Thirty three years ago, on this day, October 13, 1990, Australian Environment Minister Ros Kelly defended the decision taken to have loopholes in the climate change target…
Twenty six years ago, on this day, October 13, 1997, Australia was busy saying “yeah, nah” to the world…
The Minister for the Environment, Ros Kelly, defended the Government’s conditional greenhouse target, saying an unqualified one would have been “irresponsible”.
On Thursday, Cabinet agreed to a target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 20 per cent on 1988 levels within the next 15 years.
However, no action will be taken that might adversely affect Australian international competitiveness.
Lamberton, H. 1990. Kelly defends greenhouse ‘conditions’. Canberra Times, 13 October, p 3
Greenhouse countdown
The temperature is rising in the debate over greenhouse and Australia is coming under increasing pressure to declare its hand ahead of the Kyoto summit. A lot is at stake, writes Lenore Taylor.
Every world leader John Howard speaks to about greenhouse gas emissions wants him to answer one question. What can Australia do?
Bill Clinton asked him at the White House. Tony Blair asked him at 10 Downing Street. Neither got an answer.
Australia has invested enormous diplomatic and political energy explaining what it can’t do – and according to the Government it definitely can’t agree to any absolute reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
But it has failed to say what it can do.
Taylor, L. 1997. The heat is on. Australian Financial Review, 13 October, p. 16.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 354/363ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was in 1990 the Australia Federal Government had made a promise with tricksy caveats that had kept its domestic allies – or people that needed to pretend they agreed – on side and allowed for the international reputation not to be too much in the toilet. Seven years is a long time in politics. In 1997 John Howard was doing his level best to to minimize Australia’s commitments under the UNFCCC that Ros Kelly had signed. The State and corporate interests, as they saw them, had not really changed – Howard was simply being more honest about it all, because he was being forced to be honest with his back up against the wall.
What I think we can learn from this
That it is too easy in every sense to tell stories about government policy-based entirely around public utterances or perceived personalities of state functionaries leaders. I have been guilty of that of course, we all have. But we also need to remember that states are battlegrounds of and reflections of powerful interests, be they ideological such as churches but also private companies and multinationals etc. Within this mix you’ll also find the usual collection of unions and civil society busy-bodies and do-gooders and somewhere at the bottom the usual collection of, well, people who are trying to figure out if they can afford to stay alive next week and both heat and eat.
What happened next
Australia kept up the criminality.
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.