Thirty years ago, on this day, February 4 1993, Australian business interests continued their fight against the future of the human species.
The Federal Government’s ratification of an international climate change agreement last month is a chance for Australia to rewrite its greenhouse policies and perhaps even argue for a national increase in greenhouse gas emissions instead of a cut.
That’s according to Woodside Petroleum managing director Charles Allen, who told the Outlook conference yesterday it was time for a “reappraisal” of Australia’s greenhouse policies.
Mr Allen said “emotional media and political treatment” of the greenhouse issue had obscured the real problem. While it was clear greenhouse was happening, he said, there were many scientific uncertainties about its magnitude and speed.
He said Australia produced only about 1.5 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gases, even though per head of population emissions were on a par with major greenhouse producing nations.
Mussared, D. 1993. Increase Australia’s greenhouse emissions: Woodside. Canberra Times, 5 February, p.13.
AND
THE Federal Government would have to consider unpopular measures such as a carbon tax if wanted to achieve its goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 20 per cent by 2000, according to the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics.
A senior ABARE minerals economist, Mr Barry Jones, told the Outlook ’93 conference yesterday that the measures announced in the Government’s Greenhouse Response Strategy would not be enough to stabilise greenhouse gas emissions by 2000 compared with 1988 levels, or to cut them a further 20 per cent by 2005
Garran, R. 1993. Rethink needed on greenhouse The Australian Financial Review, 5 February, p.7.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 357ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was
Australian business interests were trying to claw back ground that had been lost, sort of, in 1992 when the Australian government had signed and ratified the UNFCCC. This was also taking place ahead of an impending federal election. The context was that the Hawke government had, in October 1990, agreed to the Toronto target (a 20% decrease in emissions by 2005) with caveats. Now business wanted to emphasize the costs and to point to the fact that other nations were not doing very much.
What I think we can learn from this
No battle is ever won. Your opponents will, if they have capacity – and business often does – try to undermine you, to clawback territory. This will not be big news usually, but they never sleep, they keep fighting. Often, therefore, they win. An analogy would be the fight against women’s reproductive rights and bodily autonomy in the United States. It took them decades, but they rolled back Roe v Wade…
What happened next
In Australia, there was a proposal for a carbon tax in 1994/95. It was defeated and then Australia switched to talking about an emissions trading scheme. There was prolonged debate about this finally in 2012. A scheme was introduced within a year, then abolished.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Do comment on this post.