Labor bickers over call to drop emissions target

The Labor Party is at war over climate change policy, with frontbencher Mark Butler moving to shut down speculation it will abandon ambitious emissions targets and reach a “political settlement” with the Liberal Party.

Labor ran a “doomsday” advertisement at the last f
ederal election, which opened with the words “climate
change” before running images of natural disasters
including bushfires, floods and cyclones. 

Labor frontbencher Joel Fitzgibbon is calling for the ALP’s target of a 45 per cent reduction in emissions by 2030 to be slashed down to the Liberal’s own target of 28 per cent. Labor has previously claimed Australia cannot meet the Paris Agreement commitments on that trajectory.

Mr Fitzgibbon blindsided the party with the speech outside of his portfolio area, warning that Bill Shorten’s ambitious plans had left voters “scared and confused”.

“Labor needs to reach a sensible settlement on climate change. How many times are we going to let it kill us?” he said.

Read the story from The New Daily by Samantha Maiden - “Labor bickers over call to drop emissions target.”

(I weep - Robert McLean)

Arthur Sinodinos urges Liberals to use renewables to boost environmental credentials

Arthur Sinodinos has warned that the Liberal party should not stand in the way of renewables, suggesting the government should use a changing energy market to bolster its environmental credentials.

Arthur Sinodinos says the Liberals should not make it
seem like voters have to choose between the environment
and the economy.

Anticipating a fresh internal battle over energy policy after the Liberal-National party’s success in Queensland, the Liberal senator suggested the government should recast itself as the best manager of the grid and “take advantage” of the falling cost of renewables to ensure “greater reliability, lower cost and lower greenhouse gas footprint”.

Despite the Coalition returning with a narrow majority in the 46th parliament, former prime minister Tony Abbott lost the blue-ribbon seat of Warringah and there were swings against the Liberal party in inner-city Melbourne and Sydney seats.

Read the story from The Guardian by Paul Karp - “Arthur Sinodinos urges Liberals to use renewables to boost environmental credentials.”

The Morrison government’s biggest economic problem? Climate change denial

Last week Peter Costello accused Malcolm Turnbull of failing to develop an economic narrative to unite the Coalition. Turnbull promised this when he challenged Tony Abbott for the leadership of the Liberal Party, but, said Costello, it never came, and the result is a government struggling to manage deep differences over social issues. There was “jobs and growth”, but this is really just a goal without much of a story about how to get there, except for the company tax cuts.

The government’s stubborn commitment to coal is alienating
 it from its natural supporters in the business community.

The big question, though, is why the government does not have a coherent economic narrative.

One possible answer is that it has been too preoccupied with social issues such as religious freedom and before that, same-sex marriage, to give the economy sufficient attention. There is something in that.

Read what the Emeritus Professor of Politics, La Trobe University, Judith Brett, has written on The Conversation - “The Morrison government’s biggest economic problem? Climate change denial.”

Grattan on Friday: Malcolm Turnbull is gone but son Alex keeps the climate faith

In a Thursday video for the Wentworth byelection, Malcolm Turnbull’s son Alex has denounced “extremists on the hard right” who, he says, have taken over the Liberal Party.

More broadly though, Morrison avoids dwelling
on the significance of climate change.

The younger Turnbull called on voters in his dad’s old seat to register a protest about the party’s direction, and deliver a message on climate change. “If you want to pull the Liberal party back from the brink, there is one clear signal you can send,” he said, urging people not to vote Liberal.

Apart from the leadership coup Turnbull, a Singapore-based investment manager, highlighted energy policy to make his point about the hard right’s “crazy agenda”.

“As an investor in energy, I’ve seen that in particular there’s no way coal can compete anymore. Renewables have gotten too cheap, firming costs are reasonable, and really there’s no trade off any more between lowering your power bills and reducing emissions. And yet still some would like to prosecute a culture war over this issue”.

