Before considering the details of Labor’s plan one must consider Australia’s position as a world leader in annual per capita greenhouse gas pollution and fossil fuel exports.

Australia’s Domestic greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution including land use in Mt (million tonnes) CO2-e (CO2-equivalent) was 465 Mt CO2-e in 2000 but reached 600 Mt CO2-e in 2009. However simple cause-and-effect considerations mean that one must also consider Australia’s huge fossil fuel exports that in 2009 totalled 815 Mt CO2-e, the breakdown being 31 Mt CO2-e (liquid natural gas, LNG) plus 784 Mt CO2-e (coal). Thus Australia’s Domestic plus Exported GHG pollution was 1,415 Mt CO2-e in 2009. Australia’s annual per capita GHG pollution in 2009 was accordingly 600 Mt CO2-e/21.9 million people = 27.4 tonnes CO2-e per person per year but 1,415 Mt CO2-e/21.9 million persons = 64.6 tonnes CO2-e per person per year if Australia’s huge fossil fuel exports are included. By way of comparison, the annual per capita GHG pollution of Bangladesh is 0.9 tonnes CO2-e per person per year, 72 times lower than Australia’s Domestic plus Exported annual per capita GHG pollution).

The Labor Government plan involves the following major features (noting that Australia’s GDP is about $1,000 billion and that its power generation capacity, about 90% fossil fuel-based, is about 50,000 MW).

1. There will be a derisory GHG pollution target of “5% off 2000 GHG pollution by 2020” and a target of 80% reduction by 2050. A Climate Change Authority will recommend caps for an Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) and GHG pollution targets. The Government will be asked to explain if it does not adopt the recommended targets.

2. A very low carbon price or Carbon Tax of $23 per tonne of carbon ( $23/tC) will apply to a politics-determined, limited set of GHG sources from 1 July 2012, rising by 2.5% in 2013-214 and 2014-2015. In July 2015 a Cap-and-Trade Carbon Trading Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) will be introduced and the Carbon Tax will be allowed to float between a price floor of $15/tC (indexed) and 20% above the expected international price (also indexed).

3. The Carbon Tax will only apply to stationary energy (power stations), industrial processes (e.g. steel and cement manufacture) and fugitive emissions (e.g. from coal mines and rubbish tips). However, in keeping with the profoundly corrupt nature of Australian society, the Carbon Tax will not be applied to agriculture, light commercial and household transport, and to trucks. However trucking outside of agriculture will face reduced business fuel tax credits from 2014. Aviation will face a higher excise on fuel. The Australian Productivity Commission will review fuel tax arrangements.

4. The ETS arrangement will permit International Carbon credits after 2015 to offset the cost of licenses to pollute the one common atmosphere of all countries of the World. A maximum of 50% of International Credits can be used (e.g. from forestry-related deals with tropical Developing countries).

5. There will be all kinds of taxation benefits and pension increases to cover the increased costs of the Carbon Tax flowing through to electricity, gas and other purchases by middle to low income people.

6. Emissions intensive trade-exposed industries (notably steel) will be partly protected. A Coal Sector Jobs Package will give $1.3 billion over 6 years to assist over emissions from gassy mines. A Clean Technology Program will provide $1.2 billion to support low emissions technology in manufacturing. An Energy Security Fund will provide $5.5 billion in free permits and cash to 2016-2107 and up to 2000MW of high emissions power plants will be closed.

7. A Clean Energy Finance Corporation will invest $10 billion over 5 years from 2013-2104 in renewables and low emissions technologies (excluding Carbon Capture and Storage). An Australian Renewable Energy Agency will supervise $3.2 billion in renewable energy funding. It is projected that $100 billion will be invested in renewable energy over the next 40 years (i.e. $2.5 billion per year).

