On the 28th of February 2003, the Business Council of Australia announces that it no longer have a position on whether Kyoto should be ratified on it or not [see here]. There has been a vicious fight within the Business Council of Australia. And the insurgents, people like BP’s Greg Bourne, have been unable to change position but are too big to ignore.
The broader context was the Commonwealth Government of Australia, led by John Howard, had, extracted a sweet deal for Australia at the December 1997 conference in Kyoto, but then failed to ratify it. This meant carbon trading was off the agenda for Australia forestry outfits and banks. It also was a source of frustration and anger for “progressive” business. Part of Howard’s argument was that business was united behind him. This BCA fight showed it was not.
Why this matters
You get these fights behind closed doors, within business associations – indeed, one of the roles of business associations is to be a venue for these sorts of spats, so they don’t take place devant les enfants. (Business associations have many other roles, providing information to members, lobbying, governments, etc. Providing training, standards, voluntary schemes, but as a venue, they’re pretty cool.) Now, one of the problems for researchers is that you can’t use freedom of information. You can’t interview people while they’re there in the thick of it, probably. And then, of course, when you do get hold of them afterwards. they’re telling you their version, their memories have faded, et cetera. But now I’m getting into methodology and epistemology, which were not, I suspect, why you came to this website
What happened next
It would be another three years before the cracks properly started showing in the Howard regime’s defence. By then Howard had scuppered another attempt at an Emissions Trading Scheme (2004). By April 2006 though, Westpac (a bank) and others formed one of a series of short-lived issue-specific groupings that would release a glossy report, lobby a bit and then fade away…
On this day 19 long long years ago George “Dubya” Bush announces “FutureGen”
Anon. 2003. Bush announces billion-dollar energy project. Agence France-Presse, 27 February.
WASHINGTON, Feb 27 (AFP) – President George W. Bush announced Thursday that the United States would lead a 10-year, one-billion- dollar effort to create the world’s coal-based, zero-emissions electricity and hydrogen power plant. [FutureGen]
The context is his resistance to anything that looks like regulation domestically, or international agreements. Still, in order to preserve electability, you have to mutter something about “technology-driven solutions and the like…” And that is pure catnip to people who don’t want to face facts (most folks, most of the time, some folks all of the time).
What happened next?
It failed, got rebranded (“FutureGen 2.0”) and failed again. Wikipedia has a decent article. fwiw.
On this day, eight years ago, Peabody Coal started an advertising campaign called “Advanced Energy for Life.” Because as the dirtiest fossil fuel, coal had a serious image problem, and therefore needed to conflate itself with notions of energy poverty.
Why this matters
What they’re trying to do when they do this is insinuate that anyone who is opposed to the burning of ever more coal somehow wants people in Africa to die young, after a miserable impoverished life.
What you’ll find, of course, is that the many of same people who are protesting about environment also would like debt relief (cancellation), democratisation technology transfer and all the rest of it.
But Peabody would rather have you believe that all environmentalists are racist Malthusian assholes all the time. Now, it is indisputable that some environmentalists historically and down into this present day, racist assholes, and explicitly and unashamedly others, confused or ignorant, and of course, most buy into the myths of it being possible to have everything for everyone and there being no trade offs.
What happened next
One of Australia’s briefer Prime Ministers, Tony Abbott, used the “coal is good for humanity” line when opening a coal-fired power station later that year.
Peabody is making money at the mo’, because gas prices have spiked and so coal is competitive. For now.
I’d recommend an article by James Meek in the London Review of Books about Scottish offshore wind energy and who is building the towers and the kits and under what conditions. But I digress.
What happened next
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s later that year when opening a coal mine, use one of the Peabody talking points. Coal is good for humanity. So that’s When for pee buddies, PR people,
Peabody has, of course, entered bankruptcy proceedings chapter 11, I think. But that doesn’t mean that they’re not that some people aren’t making money. It just means that times are tough for call my heart’s bleeding.
On 25th of February 2007, with the Australian – yes back to Australia – federal election, a matter of months away. newly-minted opposition leader Kevin Rudd and his shadow Environment Minister Peter Garrett of Midnight Oil are out there spruiking “A National Clean Coal Initiative.”
