been distributed in tax cuts and middle class welfare. Wayne Swan in his book The Good Fight points out that Peter Costello received a total of $334 billion in revenue upgrades and managed to spend $314 billion of it. A once in a century chance to upgrade our infrastructure was missed.

The Coalition’s third plank is pursuit of “small government”, even though Australia has one of the smallest public sectors of all developed countries, and we have pushed privatization to the extent that we are paying far more for poorer services than we would be had we retained public ownership of assets such as roads, airports and energy and water utilities.

Yet Eltham tells us:

With spending at 25.9 per cent of GDP, the Abbott government is indeed spending more than Julia Gillard’s government – more, in fact, than every year of the Rudd-Gillard era, except the stimulus year of 2009-10.

I’ve always thought there was an ideological dimension to Howard-Costello’s distribution of goodies. We are expected to take more responsibility for ourselves. But why does Labor follow suit? Purely for political reasons, I think. To avoid the ‘big spender’ tag and demonstrate economic management.

Labor might do better to take a different and more honest approach. Australia could become a better, fairer and more decent place to live if we taxed and spent to, say, 30% of GDP. We’d still be near the bottom of the league tables.

I’ll leave you with this graph of the underlying cash balance as a percentage of GDP from MYEFO via the AFR:

Cash balance 2 001_cropped_600

You’ll notice that Swan had the balance down almost to minus one percent before Hockey came and created a mess. I agree with Chris Bowen, Hockey is simply not up to the job.

Climate Action, Climate Policy & Planning

Weak climate deal salvaged in Lima

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Seems the most important thing that can be said about the Lima climate change conference (earlier post here) was that it did not fail. The prospect is still there for a deal in Paris next December, but it looks like being a weak deal – a deal that does not limit warming to two degrees, a deal that will not be legally binding, and a deal that may lack some of the major participants.

The most exciting thing about the conference was that the reference to ensuring the world has net-zero emissions by 2050 is still there:

The mitigation section of the draft text states countries must aim for “a long-term zero emissions sustainable development pathway” that is “consistent with carbon neutrality / net zero emissions by 2050, or full decarbonization by 2050 and/or negative emissions by 2100.”

Giles Parkinson says this was explicitly supported by over 100 countries. Julie Bishop was not bloody-minded enough to insist that it be removed.

The phasing out of fossil fuels as a reality is now part of the conversation and capital for fossil fuel exploration and development should begin to dry up.

Once again The Carbon Brief provides a handy summary:

  • Lima Call for Climate Action outlines main aspects of a new global climate deal.
  • Keeps goal of limiting global warming to less than two degrees.
  • Contains reference to ensuring the world has net-zero emissions by 2050.
  • Doesn’t clarify if a new deal will be legally binding.
  • Doesn’t give countries the power to alter other country commitments.
  • Doesn’t offer new assurances on the flow of climate finance.
  • Leaves all options on the table regarding compensation for countries worst hit by climate change.

Ambition

The principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibility’ is enshrined by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Accordingly in the Kyoto deal only the developed countries were required to limit emissions.

This time everyone is going to have to front with a climate mitigation plan, but

countries must work to ensure a 2015 deal “reflects the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, in light of different national circumstances.”

Initial plans should be submitted by March. Australia has said that we will submit ours by June. Work has not yet begun, but it is clear that Tony Abbott himself is going to take control of the process.

The UN will do an analysis and report on the overall impact of the country targets by November. There is no chance that it will add up to a plan to limit warming to two degrees.

The EU wants ‘contributions’, once established to stand for 10 years. Some other countries favour five years, for greater flexibility.

Legally binding

The EU, some of the smaller countries and Australia want targets, once set, to be legally binding. There seems no chance that this will happen. Luke Kemp at The Conversation says that for the US to agree two-thirds of the Senate have to vote in favour. They won’t vote for a legally binding agreement and China won’t sign up unless the US does.

Frankly, I can’t see the US Senate agreeing to any kind of a climate deal in the foreseeable future, so the Paris deal, like Kyoto, may have to start without some of the major players.

