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NEWS AND VIEWS
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Global Warming and Climate ChangeLooking on the bright side againThursday, 7 August 2008 - We journalists seem to love giving bad news a bigger run than better news so with my continuing determination to be an optimist about the weather I bring you this drought update from the Australia Bureau of Meteorology. more Good news for polar bearsWednesday, 6 August 2008 - Cross fingers and hope for chills. The polar bears seem safe for another year. Whatever impression you might have got from Marian Wilkinson in the Fairfax papers and Four Corners this week, there has been a better than expected northern summer for Arctic Ice. During July the ice cover was better than in July during the last three years which had produced very gloomy predictions indeed about the future for the bears. more Deciding who does what in troubled timesFriday, 27 June 2008 - The Federal Treasury and the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority are finally getting around to deciding who does what in the event that Australia runs in to some really serious problems with its financial institutions. The two organisations have just agreed on a Memorandum of Understanding as to who is in charge of what which says that an early priority "is the development of a co-ordinated policy in relation to the licensing of financial institutions and the regulation of ownership and control of financial institutions." It is amazing really that there is not one already but, says the MOU, "since the administrative responsibility for these is split between the Treasurer and APRA, and the Treasurer may delegate some of his powers in relation to shareholdings to APRA, these policies should be fully harmonised as soon as possible." more Keep repeating a Wong sloganWednesday, 25 June 2008 - Politics these days is largely about repeating glib slogans. Talking about a concern for working families is a prime example but Climate Change Minister Penny Wong is now making a worthwhile contribution to sloganeering. When she is asked these days about the cost of climate change measures she trots out : "failing to act, the cost of not acting, will be greater than the cost of acting." more Strange thing this global warming - more ice in AntarcticMonday, 2 June 2008 - To the non-scientist like me - a failure in matriculation physics 60 years ago is not a great recommendation as an expert - there is scope for a glass half full or a glass half empty approach when it comes to global warming. more No progress in SeoulWednesday, 25 June 2008 - That the passage to an international agreement on climate change will be a long one was evident again on Monday when the representatives to the U.S.-led Major Economies Meeting on Energy Security and Climate Change in South Korea could not reach agreement on a target to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by 2050. more Don't be yellow Kevvie. Be greenWednesday, 28 May 2008 - Politicians in many parts of the world, not just those in Australia, are getting a taste at the moment of just how difficult it will be to move voters from being concerned about global warming to actually doing something about it. more No what if strategyTuesday, 20 May 2008 - Prime Minister Kevin Rudd last night told the National Business Leaders Forum meeting at Parliament House in Canberra of the three pillars of his Government's long-term response to climate change. The first is to help shape an effective global solution; the second is to reduce Australia 's emissions along the lowest cost path; and the third "adaptation - the changes we make to adapt to the impacts we cannot avoid." All very fine words but what was completely lacking was any talk of what his Government is planning to do if global warming is a reality yet there is no agreement among the world's major emitters to reduce emissions. more How will politicians handle the cost of climate change?Saturday, 17 May 2008
The difficulties politicians will have doing anything about the costs of dealing with the curtaiment of greenhouse gas emissions was demonstrated clearly when Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson chose to make a five cents a litre reduction in petrol excise the key feature of his version of the budget. more The problem to come with climate changeThursday, 17 April 2008 - All the nonsense being talked by the Federal Government about its efforts to keep down petrol prices is a perfect illustration of the problem to come when it stops talking about the need to curb carbon dioxide emissions and starts doing something about it. Labor keeps telling us that reducing emissions is essential and the best way of achieving that is by increasing the price of things like petrol that causes them. So why all this effort to reduce the petrol price? Logic suggests the Government should be happy that oil companies in reacting to higher crude oil prices are doing the job for it. more The lesson from Doha for climate changeThurssday, 3 April 2008 - If there is one thing that economists tend to agree on it is that free trade is good and in every nation's interest yet the battle to bring down trade barriers is proving a long and arduous process. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was doing his bit in Brussels this week to persuade the European Community to reach agreement with the United States so the Doha round of talks on agricultural trade can continue. The matter is important to Australia 's primary producers so the effort was worth making however unlikely success might be. The exercise might also bring home to Mr Rudd the extreme difficulty of getting the countries of the world to agree on things even when they are in the overall interest of all of them. more A market not a taxFriday, 4 April 2008 - A fascinating study by the International Monetary Fund on the economic costs of global warming has just been published and it actually comes close to explaining why it is that we are about to have an elaborate market for carbon emissions rather than a tax that would achieve the same purpose of reducing emissions. The chief reason, says the IMF in its report " Climate Change and the Global Economy " is that taxes "may be politically difficult to implement." This despite the fact that there are many reasons why taxes would work better. MORE Some "what if" planningTuesday, 11 March 2008 - Hopefully the politicians full of zeal to do something about climate change are listening at the Outlook Conference run by Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARE) this week. more The Wise AristotleTuesday, 4 March 2008 - I know one swallow does not make a summer, neither does one fine day; similarly one day or brief time of happiness does not make a person entirely happy. I know because Wendy Craik of the Murray-Darling Basin Commission reminded me so yesterday when she reported on the continuing dire state of her Basin. more Planning for no climate change agreementFriday, 22 February 2008 - Somewhere in a public service basement I hope there is some diligent official working on a plan for how Australia can best cope with global warming if the world community does not come up with an agreement to make the dramatic cuts in carbon emissions that Professor Ross Garnault reported yesterday are necessary. It is all well and good to work out how this country can contribute to a global policy and the adjustments that will be necessary if we do so but an important part of the "if" is what other countries do. more One for the List of Availability EntrepreneursThursday, January 03, 2008 - I drew attention earlier this week to a New York Times report on what social scientists call availability entrepreneurs: the activists, journalists and publicity-savvy scientists who selectively monitor the globe looking for newsworthy evidence of a new form of sinfulness, burning fossil fuels. At the time I had not expected that the Australian Bureau of Meteorology would so quickly join the entrepreneurial ranks but clearly it has. Today the Bureau released its Annual Australian Climate Statement 2007 which, with obvious relish, takes the egg beater to show what happened to average temperatures during the year. more Availability Entrepreneurs and Antarctic IceTuesday, January 01, 2008 - Until I read the New York Times this morning I had not heard of availability entrepreneurs . John Tierney, that paper's always entertainingly readable op-ed columnist, used the expression in his New Year's prediction piece warning us we are in "for very bad weather." In 2008, he predicted, our television will bring images after frightening image of natural havoc linked to global warming. We will be told that such bizarre weather must be a sign of dangerous climate change - and that these images are a mere preview of what's in store unless we act quickly to cool the planet. more
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| © Richard Farmer 2008 |
