Category: Australia

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anti-reflexivity Australia Denial Media

March 10, 2010 – ABC chairman gives stupid speech to staff

Thirteen years ago, on this day, March 10, 2010, Maurice Newman, a neoliberal warrior from the 1970s onwards, gave a climate denial speech to senior ABC staff. Prime Minister John Howard had appointed him as chair in January 2007.

 In a speech to senior ABC staff on 10 March 2010 he said climate change was an example of “group-think”. According to an ABC PM account of the speech: “Contrary views had not been tolerated, and those who expressed them had been labelled and mocked. Mr Newman has doubts about climate change himself and says he’s waiting for proof either way.”

(wikipedia Maurice Newman)

and

“The media hasn’t been good at picking these things up and it’s really been the question of what is conventional wisdom and consensus rather than listening perhaps to other points of view that may be sceptical.

“And I brought in as well in that vain what’s been going on in climate change where there’s been clearly a point of view which has been prevailing in the mainstream media, and the fact that again perhaps consensus and conventional wisdom may not always stand us in good stead.”

https://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2010/s2842177.htm

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 391.3ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was

People like Maurice Newman, long time neoliberal soldier, want to be within the commanding organisations such as universities and media, for obvious reasons. And he did what he (was) set out to do….

What I think we can learn from this

What’s interesting, what we can learn is that these terms like “groupthink” gets thrown around as if there’s some sort of profound statement. And they’re a shortcut for avoiding actually engaging with the fact that the science around the basics of climate change has been settled for a very long time. Unable to combat that. Newman and his ilk resort to name-calling and pseudo profound smears.  But it’s quite effective…

What happened next

In an article in The Australian on May 8, 2015, Maurice Newman, chairman of the Prime Minister’s business advisory council, said that the United Nations is behind the global warming hoax. The real agenda of the UN “is concentrated political authority. Global warming is the hook,” Newman said. “This is not about facts or logic,” he added. “It’s about a new world order under the control of the UN. It is opposed to capitalism and freedom and has made environmental catastrophism a household topic to achieve its objective.”

James Powell Could Scientists Be Wrong

http://jamespowell.org/resources/CouldScientistsBeWrong.pdf

The ABC has continued to be a site of struggle, and has been almost entirely hollowed out by the neoliberals and their chums. You can always track individual journalists and stack the board with non entities and lackeys and if they persist in being independent, reduce their funding until they get the message. 

See also organisational decay.

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...

Categories
anti-reflexivity Australia Carbon Pricing Denial

March 5, 2011 – Australian “wingnuts are coming out of the woodwork”

Twelve years ago, on this day, March 5, 2011 veteran Australian political commentator Laurie Oakes nailed the climate denialist nutters.

“Wingnuts are coming out of the woodwork. The mad and menacing phone calls to independent MP Tony Windsor are just one indication. There are plenty of others online. The carbon tax and Tony Abbott’s call for a people’s revolt have crazies foaming at the mouth. You see it on the ‘Revolt Against the Carbon Tax’ Facebook page, for example. Like this message from a Gillard-hater about a rally in front of Parliament House being planned for March 23: ‘Just like Egypt we stay there and protest continuously until she and her cronies, Bob Brown Greens etc are ousted! We have got to get rid of this Godless mistress of deceit.”’

Oakes, L. 2011. Loonies latch on to the politics of hate. The Australian, 5 March.

Oakes, 2013: 86

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 392.8ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was an incredibly heated culture war that had been constructed around the question of having a price on carbon emissions. Opposition Leader Tony Abbott had had multiple positions on carbon pricing and climate change (the Howard government had gone to the 2007 election with such a policy). Abbott admitted to being a weather vane n the issue

By March 2011 he had seen off Kevin Rudd and had been reportedly willing to sell his ass to become Prime Minister. In February 2011 Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard had announced that there would be an emissions trading scheme with a fixed price for two years. And as oaks puts it, all the wingnuts came out to play…

What I think we can learn from this

That settler colonies don’t deal well with the notion of environmental limits especially if someone who is only a woman is in charge.

That it is partly possible to import culture war techniques from the United States. They won’t work perfectly in other countries, but for a while, they give the appearance of effectiveness. 

You also want to think about McCright and Dunlap 2011, anti reflexivity as part of the picture underneath all of this.

What happened next

Well, on the 23rd of March, there was the infamous rally with Abbott being photographed next to placards that talked about “Bob Brown’s Bitch” and “Ditch the Witch ”. The wingnuts kept coming out to play but with less than less efficacy. It’s not just left wing groups that suffer from burnout and emotacycles.