8. The revenue is expected to be $8 -$9 billion pa to 2014-2015 and fuel tax savings when implemented will save $0.6 billion pa. Household assistance will cost $4-$5 billion pa and industry assistance will cost about $3 billion pa. However a further $1 billion pa is required from general taxation-derived revenue to pay for the package. Out of this about $2 billion will go to fund renewable energy.

This is a profoundly dishonest, counterproductive and damaging proposal that fails to seriously tackle man-made climate change and indeed entrenches climate change inaction in disproportionately polluting, climate criminal Australia. In contrast, the Liberal Party-National Party Coalition Opposition has a Direct Action Plan that involves Government savings-funded action of re-afforestation, biochar and lower emissions technology and costing about $1 billion pa to achieve the same derisory “5% of 2000 GHG by 2020” goal of the Labor Government . The Coalition proposal has the benefits that it does not damage Australian industry and does not entrench climate change inaction (the Coalition scheme can be readily ramped up if needed – and of course, massive ramping up is needed).

More specific criticisms of the Labor Carbon–Tax-ETS-Ignore Agriculture (CTETSIA) plan are set out point-by-point below.

1. Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany, and currently visiting Melbourne to speak at the “Four Degrees or More?” conference at the University of Melbourne, wrote as follows in Melbourne’s The Age newspaper (11 July 2011):

“leading [the World] is about Australia adopting for itself the kind of reduction target that is needed from all to keep warming below 2 degrees. The 5 per cent reduction from 2000 by 2020 position of Australia translates into about a 25 per cent to 30 per cent increase in industrial greenhouse gas emissions above 1990 levels, once all of Australia’s special accounting rules are included”.

If we assume that Labor actually succeeds in achieving “5% off 2000 GHG pollution by 2020″ this will mean Australia’s Domestic plus Exported GHG pollution in 2020 will be roughly double that in 2000 (see: Australia’s “5% off 2000 GHG pollution by 2020” endangers Australia, Humanity and Biosphere). According to Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, for a 67% chance of avoiding a catastrophic 2 degree Centigrade temperature rise, the World must cease CO2 emissions by 2050 and top per capita greenhouse gas (GHG) polluters such as the US and Australia must get to zero CO2 emissions by 2020. According to the Australian Climate Commission’s 2011 “The Critical Decade” report, for a 75% chance of avoiding a disastrous 2 degree Centigrade temperature rise the World can emit no more than 1 trillion tonnes of CO2 before reaching zero emissions in about 2050. Australia’s high Domestic plus Exported GHG pollution rate means it must get to zero emissions in 1.9 years or in 4.6 years (ignoring Exported GHG pollution) (see: Australia Ignores 25 Huge Climate Change Realities).

2. It is estimated that a carbon tax of greater than $25/tonne carbon will encourage gas-fired power, $70/tonne carbon is needed to encourage wind and about $200/tonne carbon will encourage concentrated solar thermal installation (indeed Labor hopes for a Carbon Tax-driven coal to gas transition) . Gas is not clean, it is dirty, 1 tonne of methane (CH4) generating 2.8 tonnes CO2 on combustion. Gas burning is cleaner than coal burning in terms of twice the MWh/tonne CO2 emitted and less health damaging pollutants but gas is not cleaner than coal burning GHG-wise. Thus methane (CH4) leaks (3.3%) and is 105 times worse than CO2 as a GHG on a 20 year timeframe taking aerosol impacts into account, this meaning that a Carbon Tax-driven coal to gas transition will double electric power industry-derived GHG pollution.

3. The Carbon Tax only applies to the approximately about one third of Australia’s sources of GHG pollution and notoriously excludes agriculture which, according got the latest World bank assessment, is responsible for over 50% of GHG pollution. These politics-driven exclusions are discriminatory as well as making it quite clear that Labor simply does not want to “tackle climate change”. The boasted “80% off by 2050” can be seen as dishonest spin because most of the politicians involved will be dead or extremely elderly by 2050.

