Who supports a market solution for Climate Change?

Prof Ross Garnaut told about 1000 people assembled in the Brisbane City Hall on 11 July 2008 that the ‘centrepiece of our [the federal government] response to climate change is an Emissions Trading Scheme [ETS]. See http://bushtelegraph.wordpress.com/2008/07/11/garnaut-on-climate-change-the-market/

Who supports a market solution for Climate Change? Where is the evidence that the market will be able to prevent the current overproduction of greenhouse gases?

This is question I should have asked at the public forum on “australia’s energy [r] evolution” at 6pm QUT Gardens Point on Wednesday 16 July 2008.

A pretty small audience turned up at the QUT to hear some very good speeches about Energy Use in Queensland.

Toby Hutcheon from the Qld Conservation Council said that Qld is the highest greenhouse gas polluting state in the world (he must have meant per capita). He said that Qld has sufficient access to Solar, solar thermal and geothermal energy to provide 100% of our energy needs. He said that there was no political will in Qld to use renewable energy and given this situation in Qld and since PM Rudd comes from Queensland he has no credibility.

John Bell, the assistant dean of research at QUT said that energy is an issues because of climate change and peak oil. He said that we don’t need to use energy the way we are. We should look to personal consumption of energy and make personal changes to reduce our consumption. he said that the form of energy that industry needs is mainly heat and not electricity so we should change to heat energy.

The chairperson, Wendy Miller, played the U tube video called Go Solar showing the civil disobedience by Greenpeace at Swanbank power station.

She then introduced Julien Vincent from Greenpeace who said that Greepeace argued for the following terms of sustainable economic growth:

1. Clean energy
2. Natural limits
3. phase out dirty energy
4. equity
5. De-couple growth

See Australia’s energy [r] evolution

After the talk a wide range of questions were put to the speakers and one other Trevor Berrill who is an engineer that has been involved in sustainable energy education in Queensland and various environmental organisation like Friends of the Earth for many years.