BREAZE

Tell Kevin Rudd 'We Want Real Action'

YES to Renewable Energy & Green Jobs.

NO to the CPRS, with its useless billion-dollar giveaways to industry

Friday 5 June, 12.30pm, Cnr. Lydiard and Sturt Street

What an action it was! 83 people, one electric car and an ALP staffer turned up to see 'Kevin Rudd', 'Penny Wong' and 'Billionaires for Coal' tell it how it really is.

See more photos here

'Kevin Rudd', 'Penny Wong' and 'Billionaires for Coal' patted one another on the back alot, withdrew large wads of cash from the pockets of the public and consigned potential green-collar job workers to the dole queue. Read the schtick here...

Engaging Government group convenor, Andrew Bray, mounted the soap-box and spoke with great passion and possibly too much length. Read his fightin' words here..

And it didn't just all happen on the day. There was a bit happening to lead up in the weeks before...

In the six weeks leading up to the introduction of the CPRS in parliament we had a series of articles published in the Courier on issues around the legislation. Green Jobs, Climate Science, Coal, Voluntary Abatement. You name it, we discussed it....

On the Sunday before the rally we spent a leisurely afternoon painting banners. See the photos here.

On the Monday, BREAZE called on Catherine King to cross the floor to oppose the CPRS Legislation.

• This was the Courier article complete with her riposte. Feel free to join in the discussion at that link - those climate sceptics really are determined to muddy the waters for everyone!
• This is our open letter to the member for Ballarat and this is our press release.

PRESS RELEASE: BREAZE to Catherine King: Cross the floor for our future

Ballarat sustainability group Ballarat Renewable Energy and Zero Emissions (BREAZE) delivered a letter to Catherine King today (see attached) calling for her to cross the floor and vote against the proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.

BREAZE says the scheme is bad for the climate and bad for Ballarat.

“We will be holding a rally this Friday, World Environment Day, to call for a better scheme to protect our environment. We'll be at the corner of Lydiard and Sturt Streets at 12.30pm” said Andrew Bray from BREAZE.

“The scheme's targets fail to protect us from dangerous climate change. It threatens Ballarat with more intense bushfires, drought, reduced rainfall and a dead Murray Darling Basin, which supplies a large amount of our food.”

“The CPRS is designed to fail, guaranteeing only a paltry five percent reduction target”.

“Not only does the scheme fail us on climate, it will take millions of dollars from residents and businesses in our region and give it to big polluters and the coal industry, none of which contribute to Ballarat's economy.”

“Ballarat businesses and residents will be paying more for energy, materials and other associated costs. This would be fine if the money was going purely to energy efficiency, renewable energy and creating sustainable jobs for the long term, but it's not.”

“People will be wondering where all this money is going – well it won't be staying in Ballarat, that is certain. More than $450 per household will go to coal-fired power generators, nearly $100 per household will go to coal mining companies and $500 per household will go to big polluters every year.”

“That's over $50 million every year leaving Ballarat to pay coal companies and other big polluters.”

“Ballarat doesn't have a coal industry, nor do we have big polluters that will receive compensation. Neither do the vast majority of electorates in Australia. So more than $1000 per household in Ballarat and many other electorates will be transferred to those areas with coal mines, coal-fired power stations and big polluting industry.”

“Ballarat has an abundance of wind power capacity, we will soon be producing enough power to supply all of Ballarat. These renewable energy industries create jobs locally – that's where the money should be going. We should not be propping up a coal industry we don't want or need here.”

Ballarat businesses will pay millions of dollars to become more energy efficient and avoid increased energy costs or will simply pay more long term. While billions of dollars are slated for the coal industry and big polluters, just $200 million has been offered in the new Climate Change Action Fund for businesses not in the big polluter category.

“This scheme should be known as the Carbon Polluters Reward Scheme.”

“If Catherine King cares about our future, and we're sure that she does, she should cross the floor and demand a scheme that works towards a safe climate rather than paying off big polluters.”

------------- ENDS -------------

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Theatre Schtick for the day

Host to Kevin Rudd – “So tell me Prime Minister, what's so good about the CPRS?”

Kevin Rudd: “Why do I love the CPRS? I love handing out money to my mates in the coal industry. Why do I love handing out money to the coal industry? Because they give money to me!”

