South Africa's Carbon-Tax Debate Disappoints
<http://triplecrisis.com/south-africas-carbon-tax-debate-disappoints/>
/Patrick Bond/ <http://triplecrisis.com/author/patrick-bond/>
http://triplecrisis.com/south-africas-carbon-tax-debate-disappoints/#more-5498
To be sure, it's a difficult period for imposing new environmental
taxes, given ongoing financial sector power over public policy. With the
entry of European Union airlines into the region's fast-collapsing
Emissions Trading Scheme
<http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=163164>, a group
of non-European countries led by the Chinese is revolting
<http://www.skynews.com.au/eco/article.aspx?id=725292&vId=> against
paying higher air fares to and from Europe.
There are bad and good arguments about carbon taxation here. According
to a /China Daily /report/, /"Europe's compulsory charges are set to
have great impact on China's aviation industry, and more profound
influences may be found in the export sector. China therefore strongly
opposes the EU's unilateral action, viewing the EU's move as violating
the United Nations Climate Change Framework Convention and related
regulations of the International Air Transport Association."
The North's opportunities for creeping carbon taxes will rise or fall in
this battle, since finding agreement on the UN's 'common but
differentiated responsibility' (a good argument against imposing the tax
on poorer countries) will be near impossible.
Would a carbon tax help slow climate change? It depends on how high it
must be in order to generate conservation incentives. As HSBC bank
economists argued in a report released on March 8, the recent Brent
crude oil price rise to 96 euros/barrel had the equivalent disincentive
to emit CO2 as would a carbon price of 153 euros/tonne (ten times higher
than most current proposals). The European Union's Emissions Trading
Scheme now sells carbon at just 8 euros/tonne. As HSBC put it, "Even
pricing carbon at its total estimated damage costs of 64 euros/tonne has
equivalent economic impacts to an oil price rise of only $24/bbl."
South Africa, an in-between country that hosted the UN's climate summit
(COP17) last December, should reasonably be expected to also hold a
rigorous, far-ranging debate on transitioning to a low-carbon economy
through strategic state investments and by imposing taxes on egregious
polluters. East of Johannesburg, for instance, Sasol's
coal/gas-to-liquid petroleum refinery at Secunda is still the world's
worst CO2 emissions site, while the Eskom parastatal electricity
supplier is building the world's third and fourth largest coal-fired
power plants at Medupi and Kusile, north and west of Joburg, also
despoiling the region's fragile water supplies.
Sadly though, we have not raised climate consciousness to the point that
even a rudimentary conversation has begun on either command-and-control
regulatory reductions or neoliberal 'get the prices right' strategies to
internalize pollution externalities. We still have no clue as to how
quickly carbon taxes would be passed to consumers, and whether price
elasticities generate genuine behavioural change -- or simply more class
apartheid.
Worst of all, the state regulatory option appears off the table. Last
month, President Jacob Zuma's State of the Nation address
<http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/80007> and Finance
Minister Pravin Gordhan's Budget Speech
<http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/02/29/market-climate-failure/> set the
tone for renewed pro-corporate, high-carbon underdevelopment, announcing
more than $100 billion worth of new infrastructure for minerals export,
smelting and port expansion. Fracking shale-gas extraction also appears
imminent, with Shell proposing to drill SA's most water-sensitive area,
the Karoo.
Evidently, SA civil society's watchdogging of the triple-crisis nexus of
finance, development and environment is not working. Moreover, last
week, Parliament gave constituents a lesson
<http://www.pmg.org.za/report/20120229-national-planning-commission-all-issues-relating-pursuance-low-carbon?utm_source=Drupal&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Free%20Alerts>
on how /not/ to discuss low-carbon development. Environment Committee
chairperson Johnny de Lange is best known for two interventions in
parliament, namely physically fighting an opposition party member and
then admitting his ministry was losing SA's infamous fight against crime
<http://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/wind-knocked-out-of-the-fight-against-crime-1.412602?ot=inmsa.ArticlePrintPageLayout.ot>.
He proved unresilient when facing up to the world's greatest challenge,
throwing another blind punch at the environment and, according to
Parliamentary Monitoring Group minutes, ignoring carbon taxation
entirely: "De Lange commented that a large part of the population were
poor and struggled to survive every day, and the last thing they would
want to think about would be the future."
In reality, grassroots movements -- such as the South Durban Community
Environmental Alliance (disclosure: I'm a member) -- make regular
appeals to bring down Eskom's extreme electricity prices as an urgent
matter of daily life, for they have soared 150 percent since 2008 to pay
for Medupi and Kusile (not to mention another $45 billion we expect to
be billed for nuclear power plant construction in the coming 15 years).
The way to do so is to /halt new coal-fired powerplant construction/ and
simultaneously, so as to avoid demand pressure, /cut off the supply of
the world's cheapest electricity
<http://eepublishers.co.za/article/eskom-bhp-billiton-and-the-secret-electricity-pricing-deals.html>/
to BHP Billiton and Anglo American Corporation. The former guzzles more
than 10 percent of SA electricity, providing just 1500 jobs in its main
aluminum smelters.
Any such attack on these mega-corporations requires much more social and
labour pressure, as well as a Just Transition alternative such as that
recently developed by the 'Million Climate Jobs
<http://www.climatejobs.org.za/documents/campaign-booklet/180-climatejobsbooklet2011.html>'
campaign. It's still very early in the process, and we can expect
interminable delays from a Treasury reluctant to harm mining houses
which are already lobbying vigorously against a tax
<http://www.miningweekly.com/article/mining-heavy-sa-industry-group-issues-carbon-tax-warning-2012-01-23>.
In its most detailed document
<http://www.treasury.gov.za/public%20comments/Discussion%20Paper%20Carbon%20Taxes%2081210.pdf>,
Pretoria's neoliberal Treasury officials claim, "a tax of $10/t CO2e,
increasing to around $25/t CO2e would be both feasible and appropriate
to achieve the desired behaviourial changes and emissions reduction
targets." Those emissions-cut ambitions (34 percent by 2020 from a very
high 2009 'Growth Without Constraints' scenario) are rather low, given
our vast historical responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions: third
highest per capita rate amongst the 20 major emitters.
If we want a genuine transformation of coal-addicted SA capitalism and
for Climate Justice to prevail, it looks like we should put much more
pressure on the state to rethink its absurd investment plans, to cut
power to smelters while ensuring metal workers have jobs in renewables,
and to roll out more Free Basic Electricity (beyond current token
supplies of 50 kWh/household/month to 'indigent' families).
The only good news from South Africa is that with the world's carbon
markets in crisis, virtually no one is talking about emissions trading
<http://www.storyofcapandtrade.org/>, unlike misguided politicians and
policy wonks in Sacramento and Beijing.
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