Climate Code Red

“Critical decade” or “lost decade”? (3) Is the future unspeakable?

2013-04-09T08:11:00.000+10:00

The Australian Labor government’s climate policy steps were slow in coming and incremental, when they needed to be transformative, and a likely Abbott government will be worse, so what’s important now?

by David Spratt | Third in a series | Part one | Part two

Published at ReNewEconomy on 10 April 2013

Photo courtesy Greenpeace

As the federal Labor government and a significant period in climate policy-making in Australia very likely come to a close this year, there is an opportunity for the climate action and advocacy movement to reflect and plan together. One important chance is from 18-20 May in Kurri Kurri in the Hunter Valley of NSW, where community activists from around Australia will gather for three days of discussion under the banner Our Land, Our Water, Our Future: Beyond Coal and Gas.

But this very topic – of not quadrupling Australia’s contribution to greenhouse gas emissions with an explosion in coal and gas exports (see Part two), let alone the additional contributions from domestic coal seam gas and dirty coal power stations – is a great example of the central problem in climate policy-making in Australia. And the problem is this: as a nation we are unable or unwilling to even talk about climate change in a meaningful way.

Take coal exports: apart from the grassroots climate action movement, some but not all climate advocacy groups, The Greens, researcher Guy Pearce and The Australia Institute, there is a void in public discourse on this most central issue. Remember the shellacking Bob Brown and then Greenpeace got from Labor, the LNP, business, unions, the commentariat and all-and-sundry when they dared to raise the issue?

This final part in a series on “‘Critical decade’ or ‘lost decade’?” is devoted to the observation that as a society we do not talk with comprehension about global warming, and so cannot act with the attention, speed and scale required. By not articulating the full problem, we are bound to fail to solving it. In 2012, I described this cognitive dissonance:

Globally, and in Australia, the gap between the action required for a safe climate and what is actually being done is growing wider at an alarming rate. Nothing is spoken about any of this. Public leadership in Australia on climate is thin. Ask friends to identify who they could name as public figures in Australia who have shown courageous and consistent public leadership on climate. Some will say Christine Milne, and then struggle for another name.
     The problem is now so big and action required is so far outside business- and politics-as-usual that for most of the climate movement the only way to be “relevant” is to not describe the problem as it is, and not describe the scale and urgency of the solutions. We have achieved a collective cognitive dissonance where the real challenge we face is excluded from discourse. This is our Climate Policy Paradigm.
     Most eNGOs and activists consciously seek not to specifically engage about the scale of the problem and the urgency of the action required because it is not an immediately winnable goal or kosher inside the political beltway and in the daily news cycle. This Catch-22 means that what really needs to be done is rarely articulated. It’s pretty crazy when you know – on the present political and economic settings – that we are heading towards an apocalypse and the public discourse is so deluded that you are excluded or marginalised for saying so.
     US environmentalist and former deputy director of Greenpeace USA, Ken Ward, describes the problem:

There are powerful arguments against the anything-is-better-than-nothing philosophy, but there is an even more basic problem with our "policy-first" approach. The world can only draw back from the climate tipping point by transformative political action.. (yet) For twenty years we have approached the problem by pre-negotiating with ourselves on behalf of our opposition. We don't think about it in those terms, but that is what climate policy is all about. We calculate what concessions are necessary to placate whichever interest, power or nation is thought must be mollified, and then devise a scheme to fit within those limits… Over decades, layers of accommodation and polite behavior have built up by accretion, while our rough edges have been worn down. The net result is a worldview – we may call it the "Climate Policy Paradigm" – that is so universally accepted that it goes unnoticed, yet its power is so great that we have abandoned the precautionary principle, environmentalism's central guide for action, with barely a murmur when the two came in conflict.

So what climate talk do we do in Australia now? By which I mean the climate issues that have some currency in the public conversation, that are substantially discussed and understood apart from those sectors with an immediate professional or partisan interest. Here’s my guess as to the level of engagement and understanding on a number of key issues (based on the headline proposition in bold and not necessarily the detail), both in the public conversation and in the climate action and advocacy movement. Some of my very subjective scores may seem wildly inaccurate, so please use comments to have you say!

