Thirty three years ago, on this day, October 24th, 1991 AMEEF (Australian Minerals and Energy Environment Foundation) was launched in Canberra by Martin W. Holdgate, then Director General of the IUCN,
(The Mining Review, Dec 1991 – p8-10.)
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 357ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the Australian mining industry had come in for a lot of flak, for environmental criminality, degradation, or whatever you want to call it. And this included the climate issue.
They pushed back, calling their critics all the names under the sun, but they also needed some sort of positive front foot to put forward. And here we have the Australian Minerals and Energy Environment Foundation, which is one of those outfits that you can set up to dish out awards to yourself, and press releases and the occasional book. And this is a soothing lullaby to middle class people who want to believe that everything’s okay. Alongside this, there’s also been AMIC’s “Mining: it’s absolutely essential” campaign. They had done adverts and all the rest of it trying to TV adverts, newspaper adverts, etc.
What I think we can learn from this is that there are these basically hollow organisations made up of well-meaning, but probably naive or desperate scientists and bureaucrats. They do some good work, you could say, at the margins. They’re trying to change the system from within. It’s maybe better than sitting on your ass and complaining or making websites I don’t know. But if social movements had to tackle the Juggernaut, they need to see this as another tactic. But they won’t, because we’re not smart enough to solve the problems that we are causing with our smarts without cutting.
What happened next I think it’s defunct? Website looks, ah, interesting. https://ameef.com.au/
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.
The question is this. Who is the bigger climate criminal – John Howard, Prime Minister of Australia 1996-2007, or Anthony Albanese, same gig from 2022 to ??. It’s not as straightforward as you think.
My answer is below. It’s not clear cut, and I am keen to hear your arguments. In the tweets/replies/comments, etc. Suggested hashtag #HowardOrAlbo
For those to young to remember, and those who have done their best to repress the horror: John Howard did enormous damage to Australia, across a wide range of issues. For these purposes, I’ll stick to climate.
A one paragraph history lesson.
After the shock of the Liberals going to the 1990 Federal election with a stronger emissions reduction target than the ALP, the opponents of meaningful Australian climate action had successfully mobilised in the early 1990s. They prevented any ambitious contribution by Australia to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992. They gutted the Ecologically Sustainable Development process initiated by Bob Hawke, Labor Prime Minister from 1983-1991. They stopped any effective action going into the National Greenhouse Response Strategy (December 1992). In all this they were helped by Labor’s Paul Keating, who rolled Hawke in late 1991. In 1994-5 the opponents of climate action, co-ordinated by the Business Council of Australia and what we now know as the Minerals Council of Australia. They laid the groundwork for Australia to plead for “special treatment” internationally, using farcical economic modelling.
Then John Howard came and dialled it all up not to eleven, but to twelve. He doubled down on the economic modelling, which was all horseshit, literally funded by the oil coal and gas companies. He made promises about renewables in order to buy off the worried Liberals, promises he then did everything to avoid keeping. He arm-twisted and bullshitted his way to an incredibly generous deal at Kyoto (and then pulled out, once his mate George W. Bush had led the way). He did everything he could to slow renewables, including organising a meeting of fossil fuel company CEOs to demand their help (I am not making this up). He twice killed off an Emissions Trading Scheme, the second time – in 2003 – against his united cabinet. On and on and on I could go.
Anthony Albanese is worse.
If we can only send one Prime Minister to the International Court of Justice at the Hague it should be loveable raised-in-social-housing Albo.
Here’s my reasoning.
John Howard has two (weak-ish to laughable) arguments in, ah, “mitigation.”
First – he was born in 1939. He was raised to believe that there were no limits to the Earth’s bounty, and that if there WERE limits, well, technology would fix them (1) . He was 30 when the whole eco-doom thing started, and could say “this is a yoof fad”, even while his party, the Liberal Party, created a Minister for the Environment for the first time. I wrote about this in an academic article called “Wind beneath their contempt: Why Australian policymakers oppose solar and wind energy”(Hudson, 2017). There’s a Conversation article about it here.
Second – in the 1990s, even after the Second Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1995-6 it was possible – if you really really engaged in a lot of motivated reasoning – to believe that climate change was mostly a greenie scare designed to create a dreaded Superstate of regulation. The commies had lost the Cold War and were starting a war about Heat to have another go.
