Category: Australia

Categories
Australia Denial

July 12, 2007 – #Australia gets swindled on #climate change…

On this day, 12th July 2007, the absurd documentary “The Great Global Warming Swindle” was shown in Australia. 

“On July 12 ABC TV in Australia aired “The Great Global Warming Swindle”. This followed saturation promotion in days leading up to the broadcast, including items in various current affairs and news programs. They followed the broadcast with an interview with the film maker, and then a panel discussion of “experts”. It was one of their highest-rating programs for the year, but altogether it was an uninspiring two hours of television.” [source]

(There’s a nice account of David Karoly versus Ray Evans in Mark Davis’ Land of Plenty page 190)

In 1990 there had been a similar imported schlockumentary, called “The Greenhouse Conspiracy.” – we will come back to that later. The ABC had not shown it, despite the IPA’s best efforts. Instead it ended up on SBS.

Why this matters. 

Pseudo controversy like this helps slow debate. That’s the point of it.  There’s even a recent (April 2022) academic article that shows this effect –

Time and skeptical opinion content erode the effects of science coverage on climate beliefs and attitudes

What happened next?

The Swindle served its purpose – creating demoralisation, confusion and, well “fear uncertainty and doubt.” Bravo! Pity about the planet and all its creatures, but hey, what can you do?

Categories
Australia UNFCCC

July 11, 1996 – Celebrity Death Match: Australian fossil fuels industry versus The World (Spoiler: world lost)

On this day, 11 July 1996, at the second “Conference of the Parties”, the fossil fuel lobby started to get up front about being perfectly happy for future generations to fry.

GENEVA, July 11 (Reuter) – Heavy industry groups from around the world Thursday pressed a major campaign to stop moves to cut the amount of carbon dioxide, widely blamed for global warming, pumped into the atmosphere by rich countries.

The focus of the drive, which is getting its major impetus from U.S. energy producers but was strongly backed by an Australian grouping, are warnings that economic disaster would hit developed and developing countries alike if cuts were mandated. The Australian Industry Greenhouse Network — which includes coal, aluminum and gas industry associations — is also lobbying hard among delegates, who at the end of next week will be joined by ministers at the key stage of the conference.

The AIGN is distributing a study arguing that cuts in “greenhouse gas” emissions would bring a trade slump to all the countries of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.

Its stand is backed by the Australian government, whose delegation is opposing agreement on any uniform carbon reduction targets for the developed world alone — the main purpose of the gathering.

Evans, R. 1996. Energy industry fights to block cuts in coal, oil use. Reuters, 11 July.

Why this matters. 

The Hague won’t be above water forever, and trials for crimes against humanity and the biosphere really ought to get going sooner rather than later….

What happened next?

Everybody knows the war is over, everybody knows the good guys lost.

The fossil fuels kept getting burnt, in increasing quantities. The burning of them left a residue in the atmosphere. This was not an accident.

Categories
Australia South Paciific

July 11, 1989 – Australia says “sure, we’ll take #climate refugees.” Yeah, nah.

On this day, July 11, 1989, the 20th South Pacific Forum closed                    

“Both Australia and New Zealand indicated that they and the rest of the world would undoubtably be prepared to take humanitarian action in moving people driven out by rising waters” reported Steve Burrell in an article titled “ENVIRONMENT DOMINATES FORUM” from Tarawa, Kiribati, The Australian Financial Review, 12 July 1989.

And everything Australia has done since then I am sure gives confidence to people living in that part of the world that everything will be just fine…

Why this matters. 

Why should anyone trust Australian diplomats?

What happened next?

Australia expanded its domestic use of coal and – more importantly – its exports. So, for example, seven years later (see next post).


Oh, and folks made jokes about islands getting swamped.

See also –

2006, Jan 5: strategic hand-wringing about “Our Drowning Neighbours”
Categories
Activism Australia

July 10, 2008 – first Australian #Climate Camp begins, near Newcastle

On this day in 2008 the first Australian climate camp began near Newcastle.

Climate Camps were all the rage at the time, after the first one, in Yorkshire, England in August/September 2006.


