Turnbull has lanced the boil of climate change denialism
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Thursday 26 November will be the high water mark of Australian climate change denialism’s political influence. Malcolm Turnbull’s stoic courage in Parliament House on Thursday lances the boil. It will be seen in retrospect as a defining, cleansing moment for the Australian Liberal Party. To put this in context, Al Gore’s new book Our Choice offers instructive reading. Gore robustly exposes the motives and methods of the American denialist movement. Australia is some years behind, but the political parallels are close. From the early 1990’s, major American carbon-based corporations came together in an immensely well-resourced movement, the Global Climate Coalition (GCC). Their objectives were to protect for as long as possible the value of their huge carbon-based assets, through a systematic casting of doubt on climate science’s growing understanding of the threat to humanity of disruptive global warming. They used well-tried methods, of the tobacco companies’ campaign against anti-smoking regulation. But this time, the stakes were much higher, and the potential to mobilise large sections of disturbed public opinion much larger. The high stakes involved, with climate science calling for major decarbonisation, and the accompanying fears of possible losses to existing industry assets and jobs, gave fertile soil for the GCC’s campaign that such change was premature or unnecessary. Over the next 15 years, a denialist movement steadily grew in strength and boldness, especially but not only on the conservative side of politics, and in Australia as well as the US. Scientists and political commentators alike underestimated the grassroots power of this anti-science movement to influence politicians. As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s warnings of disruptive climate change firmed from 2003 onwards, so too did the political strength of anti-science denialism in Australia. Its first successful use of its power was the white-anting of the Garnaut Climate Change Review. Through 2008, influential sections of Australia’s business sector, trade union movement and conservative media articulated the case for climate policy inaction with increased audacity. This was accompanied by a growing grassroots campaign, expressed though mounting website activism and direct pressure on politicians from committed deniers and doubt-sowers. Weaker politicians wilted under the onslaught. Kevin Rudd was shocked to see in 2008 how deeply Australian mainstream industry and trade unionism thinking had been infected by denialist views. In September 2008 he abandoned Garnaut’s recommended 25% Australian emission cuts 2020 target. Rudd’s ETS became a hollow shell. His decision for 5-15% cuts by 2020 sent an encouraging message to denialists, that in his political heart he did not believe the IPCC warning of disruptive climate change if the world failed to move to serious decarbonisation. With a weak carbon-protectionist ETS in the bag, the deniers shifted their policy focus to another remarkably ambitious goal: trying to turn the Opposition into a denialist do-nothing coalition. And they very nearly succeeded on Thursday. Denialists in the coalition almost toppled Malcolm Turnbull. There was Shakespearean tragedy in this confrontation. An expanding gang of moral and intellectual pygmies and opportunists combined, to very nearly bring down a brave and far-sighted leader. They could no longer see how they had been misled and used by the carbon lobbies. Turnbull is right. His short-sighted detractors are wrong. Climate change denialism must be confronted, in the Opposition as in the governing party: and as Rudd belatedly began to do in his Lowy speech. The reality of disruptive climate change directly threatens the security of our children. The need to decarbonise Australia must be confronted bravely, even if it is almost too late. There is no more important political agenda than this. The 5% ETS, though deeply flawed, deserves passage because it will establish a policy benchmark of recognition of climate change’s existential threat to our children. The Greens ought to vote for it in the Senate, along with Labor and intelligent conservatives, as recognition of its symbolic importance as a bridge crossed. International events and opinion are moving in Turnbull’s favour. Obama’s announcement of a 17% minimum US 2020 target with stronger targets thereafter will strengthen international resolve to achieve something meaningful in Copenhagen. Public opinion polls register renewed understanding of the priority of the climate issue, now that the worst of the GFC appears over. The recklessness on Thursday of the over-ambitious malcontents and opportunists in the coalition will be seen in retrospect as purging the boil. It will allow Turnbull to reconstruct a loyal shadow cabinet of climate change realists, on the model of David Cameron’s UK Conservative Party. In 2010, Australia will have a more productive political environment for serious attention to climate change mitigation and adaptation policies. Our children need responsible stewardship from our generation. Rudd and Turnbull can together take the debate forward, in a spirit of Churchillian resolve and stoicism. I salute them both. We are entering a Dunkirk moment, which demands political courage from both government and opposition parties. It is good that the boil has been lanced in the coalition. The weaker elements ready to appease the self-interested ruthlessness of Australian carbon lobbies are now exposed by their own actions. Tony Kevin’s latest book on Australia’s climate change crisis is ‘Crunch Time’ (Scribe, 2009). He is a former diplomat and author of ‘A Certain Maritime Incident: the sinking of SIEV X’ and ‘Walking the Camino’. |
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11 Comments
A weak ineffective ETS will achieve as much as the denialists’ medieval ideology.