It was nonsense, of course it was, but we all believe nonsensical things, occasionally. And so what if some temperature records were falling? Australia is a land of extremes… Dorothea McKellar yadda yadda yadda. Yes, there’s a Millennium Drought (pray for rain, said Howard, in April 2007), but Australia has always had droughts. Howard could grasp some flimsy bullshit climate “doubt.” It had no substance, but it was there.
Finally, in his defence, too at least Howard never pretended to give a rat’s arse. At least he had enough respect to be open in his contempt for the black armbands, the green armbands etc.
Albo has none of that.
Albo was born in 1963. He was 9 when The Limits to Growth came out. Questions of environmental damage and danger were just there for him growing up. He was 20 when the Franklin Dam was saved by his beloved Labor Party. He was 25 when Bob Hawke came over all “green,” when Australia was freaking out about the hole in the Ozone and the Greenhouse Effect.
Albo? How many impossible bushfires? How many killer heatwaves and temperature records smashed? How many incinerated animals? A billion? Two? Are you waiting till the number gets to 5 billion, Albo?
What are you planning as your excuse, in ten years, Albo? I’d really like to know. Oh and, btw, that sound you hear? It’s your old boss, Tom Uren, spinning in his grave.
Whatever your excuse is, it won’t fool anyone. Except maybe you? And maybe in the Alboverse that’s all that matters. Top “leadership”, mate.
Meanwhile, Albo has told us how much he cares. Albo has been making a song and dance about how much he cares for two decades.
The Senate Inquiry into the Energy White Paper has concluded the Energy White Paper will delay critical action on climate change for another twenty years [All Our Yesterdays post here]
And the ALP is forever telling the Greens they are irresponsible (2). Because Labor has suuuuch a good record of following through.
On that subject, a quick digression about one of Albo’s enablers.
Health Minister Mark “The Climate Wars” Butler, sat there like a Trappist monk, watching Albo shit over the portfolio that was his “passion”. Mate your silence is heard. People remember your book, all the lovely words. People hear it and draw conclusions about the quantity and the quality of your sincerity and your courage. You think anyone will be impressed when you mumble something about Caucus rules and Party loyalty? How about some loyalty to the community you claim to represent? The city you are supposed to speak for? How about, I don’t know, even some species loyalty? Mene mene tekel upharsin, eh?
So Howard IS a climate criminal. He should be sitting in the dock by the North Sea. But Albo belongs alongside him, and I think in front of him. Albo has no excuses. Not the excuse of outlook, not knowledge. Albo is the guy in the Kudelka cartoon from last weekend.
Basically, this. As per Richard Denniss’s quotetweet
Australia has relied on rorting rules rather than cutting carbon emissions for decades…
Carbon offsets, carbon capture & storage, clean coal…& now nuclear…any magical future solution can be used to justify subsidising fossil fuel expansion in the present
Yep. This is bipartisan. But the chickens are coming home to roost (or are they among the incinerated billions of animals?) And Australia’s “ambition” is utterly inadequate, as per Bill Hare’s May 2024 Conversation article and Carbon ActionTracker work.
[Btw, the disclaimer at the bottom, in reference to Royce Kurmelovs, applies equally to Dennis and Hare.]
But before you go out and save the world, inquiring minds would like to know – in your opinion – Albo or John Howard? Who is the bigger climate criminal?
Further reading
I have focussed on two “personalities.” There is always the danger of a morality tale, ignoring the awesome power of the networks of determined, clever and remorseless individuals and groups that have played and won the game called “capture the state.” The reading below (especially the Royce Kurmelovs’ book, to be spoken of in the same breath as Guy Pearse’s work) should help with that.
Even Tony Abbott , born 1957, kinda sorta has that excuse (though he and his best mate Malcolm Turnbull are the same age)
I am not now, and never have been a member of the Green Party of anywhere. Or any political party. And as for the Greens, I am not always a fan of how they do bread and butter politics. Here and here. And here, I guess.
