The appointment of Larry
Marshall to head the CSIRO and Alan
Finkel as Australia’s Chief Scientist highlight the integration of business
into Australian scientific and political debate. Marshall is an ‘entrepreneur
and venture capitalist’ who speaks of ‘lean innovation
and ‘agility’. Finkel, ex-chancellor at Monash and proponent of
nuclear power, has been billed
as ‘a scientist and an entrepreneur… [who can] help Australia bridge
the gap between scientific research and industry’.
This optimistic persepctive is supported by a new
CSIRO report, Australian National
Outlook 2015, released November 5, 2015, which highlights the ability to ‘decouple’ or
‘reconcile’ economic growth and multiple environmental pressures. The report argues that ‘Australia could
make enormous progress towards a more sustainable future without a major change
in what we value’. In other words, it rejects ‘communitarian limits’ on growth.
Instead, energy consumption, water use and food output an all continue to rise
while greenhouse emissions fall, stressed catchments can be maintained and native
habitat restored.
This argument is also reflected in the Corporate Social
Responsibility strategies of many of our biggest polluters. We Mean Business is ‘a coalition of
organizations working with thousands of the world’s most influential
businesses and investors… to recognize that the transition to a low carbon
economy is the only way to secure sustainable economic growth and prosperity
for all’. The
organization promotes the idea that ‘shifting to a low carbon economy is the only sensible way
to stay competitive in the market’. Members include The Climate Group, which, during
‘Climate Week NYC’, September 2014, launched
a ‘multi-year
initiative to encourage major companies to commit to using 100% renewable power. This initiative
was called RE100. The Climate Group also
organized the ‘Compact
of States and Regions’ which provides a
‘single, global account of greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction targets made by state
and regional governments’ (including South
Australia and the Australian
Capital Territory). On
November 5, ’We Mean Business’ organised an ‘action’ in Sydney called the Australian Climate Leadership Summit
‘hosted’ by CDP.
‘More
than a dozen’ of Australia's largest companies signed up
to one or more of a series of seven ‘pledges’. It
comes as Commonwealth
Bank and the NAB
made well-publicized
announcements about their own policies on climate change. The banks will look
at increasing focus on renewable energy and at ways carbon intensive projects
can lower their emissions.
These win-win-win scenarios do not
provide a platform for the kind of regulatory changes necessary to
limit global warming. As CSIRO’s National Outlook report illustrates:
Governments need to choose. This will
involve some pain. Haward Pender of the ACCR writes: ‘The political process of recognising the need for
physical constraint of emissions is slow and difficult’. In particular, many
assets, including mines and coal-fired power stations,
are likely to become ‘stranded’.
There is no guarantee the Australian government will make the
necessary decisions. As George Monbiot illustrated recently:
‘Banks,
corporations and landowners wield an unaccountable power, which works with a
nod and a wink within the political class.’ At the same time, it is not
clear that the electorate supports a change in energy policies. Recent CSIRO
research reported that less than half of Australians (45.9%) believe that
climate change is happening and is caused by human activity. Moreover,
this recent (now
canceled) CSIRO survey found that that respondents assumed that only one
third of Australians (32.8%) believed that climate change was induced by human
activity.
Some reports invoke Turnbull’s ‘character’ as a reason for
optimism. As Tim Buckley of the ‘Institute for Energy Economics and Financial
Analysis’ writes:
‘Where Abbott clung
to a status-quo outlook that refused to see the light, Turnbull is a realist
who knows change is on the way’. Turnbull, by his
own admission, will only act if it is in Australia’s financial interest to do
so and if it is in his own political interests to do so.
In the
meantime, the government continues the annual $5 billion subsidies for high-carbon assets that cannot be exploited
without driving the planet far beyond the internationally agreed target of
limiting global temperature increases to no more than 2 degrees C. These subsidies play an
increasingly significant role in maintaining the financial viability of many
fossil fuel mining operations. Carbontracker
estimates these subsidies (including postponed rehabilitation payments, direct
tax deductions and and fuel excise exemption) at $5.22AUD per tonne. Given the
rapidly declining Australian
Coal Price (-7.53%
from last month and -17.86% from one year ago), the survival of the coal sector ‘may perversely
come down to government intervention’. Carbon Capture and Storage technologies,
necessary for the longer term survival of the coal industry, currently adds
costs to generating power that are too
high for the process to be applied in a stand alone commercial context and may be beyond
the survival window for a lot of the coal mining companies.
Malcolm
Turnbull recently argued that energy sources have physical and financial
but not moral characteristics. Energy policies need to evolve, Turnbull argues,
in a manner that is ‘non-ideological’, ‘clear-eyed’, ‘cool-headed’ and ‘rational’.
Turnbull’s language is copied by Environment Minister Greg Hunt, who argues
that, ‘so long
as it produces reliable electricity… there are no
moral qualities either way in different forms of energy or electricity’. At the
moment Turnbull’s actions are more bloody-minded than cool-headed.
