Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme

Online Opinion report:: This week the Australian Parliament passed the Clean Energy Bill. Despite my reservations about the bill, I am pleased to see it finally made law. However, the work of the climate movement has only just begun.

The bill establishes a carbon price which will later become an emissions trading scheme. The policy is admittedly pretty awful and riddled with flaws, but unlike the old Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme at least it is better than nothing. As before, Labor intends to "reduce" Australia's emissions mainly by switching power generation to natural gas and buying carbon offsets from overseas, both of which I consider extremely dubious. However, the Greens, Tony Windsor, and Rob Oakeshott have worked hard to tangibly improve the policy, to the point where it can be considered a first step towards a renewable energy future. These farsighted crossbenchers have won unprecedented, independently-managed renewable energy funding; and built in regular independent reviews which provide opportunities to lift Australia's ambition later on.

Now climate activists need to work on building support for that greater ambition. Although the first independent review of the carbon price is not until February 2014, there is plenty more that can be achieved in the current Parliament. Here's what you should do if you care about climate action.

CLIMATE SPECTATOR reports:A decade after it was first seriously discussed in Australian politics, and on its fourth attempt to make its way through a hostile parliament, Australian is now poised to finally implement a carbon pricing regime.

The passage of 19 bills through the House of Representative on Wednesday, propelled and finally approved by two country independents and a single Greens member, means that the passing into law of Clean Energy Future package is now a mere formality, as the government and the Greens have the numbers in the Senate.

There is no doubt that this signals the start of one of the greatest transformations of the Australian economy, ranking alongside the floating of the currency, the introduction of the GST and other major policy initiatives. But will this transformation be sudden and dramatic, or will it be a slow burn? Climate Spectator asked leading business people, advisors, politicians and lobbyists for their take. This is what they said:

This week, the Labor government’s Multi-Party Climate Change Committee (MPCCC) agreed to a set of principles to guide the development of a national carbon-pricing model. While a carbon pricing legislation is a worthy pursuit that will make fossil fuels more expensive, we must not forget that a carbon price alone is not enough to deal with the climate crisis. The mechanism has several limitations that inhibit the deployment of clean energy infrastructure.

By Leigh Ewbank. Published by the ABC, Australia's national broadcaster.

Australia needs a Plan B for climate policy. We need a nation-building project on the scale of the Snowy Mountains Scheme to invest in renewable energy and sustainable infrastructure. This is the fresh approach needed to drive Australia's transition towards a clean economy and protect the nation from dangerous climate change.

The Prime Minister's announcement yesterday that the government will delay its Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme until 2013 is a tacit admission that pricing carbon is not viable in the current political environment.

Labor and proponents of emissions trading have been living a fantasy for too long. They have ignored the realities of politics to pursue a policy that had no reasonable chance of being implemented at a time when climate change experts agree we must act. Now, Australia is set for yet more inaction.