Time travel cheat, a bit, here’s an account of what happened days later – 

July 13 & 14, 2008: Newcastle, NSW, Australia Climate Camp stops coal trains at worlds’ largest coal export port

On July 13, 2008 approximately 1000 activists stopped three trains bound for export at the Carrington Coal Terminal for almost six hours. Dozens of protesters were able to board and chain themselves to the trains while others lay across the tracks. Hundreds were held back by mounted police. Police arrested 57.[19]             

Sunday 13th July 2008: 1000 people gathered at Islington Park in Newcastle for a rally and march to the Carrington Coal Terminal. It was a colourful and eclectic crowd of local residents, parents and children, percussionists, clowns, students, and concerned citizens from every state in Australia. Their message was simple and clear: let’s see renewables instead of more new coal.             

Source: Greenpeace

See photos and account on peacebus.

Climate Camp Australia 2008

Why this matters. 

We have tried to resist. That resistance has been regularly exhausted, repressed, derided. But those who resisted were right, even though they lost.

Those who derided, smeared, laughed? They can go… well, this is a family website, so let’s just use the word “away” – they can go… away.

What happened next?

The coal kept being dug up, exported, burned. The carbon dioxide molecules kept warming the planet.

Categories
Australia

July 7, 1970 – an Australian banker goes “Full Extinction Rebellion”, 50 years early…

On this day, July 7, 1970,Bede Callaghan, the Managing Director of the [Australian] Commonwealth Banking Corporation, said some really Roger Hallam-ite/Extinction Rebellionesque stuff

“On 7 July 1970, Mr Bede Callaghan, managing director of the Commonwealth Banking Corporation spoke on the ‘Perils and Pitfalls of the Seventies’ at an American Chamber of Commerce luncheon in Adelaide.”

(Whitelock, 1971:29) 

According to another book, Callaghan said the following:

“And so the sprawling city, the maimed country, and even the air we breathe and the sea that gives us life, combine into what can only be described as a coming nightmare unless we as a people are prepared to become violently Australia-conscious and to replan, decentralise, preserve,prohibit and police. We won’t correct the situation unless first as individuals and secondly as a nation we are prepared to think, to take care and to spend money.” 

(Whittington, 1970:149) 

https://livinghistories.newcastle.edu.au/nodes/view/55055

Why this matters. 

This kind of rhetoric was not that unusual at the time (1970). We should remember that when we put faith in information-deficit models, and the Power of Exhortation…

What happened next?

By 1973 all this stuff was ancient history. It has come back periodically since then. So it goes.

Categories
Australia

July 4, 2004 – @WWF_Australia try to shame John Howard into #climate action…

On this day, July 4, in 2004 WWF Australia brought together various outfits as “the Australian Climate Group.”

They said –

“An unprecedented alliance of commercial and scientific experts has formed the Australian Climate Group (ACG) which today launched its first report, Climate Change: Solutions for Australia. The Report is designed to guide public opinion and government policy towards a solution to the issues of climate change”

You can read it via here.

The context? John Howard was wrecking the joint, blocking even the most minor climate action. People and organisations kept trying to organise…

Why this matters. 

This is what (some) NGOs do – they try to build coalitions/alliances of actors to chip away at the legitimacy, the hegemony of those they don’t like. Sometimes it works, often it doesn’t.

What happened next?

It didn’t do much. This was the period of peak-Howard. Two years later, a Westpac-led effort (iirc put together by Australian Conservation Foundation) had a bit more traction.

Categories
Australia

July 3, 2008 – Greenpeace activists enter New South Wales coal power station

On this day, July 3, in 2008, 27 Greenpeace activists entered the 2,640 megawatts Eraring Power Station site north of Sydney to call for an energy revolution, and took direct action to stop coal from being burnt.

“Twelve protesters shut down and chained themselves to conveyors while others climbed onto the roof to paint ‘Revolution’ and unfurled a banner reading ‘Energy Revolution – Renewables Not Coal’. The action preceded the Australian government’s climate change advisor Professor Ross Garnaut’s delivery of his Draft Climate Change Review on July 4”

[sorry don’t know the source]

This text and photo is from here

Greenpeace activists, including an ex-miner, block the coal supply to the Eraring coal-fired power station by locking on to the coal conveyors. Eraring is Australia’s most polluting coal-fired power station and is responsible for 13% of Australia’s greenhouse pollution. The old and inefficient plant sends nearly 20 million tonnes of greenhouse pollution into the atmosphere every year. Each hour the coal supply is blockaded, prevents 2,000 tonnes of CO2 being released. As the government’s climate change advisor, Ross Garnaut, prepares to deliver his draft review in Canberra, Greenpeace calls for urgent action on climate change. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd must deliver policies that upscale renewable energy and start replacing dirty coal-fired power.