Abbott got the opportunity to show the world what a smart and effective leader he could be from September 2013.  “Oops” doesn’t begin to cover it.

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.

Categories
Australia

March 4, 1998 – The Australian Greenhouse Office gets a boss…

Twenty five  years ago, on this day, March 4, 1998, Gwen Andrews became the first boss of the “Australian Greenhouse Office”

“With a bureaucratic background in the Department of Finance and an unassuming manner, Andrews was probably useful early on in allaying concern in industry at the creation of the new office. However, as the AGO suffered one Cabinet defeat after another, the hopes of the staff to be part of Australia’s response to the world’s biggest environmental threat were deflated and morale fell. Andrews resigned in 2002 and later said that over her four years in the job she was not once asked to brief the Prime Minister on the issue.

(Hamilton, 2007: 99)

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 367.3ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context for the creation of the Australian Greenhouse Office, was that John Howard had been desperate to minimise the political damage that would accrue from not making a deal or not signing on to a deal at Kyoto. 

In late 1997, before the Kyoto conference, in order to get his version of the narrative installed as insurance, he had announced the creation of the Australian Greenhouse Office. As was pointed out by Clive Hamilton, the funding for this was derisory, and it was likely to achieve nothing. 

And so it came to pass. Gwen Andrews was the appointed CE.

What I think we can learn from this

It’s easy for naive radicals and for liberals to think that the creation of an office or a task force is somehow progress. It is not. It is at best potential progress, the outcome of which will rely on sustained radical non co-opted action. But this is tremendously difficult because for NGOs in need of easy wins such taskforces are pure catnip, and middle-class people who have mortgages to pay, kids to educate and so forth go and get medium to well paid jobs in such structures. You see it all the time. – see the end of this report about Manchester event about airports and public hearings as a redemption ritual – https://manchesterclimatemonthly.net/2013/07/09/event-report-airports-commission-talks-climate-in-manchester-redemptionritual/

What happened next

The Australian Greenhouse office staggered on as a less and less convincing thing, fig leaf, until it was in the manner of these things discarded in 2003 or 2004.

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..

References

Hamilton, C. (2007) Scorcher: The Dirty Politics of Climate Change. Black Inc.

Categories
Australia

March 3, 1990 – Energy efficiency could save billions a year, Australian government told (says ‘whatevs’).

Thirty three years ago, on this day, March 3, 1990, a report on energy efficiency, commissioned by Australia’s Federal Government, was launched

AUSTRALIA could save money and drastically reduce emissions of greenhouse gas if it became energy efficient, a report released yesterday revealed.

The report, A Greenhouse Energy Strategy, commissioned by the Federal Environment Department, found that by the year 2005, Australia could reduce its carbon dioxide output by almost 19 per cent on 1988 levels, resulting in annual savings of $6.5 billion.

Mealey, E. 1990. Energy cuts could save $6.5bn a year. Sun Herald, 4 March, p. 37

And

In the year 2005, greenhouse gas emissions could be cut by 18.8 per cent below the 1988 levels, and at the same time, Australia could save $6.5 billion a year, Federal Environment Minister Graham Richardson said on March 3. He was presenting the Greenhouse Energy Strategy report by Deni Green Consulting Services. “An annual saving on that scale has the potential to turn Australia’s economy around,” said Senator Richardson.

Anon, 1990.  How energy efficiency could save money, cut greenhouse gases.  Green Week,  March  13 , p.3.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 355.7ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that Australia and other nations were holding various meetings, The Hague (March 1989) Nordwijk (November 1989), etc. around a climate treaty. The US and UK were both trying to slow it down. And in these various nations, environmentalists were trying to get strong policies about greenhouse gas emissions reductions. In Australia the environment department (DASETT) paid for a study by an expat American economist called Deni Green. 

And on this day, a report was released, written by her, saying that energy efficiency measures would make achieving a putative 20% reduction in emissions by 2005 very, very doable. 

Various states were already talking about the Toronto target adoption, the Federal Government was holding out. Treasurer Paul Keating had stopped the push for one for such an announcement in 1989.

And of course, all of this was happening in the context of a federal election to be held later the same month.

What I think we can learn from this

We need to remember that people have been talking about the value of energy efficiency as a greenhouse gas reduction measure for literally decades. And yet, not nearly as much progress has been made as they would have expected that the time or could have been. And it’s worth exploring why. One simple reason is that efficiency is not sexy, it doesn’t mean that the politician can stand there with a big hardhat and a high vis jacket. It also speaks to having to be limited. And modern humans hate that idea, hate having to live within limits. Or rather, the capitalists hate the idea that we would have to…  see Hudson 2017 for more on this

What happened next

The Friends of Coal won all the big battles, and the idea of energy efficiency on steroids got sidelined again, of course.

