Friday, August 18, 2006

 

Americans agree Bush failing on Climate Change

The majority of Americans say President Bush deserves criticism for his response to global warming. A Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll in August found 56% accusing Bush of doing too little to protect the environment, up from 41 percent in 2001. 70% said global warming is a serious environmental problem, 58 percent said the Bush administration is not doing enough to reduce it.

 

US Supreme Court could force Bush to regulate

The Supreme Court will decide in October sessions whether the Bush administration must regulate carbon dioxide to combat global warming. The court will address whether the administration’s decision to rely on voluntary measures to combat climate change are legal under federal clean air laws. Twelve states have taken the Environmental Protection Agency to court to force it to do its statutory duty to regulate greenhouse gases from cars and to determine whether the EPA can regulate carbon dioxide from power plants.
As a presidential candidate in 2000, Bush expressed support for regulation of the greenhouse gas, but once elected withdrew support for the Kyoto Protocol.
The White House argues that mandatory reductions would harm the economy and does not consider carbon dioxide a pollutant.

 

Government just doesn't get it, says Fairfax press

Someone has to pay the Greenhouse bill


Australia's Fairfax press empire is throwing its weight behind a sane approach to global warming. Two recent articles sound the call to arms. In The Age, Tim Colebatch wrote on July 18, 2006: "If the science is right (and each year seems to confirm it), then we and the world are facing changes that will reduce our ability to grow food, and could threaten the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people worldwide.

"The Prime Minister's disappointing speech yesterday was more evidence that at the top of this Government they just don't get it. New technology is not an alternative to carbon taxes and emission trading schemes, it is their outcome. And the massive scale of the problem is not a reason to do less, but to do more.

"You can pour money into research and development of clean technologies and hope for breakthroughs. But let's be pragmatic. Unless the new clean technologies cost less than the old polluting ones, business will not take them up. That's why you need a tax or regulatory system that creates a financial incentive to do so. Then markets will work, and clean technologies will take over."

The next day, the Sydney Morning Herald's planning writer Elizabeth Farrelly wrote, "This is the mystery. Polls show we worry about climate change, but we vote from the hip pocket. John Howard, the polls tell us, makes us feel safe. But we blind ourselves to the yawning chasm between feeling safe and being safe."

Climate change has become a moral issue, she says. Maybe the moral issue. "In Australia, where governments quail before moral issues, the vacuum is filling with an unlikely alliance of business and philanthropic lobby groups. The Australian Business Roundtable on Climate Change argued in April that a 60 per cent cut in Australia's emissions is compatible with strong economic growth. Westpac's chief executive officer, David Morgan, known for lampooning emissions proposals as Mein Kampf and seeing carbon trading as a European conspiracy, notes that 'the next president of the United States … [is expected] to initiate urgent action on climate change'.
"In the US, where the writer Elizabeth Kolbert argues the need for an "environmental Churchill", an obstructionist Bush White House is nevertheless ringed by cities, states, Congress and the courts, plus a few inner-Republican colleagues, determined to make change. Last year, California's Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, launched a plan to cut state emissions by 80 per cent by 2050. "The debate is over," he said. "The science is in. The time to act is now." Right-wing evangelical leaders of 30 million people marched on Capitol Hill, urging leadership on climate change. Since then, 238 US mayors have pledged to "meet or beat" Kyoto; the House of Representatives Appropriations Committee has supported emissions caps and the Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether CO 2 regulation should be mandatory."

 

Someone has to pay the Greenhouse bill


The attack on the Australian States's proposed Greenhouse Gas Abatement Scheme by the federal government and some industry groups ignores one critical fact: someone will have to pay for global warming. The Australian Financial Review - the voice of Australian business - disagrees with the attacks on greenhouse trading: "An international trade in emission rights (and other environmental services) is the way of the future... Australia, with its comparative advantage in the production of fossil fuels, has a very strong interest in the adoption by the global community of rational, market-based greenhouse strategies." And writing in BRW, Professor Paul Kerin, who teaches strategy at Melbourne Business School, said recently, "Howard says that, as Australia is (just) on track to meet its target, there is no need for market mechanisms. He is wrong: a market would ensure Australia meets its target at least cost, and would provide information to help decide whether we should overshoot our generous target. By comparison, the EU is already 5.5% below its 1990 emission level... Howard's claim that market trading would cost jobs by raising energy costs is also nonsense. The emission trading price is just a transfer between two emissions generators - overall, the industry's net cost is unchanged. High-cost polluters pay more (as they should) but low-cost players gain by reducing emissions and selling allowances.
"The Federal Government should join the states and territories to start a national carbon dioxide emissions market. The low trading prices that are likely to emerge, given our current overly generous emissions target, should persuade the Government to set a much lower emissions target, and then stand back and let market participants work out how to achieve it."

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