The Coalition recently announced its climate change policy, the guts of it is an emission reduction target by 2020 of 5% below 1990 levels.
Peter Cosier (Director of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists) - “The good news is that the Coalition has recognised that climate change is a problem"... "If Australia is to make its contribution to managing carbon pollution we need to reduce our net emissions by at least 25% by 2020 (and by between 80% and 95% by 2050). This policy doesn’t get us anywhere near those targets"
Professor Ian Lowe (Emeritus professor of science, technology and society at Griffith University, Qld and President of the Australian Conservation Foundation) - "The most disappointing aspect of the Coalition’s policy is that it aims only to reduce our carbon dioxide emissions by five per cent. So it has effectively accepted disastrous climate change. The Bali Road Map set targets in the range of 25 to 40 per cent for countries like Australia to give the world a fighting chance of avoiding unacceptable impacts. .. It appears constrained by its denial faction to propose only measures that are manifestly inadequate".
Dr Helen McGregor (AINSE Research Fellow in the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at University of Wollongong) - "Cuts to emissions of far greater than 5% by 2020 are required to tackle the climate change issue - this policy does not appear to have any long term plans for deeper cuts into the future."
As opposed to putting a cap, or price, on emissions of carbon pollution this policy would see the government establish a direct action fund to pay business and industry to reduce emissions. Most of the emissions reductions would be realised by schemes to increase the amount of carbon stored in the soil.
Dr Frank Jotzo (Fellow and Senior Lecturer at the Australian National University’s Crawford School of Economics and Government) - "A price on emissions, via emissions trading or a tax, remains the most cost-effective way to cut back on emissions. Subsidies and grants may be necessary in some cases, but they invite bureaucratic inefficiency, and even more profit-seeking by industry than we have seen under the CPRS process. And of course someone will always have to pay. Under emissions trading, industry pays first and recoups the costs by raising prices for consumers. Under a subsidy approach, the taxpayer pays for grants to industry.
Soil carbon improvements and research on bio-sequestration are worthwhile investments if implemented well, but they are not the answer to Australia's rising emissions from energy use... What is needed is a strong and pervasive price signal to emitters, through an emissions trading system, perhaps starting with a fixed price to provide certainty in the start-up phase"
Professor Wasim Saman (Professor of Sustainable Energy Engineering and Director of the Sustainable Energy Centre at the University of South Australia): "The plan includes a number of practical common sense measures... However, in total, it is merely tinkering around the edges and fails to clearly signal Australia’s long term commitment to reduce carbon emission.
Adjunct Prof Alan Pears AM (Senior Lecturer, School of Global Studies, Social Science and Planning at RMIT University): “The Coalition’s policy includes a number of useful measures. However, it rejects a key element of any long-term transition to a low carbon economy - placing a price on carbon emissions.
The policy relies heavily on encouraging farmers to increase soil carbon. However, this measure is not yet internationally recognised as an abatement action, and there are some scientific uncertainties about aspects of the approach".
David Pearce (Executive Director of The Centre for International Economics in Canberra) - "Soil carbon does offer a genuine abatement opportunity, but it is one that also carries risks (how will the policy deal with unexpected emissions of soil carbon from bush fires, for example?). There is, of course, no reason why soil carbon could not be included in an emissions trading scheme".
The direct action fund would increase to a total of $1 billion per year by 2014 and the coalition claims this would allow them to reduce carbon emissions for cheaper than emissions trading.
Professor John Foster (from the School of Economics at the University of Queensland and is Vice-President of the Economics Society of Australia (Queensland Branch) - “Any policy that does not penalise ‘base line’ growth in emissions by firms and does not have a cap is very unlikely to achieve a 5% reduction target by 2020.
This is a policy that pivots around the palatable ‘business as usual’ case and that is why it’s so cheap.
There is no indication of how the estimated carbon dioxide reductions in the different areas were modelled. It looks very much like guesswork.. Effective climate change policy is difficult to design and implement - it must involve the introduction of an emission trading scheme and/or a significant carbon tax. So the suggestion that it can be done easily and cheaply is unconvincing.”
Professor John Quiggin (Australian Research Council Federation Fellow in the school of economics at the University of Queensland): "The Liberal Party plan relies primarily on wishful thinking about the potential for near-costless gains from soil carbon. In the absence of adequate accounting systems, this proposal is vulnerable to massive rorting. The rest of the proposal consists if picking winners that seem likely to appeal to focus groups, rather than providing incentives to find the most cost-effective ways of reducing and offsetting carbon emissions. Taken as a whole, the package and its costings lack credibility.”
Taken as a whole, reaction by various experts can be summarised by saying that while it is positive that the Coalition has a climate change policy, the target is "inadequate", compared to creating a low carbon clean energy economy this policy just "tinkers round the edges" with no long term vision and its prospects of delivering a 5% cut with the amount of money proposed may well be "wishful thinking". This is an unfortunate state of affairs given the urgent need for effect action on climate change.
Full comments from the various experts can be found here