The Department of Climate change referred to the newly released Oxford Dictonary Definition as:

“However, a common understanding as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary is making no net release of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions to the atmosphere”.

This statement does however misrepresent the OED definition which in full reads as:

“ carbon-neutral adj. (of a process, agency, etc.) making or resulting in zero net emission of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere; claiming to balance any carbon dioxide emission by some form of carbon offset”.

The difference is significant in that the Department of Climate Change has omitted the words in brackets “of a process, agency etc” which relates the outcome to a process or entity and not to aggregated economy wide emissions.

The Department of Climate Change has also deleted the text which is relevant to claiming the balance by some form of carbon offset which is also relevant to a process, agency, etc., and not economy wide aggregated emissions.

Can anyone tell me if it is some kind of professional sin make reference to a dictionary meaning in such a way leaving out essential elements of the meaning?

Tim K

“The Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme will be the primary mechanism through which Australia will seek to meet its emissions reduction objectives. The other major elements of the Government’s mitigation strategy are the expanded Renewable Energy Target, investment in renewables and carbon capture and storage, and action on energy efficiency. These comprise the four elements of the Government’s carbon pollution reduction strategy.”

and also states (page xxii) that our overall climate change strategy has three pillars, which might be called national mitigation, national adaptation, and multilateral action and diplomacy. The paragraph above is only describing the elements of the national mitigation strategy. There are many multilateral actions which are also potentially significant – apart from our participation in the post-Kyoto process, there’s also a “forest carbon” initiative involving Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, and our involvement in the Asia-Pacific Partnership and Major Economies Meetings, which I imagine will continue under Obama but will be folded into a much larger American climate change program. There’s also a ministerial dialogue with China about climate change, and the proposed Global CCS Institute, to be headed by Nick Otter:

http://www.europeanenergyforum.eu/upload/cv-of-mr-nick-otter

So to try to sum up the multilateral dimension of Australian actions: CCS is very prominent, and tied up with hopes that coal exports to China will grow to rival or exceed those to Japan. There’s the sectoral cooperation going on within the Asia-Pacific Partnership (working groups on cement, on buildings, on steel, on electricity, etc). There’s the forestry initiative, the details of which I know nothing about. And there’s our participation in pre-Copenhagen climate diplomacy, mostly by way of our membership in the JUSSCANNZ group, I imagine.

I would like to see us involved in multinational renewables R&D, and also getting behind the IEA’s proposal to turn itself into an energy-technology R&D clearinghouse (an offer made as part of its 450 and 550 Policy Scenarios developed last year), but so far I’m aware of no such initiatives.