Below is an email interview with Bill Hare, CEO & Senior Scientist at Climate Analytics
You can follow Bill on Twitter – @BillHareClimate
1. When did you first hear about climate change, and how? What was the Australian Conservation Foundation’s early position on it?
I heard about rising CO2 concentrations and climate change in high school from a geography teacher in the early 1970s.
What woke me up to it as a significant problem was an academic at University of Western Australia gave me a paper in nature in 1978 to look at. At first, I was sceptical, but the more I looked into it the more I became convinced it – fossil fuel CO2 induced climate warming – was a serious problem.
When I first joined the Australian Conservation Foundation climate change was not a theme. Stratospheric ozone depletion was an emerging problem, and I was pretty heavily briefed by CSIRO scientist at the time, notably Barrie Pittock. He also brought to my attention, a number of international publications on rising concern about global warming.
By the late 1980s, there were calls for a 20% reduction in C02 emissions by 2005 (the Toronto target). If I recall correctly the ACF lined up behind those calls in various submissions and press commentary.
At the same time, we were also calling for a phase out of chlorofluorocarbons and other ozone-depleting substances to combat stratospheric ozone depletion.
2. Australian policy elites first started to have their attention properly drawn to the issue almost 30 years ago, in 1986, with the public following in 1988.
Yes, there was the 1987 CSIRO conference, and that I think marks the beginning of formal attention to this issue
I had a paper at this conference with my colleague at the time Helen Quilligan
Since then, there have been fierce battles over even the most elementary of policy instruments (carbon pricing and support for renewables).
Yes, and at the level of macroeconomic policy, the view by the late 1980s in Australia was that the country had a lot to benefit from exporting coal and other resources to North East Asia, including China.
This became quite a dominant view and provided a justification of much of what happened in the 1990s and beyond.
Hawke in responding to this report, recognised the environmental challenges that would come from a massive expansion of and made the claim that
“And let me make this point. My Government does not accept the simplistic dichotomy – development or the protection of the environment. We must have both. And our record shows that we can have both.”
The ecologically sustainable development process that he set up however, failed to substantially impact the direction and scale of environmental protection in Australia. Paul Keating had a little interest in this when he assumed the role of prime minister and there’s process became completely moribund, under pressure from the resource development lobby and relevant agencies of government.
Climate policy was essentially non-existent, and opposition to action inside government federally was widespread and intensive.
One fairly standard academic view is that this is what you’d expect of a country with enormous fossil fuel reserves and a powerful mining industry.
That is very fatalistic view. Is that what had to be? I’m not so sure – ecological modernisation, under the umbrella of the Ecologic development process was aimed at industrial power. I don’t think it had to end up the way it did.
Looking back at this period, I don’t think the extent of capture of the political parties by the fossil fuel industry was anywhere near as advanced as it is now.
Is that too fatalistic? Does that let the politicians, other business and civil society off the hook?
I think it lets politicians off the hook and does not properly contextualise the rapacious behaviour of Australia is mining, resources industry and fossil fuel industry. I think the Murdoch press played a very significant and destructive roll in all this over the last 20 or 30 years.
It’s hard to comment on the role of civil society.
(And if this academic view is not a good explanation, what is a better one?)
I don’t know how ground breaking it is to describe the blinding obvious in retrospect.
It might have helped if a lot more academics has spoken up about the adverse direction of Australia on climate action over the years.
3. Without getting bogged down, what could and should have been done differently,
Well, it depends on ones view of history. Is it historically determined that in 2013 Australia elected a government that would repeal groundbreaking climate legislation and policies and start a decade of denial?
If this legislation has not been repealed, then I think we would be in a substantially different place. Then we are now, probably one somewhat behind the European Union, but with a range of different policy instruments in place that could be improved.
and – crucially – what could and should ‘campaigners’ (broadly defined so as to include renewables companies etc) do differently in the short-to-medium term to try to accelerate policy and technology change towards something that might be considered adequate.
Well, there are a number of things that need to be focused on, and these include working to establish the right long-term policy frameworks, fearlessly hold government to account on their policies and actions, continue the campaign to convince people of the wisdom and benefits of climate policy action, make sure people understand the risks coming from global warming and to upgrade communication efforts in this area.
It is very important that NGOs and academics are fully independent of government and special or pecuniary interests, particularly in the Australian context interest in offsets. Unfortunately, there seems to be quite a pattern of interest that may conflict.
