Twenty two years ago, on this day, February 25th, 2003,
In an attachment to a cabinet memorandum dated 25 February 2003, Treasury warned that “the current approach to domestic emissions mitigation is not a sustainable long term approach, with its heavy reliance on spending programs, prescriptive regulation and ‘picking winners’”.
Treasury said this would come “at a very high economic cost” whereas any credible long-term climate change strategy must involve shifting the bulk of the responsibility to emitters.
It said a broad-based market mechanism, such as an ETS, had the benefit of “inducing a least-cost path to reducing emissions and best positioning the economy to respond to future developments” https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/jan/01/liberal-coalition-cabinet-papers-emissions-
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 376ppm. As of 2025 it is 427ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that in June, 2002 John Howard had said that he would not be putting Australia’s membership of participation in the Kyoto Protocol forward for ratification,e. Australia would be outside.
But the climate issue was still live, with the Millennium drought ongoing and various attempts to sensitize people. There had been an attempt to get an emissions trading scheme through Howard’s cabinet, in August of 2000. That had been defeated thanks to Nick Minchin as the front person. And at this point, I suspect it was fairly clear that there was going to be another attempt at putting an ETS through. Treasury was simply saying what was obvious .
What I think we can learn from this is that there really was, among people who work on the economy, not a lot of debate about the need for some sort of price on carbon. That’s what you do. You raise the price of things that are causing harm, and hopefully you use the money to research things that will cause less harm. That’s the theory anyway.
What happened next Howard would literally, single-handedly killed off the emissions trading scheme later, in 2003. The emissions kept climbing, and we are absolutely toast.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
Also on this day:
February 25, 1981 – National Party senator nails the climate problem
Feb 25 1992- business groups predict economic chaos if action is taken on #climate
Feb 25, 2007 – “Clean Coal Initiative” as move in game of one-dimensional electoral chess #auspol