Read the piece by Michelle Grattan from The Conversation - “Grattan on Friday: Malcolm Turnbull is gone but son Alex keeps the climate faith.”

Independent climate campaigner ends Liberals’ 61-year hold of Wagga Wagga

The Daily Telegraph is calling it a Bush Bloodbath. But could the crushing by-election defeat of the Liberal Party in a regional seat it has held safely since 1957 be more accurately described as a Climate Comeuppance?

Climate campaigner, Joe McGirr, dislodges the Liberal
 Party from the blue ribbon Riverina Electorate.

The final numbers are not in yet, but it has been called: The blue ribbon Riverina electorate of Wagga Wagga has been won by an independent candidate called Joe McGirr – a medical doctor who puts climate change firmly at the top of his political agenda.

Dr Joe, according to an article published late last week in The Australian, is not for turning on this stance, and has gone as far as to have “written articles” about the dangers of the global warming and supported organisations like the Climate Council.

Read the RenewEconomy story by Sophie Vorrath - “Independent climate campaigner ends Liberals’ 61-year hold of Wagga Wagga.”

Liberal activists target Tony Abbott's seat over climate change policy

Tony Abbott’s political future could be under threat from a group of activists who have been organising environmentally conscious voters to join Liberal party branches on Sydney’s north shore – a move that could unseat the former prime minister.

 Environmentally conscious Sydneysiders are being
  urged to join the Liberal party in Tony Abbott’s seat. 

Billing themselves as “the counterweight” to the pro-coal power Monash Forum, the North Shore Environmental Stewards have held at least two recruitment functions at which attendees were urged to tap into their networks of environmentally conscious people to join the Liberal party branches in Abbott’s seat of Warringah and on the lower north shore.

The NSES has a Facebook page that says the group “supports clean energy and a healthy environment, and believes in traditional Liberal party values of environmental stewardship”.

Read the story by Anne Davies from The Guardian - “Liberal activists target Tony Abbott's seat over climate change policy.”

Finkel review: Government backbenchers question clean energy target report

Pro-coal backbenchers within the Liberal Party have already begun undermining a report from the chief scientist Alan Finkel, as Labor foreshadows pulling support for the proposal if new coal-fired power stations are built.

Alan Finkel's report proposes a clean energy
target to help reduce carbon emissions.

Dr Finkel's report proposes a clean energy target (CET) to help reduce carbon emissions and lower electricity prices for households by about $90 per year.

Tasmanian Liberal senator Eric Abetz is accusing the chief scientist of using "creative assumptions" to come up with his recommendations for a CET.

Western Sydney Liberal backbencher Craig Kelly is calling for another report to be done into the economic effect of setting aggressive emissions reduction targets.

Read the ABC News story - “Finkel review: Government backbenchers question clean energy target report.”

Liberal Party powerbroker's wife Kristina Photios quits over lack of action on climate change

Powerbroker's wife,
Kristina Photios, has quit
the Liberal Party because
of its lack of action
on climate change.

Kristina Photios, the wife of NSW Liberal Party Michael Photios, has quit the party to speak out against a "vocal minority" of conservatives she says are preventing any progress on climate policy by the Turnbull government.

The Liberal Party must move "back to the centre" and progressive members should stand up and be heard to ensure Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is not held hostage to the hard right of the party, Ms Photios told Fairfax Media.

Her unvarnished comments, which will likely have internal ramifications for Mr Photios as the longtime leader of the left or "moderate" faction in NSW, have given an insight into the depth of feeling raging inside the party in a week in which Mr Turnbull was again forced to retreat from a public debate under threat of insurrection from within his own ranks.  

"Debate in the Liberal Party is being shut down by a vocal minority of conservatives who are subverting the democratic process," Ms Photios said, singling out former prime minister Tony Abbott and South Australian senator Cory Bernardi as among those "ideologically-driven" Liberals who wield disproportionate influence.

