So is the CPRS a good thing?

Everyone is talking about the Carbon Pollution Reduction Schemes (CPRS) in Australia this week – the climate change legislation Australia had to have… a watered down compromise to reduce the risk of the big polluters causing unemployment carnage if there is a small reduction in their fat profits.

Some in the green movement say that “the legislation is a start and we have to start somewhere” whilst others note that “it would be better to have no legislation at all rather than a fundamentally flawed piece of legislation”.  So what’s all this mean?

I’m not sure I know the answer.

What I do know is that we emit more pollution per person than any other country on the planet.  That will cause problems for us in Australia and it sure as hell will cause tragedy for the poor in the developing world who are the innocent victims of this global crisis.

Tackling climate change effectively is going to require serious sums of money. Developing countries, many of whom are on the front-line in the battle against global warming, will require large amounts of external public finance to adapt to climate change, reduce their emissions and move to low-carbon pathways out of poverty.

Rich countries, who have largely caused the climate crisis through their historical greenhouse gas emissions, will have to find a way to pay for the true costs of their pollution

To repay their climate debt rich countries like Australia must do two things:

1. Make deeper emissions cuts than what they are currently considering so that developing countries have some space to grow their emissions without destroying the planet.

2. Provide finance and technology to developing countries to enable them to reduce their emissions, adapt effectively to climate change and chart low-emission pathways out of poverty.

ActionAid believes that as a first instalment of their climate debt repayment plan rich countries must cut their emissions by at least 40% against 1990 levels by 2020 and provide developing countries with at least AUD$220 billion a year by 2020 to enable them to tackle climate change effectively.

So what’s Australia’s fair share of the climate debt?

Based on our contribution to climate change (that is, our Co2 emissions) and our ability to pay, ActionAid calculates that Australia’s climate debt is 3% of the global bill for the cost of mitigation and adaptation measures and this debt must be paid by 2020.

That puts Australia’s total bill at approximately $3.3 billion for mitigation and $3.3 billion for adaptation per year.

Now, $6.6 billion is a lot of cash to be shelling out each year. Sure. But it’s our fair share.

So where will the money come from to pay our climate debt? One thing’s for sure, it shouldn’t be repaid by raiding the existing aid budget, which currently stands at just $3.8 billion or 0.35% of our gross national income.

But we’re sure that our political leaders would never think of raiding Australia’s embarrassingly small international development budget to repay our climate debt to developing countries. Aren’t we?