The Kyoto Protocol was dreamed up by the Climate
Jet-set in Kyoto, Japan in 1997.
One of the first decisions of born-again-green PM, Kevin Rudd, was to commit
Australia to Kyoto Phase 1 in 2007.This
treaty required signatories to reduce production of carbon dioxide to 5% below
1990 levels by 2012.
As a late joiner, Australia got a lower target, involving no actual cuts.And they achieved that easy target by robbing Australian landowners - they stole carbon credits from
landowners by imposing tree clearing bans. That larcenous trick can’t be pulled
twice.
Ironically, the death notice for the Kyoto misadventure was posted by Japan,
the birthplace of Kyoto, when they announced at Cancun in 2010 that Japan would
not agree to any further targets. Japan was shocked at the billions in
liabilities they had accumulated by not meeting Kyoto 1 target cuts.
Undeterred by this warning, another ALP/Green government agreed to Kyoto 2 in
2012 – 5% below 2000 levels by 2020.
This target, agreed to without due diligence, is dreamland stuff for Australia.
Once the growing population is taken into account, this target would require
Australians in 2020 to maintain industries and create new jobs using 30% less
hydro-carbon energy per capita than was used in 2000.
Mining and mineral processing, agriculture, manufacturing, transport, tourism,
electricity generation, cement, forestry and fishing are the backbone
industries of Australia. Not one of these industries could maintain production
while also significantly reducing their production of carbon dioxide, unless
Australia embarks on a crash program of building new hydro and/or nuclear power
stations. The chance that green regulators or politicians will allow either of
these options any time soon is zero.
The use of carbon fuels, more than any other indicator, measures the growth and
health of modern economies. The only way to kill carbon
is to kill the economy – close industries or send them overseas. The Global Financial Crisis probably did more to
reduce the use of hydro-carbon fuels than Kyoto will ever do.
Japan’s exit from Kyoto obligations was soon
followed by Canada and Russia. USA never signed, nor did China, India, South
Africa or Brazil.
Thus the four biggest economies in our region (USA, China, Japan and India) are
not burdened by Kyoto. Nor are our big competitors - Brazil (iron and beef),
Indonesia (coal), Chile (copper) and Canada (wheat). We only have the Kiwis and
the faraway Europeans sharing the sinking Kyoto ship.
The Kyoto Agreement is a failure. Australia repealed the costly carbon dioxide tax. Next we should get rid
of Kyoto liabilities.
Just before he embarks on his Down-under tour (See tour schedule HERE) , Patrick Moore has labelled the body he co-founded - Greenpeace - as evil and guilty of losing its humanitarian roots.
• Co-founder Patrick Moore says organisation doesn't care about people
• He cites example of a GM-rice which would help millions if widely produced
• Dr Moore says fact that Greenpeace oppose crop shows it is 'evil'
• Comes after the ecologist quit the group because it became 'too political'
Ecologist Dr Patrick Moore, who quit Greenpeace in 1986, has launched a scathing criticism of the activist group, which he insisted has lost its humanitarian roots.
His attack on the organisation he helped create comes as former Environment Secretary Owen Paterson campaigns against the 'self-serving' and 'highly-paid' network of environmental pressure groups he calls the 'green blob'. (LINK)
Dr Moore told BBC Radio 4's Today Programme: 'My problem with Greenpeace is they have lost any humanitarian roots they had.
'When we started Greenpeace it was to stop nuclear war and the destruction of human civilisation, that of course is the "peace" in Greenpeace.
'The "green" is the environment and that's good as well, but they lost the concerns for humans... They have turned, basically, into an evil organisation.'
Minister for Natural resources & Mines, Andrew Cripps
photo sourced Courier Mail
Regional Queensland deserves better. Agricultural producers did not deserve to be labelled environmental vandals under the previous government and they don’t deserve the slur made by Minister Andrew Cripps when he said [page 3010] that those who did not support the Mineral& Energy Resources (Common Provisions) Bill were:
“influenced and misled by green groups or certain law firms whose main interest is to generate community concern and discontent.”
This is clearly quite ridiculous, this polarising of the debate is very unhelpful and the Minister should take the time to read the transcript to the Mackay hearing where landowners took the trouble to point out that they have a legitimate view under no influence from any other sector.
