Seventeen years ago, on this day, March 22nd, 2007, all the right words get said by the Australian unions.
The ACTU has called for sweeping national reforms across transport, mining, agriculture, construction, education and public health to tackle climate change and generate new jobs. The comprehensive green action plan will increase pressure on federal Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd to adopt a more radical climate change policy as Labor prepares for next month’s national conference. Reforms outlined in the ACTU’s newly endorsed climate change strategy include government subsidies for energy efficient retrofitting of buildings, new mandatory green building codes for all commercial buildings, large-scale reuse of treated effluent, improved vehicle fuel efficiency and greater use of shipping to cut national transport emissions. ACTU secretary Greg Combet described climate change as ”the pre-eminent policy challenge of our time”, and urged industry to ”face up to global warming and be accountable for investing in sustainable jobs rather than raising the fear of job losses and expecting government handouts”.
Beeby, R. 2007. Union pressure on climate. Canberra Times, 22 March.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 384ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context is that everyone in Australia was being performatively concerned about climate change since about September of the previous year. To be fair, the ACTU had been wringing their hands on climate since 1989. But they had allowed – fatally – the mining union to be in charge of energy policy, which meant very weak climate policy, very pro-fossil fuels climate policy. And by now, the ACTU was messing around with the whole idea of carbon capture and storage, see Coal21, etc. And this was the latest iteration of that.
What we learn is that trade unions are really good on workers rights, and essential in my opinion, and can be incredibly innovative, and be engines of democracy. But they can also be unhappily on climate, largely crap; not all of them all of the time, but too many of them most of the time. And the books I’ve read, and the articles I’ve read, are a little bit too hagiographic for my liking.
What happened next? Kevin Rudd, once he became prime minister, threw insane quantities of taxpayers’ money at the Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute, for which there’s virtually nothing to show.
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:
March 22, 1960 – US Television warning of carbon dioxide build up, courtesy Athelstan Spilhaus…