Read The Sydney Morning Herald story - “Liberal Party powerbroker's wife Kristina Photios quits over lack of action on climate change.”

Malcolm Turnbull considering carbon price as he kills off Tony Abbott's 'Green Army'

Minister for Environment and Energy
Josh Frydenberg sparing with Jean-Claude
Van Damme in Parliament House.

At last. Do we see signs of Malcolm Turnbull finally beginning to flex that prime ministerial muscle? Today's news is dominated by two big shifts in the Coalition's climate policy.

First, Turnbull is killing off Tony Abbott's so-called 'Green Army'.

And just as the conservative/hard-right of the Liberal party feared, a carbon price is back on the agenda under Turnbull.

Fairfax reports the government will consider whether to introduce a carbon price post-2030 and whether to allow international permits for carbon reduction cuts overseas as part of a 2017 review promised in 2015 by former environment minister Greg Hunt.

Read Latika Bourke’s story in the Melbourne Age - “Malcolm Turnbull considering carbon price as he kills off Tony Abbott's 'Green Army'.”

On climate change policy, neither time nor Trump are on Turnbull's side

 A Climate Analytics report has found that
developed countries will have
to stop burning coal for electricity by 2030.

When Malcolm Turnbull was dumped by the Liberal party in 2009 because he refused to renounce support for emissions trading, the man now about to assume responsibility for implementing Donald Trump’s evisceration of US climate change policy was elated.

Myron Ebell, a veteran warrior against action on global warming, wrote on his “competitive enterprise institute” blog that “toppling Turnbull was a necessary step” in defeating Australia’s cap and trade scheme. And he understood exactly who deserved credit.

“A number of Liberal members have risked their careers to stop cap-and-trade, including Cory Bernardi and Nick Minchin as well as Tony Abbott. They should all be honored for their courageous stand,” Ebell enthused.

Trump, who has claimed the “concept” of global warming was concocted by the Chinese to hurt American manufacturing, has vowed to withdraw from the Paris climate change treaty, abolish the Environment Protection Authority’s climate policy role, scrap Barack Obama’s centrepiece Clean Power Plan and dismantle any curbs on fossil fuel developments.

Read Lenore Taylor’s report on The Guardian - “On climate change policy, neither time nor Trump are on Turnbull's side.”

Cause for cautious hope on climate policy

When Malcolm Turnbull snatched the leadership of the federal parliamentary Liberal Party back from Tony Abbott last September, it fuelled community hopes that our Prime Minister would moderate the government's position on a number of issues, including anthropogenic global warming. After all, he had unexpectedly lost that leadership by a mere single vote in the party room in 2009 because he was proposing a more robust policy to mitigate climate change by cutting carbon emissions than was Mr Abbott.

When he took over late last year, Mr Turnbull's approval ratings in part reflected those hopes he would break with Mr Abbott's support for the coal industry. There is overwhelming international acceptance that burning fossil fuels is the key cause of the dangerous global warming that is occurring. The science is beyond question; the debate is not about whether climate change is happening, but about the best way to minimise global warming by reducing carbon emission

Read The Age Editorial - “Cause for cautious hope on climate policy.”

Farmers are 'the sentinels of climate change'

Judging by reports emerging about the National Party’s wish list that Barnaby Joyce has presented to Malcolm Turnbull as conditions to form a coalition with the Liberal Party, rural Australia has a lot to fear from lack of leadership on climate change.

Our nation’s farmers, being well attuned to changes in climate, are the sentinels of climate change.

Farmers are the Australians whose livelihoods are affected first, and most, by climate change.

Read the opinion piece in the Northern Daily Leader by Tamworth’s Dr Robert Gunning – “Nationals need to show leadership.”

Melbourne's Age call for more action on climate change

T

he Editorial from yesterday’s Melbourne Age.

Six years ago, Malcolm Turnbull lost the leadership of the Liberal Party to Tony Abbott during a bitter tussle over the Coalition's direction on climate change policies. On that day, any serious efforts by the Coalition to develop emissions reduction strategies all but vanished.