4. The ETS approach has been condemned by top climate scientists, economists and analysts as empirically ineffective (e.g. the outstandingly ineffective EU ETS), disastrously counterproductive, market manipulation-permissive and inherently fraudulent (Australia proposes to sell licences to pollute the one common atmosphere of all countries in the World). For about 50 such expert views condemning the ETS approach see 300.org). The use of International Credits is a dishonest ploy that enables high polluting companies to obtain much cheaper Carbon Credits outside Australia from corrupt and impoverished Third World countries.

5. Of the Carbon Tax and other revenue or savings amounting to about $10 billion pa, about $5 billion will be given to householders to pay for the increased costs passed on to them by the energy sector and other industry. However this simply makes Australian manufacturing less competitive, a problem compounded by the very high value of Australian dollar.

6. In addition to half the Carbon Tax money going to enable householders to pay for increased costs, the most highly polluting industries will be further supported by about $3 billion pa. The ETS will involve massive subsidies for major polluters.

7. $2 billion per year for renewables is pathetically small given the urgent, science-demanded need to reach 100% renewable energy ASAP (see point #1), an achievement that will variously cost $37 billion pa for 10years (wind and concentrated solar energy with molten salts energy storage; Beyond Zero Emissions), $13 billion pa for 20 years (Professor Peter Seligman’s scheme in his book “Australian Sustainable Energy – by the numbers”); $14-$20 billion pa for 10 years (for wind power providing 80% of an estimated 325,000 GWh of electrical energy needed by continent Australia in 2020). In social context, Australians spend about $20 billion pa on gambling. Of course one must also realize that anti-science Labor has a strange notion of what “renewable energy” means – thus this term covered methane for hot water and methane from mines in Federal Renewable Energy legislation several years ago.

8. Overall, this Carbon Tax amounts to a futile cycle of taxing some polluters and returning the money to the polluters or to consumers to help them pay for increased prices – with an arguable $2 billion pa slippage for renewable energy investment. And all this to achieve a doubling of Australia’s 2000 Domestic plus Exported GHG pollution by 2020 while pretending to “tackle climate change”.

The extraordinarily incompetent, pro-coal, pro-gas Gillard Labor Government is good at one thing – politics. Labor has very successfully conned most of the pro-environment movement in Australia into support for its disastrous climate policies on the utterly flawed basis that “doing something is better than doing nothing”. However dispassionate, science-based analysis says that Labor’s policy will be a comprehensive disaster. The fundamental reason for the disaster is that Labor’s policy is based on an endlessly trumpeted lie, specifically that it wants to “tackle climate change”. PM Julia “Juliar” Gillard refuses to say if she had opposed the ETS proposal of former Labor PM Kevin Rudd and is much criticized for promising before the last election that there would not be a Carbon Tax if her government was re-elected. Now she says that she went to the election supporting an ETS, conveniently ignoring the reality that an ETS is in itself a huge Carbon Tax.

If Labor were serious about “tackling climate change” it would immediately (a) abolish the estimated $12 billion pa in fossil fuel subsidies and (b) simply abolish export licences for Australia’s coal and natural gas exports. In 2009 Australia’s Domestic GHG pollution was 600 Mt CO2-e and its Exported GHG was 815 Mt CO2-e, the total being 1,415 Mt CO2-e. In 2000 Australia’s Domestic GHG (465 Mt CO2-e) plus Exported GHG (349.4 Mt CO2-e) was 814 Mt CO2-e. By 2020 on Labor’s policies, Australia’s Domestic GHG pollution will be 442 Mt CO2-e and its Exported GHG will be 1,149 Mt CO2-e, the total being 1,591 Mt CO2-e, 12% bigger than at present and 195% of that in 2000. The Australian Labor Government has no intention of “tackling climate change” while dishonestly pretending otherwise.

