Dismantling Australian climate policy: a case study in disagreement. The federal government can’t convince the electorate of the ills of renewables (RET`s). Perhaps they should listen instead, and leave the renewable energy target alone. I work in the renewable energy industry, so I’ve got an immovable stake in Australia’s climate policy. The advice professed to young Imogen seems to manifest in the trajectory of our regulatory response to climate change. Soon after the election of the government last September, Labor’s climate policies were marked for prompt obliteration. The Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC), the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (Arena), the Climate Change Authority (CCA), the Climate Commission and the carbon pricing mechanism were all on the climate abolition wish list. The closure of the CEFC and Arena were blocked in the senate, and any future attempts to axe the agencies are likely to be stonewalled (oddly, Abbott recently cited the CEFC as one of the reasons Tasmania is “open for business”). The repeal of the carbon pricing mechanism was troublesome and drawn out. The CCA repeal was blocked by the Palmer United party, and the Climate Commission was reborn days after its abolition as the Climate Council through a crowdfunding campaign that raised $1m in a few days. The attempts to dismantle Australian climate policy are a case study for Abbott’s description of the process of disagreement. Though the repeal of the deeply unpopular carbon price was successful, the government tried, and failed, to persuade the senate of the worth in scrapping the CEFC, Arena or the CCA. theguardian/commentisfree/2014/aug/14/dismantling-australian-climate-policy-a-case-study-in-disagreement
Posted on: Wed, 20 Aug 2014 07:17:31 +0000
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