Victoria's Climate Change Act
First steps on the road to a safe climate?
On Friday, 3 September the Victorian Parliament ratified a new Climate Change Act. At the heart of the Act is a target for Victoria to reduce its emissions by 20 percent by 2020 (on 2000 levels).
Now we all know that the science tells us that stronger targets than this are going to be necessary to limit climate change, and we’ll continue to campaign for scientific targets. However until last Friday Victoria’s greenhouse target was to reduce the state’s emissions by 60 percent by 2050. That was an unlegislated target of the ALP Government. Now we have a stronger, nearer term, legislated target which has been supported by all parties in the Parliament. It is also an unconditional target, which means that regardless of what happens nationally with emissions trading, Victoria’s target stands. That’s a significant step in the right direction, and a sign that our parliament is beginning to reflect community consensus on the need for climate action in Victoria.
Congratulations to the ALP Government for introducing the Bill, and the Greens and Coalition for supporting it. We were particularly pleased that the Coalition supported the Bill given the federal Liberals and Nationals chaos on the issue. We now have both the ALP and the Coalition in Victoria holding much stronger policy positions than their Federal counterparts.
What’s more achieving the 20 per cent reductions target will require some significant policy effort. Left unchecked Victoria’s emissions are anticipated to climb to 130 million tonnes per year by 2020, but our 20 per cent target requires that emissions are cut to 96 million tonnes annually by 2020. That’s a cut of 3.4 million tonnes every year for the next decade or 34 million tonnes annually by 2020. The recently released Climate Change White Paper outlined a number of policies that would lead to some emissions reductions, (eg replacing one quarter of Hazelwood and doubling the state’s energy efficiency target), but not in the order of 3.4 million tonnes per year. So now we’ve got the legislative mandate for new climate policies to cut pollution.
As you’re probably aware at Environment Victoria we’ve got two big ideas that we think all political parties to adopt. Firstly, replacing the whole of Hazelwood power station could deliver emissions reductions of 14.5 million tonnes per year as soon as the end of 2012. Secondly retrofitting one million Victorian homes for energy and water efficiency could deliver another 2.7 million tonnes of annual abatement while protecting Victorian households against rising utility bills, water shortages and extreme weather.
The passage of the Climate Change Act shows that the Victorian Parliament can rise to the challenge of climate change, regardless of federal inaction. The state election is 12 weeks away. Let’s hope that the policies we need to achieve our new target are seized upon and delivered.
PS: It should be noted not everyone in the Parliament was happy about the Climate Change Bill. Liberal Party Upper House representative Bernie Finn had this to say about the Bill:
This is a con; the whole thing (climate change) is a con. Today we are in the Parliament of Victoria wasting our time on something that is largely an invention of the left.
While its worrying that such views are still held in the Liberal party, its encouraging that they are no longer winning the day.
Comments
Climate Change
And not well written either, climate change may be a normail event. But the human race has also added to the ongoing problem due to a few that are all about making vast profits,at the cost to the environment and we who are living here. I have been involved in the environment for the majority of my life, yes I am green and why because I hate to see the world that will be here for my grand daughter. And as a parent I owe it to my children to attemptto educate those amongst us that have not yet seen the light. Yes quite true we have been dumping toxic wastes into our oceans for a number of years, but to continue on the path we are is shere lunacy. We are more advanced and educated as to the impact such behaviour has had on this plane due to shere unadulterated greed, and we still keep plundering our vast oceans and land for a quick profit. With no regard of the consequences for future generation, I for one am not prepared to sit this one out because the cost to ourselves goes above and beyond all of these things.
Brumby's climate bill and EVs good ideas
Mark
Signing up to a 20% cut they will never have to pursue and for which they will never be held to account without any strategy for achieving this goal looks as much like a cunning attempt by the Brumby government to neutralize the threat of the Greens in the inner Melbourne seats as it looks like a serious commitment to a carbon constrained future. In this respect the State Greens may have given the Brumby government a free kick with their surprisingly generic climate and energy policies.
Retrofitting Victorian homes to a higher star rating will only produce reductions in emissions and power bills if accompanied by the appropriate behaviour by the buildings' occupants. This is not an argument for not improving the potential performance of these homes but highlights the importance of incentive to do the right thing and education to show people what that is.
A Positive Step Change
The proposed Dual Gas (coal and gas) power station is a great step change in emissions (1.3-4 down to sub 0.8)!
It also builds base load capacity within the Victorian grid allowing us to further invest in renewables.
Ask yourself this - would you prefer a nuclear station?
Remember 9 out of 10 Chernobyl victims prefer coal... And all of us want a cleaner future. Not just for the next generation but for the next 5000+ years.
car tyers use for fuel in china
so you greens think that you are going to save the planet by punishing the australian economy and the australian public by making australian idnustries abilities harder to operate and compeate against the rest of the world. you greens wants to put heavy taxes on coal fiered power stations and other industries, while in china they are burnning coal by the billions of tons ,but not only coal but also millions upon millions of car tyers anually according to a 60 minituts story, and a lot of those tyers i might add are imported from australia.
this global warming is nothing but stupid science backed by enviromental groups and all it is,is dogy science, climate change is a natrual event that comes and go .
one of the bigest hypocrites amongs many others like "Al gore and Tim flannery", is ross garnout, the chairman of lihir gold in papua new geunie. while he goes around preaching climate change he is one of the bigest polluters on the planet. the destruction he is helping to cause to the ocean by dumping contaminated mining overburden into deep water space in the ocean, and destroying large amount of land mass enviromental destruction he still managed to sneak under the radar. "[by the way dumping overburden into the ocean is also a practise by many other international minning companies around the world]"
humans have been using the ocean as a dumping ground for many centuries ,they claimed a lot of ocean space all around the world in some cases to increase their land mass,other natrual events like volcanic lava like in hawaii for instance also claimed a lot of land from the sea, and were land is claimed it takes ocean water space and it pushes the water elsewhere. yet none of the enviromental groups stop to think how much ocean space been claimed by human activities over the centuies as they jump up and down screaming and yelling that the sea level is raising help climate change, and then they wrongly point their fingers at so called climate change saying that the ice is melting thats why the sea level is rising. [how stupid is that]. sea water space is also taken over wene humans dump car tyers and sink ships to create artificial reefs and as the reef takes place and grows that also increases the problem of the water rising .[just in case you are worried about sea rising thats all , i'm not].
when ice melt at least it came from the ocean in the first place , human using the ocean as a dumping place and claiming land from it that is not part of the natrual prosses and a lot of problems will accure. take a look at south korea "for a tip of the ice berg example" how much ocean they've pushed back by the 11 kilometers sea wall that they've buildt , and at the same time destroying all the fishing grounds thats been around for centuries. [project story was shown on SBS global vilage]
my final comment is this. in my opinion the sea is not risnig because of stupid climate change ideas. good science said that were lands are having water level rises problems is simply because that the land is sinking, and some areas is because of flooding rivers ,not because of climate change , and i myself add to that fact .That if sea levels are rising at all is because of human activities as i briefly commented in this article and has not been picked up by the bad dogey science .
[climate change science and enviromental groups are like a pack of dogs barking at a cat up a tree, the trouble is they are barking at the wrong tree, because the cat is in the other tree 10 meters away from the tree that they are barking at].
[scripture says , wene the blind leads the blind they both fall into the ditch]
you sound extremely well informed ...
... NOT!!
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