Thirteen years ago, on this day, February 28, 2010, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was on a then-quite-good ABC TV program called “Insiders.”
He said this: “When our kids look back in 20 years and ask the question of this generation, ‘were they fair dinkum or did they walk away from it?’, I’d rather say that I threw everything at it, threw absolutely everything at it, to try and make it work, and to try and deliver an outcome at home and abroad.
“We think we’ve got to act, and act appropriately. That’s why we don’t walk away from this one bit.”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 391ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was
Kevin Rudd had skilfully come to power in late 2007 by using climate change as a wedge against his political opponents – first Prime Minister John Howard, and then, once he got the top job, against opposition leaders Brendan Nelson and Malcolm Turnbull. But then, in 2009, he came up against junkyard dog Tony Abbott, and he lost his nerve. He was advised to call an election (see December 23 blog post from last year). He didn’t, and then didn’t figure out a way of climbing down from his climate position. He dismissed a proposal from the Greens for an interim carbon tax. He … ah, I could go on.
What I think we can learn from this
Politicians who talk about “great moral challenge” without showing skill or guts are worse than useless, because they encourage cynicism and fatalism, making it that much harder for those who come after them.
What happened next
Rudd bailed on climate. This tanked his previously high approval ratings (which were already taking a dent, it’s true) Rudd then ran off on a Mining Tax crusade. That came to an end, almost by accident, when his long-suffering and until-then loyal deputy Julia Gillard challenged for the leadership in June 2010. Gillard got some carbon pricing legislation through, but at the cost of, well, everything.
This was all unnecessary. If Rudd had had skill or guts….
NB, for any ALPers – nope, never been a member of the Greens, and when you focus on their actions during the CPRS vote, you reveal that you are unwilling to admit that your guy was not as smart or courageous as he thought, or as he needed to be.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Do comment on this post.
On this day, December 23 in 2009, Kevin Rudd was given the strongest possible advice to go for an early “double dissolution” election and force through climate policies.
In the week before Christmas, on 23 December 2009, a leadership strategy group comprising Rudd, Gillard, Swan, Faulkner, Arbib, Bitar and Alister Jordan gathered at Phillip Street, Sydney. Accounts of this meeting differ widely and significantly. Yet the central thrust seems clear. Arbib and Bitar say they wanted an early 2010 double dissolution election to be announced around Australia Day 2010.
Paul Kelly, 2014, Triumph and Demise, p275
[The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 387ppm. At time of writing it was 419ishppm- but for what it is now,well, see here for the latest.]
The context was this –
Kevin “greatest moral challenge” Rudd had been enjoying watching the Liberals and Nationals tear themselves apart on climate change, while simultaneously allowing his own policy to be watered down and watered down. When push came to shove, the Greens (whom he had been steadfastly ignoring) didn’t vote for the legislation. Tony ‘wrecking ball’ Abbott became opposition leader, the Copenhagen conference failed and Rudd lost the plot.
Why this matters.
The ALP never point out that their man Rudd had a choice, and he blew it. Instead they blame the Greens (full disclosure – I am not now, and never have been, a member of the Green Party of Australia/England/Mars whatever.)
What happened next?
Rudd chickened out, lost all credibility when he punted the climate issue that had been – according to him ‘the great moral challenge of our generation’. Then he tried to bring in a mining tax, incurred the wrath of the cashed up miners (obvs) and then got toppled by his deputy, Julia Gillard, after a front page of the Sydney Morning Herald story with an insinuatiion against her loyalty to Rudd against her finally broke her patience (and loyalty). And then, then the soap opera got properly wild…
On this day, November 6 in 2009, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd gave a speech at the Lowy Institute about climate change, ahead of his second go at getting legislation through Parliament, and with the Copenhagen Conference coming up. And he enjoyed poking Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull in the chest
“The clock is ticking for the planet, but [the] vested interests at work are simply too great”
Rudd had not really done very much talking about climate change over the previous two years (except when a policy document was landing). A February 2010 article by journo Peter Hartcher claimed Rudd’s climate silence had been deliberate, since it meant the media would be attacking Liberals a lot. Who knows. Certainly Rudd could have been out there explaining the basics and explaining the danger, instead of occasional soundbites.
[The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was xxxppm. At time of writing it was 416ppm- but for what it is now,well, see here for the latest.]
The context was this –
Turnbull had made false accusations about Rudd and corruption a few months previously (“Godwin Gretch”). Rudd was enjoying the Liberals and Nationals fighting each other, weakening Turnbull.
Why this matters.
