While all the rats are jumping off the Unreliable Wreck, Australia is leaping onto it. Every country that uses electrical-generators for magical Global Climate Control has expensive electricity. They’ve lost industries, jobs and sovereign power as well as hot showers.
Our energy prices are already a train-wreck, but Super-Albo is here to take that failure and double it. While Germany, France, Austria, Netherlands, Poland, China, India, Hungary, Greece and the United Kingdom are all ramping up their coal, we’re going to use less to fend off the floods and hold back the tide. It’s pretty much just down to us and our friends, those crazy Canuks and the cockoo-Kiwi’s to save the world. All doing the climate voo-doo.
Magical pagan symbols and messages
The term “action” doesn’t mean any actual activity — apart from lots of paperwork:
Albanese told parliament: “Passing this legislation sends a great message to the people of Australia that we are taking real action on climate change.”
Instead of a message, Australians were hoping to get a $275-a-year cut in their electricity bills.
Meanwhile the rest of the world is sending a message to Australia — and they are saying: We Want Your Fossil Fuels.
That’s a loud signal there in the price of coal and gas:
Trading Economics Price of Newcastle Coal
Trading Economics Price of TTF Gas
Magical wands of Climate “SafeGuard” policies
How exactly is Australia going to cut emissions even further? It’s through a hidden bomb called the “SafeGuard Mechanism” which a secret Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) designed to punish the biggest corporate emitters — which of course means they’ll pass on those costs to the sucker consumers. It was legislated in secret on the last night before Christmas in 2015. Thank Malcolm Turnbull for that gift buried in the fine print that apparently almost no one in Parliament even knew about.
Remember in July 2014, when Al Gore flew out to cuddle up to coal miner Clive Palmer, who held the last vote Prime Minister, Tony Abbott was waiting for so he could Axe That Carbon Tax? Palmer had forced him to add in a proviso for a review of an emissions trading scheme that would only happen if and when all the major players signed up. The Australian ETS came into force the day before the 2016 election, yet almost no voter knew. The dollar values were small and symbolic — but the legislation was locked and loaded just waiting for the Labor Government to win. And now all they have to do is turn the knobs up — adjust the targets, and the money will start to flow as a subsidy feeding unreliable energy in Australia. But its also possible that money will head offshore and subsidize jobs and unreliable projects overseas.
It was a brilliant piece of political maneuvering. Having brought in the hated ETS through the “conservative” Coalition, the conservatives could hardly campaign against “an ETS” they themselves had legislated, and presumably, neither could Clive. It thus neutralized and prevented a rerun of the landslide 90 seat victory Tony Abbott scored in 2013. It’s not clear how critical the Clive Palmer condition had been — perhaps it just meant Turnbull could say “it was part of the Abbott legislation” and Turnbull would have got it through anyway, but it might have stopped Abbott and other Liberals rebelling against it or even looking closely at it?
So now we have a 43% carbon reduction target, but no one really knows the details:
Anthony Albanese’s climate politics power play leaves nation in the dark
Dennis Shanahan, The Australian
Yet, Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen had to concede there will be changes to the mechanism, which will be subject of a discussion paper “later in August” and which provides an opportunity for the Greens to meddle.
“We’ll be releasing a discussion paper on the detailed design mechanism on the safeguard mechanism in August, probably. That will be up for consultation. The Greens have indicated they will probably have feedback on that,” Bowen said.
It is the treatment of this mechanism, not nearly as clear as Albanese makes out, that is creating deep concern within the resources sector and the 215 industries and entities subject to the rules.
The threat of technicalities about various types and classes of emissions ruling out new gas and coal projects or even nullifying existing projects is real and yet to be addressed as the government revels in its climate change success.
The cheapest way to generate carbon credits in Australia was the bargain auction system Tony Abbott organised. But those tons of “carbon” avoided were a mere $14 a ton, nothing like the cost of wind and solar projects. Presumably the Labor Government will have to curb that, or their co-dependent friends in the Renewables Industry and foreign banker traders won’t have much fun in the market. We can’t have farmers earning too many carbon credits can we?
Meanwhile the new “target” and labyrinthine carbon laws make bureaucrats absolute kingmakers. Should your coal mine go ahead? (Don’t run an election campaign against the ruling party.) Clive Palmer’s mine got axed today, (the irony) because even though the Great Barrier Reef is healthier than AIMS has ever measured, his coal mine (and not all the ones in China) threatens the reef. Perhaps if the Labor Party had needed the one Senator Clive has, it’d be different…
The mine would have seen the annual production of up to 10 million tonnes of thermal and coking coal for a quarter of century, creating up to $8.2bn in export revenues and employ as many as 500 people. The project is 130km northwest of Rockhampton – and just 10km from the Reef World Heritage area.
Australia, still the greatest global patsy.