DISCLAIMER
I helped Royce with bits of research and we continue to collaborate. For clarity, he had no foreknowledge of this article, nothing to do with it. Same goes for two other ppl whose work I drew on – Richard Dennis’s and Bill Hare. Didn’t consult them in this, no idea if they will applaud or be horrified. My views alone.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 308ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius had been dead for four years buthis ideas about CO2 as something building up in the atmosphere that would cause warming was still around. And every so often a newspaper will pick up on it. We’ve had several other examples of that already on All Our Yesterdays for example, here and here, [New York Times and The Oregonian].
What we learn is that good ideas go through rough patches. Bad Ideas can go through noisy patches. Do we get closer approximations of reality? Yeah, I think we do. We split the atom goddamnit. Go us, brainy murder apes!
What happened next It would be another 20 years before Gilbert Plass would make his statements at the American Geophysical Union meeting…
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.
Twenty three years ago, on this day, October 20th, 2001, four years to the day after they’d tried to give him solar panels, Greenpeace nailed John Howard.
Greenpeace noted in an October 20 [2001] media release, “In its ongoing attempt to avoid an agreement that has any legal consequences, Australia has tried to weaken the whole Protocol by substituting the word ‘should’ for the world ‘shall’ throughout the compliance agreement, weakening its legal power. [Compare Paris panic in 2015] Australia also wants to be able [to] play with its figures on forestry and land use, and is trying to get the rules written so it doesn’t even have to say exactly where the forests are.”
Jennifer Morgan from the World Wildlife Fund described Australia as the “leader of the backtrack camp”. The Climate Action Network awarded Australia a “Fossil of the Day” award for trying to gut the compliance regime.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 371ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that here we were, a month after 911 and a month before the next Federal Election. John Howard was still being a prick on climate. Of course he was. He was breathing. He had defeated an emissions trading scheme. He had slowed down renewable energy as much as he could. And he’d already kind of promised that he wasn’t going to ratify Kyoto, (though he didn’t make that announcement until June of the following year.)
What we learn is that Greenpeace has been telling the truth to Howard and all of these politicians but you shall know the truth and the truth really shall not set you free. Anyone who tells you that the truth will set you free is either a god-bother, a helpless liberal or hasn’t been paying any attention.
What happened next? Howard won another two elections (2001 and 2004), caused more mayhem and despondency. And the emissions kept climbing. And the coal exports. And the LNG. And the profits accruing to a few companies. And here we are.
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.
Twenty-five years ago, on this day, October 15th, 1999 the Australian Financial Review reported that ,
The Federal Government has conceded for the first time that its greenhouse gas policy could reduce the competitiveness of key sectors of the Australian economy.
The Australian Financial Review has obtained a draft record of an August 25 meeting of the Council of Australian Governments’ High Level Group on Greenhouse. It puts the Commonwealth position in these terms: “Competitiveness is fundamentally linked to the economy as a whole and not individual sectors – no government could promise that the competitiveness of individual sectors would remain unchanged over time.”
Hordern, N. 1999. Greenhouse policy `can affect competitiveness’. The Australian Financial Review, 15 October, p. 6.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 368ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the Howard Government had come in in 1996 even more hostile to climate action than Keating. It had ramped up the opposition to international commitments. It had done greenwash where necessary and naked contempt when it thought it could. In 1997 it had been cornered into making a few promises that it was now trying to backtrack on, and water down. But it couldn’t always bluster past the advocates of action at the state level, including New South Wales Premier Bob Carr…
What we learn is that in 1999 even the Howard Government realised that continuing to ignore climate impacts was going to cause problems for The Australian Economy.
What happened next? Howard continued to do everything he could to avoid any climate action, both domestically and internationally. Domestically, he continued to undermine any progress on renewables, and to kill a carbon price twice (in 2000 and 2003). Internationally, he refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol (despite having extorted the most unimaginably generous terms) and joined in various “spoiler” activities with the US.
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.
Thirty-eight years ago, on this day, October 12th, 1986, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s science discussion show, Ockham’s Razor – soap box for all things scientific, with short talks about research, industry and policy from people with something thoughtful to say- tackled climate change… Yes. 1986.