A record amount of ice is melting in the Arctic, which is passing dangerous tipping points. Arctic warming is now contributing to prolonged, extreme weather events in many parts of the world. Sea-ice-free Arctic summer periods are imminent, and the complete melting of the Greenland ice sheet will occur at lower global temperatures than previously thought. Increasing methane releases from the Arctic are an ominous sign that larger-scale permafrost melt may be under way.
[Score: public conversation 2/5; climate movement 5/5]
Human actions are triggering the sixth mass extinction event in the planet’s history. The world’s biodiversity has dropped 30% over the last four decades, a rate not seen in 60 million years. Extinctions worldwide are occurring at a pace that is 1000 times as great as the background rate. Eminent Naturalist E.O. Wilson predicts that our present course will lead to the extinction of half of all plant and animal species by the year 2100.
[Score: public conversation 1/5; climate movement 4/5]
Oceans are more acidic than they have been for at least 20 million years and coral reefs are close to destruction. Oceans are acidifying ten times faster today than 55 million years ago when a mass extinction of marine species occurred. It is predicted 10% of the Arctic Ocean will be corrosively acidic by 2018, and 50% by 2050. Half of the world's coral reefs have already been lost.
[Score: public conversation 1/5; climate movement 3/5]

Global warming is getting worse at an accelerating rate. Greenhouse gas emissions rose 1% per year in the 1990s but 3.1% since 2000. The rate of increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide has lifted above 2 parts per million per year and long-term NASA climate science head Jim Hansen expects it to be rising by 3 parts per million per year.
[Score: public conversation 0/5; climate movement 2/5]
Best current emission-reduction commitments by governments will still lead to 4 degrees of warming by 2100 and as early as 2060. A 4-degree warmer world may reduce the planet’s carrying capacity to one billion people or less, and would over time lead to the loss of all ice sheets and an eventual 70-metre sea level rise, amongst many devastating impacts. As Prof. Kevin Anderson has noted: "There is a widespread view that a 4°C future is incompatible with an organised global community, is likely to be beyond ‘adaptation’, is devastating to the majority of eco-systems and has a high probability of not being stable".
[Score: public conversation 1/5; climate movement 3/5]

Warming of 2 degrees is not a safe target but “a recipe for disaster”. Two degrees of warming will create a sea-ice free Arctic (we are almost there at just 0.8C of warming), push Greenland and West Antarctic melting passed their tipping points, destroy the world’s coral systems, and produce an eventual sea-level rise of around 25 metres, and many other devastating impacts.
[Score: public conversation 0/5; climate movement 2/5]
We have already gone too far. At current temperatures, there is no "cushion" left to avoid dangerous climate change. It is hard to argue that anything above the Holocene maximum (of around 0.5 degrees above the pre-industrial temperature) can preserve a safe climate, and that we have already gone too far. The notion that 1.5C is a safe target is out the window, and even 1 degree is an unacceptably high risk when we seek what is happening around the world at just 0.8C.
[Score: public conversation 0/5; climate movement 1/5]
A primary short-term goal is to avoid crucial climate tipping points that would lead to large-scale scale carbon cycle feedbacks or warming which are irreversible on human time scales. Warming in the Arctic suggests we are at or close to some of these points right now. This is a big challenge to those policy paradigms which emphasise long-term change (zero growth, lower population, a sustainable economic system, cultural change, etc) as a pre-condition for climate action.
[Score: public conversation 1/5; climate movement 3/5]
To avoid crucial climate tipping points employing geo-engineering will be necessary as the least worst option. Geo-engineering is no substitute for a crash program to reduce human emissions to zero as fast as possible if we are to restore a safe climate, but the latter will likely not stop critical tipping points being breached. This is a contentious issue.
[Score: public conversation 0/5; climate movement 0/5]
Large-scale carbon drawdown (sequestration) is necessary for a safe-climate. Because greenhouse gas levels are now above 450ppm and a safe climate is well under 350ppm, getting carbon out of the atmosphere in large measure is a key measure. One published scenario for an under 350ppm target includes 100 billion tonnes of re-afforestation as a necessary component.
[Score: public conversation 0/5; climate movement 2/5]
You can't negotiate with the laws of physics and chemistry. Yep, this is an odd one, but it seems to me that this proposition is constantly denied in public policy-making, for example in acknowledging the (too conservative) 2007 IPCC figure of a 25% cut in emissions by 2020, but then in a bi-partisan manner agreeing on only a 5% reduction.
[Score: public conversation 0/5; climate movement 4/5]
Government fossil fuel subsidies in Australia are greater than the total revenue collected from the carbon tax. Labor will hand a $2.3–5.4 billion profit bonanza to Australia's dirtiest power stations from carbon price compensation. Australia Institute research found total government subsidies to the fossil fuel industry of around $13.3 billion a year, compared to revenue from the carbon tax of just $7.7 billion a year (on fossil fuel industry pollution).
[Score: public conversation 0/5; climate movement 2/5]
An energy revolution is making renewable energy technologies cheaper than energy from fossil fuels. The speed of innovation and deployment and lowering of costs will transform the world’s energy systems over coming decades, but left to a free market it will not happen quickly enough.
[Score: public conversation 2/5; climate movement 5/5]
A carbon budget approach to emissions reduction for even the unsafe 2-degree target means Australia achieving zero emissions within a decade. There is just beginning a public discussion about a “carbon budget”, but generally for unsafe targets and without “doing the maths” for Australia.
[Score: public conversation 0/5; climate movement 2/5]
Only action at emergency speed and scale is now capable of preventing a climate catastrophe. What needs to be done cannot be achieved in today’s neo-conservative capitalist economy. A rapid transition will required a great deal of planning, coordination and allocation of labour and skills, investment, and materials and resources, that can’t just be left to markets and pricing. There is a choice between two dystopias: some very significant social and economic disruptions now while we make the transition quickly, or a state of permanent and escalating disruption as the planet’s climate heads into territory where most people and most species will not survive. So this will not be painless, and citizens will need to actively understand and participate in some personally-disruptive measures, but they will do so because they have learned that the transition plans are both fair and necessary, and the other choice is unspeakable. Paul Gilding addressed some of these issues in The Great Disruption, but few were prepared to continue the conversation.
[Score: public conversation 0/5; climate movement 1/5]

