Morrison has been busy this week promoting himself and trying hard to bolster his polling. Just as I watched Abbott waving a placard at the Mona Vale turnoff in north Sydney after Howard had warned him he was going to lose his seat if he didn't get to work.
So Morrison gets back to his day job shaking hands and smiling in his best, most charismatic character with an eye fixed on the cameras, checking he's in the right light and smiling his best smile.
Meanwhile Matt Canavan says COP26 has given the "green light to coal and gas", projects he's been pushing hard for since he went into politics. his raison d'être. And Angus Taylor can't get the smile off his face either, but for the same reasons as Canavan. He's ok. let Morrison worry about the election.... everyone votes for the Prime Minister.
but there's a rotten egg for the PM who tells us that Big Business will do it all, Can Do Capitalism, and he's right because Morrison is the leader of a Won't Do Government. Morrison Won't do the plan that businesses need to direct their investments. Morrison Won't do anything to support, innovate or develop technology that is growing the world over but wants to support increased gas emissions, especially methane.
this Renew Economy article says it better than I can.
Revealingly, the modelling shows the Morrison government considered an alternate scenario, which evaluated the potential outcomes of Australia achieving the complete 100 per cent reduction in net emissions by 2050.This scenario would see Australia increase its investment in domestic carbon sequestration, achieved primarily through increased re-vegetation of Australian land (and not the government’s favoured carbon capture and storage technology).
The modelling found that setting a more ambitious target – one that gets Australia all the way to full net zero by 2050 – would have a negligible impact on the Australian economy, amounting to just a 0.01 per cent change in GDP by 2050, which is meaningless for a projection three decades into the future.
The more ambitious scenario, as one might expect, has a more detrimental impact on the coal and gas sectors, with the modelling estimating that a complete net zero pathway would “have adverse impacts on fossil fuel based sectors, with $4.9 billion lower output value from coal and gas in 2050 relative to the Plan.”
Yet the modelling shows that this hit to the fossil fuel sector is almost entirely offset by increased benefits to farmers, saying that the 100 per cent net zero scenario “involves higher volumes of land sequestration, which provides $4.3 billion in additional revenue to participating land holders”.
It shows the Morrison government – and the Nationals party room – made a choice between two scenarios: adopt a “Plan” that cuts emissions by 85 per cent by 2050 and leaves the fossil fuel industry better off; or adopt a full net zero emissions target that negatively impacts the coal and gas sectors, but substantially boosts incomes for farmers, and has virtually no impact on the broader Australian economy.
As we now know, the Morrison government picked the weaker option that does not deliver net zero and that benefits fossil fuels.
An excerpt from the Morrison government’s “Long Term Emissions Reduction” modelling.
The modelling has largely been prepared by the government itself, with the Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources leading its preparation, having engaged consultancy McKinsey – paid more than $6 million for its work – and a handful of sympathetic modellers to guide the economic analysis.
As was revealed during recent senate estimates hearings, the modelling report was still in the process of being prepared long after Morrison and Taylor announced the adoption of its “plan”.
The lack of specific details about how Australia will cut emissions over the next three decades, and the degree to which the modelling document itself is an incoherent mash of rehashed government policy announcements and economic speculation is largely reflective of how the Morrison government has approached the development of its climate and energy policies.
The modelling was released late on Friday afternoon, in a classic end of week dump designed to limit media scrutiny, and shows the degree to which the government’s emissions reduction plans lack the detail and the considered analysis that Australian businesses, investors, and environmental advocates have been calling for.
The “plan” includes no new policy initiatives. It provides no detail on how sectors like the electricity sector and industry will transition to cleaner energy sources. It contains no details around how Australia may be able to take advantage of growing global demand for zero emissions products like renewable hydrogen and green metals.
Instead, it produces a range of fanciful alternate scenarios – including one that assumes a $400 per tonne carbon price – that will clearly form the basis of political attacks against the Labor opposition, with a federal election expected to be called in coming months.
The modelling and the plan were evidently never about preparing a well-considered plan for transitioning Australia’s economy in a world rapidly moving to clean energy technologies, but it was about producing a document that could be used to convince the Nationals that the Morrison government wasn’t about to harm fossil fuel industries and to provide cover for political scare campaigns.
https://reneweconomy.com.au/how-the-morrison-government-chose-fossil-fuels-over-farmers-detailed-in-laughable-net-zero-modelling/
An excerpt from the Morrison government’s “Long Term Emissions Reduction” modelling.
