Five things we learned this week ….

Could Rio’s $1.2 billion MRRT windfall reincarnate Rudd

Clean energy industry types despairing about the likely course of climate and renewables policy in an Abbott government may have gained a flicker of hope this year – from Rio Tinto’s $1.1 billion windfall from the Mining Resources Rent Tax.

The MRRT, as we have all been told, was supposed to take some of the cream from the mining giants’ super profits from the sale of commodities such as iron ore and coal, but far from raising $4 billion as was once envisaged, it allowed Rio Tinto to claim a tax benefit of $1.13 billion in a single year, allowing it to narrow its year losses to less than $3 billion from more than $4 billion.

This has come courtesy of a mechanism that allowed the companies to benchmark the “market value of its mining assets, and whose details appear to have been unknown to Treasury because it was negotiated by Treasurer Wayne Swan and Resources and Energy Minister Martin Ferguson.

It’s a massive embarrassment for the government, and particularly painful for Swan, and has sparked rumblings and much speculation for a return of Kevin Rudd, despite the repeated denials. As Michelle Grattan writes today, “Rudd has the demeanour of the king in exile, bent on recapturing the throne.” All sorts of scenarios are now playing out for the return of Rudd in the “ides of March”. How ironic that the the very tax that triggered his downfall could lay the groundwork for his resurrection. The politics of 2013 may not be as clear cut as they seemed.

Obama’s big climate challenge

Much has been made of US President’s Barack Obama’s new found vigour for climate action following his State of the Union address. But this graph provided by the economics at HSBC below shows the challenge he has ahead of him. The US has succeeded in reducing emissions in the last four years, but to meet its interim targets still requires a massive change away from business as usual.

HSBC says Obama has a few aces up his sleeve. Although several attempts at pushing through a cap and trade scheme have been rejected (since 2003), and a new plan will likely suffer the same fate, the Environmental Protection Authority can impose strict emissions limits on existing and new power plants. Obama has also pledged to double the amount of renewable capacity in the US by 2020, suggesting an average installation of more than 12GW of wind, solar, biomass and geothermal over the next seven years.

He wants tax credits to be made permanent, ut more controversially, he wants to use oil and gas revenues from public lands to fund alernative fuels for transports, and he wants to reduce energy wastage by half. HSBC says the carbon tax in not on the agenda now, but could return as part of a broader fiscal settlement.

The secret route that channelled $100m in denialist funds

An investigation by The Guardian has uncovered a secret route that has allowed conservative billionaires to channel nearly $120m to more than 100 groups casting doubt about climate science. The funds were doled out between 2002 and 2010 to a network of more than 100 different think-tanks and activist groups with the single purpose of redefining climate change from neutral scientific fact to a highly polarising “wedge issue” for hardcore conservatives, the Guardian writes.

The investigation found that by 2010, two Donor Trusts were channeling jut under $30m to a host of conservative organisations opposing climate action or science, out-funding even the notorious petroleum billionaires the Koch Brothers by a factor of 6 to 1.

 Alice in Wonderland policies in Australia

Give the Alice in Wonderland policy positions of the Republican Party and Australia’s conservative coalition towards carbon taxes -“the government can’t control the climate”, they both say from apparently shared cheat notes, it seems to have had an impact.

Take the state of Victoria, for instance: In 2010, then Labor Premier John Brumby had an ambitious target of a 20 per cent reduction in state emissions by 2020, along with a 25 per cent renewable energy target, including a 5 per cent big solar target.

How times change – conservative Premier Ted Baillieu has expressed his antipathy to wind and climate policies since before his election. And the paper on “securing Victoria’s economic future” issued from his office in December is basically devoid of any mention of renewable or climate. Wind energy gets a single mention, and solar gets two, one in the context of winding down incentives. But brown coal – and the economic prospects of exploiting even more of the resource – gets 12. The phrases “climate change” and “renewables” policies are only mentioned in the context of additional costs to consumers. Some vision for the future.