Ockham’s Razor [Series 86, Episode 101] – The Greenhouse Effect, Part 1 – Cause – Doctor Brian Tucker [CSIRO Division of Atmospheric Research]
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 347ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the CSIRO had finally been able to ring the alarm bell about carbon dioxide. And people starting to talk about it, worry about it. And it turned up on the radio. The broader context was that there had been people on ABC radio science shows since 1969, – and conceivably earlier – warning about carbon dioxide buildup. We had Frank Fenner on 16th of September 1969 And we’d had Richie-Calder on the first ever Science Show in 1975.
What we learn is what we always learn – that we knew, we knew, we knew.
What happened next. The Commission for the Future put together the Greenhouse Project with CSIRO. It was effective in raising awareness among policy elites and mass publics in 1988 and 1989. And then they didn’t get further funding.
And as per the Rosaleen Love’s article in Arena, it all just went away because we can’t stare into the abyss for very long…
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.
Thirty three years ago, on this day, October 10th, 1991, on the one year anniversary of Australia setting an ambitious greenhouse gas reduction target…
MELBOURNE: Accusing the Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, of a “gross betrayal”, major conservation groups united yesterday to condemn the Federal Government’s proposed resource-security legislation.
The executive director of the Australian Conservation Foundation, Phillip Toyne, said Mr Hawke was going ahead with the legislation despite a commitment last year that he would not.
He said the Prime Minister had made the pledge to himself and environmentalist-musician Peter Garrett, during a meeting between the three.
“He told us there would be no resource-security legislation. It was an unambiguous exchange of views and the intent was clear,” Mr Toyne said.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 355ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the Ecologically Sustainable Development process was clearly being gutted. And Hawke was not defending it. It was a long time since the heady days of 1989, 1990 when people were voting green. Hawke had other things on his mind, such as a potential challenge from Paul Keating, and also the new Liberal leader, John Hewson with his so-called Fightback! neoliberal policy. So the green issues could go jump, basically.
What we learn is that for everything there is a season and seasons for environmental concern, rarely seem to last more than a year or two. And then the pull of greed and “must keep the economy bubbling along” comes back stronger than ever. And so it came to pass.
What happened next two months later, Hawke was gone. Paul Keating successfully challenged: he was not a fan of environmental issues. And especially the so-called amorphous greenhouse issue. And it’s fun when you read his memoirs or biographies, it just doesn’t crop up. It’s just staggeringly absent.
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.
On Monday October 9, 2006, a group of Australian charities and pressure groups, who’d been working with the CSIRO, released a report “Australia Responds: Helping Our Neighbours Fight Climate Change.” (download here if you like).
“
It called for lots of sensible things, including
Increase Australia’s overseas development assistance (ODA) in line with most other developed nations to 0.5% of GNI by 2009 10, and 0.7% by 2015.
Review Australia’s immigration program in light of the expected impacts of climate change. This review should consider mechanisms to support people displaced by climate change within the region. • Make a strong commitment to support disaster risk reduction, mitigation and preparedness measures within the ODA program.
Adopt a national framework for reducing Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions by at least 60% of 1990 levels by 2050, with an implementation timetable that will provide a 20% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 382ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
By the way, something else really important happened on the same day – Anthony Albanese made a statement on how Australia needed to take climate refugees.
You can also read my Open Letter to a Tuvaluan turning 18.
And here is a fourth post (no, nobody has ever told me to shut my damn mouth – why do you ask) tying it together and suggesting some answers to the only question that matters “What is to be done?” It also has links to various organisations trying to help.
The context was the Australian government under Bob Hawke had made noises about accepting climate refugees. Keating ignored the whole issue, and under him the “fuck the world, we’re gonna sell soooo much coal bwahahahaha” strategy got moving. John Howard dialed it up to eleven. Then 12. John Howard belongs in one particular place close to sea-level. That place is The Hague.
From Labour’s “Our Drowning Neighbours” discussion paper
What we learn is that
NGOs can get scientists on board, and work their guts out and it will be a one-day wonder. A political party (especially in Opposition) will piggyback on the work. And the media will very very quickly lose interest, for a variety of structural reasons.
And so it came to pass.
What happened next
The report generated a certain amount of attention.
The low lying nation of Kiribati is just one of our Pacific neighbours facing the real day to day effects of climate change.
Rising sea levels, huge tides and unpredictable winds are already a part of life there. So what do you do when climate change is literally on your doorstep?
