Don’t argue the mechanism, set the target

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The UK Prime Minister David Cameron surprised everyone this week by proposing to write into law a 50% emission reduction target over 1990 levels by 2025.  A bold step perhaps, albeit one that serves his political ends as much as benefiting the atmosphere. The audacious move even managed to leave the environmentalists with nothing to argue about. Mr Cameron probably allowed himself a wry smile into his shaving mirror.

Naturally there is a get out of jail free card in the form of a review in 2014 to see if other European nations have followed the lead. Plus UK emissions are already 23% lower than 1990 thanks to initiatives on easily achieved reductions. Yet no one doubts the ambition, for it will become increasingly harder to close in on the target.

So why did Cameron impose such a mission on a country with an ailing economy and huge government debt requiring draconian actions to cut public spending? Because there is nothing like a mission impossible to galvanise people; a collective cause get people fired up enough to take action, innovate and embrace risk.

Cameron has taken a gamble. Success will see UK business change to be more efficient and grow new sectors in innovation, especially in clean energy, and the gamble is that a mature economy has the smarts to achieve it. Plus he has the market mechanism of the EU ETS and an electorate who already understand the cause. The downside is that cause may not be strong enough to ignite passions and the target too distant and potentially too costly. On balance though, what appears bold is solid politics and an understanding that transition to a less carbon intensive economy is inevitable; in short, leadership.

Not so surprising this week were opinion poll numbers in Australia.

The Prime Minister Julia Gillard is currently less popular and the Labour Party primary vote is lower than when the jitters struck and the party ousted her predecessor and she became Prime Minister almost a year ago. The pollsters take is that the Australian public is not listening anymore and they don’t want a carbon tax. Only it would be suicide for the government and the party to capitulate again. Somehow, someone somewhere has to come up with a policy on emissions.

The problem is that, unlike the UK, Australia is in a time of plenty. It may feel precarious to be so reliant on a resources boom and there are fiscal challenges, not least the effect of a strong currency on trade exposed sectors, but really, these are good times. And in good times mighty challenges have trouble finding traction. Any call for a ‘fight on the beaches’ spirit just sounds odd. So instead of a cause we have a 5% emission reduction target, a laughable proportion already massively exceeded by the UK.

Now suppose the PM embraced the risk and made a 50% emission reduction by 2025 her carbon policy. Forget the tax for the moment, go back to basics and set the target.

Such a policy has meaning, can be explained and provides the context for any number of mechanisms to achieve the result. The debate can then be about the most efficient way to reach the target.

Success would see Australia emit 225 MtCO2e in 2025.

In reality this will be a net emission, combining emission reductions and sequestration. Quietly amongst the ‘great big new tax’ spin the Carbon Credits (Carbon Farming Initiative) Bill 2011 is in front of parliament, the mechanics of a domestic carbon offset scheme that could see 20 MtCO2e per annum sequestered by the agricultural sector alone.

Take a punt on this offset option, educate for energy saving, keep the feed in tariffs, even try a CPS style market instrument and the target is achievable. And, best of all, the electorate will understand why it was all necessary.

Who knows, the public might even respond to such leadership in the polls.

BMAD

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It is often said that the end cannot justify the means. This adage comes for the logic that an immoral act is an immoral act irrespective of when it occurs or for what reason.

The other day I witnessed an argument that left me thinking how this is adage is rarely applied.

The discussion began over a conservation problem that is becoming widespread in the eucalyptus forests of eastern Australia. Mature canopy trees are dying from infestations of sap sucking insects that proliferate to reach huge numbers sufficient to defoliate the tree. This explosion of insects and damage to leaves happens where a bird species, the bell miner, is abundant.

Rather than eat the insects, bell miners eat the sugary lurps that the scale insects use to protect themselves – it is a little like harvesting, for the insects regrow the lurp that covers them and the birds come round again.

Bell miners are aggressive birds and chase away other species. This lowers the predation rate on the insects that, over time, means more insects. The insects feed on the leaves that eventually succumb. When the trees loose too many leaves they die back. The process has been given an acronym BMAD; bell miner associated dieback.

Bell miners do well in disturbed forests suit because they like the dense undergrowth that comes when a forest is altered by fire, logging or other human interference.

Once established the best way to slow the spread of BMAD is active management involving the removal of shrubs. This means suppression through mechanical means, sometimes fire or, more usually, the application of herbicides.

These are drastic interventions of the kind that the conservation movement opposes with religious fervor. Only BMAD is far worse. So even among the ardent conservationists it has been accepted that intervention to remove shrubs is necessary. It is acceptable to manage with interventions of herbicide a habitat that was disturbed.

