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AUSTRALIA

Fossil fuels must be demonised

  • 01 September 2014

The Federal Government is set to release the report from its Renewable Energy Target (RET) Review Panel chaired by businessman Dick Warburton, with a decision to follow within weeks.

The review recommends a significant scaling back of Australia’s renewable energy scheme, with two options. One is closing the scheme to new entrants, and the other is supporting new renewable energy power generation only when electricity demand is increasing.

Even if the report’s recommendations do not make it through the Senate, it’s likely that it has landed a fatal blow on the renewable energy industry by destroying investor confidence. It’s the ‘sovereign risk’ effect was used as the major argument against the mining super profits tax.

The findings of the report support the prime minister’s stated wish to see the fossil fuels industry ‘flourish’ and environmental approval hurdles minimised. ‘It’s particularly important that we do not demonise the coal industry’, he told an industry gathering in May. The fledgeling renewable energy industry, it seems, is expendable.

The action to kill the renewable energy target is driven by a particular business case that takes no account of the moral imperative that is changing government policy in other countries. The Edmund Rice Centre released a statement on Friday urging Mr Abbott to visit a climate vulnerable Pacific atoll nation to see first hand the effect on the citizens of these poor nations of the greenhouse gas emissions from the likes of Australia’s coal industry.

It might move him to reconsider his resolve not to demonise the coal industry, and understand what’s behind the growing movement that considers such stigmatisation to be the only ethical course of action. Last Monday, Sydney University announced it had instructed its equities managers to halt investment in the coal and consumable fuels sub-sector of the Australian Stock Exchange. This is seen as a step towards divestment of its existing interests in companies including Whitehaven.

Divestment from fossil fuel investments is widespread overseas. It’s expected that the Vatican will commit itself to this, with Pope Francis planning to release an encyclical in coming months on humanity’s role in caring for the Earth.

The international grassroots organisation 350.org, which is urging the Vatican to act, distils its message in the simple logic: ‘if it’s wrong to wreck the planet, then it’s wrong to profit from that wreckage’. Anybody who is able to see the effect of rising seawaters on the lives of Pacific Islanders will at least
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