"Mea culpa, Mea maxima culpa"

[Belle]

Ross Gittens (Sydney Morning Herald) writes that he's guilty and ashamed over the fact his 5 grandchildren are going to inherit a dirty world that is going to boil through climate change - a climate that baby boomers have personally wrecked. He begs their forgiveness in this quasi-religious tripe based on climate apocalypticism. (You just keep shaking your head over this undergraduate stuff.)

Australian emissions can make zero material impact to global temperatures, but we can stop exporting our resources which contribute. Apparently. Poor Ross, "Economic Editor" that he is, STILL doesn't know that there are other ready world markets to supply energy to other countries which will be taken up in a heartbeat if we stop selling. Too long living in the hive, drawing a weekly salary without the slightest concern about our standard of living or capital risks involved in maintaining same!! No concept of the risk/reward paradigm and its impact on standard of living. No nuance, just hysteria. He doesn't care either that there are third world countries which need coal to burn so that they can have the standard of living we've enjoyed for over a century. It's cultural chauvinism. And unadulterated ideology.

They won't thank you, Ross, when their standard of living reduces to the extent that education, hospitals, defense and roads cannot be paid for through our export markets. They'll have to provide this THEMSELVES. You make them strong, Ross, by empowering them to make mistakes/fix things themselves (as we all had to do), and the notion they'll be a pure and good generation - far better than their forebears - is primary school nonsense you only ever get from the Left. I hope you've told them to give up their travels, Ross, their mobile phones and gas-guzzling motor vehicles!! And Ross, you haven't been watching; the 'war of our times' will be with China.

An apology to my grandkids for not fighting in the war of our times
Ross Gittins
Economics Editor

While I was on holiday, I noticed a tweet that left me in no doubt about the subject of my first column back. It said: “I genuinely think the next generation will not forgive us for what we have done to them and the world they will have to live in.”

I, too, fear they won’t. I don’t know whether our political leaders ever think such thoughts, but it fills me with dread. Maybe the pollies think what I reluctantly think: With any luck, I’ll be dead before the next generation realises the full extent of the hell our selfish short-sightedness has left them in.

But the climate seems to be deteriorating so rapidly I’m not sure I’ll get off that easily. I love my five grandkids, but I’m not looking forward to the day they’re old enough to quiz me on “what I did in the war”. What was I saying and doing while our leaders were going for decades kicking the problem down the road as the easiest way to get re-elected?

“Well, I was very busy writing about the shocking cost of living – oh, and rising interest rates.” Really? Is that the best excuse you can offer, Grandad?

We elected a bloke called Albo (the second coming!) who promised to try a lot harder than his predecessors to reduce our emissions of greenhouse gases. He said he’d cut them by 43 per cent by 2030. He was quick to put that target into law, and his people worked through the Christmas holidays to outline the “safeguard mechanism” he’d use as his main measure to achieve the reduction.

While the rest of us were at the beach, Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen announced a few weeks ago that Australia’s 215 biggest industrial polluters – running coal mines, gas plants, smelters and steelworks – will have their emissions capped, with the caps lowered progressively by 30 per cent come 2030.

Businesses whose emissions exceed their cap will face heavy fines. To the extent they can’t use cleaner production processes to reduce their emissions, they’ll be allowed to buy “carbon credits” from other heavy polluters who’ve been able to reduce their emissions by more than required, or from farmers who’ve planted more trees.

Trouble is, it wasn’t long before the experts started pointing to all the holes in the scheme. For a start, the combined emissions of these biggest polluters account for only 28 per cent of Australia’s total emissions.

For another thing, the notion that, as well as reducing the carbon we’re adding to the atmosphere, we should find ways to remove some of the carbon that’s already there is a good one in principle, but riddled with practical problems. Whereas the carbon we emit may stay in the atmosphere for 100 years or more, the carbon sequestered by a new tree will start returning to the atmosphere as soon as it dies or is cut down. It’s hard to measure the amount of carbon that tree-growing and other agricultural activities remove, which makes such schemes particularly easy to rort.

In his recent report into expert criticism of our carbon credit scheme, Professor Ian Chubb sat on the fence. While judging the scheme to be “well designed”, he identified various dubious practices that should be outlawed. And he stressed that big polluters must not rely on buying carbon credits to the extent that they’re able to avoid reducing their emissions in absolute terms.

A further weakness in the government’s scheme comes from its refusal to prohibit any new coal mines and gas plants, despite the International Energy Agency and other international agencies saying the world won’t have any chance of avoiding dangerous climate change if it’s relying on new gas or coal projects.

So, the scheme involves leaning on our existing 215 biggest polluters to reduce their emissions by 30 per cent, while allowing a bunch of new big emitters to set up, provided they then start cutting those emissions back.

Really? This is how we’re going to cut our total emissions by 2030? Seriously?

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A great comment under this article in the paper today says it all:

It's like taking a teacup out of the ocean. By all means do those things, but the only practical effect is it allows you to feel virtuous. There is no practical effect on the climate itself.