At 4 minutes to midnight Tuesday night September 9th the Queensland Government sold out rural landowner’s property rights with the passing of the Act complete with amendments [page 3104]
The lead up consultation was a pretence and the parliamentary committee report a farce on a Bill that was so bad that it had the potential without considered and responsible modification to be second only to the notorious vegetation management act of the previous government. But then the last minute amendments presented in block with no scrutiny realistically possible, rammed through on party lines delivered a disastrous outcome that deserves equal notoriety of anything landowners suffered under the Beattie/ Bligh era.
Across the board in submission and at the hearings [here& here] rural organisations and individual landowners outlined their grave concerns about the Bill and offered constructive suggestions to how improvements could be made. The parliamentary committee chairman, the LNP member for Lockyer, Ian Rickuss failed to make recommendations which took account of these serious concerns.Numerous submitters and witnesses at public hearings gave personal accounts of the difficulty of securing a satisfactory Conduct and Compensation Agreement (CCA) and the gross imbalance of power. Mr. Rickuss seems to think they were all just whinging. In the debate on Tuesday night Mr. Rickuss displaying his insensitivity to the submissions made said: [page 3061]
Ian Rickuss, member for Lockyer
photo sourced ABC
“What I can say about the conduct and compensation agreements for the landholders is that some of the landholders have to grab these and take control of the agenda. This is what it is about. If they sit down and think about what they have to do with these conduct and compensation agreements and get the appropriate advice, these will be a real win-win for the landholders.”
“I ask landholders to put in a lot of effort into these things.”
Mr. Rickuss is urging landholders to get the appropriate advice and yet the Government has left in a primitive clause in this Act which was meant to “modernise” the resources Acts where landowners can “opt out” of conduct and compensation agreements. This will catch out many landowners who lose their ability to access the Land Court and is binding on future title holders. Landowners need to seek legal advice and not to agree to this option as you lose the ability to call on the umpire, the Land Court, which does its best to be fair.
One would wonder who the minister, Andrew Cripps, believes is appropriate to give advice as he repeatedly slandered legal experts experienced in representing landowners who at their own expense wrote submissions and gave evidence at the hearings.Under parliamentary privilege Minister Cripps stated that certain legal firms were scaremongering lawyers; legal profession with vested interests; encouraging conflict; attracting and/or protecting their business and were irresponsible.
Property Rights Australia believes that it is the Minister that has been highly irresponsible. Not only are these allegations patronising and insulting but plainly untrue. It is negligent behaviour for the Minister and the Government to discourage landowners to trust experienced legal professionals who are essential to protect landowner rights in negotiations.
The Minister has been misleading in his statements not only before the Bill was passed but in defending it afterwards. Most notable was throughout the debate stating clearly that even though the Bill removes objection rights to small mines that objections can still be made on large mines. In his speech introducing the Bill for its second reading Andrew Cripps did foreshadow the later introduction of further amendments but any informed person would have thought what he was talking about was quite different to what he ultimately introduced. Despite his earlier assurances amongst the amendments was one that effectively has removed the right to object to a large mine as the Coordinator General’s conditions will be considered to address the environmental concerns and therefore almost no one will have the right to object to the Environmental Authority. In effect the Coordinator General will be judge and jury without access to appeal of new resource projects.
Small alluvial gold mine north Queensland
For the government to talk about small mines as low impact mines is nonsense. There are large mines that affect a large number of people, even entire communities right down to small mines that affect fewer landowners. The impact on the few can at times be severe.
Restricted areas have been severely curtailed and will not exist for most infrastructure unless it is negotiated in a CCA.Again the minister has been misleading on this subject talking about landowners being left with isolated infrastructure; a Swiss chess affect, he called it. The reduction of restricted areas is of benefit to the resource company rather than the landowner who not only loses protection over important essential infrastructure on their land and privacy around their houses but also loses a very real bargaining chip for the landowner during negotiations.
No reasonable or responsible person, company or government can expect a landowner to accept damage, loss, contamination or interference to their established business to benefit a resource company. Property Rights Australia believes that at the very minimum landowners with impacts identified in the EIS should be notified by mail, have the ability to make objections and unimpaired access to the Land Court.
