Australia to Become Involved in ‘Subprime’ Carbon Market?
Posted by jennifer, November 11th, 2011 - under Opinion.
Tags: Carbon Trading
EARLIER this week the Australian Senate passed the Clean Energy Bill and the associated 18 other Bills that set out the carbon pricing mechanism due to come into effect from July 1, 2012. The so-called big polluters will need to reduce or offset their emissions from that date.
One potential mechanism for offsetting emissions is by buying Kyoto compliant carbon units from overseas.
The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) established under the Kyoto Protocol is a cornerstone of the existing international greenhouse-gas emissions-trading scheme. It allows emissions to be offset by investing in schemes, for example hydroelectric power and wind farms, in developing countries. But the schemes have to be certified.
About one-fifth of existing Clean Development Mechanisms (CDM) are registered in India, and certified, but they may nevertheless be non-compliant.
That’s according to a recent article in the journal Nature that reported on a 2008 diplomatic cable published by WikiLeaks.
The situation may have improved, but the Nature article suggests it may have actually gotten worst. Then again the United Nations own validation and registration process for the CDMs, like Kyoto itself, is fairly arbitrary and bureaucratic and not particularly focused on emissions reductions.
Now the carbon tax legislation is through the Australian parliament the Australian Regulator will start to auction floating priced carbon units, based at least in part on CDMs. In addition to buying carbon units in the auction process, secondary markets and derivative markets will likely also develop in Australia also linked in to the international greenhouse-gas trading system.
So does this in effect mean Australia will soon be linked in to a type of ‘subprime’ UN compliant carbon trading scheme?
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Australia: Carbon tax/pricing mechanism approved – what needs to be done to prepare for it? By Fiona Melville And Jo Garland
http://www.utilityproducts.com/news/2011/11/1538624264/australia-carbon-tax-pricing-mechanism-approved-what-needs-to-be-done-to-prepare-for-it.html
Clean-energy credits tarnished: Wikileaks reveals most Indian claims are ineligible. By Quirin Schiermeier.
Nature, Volume 477, pages 517-518
CAGW is sceptic meme speak.
Changing dryland cropping sequences from 6 break even, 3 make money, 3 lose money to a less favourable risk profile while not the big C (catastrophic) is a significant pisser if you’re a dryland farmer.
But anyway lads – shouldn’t you be somewhere watching the latest wiggle in some arcane data set (HEY THIS IS THE BIG TREND DEPARTURE POINT RIGHT NOW – I TELL YOU !!) or worshipping the latest solar cycle crap from the Tajikistan Journal of Chook Farming. Conference proceedings here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dlr90NLDp-0
As for Bob’s Plan B – hahahahahahahaha …. good one ….
Anyway – looks like Labor’s fortunes are back and Abbott has done a runner overseas.
AND and and did I read that
And did I read that Greg Hunt said the opposition won’t be repealing the Carbon Farming Initiative but will be enhancing it.
“And did I read that Greg Hunt said the opposition won’t be repealing the Carbon Farming Initiative but will be enhancing it.”
The Climate Sceptics will repeal it.
Who ? unelectable swill Check out the candidates – a veritable Dad’s Army of codgers. And won’t they now have defected to the Tea Party anyway?
Dad’s Army eh; as opposed to the Green’s “Are You Being Served”, I suppose.
Interesting outcome from Bolt’s interview with Steffen is the admission that our recent drought was not caused by AGW and Wong , Flannery etc were wrong to claim otherwise.
So to extend this AGW argument a little further why hasn’t there been a continuation of the warming for the last 10 or more years.
Also problems with SST increases, OHC and SLR for quite a while. So where is Trenberth’s missing heat hiding? Perhaps it’s just buggered off to outer space and hopefully taken part of the AGW argument with it?
Then there’s the problem of a very quiet old Sol to contemplate.
Perhaps the next IPCC report might reflect more commonsense and science of the physical world and less reliance on those messy climate models. I guess only time will tell.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/14/ipcc-draft-climate-change-signals-expected-to-be-relatively-small-over-coming-20-30-years/#more-51153
BTW this time I’m sure Donna and her army of supporters will swoop on the next report quickly and dissect it line by line for exaggerations, lies, poor research and clueless stupidity.
But I’m sure the dummies understand that this time groups will be waiting with baseball bats to expose any underhand nonsense in a matter of weeks after publication.
Luke is back.
Marc is gone.
hmmmm?
