The Labor Party's climate approach is extremely disappointing.

The science and expert input has made a strong case for action for more than a decade. A majority of Australians already want to take action on climate change. What would be required to come out of a Citizens' Assembly to convince the Government to take action? An absolute majority? A majority in key electorates?

This appears to be another 2020 Summit-style delay to make it appear that action is being taken when the purpose is purely delay for political advantage.

Australians deserve better than this. If the Hawke and Keating Governments had taken the approach of a Citizens' Assembly to consider the major economic reforms of the 1980s, Australia would be a third world economy floundering in the wake of the global financial crisis. The floating of the dollar, tariff reductions and labor market reform would not have been understood nor supported by a Citizens Assembly. What is proposed is not leadership — it is an abdication of responsible action.

The Labor approach also appears to be based on the 'fact' that the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme is the best policy, one which would be implemented once enough Australians are genuinely convinced. There is far more debate needed about this policy approach, which I believe is seriously flawed, than about the science of climate change. It is the policy approach that should be debated, not the science.

Of the Coalition or Labor policies on climate change, it is hard to decide which is worse. It is appalling to see the politics of asylum seekers applied to climate change policy.

Photo by Flickr user Twm, used under a Creative Commons license.

It was good news when Treasurer Wayne Swan announced that the House Economics Committee was to enquire whether the core of Australia’s response to climate change – the Carbon pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) — is the best way to tackle climate change.

This now cancelled review could have reconsidered the range of alternative approaches available and would have enabled the genuine concerns of all sides of politics, from the Greens to the conservatives and within the Labor Party, to be addressed. It would also have been an opportunity for the Government to produce a consensus policy framework.

The precise nature of the 'cap and trade' approach as currently proposed in the CPRS was never going to be easy to adjust to the political realities it was trying to address. The fundamental problem with the CPRS, as with the policy recommendations of the Garnaut Review, is that it starts with the idea that a rigid target and a timetable should be the basis of the policy design and that the problem of uncertain costs can either be ignored or tackled in an ad hoc way through exemptions and handouts.

However, the balance between reducing emissions as quickly as possible while smoothing costs over time should be integral to the policy design. The core of the policy design should be a clear, credible, deep cut in emissions where possible, with a clear mechanism for smoothing costs over time, based transparently on the evolution of international agreements and adjusted as information on costs and benefits are revealed. 

It is not too late to modify the CPRS to shift to a much simpler and more sensible approach that would address the genuine concerns of all sides of politics (though it would have been better to do this in an open enquiry with expert input rather than behind closed doors in political negotiations with the Senate). Here's how it can be done. More...

The Garnaut review, based on targets and timetables for emission reduction, will delay action on climate change at the global level. Most of the world has no clear policy framework, and most countries are not taking on targets and timetables because they don't want to commit to a system without knowing the cost. Some countries that have taken targets (Japan, NZ, Canada) are not even close to hitting them because domestic politics is blocking action. Only the Europeans have a wide ranging ETS and it is full of holes and exemptions for political reasons.

Wishful thinking will not solve this problem but it will, and has, delayed action. Emissions are at the high end of the most pessimistic projections. We have had Kyoto for 11 years and we are in the first year of the binding period with no chance of hitting the Kyoto targets on average between 2008-2012. That is why there is so much debate about what to do post-2012. This is pretty strong evidence that we need to modify the approach in important ways and not promote a position in Australia that will actually delay action globally.

A better way is to have clear long term goals priced in transparent domestic markets and fixed short term carbon prices equal (where possible) across countries. The McKibbin Wilcoxen Hybrid  is a way to break the national and global political log jam because it deals with climate policy in the same way countries now run monetary policy (but with a different time frame).