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..

See also – I wrote about this report last year!

Categories
Australia Uncategorized

February 28, 2010 – Australian Prime Minister says won’t walk away from climate. (Then does, obvs.)

Thirteen  years ago, on this day, February 28, 2010, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was on a then-quite-good ABC TV program called “Insiders.”

He said this: “When our kids look back in 20 years and ask the question of this generation, ‘were they fair dinkum or did they walk away from it?’, I’d rather say that I threw everything at it, threw absolutely everything at it, to try and make it work, and to try and deliver an outcome at home and abroad.

“We think we’ve got to act, and act appropriately. That’s why we don’t walk away from this one bit.”

Then two months later, he walked away from the whole issue of climate change, trying to pin it all on Tony Abbott.  https://www.abc.net.au/news/2010-06-24/rudds-downfall-he-never-really-got-it/880258  and https://pmtranscripts.pmc.gov.au/release/transcript-17085

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 391ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was

Kevin Rudd had skilfully come to power in late 2007 by using climate change as a wedge against his political opponents – first Prime Minister John Howard, and then, once he got the top job, against opposition leaders Brendan Nelson and Malcolm Turnbull.  But then, in 2009, he came up against junkyard dog Tony Abbott, and he lost his nerve.  He was advised to call an election (see December 23 blog post from last year). He didn’t, and then didn’t figure out a way of climbing down from his climate position.  He dismissed a proposal from the Greens for an interim carbon tax. He … ah, I could go on. 

What I think we can learn from this

Politicians who talk about “great moral challenge” without showing skill or guts are worse than useless, because they encourage cynicism and fatalism, making it that much harder for those who come after them.

What happened next

Rudd bailed on climate.  This tanked his previously high approval ratings (which were already taking a dent, it’s true)  Rudd then ran off on a Mining Tax crusade. That came to an end, almost by accident, when his long-suffering and until-then loyal deputy Julia Gillard challenged for the leadership in June 2010.   Gillard got some carbon pricing legislation through, but at the cost of, well, everything.

This was all unnecessary. If Rudd had had skill or guts….

NB, for any ALPers – nope, never been a member of the Greens, and when you focus on their actions during the CPRS vote, you reveal that you are unwilling to admit that your guy was not as smart or courageous as he thought, or as he needed to be.

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong?  Do comment on this post.

Categories
Australia

February 27, 1988 – Canberra “Global Change” conference ends

Thirty five  years ago, on this day, February 27, 1988, a conference about, well, Global Change, finished in Canberra.

1988 Australian Academy of Science (1988) Global change, Proceedings of the Elizabeth and Frederick White Research conference 24-27 February 1988.

[fill in, take photo of contents page]

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 351ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was

The Australian Academy of Science had been looking at climate change since a 1975-6 report (with a 1980 conference, and then another in 1987).  Meanwhile, the problems of Amazonian deforestation, ozone, acid rain etc were all very much ‘in the news’.

What I think we can learn from this

Smart people will identify problems, in great detail, but, fearful of being labelled “political” are hesitant to name the names of the people, organisations, motives and processes that are perpetuating the problems, or talk about what would actually need to be done, beyond vague “change in legislation/change in mindsets” stuff. They bring an ethical knife to a power gunfight….

What happened next

More fine words. More emissions. And here we are.

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong?  Do comment on this post.

Categories
Australia Coal

Feb 26, 1998 – Australian “clean coal” is on the way (again).

Twenty five years ago, on this day, February 26, 1998, yet more promises of clean coal were made in Australia, by eerie coincidence the world’s number one coal exporter…

RESEARCH laboratories where scientists will work to make Australian coal the “cleanest” in the world, will be opened by Premier Bob Carr today.

The Ian Stewart Wing of the chemical engineering laboratories at Newcastle University form part of the co-operative research centre for black coal utilisation.

The centre, partially government funded, was established in 1995 to carry out world class research to maximise the value and performance of Australian black coal resources

Anon. 1998. Tests for green coal. Daily Telegraph, 26 February.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 366.1ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was

At a Federal level, Prime Minister John Howard was resolutely anti-climate action (even after extracting an amazingly generous deal at Kyoto).  At the state level, New South Wales and Queensland wanted to export more and more coal, obviously.

The CSIRO, having been lukewarm/opposed to renewables for yonks, was talking up the prospects of “clean coal.”  