Kemp says that Australia was softening its stance, so fears that Australia was playing a game to torpedo the talks seem to be misplaced.

Accountability

Each country’s official plan to cut emissions and tackle climate change will be known as an ‘intended nationally determined contribution’ (INDC). The conference could not agree whether INDCs should be scrutinised.

The EU is willing to agree to the INDC system if governments can scrutinise each country’s INDCs, and suggest how they may need to change to increase ambition. Other countries, such as China and India, are very much against such scrutiny, known in the process as ‘ex-ante review’.

Lima’s draft text doesn’t determine whether the INDCs will be subjected to official review.

I’d say forget it.

What next?

There was more, of course, including financial assistance (never satisfactory). The draft document contains as many as 11 alternative versions of the text. There is masses of work to do.

Work will continue in various working parties and in a major conference in Bonn in June. No doubt discussions will continue in other forums, such as the G20 in Turkey. The next step is to submit INDCs by March. We’ll cheat by looking at everyone else’s homework. So will the Abbottistas be proudly recalcitrant, or will we track near the back of the peloton but try to pretend we are in the middle?

Elsewhere Graham Readfearn has annotated Julie Bishop’s speech.

Climate Action, Climate Policy & Planning, Climate Science

Two degrees

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Carbon Brief has compiled a series of three posts on the so-called 2°C ‘guardrail’ used in global warming discourse:

This post will pick out some of the highlights, but is not a substitute for reading the posts. Continue reading Two degrees →

Life, Politics & Government, Science, Sundries

Saturday salon 13/12

2 Comments

voltaire_230

An open thread where, at your leisure, you can discuss anything you like, well, within reason and the Comments Policy. Include here news and views, plus any notable personal experiences from the week and the weekend.

For climate topics please use the most recent Climate clippings.

The gentleman in the image is Voltaire, who for a time graced the court of Frederick II of Prussia, known as Frederick the Great. King Fred loved to talk about the universe and everything at the end of a day’s work. He also used the salons of Berlin to get feedback in the development of public policy.

Fred would only talk in French; he regarded German as barbaric. Here we’ll use English.

The thread will be a stoush-free zone. The Comments Policy says:

The aim [of this site] is to provide a venue for people to contribute and to engage in a civil and respectful manner.

Here are a few bits and pieces that came to my attention last week.

1. CSIRO cuts


From ABC Rural:

The CSIRO is set to lose one staff member in five over the next two years.

The effect of the Federal Government’s cut of $114 million is now becoming clearer, with at least four regional research sites under threat.

National organiser for the CSIRO Staff Association, part of the CPSU, Paul Girdler, says 878 staff are to be cut over two years, until June 2015.

“It’s over 100 more than originally forecast.

“Over two years, the CSIRO is losing 21.5 per cent of its workforce, or one in five jobs.

“This new analysis demonstrates the cuts are even worse than when they were announced.”

Given the cuts last year, the total tally is 1,400 jobs at the Science Organisation.

CSIRO Chairman Simon McKeon says the organisation has “cut into the bone”.

We should be redoubling if not doubling our science effort.

Julian Cribb, science writer and author of The Coming Famine, says every government since Labor under Bob Hawke has slashed the CSIRO.

I simply can’t understand Industry Minister Ian McFarlane saying year-on-year funding is increasing, unless you cut overall first and then increase the funding each year. In which case he is intentionally misleading.

There’s more on the 7.30 Report.

Stephen Luntz at Crikey explains that many scientists will have unfinished projects, which doesn’t help them establish a reputation to find a job elsewhere.

Those made redundant include Nobel prize contender San Thang.

2. Farewell Stella Young

Stella Young, comedian, journalist and disability advocate, has died aged 32. I gather her death was unexpected. She will be missed.

