Twenty seven years ago, on this day, July 25, 1996, then-new Prime Minister John Howard was correctly identified as a muppet. Sorry, puppet.
The Howard Government has refused to endorse Labor’s program to support research into renewable ethanol fuel, drawing sharp criticism from industry and the Australian Democrats.
At a meeting with ethanol industry representatives yesterday, the Minister for Resources and Energy, Senator Warwick Parer, refused to guarantee continuing commitment to a bounty scheme and a pilot plant which were funded by the former Labor Government to encourage cost-effective production of the alternative fuel.
Martin, C. 1996. Howard a ‘fossil fuel puppet’, Australian Financial Review, 26 July, p. 16.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 363.7ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that John Howard has not been Australian Prime Minister long (March of 1996). But it’s pretty obvious that whatever lingering hopes, environmentalists and producers of ”environmentally friendly fuel” ethanol were not going to get much love. And their low expectations were met.
What I think we can learn from this is that a new government whether it has a different ideology or a leader with different priorities can suddenly not be returning the calls of various actors, be they entrepreneurs or social movement organisations or whatever. And windows of opportunity, both for the social and technological innovations can close really rapidly. And of course, everyone knows that, which is why you get such desperation about any given election because opportunities for either necessary research and development or sucking on the public tit, (depending on your perspective) will be curtailed. And so it came to pass in this case.
What happened next
Howard ruled Australia for 11 years. He did everything he could to squash renewables with some success. Well, certainly delay.
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.