Tag: Anthony Albanese

On May 16th, 2005, the Australian Senate inquiry into the 2004 Energy White Paper came out.

The 2004 Energy White Paper had – even by the spectacularly low standards of the Howard Government – been a blank cheque for the fossil fuel industry (they’d basically been invited to write it) and a kick in the teeth for the then-nascent renewables lobby.

So, the Senate inquiry

has concluded the Energy White Paper will delay critical action on climate change for another twenty years.

The Senate Inquiry report shines a light on John Howard’s failure to act on climate change. The report says the Energy White Paper:

• Is a blueprint for delay in reducing Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions and will be directly responsible for the high cost to future generations of Australians – environmentally and economically.

• Fails to accept climate change has already begun and therefore action to reduce emissions must be taken immediately.

• Lacks an effective plan to cut greenhouse pollution, a long term target to boost renewable energy or a long term plan to control the spiralling pollution from the energy or transport sectors.

Where does all this come from? From the website of an obscure Australian politician called Anthony Albanese, who, by the time some of you read this will either

a) be Prime Minister of Australia

or

b) have lost the unlosable election and be hiding in a caravan park in rural New South Wales.

Why this matters?

States still sometimes have the capacity to tell the truth about what the government is (not) doing. If you keep your eyes open, you can get a pretty adequate picture of what is going on. In the UK, for example, the National Audit Office still tells you more or less how things are failing.

What happened next

Howard’s end came in late 2007. Labour under Kevin Rudd comprehensively bollocksed its climate response. Gillard tidied up the mess as best she could. Then the wrecking ball known as Tony Abbott swept that thin legislation away. Prime Minister Turnbull did feck all, Scott Morrison has continued the rot…

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.