This is a quick attempt to demonstrate the proposition that cognitive dissonance characterises the public conversation on global warming and climate action in Australia. It's not for want of trying by many climate activists at the local community level, for they are desperate for a broad and serious public engagement with the climate crisis. They have the desire, but often insufficient power, to be heard widely in public policy circles.

On coal seam gas it has been the energy and commitment of so many people in so many affected communities united under one banner that has made it a front-page story and re-written the politics and the business prospects of the industry. But how is this done when it not an in-your-backyard issue and easily related to personal lives?

One approach is to make the connections between the extreme weather events people are experiencing and climate change. This is helping to improve public understanding of climate change and support for action, according to recent polling. Another is the hard slog of organising, connecting, and activating communities on the big issues for them, whether it is the impact of coal dust on their lives, or concern that using and exporting more and more coal and gas is incompatible with a decent life for future generations.

There is also an irreducible role for those who already have some cultural capital in the public conversation, in providing ideas leadership. In 2002-03 it was easy to observe how the mass community protests against the coming Iraq war were given a boost when support came from unexpected quarters amongst people who had or could quickly gain public standing and access; people like General Stratton, former intelligence officer Andrew Wilkie and former prime minister Malcolm Fraser, to name just three.

The same is true today. Where are the leaders in the public conversation prepared to consistently talk about the sorts of issues sketched above?

Let me take one example, not because I want to particularly single him out, but because he has said a good deal of interest on the public record. Professor Ross Garnaut, through his work on two series of reports for the Labor government, probably did more than any other person to focus public attention on climate policy-making over the last six years.

In his first round of reports, the science he was fed was pretty conservative, what Garnaut later came to call "reticent" (see below). It was behind the times, like the 2007 IPCC report on which much of it was based. After publication of his 2008 reports, Garnaut realised this and, despite not being a scientist, frankly recognised what he called the "bad possibilities" in climate science with "immense impacts" and "highly adverse outcomes" in his verbal presentations. At a public meeting he held in Sydney in mid-2008, I asked from the floor what it would mean for his policy prescriptions if those "bad possibilities" were to come true. His matter-of-fact answer was words to the effect that it would "make them irrelevant".

Now we know that those "bad possibilities" have come true. Garnaut recognised this and incorporated them into his second round of reports in early 2011, concluding his "Update paper 5: The science of climate change" with an extraordinary section on "Reflections on scholarly reticence":

It is remarkable that the review of developments in the science—new observations and results of new research—have all either confirmed established scientific wisdom, or shifted the established wisdom in the direction of greater concern... In an area of uncertainty, this is not what one would expect. One would expect some new knowledge to surprise by being more worrying than the central points in the mainstream science, and some new knowledge to surprise because it is less worrying. When all the new knowledge that challenges the old is on the more worrying side, one worries about whether the asymmetry reflects some systematic bias.
     ... Publications lags introduce unfortunate delays between discovery and influence in the policy discussion, but there is no reason to expect them to cause systematic bias in the direction in which new knowledge changes the established wisdom.
      I have come to wonder whether the reason why most of the new knowledge confirms the established science or changes it for the worse is scholarly reticence. I wonder whether we are seeing the effects of a professional reticence about stepping too far in front of received wisdom in one stride...
     There must be a possibility that scholarly reticence, extended by publications lags, has led to understatement of the risks.
      That is not a reason to clutch for knowledge outside the mainstream wisdom: if our discussion ceases to be grounded in the established science, we have no firm, common ground from which to work on the most difficult policy problem of our times.
    We should, however, be alert to the possibility that the reputable science in future will suggest that it is in Australians’ and humanity’s interests to take much stronger and much more urgent action on climate change than might seem warranted from today’s peer-reviewed published literature. We have to be ready to adjust expectations and policy in response to changes in the wisdom from the mainstream science. (emphasis added)

To summarise, Garnaut here recognises – especially in the last paragraph – that what will need to be done is much stronger than was being proposed, just as his "bad possibilities" response did three years earlier. So all along, Garnaut has been aware that the climate policy paradigm on which he was asked to report by Labor within fairly narrow boundaries was a parallel universe to the real world challenge.