Why this matters. 

We resist. Weakly, inadequately, but we resist.

What happened next?

The power station is finally being decommissioned.  (Not much) better late than never.

Categories
Australia

July 2, 2007 – Australia learns it has been left “High & Dry” on #climate change

On this day, 2nd July 2007, the highly-principled Guy Pearse (not the actor) released his brilliant book “High and Dry”.

“A Liberal Party member and former ministerial speechwriter issues a book today which depicts the Prime Minister with a stranglehold on environmental policy, deliberately surrounding himself with climate change sceptics.”

Rudra, N. 2007. Liberal attacks PM on climate. Canberra TImes, 2 July.

The problem was that High and Dry was soon “outdated,” when the Liberals were swept from office in late 2007.  Pearse wrote a cracking Quarterly Essay about what Labor was up to, published in 2009.

HOWEVER the book is well-written, well-researched and gives you names and tactics of the “Greenhouse Mafia.”

The book still stands as an example of how you

  1. Do a PhD
  2. Turn a PhD into a book (a different beast)
  3. Make an impact, behave with integrity.

Why this matters. 

Names are named, repertoires exposed. This is how you are supposed to do intellectual work.

What happened next?

Pearse kept writing about this for quite a while.

Categories
Australia Denial

June 27, 2000 – crazy but well-connected #climate denialists schmooze politicians

On this day in 2000, the beserk but effective “Lavoisier Group” of  Australian climate denialists schmoozed senior politicians (former Treasurer Peter Walsh, an ALP thumper, probably set this up).

The Lavoisier Group (named for a French chemist, because these groups are always – somewhat pathetically – trying to bolster their cred and signal their, ah, “erudition”) had been formed as a radical flank effort to try to stiffen John Howard’s resolve in keeping Australia from ratifying the Kyoto Protocol.  (Australia had, by various means, gotten a sweet sweet deal of an emissions “reduction” target of [checks notes] … a 10% INCREASE in emissions – see Clive Hamilton on this.]

“Last year, the Lavoisier Group held meetings around the country, including a June 27 dinner for a select group of federal parliamentarians in the House of Representatives’ dining room.”  

Jim Green (2001)  Corporate greed behind US dumping of greenhouse treaty, Green Left Weekly, April 4

Why this matters. 

Small groups of determined and well-connected people who are going to help other people stay rich can be surprisingly effective in blocking things. Who knew.

What happened next?

Lavoisier kept on being effective for as long as Howard was PM (though things got trickier for them by 2006 or so). They were an important building block for the climate denial “movement” that flourished from 2009 or so through to 2013 or so. They are still, bless them, publishing their idiocies.

Categories
Australia

June 26, 1991 “environment is not flavor of the month any more”

On this day, June 26 in 1991, Australian journalist Maria Taylor gave a good example of how the wave of climate concern that had begun in 1988/9 was ending.(they always do).

STATE OF THE WORLD 1991. A Worldwatch Institute Report on Progress Toward a Sustainable Society. Allen and Unwin. $19.95.

Reviewer: MARIA TAYLOR

A SYDNEY marketing man and sometime advisor to the environmental movement told me recently that these days it’s hard to sell business on sponsoring environmental projects because “environment is not the flavour of the month any more”.

While sheer survival may top many a corporate agenda at the moment, it’s still a breathtakingly quaint notion to suppose that “the environment” is a media beat-up begun a year or so ago and now about run its course.

The implication is that just as soon as we can get the economy to behave again, it will be back to business as usual. A lot of people also believe in fairy tales….

Taylor, M. 1991. Heads in the sand over the environment. Canberra Times, 26 June, p.8.

Why this matters

The “Issue Attention Cycle” is a thing. You can think it is stupid, but that doesn’t change its thing-ness, and your need to think carefully about what you do within it to be able to keep doing things after it.

What happened next?

Maria Taylor wrote a PhD thesis. A good one It became this book: Global warming and climate change: what Australia knew and buried. You can read it here

She has a website here.