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Climate policy has become bogged down in the debate over a clean energy target. Shutterstock

Malcolm Turnbull’s government has been wrestling with the prospect of a clean energy target ever since Chief Scientist Alan Finkel recommended it in his review of Australia’s energy system. But economist Ross Garnaut has proposed a path out of the political quagmire: two clean energy targets instead of one.

Garnaut’s proposal is essentially a flexible emissions target that can be adapted to conditions in the electricity market. If electricity prices fail to fall as expected, a more lenient emissions trajectory would likely be pursued.

This proposal is an exercise in political pragmatism. If it can reassure both those who fear that rapid decarbonisation will increase energy prices, and those who argue we must reduce emissions at all costs, it represents a substantial improvement over the current state of deadlock.

Ross Garnaut/Yann Robiou DuPont, Author provided Will two targets increase investor certainty?

At a recent Melbourne Economic Forum, Finkel pointed out that investors do not require absolute certainty to invest. After all, it is for accepting risks that they earn returns. If there was no risk to accept there would be no legitimate right to a return.

But Finkel also pointed out that investors value policy certainty and predictability. Without it, they require more handsome returns to compensate for the higher policy risks they have to absorb.

Read more: Turnbull is pursuing ‘energy certainty’ but what does that actually mean?

At first sight, having two possible emissions targets introduces yet another uncertainty (the emissions trajectory). But is that really the case? The industry is keenly aware of the political pressures that affect emissions reduction policy. If heavy reductions cause prices to rise further, there will be pressure to soften the trajectory.

Garnaut’s suggested approach anticipates this political reality and codifies it in a mechanism to determine how emissions trajectories will adjust to future prices. Contrary to first impressions, it increases policy certainty by providing clarity on how emissions policy should respond to conditions in the electricity market. This will promote the sort of policy certainty that the Finkel Review has sought to engender.

Could policymakers accept it?

Speaking of political realities, could this double target possibly accrue bipartisan support in a hopelessly divided parliament? Given Tony Abbott’s recent threat to cross the floor to vote against a clean energy target (bringing an unknown number of friends with him), the Coalition government has a strong incentive to find a compromise that both major parties can live with.

Read more: Abbott’s disruption is raising the question: where will it end?

Turnbull and his energy minister, Josh Frydenberg, who we understand are keen to see Finkel’s proposals taken up, could do worse than put this new idea on the table. They have to negotiate with parliamentary colleagues whose primary concern is the impact of household electricity bills on voters, as well as those who won’t accept winding back our emissions targets.

Reassuringly, the government can point to some precedent. Garnaut’s proposal is novel in Australia’s climate policy debate, but is reasonably similar to excise taxes on fuel, which in some countries vary as a function of fuel prices. If fuel prices decline, excise taxes rise, and vice versa. In this way, governments can achieve policy objectives while protecting consumers from the price impacts of those objectives.

The devil’s in the detail

Of course, even without the various ideologies and vested interests in this debate, many details would remain to be worked out. How should baseline prices be established? What is the hurdle to justify a more rapid carbon-reduction trajectory? What if prices tick up again, after a more rapid decarbonisation trajectory has been adopted? And what if prices don’t decline from current levels: are we locking ourselves into a low-carbon-reduction trajectory?

These issues will need to be worked through progressively, but there is no obvious flaw that should deter further consideration. The fundamental idea is attractive, and it looks capable of ameliorating concerns that rapid cuts in emissions will lock in higher electricity prices.

For mine, I would not be at all surprised if prices decline sharply as we begin to decarbonise, such is the staggering rate of technology development and cost reductions in renewable energy. But I may of course be wrong. Garnaut’s proposal provides a mechanism to protect consumers if this turns out to be the case.

Bruce Mountain does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

Authorities in Australian coastal town will exhume the body of the 20-tonne humpback over fears it is attracting sharks

Authorities in the Australian coastal town of Port Macquarie will dig up the carcass of a 12-metre, 20-tonne humpback whale from a local beach and dump it in landfill because of fears the animal is attracting sharks.

On Friday, officials at the Port Macquarie Hastings Council announced that the body of the whale, which was buried as an “option of last resort” after it washed up on Nobbys Beach in the beach town in New South Wales on Sunday, would be removed following an outcry from local residents.

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Sceptics prefer to reject regulations to combat global warming and remain indifferent to the havoc it will wreak on future generations

From my vantage point outside the glass doors, the sea of grey hair and balding pates had the appearance of a golf society event or an active retirement group. Instead, it was the inaugural meeting of Ireland’s first climate denial group, the self-styled Irish Climate Science Forum (ICSF) in Dublin in May. All media were barred from attending.

Its guest speaker was the retired physicist and noted US climate contrarian, Richard Lindzen. His jeremiad against the “narrative of hysteria” on climate change was lapped up by an audience largely composed of male engineers and meteorologists – mostly retired. This demographic profile of attendees at climate denier meetings has been replicated in London, Washington and elsewhere.