What I think we can learn from this

Research and Development organisations are largely captured by powerful/rich actors, via various mechanisms that are not hard to understand but unless understood ‘in the round’ can be dismissed as ‘conspiracy theory’.  New technologies find it very very hard to get traction…. (Mark Diesendorf has written extensively about this, by the way).

What happened next

Clean coal is still coming, just like full communism was under Brezhnev, and just like nuclear fusion is. Now, about that bridge you were interested in buying from me you know, the one in Sydney… I can bribe the official writing the tender documents, but I need some cash from you up front…

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong?  Do comment on this post.

Categories
Australia

Of “carbon credits”, punks and Gish Gallops – the deeper patter(n) in Australia’s climate wars.

Hello to all new Twitter followers – thanks, I hope you like the site.

Let’s start with the unjustly obscure English punk/folk singer TV Smith. Don’t worry, we will quickly get to Australia’s climate wars and the long con of carbon credits.

Smith has been around since, well, punk began in the mid-1970s. I’ve described him – fairly I think – as “Chomsky meets Leonard Cohen, but punk.” The man can do things you don’t often associate with punks.  Like, properly sing.  And write – the man is an insightful compassionate poet and keen observer of, well everything. (1)

He can write about nature, technology, about the sense of futility but endurance in resistance. And he can about the ways that elites seek to discourage challenge. Which is where this story begins.

In his song “More Than This” on his album Misinformation Overload, Smith sets the scene

So the bankers take their seats

With the party elite

In a billionaire’s retreat

Safely out of reach.

And they blame the workers, blame the unions

Blame the slump and blame the boom

And the consumer, blame the system

Blame the losers, blame the victims

And then, the second verse…

So the policies are planned

That we won’t understand

Then the members all shake hands

And the meeting disbands

And they blame the downturn, blame the climate

Even though they’re the ones behind it

Blame the third world, blame the markets

Blame the decoys, blame the targets

And when I watch or read the brilliant coverage of the carbon credits scam (more on those pieces in a minute) my mind is drawn back to those lines

“So the policies are planned

That we won’t understand”

That is to say, I want to make the basic point that a dense and incomprehensible policy, well that is a FEATURE not a bug.  Making it eye-wateringly, brain-shreddingly complex means that the conversation can stay at the level of soundbites, that most people give up trying to understand it and those who do persist seem weird to their friends and are disheartened and CRUCIALLY – you need a lot longer to unpack bullshit than to throw it, and if you’re having to explain it in detail, you are irritating/frustrating potential supporters.  It becomes a “well, we should just leave it to the people who study this all day long.”


This tactic, when used by creationists to try to cast doubt on evolution by natural selection, is called a Gish Gallop, after its main proponent, Duane Gish.  Basically, someone gallops through a whole load of nonsense, and their opponent is then left to either let a load of lies/half-truths go unchallenged (and strengthened) or else take up five or ten more times trying to unpick it all, and probably strengthen it into the bargain.  It’s a no-lose situation for the bullshitters.


Which brings us to the carbon credits saga, the latest in the long line of astonishingly successful tactics used by Australian fossil-fuel interests over the last thirty five years.

They toyed with (but mostly abandoned/subcontraced it out deniably) outright denial. Then they put out the “too expensive” argument, and enlisted various other groups (looking at you CFMEU) to resist both a carbon tax and then an ETS.  They talked with a straightface about technofixes, and got the taxpayer to dig deep. They have now morphed into using a policies-are-planned/Gish Gallop approach, alongside being the fox in the henhouse and benefitting from the fact that lots of potential critics never survived – at an organizational level – the drop in radical-end-of-resistance funding after the Global Financial Crisis. The big groups that might call bullshit are mostly – not all, but mostly – cowed or captured.

The “complexity” takes us back to the days of the tax versus ETS debates (which go back further than 2009, and further than Shergold in 2006/7, but I digress).  An ETS is supposed to be more “efficient” (though that is asserted rather than supported with evidence). But the key benefit, I suspect, beyond being able to make banks and consultancies rich via various wheezes that are politely called “regulatory arbitrage” and the like (academics don’t like to use words like “thievery” or “rorting” – it’s too close to the truth) was this – ETS is complicated compared to a tax, which would be easy to understand, easy to “sell,” if sold right.

And so when the Greens, in early 2010, tried to save something from the wreckage Rudd had caused (see that cartoon by the brilliant @davpope), one of the points was that it would remove the eye-watering complexity.

And they were, ignored.

