Category: Australia

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Australia

April 6, 2006 – the anti-climate dam of John Howard begins to crack…

On this day, sixth of April 2006, the “Australian Business Roundtable on Climate Change” released its first and I think only report, “The business case for early action,” a 25 page extravaganza of nice pictures and nice rhetoric..

The ABRCC was made up of insurance, banking and service sector outfits. (The manufacturing and extractive industries were conspicuously absent).

They were trying to combat the impression that John Howard, Prime Minister of Australia since March 1996, had been able to give of business was against climate action because it would destroy the economy.

It was not the first attempt to create a business pressure around climate action; WWF had been trying in 2003 or so. And of course, there were open letters and surveys and all sorts of other efforts before 2006.

Why it matters

Well, it doesn’t, but it reminds us that service sector (esp banking and insurance types, and sometimes “gas rather than coal” outfits are keen to seek out business opportunities, and to undermine the pro-coal/anti-carbon trading outfits. And that one of the ways they do that is via these sorts of gaudy one-offs…

What happened next

In retrospect, this report can be seen as one of the opening salvo softening up for what would happen later that year, which is one of these periodic explosions of concern about climate change that swept Kevin Rudd bless his cotton socks to power.

The ABCC to my knowledge to do much more. It had served its purpose. And once these loose coalitions have said their piece, it’s hard and “not worth it” to most of the members to start saying what they DON’T agree with – too much cost in co-ordinating, negotiating, reputation-managing for very little return. There are other ways to make their point, so these outfits tend to fold… 

Fun fact, the guy in charge of Westpac (big bank, and one of the signatories) at the time, David Morgan, is married to Ros Kelly, who was the third Australian was the the Australian Minister for the Environment back in 1990 when Australia made its first empty promise on emissions reductions. The Australian business elite have known about this issue for a very very long time.

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Australia

March 30, 2007 – Climate as “the great moral challenge of our generation” #auspol

On this day 15 years ago then-Opposition Leader Kevin “I’m from Queensland, I’m here to help” Rudd made a speech about “great moral challenge of our generation”  at the ALP climate summit at Parliament House, Canberra.

You can read more about this here, in a post by an incredibly intelligent, good-looking and kind individual who has given permission for linking. The conversation below the line is really really good…

Rudd was using the climate issue to make John Howard, Prime Minister and climate criminal since 1996, look outa touch. It was working, and kept working, all the way to the election. Australia cared about climate change.


Rudd then did fuck all as Prime Minister, using the climate issue to wedge the Liberals and Nationals, and then running scared after the failure of the Copenhagen conference and Tony Abbott’s arrival.

Labor folks still blame the Greens (for sake of clarity, I am not and never have been a member of ANY political party – Trot, Green Labour, Labor whatever). To admit that they chose and supported a wrong ‘un who has totally fucked Australian climate politics is just too much for them.

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Australia Coal

March 28, 2010 – protestors block Newcastle coal terminal #auspol

On March 28 2010, a flotilla of brave campaigners and citizens and protesters tried to stop the Newcastle coal port and briefly succeeded. This was a Rising Tide Australia action. 

Climate protest fleet attempts blockade of Newcastle coal port | Climate Citizen (takvera.blogspot.com)

The context is that Newcastle is a huge coal exporting port for both thermal coal and metallurgical coal. In 2010, while the Labour government had just abandoned its lame “carbon reduction pollution scheme” it was still talking about continuing to expand coal export infrastructure. 

And these human beings were trying to stop it. 

Why this matters. 

It’s easy to forget that there has been constant resistance to stupidity.  But there is that Schiller line, isn’t there – “against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain.”

What happened next?

The protestors, of course failed, but that’s not their fault. And the exports have continued and are continuing against all common sense and care for future generations. 

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Australia

March 21, 1994 – Yes to UNFCCC, yes to more coal-fired plants. Obviously. #auspol

On this day in March 21 1994 is an important and ironic day for climate action. Two things happened that tell you a lot about where we are.

This was the day on which the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change became international law. And it was secondly, the day that Singleton Council in New South Wales said yes to another coal fired power station over the protestations of Greenpeace, Australia. 

So, on that first one: there had been the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 and the requisite number of nations, including the United States and Australia had ratified the treaty. And this all took place a little bit quicker than a lot of people expected, (which left the Manchester Global Forum as basically an irrelevance – it had been plotted when the assumption was that it would take several more years for Rio to become a “thing”.)

At the end of 1992, when Australia ratified the UNFCCC, it had also launched the National Greenhouse Response Strategy, full of vague platitudes (all the real commitments and ideas had been killed off in the committees beforehand, rendering the “Ecologically Sustainable Development” process of 1990-1991 useless).

And you can argue that the federal system in Australia makes it impossible to get strong, coordinated action on climate. And maybe there’s an element of truth to that, but the federal government didn’t even bloody try. 

And the Singleton coal fired power plant is a really good example of how we can pat ourselves on the back for passing international laws, while on literally the same day pursuing the path that will give the light to all our fine words. Greenpeace did their best, they had a court case. They lost it later that year. 