3. Gillard’s My Story

I finished Gillard’s My story a while ago and have been meaning to report on it. Generally speaking I agree with Natalie Mast’s review but have a query about her final summation:

My Story is a substantial piece of work, yet there are times where policy wonks will be wishing for greater detail on negotiations or even why certain policy decisions were taken. Still in a work this size, limits must be made. For the most part Gillard’s focus is on key issues and those close to her heart.

The lucid presentation of Gillard’s case ultimately provides a cogent defence of the reasons for the challenge to Rudd, the difficulties her government faced, both internal and external, and an insight into Gillard herself.

I thought her detail on individual policies was more than one would expect. As PM she was impressively across a wide range of briefs and her recall is astonishing.

Lucid, yes, also very reflective and self-critical.

The first 130 pages tell the story of how she came to power and governed. In the following 331 pages she takes policy areas one by one, explaining how and why decisions were taken and in some cases an assessment of what still needs to be done, but laced with back stories and relevant anecdotes. The book forms a valuable resource.

Natalie Mast is right in saying she supported Rudd to the hilt and praises him where she thinks he did good work. I too found it surprising that she virtually took over organising his office for him. Also in areas such as health she ended up running the policy internally because Rudd was incapable of doing so.

Surprises include her attitude to gay marriage, which has always been painted as conservative. She says her brand of feminism historically saw marriage in general as an oppressive institution, so it was marriage that she opposed, not the gay bit. She concedes that views have now moved on.

I’ve come the the conclusion that Rudd probably did cause the leaks during the 2010 election campaign. Probably. Gillard reckons it wasn’t to bring her down, Rudd wanted to be foreign minister in her government and she was intending to give him something else. She was told the leaks would continue until she changed her mind. When she conceded his wish the leaks stopped.

One thing is certain, she will never respect Rudd as a person, a view he probably reciprocates.

Finally, I’d love to say more about the misogyny speech. Spoken unscripted with such eloquence and passion, yet she wasn’t personally angry. There is a lesson in there, but it will have to wait for another time.

Climate Action, Climate Policy & Planning, Climate Science

Climate clippings 117

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1. Australia targeted as climate change obstacle

I pointed out that Australia is the dunce of the class on climate change according to the Climate Change Performance Index 2015.

Elsewhere the French are already considering how to cope with Australia’s and Canada’s negativity at the Paris conference next December.

2. Seeney in denial on sea level rise

That dipstick Jeff Seeney, Deputy Premier in Queensland, has directed the Moreton Council to remove all reference to sea level rise from, its planning documents:

“I direct council to amend its draft planning scheme to remove any assumption about a theoretical projected sea level rise from all and any provision of the scheme.”

The council had made provision for a possible 0.8-metre rise in sea level by the year 2100. Seeney says:

“I am prepared to protect the property rights of Queenslanders in other council areas should this issue arise again.”

Who is going to protect them from him? The Local Government Association of Queensland (LGAQ) is seeking legal advice.

Seeney claims the issue has nothing to do with climate change! Denial doesn’t come clearer than that!

3. West Antarctic melt rate has tripled

A NASA study has done a thorough analysis of the land ice melting in the Amundsen Sea Embayment where the glaciers are melting faster than any other area of Antarctica.

SuppA-W-Ant-300x260

The rate of loss accelerated an average of 6.1 gigatons per year since 1992, but now the rate is increasing by 16.3 gigatons per year.

The total amount of loss averaged 83 gigatons each year over the whole period, that’s the equivalent of losing the weight of Mt Everest (not just the ice on it) every two years.

4. Warmer seas could cause faster melting of Antarctic ice

A separate study has found that the seas around Antarctica are warming, which could increase ice shelf melting.

Ice shelves float, so the melting does not cause sea level rise, but they buttress the land glaciers. Take away the ice shelves and the glaciers flow faster.

5. New large scale battery storage in Germany

Belectric and Vattenfall have opened new large-scale battery energy storage system at the Alt Daber solar power plant in Germany. The facility uses lead-acid batteries.

For the system to be economical without any financial support, costs will have to come down by around a third.

