If the Rudd government can urge the parliament to maintain a bipartisan approach to Indigenous affairs — going so far as to create a war cabinet in fact — then why not for climate change?
Rudd’s further politicisation of the ETS over the last few days proves once and for all that politics is incapable of combating climate change.
During times of crisis, the public for the most part are willing to fall in line behind their brave leader. Turnbull can’t get traction in the midst of the Global Financial Crisis, partly because his soundbites are askew, but also because when people feel insecure, they’re not interested in a fight. In the midst of any kind of crisis, be it economic, geopolitical or environmental, the public simply want to be reassured.
Unlike the press gallery, who continue to pursue the he said/she said soundbites, predictable Newspolls and tiny nuances that make up political combat, the public have got bigger things to worry about.
So why wedge Turnbull on the ETS? Why politicise such a crucial piece of policy? If the government is truly serious about tackling climate change, a platform on which they were elected, why suck up air time with attack lines reserved for an opposition leader with Nelson-like levels of popularity?
This is what’s so unedifying about watching Rudd, Wong and Combet this week. Instead of taking the air time to explain why they believe the ETS is important; why they believe they need to provide certainty to business by pushing the legislation through; why Wong and their department have worked their guts out over this and why achieving the 25% target at Cophenhagen is so important, they’re expending soundbites on attack lines and batting away suggestions of a double-dissolution trigger.
But Shaun Carney in The Age today has a different take. Carney says it’s the Greens and the Coalition who have forced Rudd’s hand:
By effectively killing the Government’s first version of an ETS, and flagging that the Senate in its current configuration is incapable of passing a carbon reduction scheme into law, the Liberals and Greens have caused Rudd to use climate change as a political instrument rather than as a policy one.
So this issue has crossed party lines after all — between them, the government, the Greens and the Coalition have managed to forfeit the invaluable airtime that climate change had finally managed to carve out.
The GFC and an election on the far horizon will drive the nail in the coffin.
It was fun while it lasted.
20 Comments
If you take the position that Rudd’s CPRS (either the original version or the new version) was worse than doing nothing on climate change (as the Greens and much of the environment movement have said), then a rational examination of the state of the Senate tells you that it is not possible to pass a worthwhile version of the CPRS through the current configuration of the Senate. Even if the ALP came onboard, you couldn’t get Fielding to agree to anything worthwhile.
So if you take that position, and understand that the Greens will probably take complete control of the balance of power (at the very least Fielding would lose his seat) following a half-senate election or double dissolution, then the best strategy is to delay the CPRS until after the next election, or even try and force a double dissolution.
From my point of view, that’s the only rational course of action for the climate movement.
Sophie – I am a little mystified by this lament for a bipartisan approach that never was. Given the Coalition’s persistent criticism of Labor’s climate policy and its own climate policy turmoil, how was it ever possible? I still expect we’re going to see convergence in the end and the passage of the CPRS in some form. What’s really happening is that the Coalition is being slowly forced to enunciate a plan of its own, or otherwise suggest modifications to the government’s plan that they would support. You can’t have a bipartisan war cabinet when one party doesn’t want to fight the war just yet.
I’m sorry, but give me a break Sophie.
You say that “During times of crisis, the public for the most part are willing to fall in line behind their brave leader..(and) In the midst of any kind of crisis, be it economic, geopolitical or environmental, the public simply want to be reassured”.
That’s not the Australia that I know. I can’t go anywhere without hearing opinions on what this government is doing, right and wrong. People have very strident opinions about this government’s policies, especially on climate change.
The point of all this, in your opinion, is that “politics is incapable of combating climate change” and there should simply be a “bipartisan approach” to the issue. Presumably this bipartisan approach would be along the lines of your belief in the global warming hypothesis. What about people like me that think it is the weakest theory they have ever seen? How is it fair that this “bipartisanship” would completely exclude our views? And it’s not good enough to say we’re just part of an idiot minority.
Maybe the government delayed this crazy policy because the details showed it to be ludicrous. Maybe that’s normal politics at work rather than the mono-think we’d get with “bipartisanship”. Just a thought.
I’m unclear what Liberals issue with the current scheme is.
Its cap and trade (their prefered model). The -5% target is soft enough. -25% when all our competitors sign on is fine, industry can’t play the trade card then. Starting in July 2011 was the Libs idea.
Liberals can’t complain that industry isn’t getting enough compensation. Over time that compensation erodes, but that is a 10 year issue.
The Liberal Party’s position on a climate change policy is to avoid having one for as long as possible. In fact if they were in power you would end up with the position that we shouldn’t do anything at all until the USA and others do.
I am forced to the same conclusion as Sophie – politicising the climate debate will not deal with it. Rudd has the mandate to go in hard and set high limits on CO2 emissions. If he doesn’t do that before the next election he could well lose significant support. I fear that democracy is a poor tool to deal with such an issue and the result will be that we get it right too late rather than get it half right on time.
So John – if “democracy is a poor tool to deal with such an issue” then what do you propose? Dictatorship? The rightful tyranny of the global warming believers? Your whole argument is ridiculous. Our opinions on this matter differ and like it or not my vote is worth the same as yours. Deal with it.