This the ALP needed because otherwise they couldn’t win Queensland, a major coal exporter. Clean coal had been a persistent theme or trend or meme – or bullshit, to use the Anglo-Saxon terminology – for 10 years. Nine years minus a day earlier, a clean coal CRC had been set up.
“Anon. 1998. Tests for green coal. Daily Telegraph, 26 February.
RESEARCH laboratories where scientists will work to make Australian coal the “cleanest” in the world, will be opened by Premier Bob Carr today. The Ian Stewart Wing of the chemical engineering laboratories at Newcastle University form part of the co-operative research centre for black coal utilisation. The centre, partially government funded, was established in 1995 to carry out world class research to maximise the value and performance of Australian black coal resources.”
The unions were in favour of clean coal, certain elite business, environmental NGOs like WWF were at least making the right noises. Because otherwise you can’t make the numbers add up. Apparently, you can’t unless you radically reduce emissions in the first place which is going to cause economic pain and dislocation and interrupt the “we can have our cake and eat it story” that politicians need to tell.
What happened next
Well, Rudd got elected. Garrett was a minister in his government before having to take the blame for pink bats. Garrett wrote a very good book about his time blue sky something and then returned to being the lead singer of Midnight Oil. I won’t repeat what Kevin Rudd got up to.
On 25th of February 1992 20 business associations from nine different countries try to slow down progress towards the impending Rio Earth Summit agreements by predicting economic calamity and doom: the same old story.
1992 On 25 February at UN headquarters (New York City, USA), 20 business associations from 9 countries released a joint statement to the fifth session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee for a Framework Convention on Climate Change….
Anon. 1992. International Business Associations Issue Statement on Climate Negotiations. Global Environmental Change. Vol. 4, No. 5 13 March.
You will be shocked, shocked to learn that Australian business interests were in that mix – “The business associations, nearly half of which are from Australia, are in the fields of fossil fuel and energy production, manufacturing, and metals.”
Why this matters
We need to remember that whenever governments and state institutions are forced to consider the long-term well-being of constituents/future generations, there will be short termist vested interests pushing in the opposite direction. That’s just the way it is.
What happened next
A weakened Earth Summit. Treaty text was put forward, not entirely due to business interest, but also the US administration of George HW Bush in June of 1992. This was then ratified and then gave us the COPs for climate and biodiversity. Meanwhile, the carbon dioxide accumulates, the biodiversity collapse accelerates. And to young folk out there, I’m sorry. We old fuckers, we blew it. You have every right to feel betrayed and gaslit let down by your parents and your grandparents
The business associations? They’re singing differently, but the song remains the same…
also known as “The last post.” (Almost) every day from Friday 11th to Thursday 24th February, a post (sometimes two) will appear on this site, to celebrate the Republic of Newtonia – a brief occupation of a site in Hulme in defence of Abbey Pond (near the Old Abbey Taphouse). In 1994, local people and environmental activists tried to stop the Council and the Science Park from filling in the much-loved pond. If you were there, and want to share your memories (and any photos or other material) please do get in touch via mcmonthly@manchesterclimatemonthly or on Twitter – @mcr_climate
Also, on Thurs 24th, the 28th anniversary of the Pond’s destruction, there is an online meeting, from 7.30pm, bringing together people who were at the Republic of Newtonia with campaigners defending green spaces now. You can book here (it’s free).
The campers knew the day would come. On Thursday 24th February, the Republic of Newtonia ended, under the bulldozers of the Council. There’s more to be said and written about this (there was a good piece in the Guardian, for example) but for now, a written account (from Do or Die, the Earth First publication), and a portion of the interview with Unity Kelly.
Anyone reading the Guardian on Friday 25th of February would have been met with the bizarre photo on page 5 of two individuals standing knee deep in icy water in a pond in Hulme.
This pair were locked together through a length of gas pipe, and one of them (me), had a 12 foot piece of children’s climbing frame d-locked to his neck. Was this a bizarre form of aquatic auto-asphyxiation? Was it a new cure for smoking perhaps? In fact it was the latest in the increasingly long line of Direct Action taken by Manchester Earth First!.