6. Solar and wind energy backed by huge majority of Australians

Solar and wind energy enjoy strong support from the Australian public, with 80% of people putting them both among their top three energy choices in a poll for the Australia Institute.

By contrast, coal and coal seam gas were chosen by 35% and 38% of those polled as being among the best three future energy sources.

A separate review of medical literature by the Australia Institute debunked the fear that wind power damaged people’s health, finding “no credible evidence” directly linking exposure to turbines with negative health effects.

Nine out of 10 people said they wanted more solar energy.

Six in 10 people said they were concerned about the impact of coal and coal seam gas on the landscape.

7. UNSW researchers set world record in solar energy efficiency

Solar researchers working at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) claim to have produced a system that converts over 40 percent of incoming sunlight into electricity, thereby taking the title of highest solar efficiency for a photovoltaic system ever reported.

“This is the highest efficiency ever reported for sunlight conversion into electricity,” said UNSW Professor Professor Martin Green, Director of the Australian Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics (ACAP).

8. The end of coal as we know it

And oil for that matter.

Graham Readfearn in Lima at the climate Conference of Parties has found these items in the negotiating text:

Parties’ efforts to take the form of:

a. A long-term zero emissions sustainable development pathway:

Consistent with emissions peaking for developed countries in 2015, with an aim of zero net emissions by 2050; in the context of equitable access to sustainable development;…

Consistent with carbon neutrality/net zero emissions by 2050, or full decarbonization by 2050 and/or negative emissions by 2100;….

He understands they were put there by Norway, the Marshall Islands, Sweden and the AILAC grouping of countries consisting of Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Peru and Panama.

Andrew Robb Bishop have noticed and are complaining. It will be interesting to see whether the statements stay.

Readfearn finds that a move for a zero emissions target is growing and Malte Meinshausen explains that it is inevitable if we are serious about staying within two degrees.

Life, Politics & Government, Social Science and Society

New low in human rights: the asylum seeker legislation

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Morrison_Sowhothebloodyhellareyou _500

Ben Doherty at The Guardian has characterised the new asylum seeker legislation as “a seismic piece of legislation – one that destroys more than it creates.”

The passage of the Migration and Maritime Powers Legislation Amendment (Resolving the Asylum Legacy Caseload) Bill 2014 which “has given the immigration minister, while he holds that job, unprecedented, unchallengeable, and secret powers to control the lives of asylum seekers.”

In effect under the bill the minister can do anything he chooses, he can ignore the UN convention and avoid legal challenge – the courts have been sidelined.

With the passage of the new law, the minister can push any asylum seeker boat back into the sea and leave it there.

The minister can block an asylum seeker from ever making a protection claim on the ill-defined grounds of “character” or “national interest”. His reasons can be secret.

He can detain people without charge, or deport them to any country he chooses even if it is known they’ll be tortured there.

Morrison’s decisions cannot be challenged.

Boat arrivals will have no access to the Refugee Review Tribunal.

Instead, they will be classed as “fast track applicants” whose only appeal is to a new agency, the Immigration Assessment Authority, but they will not get a hearing, only a paper review.

“Excluded fast track applicants” will only have access to an internal review by Morrison’s own department.

Cross bench senators have been suckered by the promise that children will be released from detention, something the minister already had the power to do.

If we had a human rights charter the legislation would be struck out in a heart beat in a high court challenge. Since we don’t there is a fair chance the inevitable challenge will fail.

Critics – and they are a formidable group, including the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the UN’s Committee Against Torture and parliament’s own human rights committee – say the bill strips the checks and balances that have always existed in Australia’s immigration system, and removes basic protections for those who arrive seeking asylum.

Australia now regards itself as free from the bonds of the Refugees Convention – a treaty Australia helped write, and willingly signed up to, more than half a century ago. All references to it have been removed from Australian law.

Max Chalmers at New Matilda reports on 25 children born in Australia who all had parents interned on Nauru but were flown back to Australia to give birth because of the poor medial conditions on the tiny Pacific Island. These children are the subject of a legel challenge being run by Maurice Blackburn’s social justice department. The legislation seems designed directly to alter the status of the children retrospectively and so prevent a favourable judgement.