There are many others with standing in the public conversation who know this too, especially as more very sobering scientific research and observations become available, such as events in the Arctic. Why do such public figures, whether they be commentators or business leaders, past and present politicians, or public sector figures, not step up now? One reason is that individually they fear, as Garnaut says, "about stepping too far in front of received wisdom" and becoming isolated and marginalised amonst their peers. Some have institutional restraints in working for government organisations, and others have business or professional interests that are incompatible with calling a spade a spade when it comes to the greatest threat that humans have ever faced.

But together, there is the capacity for a public opinion leadership group to take shape, end the unbearable silence, and beat down the walls of cognitive dissonance within which the climate discussion lives in darkness. Such ideas leadership is far from sufficient, but an absolutely necessary, action as we all ponder our own roles in determining whether this will be the “critical decade” or the “lost decade”

As Ross Garnaut has remarked in presenting his second round of reports: “The failure of our generation on climate change mitigation would lead to consequences that would haunt humanity to the end of time.”

“Critical decade” or “lost decade”? (2) Inside the beltway

2013-04-08T12:48:00.000+10:00

With a victory for Tony Abbott and the Liberal–National Party coalition at Australia's federal election in September, and conservative domination of Australian parliamentary politics for the remainder of this decade both likely, what will the major parties do on climate action?

by David Spratt | Second in a series | Part one | Part three

Published at ReNewEconomy on 9 April 2013

Increasing heat content in the oceans (blue) show the
claims that global warmed has "stopped" to be fallacious.
Courtesy Skeptical Science.

LIBERAL–NATIONAL PARTY COALITION (LNP): The federal LNP’s plans are clear: up to $70 billion cuts in government spending, public sectors austerity and up to 35,000 public sector job losses. Think David Cameron in the UK or Campbell Newman in Queensland. Big business will get a free run, the mining profits tax will go, and wealth will be transferred to the top end of town. All in the name of reducing the size of government and reducing regulation to expand the private sector because more, bigger and more profitable markets are our saviour.

Except when it comes the Labor-created market in trading carbon pollution rights, where LNP leader Tony Abbott has promised to axe the market. Surveys find that two-thirds of business leaders think the carbon price will stay, and many hope that Abbott won’t have the Senate numbers. If they do, will Abbott’s delay-and-deny ideology triumph over a basic tenet of neo-liberal capitalism that a free market is a good market, and the more the better? Investment banker Mark Carnegie says Abbott is “is the person least committed to free market economics of the viable political leaders”. As carbon markets expand internationally, big business – and especially finance capital which thrives by trading and speculating on everything in sight – don’t want to be chopped out of the action. Even ExxonMobil and Shell and BP have called for the carbon tax to stay, which says something both about Abbott’s relationship to business, and how tame is the carbon price.

If legal advice is correct, Abbott's ''pledge in blood'' to scrap the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) “will cost taxpayers more in compensation and legal costs than the financial benefit of abolishing the system”.

Team Abbott’s “direct action” climate plan is a fraud that was not designed to cut overall emissions from a ceiling, but as a fig-leaf so they could say they had a plan that wasn't a tax. It was a thought bubble, as discussed here, here and here.

If the LNP has a big majority, it will be more of a challenge to mobilise sufficient community power in sufficient LNP seats to make a difference in Canberra.

So the LNP’s response to governing in the “critical decade”? Slash and burn, if Tony Abbott’s attitude to public transport is any guide. It will be about how many climate and environment programs are binned, and how many regulatory processes are trashed.

Yet there some countervailing tendencies. There is the question of the Senate outcome, discussed in part one. And there are those frontbench LNP figures who have some grasp of the climate issue and once supported a carbon price – such as Turnbull, Macfarlane, Hockey and Hunt – who should find it discomforting to watch a scorched-earth approach to existing climate programmes. And they have the support of big business on at least one of the key issues. Can Tony Abbott and Andrew Robb be rolled with a sleight-of-hand that says the tax is “scrapped” and replaced by emissions trading, which it is legislated to do in any case?

Is Malcolm Turnbull really going to sit quietly on his hands as the carbon price, the CEFC and perhaps the RET go down the plughole? If he did, his public standing would be much diminished as a necessary consequence of his acquiescence.

Secondly, large majorities are often not good for unity in governments, and discipline can break down. As well there is the problem of over-reach in which a government is perceived to have “gone too far”, as was the case when John Howard obtained a Senate majority in 2004, slammed through WorkChoices and paid the price in 2007. Abbott has been in a political straight jacket as opposition leader and had 0restrained some of his madder behaviours and pronouncements, but as a victorious prime minister can he be similarly contained?