For two weeks we camped out on and around Abbey Pond, one of the most ecologically diverse ponds, (shouldn’t that read ’only ponds’) in Greater Manchester and the only green space in a huge I960’s architectural abortion that is Hulme, an area near Manchester City Centre. We risked death in one of the most violent cities in England, and weather which fell to bellow minus ten, snow, hail and rain were thrown at us by the great global warmer. We were trying to stop the Science Park, (City Council. University of Manchester and UMIST are shareholders with fellow planet trashers Ciba-Geigy, Granada TV, Courtaulds and Ferranti), from building Phase Four- a laboratory, offices and huge car park to join the other one that has no cars in which was built during phase three.
The actions in the intervening two weeks ranged from the cuddly ‘Burst Main Event’, an alternative fair for kids, to a fax from David Bellamy, (never mind the RTZ sponsorship and the Ford cars commercial), to direct action when the bailiffs came on to the site to remove us. We had massive support from locals of all ages, although getting them to turn up and get into the way of the development was harder.
Local kids, more used to trashing cars than most eco-activists, ranted about too many car parks and how much they loved the only green space near their homes.
The site consisted of about 0.6 hectares with a small pond surrounded by 25 year old trees.
A tree house was built and hammocks hung, while we also built the ‘Wanstonia’- concrete bollards to lock arms through. There were 30 of us up at the site at 7.30 am and about the same number of police and bailiffs, but with outside agent provocateurs brought in from Lancaster, Liverpool and Leeds, we delayed trashing the pond by seven hours. Every trick in the book was used- D-Locking, tree sitting, pond sitting, obstruction and young children. But in the end most of our activists were arrested and while we remained imprisoned the pond had a small proportion of its waters removed by a tanker, while most wildlife understandably stayed near to the bottom where they were bull- dozed over with rubble. We plan more action.
Hyperactive Pete, Manchester Earth First!
And from Unity –
And there was this roundmetal disc, one of the things that the Earth Firsters had rescued, they must have used several shopping trolleys [to transport it to the site] it was the base of a children’s merry-go-round in Hulme. And we put it up on the frame.
And as the bulldozers were coming in, I walloped it symbolically with a piece of wood, and it must have resonated, it made ar bloody good noise, the knell of doom resonating all over Hulme, until people pleaded me to stop doing their heads in!.
On the day 23rd of February 2009, Australia’s climate minister, Senator Penny Wong – full disclosure, I knew her when we were both at Adelaide University – confused the policy that she was advocating the carbon pollution reduction scheme.
“Under pressure from the mounting criticisms about how the CPRS cancels out the benefits from individual emissions reductions, Wong responded on the ABC’s 7.30 Report on February 23 that individual reductions will allow the government to increase carbon targets in subsequent years. This prompted an incredulous response from Andrew Macintosh, associate director of the Australian National University Centre for Climate Law and Policy. “Either Wong doesn’t understand her own scheme or she is deliberately lying”, he wrote on Crikey.com.au on February 24.”
The context is this. The Howard Government, 1996 to 2007 had successfully resisted all calls to meaningful action and climate change and even meaningless stuff like an ETS, even from within its own cabinet. Kevin Rudd used this uselessness on climate change – or rather, this defence of fossil fuel interests, which is not useless to fossil fuel interests – as part of his branding, to become prime minister. And in 2008, a torturous, confused, complex, complicated and ultimately corrupted process to create a carbon pollution reduction scheme had unfolded. 2009 was to be the year when the legislation was pushed through and what Wong was doing was trying to sell it. But the CPRS was insanely complex and hard to explain. And I for one, taken with the idea of a very simple carbon tax which might be less “efficient”, but more effective and hard to game was the way forward. It was not to be…
Why this matters
Because when politicians make complicated proposals, they lose the public and the public thinks this is going to be unfair, there are going to be loopholes, the rich will get their way and the public is usually right. “And the policies are planned, which we won’t understand” as TV Smith sings…
What happened next
The CPRS failed to get through first time in the middle of the year, as was expected, and then didn’t get through again in November, December. And therein lies a story….
