Twenty-five years ago, on this day, October 15th, 1999 the Australian Financial Review reported that ,
The Federal Government has conceded for the first time that its greenhouse gas policy could reduce the competitiveness of key sectors of the Australian economy.
The Australian Financial Review has obtained a draft record of an August 25 meeting of the Council of Australian Governments’ High Level Group on Greenhouse. It puts the Commonwealth position in these terms: “Competitiveness is fundamentally linked to the economy as a whole and not individual sectors – no government could promise that the competitiveness of individual sectors would remain unchanged over time.”
Hordern, N. 1999. Greenhouse policy `can affect competitiveness’. The Australian Financial Review, 15 October, p. 6.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 368ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the Howard Government had come in in 1996 even more hostile to climate action than Keating. It had ramped up the opposition to international commitments. It had done greenwash where necessary and naked contempt when it thought it could. In 1997 it had been cornered into making a few promises that it was now trying to backtrack on, and water down. But it couldn’t always bluster past the advocates of action at the state level, including New South Wales Premier Bob Carr…
What we learn is that in 1999 even the Howard Government realised that continuing to ignore climate impacts was going to cause problems for The Australian Economy.
What happened next? Howard continued to do everything he could to avoid any climate action, both domestically and internationally. Domestically, he continued to undermine any progress on renewables, and to kill a carbon price twice (in 2000 and 2003). Internationally, he refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol (despite having extorted the most unimaginably generous terms) and joined in various “spoiler” activities with the US.
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:
October 15, 1971 – “Man’s Impact on the Climate” published
October 15, 1985 – Villach meeting supercharges greenhouse concerns…