Carbon Credits Government Watch

A global carbon trading market, including Australia and the US, is the best way to protect the environment while promoting economic growth, Britain's finance minister Gordon Brown told the UN on April 20, 2006. "The innovation of carbon trading offers us a way to reinforce economic and environmental objectives simultaneously," he said. "Carbon saving can be a way of making money and increasing returns on investment. It makes economic opportunities of a climate-friendly energy policy real and tangible."
Britain now wants to extend a European Union-wide carbon reduction scheme beyond 2012 and link it with other initiatives around the world, including in the United States, Australia, Canada and South Korea to "make it the driver for a deep, liquid and long-term carbon trading system."
The ultimate goal must be a global carbon market to make the environment a driver of future economic growth.

The States and territories of Australia have formed the "National Emissions Trading Taskforce" which "could in future link Australia to international carbon markets". The European Union has an emissions trading scheme. But Australia and the US refuse to put businesses at risk by imposing on them to real cost of their business activity.
SO the State and Territory Governments established a Taskforce to develop a multi-jurisdictional emissions trading scheme, in the absence of national leadership on greenhouse policy.
In September 2005 the Taskforce released The Background Paper for Stakeholder Consultation into Emissions Trading, submissions were invited by 11 November 2005.Access the Emissions Trading Submissions here
Soil carbon got a seat at the table, although Forests are accepted as sacrosanct, despite their failures. The Background Paper for the Stakeholder Consultation in September 2005 included the following reference to soil carbon:
"Substantial opportunities exist to offset emissions through managing carbon sinks in vegetation (other than Article 3.3 Forests) and in agriculture. For example, very large amounts of carbon could be stored in increased rangeland vegetation. If emissions trading provided an incentive for such management changes, there could be considerable additional benefits for biodiversity, soil and land management. Article 3.4 of the Kyoto Protocol allows for accounting and trading in these areass in the second and subsequent Kyoto committment periods."

2010 is the likely start date for an emissions trading scheme for Australia, reports
Environmental Finance online news. "Outlining progress by Australian states and territories on a possible trading regime, Inter-Jurisdictional Emissions Trading Group project manager Anthea Harris said start-up in 2010 would provide plenty of time for consultation 'on every last detail' before scheme commencement," says the report. Anthea Harris is Project Manager for the Inter-Jurisdictional Emissions Trading Group.Her comments were made at a climate conference in Adelaide in February.
The Government's position is that "there is no particular reason why we need to put the clamps on immediately for immediate short-term reductions," as Australia is set to meet its Kyoto targets. A green paper on a proposed trading scheme will be released at the end of June.
Australia's federal environment minister Ian Campbell said had an "open mind" on trading, but he was concerned Australia would be too small a market for an effective and efficient scheme to operate. He was leaving it to the states and territories to do the running on the issue.

With his wagons in a circle, President Bush is under seige from a disparate array of lobbyists, including Evangelicals and the Union of Concerned Scientists, Greenpeace and DuPont, reports US News last week.
Bret Schulte reports that what is driving this push is "an emerging consensus on global warming, fed by a stream of recent scientific reports. If that consensus view is correct, the results could be devastating: rising oceans, ferocious hurricanes, and prolonged droughts."
Public concern has shot up markedly in the past two years, according to a poll released last month by the Opinion Research. Sen. Pete Domenici, the powerful chair of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, last week hosted a high-level forum of scientists, businesses, and public-interest groups to discuss how to curb emissions without busting the economy. 160 organizations, individuals, and businesses submitted proposals tranging from caps on emissions to a market for large polluters to buy credits. US NEws reports that passage of a bill is unlikely this year. Nevertheless... legislation curbing greenhouse gas emissions is starting to feel like a case of when, not if."
86 evangelical leaders signed on to a major initiative that accepted the reality of human-related global warming and called for federal legislation to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. The movement fell short of a full endorsement by the National Association of Evangelicals, but the group's chief lobbyist in Washington, the Rev. Richard Cizik, is one of the initiative's biggest boosters. The former skeptic was swayed at a three-day climate-change conference in 2002. "I had a conversion [that was] characteristic of my conversion to Christ," he says. The Bible calls us to be good stewards of the Earth, he believes, but the crusade is largely driven by the potential human toll from disasters. "The group has begun running ads on CNN and the Fox News Channel. It's even turning up the pressure on one of the religious right's staunchest supporters, Sen. Sam Brownback, by airing television ads in Kansas urging him to take a tougher stand on the issue," reports USNews.
Meanwhile, investors are agitating for change. A group of institutional investors called Ceres is deploying $3 trillion in assets to sway businesses to cut emissions and plan for a future in which climate change or federal laws could hurt profit margins. "Companies are also feeling the pain of operating in a patchwork quilt of state emissions standards that have sprung up in the absence of federal legislation," says the report. But companies like DuPont, which has already saved billions by making its plants more energy efficient, will welcome mandatory restrictions which would give them a competitive edge. British Petroleum is trumpeting its cuts in emissions while promoting its slate of alternative energy solutions. And many multinationals are facing emissions restrictions in Europe, where the Kyoto Protocol is already working.
Back home in the USA, the Republican Party is splitting on the issue. Prominent Republican Tucker Eskew, a former deputy communications director for President Bush, is supervising a joint campaign with the Ad Council and the group Environmental Defense to educate the public on the global warming threat. 53 senators passed a nonbinding sense of the Senate resolution last summer, stating that, at the very least, climate change is real and mandatory restrictions on greenhouse gases are needed.

