A flurry of public meetings followed the federal government's green paper on carbon emissions trading. I attended two quite different information sessions in Sydney.
The first, at a swish hotel in Sydney's CBD in the middle of the day on July 22 was geared towards the big polluters. It was organised by the Department of Climate Change and the format was a bureaucratic double-act. The first session provided details of the new requirements to report carbon emissions that commenced at the beginning of this financial year. The second session focused on the mechanics of the new emissions trading scheme.
According to the presenters, the scheme only targets the top thousand or so polluters, responsible for about 70% of emissions in the sectors covered by the scheme. The scheme's designers have done their maths and decided the cost of including the other hundreds of thousands of smaller corporate carbon polluters isn't worth it. Instead, beginning this year, corporations with "operational control" of facilities that emit over a certain threshold will have to begin reporting their emissions and participate in the scheme once it commences.
The flaw in this was revealed by a question from a representative of a big emitter. Corporations often have complex arrangements with contractors. So is it up to the contracting parties or the government to determine who has "operational control" of a particular facility? According to the departmental representative, that's up to the contracting parties to determine. So is there anything stopping big polluters from restructuring and vesting operational control in units that fly under the emissions threshold radar? This wasn't asked openly, but seemed to me to have been answered in the negative.
Most of the questions from the floor were from company representatives. There were clearly some non-business members of the public present — a small number spoke from the floor with criticisms of the scheme: one, a climate change denialist; another, concerned the scheme would be insufficient to bring about the deep emissions cuts needed. Most attendees, however, would have been paid to attend the forum.
By contrast, the evening meeting at Petersham RSL club on August 5 was attended by up to a thousand concerned people, most of whom were probably not there on work time. It was more overtly political, and was hosted by federal Labor MP Anthony Albanese. It featured climate-change minister Senator Penny Wong and an introduction to the science of climate change by Dr Ben McNeil from the University of NSW.
Wong's presentation tried to sell the government's scheme as the difficult but environmentally necessary thing to do, but questions and comments from the floor suggested most people didn't buy it. She said the government aims were to reduce carbon pollution, adapt to the climate change we can't avoid, and be part of forging a global solution.
She claimed putting a price on carbon would be "the only way" to reduce emissions, and that the government's job would be to "strike a balance" between the "imperative" to do something about reducing carbon emissions on one hand, and responsibility to the Australian economy on the other — as though it is reasonable to "balance" restoring the conditions for a safe climate for humanity and the profits of Australian business.
Questions and comments from the floor that highlighted the problems with the scheme received a lot of support from the rest of the audience. Some of the issues raised included that the proposed scheme rewards polluters instead of punishing them; the vulnerability of the carbon trading market to the crash in the price of carbon; the failure to deal with "the elephant in the room — breaking the back of dependency on coal"; and the need for direct government support for renewables and public transport.
Not much was made of the existence of submissions process for stakeholders to have their say on the green paper before it becomes government policy (a white paper). It's clear to many that more important submissions will be building the political momentum for real action on climate change. The climate emergency week of action, beginning on September 21, will be a good step in this direction [see article page 4].
[Kamala Emanuel is a member of the Socialist Alliance. Visit http://www.socialist-alliance.org.]