Of course there is a fundamentally important domestic reason for Australia to stop carbon pollution. Carbon burning pollutants have been estimated from Canadian and New Zealand data to kill about 10,000 Australians yearly. Australians dying each year from the effects of pollutants from vehicles, coal burning for electricity and other carbon burning total about 2,200, 4,600 and 2,800, respectively. Further, “annual per capita greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution” in units of “tonnes CO2 -equivalent per person per year” (2005-2009 data) is 0.9 (Bangladesh), 0.9 (Pakistan), 2.2 (India), less than 3 (many African and Island countries), 3.2 (the Developing World), 5.5 (China), 6.7 (the World), 11 (Europe), 16 (the Developed World), 27 (the US) and 27 (Australia; or 64 if Australia’s huge Exported CO2 pollution is included).

In summary, in stark contrast to the Australian Coalition Opposition’s too-little-too-late Direct Action policy, the pro-coal, pro-gas, anti-science, market economics-based Carbon Tax-ETS-Ignore Agriculture (CTETSIA) policy of the Gillard Labor Government fails comprehensively in 2 key areas, specifically (1) it entrenches climate change inaction for decades by promoting a Carbon Tax-driven coal to gas transition (that will double electricity generation-derived GHG pollution) and scuppering science-demanded 100% renewable energy by 2020 and (2) it adopts an empirically ineffective, disastrously counterproductive and inherently fraudulent ETS approach as well as ignoring petrol, fossil fuel exports (apart from fugitive emissions, extraction and transport costs), soil, forestry and agriculture (agriculture being responsible for over 50% of GHG pollution). And Australia’s huge fossil fuel exports will continue to remorselessly expand with an annual growth of 2.4% for coal and 9% for LNG.

Climate criminal, climate racist Australia is disproportionately involved in a worsening climate genocide that is predicted to kill about 10 billion non-Europeans this century (see “Climate Genocide”). Australia’s selfish, greedy, politically correct racist (PC racist), dog-in-the-manger intransigence about climate change action invites international boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS), sporting bans (e.g. exclusion from the Olympics and the football and cricket World Cups), Green Tariffs, International Court of Justice (ICJ) litigations and International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutions. What can decent people do? Decent folk must (a) inform everyone they can and (b) demand sanctions in response to Australia ‘s entrenched policy of disproportionate greenhouse gas pollution of the World’s one common atmosphere.

An extraordinary admission by the Australian Federal Government has passed unnoticed by the Mainstream media in the “look away” Land of Oz, the Antipodean Land of Flies, Lies and Slies (spin-based untruths), the Murdochracy called Australia.

However from the Green Senator Christine Milne’s blog of the June 4, 2008 entitled “Rudd Treasury not modelling real climate protection scenarios” we read that “Treasury is only modelling global emissions scenarios with a very high risk of triggering runaway climate change, Australian Greens climate change spokesperson, Senator Christine Milne, discovered today in Senate Estimates hearings … On questioning from Senator Milne in today’s [Senate] Estimates hearings, [public servant] Meghan Quinn revealed that her Department [Treasury] is only modelling scenarios leading to global atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases at 450 and 550 ppm of carbon dioxide equivalent. Treasury had not been asked to model lower concentrations, Ms Quinn said.”

Senator Milne has stated: “If Treasury has not been asked to model safe climate scenarios, I will fill that gap today by calling on the Prime Minister to direct Treasury to model at 350 and 400 ppm as well as 450 ppm and to drop the 550 ppm scenarios as too dangerous for the climate.

“450 ppm gives us a less than even chance of avoiding 2 degrees warming, leading most likely to the complete loss of Arctic summer ice, extinction of polar bears and so many other species in the wild, and potentially setting in train positive feedback loops that could send our climate into an uncontrollable heating cycle.

“550 ppm will send us toward 3 degrees warming, destroy the Great Barrier Reef and almost certainly trigger runaway climate change, leading some to say that there is no such thing as stabilisation at 550 ppm. It should not even be being modelled as it is beyond the point where a safe climate for all living creatures, including humanity, can be imagined.”