And the Singleton coal fired power station has had a long life, which is more than you can say, perhaps for children born in the year 2030, or 40.

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Australia

March 20, 2014 – industry groups monster reef defenders

On this day in 2014 the Queensland Resources Council (a club for the miners etc) decides to try to smear… WWF. Why? Because WWF has the outright temerity to say all might not be well with the Great Barrier Reef and that it ought to be protected a bit more. And here we are.

On same day – Milman, O. 2014. Mining industry accuses WWF of lying about threat to Great Barrier Reef. Guardian, 20 March. The Queensland mining industry has launched a blistering attack on WWF, accusing it of running an untruthful Great Barrier Reef campaign that could jeopardise the reef’s world heritage status. Michael Roche, the chief executive of the Queensland Resources Council, said he has noticed a “dramatic change in approach” from WWF since it joined the Australian Marine Conservation Society to launch the Fight for the Reef campaign.

Classy.

What it all means – well, those with the money want to keep making money (doh). And they regard environmental regulations as unnecessary red tape. And they want to make it harder for civil society to advocate for these things. They’ll often pretend to be in favour of “protection” as long as it is vague and “balanced.” What makes this incident interesting is that the mining lobby isn’t just going after the “crazed hippies” but as establishment an outfit as WWF – albeit by insinuating that they’ve fallen under the spell of crazed hippies.

We can laugh, but this sort of attack has been, historically, a tremendously powerful tool in the armoury of those doing “predatory delay.”

So glad I did not breed. The second half of the twenty-first century is going to make the first half of the twentieth century look like a golden age of peace, love and understanding. If, in fact, we have another thirty years to begin to find out…

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Australia

March 19, 1990 – Bob Hawke gives #climate speech

On this day in 1990, while up for re-election Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke spoke to scientists at the opening the CSIRO Atmospheric Research Building, Aspendale Victoria.

As Maria Taylor notes in her excellent “Global Warming and Climate Change: what Australia knew and buried”

“In the late 1980s, political leaders (Jones, Hawke and Richardson) publicly interacted with the CSIRO scientists and division advisory boards. From that advisory board, Bob Chynoweth personally briefed the prime minister, according to a Hawke speech to the division on 19 March 1990 (Hawke 1990).”

One of the ironies of that election campaign (which was the only time I voted, I think, in Australia) was that the Liberal National Party actually had a more ambitious carbon dioxide reduction target than the ALP….

Hawke was re-elected, with the help of small g-green votes (the Greens did not exist yet). He was making some of the right noises about climate and environment, but was toppled by his former Treasurer, Paul Keating, who most definitely did not care about “greenie” issues or votes…

And here we are.

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Australia

March 16, 1995 – Victorian government plans brown coal exports

On this day in 1995, the Victorian government said it would spend taxpayers money on brown coal and trying to making power stations that used it 30% more efficient in a joint venture. 

“THE Victorian Government is to participate in the country’s largest research and development syndicate, a $100 million joint venture for research which could make the State’s four baseload brown coal power stations up to 30 per cent more efficient. The syndicate arranged by Bain and Company includes Perth entrepreneur Mr Kerry Stokes’ Australian Capital Equity as majority investor, with ABN Amro Australia , Mercantile Mutual , Babcock & Brown , and Deutsche Bank AG . The other investors are HRL Ltd – the former research arm of the State Electricity Commission of Victoria, now 40 per cent owned by the State – and the SECV shell. The project announced yesterday by the Victorian Minister for Energy, Mr Jim Plowman, and HRL Ltd, to construct a 10 megawatt generation facility to test the commercial viability of new coal-burning technology, is funded under the Federal Government’s 150 per cent R&D tax concessions. The study will examine integrated drying, gasification and combined cycle (IDGCC) technology, which promises – by turning low-grade coal into coal gas – to cut electricity supply costs and reduce greenhouse gases by 25 per cent.” Pheasant, B. 1995. Vic takes stake in $100m coal R&D. The Australian Financial Review, 17 March, p.9.

The backstory is that Victoria has unimaginably vast reserves of brown coal. Brown coal is less pure than black coal. And when you burn it, you get a lot more mercury ash, C02 and general crap. This means that it’s a really poor thing to export as well. So Victoria has never been able to make a go of that, despite periodic speculative schemes.

If you want to know about the guy who brought coal to Melbourne as it were, that’d be John Monash (to simplify matters somewhat). 

The backstory here is that in 1989, the State Electricity Commission of Victoria came up with a plan about how to deal with greenhouse, but then was privatised, and all of that went out the window.

Why this matters. 

We should know that there have been promises of technological salvation, going back a very long time. This is neither a particularly old nor particularly recent one. But it is, to use a phrase that was popularised in Victoria, for another purpose, “a dumb way to die”.

What happened next?

Brown coal continued to be burnt and burnt. And the co2 continued to accumulate, which is of course how I finish most of these blog posts.

