Nineteen years ago, on this day, May 29th, 2007, Australian Prime Minister John Howard plays the “he’s an Englishman” card versus economist Nick Stern…
However, in a Parliamentary debate in May 2007, the Prime Minister suggested the [Stern] review was Eurocentric propaganda. He stated that the report of the Government’s Task Group on Emissions Trading:
… will not be a grab bag of proposals taken holus-bolus from a report written by an Englishman for European conditions and designed to promote the political objectives of the British government. That is what the Stern report is all about. Stern is not the biblical scholar of climate change that is posited by those who sit opposite. Stern has written from the perspective of an Englishman, from the European circumstance and from the European point of view. 73
Commonwealth, Parliamentary Debates, House of Representatives, 29 May 2007, 48 (John Howard, Prime Minister).
Macintosh, 2008 page 66-7
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 353ppm. As of 2026 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that John Howard, as prime minister, had spent the 10 years from 1996 to 2006 amplifying and extending the previous Keating Labor government’s hostility to climate change action. Howard had painted himself into a corner, and it was understood that he wasn’t going to be able to paint himself out, or leap over the wet paint, or whatever the metaphor might be.
The specific context was that the UK Labour Tony Blair government had asked a World Bank economist called Nick Stern to produce a report on the “economics of climate change.” This was largely to overcome Treasury intransigence on the question of climate policy. The report, the Stern review, was released in late 2006.
It was at this point, not entirely unrelated, that John Howard had had to perform a U-turn and announce the creation of the ‘Shergold Taskforce’, which would look into the economics of emissions trading.
What I think we can learn from this is that even the best politicians – and Howard was a good politician. I do not mean that as a compliment – run out of steam and run out of road, and by this time, Howard had. Now, very rarely does a politician know when to leave the stage. If Howard had announced his retirement in 2006 his legacy, his “reputation”, would have been assured. But they all come to believe their own propaganda. They all come to believe that they are somehow indispensable. So… no one is indispensable.
What happened next.
Here we are 20 years later, at the beginning of the Fafocene. Economics has not saved us. What we needed was more, but we didn’t know how to get it. And the opposition to ‘it’ was extremely deep-seated and almost insurmountable.
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.
Also on this day:
May 29, 1968 – UN body says “let’s have a conference, maybe?”-
May 29, 1969 – “A Chemist Thinks about the Future” #Keeling #KeelingCurve
May 29, 1989- “We will all be flooded” –
May 29, 1992- ANAO says it will look at DPIE’s energy management programme