It seems that children born in detention in Australia can now be deemed to have arrived by boat.

The UNHCR takes the view that Australia, as a signatory of the 1951 Refugee Convention cannot relieve itself of the obligations of the convention. The new law, however, creates an “new, independent and self-contained statutory framework” where Australia makes up its own rules. Australia now regards itself as free from the bonds of the Refugee Convention.

Especially egregious is the treatment of the principle of non-refoulement obligations under the legislation. Under this principle it is forbidden to return a person to a country where they may still be persecuted or tortured. Don McMaster at The Conversation points out that the Australian law states:

… it is irrelevant whether Australia has non-refoulement obligations in respect of an unlawful non-citizen.

The law seems designed to ensure that whole boatloads can be returned to Sri Lanka without legal challenge.

Malcolm Fraser has savaged Scott Morrison’s new asylum seeker laws and the senators who passed them.

Australia is now known around the world as the most inhumane, the most uncaring and the most selfish of all the wealthy countries, former prime minister Malcolm Fraser has declared.

Mr Fraser says migration legislation passed last week has given Immigration Minister Scott Morrison “dictatorial, tyrannical powers” over the lives of asylum seekers and “destroyed the rule of law as we know it”.

“The crossbench senators, Xenophon, Wang, Lazarus, Day, Leyonhjelm and Muir are wrong because their grievous political error has betrayed Australian democracy,” Mr Fraser said.

“They have co-operated by tearing up international conventions, practices of international law, all necessary if we are ever to establish a better and a safer world…

Paul Syvret in The Courier Mail says the legislation makes Australia a rogue state regarding international law and human rights. He terms it as “cruel, callous legislation that is arguably in breach of international law.”

Morrison effectively used children in detention as pawns to blackmail his legislation through the Senate, saying to the likes of Muir: “Pass my Bill and I’ll release the kids.”

This ignores the fact that he (and Labor before him) has the power at any time to release those children. It is hard to imagine a more cynically exploitative abuse of process and human life, and this from a man who professes to be a Christian. And here it is a shame Muir and others didn’t stand firm and say “Release the children first, and then we’ll negotiate”.

About 70% of the detainees languishing behind wire in the Manus Island and Nauru compounds who have had their claims processed have had positive determination of their refugee status, but both sides of politics have ensured that they have no place here.

It is a policy of deliberate cruelty perpetrated by both sides of politics, but taken to new — to use Senator Sarah Hanson-Young’s description — sociopathic depths by Morrison last week.

Future generations will look back on this dark period in Australian history with profound shame and regret. Many of us feel that way already.

Climate Action, Climate Policy & Planning

Australia the dunce of the class on climate change

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Australia ranks 57 out of 58 countries in the The Climate Change Performance Index 2015, heading only Saudi Arabia, which is not classified as an industrial country. Australia has dropped 21 places since the last survey a year ago.

There are reports in The Age and The Guardian. From the latter:

Australia has been named the worst-performing industrial country in the world on climate change in a report released at international negotiations in Peru.

The climate change performance index ranked Denmark as the best-performing country in the world, followed by Sweden and Britain.

Among the world’s top 10 emitters, Germany was ranked the highest at 22. Australia was second bottom overall, above Saudi Arabia – which was not classified as industrial.

The report states: “The new conservative Australian government has apparently made good on last year’s announcement and reversed the climate policies previously in effect. As a result, the country lost a further 21 positions in the policy evaluation compared to last year, thus replacing Canada as the worst-performing industrial country.”

This map from The Guardian gives an overview:

World map_cropped_600

Clearly Europe is the best performing region. Here are the top dozen ranked countries:

Country rankings_cropped

No countries were coded dark green for “very good”. This means according to the report’s criteria that no countries are performing well enough to limit global emissions to two degrees. Because the top three places were left vacant you have to subtract three from each ranking to find the actual rank placing. Eleven of the twelve countries coded “good” were European.