All good so far. The argument came of over the next issue.

Someone made the comment that ecologically endangered communities could be managed for improvement.

‘No, no, no you cannot do that’ was the indignant cry. ‘You cannot mess with an EEC, you just can’t.’

It was seen as a morally abhorrent suggestion. If something is designated as endangered it is suddenly untouchable.

But why not actively manage? Is it not exactly the same as the intervention proposed to tackle BMAD. In that thorny issue the end justified the means. But the same means cannot be applied to an EEC.

So in the real everyday world we have selective morality.

No surprise perhaps, but it makes you wonder what grounds our logic if its not a sense of morals.

Rhinos

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This picture was taken in 1988. The building is part of the Mana Pools National Park warden’s complex in the Zambezi valley, Zimbabwe. The skulls are from black rhino collected by wildlife staff as they waged an unwinnable war against poachers.

At the time the photograph was taken it didn’t seem that there was anything that could be done. Rhino horn was a valuable resource. One animal provided income enough to feed the poacher and his family for a year and in a poor country this meant a lot. Plus wherever there is a resource humans seem to find a way of exploiting it for commercial gain.

In the end it was too costly to police the river front environment and the rhino population continued to   decline, even though the dense bush was ideal habitat.

By 1993 the total number of black rhino in Africa was 2,400 and the Zambezi valley, the largest stronghold of the species was decimated.

When it became clear that prevention wouldn’t work a translocation program was initiated. Rhino were darted and, much their annoyance, transported south to ranches and reserves further south.

It seemed to me that this was a desperate, rather costly and probably not very effective approach.

Yet in 2008 the total population of Black Rhino in Africa was 4,240.

Maybe it worked.

Climate change policy: Does Australia need it?

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The other day I listened to a presentation from the CEO of a company in the carbon game. Branching out from bio-energy, this company has developed smart technology to grow algae using the CO2 emitted from coal fired power stations.

It was an impressive story. The algae do what algae do in high-tech plastic bags and convert carbon dioxide to plant material at a claimed rate of up to 800 t per hectare (for comparison average wheat yield in Australia hovers around 1.5 t per hectare).  A quarter of the algal biomass harvested is extractable as vegetable oil and the rest as vegetable protein (dry pellets). The potable water byproduct is recycled back into the bags for the next batch of algae.  The list of salable items that can be manufactured from the algal produce was endless.

If I were an investor I would be muscling my way through the heavy hitters already camped outside the guys office and buy whatever shares I could. Not surprisingly the owners see no need to sell shares in the company to the public.

And the thing was that this particular entrepreneur, with a genuine smile on his face, did not care one iota about a carbon price, greenhouse gas emissions or a climate change policy. Why would he? He had salable products (oil and protein) that a host of buyers wanted, and he was making them from industrial waste (CO2) that everybody wants to get rid of. He had found a great win-win. And when that happens it’s all good, including in this case a powerful combination of greenhouse gas abatement and mitigation with the bonus of food production.

No doubt you are thinking, ‘Oh, but there has to be a catch’. And maybe there is in the scalability, sources of nitrogen, finding enough land next to power stations or many others we haven’t conjured up. The point is though, that the combination of smarts, entrepreneurship and willing investors can be a powerful tool when let loose on a problem.

If business actions can fix the climate problem, then why do we need policy? The reason is this. There are only a few courageous entrepreneurs and, especially in Australia, even fewer risk taking investors. This means that the rest, the mainstream who are risk averse and a tad timid, need help to solve the problem; and this is the role of policy. For policy can provide support, encouragement rules for a social climate that help us help ourselves.

Since the Australian government dumped its own Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, an emissions trading solution to what Prime Minister Rudd has called ‘the greatest moral challenge of our age’, the media has talked of backflips and the taxi drivers have expressed their disappointment at broken political promises. All the people I have spoken to are just a bit depressed at it all.

These reactions to political weakness are inevitable because we do need policy, we need it to give us confidence and in the case of climate change policy we need it now.

The hip pocket

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A young colleague recently claimed that her generation has great concern about environmental ills. She thought that her y-generation all have deep feelings about the woes of our world. They want something done about it, especially climate change. She claimed that late alphabeters will be angry at any government that promised action on climate change but then reneged as the Australian government has just done.

“Are you sure,” I said, ‘won’t they vote with their hip pockets?”

“No they have all they need,” she said, “I mean we all have food and shelter and with those needs met we want to do the right thing.”

I believed her, at least the intent part. And I am sure it is how she feels herself having moved her own career path away from high finance into an environmental company. Unfortunately I don’t think that we have the freedom from basic needs that our apparent wealth implies.