State LNP governments are over-reaching. The Victorian LNP government was behind in the polls less than two years after gaining power. The Reclaim Victoria’s Environment Campaign highlights and supports community action around the many appalling environment and climate policy failures of the LNP, based on market research which found that electors were both largely unaware of the government’s actions, and strongly opposed to them once they understood what was happening.

Thirdly, there are global factors that may up-end the Australia economy and tarnish Team Abbott’s ride in power. Australia’s mining bubble will burst, some say sooner rather than later, with mixed signals from China about future economic growth and demand for coal and iron ore; another global financial crisis seems less a case of if than when. And there is a growing inevitability of devastating climate/weather events magnified by global warming and so cruel in their impacts that they will have political resonance around the world, and even in Canberra.

Fourthly, no amount of political intransigence will stop the accelerating growth in renewable energy, but only delay deployment in Australia to the economy's long-term disadvntage. Giles Parkinson’s ReNewEconomy newsletter reports on this new energy revolution day-by-day, for example on 28 March:

"The perception of renewables as an expensive source of electricity is largely obsolete, given the huge cost reductions achieved in recent years,” the Citi analysts write. The report notes residential solar PV has already reached ‘grid parity’ in many countries, with much of the world set to follow by 2020.
It also says that utility-scale renewables will also be competitive with gas-fired power in the “short to medium” term. This has already occurred with wind energy in many countries. The exact ‘crossover’ points for utility-scale solar will vary from country to country, but in many regions, the Citi analysts say that big solar will be competitive by 2020.
“Utility-scale solar is rapidly approaching parity with wholesale electricity prices in a number of countries, including Italy, Spain, the US and China,” Citi says.

LABOR: Labor won’t want to talk about climate change during the election (except where it is under threat from the Greens) and is very unlikely to make any new commitments, a bit like their 2010 election campaign.

What will Labor do on climate in opposition? If the actions of the State Labor oppositions are any indication, very little. The big parties on both sides of politics at State level are united in not making global warming action any sort of priority. Both sides have used the 2011 federal legislation as an excuse to abandon State efforts in the name of removing “duplication of roles in relation to climate change mitigation and the implementation of the carbon tax”. If Team Abbott abolishes the carbon price, will the States move back into the field? Very doubtful.

It's a good bet that the conclusion that Labor will draw from the current period is to not champion climate action from now on. There will be a push to go quietly on some of Abbott’s proposed roll-backs. Have a look at the efforts on climate of Daniel Andrews in Victoria and John Robertson in NSW as state opposition leaders!

Inside the Labor Party there is a strong, if fallacious, view and especially in the right faction that climate policy has been at the centre of the Gillard government’s problems. Australian Workers Union boss and right-winger Paul Howes, a proud architect of Rudd’s execution and Team Gillard cheer-leader, says he is a "dig it up, cut it down type of guy" and is the coal and gas industry's best friend. For him, The Greens are Labor’s biggest enemy.

In reality, Labor’s climate problems are of their own making. As discussed last year, Labor’s strategic errors included:

Kevin Rudd’s strategic decision to isolate the Greens and deal with the opposition on the CPRS in 2008-09 kicked back in his face with the defeat of Malcolm Turnbull as opposition leader, unleashing the deny-and-delay Tony Abbott.
A failure to act decisively. The sense of urgency was lost in 2008, according to public opinion researcher Hugh Mackay, who says that the fall in public support was evident by mid-2008, when the sense of expectation accompanying the change of government was deflated by inaction in the first six months of Rudd’s term, creating "a very critical vacuum" in which "people kind of shrugged and said well, it is not that serious after all ... It was seen as much more about a talking game than an acting game ... When we were not called upon to act, the opportunity was lost."
Getting Copenhagen wrong. Despite the gathering evidence throughout 2009, Rudd and climate minister Penny Wong bound their strategy to a good outcome at the Copenhagen climate meeting, and when it all went belly-up they were left high and dry.
More procrastination: Senior government figures thought they had a deal with Rudd to go to a double dissolution in early 2010 on the CPRS, before the worst of the Copenhagen fallout rained down. But Rudd prevaricated and lost his nerve; then Gillard and Swan pushed him into a backflip on carbon pricing, and by June 2010 he was gone.
Two backflips in five months. Gillard went to the August 2010 election with a climate policy fit only for comedians, promising no carbon tax but "cash for clunkers" and a 100-person national consultation. Weeks later, and needing The Greens' and independent support to save her face and her government, she backflipped and set the Multi-Party Climate Change Committee in process. Given the nature of the coup against Rudd and the election result, Gillard’s credibility was half-shot before she started and her subsequent handling of the climate issue – evasive, dispassionate, disinterested, poorly communicated – did more damage to Labor’s credibility. And it probably also did damage to the case it was prosecuting: climate action.
A critical failure to sell the carbon tax by taking “climate” out of climate-change policy public messaging. The “Clean energy future” campaign in 2011 was classic bright-siding. All clean energy and barely a mention of climate change or impacts. And so was the “Say Yes” campaign run by a number of Australian environment/climate non-government organisations (eNGOs), together with the ACTU and GetUp, in 2011.
Since the legislation passed, the government has rarely talked about climate change.