 

In a frank opinion piece written just days after that 2009 defeat, Mr Turnbull declared that any such policy produced while Mr Abbott led the Liberal Party "will simply be a con". He said the Liberal Party had no intention of doing anything about climate change because Mr Abbott and his band of conservative supporters fundamentally did not believe the science that showed global warming was caused by human activities.

Read the Editorial here - “Malcolm Turnbull should lift our climate targets.”

Bjorn Lomberg loses government favour and support

T

Bjorn Lomberg.

he federal government has dropped its offer to spend $4 million on a research centre to be headed by climate change "contrarian" Bjorn Lomborg.

Education Minister Simon Birmingham said his predecessor Christopher Pyne made the decision in the last week of his tenure, which would have been when Malcolm Turnbull deposed Tony Abbott as leader of the Liberal Party. It came to light that the idea for government funding of the centre had originated from Abbott's office, with Pyne tasked with finding a University to host the centre in return for $4 million in government funding.

Read the story by Tristan Edis on The Climate Spectator - “Government dumps Bjorn Lomborg centre initiative”.

Farmers call for action on global warming

A

ustralia’s farmers have banded together in asking the Australian Government to act in response to global warming.

The farmers had written an open letter to the Liberal Party declaring climate change as real and happening on their farms.

The letter says:

 "We as Aussie farmers call on the Liberal Party conference to reject the motion put by the regional and rural committee of the Liberal Party questioning the basis of climate science, and instead call for post-2020 targets to cut carbon pollution that are in line with scientists' recommendations of at least 40 per cent by 2025, and at least 60 per cent by 2030 over 2000 pollution levels."

Read the ABC Rural story - "Farmer group urges Liberal Party to take strong action on climate change”.

Is it a genuine ideological split, or more politcal gamesmanship?

Robert McLean

I

s the disagreement about global warming a genuine ideological split in the Liberal Party or are Australians being subjected to more political gamesmanship?

Political reporter with The Age, Heath Aston, wrote today that, “Prime Minister Tony Abbott is facing a push from inside the Liberal Party to prevent Australia signing up to any binding emissions reduction targets at the upcoming Paris climate talks.”

Is it a political ploy that will allow the PM and Environment Minister, Greg Hunt, to say “Well, we tried, but the democratic choice is to have further investigation of the science”?

The Age reported today that a cabal of regional and rural Liberal members, centred in Western Australia and supported by a number of conservative MPs, will force a vote at Saturday's federal council meeting in Melbourne on whether Parliament should "examine the evidence" around climate change before agreeing to any post-2020 emissions cuts.

Read The Age story - “Tony Abbott, Greg Hunt confronted by anti-climate science push from within Liberal Party”.

A note in reply to Sharman Stone

Recently I wrote to the Federal Member for Murray, Sharman Stone, about the potential changes we face as an outcome of climate change.

Her reply was kind and courteous, but quickly collapsed into a political discussion about the wonders of Liberal Party ideology compared to the inadequacies of Labour Party policy. That, however, what was not what I wanted to hear, rather I eager to hear about some positive, bipartisan steps that would ease the impact of human-induced climate change.

Below is what I said today (March 6) in reply – Robert McLean.

Dear Sharman,

Thank-you so much for your reply to my note about human-induced climate change.

Sharman Stone

It saddened me that you choose to cherry-pick facts and then without hesitation turned it into a political conversation about who was right and who was wrong.

It’s worth noting, however, that nature doesn’t care about our politics, or the world’s economy, its only interest, if it can be argued nature has an interest, is in finding equilibrium, something it will do regardless of our political stance or financial stake in world affairs.

The overall threat to the world, and the very existence of humanity, is so great and so in need of an immediate attention we need genuine and honest bipartisan response to the impact we are having on our climate.

