Given that the release of the Garnaut report was delayed by a couple of hours this morning while Rudd and the rest wrapped their head around Wall Street, it seems appropriate to ask — will the economic meltdown push the climate change debate off the page for good?
Professor Garnaut reassured The Oz that it won’t –
It’s an enormously complicated question…But climate change is a long-term structural issue and financial crises are short term. They are highly disruptive, but a short-term issue.
But if it’s left up to public pressure, the Lowy Institute Poll released earlier this week doesn’t inspire much confidence… We’re noticeably tighter than this time a year ago — in that innocent time before interest rate rises and retail figures slumps, we rated climate change as the most important issue, and we were willing to pay up. This year, climate change fell to just equal fifth.
Right now it’s hard to see the other end of the Wall Street mess — but some eternal optimists are pointing the way… Glen Hurowitz in The Nation talked up ‘The Next Bull Market’ – instead of “shovelling good money after bad”, Congress should put its money into developing the booming green economy:
A recent report report by the Center for American Progress estimates that investing just $100 billion in the green economy (one-seventh the amount contemplated in the administration’s proposed Wall Street bailout) would create 2 million new jobs, with a significant percentage of those coming in the struggling manufacturing and construction sectors. In contrast, investing that much money in the financial services sector would generate just 1.1 million jobs.
But if we’ve learnt anything this week, it’s that the market can’t solve everything. So says The Boston Globe’s green blog:
We desperately need policies that reflect the enormity of the climate crisis before us – and the true environmental and social cost of carbon dioxide pollution. Until strong national and international climate limits are enacted, capital will flow too easily to the lowest common denominator – quick speculative projects that ignore long-term consequences.
But how to convince people to take their eyes off their spiralling share portfolios and shell out for higher energy bills? How do you grapple with the enormity of global warming when you’re more worried about keeping your job?
3 Comments
It always seemed to me that “The Economy” has long been advantaged in its ability to enter the public pysche than “The Environment”. This advantage largely stems form the fact that The Economy is endlessly measured from every direction by a vast industry obsessed with staring at its own navel. What is largely a series of abstract concepts surrounding money and value all these numbers help to make the economy concrete in the mind of the public. Alan Kohler can then deal out a couple of graphs each night from his endless deck.
Paradoxically, the very real biosphere on which we all depend and refer to The Environment is relegated to an abstract place somewhere outside of the metropolitan area. Modern living is super efficient at detaching us from the world that sustains us; who cares about the temperature outside when we have climate control inside.
So we’re left with a situation where it is easier to convince people that the events and actions on Wall Street will have a greater impact on our lives than the environmental degradation and pressures caused by over-consumption in every direction.
We need to give Alan Kohler for a Tim Flannery who can let us now how many tonnes of CO2 was spewed into the atmosphere today compared to last year; how many hectares of forests were cleared; the extent glaciers melted in this quarter or that quarter; a nice graph with a blue line showing the energy use of Australians compared to Americans/Europeans/Ethiopians/Chinese/etc in red; and so on, and on.
the reality is obvious – it was all well and good to look at these kind of luxury issues when the economy what humming along. But now we’re heading for troubled waters, the will of the people to sacrifice will be greatly reduced.
Its like telling a 3rd world country they need to minimise green house gas – they are still concentrating on getting food on the table.