Thirty three years ago, on this day, August 18th, 1991 the rich people told future generations (especially of poor people) to go fuck themselves.
The Business Council of Australia yesterday rejected proposals to make industry more energy-efficient.
The council criticised recommendations by the Federal Government’s taskforce on ecologically sustainable development to increase energy prices and impose new taxes, such as a tax on fuel with high carbon levels.
The council said the country’s future lay in continuing to develop its natural resources. Its executive director, Mr Peter McLaughlin, said the sustainable development process could significantly damage industry unless it adopted a “much more realistic tone”.
Peake, R. 1991. Business Rejects Lower Energy Use. The Age, 19 August, p.14.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 355ppm. As of 2024 it is 424ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the Business Council of Australia, the main club for big business, was shouting no at everything, a bit like Ian Paisley did. And even stuff that made absolute sense on any level of economic thinking was shouted down. I think there are two things going on there, around fear of a slippery slope, and also that regulation might be shown – gasp – to be beneficial.
What we learn; two things. First, in the midst of a culture war, the red mist or the green mist descends. And the other thing we need to remember is that all of the economic modelling that outfits like the BCA were relying on and commissioning, assumed perfect efficiency already. And no matter how many empirical examples were given to them, by Alan Pears and other energy efficiency advocates, if it didn’t fit the theory, it was discarded. It was ignored. And so if you believe that things are already perfectly energy efficient, agreeing to further energy efficiency measures is actually merely agreeing to wasteful government regulation in and of itself, which will then encourage more bureaucrats to breed in dark corners.
What happened next, the BCA won, and the Australian housing industry is still miserably inefficient, of course. But the economic models that say it’s impossible for business to be inefficient, persist and have their death grip on the minds – if you can call them “minds” – of business elites.
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:
August 18, 1975 – it’s gonna get hotter, not cooler, say scientists
August 18, 1996, Ex-CSIRO #climate boss shows he has lost the plot