It will take years for the Labor hierarchy to untangle themselves from their present pain and poor electoral standing. Just how vigorously will Labor defend the carbon pricing, the CEFC and the RET? Will Labor campaign for new initiatives and a much higher level of ambition, as the scientific understanding of future clime impacts dictates we must?

Perhaps that depends on whether there is a productive reflection and some caucus members – particularly on the Labor left who are better on climate but zipped their mouths in the cause of unity – lead a useful debate inside the Labor party on its climate record of high aspirations, multiple back-flips and a complete failure of courage to explain and defend their own legislation. The worse outcome would be for all this to be swept under the carpet and denied.

As well, Labor cannot take climate off the agenda if it wants to hold onto marginal, inner-city Green–Labor seats. Adams Bandt’s 2010 victory most potent political message – “I will not backflip on climate” – was in pointed contrast to the actions of Labor leaders Rudd and Gillard. No matter how climate tracks as a political issue around the nation, it will always play a key role in the marginal Green–Labor seats, and that is a mechanism for keeping Labor from burying the issue.

GREENS: Before becoming prime minister, Julia Gillard had shown little personal interest in environmental or climate issues; her biggest effort was to knuckle Rudd into abandoning the CPRS, and then knocking him off. Adam Bandt’s 2010 victory in the seat of Melbourne and The Greens’ decision to make climate the sticking point in negotiating support for Labor (with support from independents Oakshott and Windsor) is the only reasons the Gillard government acted on climate. If Labor had won in its own right, climate action would have amounted to cash-for-clunkers and a 100-person talk-fest. There would have been no carbon price, no CEFC, no ARENA and no Climate Authority.

The Greens clearly get the scale and urgency of the problem, but have been caught between the need to keep the Labor government running full term and the frustration that the level of ambition in the climate package was far short of their aspirations and what is necessary. And they have been reticent in pushing stronger positions if there is no public support from other players.

The big question for The Greens will come after the election. At least some of their political representatives understand that climate is the issue that transcends all others in this sense: if global warming is not stopped by a speed and depth of action far beyond anything that is on the public agenda, the consequences in the next half century will be so devastating as to make many of their values – human rights, justice, fairness – irrelevant.

On the current greenhouse emissions trajectory driven by repeated political failure, global warming will reach 4 degrees Celsius this century and as early as 2060. Such an outcome may well reduce the human population to less than one billion people through decades of climate ecocide. In these circumstances the paths to global justice, civil right and human dignity are best, and can only be, served by making transformative climate action the core of political activity.

Of course the same proposition applies to all parliamentarians and especially those Labor members who aspire to leadership on global warming issues. A starting point is to understand what has to be done and speed of action is necessary to avoid passing critical tipping points which are near at hand. This is the topic for the third and final part of this series.

“Critical decade” or “lost decade”? (1) The conservative tide

2013-04-07T15:53:00.000+10:00

Political parties which vacillate between denial and delay on climate action are set to dominate Australian politics for the remainder of this decade, so how should we respond?

by David Spratt | First in a series | Part two | Part three

Published at ReNewEconomy on 8 April 2013

The global average temperature is now higher than
at any time during the Holocene, the period of
human civilisation

Australian Climate Commission reports in recent months (here and here) emphasise that this is “the critical decade”. Yet the bookies say there is an 85-90% probability that the Gillard Labor government will lose this year’s federal election – and by a big margin – heralding an era of conservative domination of Australian politics at national and State levels.

Just before Easter, ALP stalwart and former ACTU secretary Bill Kelty wrote that: "The politics of the next few months is no longer about the result of the next election" (emphasis added). Everybody knows Labor is lost, baring Kevin Rudd rising from the dead and at least giving the conservatives a shake.

The next day, the Australian Financial Review reported that “Labor faces annihilation in marginal seats”. Polling in 54 marginal seats found the two-party-preferred (2PP) swing against Labor since the 2010 election had almost doubled, to 9.3% from 4.8% in two months, exposing Labor "to the loss of all 24 marginal seats it holds across Australia and risking up to 15 more semi-marginal electorates". It concluded that, at worse, Labor could win “as few as 32 seats in the 150-seat Parliament”. This was just after the Crean-Rudd leadership fiasco.

The irony is that while Prime Minister Gillard may proclaim to be personally “tough”, her government is anything but. It is strategically incompetent, communicates poorly, is disunited and faces an electoral wipeout. In Crikey, Guy Rundle wrote persuasively of 15 reasons why Labor is “on the edge of the abyss”. ABC presenter and former editor of The Drum, Jonathan Green, asked “Is it time to wonder whether saving the ALP is either necessary or desirable?”