Tamas,
The political cycle is about an order of magnitude faster than the time frame in which climate change is due to occur (according to Garnaut, a substantial decrease in the rate in emissions production by 2050 and a move to a zero carbon economy by the end of the 21st century are both required[1]). This timeframe doesn’t sit well with the current arrangements by which industry, who dependent on the CO2 intensive economy, influence government. This, along with the short 2-3 year cycle with which the politicians communicate with the electorate creates a large incentive to inactivity. That’s the crux of the problem.
Democracy soves the problem where transition of governments risks civil unrest (e.g. Obama’s election last year, Rudd’s the year before, Blair’s in the 90s), but does not address long term systemic problems well.
Second thing: your comment “The rightful tyranny of the global warming believers” leads me to believe that you are using epistemological standards used in the humanities to understand a scientific problem. Using methods from the humanities to try to understand the scope and magnitiude of the climate problem is in no way appropriate, and is a major contributor to the muddying the public consciousness on this issue. The science has been settled for thirty or more years, and over the last decade the evidence has been mounting and been becoming more alarming. Conflating natural science methods with methods from the humanities has artifically inflated the importance of the uncertainty. This in turn has allowed governmnets to take a negligent attitude to this problem over the last 30 years.
You’ve really got to hope that we can turn this super-tanker around on a 10 cent coin.
[1] Certainly seems sound enough from my casual reading of the science over the last decade or so, but then my background is in the life sciences, and apparently I can only get employment as a social scientist and computer nerd
kdkd – You say that “The science has been settled for thirty or more years, and over the last decade the evidence has been mounting and been becoming more alarming”.
Then how come the latest temperature measurments show the Earth is now warmer today than it was 30 years ago? This single observation falsifies the global warming hypothesis and therefore your 30 years of ’science’.
Seriously – how long do we have to wait until the temperature starts rising?
Sorry – in the above comment I meant to say “the Earth is NO warmer today than it was 30 years ago…
Tamas:
I spent a little time looking for the most credible source I could find on global temperatures, to deal with your “30 year” assertion, and managed to find this: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/research/2009/mar/glob-mar-pg.gif (short link: http://xrl.us/beshzj). It’s a very credible source, and in a timeframe that is reasonably appropriate – much more so than your 30 years. The only thing I can think of is that someone’s taken the data point in 1992 or so and compared it against the mean for the 2000s.
Anyway, that dealt with, if you want to deny that there’s a role with C02 (and other atmospheric chemicals with bonds that absorb and emit infrared radiation in the atmosphere to cause the greenhouse effect) then there are some pretty fundamental laws of chemistry that you’re fighting against.
As I said before, malefactors who want the science to seem uncertain use rhetorical techniques and standards of proof that are not consistent with rigorous scientific method to create this uncertainty.
Kdkd:
Perhaps you should look again. The graph showing figures to 2000 is not unusual for the alarmists to use and is taken some time before the earth commenced cooling.
(thereby killing of the hypothisis that man is causing global warming)
But we can all have a look ourselves on how this is just ideology gone mad.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/
http://www.newsweekly.com.au/articles/2009apr04_e.html
If the senate are foolish enough to pass this bill then generations of the poorest members of our community will have to pay for an ETS that will achieve absolutly nothing. (at least most people admit that much)
Yes it will achieve new income streams for governments and major corporations at the expense of fixed income earners and pensioners. On todays estimates about 11 Billion will be dragged out of lower income earners.
http://www.sustainabilitymatters.net.au/news/25376-Australian-ETS-could-be-worth-11-billion
Lets just hope our senators do their job and finish off this nonsense once and for all.
kdkd – Who’se ever denied the Greenhouse effect? The point is that CO2 doesn’t have any explanatory power in the climate system when compared to the vastly greater natural influences. It is simply absurd to say that humanity’s 4% emissions share of a gas that constitutes 0.00038 of our atmosphere (and less that 5% of greenhouse gasses) dominates the natural environment. And there’s no proof for it either – just the shonky predictions of computer models.
As for your linked NASA temperature graphs, they include the surface station data that is biased by the urban heat island effect and dodgy installations. See Anthony Watt’s http://www.surfacestations.org for shocking details. The satellites can’t be corrupted like that so their 30 year record is far more accurate and it simply doesn’t show a climate crisis.
TAmas: You have serous signs of ignorance there. NASA? No, it’s NOAA – what the septics have instead of the BoM. Anyone with a decent set of knowledge would immediately spot the difference. Urban heat island effect? What about the sea surface temperatures? Sounds like you want to have your cake and eat it. Different NOAA models do a prety good job of predicting sea swells, a similarly complex set of models where we can actaully assess them in a short time frame. “Shonky models” is empty rhetoric.
Your desire to invalidate the data in the face of the evidence is a symptom of many climate change “skeptics”. Your desire to make linear interpretations for situations that are non-linear, complex and chaotic (4% emissions etc etc etc) are another sign.