Host to Penny Wong - “Minister Penny Wong, is it really in the national interest to give billions of dollars to the coal industry and big polluters?”

Penny Wong: “Can I just say Steve, there's a range of vested interests and stakeholders arguing on each sides of the debate and what's important is to get the balance right. By ensuring that millions of ordinary Australians bear the brunt of the costs and billions of dollars go to just a few wealthy polluters, we feel we've got the balance right.”

Host to Penny Wong - “What about the 5%? doesn't that target send a bad message to the rest of the world?

Penny Wong: “What's important here is that we transition our economy, from one that is entirely driven by fossil fuels to one that is 5% less driven by fossil fuels. There's a range of planets and stakeholders to consider here, and...

Kevin Rudd: “Sorry Steve, can I just interrupt here? Why is the target 5%? Because I'm Kevin 07 and in these tough economic times we thought we'd better round down. What else are we doing? Our policy is clearcut – we're cutting down old growth forests in Victoria and Tasmania at an amazing rate. Why doesn't that matter? Because our new carbon plan will allow big polluters to buy unlimited permits from overseas, which might mean some forest is saved in Papua New Guinea and Indonesia.

Host to polluters: “So as representatives of the coal industry, what do you think of the carbon pollution reduction scheme?

Polluters: “We love it! No, actually we think it will cost jobs and turn off all the electicity so you'd better give us more cash or we'll turn the lights out.”

Host “Don't you think people probably don't care where their energy comes from, the just want their beer to be cold, the house warm and the lights to go on?”

Polluters: “That's what we're banking on, there's no way we'd get away with this if people knew how their electricity was produced!”

Polluters: “The great thing about this scheme is that people think somethings being done about climate change, but really their just paying more money to us!?

Host to green collars: “What do you want to see from government?”

“What are you doing about climate change?”

“What sort of emission reduction targets would you like to see?”

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Speech

Congratulations on coming out today on World Environment Day

• you're showing that you understand that our environment is at a real crossroads

• we've known about climate change for over 20 years now, but in Australia we're still carrying like its 1970 – digging fossil fuels out of the ground for export, burning coal for electricity and minerals processing and paddocks full of methane-belching cattle and sheep

• And we're not the only people who understand that this situation is not sustainable and things need to change

  • Its possible to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions

  • its possible to use our brains to change how we live

  • and its possible, even in our market-driven world where apparently people won't do anything unless they're paid to; its possible to make pollution expensive and reward people for protecting the environment

   

But instead, what have we been given? The CPRS, which locks in inaction for at least the next decade. With a very sombre look on his face, Kevin Rudd stood up at the National Press Club in Canberra last December to announce the guts his CPRS.

The Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, he called it.

He could have called it The Carbon Polluter's Reward Scheme, or

The Continue Polluting Regardless Scheme.

Whatever you want to call it, despite his contrived sincerity on the day, there's no way Kevin and Penny Wong can look us in the eye and say that this is a serious attempt to cut carbon pollution.

• They say they 'accept the science' and yet their aim is to limit global greenhouse concentrations to 450ppm by the year, wait for it, 2140. But as any respectable climate scientist will tell you stabilisation at 450ppm in the next 30 years is a recipe for global catastrophe, let alone 130 years.

  • It will almost certainly raise the earth's temperature beyond 2 degrees, and take us past critical climate tipping points - melting of the Arctic icecap, melting of Siberian permafrost and breakdown of rainforest ecosystems – after which we will have lost our ability to control temperature rise.

• Kevin and Penny will tell you they want to 'lead the world', but its well understood by the global community that Australia is still up to its old tricks, leaving the heavy lifting to other countries while we continue to emit at levels way above the rest of the world.

  • One of the numerous conditions that the world must meet before we adopt a 25% target is that developing countries must limit the rate of growth of their emissions.

  • We emit 25 tonnes of CO2 per head and Indians emit 2 tonnes per head. How can Kevin Rudd look the Indian Prime Minister in the eye and say a rich country like Australia won't make a strong cut to our emissions unless India does first?