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When Amsterdam removed signals from a busy junction, it made journeys faster and interactions more pleasant. Now the approach is being copied across the city

On a foggy Monday morning in May 2016, 14 Amsterdam officials, engineers and civil servants gathered nervously at Alexanderplein – a busy intersection near the city centre with three tramlines – where many people were walking, driving, and, as in any Dutch city, riding bicycles. With a flip of a switch, the traffic controls were shut off for all transport modes, in all directions.

This live pilot project came about as a result of the rapid growth in cycling in some Amsterdam neighbourhoods. Nearly 70% of all city centre trips are by bicycle, and more space is needed on the bike networks. Traffic designers are deviating from standard design manuals to accommodate this need. Among the tactics being used are the removal of protective barriers, altering light phases, reducing vehicular speed limits and designating entire corridors as “bicycle streets”. Designers have created their own toolbox of solutions for other Dutch cities to use.

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Magilligan Point, County Derry The botany of the spit was once so rich that it was known as the ‘medicine garden of Europe’

The view from the top of the basalt outcrop of Windy Hill is sublime. Below, the flat expanse of Magilligan Point, County Derry, narrows into the distance as it almost reaches across the mouth of Lough Foyle to the heather-topped green hills and little white cottages of Donegal, six miles away.

Most of the sandy spit has been converted into grazed farmland, the field boundaries following the lines of ancient sand ridges deposited as the point has grown since the last ice age. A half-mile wide strip along the western edge, facing the Atlantic, is still wild sand dunes, tall and rough. A stiff breeze blows up and over the rocky ridge and to the east dark grey storm clouds roll.

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Wind energy posts record output in August, with renewables delivering 25 per cent of all demand at the evening peak.

Mark Bailey is returning to duty as Minister for Main Roads, Road Safety and Ports and Minister for Energy, Biofuels and Water Supply, effective today.

Fears of the unstoppable energy transition are reinforced and amplified by vested interests and selfish, small minded losers who try and slow it down. Look at how energy prices jumped since Coalition's intervention on Liddell.

Something is fundamentally wrong in the NEM. Frequency control costs have risen dramatically, but the quality of the service has dived.

ARENA tips $2.5m into feasibility studies for doubling of Tasmania hydro capacity and developing 2.5GW of pumped hydro storage.

It seems there is no climate and clean energy myth conservatives and the Murdoch media won't repeat. Just as well we have renewable energy and smart businesses.

Shareholder action has struck again (perhaps). The Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility, on behalf of more than 120 shareholders of BHP, has convinced the Big Fella to reconsider its membership of the Minerals Council of Australia.

Business associations and umbrella groups exist to advance the interests of their members. The ones we know most about are those that are in the public eye, lobbying, producing position papers that put forward controversial and unpopular positions (while giving their members plausible deniability), running television adverts, and attacking their opponents as naive idealists at best, or luddites and watermelons (green on the outside, red on the inside) at worst.

Read more: Risky business: how companies are getting smart about climate change.

This has been going on for a century, as readers of the late Alex Carey’s Taking the Risk out of Democracy: Corporate Propaganda versus Freedom and Liberty will know. (Another Australian, Sharon Beder ably continued his work, and more recently yet another Australian, Kerryn Higgs, wrote excellently on this.)

Alongside the gaudy outfits sit lower-profile and occasionally very powerful coordinating groups, such as the Australian Industry Greenhouse Network (see Guy Pearse’s book High and Dry for details).

Ultimately, however, membership of these groups can have costs to companies – beyond the financial ones. If an industry body strays too far from the public mood, individual companies can feel the heat. This happened in the United States in 2002, with the Global Climate Coalition, a front group for automakers and the oil industry that succeeded in defeating the Kyoto Protocol but then outlived its usefulness. It happened again in 2009 when a group of companies (including Nike, Microsoft and Johnson & Johnson) decided their reputations were being damaged by continued membership of the US Chamber of Commerce, which was taking a particularly intransigent line on President Barack Obama’s climate efforts.

Doings Down Under

What’s interesting in this latest spat is that it involves two very powerful players. Let’s look at them in turn.

The Minerals Council of Australia (MCA) began life in 1967, as the Australian Mining Industry Council, when Australia’s export boom for coal, iron ore and other commodities was taking off.

From its earliest days it found itself embroiled in both Aboriginal land rights and environmental disputes, having established an environment subcommittee in 1972. Over time, the Council took a robust line on both topics, to put it mildly.

In 1990, at the height of green concerns, the then federal environment minister Ros Kelly offered a scathing assessment of the council, saying that its idea of a sustainable industry was:

…one in which miners can mine where they like, for however long they want. It is about, for them, sustaining profits and increasing access to all parts of Australia they feel could be minerally profitable, even if it is of environmental or cultural significance.