Just last week I listened to a professor who has direct association with the London School of Economics, Oxford University and the University of Melbourne and has been working to understand human-induced climate change and it impact on our economies and Dr Cameron Hepburn argued that if we stopped subsidizing technologies dependent on fossil fuels we would immediately remove half of our carbon dioxide emissions.

Put so succinctly that seems simple, but as both you and I know it is not and will only eventuate if there is authentic bipartisan conversation combined with an extensive project aimed at helping people understand the seriousness of climate change implications.

Personally, debates about who is right or wrong about the impact of climate change and do not interest me for as I said earlier, nature doesn’t care nor does it have an respect for what we might consider right or wrong.

You were pretty close to correct about Australia’s contribution to green house gases (less than 2%), but you failed to acknowledge the per capita contribution of Australians that makes us among the worst in the world.

Beyond that, of course and which must be noted, is that we actually export many of our emissions in that coal (the absolute villain among green house gas emitters) and other base resources are shipped overseas at an alarming rate.

Australians, or rather a few rich individuals, pocket the profits and in a world sense, we socialize the costs – in other words, we share the resultant carbon dioxide emissions with the world.

Ideas of the Liberal Party are honourable, but absolute ineffective in dealing with a problem that, if not attended to within the next three or four years will decimate the world’s populations, including Australia’s.

James Hansen

I don’t need to personally justify any of this as if has already been clearly documented, repeatedly, by many and importantly the head the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and an adjunct Professor with the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University, Dr James Hansen.

Speaking at a recent conference in America, Dr Hansen said that governments around the world are going after any fossil fuels they can find, completely ignoring the science.

He has advocated that a fee on carbon be collected from fossil fuel companies at the source.

Encouraging the governments of the world to act to counter the damage we are doing to the environment, he said our failure to have an adequate response would be “intergenerational injustice”.

Sharman, this is your watch and wouldn’t be wonderful if when in generations to come people looked back and said that is was the courage and commitment of Sharman Stone as the Federal Member for Murray that had a huge impact on saving Australia, and by implication the world, from the worst of climate change,

To initiate some movement in Federal Parliament leading to changes in our way of life that may forestall climate change impacts may require you to ultimately sacrifice your career, but that raises a difficult scenario – what is ultimately more important your career or the long-term well being of Australia.

Personally, the last four or five years has been life-changing as I have devoted myself to listening to as many authoritative speakers as I could, read endlessly and, or course, listened to a few highly qualified climate change skeptics and the result of all that leaves me without any doubt that we are facing times so difficult we even begin to imagine how tough they will be.

Being aware of the science and the implicated threats, I decided that personally I should do what I could and so set up a voluntary organization, Beneath the Wisteria  with absolutely no authority, and no formalities to discuss a reasoned response to climate change, which has meet three times and attracted up to 14 people and beyond that, and determined not to die with regrets, I have argued, with little success I might add, that the McPherson Media Group should act to prepare for what will be a trio of difficulties in climate change, resource depletion and an imploding world economy.

Jacob Bronowski

Sharman, I urge you to step beyond you Liberal Party confines, consider climate change as something that will impact on us all, irrespective of political leanings, an act to do what you can to have the Federal Government address the causations of what it is that is changing the world’s climate.

Reading just a few minutes I came across a quote from a Polish-Jewish-British mathematician, biologist, historian, author, poet and inventor, the late Jacob Bronowski, who once said:

“Dream or nightmare, we have to live our experience as it is, and we have to live it awake. We live in world that is penetrated through and through by science and which is both whole and real. We cannot turn it into a game simply by taking sides”.

Bronowski’s view seems relevant to what is ahead.

In all that, take care,

Robert McLean,
March 6, 2012.

Stone opts for 'cherry picked' facts

Sharman Stone’s views on climate change are supported by facts, but facts which are cherry picked from the complex debate to suit her argument.

Sharman  Stone

Beyond that, the Shepparton based Federal Member for Murray, is faithful to the Liberal Party stance, obviously, but because of that has a somewhat coloured view of any response.