Anyway, then the caravan moved on. Peter Garrett, the next climate spokesman after Anthony Albanese, name-checked it in February 2007 at Labor’s little shindig at Parliament House.
But the whole question of accepting climate refugees in the future became, well, somewhat awkward under Julia Gillard. Then along came Tony “Stop the Boats” Abbott and that’s all she wrote.
What happened nextmore generally.
The NGOs kept NGOing.
Meanwhile
The coal exports kept rising.
This had consequences.
The bank balances of Very Important People kept rising.
The donations – official and unofficial – to parties and individuals – kept rising.
Which was all great, obviously , and far more important than the fact that
The emissions kept rising.
The atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide kept rising.
The seas kept rising.
The whole language of “climate refugees” became a bit awks for the Gillard Government, so was shelved. Everyone moved on.
But the issue did not go away, and then – in November 2023…
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.
Eighteen years ago, on Monday October 9, 2006, the climate spokesman of the Australian Labor Party (then in opposition, and positioning itself to attack Prime Minister John Howard ahead of an election due soon-ish) released a statement with the snappy title
“Labor calls for International Coalition to Accept Climate Change Refugees”
It begins
“It’s in Australia’s national interest that we lead on climate change, not wait decades to act.
While the Minister for Environment accepts Australia “does have a substantial role to play in helping smaller, less-developed countries” that will be devastated by rising sea levels, he fails to show leadership. The Howard Government does not have a strategy to combat climate change and its impact on Pacific countries.”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 382ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
You should be able to view it on Anthony Albanese’s very own website. It was there as of 0530 Australian Time. If it is no longer there, for some inexplicable reason, well, you can see screenshots and the text are at the foot of this post – Just Scroll On. I’ve even added some hyperlinks and footnotes [in square brackets].
By the way, something else really important happened on the same day – a coalition of human rights and development organisations released a report called “Australia Responds: Helping Our Neighbours Fight Climate Change”. Here’s a post about that.
And here is a fourth post (no, nobody has ever told me to shut my damn mouth – why do you ask) tying it together and suggesting some answers to the only question that matters “What is to be done in solidarity?” It also has links to various organisations trying to help.
The context was that in the late 1980s the Hawke government (Labor, for the younger readers who may not know) was trying to both Care About “The Greenhouse Effect” and also flog a lot more coal (e.g. January 30, 1989). In August 1988 two academics had flagged the possibility of climate refugees and Australia’s responsibilities, at a conference in Sydney. At the July 1989, at the 20th South Pacific Forum, well look at what the Australian Financial Reviewreported
“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.
The same year English science communicator James Burke had produced a show – shown in Australia called After the Warming. It is – spoiler – about the future of a warming world, in which he included a scenario about climate refugees getting machine-gunned. Watch it on Youtube here. (1)
Then, in late 1991 Hawke lost a Labor Party room spill (there’d been one earlier in the year). The next Australian Prime Minister, Paul Keating, killed the “greenie nonsense.” A carbon tax was proposed and defeated by big business (1994-5) and then vacuous “voluntary action” was proposed. The Liberal Government of John Howard had been in power from March 1996 and had dialled Keating’s climate vandalism up to 11. And then to 12. By 2006 the Australians were still alongside the USA as the public face of the Venus Lobby, but Labor were beginning to use climate as one of the sticks to beat Howard with.
What we learn is that
Labor in opposition were shameless attention hounds, willing to piggie-back on other people’s intellectual and political work (then again, ‘the game’s the game’).
Labor in opposition were willing to make all sorts of lovely sounding (vague-ish) promises and enough civil society organisations either roll over and squee with delight, or refuse to get their shit together to say “yeah, honey, you don’t make that happen, there’s gonna be serious trouble.”
More generally
Political parties like to be parasites on civil society. They like to take what they want (in this case a chance to get more news for their guff) and don’t really care about the consequences for the wider ecosystem, if they can even see it (mostly they can’t).
For political parties civil society is at best a place to get authenticity, credibility and competent/ambitious personnel from especially when in opposition or facing a new challenge they can’t trot out the usual bullshit with confidence and without reputational risk.