No issue – even the end of the world – is off limits to politicians engaged in their usual positioning and fighting. An active civil society might have kept a lid on that, a bit, I guess. We’re so toast.
What happened next?
Turnbull got replaced by Tony Abbott. Rudd’s legislation failed, (and yes, the Greens didn’t vote for it), Copenhagen was a disaster and Rudd didn’t have the spine and good sense to do what his advisers were begging him to do – call a double dissolution election about climate change. He then pissed off Julia Gillard one time too many, she rolled him and…. Oh, it’s so exhausting to recount.
A friend and supporter of this project has asked me to write about “carbon credits,” which are right now a ‘hot topic’ (sorry) in Australian climate politics.
What follows is not a comprehensive history, and only partly references posts that have already gone up (more are lurking in the near future). The second half is given over more to – well, why the big focus on ‘carbon credits’ – what is allowed and disallowed by that focus?
Comments very welcome, but not about the existence or severity of climate change – the time between now and the Actual Fricking Apocalypse (AFA) is short, and I don’t intend to waste even a minute of it on trolls, bots and poster-children for the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Australia and economic instruments around climate change.
In 1973 (not 1971 as the Tweet says!) Treasury, responding to concerns about the “diseconomies” of economic growth, released a report.
On this day 8 June, 1971, the Australian Treasury released a report "Economic Growth: Is it Worth Having?" On page 11 and 12, it considers… “the greenhouse effect” and the build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.https://t.co/8SiRbmAEVa 🧵 1/6 pic.twitter.com/8Q3Rbt3Doi
— All Our Yesterdays (@our_yesterdays) June 7, 2022
It basically wasn’t that bothered. And with hyper-inflation and all sorts of other economic mayhem, the Whitlam Government seems not to have paid attention.
So, let’s skip forward to the coming of the “Greenhouse Effect” in the late 80s – and we should always remember that thanks in part to Barry Jones (Hawke’s Science Minister) Australians were well-informed (Commission for the Future, Phillip Adams, The Greenhouse Project, Greenhouse 87, Greenhouse 88, Stephen Schneider, Barrie Pittock, Graeme Pearman etc).
In 1988, Barry Jones pointed out that a price on carbon dioxide was a reasonable economic measure. Other people were saying the same – this is uncontroversial – Pigou etc etc – you want to discourage something, you make it more expensive. “The market” then finds a way. So the story goes.
But in Australia, on climate, until 1995, the major focus was on a carbon tax rather than emissions trading. And it had advocates, beyond the Australian Conservation Foundation. And they pushed it within the “Environmentally Sustainable Development” process of 1990-91. And they lost. Or rather, the determined efforts of a growing “greenhouse mafia” (to shoot Guy Pearse’s useful formulation back before the existence of the AIGN) were successful in defeating a carbon tax. Ros Kelly, Hawke and then Keating’s Environment Minister, explicitly ruled out any price on carbon, both before and AT the Rio Earth Summit-
And was defeated, by an even more determined and sophisticated resistance.
And after this, for various reasons (mostly to do with what the Americans wanted/were willing to countenance) taxes fell away (Clinton, don’t forget, had been defeated on his BTU tax in 1994) and “emissions trading became the flavour of the month. You can see it in various Australian Treasury documents, in conferences, speeches etc.
The basic idea is you create a “market” and so its magic then… reduces emissions. Meanwhile, certifiers, bankers, lawyers all get rich.
There were two big efforts under Howard to get a national Emissions Trading Scheme going. Both were defeated – the 2000 one by Nick Minchin, the 2003 one by Howard himself. Check out Guy Pearse’s High and Dry for gory details, and also Marian Wilkinson’s The Carbon Club. And there is the work of Clive Hamilton too (esp Scorcher).
Advocates of emissions trading soldiered on. One key entrepreneur was Bob Carr (there are blog posts on this site about him coming up). At a time when all states had Labor governments, they were co-ordinating on a bottom-up emissions trading scheme. Howard was not happy.
Then, when climate change “took off” in the second half of 2006 in Australia, Kevin “I’m from Queensland, I’m here to help” Rudd latched onto climate as a wedge issue.
BUT he had to go carefully, not to scare Queensland voters.
some sort of carbon trading (he put Ross Garnaut in charge of that, while in opposition).
Howard tried to come back against this, saying he WOULD now introduce a carbon trading scheme if re-elected. But too little too late etc etc
What do we learn here? That carbon trading, carbon credits etc, are regarded as “common sense” (read Tony Gramsci on this!) as normal, reasonable and the best respectable position. Despite zero evidence that they would actually “work” at reducing emissions.
