I listened to some of the Australian senate debate on 30th October 2014, and heard it said by the government that Direct Action will employ the creative energy juices of Australian businesses to reduce carbon emissions when they are given money. They will compete, under some scrutiny and selectiveness, as they submit bids for making use of the money. This is a very novel, untried process in the context of reducing carbon emissions. The stated aim is to get most cost effective reduction of carbon emissions. This process is unlikely to include the retiring of coal - fired powered stations by the construction of new renewable energy capacity.
The policy of rising petrol price from additional fuel excise will act as a carbon tax on individuals, but not on businesses that can claim a rebate, including the mining industry.
Our government still promotes economic growth, says it is 'open for business', which is a sure way of increasing carbon emissions, and it is managing to stifle investment in renewable energy. The RET is being attacked for the sake of the big energy companies, who have invested in coal and gas power. There is now an oversupply of generation capacity, with falling demand, and a reluctance to retire coal burning power stations, which I thought was the whole point of the RET, because of the urgency of reducing carbon emissions world wide by 8-10% every year.
What is the use of global warming predictions of climate scientists, if conservative politicians prefer to ignore them, and wait for them to come true?
We have strong evidence that the brains of conservative politicians are unable to process the likelihood of very dangerous and costly global warming. This is due to unconcious, emotional workings over which they have no rational control.
The Liberal and National parties as a whole show strong behavioural evidence that they fully intend to avoid taking mitigation measures, and they wish to continue with 'business as usual' policies that will accelarate global warming.
The 'free market economics' that they espouse is the chief cause of our peril. Coal is cheap, therefore it must be subsidized. Ignore market externalities. 'Direct Action' is the logic of free market economics gone mad.
Many different studies have found behavioural differences between conservatives and progressives, and corrrelated this structural brain differences. The brain regions involved have been identified. Progressive thinkers tend to have more gray matter devoted to the anterior cingulate cortex, while conservatives have an increased volume of the right amygdala. The genetic and nurture causes of these differences are uncertain. Progressives are better able to cope with complexity and uncertainty in face of fear inducing information.
A reported study used brain imaging to monitor unconcious disgust reactions. Brains of people classified as conservative reacted much more strongly, regardless of concious ratings. The authors wrote that
. . . "People tend to think that their political views are purely cognitive (ie, rational). However our results further support the notion that emotional processes are tightly coupled to complex and high-dimensional human belief systems, and such emotional responces might play a much larger role than we currently believe, possibly outside our awareness of its influence" . . .
http://swtimes.com/nationworld/liberal-or-conservative-brain-s-disgust-reaction-holds-answer
The brains of conservative politicians are unconciously in fear of global warming. Because of the large fear reaction, they need to repress it order to function. They react by opposing it, affirming their strength of treasured beliefs in hierarchy, entitlement and privilege, as rationalized by neo-liberal economic abstractions. They have a strong preference for stability. It is no surprise that 'Direct Action' can only be concieved by them in terms of a market mechanism, and a dud one at that. The promotor of 'Direct Action' is the Minister for Environment, Greg Hunt. Mr Hunt has been reported as denying that global warming is involved in causation of bushfires, by reference to Wikipedia, even though he had been specifically informed earlier by science trained experts from the Bureau of Meterology. Such a piece of knowledge is a direct challenge to his belief systems and cannot be retained.
The conservative parties now in power in Australia function best in conditions of stability and know how to promote business as usual. In times of change, they are rationally incapable of processing the information of threats because their emotional brains reject it. As regards the existential challenge to the entire human race of global warming, most conservative politicians are policy incompetents. As a party to cope with emergency change they are complete duds.
Strangely enough, the denial reaction to the findings of climate science do not apply to all political conservatives or voters. The climate scientist James Hansen is a lifetime Republican. In 1988 he testified before US Congress in 1988 that climate change was dangerous, and requires large global reductions in carbon burning. The consensus and conservative science put summarized by the IPCC has put the fear of economic death into the fossil fuel industry. It seems that many conservative politicians have been misled by denialist propaganda. The denial industry product has been fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD), heavily funded with intensive lobbying by the fossil fuel industry. There is even an entire US television channel, FOX news, devoted to the anti-science of climate change denial, portraying an alternate physics universe.
So when faced with loud and wealthy lobbyists who contribute the most funding, to the extent of influencing the more tractible of voters and media control, conservative politicians can be given strong denial messages with which to assauge their fears, and debase their policy decisions. Their are some Republican politicians who acknowledged climate change and consequently lost office, due to vote campaigns against them, assisted by the denial industry.
The climate change denial campaign of Tony Abbott for the 2013 election, "stop the tax", aided by the Rupert Murdoch media empire, owner of "The Australian", "The Daily Telegraph", and also owner of FOX News in the USA, has been consistant and repetitive with climate change denial propaganda, on behalf of the international mining and energy interests. The question is now what is the biggest fear of politicians, climate change in the future, or being pushed out by a denialist campaign now?
The stench of the fossil fuel industry lobby has been effective in Australia for several successive governments. The Minerals Council of Australia has significant influence over mining and energy policy. It represents the hundreds of billions of dollars of overseas investments. It seems that Australia governments already sold Australian rights to combat global warming to the foriegn mining devils.
Just to frighten the conservative minded people who might be accidently reading this, I will repeat that the task before us all, for Australia , and the world, is to reduce coal burning by 8-10% every year, in order to have a chance of staying under 'very dangerous' global warming of 2 degrees C. Other sources of carbon emissions should also be addressed. We would be assisted by an economy that settled for "enough is enough", and measures that increased social equality and opportunity.
Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is strongly related to global warming. More detailed ice cores from Antarticia have shown that rapid changes in CO2 occurred in pulses, when the last glacial age ended. The change in climate of 5 degrees C in global mean temperature was associated with rise of CO2 of 80 parts per million. From the beginning of our industrial age, we have now increased atmosphere CO2 by another 120 parts per million.
From the treasure trove of data and articles at https://scripps.ucsd.edu/programs/keelingcurve/
Current CO2 is way above orbital forcing changes of past 400,000 years.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-lags-temperature.htm
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