Twenty five years ago, on this day, August 17, 1998, an Australian Parliament committee looks at Emissions Trading as the ‘way forward’.
House of Representatives Standing Committee on Environment, Recreation and the Arts into the possible introduction of trading in this new commodity. (Carbon) http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/House_of_Representatives_committees?url=environ/greenhse/gasrpt/finalrpt.pdf
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 366ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the Australian government had extorted an extremely sweet deal at the Kyoto conference in December 1997. This was the starting gun for the idea of emissions trading schemes in different countries which would ultimately linked up and make bankers and traders rich while, as a sideline, “saving the world on the cheap.”
The Australian government had signed the Kyoto protocol document in April of 1998. The leak about ratification only happening if the Americans ratified will still a month away, so at this precise moment the idea of Australia having its own emissions trading scheme that then linked up to other emissions trading schemes was not the fantasy that we would look on it as with 25 years of bruising experience.
What I think we can learn from this is that standing committees/senate inquiries house of reps stuff, it’s all nice busy work or undergrowth for policy wonks where they can can justify their money they are on, make professional connections and try to create a common sense agreement around whatever their particular pet solution is. Policy subsystems, policy constituencies etc etc.
What happened next is a proposal for an emissions trading scheme for Australia went to John Howard’s cabinet in the year 2000 killed off by Nick Minchin from South Australia the Sydney’s future exchange never got off the drawing board.
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.