Queensland cannot afford to have property rights of landowners to be sacrificed to ensure the prosperity of the resource industries.
Qld parliament AREC Chair Ian Rickuss & deputy Chair
Jackie Trand. Photo sourced Qld Country Life
On behalf of property Rights Australia, chair Joanne Rea appeared before hearing at MacKay 20th August into the Mineral & Energy Resources (Common Provisions) Bill. The following is Joanne's opening statement to the Agriculture, Resources and Environment Committee
Property Rights Australia believes that this
Bill severely erodes many of the protections and rights of landowners for
the benefit of resources industries. In fact we believe it to be one of the
greatest abrogations of landowner rights since the Vegetation Management Act
1999.
Some of our concerns are outlined in our
submission but it is not exhaustive. They are concerns that are shared by
many landowner representatives and by legal professionals specialising in
representing landowners. PRA highly recommends the submission
by Shine lawyers.
We have heard the Premier and Ministers say, when asked
about landowner concerns that the resources companies and related
infrastructure will create very many jobs and the royalties will fund
infrastructure. Such statements imply that resource development and landowner
concerns are mutually exclusive. This is not the case.
We are constantly
told of the billions of dollars in revenue which will benefit the state and we
are well aware of the above average wages and conditions paid to mine workers
and contractors. However, landowners are approached with an attitude of penury
and meanness.
If resource companies want a relatively trouble free path
they should approach landowners with a fair offer of recompense from the
beginning, negotiate in good faith, not waste their time, apply pressure,
bully, ignore concerns, renege on agreements and use various other bluff and
deception tactics. They should also be mindful of local knowledge. Lobbying
Government for changes to legislation which erode the rights of landowners
because they are getting resistance to their unfair tactics is unacceptable.
Landowners feel that they have been thrown to the wolves
with the lack of protection of their property rights under pieces of
legislation like this. Commercial agreements alone are not possible without
built in protection when one party to negotiations is an unwilling party whose
time commitment is a cost and the companies who have full time paid
professionals. This factor is frequently taken advantage of.
The balance of power in negotiations with resource companies
has always been in favour of the resource companies and changes to legislation
including those in this Bill have eroded almost every bargaining chip
landowners may have had and handed the entire box and dice to the resources
companies.
The superior fire power of the resources sector has won the
day with this proposed legislation and the property rights of landowners are
being disregarded. This is not the treatment that we expect from any Government
which should be should be concerned about private property rights which are the
cornerstone of our free market system.
All in all there is too much left to regulation rather than
in the legislation, there are too many things which are not defined and landowner’s
rights have been severely curtailed. This legislation should be deferred and
taken back to the drawing board. It is entirely inappropriate that resource companies
have damaged their own reputations as honest and good faith negotiators and
then ask the government to fix their problems by legislation which damages
landowner’s rights to the enjoyment of their property. It is very obvious that
this legislation was “industry directed” for the benefit of resources companies
and that landowner rights will be severely damaged. PRA does not support the
further erosion of property rights by yet another government. It would appear
that there are no major parties whose philosophical principle is to
uncompromisingly to protect private property rights, a valuable and recognised
cornerstone of our society and the ability of businesses to operate securely.
Reading the CEO of Powerlink Qld Merryn York’s Letter(QCL 31st
July 2014), I must agree Powerlink do listen but do they hear?
As a directly impacted landholder by PQ development and a
Board Member for Property Rights Australia, I hear many things both current and
in the past on the antics of PQ and the outcomes.
It is fortunate for Powerlink the Woodduck Landholder Group’s
independent inquiry by McCullough- Robertson Lawyers(QCL 24th July 2014), did
not expand into the entire affected North West Surat Basin.The inquiry would have been more reflective of
Powerlink Qld’s pressured and often dishonest consultation practises commonly
used in their process.
Jump back in time and there are stories eerily similar to
Woodduck where landholders with powerlines
already constructed are continuing to be
ignored by PQ for appropriate compensation payment.
