Thirteen years ago, on this day, February 15th, 2011, Australian journalist Lenore Taylor, who’d been covering climate policy since the very early 1990s, lays out the choices.
For a decade the main parties in Australian politics have been choosing expensive, dumb policies to reduce greenhouse emissions over the cheap, smart option of an efficiently designed carbon price.
They’ve consciously picked ideas that cost 10 times more than the cheapest option of a carbon price, which they have repeatedly promised, only to change their minds.
Taylor, L. 2011. Time to knuckle down to make a choice, before it’s too late. The Age, 15 February.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 392ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the battles over climate policy had been raging in Australia really since – depending on how you count – early 2007 when Kevin Rudd, as new opposition leader had started using it as a baseball bat to clobber John Howard. By the time of Taylor’s article there had been four years of back and forth, sound and fury. Lenore Taylor, who had been covering the climate issue on and off since the early 1990s,, was pointing out that there was a time when you either piss or get off the pot, and there were consequences for inaction. And guess what? We’re now living with the earliest consequences of inaction. There are more, nastier, consequences to come.
What we can learn is that smart well-respected journalists have been calling it like it is since the year dot. But they actually have a relatively limited power.
What happened next Prime Minister Julia Gillard introduced legislation. It was shepherded through Parliament and became law. And then the next government, under Tony Abbott, quite quickly got rid of it. And were super-cheerful that they’d done so. Here’s a photo to prove it.
An act of astonishing vandalism, stupidity. But there you have it.
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.
Also on this day:
Feb 15, 1994 – Isaac Newton versus the Global Forum #Manchester