Here are the 10 heaviest emitters in order of ranking:

Large emitters_cropped_600

The ten worst countries are, from the bottom, Saudi Arabia, Australia, Kazakhstan, Canada, Iran, Russia, Korea, Chinese Taipei, Japan and Malaysia.

The index covers the performance of countries across five areas – the level of emissions, the trends in emissions, energy efficiency, renewable energy policies and the approach to climate change at national and international levels.

The report has been compiled each year since 2005 by Climate Action Network Europe and Germanwatch. The Australian Conservation Foundation assisted with the Australian information.

Politics & Government

PM’s stocks hit Gillard lows

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That was the front page headline in the Australian Financial Review as a result of the new Ipsos-Fairfax poll.

Actually Abbott’s ratings were below Gillard’s in important attributes.

Overall the two party preferred vote was less bad than other recent polls at 52-48 to Labor or 53-47 if minor party preferences were allocated according to stated voter preference. The focus has been on the personal ratings and the attribute poll, which you can see in detail here.

In personal performance Shorten has improved 2 points to +5, whereas Abbott has slumped from -7 to -19. Shorten is now preferred prime minister 47-39 compared to 41-41 last month.

In his ability to make things happen Abbott at 48 is below any recent PM, below Keating, Howard, Gillard or Rudd. At the same time Shorten at 36 is below any recent opposition leader.

Is it any wonder that a snicker went around the party room when Abbott spoke of their ‘year of achievement’?

Of the eleven attributes, Bill Shorten has a statistically significant lead on six; being viewed as more competent (58%), having the confidence of his party (71%), being open to ideas (68%), being trustworthy (44%), and having a firm grasp of social policy (62%). He is also seen as being more easily influenced by minority groups (44%).

In contrast, Tony Abbott has a statistically significant lead on only two attributes; having a clear vision for Australia’s future (49%) and having the ability to make things happen (48%).

Opposition leaders don’t rate on making things happen, which leaves vision.

On vision, Abbott is roughly where Gillard was in April 2013. It must be said that Shorten is also low for an opposition leader.

In competence Abbott rates well below Keating, Howard, Gillard or Rudd, and below the Abbott of 12 months ago.

Ditto for the ‘strong leader’ category.

The question now is whether Abbott is being permanently written off as a dud by the electorate or whether he can recover. Abbott has already lost authority in the party room. If this performance in the polls carries on for a few months next year, how Bolshie will the troops become?

Peter Hartcher:

With the government’s support falling only marginally but Abbott’s precipitously, the people seem to be making a personal point.

This is about you, Prime Minister.

Abbott, seen by the people to be incompetent and untrustworthy, is a liability for his government and an asset for the Labor Party.

While most of Australia relaxes over the Christmas break, the Prime Minister will spend the time in serious self-reflection. If he’s in any way competent.

Climate Action, Climate Policy & Planning

Lima climate change conference update

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The UNFCCC Conference of Parties (now 194 countries, I think) has reached the midway point. I’ve compiled some news coming out of the conference in the style of Climate clippings.

Here’s the UNFCCC executive secretary Christiana Figueres in action:

Figueres speaks_500

1. The first five days of the Lima climate change conference

Mat Hope sums up at The Carbon Brief.

    1) The need to get a deal is being talked up

There is an upbeat feel as the Paris conference next December looms, where a deal is scheduled to be cut.

    2) Expectations are being managed

They hope to complete a draft text at Lima, but it is only a stepping stone.

    3) The US-China climate deal means the spotlight is on India

With the US, China and the EU making positive pledges, eyes now turn to India. So far they have been true to form, grumbling that the developed countries should do more and provide finance for adaptation.

    4) Record temperatures and typhoon threat are framing the conference

In Copenhagen in 2009 it was freezing. At Lima the atmospherics a quite different with looming record world temperatures and typhoon Hagupit making its way towards the Philippines.

