Frydenberg takes the low road: It’s a weak NEG or nothing

The Coalition government is ramping up the pressure on the Labor states, seeking to paint the National Energy Guarantee as the middle path and the one and only policy option, despite its desperate attempts to shift the discussion to meet the demands of its own right wing.

Energy minister Josh Frydenberg - "Nice
words, but the cynicism is breathtaking".

Energy minister Josh Frydenberg used a National Press Club appearance on Wednesday to try and force the states to agree on the as yet ill-defined NEG, arguing that economics and engineering should triumph over ideology, and there was a need for a market based solution.

Nice words, but the cynicism is breathtaking.

Ideology? This, from a man who has spent much of the past 18 months demonising renewables, arguing in the face of all evidence to the contrary from the CSIRO and the network owners that high levels of renewables is reckless.

Read the story Giles Parkinson story from RenewEconomy - “Frydenberg takes the low road: It’s a weak NEG or nothing.”

Australia needs a clean energy target, not Coalition paralysis

"If you're cold, put on a jumper. If you're too hot, play under the hose.”

These have long been stock phrases for cost-conscious parents confronted with a complaining child wanting the heater turned up or the air-conditioning switched on (at least, in the latter case, until water restrictions started to bite). But now, it seems, they have become the de facto national energy policies of a government too paralysed by ideology and infighting to give the country what it needs: a secure road from the power generation of the past to the power generation of the future.

Australians were recently confronted with the startling news that nationwide, our power is among the most expensive in the world, despite our abundance of fossil fuels, long hours of sunshine and windy coastlines. The situation is worst in South Australia, which, while struggling to keep the lights on during summer, has the world's costliest electricity. Given the other states' increasing reliance on creaking relics such as NSW's Liddell power station, however, the rest of us should not be too smug.

Read the Editorial from today’s Melbourne Age - “Australia needs a clean energy target, not Coalition paralysis.”

Baffled by baseload? Dumbfounded by dispatchables? Here’s a glossary of the energy debate

Australia’s energy market is a prominent fixture in our daily news cycle. Amid the endless ideology and politics swirling around the sector, technical terms such as “baseload power” and “dispatchable generation” are thrown around so often that there is a danger the meaning of these terms can get lost in the public debate.

High-voltage power lines stand near an electricity substation on the outskirts of Sydney.

The term “energy crisis” is bandied around quite loosely with some confusion around whether the crisis is about prices or security of supply. The politics of this are infernal and largely avoidable if all sides of politics had paid consistent and principled attention to energy policy over the 20 years since the formation of the National Energy Market.

It’s worth setting the record straight on the meaning of some of these terms and how they relate to climate policies, new technologies and the progression of market reform and regulation in Australia.

This glossary, which is by no means exhaustive, is a first step.

Read the piece on The Conversation - “Baffled by baseload? Dumbfounded by dispatchables? Here’s a glossary of the energy debate."

This is not ideology

(From the archives of The Monthly)

With the conclusion of the Paris climate conference in December, global warming went from being the kind of problem politicians like to being the kind of problem they hate.

For at least the past year, the conversation about climate change centred on what kind of agreement Paris would produce. And so politicians got to posture, to say quotable things, to appear world-leaderish. As the talks were about to begin, for instance, Australia’s environment minister, Greg Hunt, said it was his “deepest hope and belief” that the world would reach a strong agreement, adding that it was “a deeply personal goal and commitment, as well as a national objective”. During the talks, he revealed that he, and Australia, was acting as a “broker” to make sure that the push by island nations to limit warming to an increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius would at least be “referenced” in the final accord. “Clearly [it] won’t end up as a formal goal of the text,” he said, since some nations would veto it, but he was “trying to be constructive by providing a pathway” so it could be mentioned.

Read Bill McKibben’s story on The Monthly - “This is not ideology.”

Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems

Imagine if the people of the Soviet Union had never heard of communism. The ideology that dominates our lives has, for most of us, no name. Mention it in conversation and you’ll be rewarded with a shrug. Even if your listeners have heard the term before, they will struggle to define it. Neoliberalism: do you know what it is?

 ‘No alternative’ … Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher at the White House.

Its anonymity is both a symptom and cause of its power. It has played a major role in a remarkable variety of crises: the financial meltdown of 2007‑8, the offshoring of wealth and power, of which the Panama Papers offer us merely a glimpse, the slow collapse of public health and education, resurgent child poverty, the epidemic of loneliness, the collapse of ecosystems, the rise of Donald Trump. But we respond to these crises as if they emerge in isolation, apparently unaware that they have all been either catalysed or exacerbated by the same coherent philosophy; a philosophy that has – or had – a name. What greater power can there be than to operate namelessly?

So pervasive has neoliberalism become that we seldom even recognise it as an ideology. We appear to accept the proposition that this utopian, millenarian faith describes a neutral force; a kind of biological law, like Darwin’s theory of evolution. But the philosophy arose as a conscious attempt to reshape human life and shift the locus of power.

Read the story by George Monbiot on The Guardian - “Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems.”

Hard facts unmask the fiction behind Coalition's 'coal comeback’

Watching politics builds a high tolerance for hypocrisy and humbug, but even I am aghast at the Coalition’s antics this week – fondling a lump of coal in parliament while accusing the opposition of an “ideological approach to energy” and negligence in policy planning.