• But even then, and this is the fantastic bit, we're not even planning to cut our own emissions! REPEAT IT. Because we can import every single one of our permits from overseas, the most of the abatement will actually be done in other countries and our polluters can carry on just as they were before. And this is not something I've made up. Our own Treasury estimates that under the CPRS our emissions are likely to grow by over 5% by 2020 and may not start to decrease until 2035.

So, will the CPRS help us ride the green jobs wave of the 21^st century? Will it transform Australia's economy so it can thrive in a low-carbon world?

• The answer is a big fat NO.

• The ACTU and ACF did a study that found that, given the right signals, green sector employment could rise from 112,000 jobs now to 500,000 jobs in 2030. But the stimulus has to come from a strong carbon price signal and the CPRS's weak targets will not deliver the kind of carbon price needed to drive this transformation.

• To give you an idea of how the economy actually will transform, consider the future development of the so-called Emissions Intensive Trade Exposed companies, such as aluminium smelters, steel makers, cement makers and the like. The largest of these companies will receive 95-66% of their permits for nothing.
  
  This quote from the Department of Climate Change themselves -
  “At the start of the Scheme it is estimated that EITE industries will be allocated around 25 per cent of total carbon pollution permits. Depending on growth in EITE industries and future global developments, EITE assistance could reach to around 45 per cent of permits by 2020.”

• And they won't be switching to Renewables, because they've been exempted from the Renewable Energy Target as well!

• So how much are we giving away exactly? Try these figures on for size. In the first 5 years of the scheme these companies will receive the following amounts:

  • Rio Tinto, who last year made a profit of $15bn, receive $2.75bn

  • Alcoa $1.7bn

  • Bluescope Steel $1bn

  • There is no requirement for these industries to reform their emissions intensity and the earliest these arrangements can be changed is 2021.

  • Garnaut quote – “Never in the history of Australian public finance has so much been given without public policy purpose, by so many to so few”

The truth is that Kevin Rudd and Penny Wong didn't have the bottle to stare down the greenhouse mafia and say to them:

• You have to change.

• We're not going to continue doing things the way we've always done them – digging holes in the ground and selling it overseas

• This country needs to adapt and we can't keep carrying you.

• Unless you're prepared to change, you're on you own.

That's why the scheme aims at such paltry targets and leaves the most vocal lobbyists alone to carry on as before. They simply weren't prepared to risk any political skin to do the job properly.

You know, Rudd's a clever bloke and its likely he understands the true seriousness of climate change. But the fact is that he simply won't acknowledge its full extent to the Australian people.

I reckon there's are two reasons for this:

• If he did, people would be expecting action commensurate with the problem, and

• its far easier to treat this an economic issue with stakeholders on each side who can be managed. 'We're getting the balance right' But there is no balance to be had with control the physics and chemistry of the world's climate. As the saying goes, nature bats last.

To give you an idea of what I mean, consider the constrast with the Global Financial Crisis.

“The Global Financial Crisis has punched a $210 billion hole in budget revenue.” If I heard that quote once in budget week, I heard it 70 times. Everyone from the PM down, frontbenchers, backbenchers, every every ALP functionary within 40 feet of a microphone was saying this as many times as their breath allowed. We all understood how bad it was by the end of that sorry week.

Sure, we hear 'we must take action on climate', though its more often 'those opposite don't want action on climate', but you won't hear things which are widely accepted by scientists and others. Things like:

• “coal is the single greatest threat to civilisation and all life on our planet.” OR

• once climate tipping points are crossed we won't be able to regain control of the earth's temperature rises OR

• once the deltas of Bangladesh become uninhabitable, there will be millions of refugees in South East Asia.

Which is where we come in.

We have what can only be described as a climate emergency on our hands and the majority of people in our society either don't know about it, or don't want to know about it. But we do know about it. And we understand that many people we love depend on us. And millions of people we don't even know, depend on us to take action to fix this problem.

Together with the 200 climate groups around Australia and the estimated millions of groups around the world, we need to out telling everyone we can find – friends, relatives, neighbours, councils, businesses, governments - that we face a genuine crisis that requires genuine action.

And if governments try to foist legislation on us that doesn't acknowledge the depth of the crisis and act accordingly, we need to spell out loud and clear that it simply isn't good enough.

And this is a message we will continue to make clear to the federal government, through our local member, Catherine King.

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