On this day, February 22, in the year 2000, Japan and Australia talked up a deal that would have allowed carbon offsets and carbon trading using New South Wales as a giant carbon sink.
Zinn, C. 2000. Japan in eco-credit deal with Australia. The Guardian, 22 February https://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/feb/22/2 Australian forest authorities have been contracted to plant 40,500 hectares of trees (about 100,000 acres) on behalf of one of Japan’s largest power companies in a controversial scheme to fight global warming. The trees are meant to offset some of the greenhouse gas emissions generated in Tokyo. The Tokyo Electric Power Company signed the deal, which could cost up to £50m, with the New South Wales’s forestry division to grow hard and softwood plantations to capture carbon dioxide (CO2). But environmentalists question whether the project, scheduled to run for 10 years, will work. They claim the area is too small and that the forests must be maintained forever or the CO2 will go back into the atmosphere when the trees are processed.
The context is this. New South Wales Premier, Bob Carr had long been aware, and I mean long been aware of climate change as a problem – going all the way back to 1971 and a television appearance of Paul Ehrlich. He became premier of New South Wales in 1995. And there was a lot of interest in carbon trading and carbon sinks in the aftermath of the December 1997 meeting of the Conference of the Parties in Kyoto, Japan,
Japan, although energy efficient, was using a lot of coal from Australia. And so there was a certain symmetry in the deal, which did not ensue, because Australia just wasn’t going to ratify Kyoto. And without that, it couldn’t be “in” the sorts of deals.
Why this matters
We need to remember that there are all sorts of fancy footwork, elegant solutions, in inverted commas, that do not come to pass. And even if they had, they would probably have been a disaster for biodiversity and not tackled the real problem. No, the basic problem is, nobody wants to cut their emissions, if it’s gonna cost money, and dampen the great God, economic growth
What happened next
Kyoto finally became law (minus the USA and Australia) in 2005. 17 years later, we’ve retreated from any binding targets to a “pledge-and-review” farce called the Paris Agreement. We’re so screwed.
On this day, February 21 1995, eminent climate scientist Tom Wigley tried (for the second time) to get Pat Michaels, climate “contrarian,” to engage in the IPCC review process for the second assessment report.
… Patrick Michaels was invited to contribute to Chapter 8. He declined to do so. One of the lead authors of Chapter 8, Tom Wigley, wrote to Pat Michaels on November 21, 1994, and on February 21, 1995, soliciting comments on the portrayal of Michaels’s Franklin Institute paper in a December 8, 1994 version of Chapter 8. Prof. Michaels did not respond to these requests. Gelbspan, R. (1998) Page 235
Michaels who’s still alive, so I have to be careful about what I say, declined.
There was no margin in it for him. It’s easier to be lobbing bricks from the outside, and not having to actually engage with the reality of what’s being said, rather than a straw man you’ve created.
Wigley had been working on climate change for decades, is he still alive and kicking. A few years earlier he had led on a day-long briefing of Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet, which I may cover in April…
What happened next
The second Assessment Report of the IPCC got viciously attacked because it said that there was a discernible influence of human activity. Ultimately, the ferocity of the attacks made it impossible for some corporate members of the Global Climate Coalition to stay on board. And you see this, the attack dogs don’t realise that by barking and snarling as loud as they are ultimately making it difficult for their owners to keep feeding them
On this day in 2006 Australian academic Clive Hamilton gave a speech in an Australian country town called Adelaide. In it he named his “dirty dozen” of polluters who were preventing climate action. The list included South Australian Senator Nick Minchin, Prime Minister John Howard, journalists and business figures.
Hamilton was, at that time one of scandalously few academics trying to talk about we’re one of the few academics trying to talk about the capture of the Australian state by fossil interests. He had also co-edited a volume called “Silencing Dissent.”
There was no comeback to his speech. Nobody sued.
Why this matters
For a long time, from the early 90s through to the mid-2000s, climate change – and especially resistance to climate policy – was a very very niche area. There really were not that many people trying to keep tabs on who was slowing down what, and how.
What happened next
The Dirty Dozen continued to be dirty. The moment of concern was hijacked and wasted. Australia has had an horrific time of it with climate policy, gridlock and mayhem. Carpe the diems.
