The main feature of Gillard's climate policy announced today is to run a 150 person citizens' jury on the issue. Strangely most of the green activists quoted are against the idea but many of my colleagues in ecological economics would probably think this was a great idea in principle. Shuang's first reaction was though that: "it will be tough to handle 150 people".
Gillard also said that under a future ETS baselines would be maintained at their CPRS level encouraging energy conservation and emissions reduction in the meantime. And that there will be a ban on "dirty coal fired power stations". In other words, they must be retrofittable with CCS, I presume.
And it seems that the US is also deferring policy to the future. But China announces that it will introduce an ETS within 5 years.
citzen's jury is a great tool - but totally inappropriate for this imperative.
ReplyDeleteThere's a clear reason why Labor Party research showed most Australians did not understand Mr Rudd's CPRS - if Australians did indeed understand how the CPRS locked us in to failure by setting a low ceiling on emissions reductions across the economy, they'd have rejected it outright.