    5) Old divisions persist

The EU wants countries’ pledges to cut emissions to be legally binding. The US is adamant that this can’t be the case as it would then have to ask Congress to ratify the deal.

A group comprising Saudi Arabia, China, India and 30 other ‘like minded nations’ continues to call for more transparency in the process. The group has used such pleas as a delaying and blocking tactic at previous negotiations.

2. Australia drags the chain at Lima

Australia has distanced itself from the Cartagena Dialogue, a group of 30 or so “progressive” countries Australia helped found five years ago seeking an “ambitious, comprehensive, and legally binding regime in the UNFCCC, and committed, domestically, to becoming or remaining low carbon economies.” You’re right, that’s not Australia now.

Giles Parkinson thinks that Australia’s main aim is to keep selling coal. That’s why Andrew Robb is there as Minister for Trade.

Effectively and, from Robb’s tweets and other evidence, in fact Australia is channelling the thoughts of their favourite thinker, Bjorn Lomborg:

who as others have pointed out has made quite a nice career casting doubt on the seriousness of climate change, arguing the problem is overstated, and concluding that on a cost-benefit analysis there is no need to do anything. That pretty much sums up current Coalition government policy.

3. China fingers Australia

One point of permanent discontent has been that developing countries would like more effort to be put into the Green Climate Fund designed to help them to adapt and mitigate climate change. China has called the $9.7 billion contributed so far by 22 countries as “far from adequate”.

In doing so China has fingered Australia as a climate bludger. Australia’s policy is to contribute nothing. So far the GFC

has received funding pledges of $3 billion from the United States, $1.5 billion from Japan, $1 billion from the UK and France, $900m from Germany as well as pledges of at least $100m from Sweden, Italy, Norway, Holland, South Korea, Switzerland and Finland. It has even received a small contribution from New Zealand.

Even Canada has stumped up $300 million.

The original pledge at Copenhagen in 2009 had been $100 billion per year by 2020 from public and private sources.

4. Newsweek report

One thing they are discussing is the form of each country’s pledge of climate action to be submitted in draft by march 2015. The only way they will agree on anything is to use the principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’ adopted in Copenhagen. This leaves countries to make it up as they wish, which means different base and target dates.

This makes comparisons difficult.

They also have yet to decide whether the basic division of Annexe 1 used in the Kyoto agreement will be retained. With Kyoto only the developed Annexe 1 countries made pledges. The US wants to eliminate subcategories. Brazil has proposed three concentric circles:

In the innermost circle, developed and Annex I Parties would commit to absolute, economy-wide mitigation targets. In the next ring, developing countries would commit to economy-wide targets that are relative to national gross domestic product, business-as-usual emissions trends or population size. In the outermost ring, the least-developed countries would commit to objectives on reducing emissions that are not economy-wide.

I’m betting on one undifferentiated blob, because they won’t all agree on anything else.

Similarly on whether pledges should be legally binding, they’ll never agree, because the US will point blank never agree to it, and all countries must agree for a decision to stand. Perhaps the New Zealand option of making reporting legally binding, but not the content of the contributions themselves, will get up.

5. Ban Ki-moon singles out Canada

Meanwhile UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has told Canada to get its finger out and start setting goals. Leadership is expected of G7 countries.

6. The bottom line

Emily Williams writing in the Santa Barbera Independent points to the sad truth – the proposals coming forward, the US-China announcement notwithstanding, “would mean ‘game over’ for the planet and the most vulnerable communities.”

The pressure is for an agreement, any agreement, to avoid “Nopenhagen” in Paris. Her article carries this image of young protestors in Lima:

protesters_Lima_COP2014_t479

Perhaps this image would be more appropriate:

Head_in_Sand_500

Life, Politics & Government, Sundries

Saturday salon 6/12

13 Comments

voltaire_230

An open thread where, at your leisure, you can discuss anything you like, well, within reason and the Comments Policy. Include here news and views, plus any notable personal experiences from the week and the weekend.

For climate topics please use the most recent Climate clippings.