It is also very important that NGOs are brave and fearless, and do not concern themselves overly with the health of the Labour Party internally, nor prioritise, access to ministers over, maintaining a strong and consistent position on the right things to do. In the end, and my experience, mature government will listen even if I don’t like the message they are at first.
4. Personal question – where do you get your hope/tenacity from? (If it’s a special Amazon delivery, what’s the URL for that!!)
One has to have hope, and as soon as one becomes cynical it’s time to leave the field. Surprising as it might seem, I get a lot of energy from the science of this issue. Yes, the news is very depressing, but if one focuses on what can be done and how fast then one can see a way forward. In addition, the massive role out of renewables, electric vehicles and batteries has to give rise to hope that we can bend the curve fast enough. At the end of the day, the problem is too serious to give up and to serious to surrender hope
Twenty three years ago, on this day, April 3, 2000, Australian diplomats once again spread bullshit rather than truth about climate change.
At the Pacific Islands Conference on Climate Change, Climate Variability and Sea Level Rise, Rarotonga, Cook Islands, well, see a contemporary account…
Mr Hare said he had recently been to a Pacific greenhouse conference in Rarotonga, Cook Islands, [3-7 April – where Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade officials had tried to play down the impact of the greenhouse effect. He said they had put up arguments that sea level rises were not as high as had been reported and might not necessarily be a result of global warming. Senator Hill said if the department’s officials were mounting that argument, it might be on the basis of scientific uncertainty in the area..
Clennel, A. 2000. Greenhouse Gas Conference `stacked’. Sydney Morning Herald, 15 April, p.15
[Compare with Australian diplomats rumoured behaviour at the first IPCC report meeting in Sundsvall in August 1990]
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 369ppm. As of 2023 it is 420ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was
The Howard Government had bludgeoned its way into a sweet sweet deal at Kyoto, but it was obvious they would not ratify unless the Americans did (vanishingly small chance of that). Meanwhile, the Australian diplomatic corps(e) was continuing its minimisation techniques (as per the Sundsvall meeting in 1990).
What I think we can learn from this
Bureaucrats have their own views, and run their own games. To think of them as merely passive lackeys of elected politicians is very naive.
What happened next
The oceans have kept on rising. Australia has kept on being a villain. The small island states have kept pointing out that in the absence of serious action, they are screwed (they are screwed).
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 this day, 25th of April 1996 Greenpeace International condemned Australia’s negotiating stance at the climate talks in Geneva.
“Gilchrist, G. 1996. Greenpeace Attacks Global Warming ‘spoiling Tactics’. Sydney Morning Herald, 26 April, p.2. Australia’s spoiling tactics in negotiations on tackling global warming undermined the nation’s “clean and green” international image, Greenpeace International’s top climate campaigner, Mr Bill Hare, said yesterday. He warned that Australia’s diplomatic position on climate change threatened its long-term trade interests.”
The context is that the second Conference of the Parties, following on from Berlin the previous year, was going to be an important to way station on the way to completing the so-called Berlin mandate, which called on rich nations to agree emissions cuts.
It was feared that the Australian Government’s obstruction tactics would move from softly-softly on display at the previous COP to full-on, shameless and unashamed heel dragging (In March of 1996 the Labor government had been replaced by John Howard’s “Liberal National” coalition.)
And – getting ahead of ourselves (COP2 did not happen till July 1996) – so it came to pass…
“The discussions at the second COP to the UNFCCC in Geneva in 1996 saw Australia establish itself as a climate change laggard. Immediately before the conference the government questioned the science of climate change and opposed the idea of the IPCC’s new conclusions on climate change impacts providing the basis for negotiations.55 Significantly, they were joined in this concern only by OPEC states and the Russian Federation.56 Most importantly, however, the government’s position at the Geneva negotiations was to oppose the idea of legally binding targets on greenhouse emissions.57”
Macdonald, Matt. 2005a. Fair Weather Friend? Ethics and Australia’s Approach to Climate Change. Australian Journal of Politics and History 51 (2): 216–234.
Why this matters.
We need to prepare criminal briefs for crimes against humanity and other species at The Hague
What happened next?
The Australian Government played a spoiler role as it still largely has, in the climate negotiations, they got a very sweet deal at Kyoto still refused to ratify. And as I may have mentioned, the carbon dioxide keeps accumulating.
