Fifteen years ago, on this day, August 11th, 2009, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, famously fond of the sound of his own voice, is actually shut up…
“Giant metaphor strikes Parliament,” is how The Onion might have rendered the power outage that, thankfully, cut Kevin Rudd off mid-sentence on climate change in Question Time yesterday. It was the only interesting moment in a Question Time so boring as to be almost physically unendurable.
The Liberals are making a concerted effort to push the Frontier Economics modelling, and good on them. It’s very brave, because the instant response, not merely from Kevin Rudd but from assembled journalists, is why isn’t it policy, and if it isn’t, what is their policy. That’s a question that remains unresolved.”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 388ppm. As of 2024 it is 424ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was in Parliament, preening and bleating. This was after his first attempt at legislating his wretched CPRS had failed, and before it was reintroduced in November. This is one of the few examples of Kevin Rudd actually being shut up.
What we learn is we learn nothing, because we’re human.
What happened next Rudd reintroduced the CPRS legislation, and it failed. Thanks to Tony Abbott. Kevin Rudd, the Greens possibly in that order?
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.
Fifteen years ago, on this day, July 29th, 2009, ALL the buzzwords are in play.
Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming held a hearing entitled, “Climate for Innovation: Technology and Intellectual Property in Global Climate Solutions.”
The key to solving climate change and developing clean energy is technology, and at the center of technology are intellectual property rights. In the Space Race, America had a singular competitor. In the Clean Energy Race to stop global warming, America is competing with the Chinese, Germans, Koreans, and countless others. How these countries and the world deal with intellectual property rights will have a huge impact on whether technology is available and deployed to solve our global problems.
On Wednesday July 29th, 2009 the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming held a hearing entitled, “Climate for Innovation: Technology and Intellectual Property in Global Climate Solutions.”
This hearing examined the impact of intellectual property rights on global warming solutions and how to encourage American innovation while spreading climate related technologies globally. Technology transfer and cooperation are part of the international climate regime and have become an important issue regarding negotiations on the future international climate agreement, and in the debate heading into the UN Climate Change Conference this December in Copenhagen.
WHAT: Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming Hearing, “Climate for Innovation: Technology and Intellectual Property in Global Climate Solutions”
WHEN: Wednesday, July 29, 2009, 9:30 AM
WHERE: 210 Cannon House Office Building, Washington DC, and Online
OPENING STATEMENT: Chairman Edward J. Markey
WITNESS LIST:
Mr. Govi Rao, Chairman, Lighting Science Group Corporation
Mr. Robert T. Nelsen, Co-founder and Managing Director, ARCH Venture Partners
Ms. Jennifer Haverkamp, Managing Director for International Policy & Negotiations, Environmental Defense Fund
Dr. Mark Esper, Executive Vice President Global Intellectual Property Center, U.S. Chamber of Commerce
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 387ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that with Copenhagen COP coming, every man, woman, dog and child, was holding conferences about climate change with all the right buzzwords: science, innovation, technology, mitigation, you name it. And there is a finite number of buzzwords that can be used and you just rearrange them and hope that that exact order hasn’t been used in the last six months. Bish Bosh you’re away.
What we learn is that humans are trapped in a quite finite web of ideas, or rather, the mainstream is; on the margins, there are all sorts of ideas, some of them good, some of them dangerous, some of them stupid, most of them stupid because humans are fundamentally quite stupid. [You can tell an idea is good when I’ve said it, basically.] And the buzzword bingo can be played.
What happened next. Copenhagen was a washout. And then the caravan kept going, and keeps falling over and having to be put back together again. And here we are. The emissions are still climbing.
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.
Fifteen years ago, on this day, July 12th,2009 there was a spat that Al Gore was expected to referee.
WHEN climate change guru Al Gore arrives in Melbourne today, he will find a conservation movement in vitriolic disagreement with itself.
A split has developed between the country’s preeminent environmental organisation, the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF), and a bloc of other green lobbyists over the foundation’s public support for the Rudd Government’s carbon trading scheme.