A recent letter to Ms Stone brought a reply that simply directed me to the Liberal Party website where an explanation to the Opposition’sDirect Action Plan was to found.

But of course that wasn’t all, Ms Stone gave no real indication of what she would do personally in her Murray electorate, but was quick to point what, in her, were the failings of the Gillard-led Labour Government.

Ms Stone was correct in pointing out that Australia contributes less than two per cent of the world’s green house gases and “to act alone or attempt to lead the way will only result in severe disadvantage to this country with no discernible improvement in the planet’s outlook”.

The latter point is obviously questionable and although our overall contribution to the worsening of the world’s climate is tiny, we are in fact right up there with the big hitters when considered on a per capita basis and that is what Ms Stone needs to be addressing – numbers relating to green house gas emissions are shown on the ABC link.

The true seriousness of our changing climate appear to have eluded Ms Stone (or is she simply being faithful to Liberal Party ideology) and within that is appears she puts the welfare of our economy ahead of that of our people.

Any workable and considered response demands courage and a commitment that exceeds political allegiance and a willingness to make decisions in a bipartisan sense.

A plea to Sharman Stone to demonstrate courage, and good sense

Reading Bill McKibben's book, The Global Warming Reader, I was inspired to follow his advice and engage with my parliamentatians and what follows is a letter written last night (February 19) and to be delivered today to Sharman Stone's Shepparton office - Robert McLean.

Federal Member for Murray

Dr Sharman Stone

426 Wyndham Street
Shepparton

 Vic 3630.

Dear Sharman,

Sharman  Stone.

 I write in the hope that I can encourage you to genuinely consider and honestly investigate the measurable changes that human activities are bringing to the world’s climate and by implication the climate here in Australia, and, subsequently your electorate.

The world’s leading climatologists have unquestionably established that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have increased alarmingly since the Industrial Revolution rising from about 270 parts per million then to nearly 400 today.

It was in 1988 that the head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, James Hansen, warned the U.S. Congress about the dangers of climate change, or if you prefer global warming.

Hansen told Congress that life on earth as we knew and understood it could be maintained, with care, if we were not to allow the carbon dioxide levels to go beyond 350 parts per million.

After that, he suggested, the world would begin to see changes in our climate, and subsequently our weather, that would eventually become uncontrollable and lead, increasingly, to events that have troubled the world in the past few years.

Positive feedback loops that are clearly understandable and which are rooted in unquestionable science threaten to even worsen events that have disrupted life for countless people throughout Australia and particularly in your electorate, as we have seen with a recent decade-long punishing drought.

Circumstances, you should note, are not going to get any better rather, they are going to worsen substantially and considering that, I encourage you to urge your party and influence the Government to build a vastly more resilient Australia.

Considering that I urge you to encourage legislation that puts the 350 ppm target ahead of economic goals; goals that are driven by the finite fossil fuels, which are the absolute villains in connection with the conditions that exacerbate climate change.

I urge you to ignore the doubters, skeptics and often misguided professors of one sort or another, and become an adherent of the certainties of nearly 100 per cent of the world’s scientific authorities and climatologists who declare that global warming is real and with unalloyed certainty that the world’s climate is changing.

The world’s climatologists repeatedly point out that what we are experiencing is, beyond argument, not natural or cyclical, but a demonstrable reality of the damage we have done to our atmosphere.

Finally, I plead with you to break with what appears to be Liberal Party policy, from your leader down, and in a demonstration of courage, tell parliament, and all Australians, including your electorate, that you now stand with those eager to prepare our country, and your electorate, to address the circumstances that are worsening, each day, as our climate changes.

Should you wish to talk with me more about this, I can be contacted at 140 Ashenden St, Shepparton 3630, by telephone at 5822 1766 or via email at: robed@sheppnews.com.au.

Thank-you,

Robert McLean.
February 21, 2012.