Every politician may now be a convert to some form of carbon restraint but few have thought through the implications.
Prime Minister John Howard has excoriated Peter Garrett for his previous remarks advocating a 20 per cent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2020. The PM, like other politicians including Mr Garrett since he became a shadow minister, favours the never-never land of 2050 as the reference base.
We now seldom hear claims that Australia's emission reduction will save the world or create vast, new sustainable industries. Australia is no more likely to be a significant player in producing windmill blades or windmill technology than it has been in conventional thermal power stations.
Indeed, adoption of carbon taxes or carbon restraints will eliminate the only cost benefit that offers some promise of competitive advantage for Australian suppliers of the materials.
Similarly fanciful are the claims of new torrents of wealth flowing from the trading of carbon credits. Any such income gains are at the cost of shifting into higher-cost energy and Sydney is unlikely to be favoured over Singapore, Tokyo, Hong Kong or many other cities as a regional trading centre.
But if a carbon-reducing policy seems inevitable, there are several reasons why a drawn-out phase-in period is to be favoured.
Firstly, any emission targets will be costly and deferring them will reduce such costs.
Secondly, the earlier the requirement to reduce carbon emissions, the more likely we are to face deadweight costs of scrapping existing plants prematurely.
Thirdly, the longer the delay, the less is the risk of incurring costs that might turn out to be unnecessary. We hear no end of (unfounded) claims that all but a tiny minority of scientists now agree that global warming is real.
But the only solid empirical data remains that from satellite observations. These have been available only since 1978, but the increase in temperatures has been far less than the forecast of 3 to 5 degrees over the next century by many climate models.
And the increases that have occurred are consistent with the solar cycles that are unrelated to human activities and have been around forever. Postponing costly action allows for greater certainty to emerge.
Finally, there is no point in Australia or other developed nations taking action when China (soon to become the world's largest carbon dioxide emitter), India and other developing nations refuse to participate. Without such participation, hardly any action by the developing world will reduce the level of emissions.
For the longer term, though, few politicians will face up to it -- substituting nuclear power for coal-based electricity generation is the only way a modern economy can make deep cuts in emissions.
Slogans such as "Solar, not Nuclear" are just that -- slogans. No modern electricity system could cope with more than 10 per cent solar power. This is because, besides solar energy costs likely to be double those of conventional sources, its variable nature makes a higher share unmanageable.
Of course, many of those mindlessly shouting the "solar, not nuclear" slogans say they would welcome a return to a more primitive economy.
When push comes to shove, however, even they wouldn't accept the implications -- such as downsizing homes to one-fifth of present size, no car transport, minimal air transport and no home heating or air-conditioning. Nobody would cop such "improvements" to their lifestyles.
Given a change in political stance, to replace present coal-based plants with nuclear power by 2050 is a readily achievable option.
For Victoria, there is a particular cost in shifting away from the brown coal that supplies 95 per cent of its electricity.
Victoria's brown coal covers vast areas, is just beneath the surface and can be conveniently and efficiently transformed into electricity. There is more than enough brown coal for Victoria to produce electricity at $0.04 a kilowatt hour to meet any demand for 500 years. This places the state among the world's lowest-cost energy provinces.
With nuclear power, the cost of generating electricity rises by at least a third. At present levels of consumption, that is an additional impost of $650 million a year.
Besides higher direct costs to the consumer, such changes would require a big industrial restructuring. The industries that now rely on low-cost energy for their competitiveness would disappear and relocate to countries without a de facto tax on carbon-based energy sources.
For Victoria, it is not at all inevitable that the jobs directly and indirectly created by those industries would be replaced by new jobs in low-energy using sectors. It is at least as likely that the jobs would disappear and the state would become an area of net employment loss and net emigration.
At the very least, competitiveness would need to be restored. The State Government would have to move seriously towards downsizing its bloated bureaucracy, discontinuing its lavish transport subsidies and wiping out other costly imposts.
These are big asks for a political establishment that cannot contemplate a first step of confronting the electorate with the need to convert to a power source -- nuclear -- that it has demonised.
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