Twelve years ago, on this day, September 4th, 2014,
On Thursday Labor Party Senators lined up with the Government, Palmer United Party and crossbench independent senators to repeal the large-scale Energy Efficiency Opportunities (EEO) program set up with bipartisan support in 2006 under the Howard Government. In a division in the Senate of 55 votes to 10, only the Greens Senators opposed the dumping of this program which had made substantial business energy savings of over $800 million dollars and 8.21 megatonnes reduction in carbon emissions.
The Energy Efficiency Opportunities program was recognised by the International Energy Agency as a world-class program helping businesses to save energy and a key element of energy efficiency policy framework and in addressing climate change.
http://takvera.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/labor-votes-with-government-to-dump-key.html
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 399ppm. As of 2026, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context was that the previous eight years had been an exhausting series of battles – legislative, political, cultural – in the climate wars in Australia, but ultimately the forces of stupidity had prevailed, as they so often do. Tony Abbott, as Prime Minister, had repealed much of the legislation within Julia Gillard’s Clean Energy Package, especially, for example, the actual emissions trading scheme.
The specific context was – here you see Labor senators, there aren’t that many of them after the 2013 electoral wipe-out, accepting political realities and voting to abolish the large scale energy efficiency opportunities programme. Energy efficiency is always hated and derided, even though there were and still are significant savings to be made.
What I think we can learn from this – is that there is no depth of stupidity we won’t sink to.
What happened next is that the culture war over climate has never really ended, that we are not smart enough collectively to fix this, and that doom is coming. If the social movement organisations had learned how to harness emotion and to create opportunities for legitimate peripheral participation, and had avoided being co-opted, repressed, or exhausted things might – might – have been a bit different, i.e. the horrors would have been delayed.
But they didn’t, and the horrors have not been delayed. The horrors are here with us now, and they’re only just warming up.
On this topic, you might like these other posts on All Our Yesterdays
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You can see the chronological list of All Our Yesterdays “on this day” posts here.
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.
If you want to get involved, let me know.
If you want to invite me on your podcast, that would boost my ego and probably improve the currently pitiful hit-rate on this site (the two are not-unrelated).
Also on this day:
September 4, 1969 – Ivory Tower types tell the truth at ANU
September 4, 1990 – Industry whines about environment minister’s speech
September 4, 2000 – industry says sky will fall if there’s a carbon tax
September 4, 2006 – Royal Society to Exxon: “Knock it off with the funding to #climate deniers”