Seriously. There’s a long list of blame and shame for Australia’s threadbare climate and energy policy, and the failure to plan for an energy market crisis that experts have warned about for years. But Malcolm Turnbull’s Coalition takes out first place.

Arguably all sides of politics have made mistakes or miscalculations to get us to this point of omni-failure – high prices, blackouts and an inability to reduce electricity sector emissions – and yes, ideology has played a part: mostly the climate-change denying, renewables-are-a-socialist-plot ideology espoused by sections of the Liberal and National parties that once upon a time, a long time ago, Turnbull also railed against.

Read Lenore Taylor’s story on The Guardian - “Hard facts unmask the fiction behind Coalition's 'coal comeback’.”

Ideologically stripped and now tainted with illegal beahaviour

A

ustralia has been ideologically stripped of its climate change protections and now further moves, painted as illegal behaviour, are directed at the country’s environmental groups.

Mark Dreyfus -
"ideological attack".

Today’s Melbourne Age says, “The Abbott government recently launched a parliamentary committee inquiry into a registry of green groups that allows donors to groups like the Wilderness Society and Greenpeace, along with smaller organisations, to deduct contributions from their tax.

“The government says the review is necessary to ensure tax concessions do not support illegal activity and will ensure environment groups face high standards of transparency. Some Coalition MPs have also sought to draw a distinction between groups that carry out on-the-ground environment restoration works and those engaged in political campaigns.”

According to The Age, the shadow Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus - Labor's frontbench representative on a parliamentary committee inquiry now looking at the charitable status of almost 600 environment groups - has declared the review an ideological attack by the government on political advocacy.

Read The Age story - “Big green donors warn funds could dry up if Abbott government changes tax rules”.

US leads the world in electric vehicle adoption

M

any argue that we need to escape completely our addiction to private vehicles and shift to a public transit system.

That is a rather idealistic idea and being one that trespasses on the existing market system and so with our present profit driven ideologies, the public transit idea has little chance of gaining traction.

What has the opportunity to make inroads is the electric vehicle for it is simply a modification of what exists and so although it would upset a segment of the existing trade, much of the motor industry would be untouched.

The Environment News Network tells readers that the United States currently leads the world in the number of plug-in electric vehicles on the road, capturing 41% of the global market.

The story - “US leads the world in EV adoption” – says that “As of December 2014, more than 712,000 highway-capable plug-in electric cars and utility vans have been sold worldwide.”

Building a business and building a government are similar

M

any successful in business attribute the flourishing of their company to the fact that they have assembled around them the smartest minds in their particular field.

Australia’s Abbott Government is, despite its many protestations, populated by people who deny human-induced climate change.

Setting the tone for the government is the Prime Minister himself, Tony Abbott, who has declared climate change as “crap”.

Running a government is not unlike orchestrating a company and whatever ideology you align yourself with, it is imperative that all the decision makers within your company reflect and promote your beliefs and values.

Subsequently when Abbott and his cohort strolled into Canberra’s halls of power, they immediately got rid of the Climate Commission, an independent body abreast of developments in the climate change conversation and advised what action the government should take.

The now defunct Climate Commission, announced by the Gillard Labor Government in February 2011, was headed by Professor Tim Flannery, and other commissioners included Professor Veena Sahajwalla, Professor Lesley Hughes, Professor Will Steffen, Roger Beale, and Gerry Hueston, who are now all members of the community funded Climate Council.

Although the Commission was projected to cost $5.4 million over four years, the Abbott Government thought it had no need of such advice and in what in the overall scheme of things is a tiny amount, save some money, a decision on which it has changed tack and has now spent $4 million employing the scientifically discredited Dr Borj Lomborg.

However, as the Abbott Government is eager to advance its ideologically-driven position on climate change, it has dispensed with a commission staffed by qualified, thoughtful and diplomatic Australians to give the role to a Dane whose beliefs are at odds with nearly all of the world’s leading climatologists.

This appointment, defying all the protocols, has not gone unnoticed and has caused serious disquiet among academics and now the Labor Opposition has joined the choir of complaints, pointed out in the ABC story, “Labor criticises $4m Government grant for Dr Bjorn Lomborg think tank”.

Ideology and decisions rarely make for comfortable bedfellows

Queensland Deputy Premier, Jeff Seeney,
 directs council to remove references to
climate change induced sea level rises.

Ideology is frequently the driver of many decisions.

Rarely, however do the two combine to produce a good outcome.

Queensland’s Moreton Bay Council has been directed to remove all references to climate change-derived sea level rises from the regional plan.

This direction, considered by some to be ideologically driven will have wide ramifications, experts claim.

An ABC story discussing the direction is headed: “Jeff Seeney orders Moreton Bay Regional Council to remove references to climate change-derived sea level rises from regional plan.”

The council is obliged by law to obey the direction.

Monbiot warns of struggle with plutocracy

Plutocracy reigns supreme everywhere, including Shepparton, and even if it is not genuine members of that genre who rule, it is most certainly plutocratic pretenders.

George Monbiot.

Columnist with Great Britain’s Guardian newspaper, George Monbiot, has written about the influence of the plutocrats and how their ideology makes is impossible to address climate change.

Neoliberalism arose in the 1970 to become a force in world politics in the next decade and now their actions and beliefs put the humanity at serious risk.

Writing in a piece headed “Forbidden Planet”, Monbiot said, “The 1000-year legacy of current carbon emissions is long enough to smash anything resembling human civilisation into splinters.”