The most recent Newspoll (25 March) had the ALP’s primary vote at 30%, whilst the Liberal–National Party (LNP) opposition had 50% of the primary vote and 58% 2PP. Just 26% approve of Prime Minister Gillard’s performance, whilst 65% disapprove. Crikey’s Bludgertrack 2013 (which averages and weights recent polls) as at 3 April points to an election result on current data of 48 seats to Labor and 99 to the LNP, excluding consideration of the five seats presently held by The Greens and independents.

In summary, most electors have long stopped listening to Julia Gillard (the corollary is that the higher her media profile, the more certain it is than Labor will lose), the LNP is likely to have a majority of 30+ seats, and is very likely to be in power for at least two terms, till 2019. (The last one-term federal government in Australia was that of Scullin in 1929-31.)
Electors’ dislike of Tony Abbott is only surpassed by their dislike of Julia Gillard, which is why Rudd as leader would have been a relief to many voters. At this late stage, Rudd would have been unlikely to keep Labor in power, but he would have at least saved some seats. These propositions were obviously too complex for the majority of members of Labor’s federal caucus.

THE SENATE: Team Abbott requires Senate support to amend or repeal the carbon price, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and the Renewable Energy Target. The Climate Authority and Australian Renewable Energy Agency can easily be trashed by administrative measures.

It is not impossible for the conservatives to control the Senate after 1 July 2014, with the willing support of the one current DLP Senator, John Madigan. This could happen in a number of ways:

Scenario one: The LNP would need to win one of the two spots in each of the two Territories, three of the six Senate spots in four States, and four of the six Senate spots in two States. The latter is far from impossible and requires the conservative side of politics to win just over 57% of the two-part preferred (2PP) Senate vote in that State. The latest Newspoll puts the LNP’s national 2PP vote at 58%, whilst Bludgertrack 2013 says 2PP support for the LNP is currently 60% in WA, 57-58% in NSW and Queensland, and over 55% is SA.
Scenario two: In NSW and WA, the final Senate sport (after the LNP claim 3 and Labor 2) will likely be between the LNP and The Greens. It is likely that the Katter Party (Qld) and Xenophon (SA) will win Senate spots, which would exclude the LNP winning a fourth Senate spots in those States. However, either or both of these could support the LNP in repealing or amending climate legislation. If the DLP, Katter Party and Xenophon all support the LNP, then it only needs to win three of the six Senate spots in each State (very likely) to have a Senate majority. In which case…
Scenario three: The Greens Senate candidate in the ACT, Simon Sheik, has the opportunity to win that seat from the LNP, a result which may be crucial to who controls the Senate if Scenario two were otherwise realised. His cause is aided by rucktions within the ACT Liberals in which long-standing Senator Gary Humphries has been rolled by the more right-wing faction of Zed Seselja, who is now their Senate candidate. Seselja is abrasive and unpopular, with a recent poll finding 49 per cent had an unfavourable opinion of Mr Seselja, while 37 per cent looked on him favourably.

If the LNP cannot muster a Senate majority on climate issues, then it would need a double dissolution, which would be unlikely before 2015, and after the next Victorian State election. This may be politically difficult: some of the gloss will have gone from Team Abbott and lower house seats would likely be lost, especially if the tide turns on State LNP governments with another two years in power; the economy may dip for global and/or domestic reasons; and punters don’t like unnecessary elections. Of course should Labor cave in (not impossible given the repeated pattern of backflips on climate policy) on some if not all climate legislation, then there would be no Senate impediment.
Turning attention from national to State politics, a look at the political balance of power and climate policy-making in the major economic states is also sobering.

QUEENSLAND: Labor was wiped out in 2012, and now has seven seats in Queensland’s one-chamber parliament, compared to 75 LNP seats. The most recent State Newspoll found the LNP with 62% of 2PP, similar to the result at the State election, with Labor’s primary vote at 27%. It’s hard to imagine how Labor can be competitive in 2015, or the LNP could possibly lose. Given the coming federal Labor wipe-out in Queensland, the odds are on the LNP maintaining government for the remainder of the decade.

NEW SOUTH WALES: Following the March 2011 election in NSW, Labor holds 20 lower-house seats compared to the LNP’s 69 seats. The LNP also control the upper house with 19 seats plus the support of Fred Nile and Shooters and Fishers Party (4 seats). Labor hold 14 seats and The Greens 5 seats. The most recent State Newspoll gave the LNP 63% of the 2PP, compared to 37% for Labor, whose primary vote is down to an astounding 23%. NSW has fixed four-year terms, with elections in 2015 and 2019. Amongst many stenches surrounding the NSW ALP, the present ICAC hearings featuring Labor luminaries Eddie Obeid and Ian Macdonald are killing Labor’s brand. There is a very high probability of the LNP retaining power in NSW till 2019 at least.

