An ETS for chain smokers

Just a Twiteresque comment about Australia’s version of an emissions trading scheme. The reason why the United States and Europe, and I suspect in a short amount of time China, are willing to adopt an emissions trading scheme with aggressive targets is because they can see that high targets will be extremely profitable for their industries if they are prepared. That is a judgement that is based on an intellectual understanding – not a semi-mythical or fanciful dream.

Australians pride themselves on being practical, and unfortunately also on being anti-intellectual. You can still be practical and be smart about it as well. Anti-intellectualism is not a virtue. If you don’t trust what some professional with glittering teeth and a flashing tongue is saying, the best way to counter them is to come up with better ideas about the topic on hand, rather than just claiming all ideas are bad.

The low targets of the ETS will sell Australians short, not because it will make energy more expensive but because it will make it difficult for Australia to join the next renewable energy technological gold rush – so to speak. The people who designed the ETS don’t seem to have an appreciation of how energy systems will be like in 10 or twenty years time. They think it will be a continuation of the energy regime of the last half century.

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One of the main purposes of an emissions trading scheme was to drive innovation into new technology that would result in lower emissions of greenhouse gases. I thought it was supposed to be about shifting resources towards the emerging renewable energy/energy storage/smart grid industries. The big wins will be for those companies that can develop the new technology for a ready made market. Even using a carbon trading scheme to favour the installation of  new wind farms and solar power stations alone is sort of missing the point, to my way of thinking. It really should be about setting up the ENABLING systems for renewable energy. Soon enough  these new technologies will be mass produced. You could buy the technology in much the same way that we import consumer goods in Australia, but the technology is going to be continually updated and improved – for a very long time yet – so the scientific training and industrial manufacturing capacity are critically important for any sense of energy security. Its the difference between technology and the artefacts of technology.

I thought the model put forward for a republic in the 1999 referendum was flawed and I voted against that model. The model and basic assumptions behind this ETS also seems to be flawed and backward looking. It might be better for the environment and for Australia for this ETS to fail so that a new ETS that is forward looking and that can see the risks and opportunities clearly can eventually take its place. Once schemes like this are introduced they are difficult to change. This one could have unintended consequences that could lock Australia into a polluting and costly coal-based energy regime, when we didn’t need to go that way at all.