The RET could complement a stringent ETS since there is no guarantee renewables will displace a gram of coal. Since non-hydro renewables were only 4,000 in 2006 I'd say there is buckley's chance of getting 16,000 hydro + 29,000 non-hydro = 45,000 Gwh in 2020. There would need to be solar panels on every square inch and a wind farm in every suburb. Since politicians are a predictable bunch I think what will happen is that medium sized combined cycle gas plants will spring up like mushrooms. That in itself could displace some coal baseload but also will back up a number of 'show' wind farms and solar plants. The next trick will be to deem the gas backup as 'honorary' renewable. Voila less CO2 more 'renewables'. Since domestic gas will be LNG parity priced Australian electricity tariffs will probably double to be more like Germany.

On the question of per capita emissions I think it is time to say that some countries have too many people. Why should Bangladesh have 150 million people not 15 million? Lord Stern points out that most Chinese emissions can be attributed to the middle class minority not the rural poor. There is just not enough fossil fuel for a billion more people in both China and India to achieve Western middle class lifestyles.

To sum up
1) politicians will probably fiddle the numbers on the ETS and RET
2) a global per capita CO2 standard is unachievable.

The problem with global warming is that we will all boil to death unless governments do something now. We are destroying the planet and there will be nothing left for our grandchildren. Ordinary human beings are imperfect, but government can be presumed to be all-knowing and omnipotent. Anything governments do is self-evidently ethical, so that disposes of any ethical concerns in executive action.

Government should order the army to shoot any human being using carbon. This will will stop the sin of humans using natural resources, which will be better for the environment, which will make the world a better place.

There is no excuse for anyone dissenting from this line, since it only means they are the stooges and shills of evil multinationals, intent on causing pollution by supplying human wants. Therefore they should be shot first.

However anyone jetting around the world to climate-blather conferences, or using electricity to publish their opinions on the internet in favour of totalitarian control of production for climate purposes, is in a privileged moral class and their use of fossil fuels is sacrosanct.

"I am sir Oracle, as who should ope his mouth, let no dog bark."
Shakespeare

Does anyone seriously believe that our planet differentiates between greenhouse gas emissions made per capita or in absolute terms? Wong is wrong if she thinks so and irresponsible if she thinks implementation of her policies will make the slightest difference to an increasingly bleak future for the human species.

Not even the weasel-words of Rudd or Garnauts political slight of tongue make the slightest difference to the fact that stupid, willful homo sapiens is pushing 40 million tonnes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere per annum. Does anyone seriously believe that emissions on this scale can continue or, as proposed by many countries (Australia included) be increased with impunity?

Can there be any doubt that pollution on this scale spells a very bleak and much shorter future for our species than most people imagine? Scientists repeatedly alert us to the dire consequences of doing what we are doing. Others warn us of the potential for dangerous climate change, water wars, famine and mass movement of people in search of dwindling areas able to support them.

We ignore their admonitions because it is not happening yet – well not seriously or continuously. We are assured things will be OK for at least the next 50 years – and by then things might get better. But if we keep on doing what we are doing, “things” will not get better.

Over the next 50 years, once in a century events such as heatwaves, draughts and tidal surges will become more common, causing increasing strife and loss of life. Then we will start to get worried, really worried. But by then it will be too late to take the corrective action which we could now be taking but choose not to.

‘Relax’, people like the Queensland Premier tell us. ‘Out coal exports are important to the State budget and anyway, there is nothing we can do to change climate change. We must have to learn to live with it.’ The problem, which Anna Bligh and Rudd choose not to talk about, is that many of us may die trying to do so.

It all comes back to the same point.

Nuclear.

Note that France has 70% less GHG emissions per capita than Aus, and produces about 75% of its electricity from nuclear. No coincidence.

Just a minor (?) quibble JonJay

We are spewing 8,000 million tonnes (8Gt) into the atmosphere (although the GFC did have an impact on that figure) - not 40 million.

_________

Peter Hume

In case you didn't notice, your post consists entirely of
a) personal argument, and
b) appeal to absent authority (apologies to William S)

Q&A

If global GHG pollution is as you claim, only 8,000 million tonnes per annum, how come global emissions were recorded by reputable authorities as being 28,000-31,000 million tonnes in 2006 ?

Could it be that they are all wrong and that the problem with carbon pollution is nowhere near as bad as we think ? So, where did the annual emissions figure of 8,000 million tonnes come from ?