Senator Milne is CORRECT – 450 ppm and 550 ppm could be disastrous according to climate SCIENTISTS as set out below.

1. World coral reefs start dying off because of ocean acidification above 450 ppm CO2. Thus coral expert Professor Mumby, University of Exeter, UK: “If we can reduce local stresses and simultaneously curb CO2 emissions to within 450 ppm as argued by the 2007 Bali Declaration by Scientists, then coral reefs and the food and housing security of millions of people could yet be saved”(see: http://www.exeter.ac.uk/…/).

2. Top coral scientists say the “tipping point for world coral death is in the 450-500 ppm atmospheric CO2 zone. Thus in a paper published in the top scientific journal Science, 14 December 2007: Vol. 318. no. 5857, pp. 1737 – 1742, “Coral Reefs Under Rapid Climate Change and Ocean Acidification (see: http://www.sciencemag.org/…/),the authors O. Hoegh-Guldberg, P. J. Mumby and 15 other scientists: “Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration is expected to exceed 500 parts per million and global temperatures to rise by at least 2°C by 2050 to 2100, values that significantly exceed those of at least the past 420,000 years during which most extant marine organisms evolved. Under conditions expected in the 21st century, global warming and ocean acidification will compromise carbonate accretion, with corals becoming increasingly rare on reef systems. The result will be less diverse reef communities and carbonate reef structures that fail to be maintained. Climate change also exacerbates local stresses from declining water quality and overexploitation of key species, driving reefs increasingly toward the tipping point for functional collapse.”

Treasury economists should not be modelling these things with the exclusion of specialist scientists, no more than they should be modelling treatment of sick Indigenous Australians – but they DO and that is why about 9,000 Indigenous Australians die avoidably every year in Australia – see an
article by me entitled “The Awful Truth” in the National Indigenous Times, June 2007.

3. As reported on the prestigious ABC Radio National Science Show, the 10-year study on coral reefs referred to above has concluded and been published as a cover-story in the latest edition of the top US and World scientific journal Science. It demonstrates that global warming and ocean acidification are acutely threatening world coral reefs that have been around for tens of millions of years.

Coral reefs require carbonate ions present in the water at the right concentrations and this only happens with carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere at levels under 450 parts per million. As atmospheric CO2 rises, more CO2 dissolves in the ocean and causes the ocean to become more ACIDIC (higher concentrations of protons, H+).

Other organisms will be affected as carbon dioxide increases in the atmosphere. Crustaceans such as crabs and lobsters are already developing diseases as the result of poor calcification of their shells (see: http://abc.net.au/…/).

At about 450 ppm atmospheric CO2 corals become sick but survive. Between 450-500 ppm corals become very sick. Above 500 ppm the world corals are heading for extinction.

In addition to the ocean acidification due to increasing atmospheric CO2 there is a direct bleaching effect of increased temperature as corals “spit out” the symbiotic zooxanthellae algae (see: http://science.org.au/…/).

4. Top UK climate scientist Professor James Lovelock FRS in his recent book “The Revenge of Gaia” says that at at an atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration of 500 ppm CO2 (perhaps the lowest some economists say we can hope to stabilize at given the extraordinary global inaction) there is a crash in the ocean phytoplankton system (that crucially sequesters CO2 , feeds ocean life and promotes cloud formation through dimethyl sulphide production), Greenland ice melts and there is a positive feedback to exacerbate global warming through the “albedo flip” – decreased light-reflecting clouds and ice and increased light-absorbing “black” water (see: http://green-blog.org/…/).

5. The threat to coral refs around the world, including Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, from global warming is spelled out in the latest 2007 IPCC Synthesis Report – this is of course a major tourist asset in an economic sense. As explained above, the recent paper in the prestigious journal Science reveals that at 450 ppm CO2 world coral reefs will start dying from ocean acidification (see: http://abc.net.au/…/). The coal industry (that is helping to destroy world coral reefs) is worth about A$25 billion pa to Australia (A$2 billion to 25,000 workers and at 30% company tax, about A$8 billion to the taxpayer) – as compared to A$7 billion pa from tourism and 63,000 jobs associated with the Great Barrier Reef (Access Economics: http://www.gbrmpa.gov.au/…a/ PDF).

