Fifteen years ago, on this day, July 12th,2009 there was a spat that Al Gore was expected to referee.
WHEN climate change guru Al Gore arrives in Melbourne today, he will find a conservation movement in vitriolic disagreement with itself.
A split has developed between the country’s preeminent environmental organisation, the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF), and a bloc of other green lobbyists over the foundation’s public support for the Rudd Government’s carbon trading scheme.
Bachelard, M. 2009. Feuding climate camps seek Gore blessing. Sunday Age, 12 July , p.8
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 388ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the Rudd Government had been trying to get support for its ridiculous Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. And they’d found it at least with the so-called Southern Crust coalition, led by the ACTU, and the Australian Conservation Foundation. But all the other green groups thought that this was an outrageous sell out. Ambition was too low. And that Rudd should be resisted. It was your fairly standard. NGO fight between people who are determined to keep their place in the room where the decisions are made, and are willing to carry water and get out and defend the indefensible versus those who weren’t in the inside of the room or didn’t want to be on the inside of the room, or were willing to be on the inside of the room as long as they weren’t being used as fig leaves. It’s a pattern you see over and over again. Anyway, apparently, Al Gore was being expected to resolve the dispute. I don’t know if he did.
What we learn from this is that the same patterns over and over again, for understandable reasons. It’s mildly entertaining that Gore should be regarded as a fair actor. I guess he had prestige. And he didn’t have skin in the game instantly. But to expect Gore to come on down on the side of people pushing for higher ambition or maybe. I mean, this was only three years after An Inconvenient Truth, after all.
What happened next? Rudd’s legislation was introduced for a second time in November 2009. It fell thanks to Tony Abbott, Kevin Rudd and the Greens possibly in that order, and then had to be introduced again in 2011 by Julia Gillard, the far superior parliamentarian but everything was in pieces and it all went tits up. Not that it would have mattered, I guess, really? I mean, we’re doomed. We have been doomed for a long time. It’s just taking us a while to catch up with that fact.
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:
July 12, 1953 – “The Weather is Really Changing” says New York Times
July 12, 1978 – US Climate Research Board meeting
July 12, 2007 – #Australia gets swindled on #climate change…