It may be that most westerners are well fed, sleep in a bed, have a wardrobe, watch TV and take the occasional holiday. And it seems that all primary needs are covered (yes, it is true the TV is now a basic need according to the UK social services) and, therefore, higher values should mature. We should think about values beyond the basic, including care for the environment.

But this wealth, that supplies all the basics and more, has not given us emotional freedom. We are not free to think of higher things because we are still struggling to keep our wealth coming. We are locked into long hours of work to pay for large mortgages, excess food and more clothes than we could ever wear. And as we are at work we have to pay for someone else to look after the kids, and someone to do the washing, to mow the lawn and so it goes. In the end we have to keep the kids at home until they are middle aged to help us pay for it all.

And what if we just stopped? If we gave it all up in order to be enlightened, then the monetary flows so essential for our economies would stop as well. Our material world would collapse in a heap. And, well, it just can’t happen. Back to work we go, stressed to the max, a hand checking on the hip pocket.

Let us hope that I am just a cynic, a product of a different generation, and that the youngsters really do have a sense of higher value – although anyone who has seen a Lady Gaga music video may have to search hard for higher value.  Let us hope and believe that these youngsters will vote on their beliefs and give with their voice to help change the way we think.

Let us hope that they won’t vote with their hip pockets.

Greens

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Recent raucous debate on climate change In the Australian parliament resulted in the Greens, a minor party with environmental leanings, voting twice with the opposition against a Climate Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) policy proposed by the government.

The CPRS legislation was an emissions trading scheme that would leverage market forces to drive behaviours of consumers and investors to cleaner more efficient energy options to lower emissions. I say ‘was’ because the policy option has just been shelved. This decision means that climate change will not be a central item in either government or opposition campaigns in the upcoming election, handy for both major parties.

And why did the Greens oppose the legislation? Because, they said, it did not go far enough. It was too weak and too kind to the heavy polluters. The reduction targets were a joke, so the rhetoric went.

This is a curious position for green politicians to take. The CPRS was an attempt to restructure the way we generate our energy and a mechanism that would money would be made from climate change adaptation measures. In other words legislation that would push more funds towards environmental benefit than any previous conservation measures in the country’s history. Instead there is no climate change policy and no serious debate on climate change legislation likely for at least another two years, possibly longer. And without a policy there is no emissions target at all.

Someone once said that the perfect can get in the way of the good. After the excesses that brought us anthropogenic climate change, it would be irony indeed if the desire for excess in redress scuppered the good.

Climate change policy on the shelf

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So it finally happened. The Australian government has given up on its climate change legislation. After failing twice to get the bill passed through the Senate, dithering under opposition pressure and then realizing they have a tight budget to deliver, the Climate Pollution Reduction Scheme has gone.

Action on climate change was the core platform that effectively won the last election for the Labour party to put them in office after more than a decade in opposition. Much was promised but all that happened was a photo opportunity for the prime minister in Bali, failed legislation and some tantrums in Copenhagen. Under Australian parliamentary law, two knockbacks on a bill is enough for the government to call an election, a double dissolution. They didn’t, instead they put the bill to one side until 2013 at the earliest.

An election is due, however, so why risk public frustration over broken promises? Because the analysts have figured that public interest, concern, will, call it what you will, has lapsed from the Inconvenient Truth fuelled clamor for policy action so prevalent during the last election campaign. The public will forget or forgive the failure to deliver policy on climate change because the issue is no longer important. At least not sufficiently to affect the result so long as climate change is not an election issue. A double dissolution would have put the issue front and centre, so better to just shelve the legislation.

The real reason the CPRS ended up on the shelf is money. Searching for the A$5 billion needed to fund health care reform and a budget already hit hard by huge incentive spending still in place to cushion the effects of the global financial crisis, the CPRS was simply too expensive. And, as everyone knows, voters vote with a hand firmly on their hip pockets.

Read more on the importance of climate change policy action at Greencollar Think Tank

Populate or perish

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Runners in City to SurfI heard this populate or perish grab on the radio today as projections for Australia were revised to see 35 million inhabitants by 2050, another 13 million more than today.

Enthusiasts were calling in saying we need more people ‘to defend ourselves” presumably because there is a perception of security in numbers.

Others wanted more people because there was a buzz, “it means growth and make the place more vibrant” and, of course, creates bigger markets for the sale of goods and services.

Then others responded with “what about the crowding, the roads, the planning we don’t have?” and then finally someone said “what about the water?” No worries, we will construct more dams.

These exchanges are fascinating for they expose real truths about the human condition and the shape of our future.

In short we really like having more people, so long as we get what we want… and it’s not too crowded.

Mark