Labor's timid energy plan continues to protect coal from carbon price: Bandt
Labor's timid energy plan continues to protect coal from carbon price: Bandt
Greens climate change and energy spokesperson Adam Bandt MP said Labor’s energy policy announced today fails to tackle coal and is another capitulation to Tony Abbott by dumping a carbon price in favour of a policy scavenged from the Liberals’ rubbish bin.
Mr Bandt said the policy also fails to act on climate change by doing little more than business-as-usual, failing the test set by the recent IPCC report on global warming. There is no policy to ensure a planned phase out of coal fired power plants.
“Labor is still scared of Tony Abbott and has run up the white flag on a carbon price, joining the Coalition's protection racket for coal,” said Mr Bandt.
“Labor has given up on having a law to cut pollution.”
“Labor’s timid energy plan is a polluter’s dream and will keep coal in the system for decades, much longer than the world’s scientists are saying is needed to avoid climate breakdown.”
“Scavenging a policy from the Liberals’ rubbish bin is not good enough.”
“As a climate policy, this will do nothing to stop the planet burning.”
“Labor is letting coal off the hook while offering little more than business as usual for renewables. Experts predict we’ll get to 41% renewables by 2030 anyway, so Labor is really only proposing an extra 9% renewables over 11 years.”
“Subsidising battery storage and underwriting renewables, policies pinched from the Greens, are good ideas but not enough. Australia needs a proper economy-wide plan underpinned by a carbon price.”
“By copying the Liberals and dragging their economy wide target into the electricity sector, Labor is also expecting the rest of the economy to do much more, something they criticised the Coalition for doing only a few weeks ago. The transport sector and farmers shouldn’t bear the burden of Labor’s failure to stand up to the coal polluters.”
The IPCC recently reported that the world would need to close two-thirds of its coal-fired power stations by 2030 to avoid a dangerous 1.5 degrees of global warming.
Contact: Gideon Reisner, 0429 109 054
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