The Garrett recession we don't need to have

The pathetic response of Labor and the major voices in the Australian environmental movement to the Government's climate change initiatives gives the lie to the notion that environmentalists have the interests of the nation at heart.

The policies outlined by the ALP's shadow environment spokesman, the multi-millionaire former rock star Peter Garrett, would saddle Australia with another recession we have to have - the Garrett recession - and come hard on the heels of the deal between the NSW ALP's whatever-it-takes Senate candidate Mark Arbib and the Greens for a preference swap at this year's election. The deal is a high water mark of principled politics. If Labor's plans to saddle individuals and businesses with energy taxes don't send the economy backward, the Greens' plans certainly will. Opposition leader Kevin Rudd has argued that Australia should have signed and ratified the Kyoto Protocol despite the fact that only 35 of its 170-plus signatories agreed to greenhouse gas reduction targets. China and India, the globe's big developing nations, aren't in, even though developing nations account for the majority of global emissions. Without commitments from all major emitters, Kyoto can only deliver a reduction in the growth of greenhouse gases in the order of one per cent. Rudd's pledge would have been the death of the economy. A spokesman for the ALP's new partner, Greens Senator Kerry Nettle, has called for a 30 per cent reduction in emissions by 2020, and at least 80 per cent by 2050, and echoed Garrett's rock star economics with a call for coal mining to cease. Neither Nettle nor Garrett has detailed how they envisage the nation would function without the coal-fired power stations that are currently our source of reliable energy. Even the most ardent environmentalist knows that alternate energy is no solution for us at this stage but not Nettle or Garrett. It would be different if they were supporting development of a nuclear industry, like that which powers a number of European nations but both Labor and the Greens are still locked out of nuclear power by their ideologies. There is a striking lack of new strategy from Labor and the Greens while the Coalition is looking beyond the dead Kyoto Protocol to a new agreement that will effectively involve all the major emitting nations in a fairer arrangement. This arrangement will ensure the burdens of meeting the climate change challenge are shared and will not automatically plunge Australia into the Garrett recession. Rudd's emission targets of 60 per cent of 2000 levels by 2050, and the 20 per cent reduction by 2020, pledged by Garrett, are astounding in their failure to address the reality that climate is a global issue. This lapse is on a par with deputy leader Julia Gillard's lunatic 2004 proposal for Medicare Gold and her appalling ignorance of the need to separate administrative and judicial functions, disclosed in the IR policy she co-authored with the ACTU's Greg Combet. The consequences of Labor's policy of cutting emissions would be similar to the effect of replacing the nation's entire fossil fuel-fired power system with nuclear energy and simultaneously removing all existing vehicles from the roads. A report from the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics modelled a 50 per cent decrease in 1990 levels of emissions by 2050 _ not dissimilar to Labor's 60 per cent target on 2000 levels) and concluded that petrol prices would rise by 100 per cent, growth in GDP would be slashed by more than 10 per cent, real wages would be cut by more than a fifth, agricultural production would be down by nearly 50 per cent and electricity output would be cut more than 20 per cent. Given the global nature of climate change, the world's greenhouse gas levels would continue to rise as even a 60 per cent cut to our contribution of just 1.5 per cent of the global emissions would have no material effect. Even if we shut down every power station tomorrow, our contribution to greenhouse gases would be replaced by the developing nations' contributions within just five months. The policies being promoted by Labor and its Green allies don't make any sense for Australia unless they are determined to bring the nation to its knees and ensure that all children will be born in poverty by 2050. And while I don't buy the "end of the world is nigh'' hysteria being generated by many of the usual less-than-reliable sources, I do get interested when they want to start meddling with the money. There is nothing wrong with prudent husbandry of natural resources, as any good miner or farmer will acknowledge _ it's also sound economics _ but will the morally arrogant please spare me their hair shirts and wear them only in the privacy of their own bedrooms?