Eighteen years ago, on this day, February 20th, 2007, the Canberra Times reports on the gas industry’s lobbying efforts around the recently-returned issue of climate change and greenhouse gas emissions…
If you’re a federal politician expect a call in election year from Belinda Robinson, chief executive of the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association.
Dutt,K. 2007. Pushing case for gas in changing climate. Canberra Times, 19 February.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 384ppm. As of 2025 it is 427ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that climate change had burst (back) onto the public policy scene in Australia in, say, September of 2006. Prime Minister John Howard had been so spooked that he’d had to appoint the a civil servant, Peter Shergold to chair a committee to write a report about emissions trading schemes. Fossil fuel interests realized that climate was back on the agenda, and the gas lobby was pushing there “we are more efficient line.” Inevitably,
What I think we can learn from this is that the gas lobby will do this regardless of the fugitive emissions and the life cycle analysis and all the rest of it that shows that gas really isn’t that much “cleaner” ie less polluting than coal. I.e. they are throwing coal under the bus.
What happened next
Well, eventually APPEA, decided to take the word petroleum out of its name, as so many other outfits have, like Statoil, for example. And you can read more about appear in Royce Kurmelov’s book Slick.
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.