Why emission trading schemes are not the answer: a left critique

What are some specific measures that can be implemented to reduce greenhouse gas emissions?

Motor vehicles

First of all the States and Commonwealth agree to an “urban” car registration category that from 2020 all new cars must be hybrids and no non-hybrid car would be registered after 2025 for residents in urban centres. To support this initiative government assistance to car companies would be limited to development of hybrid cars. There should be grants to service stations to put battery charging and storing facilities including solar generation on the premise.

Change the fuel standards immediately so that all petrol must contain 10 per cent ethanol, phased to 25 per cent by 2020. If this means importing from Brazil until local capacity gears up so be it.

Lobby for other countries to follow our lead.

Coal mining

Burning coal to generate power is one of the largest generators of greenhouse gases. This is where Australia can make one of the biggest changes to the world’s greenhouse emissions: not by investing billions of dollars into a ridiculous notion of burying CO2. Instead that money should be diverted to two areas: energy storage and transmission technology; and coal-to-diesel technology. I will return to this concept latter.

The major initiative is to cap export licenses of thermal coal from 2020, with a view to reducing the export licenses of thermal coal by 25 per cent by 2035.

This will send a very clear message to other countries that we need to find other energy sources; and that we can’t rely on dirty coal and science quackery for the future. No “ifs” or “buts”.

The thermal coal in the short term would still be mined on a limited scale reducing the impact on employment. Any coal mined would go through a coal-to-diesel process to provide transport fuels for those transport activities that cannot use hybrid systems, primarily aviation and seafaring transport, addressing the issues that will arise from peak oil threats.

Energy

Energy production is the primary source of carbon pollution, we need to dramatically overhaul its production, transmission and storage.

We are still using 19th century transmission systems and networks. We establish national grids where we have huge power stations which supply high quantities of energy over vast distances. However we have forgotten simple physics: energy is lost when we try and transmit energy over vast distances, especially when we use AC current through copper wires. We need to be using fibre optics, DC current and building localised power grids for communities. This will enable wider energy sources to be available for both base load and peak energy transmission.

In summary trying to establish an emission trading scheme in isolation is tokenistic and will not change worldwide greenhouse gas emissions, but leaving the coal in the ground will.