To the sound of shifting chairs on the deck of the Titanic …
Far too optimistic and way too generous Tony. Reality is that the coalition is gone, and the Liberal Party is finished as a parliamentary force because it is fundamentally flawed within.
It rests on a core support base of reactionary or stupid and ignorant people as seen talking to Jones, — — whose prevailing instinct is to deny that anything is amiss with the industrial world creation of the capitalist system, or the status quo in general. Turnbull will be rolled by a stitched up “unity” ticket of unlikely bedmates; they will block the [almost useless anyway] ETS.
Maybe the resultant double dissolution will give Rudd another chance at a credible approach to addressing climate change but thats probably too much to hope for.
leigh
I’d like to think this was the Chess move well and truly thought ahead by Rudd and his team of Client Change believers and Howard-like ruthlessness at destroying the fabric of the opposition.
Could Rudd have known the outcome? Surely it would have been one possible outcome that he did consider. Perhaps Rudd thought this would be the best one - one that results in a drowned-in-rising-sea-levels Coalition and a victorious double dissolution. As Leigh says, this will be the only way to bring about real regime change in dealing with the environment, taking control of both houses of parliament - hopefully more responsibly did Howard - and setting Australia as an example to the world.
Malcolm is so correct, and he is (was?) the only chance the Coalition in an election, because he understands younger voters.
“Thursday 26 November will be the high water mark of Australian climate change denialism’s political influence. “
Nope. It will be the high water mark for some years of trying to get the Coalition to see reality. The denialists are determined to take over and it will take an election thrashing to send them back into their caves.
Agree, Tony. ‘The 5% ETS, though deeply flawed, deserves passage because it will establish a policy benchmark of recognition of climate change’s existential threat to our children.’ I note that Obama is doing something similar and China is really getting in on the act. We can always criticise by saying, ‘too little too late’, but every journey starts with a single step, as someone sagely observed a long time ago. Tony it is good to see you writing on this topic. I still remember your article about ‘the dog that didn’t bark in the night’ …
Dr Harvey M Tarvydas
Moira Smith I am with your logic.
It’s pointless, no probably deceitful to say “if your first step can’t be a mile long without cutting your legs off and having them so placed then we won’t let you on the track” but then those who truly believe there’s nothing to be done about ‘carbon dioxide’ emissions must believe in superman.
Most ‘denial’ is political crap at the expense of all of us on the planet. (where does superman live?)
All good science depends on (scientists) protagonist and sceptics arguing the science which is often put to good use long before the arguments finally die out, the usefulness contributing to this (called evidence of the did it and now see, Ya all).
Climate change evidence to date is evidence to the interpretation by and large.
Politicians take scientific advice from the appointed and then are the doers. Politicians are not qualified to argue the science.
When they can’t ‘do’ for all the reasons that may be they start making excuses, all kinds including the popular one of the moment that pushes the blame on to scientists.
Dr Harvey M Tarvydas
Malcolm Street
Till very recently I used to live in Malcom Street Perth.
But that’s not the reason why I agree with you.
Dr Harvey M Tarvydas
SORRY corrected.
Malcolm Street
Till very recently I used to live in Malcolm Street Perth.
But that’s not the reason why I agree with you.