Bachelard, M. 2009. Feuding climate camps seek Gore blessing. Sunday Age, 12 July , p.8
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 388ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the Rudd Government had been trying to get support for its ridiculous Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. And they’d found it at least with the so-called Southern Crust coalition, led by the ACTU, and the Australian Conservation Foundation. But all the other green groups thought that this was an outrageous sell out. Ambition was too low. And that Rudd should be resisted. It was your fairly standard. NGO fight between people who are determined to keep their place in the room where the decisions are made, and are willing to carry water and get out and defend the indefensible versus those who weren’t in the inside of the room or didn’t want to be on the inside of the room, or were willing to be on the inside of the room as long as they weren’t being used as fig leaves. It’s a pattern you see over and over again. Anyway, apparently, Al Gore was being expected to resolve the dispute. I don’t know if he did.
What we learn from this is that the same patterns over and over again, for understandable reasons. It’s mildly entertaining that Gore should be regarded as a fair actor. I guess he had prestige. And he didn’t have skin in the game instantly. But to expect Gore to come on down on the side of people pushing for higher ambition or maybe. I mean, this was only three years after An Inconvenient Truth, after all.
What happened next? Rudd’s legislation was introduced for a second time in November 2009. It fell thanks to Tony Abbott, Kevin Rudd and the Greens possibly in that order, and then had to be introduced again in 2011 by Julia Gillard, the far superior parliamentarian but everything was in pieces and it all went tits up. Not that it would have mattered, I guess, really? I mean, we’re doomed. We have been doomed for a long time. It’s just taking us a while to catch up with that fact.
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.
Fifteen years ago, on this day, March 9th, 2009, the ABC revealed just how much lobbying was going on.
The ALP government’s intransigence is no surprise. The ABC’s Four Corners on March 9 2009 provided detailed confirmation that the CPRS is the product of immense pressure and lobbying from the corporate interests that profit most from Australia’s heavy reliance on fossil fuels.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 389ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Kevin Rudd had become prime minister, in part by using climate change as a stick to beat Liberal John Howard with. Once in office, though, he just subcontracted this out – largely ignored the issue except for the occasional set piece speech. He was more interested in the global financial crisis and running around saving capitalism and strutting and fretting his error upon the stage. In December of 2008, the carbon pollution reduction scheme white paper had been released. There were protests when Rudd did a speech at the National Press Club. And economist Ross Garnaut who had been Rudd’s pet economist for a little while, but proved to be too honest called that process “Oiling the squeaks”, saying that never in the field of human of Australian lobbying has so much been given to so many so few but so many.
Anyway. 2009 was the year that Rudd’s lot were supposed to turn the White Paper into actual legislation. And business knew that if it kept kicking and screaming it would keep being given more and more of what it wanted because Rudd is basically a spineless technocrat. And this is a good example of it.
What I think we can learn from this is that vested interests will never be satisfied with what you give them. (This is the accusation levelled at climate activists, but I think there’s some projection going on).
What happened next
Rudd introduced the legislation. It fell the first time which was fine by him because it gave him more chances to beat up on opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull (who admittedly had been a bit of a douche. Gordon Gretch etc). Then in late 2009, Turnbull ran up the white flag and wanted to get the climate issue off the table. He sent feelers to Rudd who batted him away, convinced he would get the legislation through, defeat the Liberals and go to Copenhagen for victory lap. And then along came Tony Abbott. And you know, the rest.
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 amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 387.6ppm. As of 2023 it is 420ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that everyone was talking climate because of the recently concluded Copenhagen conference and the general upsurge in concern over the previous three years. Plimer had written a book called “Heaven and Earth” which has become a major denialist tract. Monbiot was always up for a ruck. Monbiot had already put paid to David Bellamy’s appearances by pointing out that Bellamy had completely misunderstood an aspect of glacier retreat.
What I think we can learn from this
That is rare for a single intellectual crushing and humiliation to particularly matter, but cumulatively they can, I guess.
What happened next
Plimer kept plimering. Monbiot kept publishing. Kevin Rudd did not announce the double dissolution election in response to the blockage of his wretched legislation. The Australia climate wars just got worse. And the emissions kept climbing.
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..