For political parties civil society is at worst (and therefore usually) a bunch of clever and determined people who are agitated and agitating about how, now that you are in government you are not in fact keeping any of the nice (vague) promises you made when in opposition. Poach the smartest, install your own meatpuppets, defund and deride is the main way of dealing with them, alongside some patronising guff about “politics is the art of the possible, you have to govern from the centre” and all the other excuses. Make sure you keep big business sweet, because when pitchfork season comes (and it does, periodically), they are the guys who might send the helicopter to get you out of the palace.
If only somebody had written a short perfect book that ended with this
“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again: but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
What happened next
Then Labor leader Kim Beazley got knifed by Kevin “I’m from Queensland, I’m here to help” Rudd about six weeks later [Wikipedia]. The shadow climate portfolio went to Peter “in the end the rain comes down” Garrett, who name-checked the “Australia Responds” report (see next post) in February 2007 and then turned his attention to helping funnel enormous sums of taxpayer money to a real climate response, namely Carbon Capture and Storage.
Happy times.
Albo took on other jobs over the years. I don’t quite recall where he is these days, but wherever it is, I am sure he is working day and night to turn the fine words of 2006 into real policy. Oh yes. BUT, in the interests of fairness, alongside all his sterling work to expand coalmines, there was, in fact, in November 2023, an agreement to offer Tuvaluans (280 a year) visas to study and/or work in Australia.
Journalist James Burke reports from the year 2050, where humans and the Earth have survived global warming. Using an innovative device called the “Virtual Reality Generator,” a computer effect that projects different environments on a location, Burke shows various scenarios of global warming and illustrates the potential effects of today’s actions. Burke also addresses the impact of climate change on historical events (and vice versa).
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.
It’s in Australia’s national interest that we lead on climate change, not wait decades to act. [AOY1]
While the Minister for Environment [2] accepts Australia “does have a substantial role to play in helping smaller, less-developed countries” that will be devastated by rising sea levels, he fails to show leadership. The Howard Government does not have a strategy to combat climate change and its impact on Pacific countries.
On today’s AM program [3], Senator Campbell’s limp response was to put off action: “The major impacts, the long-term impacts, of climate change will take many decades to unfold.”
Pacific countries need a plan now, not when they are already under water. [4]
Tuvalu is expected to become uninhabitable within 10 years because of rising sea levels, not in “many decades” as the Minister said. [5]
Pacific countries are increasingly vulnerable to extreme weather events, including contamination of their fresh water supplies.
Labor supports the Kyoto Protocol [6] and has a comprehensive plan to assist Pacific countries threatened by climate change.
Labor’s policy discussion paper, Our Drowning Neighbours, advocates the establishment of an international coalition, led by Australia, to accept climate change refugees from Pacific countries.
The paper recommends the establishment of a Pacific Climate Change Centre to monitor climate change, protect fresh water sources and plan for emergency evacuation where necessary.
Labor welcomes the release of today’s report, Australia Responds: Helping Our Neighbours Fight Climate Change, by a coalition of groups including Oxfam and World Vision.
The report reinforces Labor’s call for urgent action to reduce greenhouse emissions and highlights the need for climate change to also be addressed through the aid budget.
All Our Yesterdays footnotes, from October 2024
[1] Yes, the national interest. Which seems to be always identical to the short-term needs of the fossil fuel industry and its mates, no matter which political party is pretending to hold the reins of power. Not to rain on anyone’s parade (btw, in the end the rain comes down, obliterates the streets of the Blue Sky Town. Just sayin’]
[2] The hapless Senator Campbell. Clive Hamilton is spectacularly rude about him in Scorcher, a book worth reading. Howard replaced Campbell with some guy called Malcolm Turnbull. Turnbull urged Honest John to ratify Kyoto (no dice). Turnbull went on to a storied career as a fearless, skilful and highly successful policy entrepreneur on climate, outmanoeuvring the forces of darkness and saving both Australia’s reputation and its physical safety.
[3] Ah, the ABC. Bless. This suggests, btw, that the press release might well have been a brainfart on the day – an ambitious policy wonk suggesting an anodyne statement hooked onto the Australia Responds report would be enough to get some headlines, and punch the bruise that was Howard’s climate dilemma. I could probably find out, maybe. But the game would not be worth the candle.