The Acquisition of Land Act 1967 encourages this type of arrogant
behaviour when resuming land and easements.Resumption for commercial
activity must be negotiated on a commercial basis with negotiated landholder
access(S15 Resumption), not as
compulsory acquisition . Landholders are reluctant sellers and should be
compensated as such.Annual payments
should be mandatory, not associated with the dangling of a carrot as is
currently occurring with Santos and Origin.
PRA hear continual trouble with the ALA 1967 beyond
Powerlink’s activity in the NW Surat basin; Sunshine Coast with Powerlink &
SEQ Water/The Ipswich Motorway with Main Roads/ the Gallilee Basin with Rail corridors
and which will also have future
development from Powerlink.
Merryn York, consultation requires much more than just
listening and no amount of external reviews will address this unless PQ can be
trusted and made responsible for what they say and agree to. People should not be going through such a
difficult process to find a fair outcome.
Ideally Government Owned Corporation Shareholding Ministers
Seeney, McArdle & Nichol need to implement changes for which ministerial
designation must occur under the Sustainable Planning Act that is more rigorous
than that just the timely supply of
infrastructure, in addition to improving the process of deriving a Conduct &
Compensation Agreement (CCA) for the project.
As an urgent first step, where the project is for private
profit, the State Government needs to at least implement a change to the ALA to
ensure that landholders can negotiate both access conditions and
compensation(CCA)in a similar way to
the P&G Act, and as a requirement before the Notice of Intention to Resume
(NIR) is issued.
Australia’s dairy sector will lose out due to Russian sanctions,
but there are bigger issues in play. Anatoly Maltsev/AAP
Russia’s targeting of $A400 million of Australian food exports and the government’s muddled response are just the latest setback for a sector struggling under failed policy approaches.
Agriculture is Australia’s only “strongly competitive industry”, according to recent reports from consulting firm McKinsey and the Business Council of Australia (BCA). Yet, the industry is today characterised by high levels of debt, low farm income, depleted reserves, increasing levels of insolvency and rising poverty. Why the mismatch?
Productivity is high in agriculture. Indeed productivity performance has been outstanding. Yet profits and incomes have been miserable for years. To top it off ABARE reports current Queensland farm incomes as the lowest for 37 years (which is when their figures began).
We’re measuring the wrong things
Measures of both competitiveness and productivity can increase when an industry is in decline. Today, agriculture is not where we hoped it would be. Existing policies and thinking have not delivered gains for agriculture in real terms (as evident in the graph) or Australia (as rising net overseas obligations demonstrate). Continuing them is folly.
A rocky path of questionable returns. McGovern, M. (2013). Repositioning Rural Australia. Choices in Agricultural Policy: Rationalise or Reconstruct? Merredin WA, Muntadgin Profit Farmers.
Disappointingly, this failed stance sits behind the “new“ veneer in the BCA’s “Building Australia’s Comparative Advantage”. Under its dated take on comparative advantage, economies of scale still rule. The productivity mantra is repeated regularly but profit is never mentioned by the BCA, and incidentally mentioned only twice by McKinsey. Yet profit and sustainable incomes lie at the heart of sound business and investment servicing.
It’s 1997 thinking. Then, Minister for Primary Industries John Anderson convened a Rural Finance Summit in Canberra. The thrust was similar. Scale was the saviour and the message was that over a quarter of farmers must go. We overachieved - more than 40% or 103,000 farmers went during the Howard-Anderson era.
The reality is economies of scale require enterprises to increase operational size, utilise the latest technology (such as limited till farming and GPS navigation), employ advanced managerial systems and so on. Increased farm size requires larger machinery and equipment to replace labour intensive farming. All this takes money, yet financial considerations have been essentially absent.
Farm sector reforms have now created a sector with 20% of farmers producing around 80% of output from an increasingly untenable financial basis. Aggregation costs were neglected.
As asset inflation was thought never to end, debt-to-equity loans were not designed to be repaid from income. Capital gains would pick up any shortfall. But as stresses built and the GFC unfolded with pervasive capital losses, the economies of scale arguments and poor lending collapsed. Untenable loan-to-valuation ratios ushered in a financial crisis in national food production.
Large highly mechanised “efficient” enterprises were suddenly expected to repay multi-million dollar debts from insufficient income. Foreign buyers acquired most significant Australian food manufacturers and many farms.
