Crikey Comment - ETS its about the Economy...

Crikey.com.au carried 2 stories in its edition on Thursday that make good points but in my opinion miss the underlying intention of what the emissions trading scheme is all about.

Bernard Keane - Green Paper: ever get the feeling you've been cheated?

Clive Hamilton - Hamilton: Shameless political capitulation

My Comments submitted to Crikey (11:58pm Thursday) -

Who says the ETS is about saving carbon emissions or the environment? It’s the economy…(you know the rest) and it is the only reason that makes bipartisan political sense to lead the rest of the world with an emissions trading scheme.

As you know Australia makes a bucket load of money out of coal exports, and as Bernard said the other day, projections of coal sales into markets like China are just silly big numbers. The biggest threat to this is, if countries start taking this climate change thing seriously and maybe China might even starting thinking more about gas, nuclear and other options.

How to mitigate that risk? Well what about a massive public subsidy to develop ‘clean’ coal technologies? Sound familiar?

If the technology works, there is a ‘holier than though’ green message to the rest of the world that will support our coal exports, our coal fired power industry will have benefited from the public investing in the technology they need to capture and store their carbon emissions, and big industry will benefit from the comparative advantage of cheaper base load electricity, again thanks to the public investment.

In the early stages of the ETS they only need to generate enough money to support the research and early stage development of ‘clean coal’. Over the next 5 or so years there are no big capital expenditures In carbon capture and storage that are ready to go.

There can be no better way to mitigate your risk than to get somebody else to pay for it, AND have them feel good (greenJ) about themselves for doing it.