[4] Thank goodness Albo has worked tirelessly these last 18 years to turn that banal exhortation into shiny reality. (ahahahaha- which stands for All Hail Albanese All Hail Albanese)
[5] Really? And the scientific basis for this headline grabbing claim is? Is? It’s almost as if the ALP doesn’t care about either science or the credibility of environmentalism, if there is a momentary advantage to be had.
This paper investigates how the Kyoto Protocol has framed political discourse and policy development of greenhouse gas mitigation in Australia. We argue that ‘Kyoto’ has created a veil over the climate issue in Australia in a number of ways. Firstly, its symbolic power has distracted attention from actual environmental outcomes while its accounting rules obscure the real level of carbon emissions and structural trends at the nation-state level. Secondly, a public policy tendency to commit to far off emission targets as a compromise to implementing legislation in the short term has also emerged on the back of Kyoto-style targets. Thirdly, Kyoto’s international flexibility mechanisms can lead to the diversion of mitigation investment away from the nation-state implementing carbon legislation. A final concern of the Kyoto approach is how it has shifted focus away from Australia as the world’s largest coal exporter towards China, its primary customer. While we recognise the crucial role aspirational targets and timetables play in capturing the imagination and coordinating action across nations, our central theme is that ‘Kyoto’ has overshadowed the implementation of other policies in Australia. Understanding how ‘Kyoto’ has framed debate and policy is thus crucial to promoting environmentally effective mitigation measures as nation-states move forward from COP15 in Copenhagen to forge a post-Kyoto international agreement. Recent elections in 2009 in Japan and America and developments at COP15 suggest positive scope for international action on climate change. However, the lesson from the 2007 election and subsequent events in Australia is a caution against elevating the symbolism of ‘Kyoto-style’ targets and timetables above the need for implementation of mitigation policies at the nation-state level.
In English? It’s all make-believe. It’s all kayfabe.
Fourteen years ago, on this day, October 7th, 2010,
Gillard scraps climate assembly
ByPaul Osborne
October 7, 2010 — 5.12pm
Prime Minister Julia Gillard has scrapped her election promise of a citizens’ assembly to deal with climate change, a scheme the opposition described as a dud anyway.
Ms Gillard said other aspects of the party’s election platform – including subsidising the replacement of older cars, rolling out renewable energy projects linked to $1 billion of new transmission lines and improving energy efficiency – would still go ahead.
Ms Gillard on Thursday chaired the first meeting of the multi-party climate change committee – one of the promises made to the Australian Greens and independents to gain support to form minority government.
In a communique released after the meeting, the committee confirmed its intention to “work co-operatively across party lines
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 390ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Julia Gillard had challenged Kevin Rudd for the leadership at the Labor Party in July, having had enough of his bullshit. There are some quite interesting and plausible accounts of what happened and how it happened. Then she’d gone to an early election. It had been going okay. Mostly, it’s gonna be tight, but Labor looked like they were going to win. Then some leaks started happening from within the cabinet. Funny that. So it was a hung parliament and Gillard had to negotiate with independents like Tony Windsor and Rob Oakshott, and the Greens to form a minority government. And therefore, her idea of a climate assembly – having 150 people to talk about the issue for a year, which she had been persuaded by some Blairite advisor – was now a non-starter, because the Independents wouldn’t wear it. The Independents wanted action. And so therefore, there was the Multi Party Committee on Climate Change, which she invited the Liberals and the Nationals to join (while knowing full well that they wouldn’t).
What we learn is that the climate assembly idea might have worked, if Rudd had come up with it (see Rudd’s “2020” event in 2008). But these processes always get dominated by the loudest, most cashed up and determined. They’re rarely particularly deliberative, especially if the stakes are high. And anyway, by 2010, the timing was all wrong. What could have looked like a sensible circuit breaker now just looked like weakness.
What happened next? How long have you got? MPCCC had its meetings, advised by Ross Garneau, etc. It came up with some legislation. Gillard put that through Parliament. It did an advertising campaign. But by then, Tony Abbott had successfully framed it as “a great big tax on everything” and had also fatally wounded Gillard in public perception. I think Gillard was a successful Prime Minister in terms of the amount of legislation she got through. She was a steady hand on the tiller. But then she also lacks certain things. For example, a penis and children. Therefore, awful, awful woman.
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.
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