"Christians Link Against Global Warming" says the Associated Press headline.
In February this year a group of 86 evangelical Christian leaders launched a campaign to pressure President Bush to change his stand against the Kyoto Protocol and realistic action against global warming.
"The leaders, who face opposition from some conservative evangelicals, want the U.S. government to pass legislation requiring the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels," reports journalist Foster Klug.
Evangelicals are an important part of the Republican Party, and the Religious Right has combined with the enegry industry to capture American greenhouse policy.
The group's call for political action will be backed by advertisements in The New York Times and other publications, and by television and radio commercials.
The Rev. Leith Anderson, a former president of the National Association of Evangelicals, said the group's effort marked an important change in the evangelical community, where many are realizing that some issues, such as global warming, AIDS and other humanitarian crises, need strong government involvement. That notion runs counter to the views of certain conservatives.
The group's efforts have sparked criticism by other evangelicals, some of whom question the scientific evidence on global warming.
The vast majority of Christian fundamentalists in the US believe we are in the 'end times' as predicted in the Bible and that to resist global warming is to defy God's will. These people influence government policy more powerfully than scientific opinion.

In answer to a journalist's question in March, President Bush admitted that global warming was a fact - a big leap forward.
when asked "WHAT IS YOUR PLAN?" THE PRESIDENT answered: "Good. We -- first of all, there is -- the globe is warming. The fundamental debate: Is it manmade or natural. Put that aside."
So he still doesn't believe that it was man made. But he's moving in the right direction.

Six former heads of the Environmental Protection Agency accused the Bush administration of neglecting global warming and other environmental problems. Five of them were Republicans and only one is a Democrat.
Bill Ruckelshaus, EPA’s administrator from 1970 under President Nixon and again under President Reagan in the 1980s, says “I don’t think there’s a commitment in this administration.”
Russell Train followed Ruckelshaus to serve the Nixon and Ford administrations. He said slowing the growth of “greenhouse” gases isn’t enough. “We need leadership, and I don’t think we’re getting it. To sit back and just push it away and say we’ll deal with it sometime down the road is dishonest to the people and self-destructive.”
At an EPA-sponsored symposium for the agency’s 35th anniversary all agency heads during five Republican administrations, including the current one, criticized the Bush White House for a failure of leadership.

Why is John Howard so careful to follow George Bush's lead on global warming? Because we'll need US Armed Forces to protect us from the millions of refugees displaced by environmental disasters arising from the 4°C increase in temperature.
In 2004, a leaked Pentagon report - under the title "An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United Sates National Security" - revealed that Australia's borders would come under pressure as millions of starving people flee third world countries when crops fail.
"The Pentagon report paints a bleak picture of a humanity reverting to constant warfare over diminishing resources," says Clive Hamilton, EXecutive Director of the Australian Institute. "It canvasses the possibility of persistent conflict in Southeast
Asia, India and China including border wars, nuclear brinkmanship and civil unrest. Instability in the region may lead Japan to re-arm and the USA to strengthen border protection to hold back waves of ‘unwanted starving immigrants’.
"For Australia, the most startling claim of the Pentagon Report is that we, along with the United States, may find ourselves building ‘defensive fortresses’ around our country to protect our resources from desperate outsiders and aggressive states created by rapid and unpredictable climate change."
The Pentagon seems to be more certain of global warming than its Commander in Chief.

EXtracted from apper "Climate Change Policy in Australia: Isolating the Great Southern Land",National Institute for Environment Public Lecture,Manning Clark Centre, ANU 2004

The position taken by the US and Australian Governments in refusing to ratify the international Kyoto Agreement - which forced heavy emitters of greenhouse gases to buy carbon credits - is rapidly becoming uncomfortable for the two leaders who took the decision to stay out. In the US, business and political circles are merely biding the time for George Bush's term to end. The Congress is known to have legislation drafted and ready. Major corporations such as General Electric are counting on the change.
Westpac CEO David Morgan said GE's CEO Jeff Immelt told him "he was virtually certain that the first action of the next President of the United States, be it Republican or Democrat, would be to initiate urgent action on climate change." Mr Morgan said GE "is allocating billions of dollars worth of investment in the confidence of that development."

The Commonwealth Government's is against trading in carbon credits, for the time being, according to a 2004 policy document called "Securing Australia’s Energy Future".

"Australia will not impose significant new economy-wide costs, such as emissions trading, in its greenhouse response at this stage," says the report. But it doesn't rule trading schemes out in future: " Such action is premature, in the absence of effective longer-term global action on climate change..."

Australia is holding out for a better deal, especially from fast-growing economies: "Expected economic growth in less developed countries, such as China and India, will result in emissions from these nations increasing substantially over the next 20 to 30 years. Total emissions from less developed countries, which have no quantitative targets under the Kyoto Protocol, are expected to soon overtake those from industrialised countries. It is clear that, to be effective, any global response must encompass the world’s major emitters."

If the international community plays ball, Australia will get a trading system: "Should such an effective global response be in prospect, the government will consider least-cost approaches to constraining emissions. This consideration would encompass the possible introduction of market-based measures (such as an emissions trading scheme) in the longer term, noting the potential for these to lead a better resource allocation and provide industry and individuals with the greatest flexibility in determining how best to respond."