Twenty six years ago, on this day, October 10, 1997, the Melbourne Age ran a front page story about businesses looking forward to Australia agreeing to actual emissions cuts…
Canberra — The Federal Government’s hard-line stance against greenhouse gas reductions has failed to win the support of Australian business.
Two-thirds of 630 company directors in a national survey across a range of sectors supported global reduction targets for Australia, with 70 per cent of those favoring a legally binding agreement.
However, directors were almost evenly divided on how targets should be set, with 50 per cent supporting a uniform goal across all countries and 48 per cent supporting different targets reflecting local economic conditions.
The Prime Minister, Mr John Howard, said this week the Government would not sign an agreement unless Australia was allowed to continue increasing emissions.
He said binding, uniform targets would unfairly damage the economy, costing tens of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in potential investment in energy and energy-intensive export industries.
The survey on environmental realism, by KPMG and the Australian Institute of Company Directors, found that 69 per cent of directors regarded environmental measures as a cost but also as an opportunity for innovation leading to improved commercial performance.
Miller, C. (1997) Business Supports Gas Emission Cuts. The Age, October 10, page 1
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 363.5ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was Australian Prime Minister John Howard was trying to claim that business was united in opposition to a strong deal at Kyoto in which Australia agreed to be ambitious.
Someone had the bright idea to actually do an anonymous survey of business and it turns out the results were not what Howard had said. Therefore this was front page news
What I think we can learn from this
That it is good to to not take the claims of your opponents at face value and to actually test their claims especially if the claim is that “business is united behind policy X or Y”, because almost by definition there are businesses who would benefit from the status quo being shaken up and they would like the state to do some shaking up.
New businesses may be able to form trade associations and get their case under the noses of the right ministers, make ministers think “this is a constituency that can’t be ignored/fobbed off or told to piss off “ Whether those new and small trade associations can get in the media and start challenging existing “common sense” and create a new common sense is another question
What happened next
Howard sent Robert Hill as Environment Minister to Kyoto. Australia got an incredibly generous deal, partly through good luck but also exhaustion. And essentially were told they could just keep emitting what the hell they liked.
It was a disgrace it was possibly the most shameful moment in Australia’s climate diplomacy against some stiff competition
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.