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Australia

March 14, 2007 – Top Australian bureaucrat admits “frankly bad” #climate and water policies

On this day in  2007, Senior Australian bureaucrat Ken Henry gave a private speech to his staff, pointing out that Australia’s climate policy was a complete mess. Laura Tingle for the Australian Financial Review. got hold of this and published it as a front page story on 4th April

2007 Tingle, L. 2007. Revealed: Treasury chief’s blast at government policy. The Australian Financial Review, 4 April, p.1.

The country’s most senior economic bureaucrat has delivered a scathing assessment of the federal government’s water and climate-change policies and warned his department to be vigilant against the “greater than usual risk of the development of policy proposals that are, frankly, bad” in the lead-up to the federal election.

In a speech to an internal Treasury forum, obtained by The Australian Financial Review, Treasury Secretary Ken Henry confirmed his department had little influence in the development of the government’s recent $10 billion water package, and expressed his regret that its advice both on water and climate change had not been followed in recent years.

The revelations came as the government was on the defensive yesterday about its failure to address climate change in its latest intergenerational report.

Dr Henry’s speech, in which he reviewed Treasury’s achievements and challenges, was given to an internal biannual departmental forum at Canberra’s Hyatt Hotel on March 14.

He noted that the department had “worked hard to develop frameworks for the consideration of water reform and climate-change policy”.

“All of us would wish that we had been listened to more attentively over the past several years in both of these areas. There is no doubt that policy outcomes would have been far superior had our views been more influential,” he said.

The context is that under Prime Minister Bob Hawke there had been some noises about doing something on climate. Under Keating that had been tossed aside thanks to a wildly successful set of campaigns co-ordinated by the Australian Industry Greenhouse Network Howard had been successful resistance on multiple occasions to any action whatsoever that wasn’t symbolic and shambolic. 

But Henry was probably specifically speaking about two efforts to get emissions trading schemes in Australia in 2000 and 2003. These were discussed in federal cabinet, and on both occasions, defeated on the second occasion, by Howard on his own

Why this matters. 

We need to know that there are people in the bureaucracy of the state with their eyes open who do not agree with what their political masters are doing. And they try to keep the policy streams alive (even if the policies are neoliberal tosh).

What happened next?

Howard lost the 2007 election. Kevin Rudd came in with all sorts of promises. And then, in 2010, revealed himself to be unwilling to stick his neck out in defence of climate action, i.e. call a double dissolution election.

And that betrayal has made people think of politicians as untrustworthy on climate, and the climate issue has been rendered incredibly toxic (to be clear – the toxification was more than just Rudd’s fault – it was a clear-eyed and cynical attempt to create a culture war).

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Australia

March 9, 2005- Albanese says “ecological decline is accelerating and many of the world’s ecosystems are reaching dangerous thresholds.” #auspol

On this day in 2005, Australian politician Anthony Albanese said the following in parliament.

At the beginning of this century, we are at a crossroad. The science is clear and compelling: ecological decline is accelerating and many of the world’s ecosystems are reaching dangerous thresholds. Overexploitation of our natural resources, habitat loss from urbanisation and the clearing of forests for farmland, competition from introduced animals and plants, and climate change induced by a 30 per cent increase in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases are threatening the world’s diversity. The facts are these: since the industrial revolution average global surface temperatures have risen by one degree Celsius, the most dramatic rise for over 1,000 years; the five hottest years on record have occurred in the last seven years, the 10 hottest in the last 14; snow cover has decreased 10 per cent since the 1960s; and glaciers that have not retreated since the last ice age 12,000 years ago are now doing so.

The Howard government’s most significant failure is its decision to pursue an isolationist position on climate change….

You can read the full whack here.

The context is this – Australian civil society was still not up on its hindlegs about climate change, despite the country’s exquisite vulnerability, shameful international record and largely derisory domestic response. By the end of the following year, that would change….

What happened next

Well, “Albo” is now leader of the opposition. And there is an election coming. Watch this space.

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Australia Energy Ignored Warnings

March 3, 1990 – ” “A greenhouse energy strategy : sustainable energy development for Australia” launched … ignored #auspol

On this day in 1990, a report was released showing that Australia could reduce its carbon dioxide emissions markedly and save a lot of money through energy efficiency measures. The report was written for the Department of Arts, Sport, the Environment, Tourism and Territories, by Deni Greene, an American consultant who had moved to Australia. 

The broader context was that Australia was discussing what emissions reductions it would commit to. Prominent among these was the so-called “Toronto target” from a June 1988 Conference, which proposed that industrialised nations go for a 20% cut on a 1988 baseline by the year 2005. This was vigorously resisted of course, by industry. Greene’s report was part of a back-and-forth set of reports trying to create/close down support for the target.

Why this matters. 

We need to remember that energy efficiency has been talked about and not done for decades. If you are interested in Australian energy efficiency, you cannot go past the tireless and pain-staking work of Alan Pears. 

What happened next?

In October of that year, just ahead of the Second World Climate Climate conference, the Federal Government did commit to the Toronto Target, but with caveats so big that they rendered the whole thing pointless. Other targets have met similar fates. And here we are.