Seventy one years ago, on this day, December 5, 1952…
The potentially deadly nature of urban smoke had been demonstrated some years earlier during London’s historic “Black Fog” of December 5-9, 1952. A temperature inversion trapped the city’s smoke close to the ground. On the first day it was still a white fog, but so extraordinarily dense that cars and buses moved slower than a walk, and the opera had to be cancelled when fog seeped into the theatre and made it impossible for the singers to see the conductor. By the last day, the fog had turned black, visibility was limited to a mere eleven inches, and the hospitals were full of Londoners perishing from the smoke. Many of the 4,000 or so people killed by this episode never made it to the hospital but died on the streets; fifty bodies were removed from one small city park. In 1956, after nearly seven hundred years of complaints about the coal smoke in London, Parliament finally banned the burning of soft coal in the central city, and the air immediately improved.
Page 167-8 Coal: A Human History by Barbara Freese. (c/w Web of Fear!)
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 312ppm. As of 2023 it is 420ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that air quality was dreadful. People had been dropping dead in peasoupers, but this was far worse, with a death toll of around four thousand. Finally, four years later, we get the Clean Air Act because of it despite continued resistance,
What we learn is that there can be multiple disasters, but you need a lot of people to die before anything will get done.
But interestingly, 57 years later to the day, there is another form of pollution in London, mental pollution, i.e. “hopey-pollution.”
So the context is this. At the end of 2008, the main legislative goal had been agreed, a Climate Change Act and this was almost entirely due to the work of Friends of the Earth, bless them. They did really good work there. Then what do you do for an encore? And the problem is that even getting that much agreement was tricky. And you need to do something that has got low entry costs that everyone can agree that might apparently help the process along. And some bright spark came up with the idea of a march and the earliest publicity said “March in December”, haha.
And it was then changed to “The Wave.” This is not really the fault of the individuals having to work within a system that contains and constrains everything.
And that means that we have to undertake these ritualised repertoires, because what else is there?
But I remember a conversation with a very frustrated advocate of marching.
And I said, “do we need social movements to fight climate change?”
“Yes” she said
“Do marches build social movements?”
“No” she conceded, but was still fuming that I wasn’t interested in marching.
The end.
Here we are unwilling and unable to innovate to do the granular work because it’s just not near enough to our wheelhouse.
So 57 years apart, London is subjected to two deadly consequences of its industrial heritage…
On this day, November 24, 2009, the Liberals and Nationals finally decide there are more votes in rage than in the future…
The pivotal event was the Coalition party meeting of 24 November [2009] to consider the shadow cabinet recommendation to support Rudd’s amended scheme. This meeting determined the future of conservative politics for many years, and its consequences for Australia were far-reaching. The debate began at 10am with a briefing from Macfarlane who called the deal ‘exceptional’. Most backbenchers struggled with its complexity. The meeting ran for more than seven hours, with two breaks. Its disputed outcome was an insight into the arcane nature of political rituals.
Kelly, (2014:252)
The context was that, despite having gone to the 1990 Federal Election with a stronger climate target than the ALP, the Liberals and Nationals decided that the scientists were lying, physics was wrong and there was nothing to worry about. That held until 2006, when Prime Minister John Howard had been forced into another of his U-turns, and had announced the “Shergold Report” – a “limited hangout” of an emissions trading scheme. It had convinced nobody and Howard was swept from office in November 2007. The Liberals had started to backtrack on climate under the first Opposition Leader, Brendan Nelson. Once Malcolm Turnbull had taken over, things shifted back. But Turnbull, disliked by his own party and also wounded by a shoot-self-in-foot scandal earlier, was in a weak position…
What we can learn is that big events don’t need big causes. It can all go horribly wrong for no particular reason (though by this time the Australian Coal Association had properly got itself going on the anti-carbon pricing campaigning. Again.
What happened next
Turnbull was sacked. His replacement was not, as many expected, Joe Hockey, but thugchild Tony Abbott. And the climate wars properly kicked off…
Fifteen years ago, on this day, July 7, 2008, the Liberal Party in Australia, perhaps bewildered to be in Opposition, started backtracking from the (pissweak) commitments it had taken to the 2007 Federal election.
THE Coalition split over climate change policy is growing, with Brendan Nelson refusing to embrace publicly the policy he has agreed to in private with senior colleagues.
Dr Nelson refused again yesterday to state simply that the Coalition supported the introduction of an emissions trading scheme regardless of whether the world’s major polluters were also prepared to act.
While taking an increasingly sceptical line towards climate change, the Opposition Leader denied there was an internal split over policy, claiming instead that it was “a question of emphasis”.
