Tony “conservationist” Abbott has been telling the Americans his government supports “strong action” on climate change. Sadly, every piece of available evidence says the opposite.

First, his policy is a competitive government grants scheme in which participation by polluters is voluntary. As veteran US lawmaker Henry Waxman told the ABC this week: “That never worked anywhere.”



Actually, we didn’t really need a US politician to tell us that. It was the advice of the 2007 Shergold report to the Howard government, which said carbon pricing was better because regulatory approaches would “impose a far heavier burden on economic activity" and in 2010, when the auditor general was scathing about a similar competitive grants scheme run by the Howard and Rudd governments.



Second, Abbott’s contention that his $2.5bn “Direct Action” plan is equivalent to a $40bn program if it were scaled up to US economy proportions is actually not proof that Australia is doing a lot (we are still aiming only for the bare minimum target of a 5% reduction in emissions by 2020) but instead clear evidence that Direct Action is an extremely expensive way to (maybe) achieve this modest emissions reduction.



After Obama’s cap and trade scheme failed to make it through the Congress he is also using non-market ways to reduce emissions, mainly new rules and regulations, but not direct government handouts.



The Coalition has also been warned about the costs of voluntary grants schemes. For example the “blue book” prepared by the Treasury for a possible incoming Coalition government in 2010 said “a market mechanism can achieve the necessary abatement at a cost per tonne of emissions that is far lower than alternative direct-action policies”. And Malcolm Turnbull made the same point in his speech to parliament after he was deposed as leader because of his support for an emissions trading scheme, when he said direct-action style schemes were “a recipe for fiscal recklessness on a grand scale” and “schemes where bureaucrats and politicians pick technologies and winners, doling out billions of taxpayers’ dollars, neither are economically efficient nor will be environmentally effective”.



Third, the actual measure of “strong action” on climate change is how deeply countries are willing to cut their emissions, not how they get there. Before the election, Abbott and the environment minister, Greg Hunt, regularly restated a Coalition commitment to increase Australia's 2020 emissions reduction target to up to 25% under a specific set of conditions for global action set down in 2009 and accepted by both major parties.



After the election the independent Climate Change Authority advised the conditions for a target higher than 5% had already been met, and when compared with the actions of other countries, 5% no longer represented a "credible option".



But Abbott insisted; “Australia will meet our 5% emissions reduction target, but this government has made no commitments to go further than that. We certainly are in no way looking to make further binding commitments in the absence of very serious like binding commitments from other countries, and there is no evidence of that.”



The Coalition now intends to abolish the Climate Change Authority. It has not said how it will decide on a post-2020 emissions reduction target ahead of the next big international meeting in Paris next year.



Fourth, available modeling says $2.5bn is not enough to meet even the minimum 5% target and doing anything beyond that, which Australia obviously eventually must, would be prohibitively expensive. This is not government modelling, because the government hasn’t done any.

Modelling by Reputex climate analytics, commissioned by the environment group WWF-Australia, found that the money set aside by the Coalition to buy abatement was likely to fall short by $5.9bn a year between 2015 and 2020, or between $20bn and $35bn in total. Modeling by Sinclair Knight Merz/MMA and Monash University's Centre of Policy Studies, commissioned by the Climate Institute, which used assumptions more generous to the Coalition, found it would need at least another $4bn. Abbott has said if Direct Action falls short he will not allocate any more money.



Fifth, the government is not only repealing the carbon price but also almost every other related government policy or program, including the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, the Australian Renewable Energy Agency and the Climate Commision, and has appointed a self-professed climate sceptic, businessman Dick Warburton, to review the renewable energy target, with a strong expectation the target will be wound back.



Sixth, Abbott rejects the link between climate change and extreme weather events, rejects the idea that climate change may mean that all the coal in Australia cannot be sold and burned, and the government does not reference climate change in policies which climate science suggests would be impacted by it, for example the drought white paper.



In 2009, Turnbull, still smarting at his demise, wrote: “The fact is that Tony and the people who put him in his job do not want to do anything about climate change. They do not believe in human-caused global warming. As Tony observed on one occasion 'climate change is crap' or if you consider his mentor, (then) senator (Nick) Minchin, the world is not warming, it’s cooling and the climate change issue is part of a vast leftwing conspiracy to de-industrialise the world.”



Turnbull may have been wrong. Abbott may have revised his views since then. But on the basis of the available evidence, not by much. It may indeed be possible to meet credible greenhouse emission reduction targets in an affordable way using policies other than a carbon price. But on the basis of the available evidence, not by using this policy.

