Political godsend

Conventional wisdom says the federal Opposition is out of wriggle room on the emissions trading scheme.  Malcolm Turnbull, the argument goes, has no alternative but to pass the Rudd Government's climate change legislation either this week or, failing that, in three months' time when the bills are tabled again in the Senate.  He must acquiesce, perhaps make amendments as he outlined today, or risk a double-dissolution green election his party has little chance of winning.

But far from setting the scene for a Coalition electoral debacle, opposition to the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme could be a political godsend for Liberals and Nationals.  As this is decidedly a minority view among political strategists and media commentators, let me explain.

Imagine that the Opposition rejects the legislation outright and the Prime Minister calls an early poll.  What would Australian voters know during an election campaign early next year?

That the Copenhagen climate conference a few months beforehand had turned into a circus.

The universal consensus is that any global agreement on mandatory and enforceable cutbacks in greenhouse gas emissions to succeed the Kyoto accord in 2012 must include the rising big polluters China and India, whose rapidly growing economies are heavily dependent on energy-intensive manufacturing industry.

Just last month, however, the Indian government insisted it would not discuss signing up to legally binding obligations to make absolute cuts in carbon emissions for at least another decade.

China, meanwhile, has set two stringent conditions in exchange for its own carbon cuts.  First, the US and other developed nations should cut their emissions by at least 40 per cent from 1990 levels by 2020.

Second, Washington and other advanced nations must cough up between 0.5 and one per cent of their annual GNP to help poorer nations cope with climate change.

These demands won't be met.  For one thing, the US bill to cap greenhouse gases that awaits a skeptical senate represents roughly a four per cent reduction from 1990 levels -- that is, one tenth of what Beijing demands.

(That the US climate bill has a lot more compensation and loopholes for big polluters than then Australian legislation adds underlining and an exclamation point.)

And with respect to China's request for 0.5 to one per cent of western nations' GNP to fund climate change mitigation, bear in mind that the entire US foreign aid budget amounts to about only 0.17 per cent of GNP.

In this climate, the Coalition could spell out the dangers of Labor's unilateral action:  that the ETS will kill investment, lower growth, raise prices that would ripple across the energy chain and touch every corner of the economy, and drive jobs and industry to nations where costs are cheaper, thus worsening the global warming problem.

If Australia adopts an ETS, and our trading partners do not, moreover, our exporters would cop a carbon cost not borne by our competitors.

In an election campaign, in other words, the Coalition could focus the ETS debate on jobs and the economy and highlight the injustice of Australian tax payers footing the bill for carbon cuts while China and India continue to pollute the planet.

Now, some media commentators and Liberal strategists warn that such a course is playing with electoral fire.  Australians, after all, want action on global warming, even though we account for only 1.4 per cent of global emissions.

But the politics of climate change have changed dramatically since Wall Street's tumble last September.

A year ago, polls showed nearly 80 per cent of Australians wanted Canberra to "lead the world" on climate change and were content to pay higher bills for electricity, gas, and other consumer goods.

Today, in the midst of the global financial crisis, a majority of Australians want to wait for the world, specifically the outcome of Copenhagen before Canberra commits to an ETS.  Voters are more worried about protecting their jobs than saving the planet.

The same strategists and columnists warn that Coalition opposition to the climate bill means Malcolm Turnbull would look "browner" than John Howard who was committed to an ETS at the 2007 election.

Never mind that Howard's position was that any ETS should be conditional on global action.

In July that year, the Liberal and National parties said:  "We cannot solve global climate change alone.  Australia must not forsake its competitive advantage for no significant impact on global emissions.  Our greenhouse gas emissions represent just 1.5 per cent of global emissions.  Domestic action to reduce emissions, while important, will have little meaningful impact if not part of wider international action."

And this:  "An effective international framework must include all major emitters."

Without China and Indian support, the Liberal and National Party opponents of the ETS legislation are simply sticking to their 2007 policy -- a position that even Kevin Rudd embraced during the election campaign when he publicly brought his then climate change spokesman Peter Garrett into line after he naively pledged Australian support for a post-Kyoto deal that excluded big polluting developing nations.

The Government boasts that the climate change bills represent the most radical and far-reaching reforms of a generation.  This is undoubtedly true.  But there are many unidentified devils in the detail of this immensely complex legislation, and it's no wonder a survey of 400 business leaders of ETS-related industries has found a third have "no knowledge" of key components of the scheme.

Clearly, Labor has failed to explain coherently and compellingly how its radical reform will affect our way of life and reduce global emissions when China and India are excluded from the post-Kyoto process.

So Turnbull would be well advised to call Labor's bluff, oppose the legislation outright and highlight the ETS's costly economic implications while proposing more effective ways of combating climate change.

The national interest, not to mention the Coalition's own political interest, demands nothing less.

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