Twenty three years ago, on this day, July 14, 2000, the tensions any social democratic party faces were out in open…
A split is emerging between the main coal mining union and the ALP over Labor’s pledge to take early action to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
The ALP’s draft environment policy, released last week, calls for the introduction of a national carbon credit trading scheme ahead of any international trade system introduced under the Kyoto Protocol, the UN treaty limiting developed countries’ emissions of greenhouse gases.
But the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union is worried about the impact of the early introduction of such a scheme on the economy and employment particularly in energy-intensive sectors.
Hordern, N. 2000. Miners unhappy with Labor’s greenhouse pledge. The Australian Financial Review, 14 July, p.12.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 370ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that some folks within the ALP were trying to turn climate change into an issue, a bit at least, as a stick to beat Howard with. But it wasn’t easy…
What I think we can learn from this is that climate change is an extremely difficult issue to build red-green coalitions on, for multiple reasons.
What happened next
Howard won the 2001 Federal Election, thanks to vicious lies about Afghan refugees. And got another six years to delay and prevent climate action.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.