Look, a con man wants to distract you, to make you think you are seeing one thing when you are actually seeing another. There are various ways to do that. Flattery is one, but so is its opposite.  They want you to believe them, not your “lying eyes” and they want you to doubt your sense-making ability.  So they complicate, they “complexify”, they gish gallop, they bullshit.

Finally, here are three things I’ve read/watched of late that I think are just brilliant at explaining the carbon credits scam. Doubtless there are others.

Crikey piece by Maeve McGregor

The reason Labor is gaslighting the nation about its climate policy and the Greens

The Juice Media video

Nick Feik in the Monthly

The Great Stock’n’Coal Swindle

References

(1) I’ve met him on a number of occasions, and as best I can tell, he’s just a top bloke too.

Categories
Australia Coal

February 25, 1981 – National Party senator nails the climate problem

Forty two  years ago, on this day, February, 25, 1981, Stan Collard, National Party senator (yes, you read that right) worried about climate change aloud, in parliament.

“Our steaming coal exports are mounting. I have no objection to that, except for one thing. I ask: Just how much further can we go with burning these masses of coal and pouring the pollutants, including carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere? One thing that we are not sure of, of course, is the ultimate greenhouse effect that it will have on this continent, maybe even in our lifetime. I think we must consider quite reasonably just where to cry halt to the burning of masses of steaming coal and where we can bring in one of the cleanest methods of power generation, that is, nuclear power generation, until something cleaner and better comes along. I reject the suggestion that the Government is lacking in its planning, but I welcome the opportunity to take part in this debate.”

Senator Collard, 25 February 1981 – Hansard..

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 340.5ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was

By the early 1980s anyone who read a proper newspaper (The Canberra Times, for example) would have been aware of the potential problem. See for example November 24, 1977 – Canberra Times reports “all coal” plan would “flood US cities” or September 15, 1980 – Australian scientists hold “Carbon Dioxide and Climate” symposium in Canberra… If you were pro-nuclear (and iirc Collard was), then the visit of nuclear guru Alvin Weinberg to Australia in 1979 was probably significant.  The problem was ‘in the air’, basically.

What I think we can learn from this

The National Party used to have intelligent serious people in it. Now, it seems, not so much.

What happened next

Collard was ignored Obviously.

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong?  Do comment on this post.

Categories
Activism anti-reflexivity Australia Cultural responses Denial

February 22, 2013 – Idiotic “Damage” astroturf attempted by miners

Ten years ago, on this day, February 22, 2013, some miners went ape, setting up a ludicrous front organisation. Brain-damage indeed.

A Goldfields lobby group is planning to launch an eleventh hour campaign against what it calls “green extremists”.

The group DAMAGE, Dads And Mums Against Green Extremists, is planning advertisements in a Kalgoorlie newspaper in the last week of the state election campaign

Anon, 2013  Goldfields lobby group opposing ‘green extremists‘ ABC. 22 February.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 397ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was

Western Australia is heavily dependent – in every sense – on mining.  Anything that gets between the miners and their cash is regarded as something to be ignored, then smeared and repressed, by any means necessary.

What I think we can learn from this

Sometimes the goon squad tries to develop a sense of humour, as it did with this retronym. It’s usually not very funny though, more pitiable and embarrassing.

And smearing people who think a habitable planet in years to come is a nice idea as “extremists” is, well, an old ploy.

But, you know, sometimes it goes all step on a rake/Streisand effect.

What happened next

The Libs won the 2013 State election. 

But the Greens?  The Greens were glad of the attempted “damage” to their brand. As one their MPs Robin Chapple said after the election

“I thank Tim Hall, the Greens candidate for the seat of Kalgoorlie. In Kalgoorlie, I also thank an organisation called Dads And Mums Against Green Extremists. DAMAGE was set up specifically to target the Greens, but in fact it helped to retain our vote by focusing on the Greens and identifying some of the issues it stands for. Many years ago former federal member of Parliament Michael Beahan told me that if your opposition is invisible, the worst thing you can do is identify them. Until the establishment of DAMAGE, the Greens to a large degree had been invisible in the Kalgoorlie media. But in the last two to three weeks of the election, the Greens were front and centre in the media and retained its vote. Michael Beahan’s point was that if somebody is not grabbing the attention, do not highlight them, but DAMAGE did exactly that.” 

https://www.parliament.wa.gov.au/Hansard/hansard.nsf/0/1fbe4e6dd9479fbb48257b8a00135769/$FILE/C39%20S1%2020130611%20p1133c-1142a.pdf

The cultures of extractivism? They continue.

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong?  Do comment on this post.