I agree that the Liberal party had to get a position on climate change, and there is no way that the maladaptive teapot stance of the drys is going to work with the electorate more generally. I’m not so sure, however, that the ‘professional’ denialists who lobby for Ma Coal etc are going to be much damaged by this. I fear a labour government emboldened by the lack of credible opposition may be even more complacent in making cosmetic gestures towards the issue. Its is, afterall, now dead as a wedge issue and that is what Labour initiatives are mostly about. So the only denialists who have lost a home are those in the public sphere. I would be happier if a double dissolution resulted in the election of more climate change oriented parties or candidates into the balance of power which would, as famously stated, keep the bastards honest.
“Simplistic” is too kind a word to describe this reductionist nonsense. Of course the carbon lobby tries to undermine AGW policy and the hypothesis itself. But to claim that the machinations of big capital drives the current wave of resistance to AGW action is false. Polls show a rapid increase in AGW scepticism (not necessarily denail) right across the anglosphere since 2006. Even among Australian Green voters (like me): 11% according to the poll published by Possum on Crikey last week.
People’s minds have been concentrated by the imminence of AGW legislation. Before that AGW was largely an abstract debate which did not involve the public in any urgent way- from THEIR point of view. Suddenly an ETS was on the table. The Greens correctly condemn it (as Tony Kevin does here) as a mere gesture. The rag-tag parliamentary Right has been galvanised after impotently muttering in their beards about AGW for years. “Crunch Time” is precisely the point: the dumb hard Right realised belatedly that they’d been horse-whispered into the corral by Turnbull’s Cameroons who in turn were bellwethered into the stockyard by Rudd. In effect Rudd converted Turnbull into a vassal, committed to permanent dependency through the ETS. Once corralled, the Libs and Nats were destined for the political abattoir.
No wonder the ALP lavished praise on Turnbull. The bellwether is always rewarded.
So we have a coalition of resistance: Greens, the shambolic remnants of the Howard ascendancy, and a public doubting both “the science” and the cost of the bogus solution. Given that the Australian ETS will have no effect on CO2 for 26 years and will never have any measurable effect on AGW, but will cost a staggering amount, why would anyone support it? Why should the poor and working class suffer for the politics of gesture? Why should the corporatist ALP be permitted to screw the country for its own moralistic gratification? Why should we pay for Rudd’s grandstanding on the world stage?
It is also simplistic to treat big capital, fossil fuel or not, as rejecting AGW schemes. They smell climate pork. The ETS rewards their “pollution”. They stand to make a killing. MRET has already delivered pork. Billions in subsidy have already been wasted on useless wind farms. Wind cannot provide baseload power. Denmark and Germany have the highest power costs in Europe but their CO2 emissions have increased. Germany is building new coal powergen to provide the backup that wind needs. Wind is a sickening scam. Potential base-load renewables such as solar have been starved to death by MRET.
(And not one urban AGW warrior has ever expressed the slightest sympathy for the great loss and distress caused to rural people by industrial wind turbines.)
Finally, it is now patently obvious that the AGW hypothesis is in trouble. The hacked East Bumcrack emails show academics behaving normally: they’re partisan. Some are ruthless intellectual Chetniks. Global warming has plateaued in the last decade. No one has any idea what will happen next. Comparing nascent climate science with evolution or tobacco/lung cancer denial is the basest intellectual dishonesty. It simply gives ammunition to the vicious Right-wing commentariat, the Devines, Albrechtsens and Bolts. The Left Tossariat, such as Rundle, Sparrow and Keane, have abdicated any critical role. Demands for censorship grow. Savonarolas such as Clive Hamilton stalk the land, preaching damnation. Democracy itself is explicitly threatened by AGW cultists- but Rundles and Sparrows stay silent. They fear excommunication.
Let the Crikey editor answer this: if Rundle or Keane attacked AGW, would they lose their jobs?
should read: “It is also simplistic to treat big capital, fossil fuel or not, as automatically rejecting AGW schemes”.