The gentleman in the image is Voltaire, who for a time graced the court of Frederick II of Prussia, known as Frederick the Great. King Fred loved to talk about the universe and everything at the end of a day’s work. He also used the salons of Berlin to get feedback in the development of public policy.

Fred would only talk in French; he regarded German as barbaric. Here we’ll use English.

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The aim [of this site] is to provide a venue for people to contribute and to engage in a civil and respectful manner.

Here are a few bits and pieces that came to my attention last week.

1. Minister now has untrammelled power over asylum seekers

The event of the week must be the passage of the Migration and Maritime Powers Legislation Amendment (Resolving the Asylum Legacy Caseload) Bill 2014 which “has given the immigration minister, while he holds that job, unprecedented, unchallengeable, and secret powers to control the lives of asylum seekers.”

In effect under the bill the minister can do anything he chooses, he can ignore the UN convention and avoid legal challenge – the courts have been sidelined.

I hope to do a separate post early next week but cross bench senators have been suckered by the promise that children will be released from detention, something the minister already had the power to do.

2. Lies, barnacles and headless chooks

As part of the service, here’s Labor’s little book of Abbott lies. Thanks to John D for the link.

I meant to link last week to Peter Hartcher’s commentary on barnacle scraping.

Back in Gillard’s time journalists would find some back-bench malcontent and then quote him or her as a “Labor source”. Now Hartcher quotes some LNP Howard era survivors. For example:

“It would be a luxury for Abbott to be able to knock off some barnacles. It supposes that he has a ship. This government has no purpose, no sense of direction. The prime minister’s office is so busy managing everything they manage nothing. It’s Rudd all over again.”

One complaint is that a series of slogans is not a narrative. Another is that Peta Credlin controls everything, including Abbott. Abbott, however, seems happy in his bondage, pointing out that Credlin’s strategies knocked off Rudd and eventually delivered them power.

Lenore Taylor takes a look at the Government’s morning memoranda, the song sheets issued to LNP pollies so that they can answer questions from the media.

Mark Textor says that

“Economic anxiety is number one, two and three on the issue agenda.”

Textor said the government needed to find “really greater clarity around what is the core to the economic strategy. Is it to diversify the economy? Is it to rekindle parts of the mining and resources community? Is it to release growth through greater productivity? … As I said, those questions, from an economic perspective, still have to be answered.”

Negotiating individual budget items through the cross-bench maze makes the Government look like headless chooks. Well, at least unstable and short-term.

3. Christopher Pyne’s deregulation crusade starts now

One barnacle still there is Pyne’s higher education ‘reform’ bill. The Government lost the senate vote, but immediately submitted a new bill to the lower hose, virtually the same but stripped of some of the nasties. As far as I can see allowing the universities to charge what they like will increase the cost of degrees, especially in the G08 sandstone universities, and lead to a greater variety in standards. Also 20% of government university funding will be stripped out.

Staff and students oppose it, VCs, especially of the G08, like it. One vice-chancellor compared the universities peak body to a flesh-eating disease!

To me, it’s pretty much the end of university education as a public good, and a complete marketisation of the sector. Pyne’s right, it probably will happen eventually, given the basic conservatism of the cross bench mob.

4. Tax payers to subsidise training priests and other religious workers

Taxpayers would subsidise the training of priests and other religious workers at private colleges for the first time under the Abbott government’s proposed higher education reforms.

As well as deregulating university fees and cutting university funding by 20 per cent, the government’s proposed higher education package extends federal funding to students at private universities, TAFES and associate degree programs.

5. Secular school ‘chaplains’ get the chop

The Government is moving to purify and cleanse the school chaplaincy program by excluding the class who are actually qualified to do the job – secular welfare workers.

This is an idealogical stance you’d expect from the Tea Party.

Peter Sherlock, Vice-Chancellor at the University of Divinity, says:

if the program continues, it must continue to fund secular as well as religious chaplains. It is blatant discrimination to require all school chaplains at state schools to be auspiced by religious organisations.