Show me an epistemological stance that is actually consistent with rigorous scientific method, which maintains consistency with your point of view, and then I might listen. I’ve avoided citing anything other than raw evidence so far, but here’s a nice “partisan” source on some of the nonsense you’re spewing. http://one-blue-marble.com/climate-change-myths.html
I stand corrected – NOAA. There is a headline on their website saying “NOAA: April Temperatures Slightly Cooler Than Average for U.S… based on records going back to 1895″. Hmm…
And what I said about the surface station measurements still stands. NASA’s data is corrupted.
What do you mean by linear interpretation of situations that are non-linear? I am simply pointing out the tiny proportion of CO2 that humanity contributes. And don’t tell me that you understand the chaotic, non-linear climate system. No one possibly can.
Do you really think these climate models can predict the climate 10, 50, 100, 200 years out? That belief just staggers me.
Your line saying – “Show me an epistemological stance that is actually consistent with rigorous scientific method, which maintains consistency with your point of view” – doesn’t really make sense to me, by the way.
That NOAA story link:
+++
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2009/20090508_aprilstats.html
NOAA: April Temperatures Slightly Cooler Than Average for U.S.
May 8, 2009
The April 2009 temperature for the contiguous United States was below the long-term average, based on records going back to 1895, according to an analysis by NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, NC.
+++
C’mon – you’ve got to admit that it’s just a little bit funny.
What’s amusing is your desperation to attempt to to present a single data point as if it represented some kind of trend
What’s your vested interest? Is it financial or just some kind of perverse gratification for kicking against the pricks?
Anyway, bored now. Some nuggets for you:
“But putting global surface temperatures aside, there are some other significant predictions of enhanced greenhouse gas warming that have been made and confirmed:
* the warming at the surface should be accompanied by cooling of the stratosphere and this has indeed been observed
* as well as surface temperatures warming, models have long predicted warming of the lower, mid and upper troposphere even while satellite readings seemed to disagree. But it turns out the satellite analysis was full of errors and on correction, this warming has been observed
* models expect warming of ocean surface waters as is now observed
* models predict an energy imbalance between incoming sunlight and outgoing infrared radiation. This has been detected
* models predict sharp and short lived cooling of a few tenths of a degree in the event of large volcanic eruptions and Mount Pinatubo confirmed this.
* models predict an amplification of warming trends in the Arctic region and this is happening
” (source http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2006/03/models-are-unproven.php with references
Anthropogenic C02 is insignificant:
“This is quite true that the natural fluxes in the carbon cycle are much larger than anthropogenic emissions. But in the natural process, for roughly the last 10K years until the industrial revolution, every gigatonne of carbon going into the atmosphere was balanced by one coming out. What we have done is to alter only one side of this cycle. We put approximately 6 gigatonnes of carbon into the air but, unlike nature, we are not taking any out.” (source http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2006/03/natural-emissions-dwarf-humans.php)
Anyhow more of these nuggets from http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2008/07/how_to_talk_to_a_sceptic.php a rather wonderful resource, which I found via the suitably skeptical (in a philosophical rather than contrarian sense) Real Climate blog: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/04/farewell-to-our-readers. This blog is written by real climate scientists with real publication records, not blowhards like you or me.
Bored now, bye.
Oh dear. I was just flicking through the cliamte skeptic rebuttal log, and came across this one about the heat islands effects. http://www.grist.org/article/warming-is-due-to-the-urban-heat-island-effect
“NASA GISS takes explicit steps in their analysis to remove any such spurious signal by normalizing urban station data trends to the surrounding rural stations. It is a real phenomenon, but it is one climate scientists are well aware of and have taken any required steps to remove its influence from the raw data.”
kdkd – I must agree with your statement that the climate change scenario is made up of “situations that are non-linear, complex and chaotic “; but there our agreement ends. The very fact that climate is non-linear, complex and chaotic makes
it virtually impossible to make long term predictions with any degree of certainty.
This is all the more so in climate change as there are significant unknowns which we are not able to introduce into any climate model as, in this respect, opur data base is limited and what data we have must be accurate and open to verification, attributes which are lacking in several global warming models.
Think on it, meteorologists can only predict the weather over the next two weeks or three months in terms of probabilities, the world’s top economists and financiers had a consensus about our prosperity three years ago and what has happened?? and the debate about gravity has been going on for a hundred years and we still dont fully understand it.
MORAL : Don’t tell me that the science of global warming is settled! It isn’t, and anyone who says so is suffering from conceit &/or delusions. Observation tells me that , in the last three or four years, the climate change debate is becoming more unsettled – and about time, too. It is about time that there was open, frank and unbiased scientific debate about it.
Bruce, point me to current peer reviewed research demonstrating that the science of global warming is “far from settled” please. It’s very difficult to tell what you actually mean bu that phrase without some context. The role of CO2 and methane in the atmosphere is very settled as drivers of anthropogenic climate change by this standard. There are of course a number of scientific subtelties that are not settled. The publicity about anthropogenic origins being uncertain is almost exclusively a beat up from so-called scientists in the pay of fossil fuel companies. They’re using identical techniques that the tobacco companies used between the 1960s and the 1990s.