Meanwhile, the council’s intransigent position on Aboriginal land rights, especially after the 1992 Mabo decision, caused it to lose both credibility and – crucially – access to land rights negotiations.

Geoff Allen, a business guru who had created the Business Council of Australia, was called in to write a report, which led the Minerals Council to adopt its present name, and a more emollient tone.

The MCA’s peak of influence (so far?) was its role in the Keep Mining Strong campaign of 2010, which sank Kevin Rudd’s planned super-profits tax. The following year, it combined with other business associations to form the Australian Trade and Industry Alliance, launching an advertising broadside against Julia Gillard’s carbon pricing scheme (which was not, as former Liberal staffer Peta Credlin has now admitted, a “carbon tax”).

Bashing the carbon tax.

The MCA has since kept up a steady drumbeat of attacks on renewable energy, and most infamously supplied the (lacquered) lump of coal brandished by Treasurer Scott Morrison in parliament.

Read more: Hashtags v bashtags: a brief history of mining advertisements (and their backlashes).

The most important thing, for present purposes, to understand about the MCA is that it may well have been the subject of a reverse takeover by the now defunct Australian Coal Association. In a fascinating article in 2015, Mike Seccombe pointed out that:

Big as the coalmining industry is in Australia, it accounts for only a bit more than 20% of the value of our mineral exports. Yet now the Minerals Council has come to be dominated by just that one sector, coal… Representatives of the biggest polluters on the planet now run the show.

This brings us to BHP. As a global resources player, with fingers in many more pies than just coal (indeed, it has spun its coal interests off into a company called South32), it has remained phlegmatic about carbon pricing, even as the MCA and others have got into a flap.

Read more: Say what you like about BHP, it didn’t squander the boom.

To BHP, the advent of carbon pricing in Australia was if anything a welcome development. The move offered two main benefits: valuable experience of doing business under carbon pricing, and a chance to influence policy more easily than in bigger, more complex economies.

In 2000, the company’s American chief executive, Paul Anderson, tried to get the Business Council of Australia to discuss ratification of the Kyoto Protocol (which would build pressure for local carbon pricing). He couldn’t get traction. Interviewed in 2007, he recalled:

I held a party and nobody came… They sent some low-level people that almost read from things that had been given to them by their lawyers. Things like, ‘Our company does not acknowledge that carbon dioxide is an issue and, if it is, we’re not the cause of it and we wouldn’t admit to it anyway.’

The schism

As the physicist Niels Bohr said, “prediction is very difficult, especially about the future”. I wouldn’t want to bet on whether BHP will actually go ahead and leave the MCA, or whether the Minerals Council will revise its hostile position on environmental sustainability.

BHP has promised to “make public, by 31 December 2017, a list of the material differences between the positions we hold on climate and energy policy, and the advocacy positions on climate and energy policy taken by industry associations to which we belong”.

In reaching for a metaphor to try and explain the situation, I find myself coming back to an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. The heroic crew has captured an individual from the “Borg”, a collective hive-mind entity. They plan to implant an impossible image in its brain, knowing that upon release it will reconnect, shunt the image upwards for the hive mind to try to understand, and thus drive the entire Borg stark raving mad as it tries in vain to compute the information it is receiving.

This analogy is admittedly crude, I’ll grant you. It is, I submit, also a pretty accurate picture of what might happen when an MCA member grows a climate conscience.

Paula Kahumbu: Enlightened conservation efforts are needed to save the world’s rhinos, combined with a total ban on trade in rhino horn

Today, September 22, is World Rhino Day. Rhinos were once widespread across Asia and Africa and even in Europe, where they are depicted on cave paintings. Today their situation is precarious.

The world population of the northern white rhino now consists of 5 individuals. Sudan, the last surviving male, is now beyond breeding age. He and two female companions are living out their lonely final years under the care of Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya.

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Victoria's renewable energy target of 40% by 2025 has passed the lower house – but the state opposition has vowed to kill it if they get into power.

Tesla prepares to announce "big battery" milestone, as Musk drops in for a space conference and storage industry awaits results of Victoria tender.

The 5.2m male reptile, one of the biggest ever seen in the state, was found with a bullet in its head in the Fitzroy river in Rockhampton

A massive saltwater crocodile – said to be one of the biggest ever seen in Queensland – has been shot dead in Rockhampton.

Police and state environmental officers were investigating after the 5.2m male reptile was found with a bullet in its head in the Fitzroy river on Thursday.

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Origin Energy will trial peer-to-peer solar energy trading using the blockchain-based platform of Perth start-up Power Ledger.

How Andrew Bolt and other right wing commentators picked up a new climate study published in the Nature Geosciences journal and got it hopelessly wrong.

It will enter clinical trials to prevent and treat the infection next year.

A new study shows that Neanderthal brains developed more slowly than ours.