But he is falling foul of senior colleagues including the deputy leader Julie Bishop, the shadow treasurer, Malcolm Turnbull, and the environment spokesman, Greg Hunt.
Until this week the Coalition policy was to introduce a domestic emissions trading scheme no later than 2012.
On Monday [7 July] Dr Nelson walked away from that, saying nothing should be done until major polluters such as China and India were also committed, otherwise it would be economic suicide.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 386.6ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Brendan Nelson had become leader of the Liberals after John Howard had lost his seat in the 2007 election. Let’s say that again. John Howard lost his seat in the 2007. Election. Nelson was by this time finding it pretty hard to square the circle because many Liberal MPs and especially National Party MPs, (the party the Liberals were in coalition with) did not like the idea that the hippies had been right and that greenhouse gases were something to worry about. And he was finding it hard to square the circle. And by this time, he must have known that Malcolm Turnbul, the ambitious merchant wanker was circling, wanting the top job.
What I think we can learn from this is that climate change is driving us mad both as individuals but also as organisations. It is an impossible object, a bit like what Captain Picard wanted to implant in the captured Borg in that episode of Star Trek. It is simply driving everyone mad because to use an old Marxist bit of jargon, “the contradictions” cannot be contained and papered over indefinitely.
What happened next is that Turnbull knifed Nelson, tried to bring the Liberals along with climate policy, was left swinging by Kevin Rudd, was then toppled and took everyone by surprise. Tony Abbott became opposition leader. Turnbull eventually toppled Abbott as Prime Minister in 2015. Yes, this is a soap opera. And then Turnbull was himself toppled as Prime Minister. And one of the people who voted against him in that leadership contest mentioned, Brendan Nelson The writers of the soap opera have clearly been paying attention to the back catalogue, and taking way too much acid.
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.
Fourteen years ago, on this day, June 19, 2009, the leader of the Liberal Party gets in a snit because business is – gasp – happy enough with the weak policy being proposed by the Australian Labor Party (then in government).
MALCOLM Turnbull has attacked big business for “snuggling up” to Labor, demanding business publicly back the Coalition strategy of amending and then passing the government’s emissions trading laws.
In a blunt exchange with about 30 chief executives at a Business Council of Australia breakfast at Parliament House on Wednesday, [17]Mr Turnbull attacked business for being “intimidated” into supporting the government and for failing to publicly push for amendments to the laws.
Taylor, L. 2009. Opposition tells industry: don’t `snuggle up’ to Labor — Turnbull puts heat on business. The Australian, 19 June, p.1.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 389.7ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was
Malcolm Turnbull as the new Liberal Party leader needed to attack Labor, get business on side and not lose his own support. This was always going to be tricky given the competing and frankly irreconcilable demands.
What I think we can learn from this
A political party has explicit ideological needs, whereas business needs to cuddle up to whoever is in government and to keep selling stuff to people even when they’re having one of the periodic fits of “Let’s save the Planet.” Therefore business is going to take a more rational clear-eyed reality-based focus. This can be hard for a political party – especially one which takes business support for granted – to understand.
What happened next
Turnbull tried to take the carbon pricing issue off the table sending his Chief of staff Chris Kenny to talk with Rhodes chief of staff but no dice road was enjoying Turnbull’s agony too much. See Paul Kelly’s book Triumph and Demise for the gory details. Turnbull then lost his position as Liberal party leader to Tony Abbott, who came out swinging against doing anything on climate change.
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 amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 389.7ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that every man and their dog were talking about climate change – had been since the second half of 2006. And now the Copenhagen Climate Summit was going to be the icing on the cake. So of course, a quote left of centre, but actually centrist newspaper has to bring together the bien-peasants (sic) and business to show that it is a responsible corporate citizen. And there is lots of talk about technology and social change and expectations. Because there are reputations to be burnished and logs to be rolled and mutual back-scratching of various intensity. And how else do you know if you’re alive, unless you’re on one of these platforms being obediently listened to?
What I think we can learn from this
What we learn is that the cycle goes on, and that everyone has their stable place in the emotacycle and the corporate emotacycle. But no one asks question “Gee, what have we been doing wrong?”
What happened next
Copenhagen was predictable and predicted catastrophe. But everyone keeps on same day.
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.
