It didn’t take long for the climate exemption disease to spread rapidly through politics.
Nationals MPs now want agriculture, mining and regional manufacturing carved out of the mythical 2050 target. The mining lobby — still mired in climate denial — wants emissions-intensive mining protected. Liberal MP Russell Broadbent wants steel production — one of Australia’s most cosseted industries, responsible for inflicting billions in unnecessary costs on the Australian construction industry through its predatory use of the anti-dumping rort — exempted as well.
We’ve seen all this before, when Kevin Rudd unveiled his Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme and then watered it down, first to reflect the financial crisis, then in the face of relentless lobbying by emissions intensive industries.
Except that was an actual, real-life policy for an emissions trading scheme. This is for an imaginary emissions abatement target that exists only in the mind of Scott Morrison and journalists.
Forget about history repeating first as tragedy, then as farce. This is more the lame reboot of a rubbish show that should never have aired in the first place, with worse actors and a third-rate script.
Some performers are refusing to even say their lines: despite having helped sabotaged all climate action over the last decade, the Business Council now feels obliged to profess support for an economy-wide 2050 target (knowing full well exemptions for major sectors simply means a greater burden on other industries), as does the National Farmers Federation.
The blatant attacks on climate action that marked the Rudd-Gillard years are now unacceptable for major corporations courtesy of social media-driven campaigns and superannuation funds keen to display their climate-friendly credentials.
The reason we’re watching this rehash, this Dancing On Ice 2021, is because the same power structures exist in federal politics now as then: fossil fuel and resources companies wield remarkable influence courtesy of their political donations, their support from key trade unions that fund Labor, the presence of former resources industry figures in senior positions within government, and a dominant media company that supports climate denialism.
And what hasn’t changed, either, is the refusal of large sections of the media to accurately report on climate policy. If the challenge facing Labor when it was in government was an intransigent opposition and a mainstream media catastrophising climate action as economically disastrous, the problem now is the willingness of many in the press gallery to run a protection racket for Scott Morrison on climate, refusing to report on his pro-fossil fuel policies and their corrupt origin properly, obsessing over trivial changes in wording rather than the reality of a climate emergency and the climate denialism of the government.
As the now overworked saying goes, insanity is doing the same thing over and expecting different results. Rehashing 2009’s emissions trading debate will lead to the same end as it did last time. Only by breaking the power structures that force that result can change be effected. That means crushing the power and influence of fossil fuel companies and News Corp and heavily restricting donations.
Without that, we’ll be watching the same lame tragicomedy performed by ever more abysmal actors for years to come.
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Peter Fray
Editor-in-chief of Crikey
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“As the now overworked saying goes, insanity is doing the same thing over and expecting different results.”
It’s not just an overworked saying. It is also very often wrong. There are countless circumstances where doing the same thing you did before can produce a different outcome. Some of the time, it is very unlikely you get the same result twice in a row, and quite impossible to get the same result indefinitely.
At this stage in the climate debate your point has nil significance. Humanity, especially in the developed western world, has made economic growth the mantra for survival for so long I believe we are already past capacity to survive. Those who look honestly at the increase in natural events with catastrophic outcomes this century know that they are increasing far more rapidly than our increase in CO2 emissions. That can only occur if, as any sensible student would expect, a system as large as our earth’s atmosphere and oceans will have “tipping points” for response to the massive extra energy raising the mass of our atmosphere by half a degree celsius requires.
Just in case I’m wrong do lot’s more NOW. Fortunately some other nations are. It great to see a tory UK government embracing NIL coal fired electricity except for extreme emergencies by 2024. Lift your game Scomo!
The relevance to climate change is moot. Certainly I’d like to see more done to reduce global warming, every bit helps even though we’ve already taken things to the point where the best result possible will still be disastrous. A recent piece in The Atlantic, “The Terrifying Warning Lurking in the Earth’s Ancient Rock Record” is as clear as could be, but of course there’s plenty more.
The (rather small) point I was making is this cliché has the unusual distinction of not only being over-used, tired and lazy, it’s so wrong it’s completely unhelpful. It just distracts from any argument the writer is trying to make.
To be candid, SSR, appealing to your calculus lecturers you should be able to recall that “every little bit” does not NECESSARILY help at all. There has to be a threshold rate of change (negatively) to arrest the trend.
It is precisely this condition that makes the current situation hopeless. R.E (to whom you were replying) is more right than wrong.
More right than wrong about the alleged definition of insanity? Really?
Past a capacity to survive.
Send the TV stations and the News/Nine papers away to Antarctica (oh, okay, Sydney will do) for a couple of years and let Melbourne get back to normal…
I wonder how these characters will respond when Australian exports get whacked with a carbon tax at the border by the rest of the world. Will that finally persuade those electorates still sending National Party representatives to Canberra to reconsider their options?
I wonder if China will do that, again? Kind of depends on how much steel they actually need.
PS, I like your ‘nym
Let’s take it to the ridiculous extreme and exempt everyone. It’s an aspirational imaginary plan anyway, as you pointed out.
Too true, “we’ll be watching the same lame tragicomedy performed by ever more abysmal actors for years to come” – from the bleachers – getting bleached by the sun ourselves.
But, if form is any guide, I’m sure that, by the time it’s too late, our media will be taking full responsibility for their complicit role in allowing this to happen, by not holding their indulged Limited News Party Coal-ition to the same standards that they do Labor (in querulous scepticism) …..
…. Check out Madonna King’s lamentation (today) on the declining empathy of our media, and her mea culpa for her part in that business model of decline – while she was such an enthusiastic participant for years with Murdoch’s ‘Curry or Maul’.
Yep, the media will fess up, the LNP will whip themselves raw, they will apologise profusely, admit their error, and undertake research on porcine aviation. Looking forward to it.