VICTORIA: The first-term LNP State government, which controls both houses of parliament, had been trailing Labor in the polls, but the recent leadership change will improve its position. The next State election is in late 2014 and both sides have an opportunity to win.

WESTERN AUSTRALIA: In this year’s March state election, the LNP won 64% of the seats, compared to 36% of seats to Labor. The ALP primary vote was 33%, compared to 53% for the LNP. In the upper house, the LNP have 61% of the seats. The LNP is in power till 2017, and are likely likely to be there till 2021 unless the state economy unwinds.

Taken together, it looks very likely that Australians nationally and in the big economic states – with the possible exception of Victoria – will be governed by conservative parties infested with a sizeable proportion of climate-denial parliamentarians, and with climate policies which could be charitably described as the politics of delay. Slash-and-burn of good environment and climate policies is probably a more honest descriptions, if the actions of incoming LNP governments in Victoria, NSW and Queensland over the last two years are any guide.

My perception at the moment is that most people in the climate movement think an Abbott victory is both appalling and all but inevitable. One big threat now is that the sense of inevitability combined with Team Abbott “looking like winners” may draw more (and especially younger?) voters to “back a winner”, which could effect both The Greens’ vote and the Senate balance. "Winners are grinners" is an old political maxim.

Labor-leaning environment and climate advocacy organisations (defined as those who have been unwilling to make substantial public criticism of Labor over the last decade, even when it was warranted) seem very subdued. Many have been largely off the radar since the climate bills passed in late 2011, and there are few signs yet of strategic discussion on a likely Abbott victory. My comments last year still seem valid:

What is even more disturbing is the evidence in 2012 that many of the larger organisations who have been concerned about winning better climate policy also seem to have taken climate off the public agenda for now. Many big groups campaigned in 2011 under the “Say Yes” banner for the carbon price, which was legislated at the end of that year. That was the start of a new battle, but in 2012 most of those objectively disappeared from the public discourse, leaving Labor and the Greens alone to fight it out against the opposition, the miners, the Murdoch press, the deniers, the shock jocks and all and sundry. To be honest, I have seen hardly a peep in the media in defence of climate action from the ACTU or unions, the aid and welfare sectors, or many of the big eNGOs. I can see only four explanations, all disturbing. Some ran for cover because it got too difficult or they had gotten what they wanted (for example, the welfare lobby); some didn’t understand the strategic need to continue fighting it out in public; the media and communications professional in those organisation were not up to the job; or these organisations and their campaigners were simply “exhausted”. All four point to management failure.

Perhaps because Labor decided to take climate off the agenda – selling its climate legislation as only about “clean energy” and those mysterious “household compensation” TV ads on tax cuts that made no link to the climate bills – then some groups also considered Labor’s electoral chances would be bolstered if they sat on their hands as well. Their general unwillingness to take full advantage of the considerable public space created by the scientists, meteorologists and the Climate Commission on the link between current extreme weather events and global warming is not a good sign.

In contradistinction, some of the smaller advocacy groups are full steam ahead at a State, regional and sectoral level. The “Lock the gate” campaign against coal seam gas has garnered amazing local community support and gained great momentum and state and national political and media attention, and the campaigns against coal expansion are growing across the eastern States, they are better resourced and attracting critical support from both local communities and experienced climate activists. There has been strong community support for renewable energy, reflected in both the one-millionth solar PV domestic installation, and in the “big solar” Port Augusta campaign.

When all is said and done, and despite the comings and goings in Canberra, closing down the polluters is always at the heart of effective climate activism and advocacy, especially since end-use emissions from Australia coal and gas exports will dwarf domestic emissions by a factor of three- or four-to-one. Researcher Guy Pearse says that the expansion of Australian coal exports with the bipartisan blessing of Labor and the LNP will mean that by “2020 or soon thereafter, Australia is exporting nearly twice as much CO2 as is Saudi Arabia today.” Pearse estimates that:

… Australian coal exports will generate around 75Gt (billion tonnes) CO2 between now and 2050 – perhaps another 5Gt will come from domestic coal use, and 8-10 Gt from LNG if the expansion of coal seam gas proceeds.

This totals around 90 billion tonnes of CO2, compared to current total domestic emissions of 0.55 billion tonnes a year, or just over 20 billion tonnes in total to 2050 if current emissions were held constant.

From this perspective, neither Labor nor the LNP by their behaviour indicate any significant understanding of the policy consequences of the carbon budget approach which the government’s own Climate Commission advocates, nor any grasp of what needs to be done in this “critical decade”. The brutal truth is that if Labor should remain in power and stick to an emissions reduction target of just 5% by 2020 (achieved by importing carbon credits) and actual emissions not peaking till 2025, this would still be largely a lost decade. With Team Abbott, the outcome is worse.

More of this in part 3, but next in part 2 a look at the major parties after September 2013.