I don’t intend to go through the insane gory details of the period 2007 to 2012 (and onwards) – you have not bought me enough Cooper’s for that. But I will say this.
In early 2010, after Rudd’s “Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme” had failed twice, and while Rudd was being too spineless to call a double dissolution election on the “great moral challenge of our generation” the Greens proposed an interim solution, a … carbon tax. Labor ignored the proposal (hi Penny!).
So, let’s skip over the last 10 years of “carbon pricing.” Except this, from the Turnbull-Frydenberg era, may amuse…
By getting into carbon credits, you can give the appearance of wanting to do something/doing something, and getting everyone focussed on a very small/technical issue which few understand. Perfect! It makes it virtually impossible for civil society actors, with their pesky legitimacy and demands for morality and far-sightedness and courageous decisions, to be involved.
It means you don’t have to piss off those very rich people who are funding you.
That’s the political purpose/attractiveness of carbon credits, over and above any actual “efficiency”.
Two final things. What I am saying is not new, or profound. Check out
Compare it with a so-called “inefficient” tax. Which is easier to collect, offers far fewer opportunities for evasion, gaming, arbitrage, get-rich-quick-scamming. Funny how the complex stuff always wins out, eh?
What is to be done?
Oh, god, I have written about that so much. Try this.
On this day, 17 June 2009, as Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was playing parliamentary and political games with his “Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme,” Tasmanian Greens Senator Christine Milne gave a blistering and prescient speech at the National Press Club
“Would you put your son or daughter on an aeroplane if you knew that it had a 50-90% chance of crashing? If not, why would you take that risk with the whole planet?”
Fortunately, sections like this below are now completely irrelevant.
“In Australia, the dominant economic, social and therefore Labor and Coalition view, is that resource extraction underpins wealth, power and influence — always has and always will. Regardless of the physical capacity of the Earth to sustain it, regardless of the collapse of the Murray Darling or the climate impact of burning more coal or logging more forests, nothing will stand in the way of that extraction continuing. All policies to address climate change are seen through that cultural lens.
“It is why, when people hear the climate science telling us that, if we do not act swiftly and decisively, the world we hand on to our children will be a very different, much poorer world, so many jump through hoops to deny it, to explain it away, or to pretend that we can compromise with the laws of physics and chemistry to suit own imperatives. It is no wonder, as Ian Dunlop observed recently, “climate policy and climate science are like ships passing in the night.”
And this too.
The truth is the climate nightmare is real and happening now. We are destroying the Great Barrier Reef, Kakadu and the snow caps. We are eroding our beaches, and our coastal cities will face managed retreat due to sea level rise. We are drying our food bowl, the Murray Darling, beyond repair, jeopardising rural communities and our food security.
Many of our Asia Pacific neighbours are struggling with rising seas and extreme weather which threatens a refugee crisis beyond anything we’ve ever seen.
Read it. Read it and weep.
Why this matters.
People get written out of history. Oddly, this seems to happen more to women than men. It’s a puzzle why, and I am sure our best scientists (meaning, of course, the males) might eventually come up with some explanation.
We knew. We were warned, again and again and again. And the glib, slick careerists (more males than females, but females can do that too you know) just kept on keeping on.
What happened next?
Rudd’s CPRS never got through because the evil wicked awful Greens voted against it. (And the ALP then refused to countenance the Greens’ proposal for a temporary carbon tax, though the ALP goons never mention that). After the 2010 Federal election, the Greens and the independents forced the ALP government to do something about climate legislation. Milne then sat on the MPCCC (Multiparty committee on climate change). And we got an ETS, CEFC, ARENA. The ETS got killed off by Abbott, day one.
On 19 February 2013 Senator Christine Milne, as Leader of the Greens, returned to the Press Club and gave the following speech – “Australian Democracy at the Crossroads: the mining industry and the quarry past versus the people and the innovative future”,
On this day, May 9 2009, the Australian newspaper carried a report that would surprise no close watcher of climate policymaking at the time.
Kevin Rudd had become Prime Minister of Australia in December 2007 with a promise and a mandate to take action on climate change. There followed a bewildering array of reports and documents (interestingly, economist Ross Garnaut was quickly sidelined because he lacked sufficient enthusiasm for “compensating” industries who were supposed to be changing their ways.
By the end of 2008 it was clear to activists (especially those who interrupted Rudd’s speech at the National Press Club) that Rudd’s basic idea was to give the rich and powerful whatever they wanted. That was the plan. And it got even worse in 2009, when he sent his climate minister on a “charm offensive.”
Steketee, M. 2009. Cool compromise. The Australian, 9 May, p.18.
