Today the Rudd Government backed away from implementing their emissions trading scheme (the CPRS) until 2013, making a carbon price in Australia before then very unlikely. The CPRS had many flaws, but was far superior to there being no carbon price at all, and could have been changed later. The Rudd government was facing difficulties getting a carbon price through parliament, but there were two ways that it could have done so:

  • It could have negotiated with the Greens to implement an interim carbon tax, while the details of an emissions trading scheme are worked out later;
  • If could have used the CPRS legislation as the trigger for a double dissolution election, in which case the legislation could be put before a joint sitting of both houses of parliament.

Instead the government has decided that they dont want climate change to be an election issue, and the Prime Minister has hardly mentioned climate change in the past 3 months. This contrasts very strongly with his rhetoric last year. At Copenhagen, he gave a speech where he said:

When I arrive home at the end of this week, will I be able to sit down, look my children in the eyes and tell them in clear conscience that I did absolutely everything I could to achieve action to avoid dangerous climate change.

Because if we cannot, then we will have failed in our basic duties as leaders of our nations, as fathers and mothers of our children and custodians of our nations’ future.

The children of the world are watching.

They are listening.

And history will be the judge of each of us here today.

Now that the Copenhagen meeting is over, does this mean that history will no longer be judging our action on climate change? Will Kevin Rudd be able to look his children in the eye and say “I did absolutely everything I could to achieve action to avoid dangerous climate change”? History may well judge that Kevin Rudd has jumped the shark today.

Kevin Rudd has said (in defense of postponing the CPRS)
“The rest of the world is being slower to act on appropriate action on climate change.
“It’s very plain that the correct course of action is to extend the implementation date.”
In her paper ‘A Polycentric Approach for Coping with Climate Change’. Policy Research Working Paper 5095. World Bank., Nobel prize winner Elinor Ostrom said:
Given the severity of the threat, simply waiting for resolution of these issues at a global level, without trying out policies at multiple scales because they lack a global scale, is not a reasonable stance.

Ostrom has made it clear why it is unreasonable for individual countries to wait for the rest of the world.