6. It has been estimated by Balmford et al in the prestigious scientific journal Science (see “Economic reasons for preserving wild nature”) that for a variety of “biomes” (ecological systems) the total economic value (TEV) is about 50% greater when the resource is used sustainably as opposed to destructive conversion. Further, these scientists have found that the economic benefit from preserving what is left of wild nature is OVER 100 TIMES greater than the cost of preservation.

Is Rudd Labor hell bent on destroying not just the Queensland Great Barrier Reef ($7 billion per annum and 63,000 Australian jobs) but the whole planet biosphere?

I have written of these acute concerns and posing this question to Australian mainstream media and politicians but – apart from the Greens – the silence is deafening in climate criminal, Murdochracy Australia, the Land of Flies, Lies and Slies (spin based untruths). Unfortunately Coal is King in Australia, the world’s leading coal exporter.

Earlier this year I sent a Formal Complaint to the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court re Australian Government involvement in Aboriginal Genocide, Iraqi Genocide, Afghan Genocide and Climate Genocide (see: http://climateemergency.blogspot.com). In relation to Australia’s involvement in Climate Genocide I documented that Australia is the World’s worst Developed nation CO2 polluter and quoted eminent atmosphere scientist Professor James Lovelock FRS who estimates that over 6 billion will die this century due to unaddressed global warming (see: http://businessandmedia.org/…/).

I concluded my Formal Complaint thus: “I understand that the International Criminal Court may be prepared to make initial investigations of formal complaints by individuals (such as this complaint) but will only act to the fullest extent of its remit in response to formal complaints by National Governments. Countries at major risk from sea level rises due to climate change include island nations in the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean and the Pacific (some of which face total extinction) and countries with mega-deltas in Europe, Africa, the Americas and Asia (of which some face catastrophic loss of agriculture and massive population displacements). Such Nations will be receiving copies of this formal complaint and are urged to transmit formal complaints to the International Criminal Court.”

I would reiterate these observations here – all countries with coral reefs threatened by climate criminal, grossly CO2-polluting nations like Australia should take urgent action via the International Criminal Court and by imposing Sanctions, Boycotts, Green Tariffs and Reparations Demands (see “Climate Emergency, Sustainability Emergency”). It is notable that this week Australian doctors, lawyers and politicians are charging the former Australian Government with war crimes in relation to the invasion of Iraq ALONE via a 52 page legal brief sent to the International Criminal Court.(see: http://theage.com.au/…/ and http://abc.net.au/…/).

Sanctions and Boycotts were successful against the racist Apartheid régime in South Africa for denying one-man-one-vote to its disenfranchised non-European African and Indian citizens. Sanctions and Boycotts are surely justified against climate criminal countries like Australia that are hell bent on destroying the biosphere for short-term profit of greedy vested interests. Maybe Sanctions and Boycotts are all that these environmental vandals will understand.

Please inform everyone you can.

Dr Gideon Polya published some 130 works in a 4 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text “Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds” (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London, 2003). He has just published “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007: http://mwcnews.net and http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com);
see also his contribution “Australian complicity in Iraq mass mortality” in “Lies, Deep Fries & Statistics” (edited by Robyn Williams, ABC Books, Sydney, 2007). He is currently preparing a revised and updated version of his 1998 book “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History” as biofuel-, globalization- and climate-driven global food price increases threaten a possibly 100-fold greater famine catastrophe than the man-made famine in British-ruled India that killed 6-7 million Indians in the “forgotten” World War 2 Bengal Famine (see recent BBC broadcast involving Dr Polya, Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen and others).