WHEN Penny Wong did the rounds of environmental and business groups last week, they suddenly found her more receptive to their arguments. What were the key things they needed to be able to support the Government’s climate change package, she asked. The Climate Change Minister had a fair idea because she had heard their demands often enough, but this time she wasn’t fending them off. Kevin Rudd, Wayne Swan and Wong already had decided on a new strategy to try to get the Government out of the political bunker.
Business demanded – and got – a delay to the start date of the proposed Emissions Trading Scheme. More was to follow…
Why this matters
In the absence of an enraged and engaged civil society, capable of more than spasms of emotion and outrage, then of COURSE “governance” is going to mean little more than doing whatever powerful industries allow. It’s easy to beat up on Rudd (and, actually, hits that sweet spot of being not only easy, but accurate and deserved), but where is the bold climate movement able to force better? Watch this space – the 2022 Federal elections in Australia may leave a bunch of climate-action-minded independents in a position of strength. Party like its early 2011 all over again!!
What happened next
Rudd couldn’t get his legislation over the line in June. When he came to try again in November he also couldn’t. Surprisingly the Greens weren’t going to vote for something they viewed as worse than useless. And then it all fell apart, with Julia Gillard left to pick up the pieces. And then… oh, it’s so exhausting and outlandish I can’t bring myself to type it up
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.
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.
On 25th of February 2007, with the Australian – yes back to Australia – federal election, a matter of months away. newly-minted opposition leader Kevin Rudd and his shadow Environment Minister Peter Garrett of Midnight Oil are out there spruiking “A National Clean Coal Initiative.”
This the ALP needed because otherwise they couldn’t win Queensland, a major coal exporter. Clean coal had been a persistent theme or trend or meme – or bullshit, to use the Anglo-Saxon terminology – for 10 years. Nine years minus a day earlier, a clean coal CRC had been set up.
“Anon. 1998. Tests for green coal. Daily Telegraph, 26 February.
RESEARCH laboratories where scientists will work to make Australian coal the “cleanest” in the world, will be opened by Premier Bob Carr today. The Ian Stewart Wing of the chemical engineering laboratories at Newcastle University form part of the co-operative research centre for black coal utilisation. The centre, partially government funded, was established in 1995 to carry out world class research to maximise the value and performance of Australian black coal resources.”
The unions were in favour of clean coal, certain elite business, environmental NGOs like WWF were at least making the right noises. Because otherwise you can’t make the numbers add up. Apparently, you can’t unless you radically reduce emissions in the first place which is going to cause economic pain and dislocation and interrupt the “we can have our cake and eat it story” that politicians need to tell.
What happened next
Well, Rudd got elected. Garrett was a minister in his government before having to take the blame for pink bats. Garrett wrote a very good book about his time blue sky something and then returned to being the lead singer of Midnight Oil. I won’t repeat what Kevin Rudd got up to.
On the day 23rd of February 2009, Australia’s climate minister, Senator Penny Wong – full disclosure, I knew her when we were both at Adelaide University – confused the policy that she was advocating the carbon pollution reduction scheme.
“Under pressure from the mounting criticisms about how the CPRS cancels out the benefits from individual emissions reductions, Wong responded on the ABC’s 7.30 Report on February 23 that individual reductions will allow the government to increase carbon targets in subsequent years. This prompted an incredulous response from Andrew Macintosh, associate director of the Australian National University Centre for Climate Law and Policy. “Either Wong doesn’t understand her own scheme or she is deliberately lying”, he wrote on Crikey.com.au on February 24.”
The context is this. The Howard Government, 1996 to 2007 had successfully resisted all calls to meaningful action and climate change and even meaningless stuff like an ETS, even from within its own cabinet. Kevin Rudd used this uselessness on climate change – or rather, this defence of fossil fuel interests, which is not useless to fossil fuel interests – as part of his branding, to become prime minister. And in 2008, a torturous, confused, complex, complicated and ultimately corrupted process to create a carbon pollution reduction scheme had unfolded. 2009 was to be the year when the legislation was pushed through and what Wong was doing was trying to sell it. But the CPRS was insanely complex and hard to explain. And I for one, taken with the idea of a very simple carbon tax which might be less “efficient”, but more effective and hard to game was the way forward. It was not to be…
Why this matters
Because when politicians make complicated proposals, they lose the public and the public thinks this is going to be unfair, there are going to be loopholes, the rich will get their way and the public is usually right. “And the policies are planned, which we won’t understand” as TV Smith sings…
What happened next
The CPRS failed to get through first time in the middle of the year, as was expected, and then didn’t get through again in November, December. And therein lies a story….