What next?
Untenable financial arrangements need restructuring. The sector needs recapitalisation, new institutional arrangements and, for a time, a hands-on approach from government.
Today, the numbers of bank foreclosures and bankruptcy proceedings challenge the mantra makers. Financial numbers that don’t add up, and often never did, trash empty pseudo-economic rhetoric. Incomes going nowhere will not service the recent debt run up, as is evident in the graph below. Systemic failures allowed this development.
Debt has outpaced the ability to service it. Ben Rees (2013) Reconstruct or Rationalise Agriculture? Compiled from: NVFP, ABARE, Commodity Statistics, Rural Debt , RBA online, Table D9
The real structural reform needed is in industry, governmental and BCA thinking. Scale and competitiveness policies that have failed to deliver need to be discarded, not re-veneered.
Real solutions require substantial considerations of income, investment and profitability under uncertainty. Finance matters as do market and supply chain realities. Policy makers have avoided these things for too long, to the great cost to agriculture, other infected industries and Australia.
Ironically today, the despised low-productivity small farmer with household off-farm employment may be more solvent than the aggregator or the competitive.
Mark McGovern is an active member of the Rural Finance Roundtable Working Group.
This article was originally published on The Conversation.
Read the original article.
Wind and Water rule the Weather;
Carbon Dioxide is a Weather Wimp and a Climate Pygmy. by Viv Forbes
Rising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is
blamed for every weather emergency, but as a weather maker, water is far more
important.
Without water, Earth’s weather would be dramatically different. We would have
no clouds, no rain or snow, no rain or hail storms, no hurricanes, no seas,
rivers, lakes or ice sheets – just cold, cloudless nights and hot, clear days
with dry winds and fierce dust storms; a dead planet like Mars.
Water has many weather effects. It cools Earth’s surface by evaporation, and
transfers that heat to the upper atmosphere as it condenses into drops of rain,
hail or snow. Water forms the wispy high cirrus and stratus clouds, the fluffy
fair-weather cumulus and the ominous nimbus thunderheads that can produce rain,
hail and storms as well as cyclones, hurricanes and tornados. Some high clouds
help to retain surface heat while lower clouds shade and cool the surface as
they intercept and reflect incoming solar radiation.
Where there is no water in the atmosphere we get hot deserts like Sahara or
frigid deserts like Antarctica. And when solar energy wanes, as in ice ages, it
is water, not carbon dioxide, that creates a real climate emergency with
life-killing sheets of ice.
Carbon dioxide exists in the atmosphere and the oceans as a trace amount of
invisible, non-toxic, non-flammable gas – quite a boring unspectacular gas
really. But it gets the gold medal for feeding the biosphere – it is the gas of
life and increased carbon dioxide is responsible for the recent measurable
greening of the planet.
In theory, carbon dioxide can warm the climate by retaining surface heat.
However, its so-called “greenhouse effect”, has never been quantified in
climate records despite being given a key role in IPCC climate models. There is
no evidence that carbon dioxide is creating dangerous global warming. Water
vapour has a far bigger “greenhouse effect” over more radiation bands, and
there is far more of it - Earth’s atmosphere has about 8,500 times more water
than carbon dioxide. Earth’s water cycle also has a large moderating effect on
any greenhouse warming from carbon dioxide. A climate tax on water makes as
much sense as a tax on carbon.
In our great climate machine, the sun is the combustion chamber, the oceans are
the stabilising flywheel and carbon dioxide is merely the temperature gauge –
its concentration in the atmosphere rises as the oceans get warm and expel some
of their dissolved CO2.
The sun and cycles in the solar system rule Earth’s long term climate. Solar
energy drives winds and water to create the complexities of the weather. Carbon
dioxide is a climate pygmy and largely irrelevant in creating the daily
weather.
We have enough real environmental problems on Earth without inventing climate
crises supposedly caused by the relatively trivial quantities of carbon dioxide
recycled by man’s industries and machines.
Water vapour and carbon dioxide are the gases of life – the biosphere needs
more of both. We should stop all foolish attempts to capture and bury carbon
dioxide and devote those resources to capture and store fresh water.