[...] skeptic Jennifer Marohasy tried to link the carbon price to the Global Financial Crisis in her post Australia to Become Involved in ‘Subprime’ Carbon Market? : In addition to buying carbon units in the auction process, secondary markets and derivative [...]
sp
Luke is back. Marc is gone. hmmmm?
Don’t think so sp, Marc is a verbose wanker,
Luke gets to the point decisively, sometimes nasty, often wrong but he doesn’t beat around the bush!
[...] skeptic Jennifer Marohasy tried to link the carbon price to the Global Financial Crisis in her post Australia to Become Involved in ‘Subprime’ Carbon Market? : In addition to buying carbon units in the auction process, secondary markets and derivative [...]
Interesting that the Climate Sceptics would campaign against the bipartisan support for the Carbon Farming Initiative (CFI) when the result of that research would be better soil health (increased organic matter), reduced loss of valuable nitrogenous fertiliser (costs big bucks), improved savanna burning (improved biodiversity from reducing high intensity late wet season fires), improved nutrition and methane metabolism from grazing ruminants, culling feral camel populations, positive biodiversity dividends from riparian tree planting for water quality and a more connected landscape with a few more trees. And a carbon neutral razing industry with vegetation offsets on their least performing land types. And scientific objectivity oversight from the DOIC (Domestic Offsets Integrity Committee).
And oh – reduced national greenhouse emissions should you believe in such things.
As usual a negative Abbott-like spoiling agenda.
Luke has exposed our delema – carbon in the soil is good. If someone can talk taxpayers into helping us put it there good.
If someone can create another market for grain, food for fuel … Er sorry my moral standard has been exceded and I’m not going to play.
I’ve watched my neighbours waste lots of taxpayers money on PV panels and resisted the temptation.
Doug
Even if your soil is in better condition with improve infiltration, soil structure, water holding capacity and cation exchange?
From experience “goodies” obtained on false premisis are risky. Somewhere down the track it’ll come back and bite you.
Getting involved will be a complicated process and probably open to rorts.
They are buying votes. Not a good start.
As it hapens a lot of farmers are getting on with it without the bribes.
Doug
Well I don’t think you’d have a complex process to approve sequestration options via something like the DOIC process if they were “buying votes”. Why not make it much easier?
Complex yes.
Rorts? hmmm hard given ongoing reporting mechanisms involved.
Is it for everyone – maybe not.
Any suggestion that Marc is a sock puppet is most unlikely.
‘Interesting that the Climate Sceptics would campaign against the bipartisan support for the Carbon Farming Initiative (CFI)…
Valid point and it’s a dilemma for us who don’t accept the theory that CO2 is causing global warming.
El Gordo – hey I thought you all believed CO2 was a greenhouse gas and had at least 1C in it for 2 x CO2? Or like typical sceptics have you changed your mind on Thursday?
No Luke,
I disagree.
The typical sceptics are questioning why the ‘warmists’ are refusing to change their minds.
The typical sceptics are asking questions and noticing that there are so many variables that it is unlikely at this stage we can prove conclusively that man made C02 is having a major influence on the climate or that mankind can actually manage the global climate or that we should be trying to do so when the evidence is not conclusive.
Whether we agree or disagree on levels is not relevant to the basic difference in idealogy.
No one is arguing that carbon sequestration is not a good idea. It is the way it will be implemented that is the problem.
I sent the following in response to The Australian’s editorial on 9 November. I don’t know if it was published, as I’ve been in a media-free zone for 11 days:
Global temperatures have been flat for at least ten years in spite of rising CO2 emissions, and there is no convincing cost-benefit analysis to justify emissions reductions. Leaving that aside, in principle effective market mechanisms would be the most efficient way of reducing emissions (“Trading scheme is a viable method of cutting carbon,” 9/11). However, what is proposed as Australia’s scheme develops is that we should send many billions of dollars offshore every year for alleged reductions elswhere which in most cases will have to be taken on faith. No one will be able to say “Here are the million tonnes of non-emitted CO2 you paid for.” There is evidence that existing schemes have been heavily rorted, and it will be almost impossible for Australia to verify that all paid-for reductions have in fact occurred.
Given that the major supporter of carbon trading, the EU, is in dire straits, and that major emitters such as the US, India and China will not take meaningful action, we would be best served shelving all emissions-reduction policies at least until a strong warming trend, demonstrably related to human activity rather than natural causes, re-emerges. That may be a long time a’coming.