There’s a lot of burn-out in the climate movement right now. A lot of tired people, a lot of grumpy people. I know – I am one!
I can completely understand why – we’ve had a year of not only hard campaigning, but also a particularly distressing one. Dashed hopes aren’t easy to bear, a split movement is difficult to deal with, and too much of the year has been spent campaigning ‘against’ something instead of ‘for’ something else.
But, hard though it may be, Id argue that now is the time when we need to pull out all stops and start campaigning stronger, louder and better!
The CPRS has gone down once, but it’ll be back soon, followed swiftly by the Copenhagen Conference.
We all agree (even the Government) that the CPRS is not good enough to seriously deal with the climate crisis, but the voices saying that it is “better than nothing” are growing louder. And, disturbingly, there seems to be a feeling almost of resignation growing in parts of the rest of the movement – a feeling that this is going to happen and we might as well not try to stop it. But for all those who argue that it should (or might as well) be “passed now and improved later”, I have one critical question:
How?
We cannot sit back now and assume that, if the CPRS passes in its current form, we’ll simply be able to improve it further down the track. If we agree it is not good enough, we must lay the groundwork now to improve it later. We need a strategy, not just a vague hope.
As part of the effort to find a way forward – the best path for us, as a movement, to ensure that we get strong, ambitious, science-based climate policy – here are the options as I see them for what may conceivably happen in the Senate in the coming months:
- The CPRS fails again because all non-Labor Senators oppose it, leading to a possible early election;
- The CPRS becomes law with the Government working closely with the Greens to make it environmentally effective and economically efficient, securing Senate support through bringing to bear their moral authority with a bill that matches the scale of the challenge;
- The CPRS becomes law with the Government browning it down even further with the Liberal Party, and the Greens supporting it because it is better than nothing;
- The CPRS becomes law with the Government browning it down even further with the Liberal Party, but opposed by the Nationals and Greens for different reasons.
Let’s take these one by one, looking at the implications for any campaign to achieve ambitious action.
In the extremely unlikely event that we face an early election on climate change and the CPRS, the implication for us all is clear: we need to be ready to run a powerful campaign calling for the strongest possible action from the next Parliament. We need to make it abundantly clear that there is an appetite in the Australian community for meaningful government action on the climate crisis, and that the community will not accept the CPRS or anything worse. If we fail to deliver a mandate for strong action and a rebuke to the CPRS, we cannot believe that we will see anything stronger than the CPRS actually implemented.
On the second option, if you don’t believe that the Government has no intention of working with the Greens to green up the scheme (and I can tell you from personal experience that they don’t have any such intention), you will at least acknowledge that the Government has no political reason to do so in the absence of a strong public campaign calling for them to do so. It is just imaginable that, if such a campaign were to build this month and grow to a crescendo by November, the pressure on the Government would be such that they would at least consider their options in the Senate. With silence and division in the climate movement, it is absolutely guaranteed that they will not do so.
Taking the third and fourth options together, it seems pretty clear to me that, once the CPRS passes, the heat will very swiftly go out of climate debate in Australia. Mainstream opinion will be that something is being done. It will be incredibly difficult for us to bring the issue back to the boil in time to deliver a safe climate.
If the Greens, and the climate movement more broadly, fall silent now, or, worse, support the CPRS now as ‘better than nothing’, I believe that it will be simply impossible to rescue the situation and strengthen Australia’s climate response in the little time we have left. We will have allowed the Government to frame the CPRS as action on climate change, the best that can be achieved at this time, and we will have given away the only thing we have: the fact that we are right.
However, if we campaign hard against the CPRS now, highlight its flaws and promote a positive alternative, it may just be possible to continue and build on the frame that this is a polluters’ paradise that must be swiftly replaced with something meaningful. The stronger our opposition now, the more clearly articulated our alternative, the more likely it becomes that we can succeed down the track.
The clear lesson from this analysis is that we must strengthen our resolve and work now to build the strongest possible campaign for ambitious climate action. Now is the time to provide a counterweight to the continued and accelerating rent-seeking of the polluters. We need to throw everything we have at this – from details critiques and analyses to NDAs and other protests, from continuing letters to editors and calls to talkback to doorknocking campaigns.
We can debate for months (as we have already) whether the CPRS is better than nothing or worse than useless, but one thing is clear: if the CPRS passes and is not rapidly strengthened, it will legislatively ensure that Australia’s emissions cannot and will not start heading downwards until 2013.
I am convinced that, if we reject that bill to lock in failure, we will be able to achieve faster emissions cuts sooner than the CPRS could ever deliver.
26 Comments
Thanks for writing this Tim. I am also very tired but share your belief that now is the time to ramp up all of our campaigning. Everyone in the Australian Youth Climate Coalition was exhausted after Power Shift, but we launched straight into the Youth Decide campaign (first national youth climate referendum!) and voting week is now in only 10 days away – 14th – 21st September.
So – if you’re reading this and agree with Tim and want to DO something to build the political pressure he’s talking about, please organise an event for, or vote in, Youth Decide (www.youthdecide.com.au). If you’re not in the age range of 12 – 29 then please tell your kids/ friends/ siblings who are
I agree Tim – and I think that the major challenge we face is shifting the movement from resignation to vigorous campaigning. To do this people need to feel hope that there is a way forward that potentially can deliver the outcomes we know are needed.
Thanks, Anna, and I’ve loved seeing the Youth Decide campaign grow both online and offline! Best of luck with it.
Now, what are other groups and individuals doing?
I strongly agree with your main conclusion that we need to work now to campaign hard against the CPRS and for serious climate action. This plan is needed now regardless of whether or not the CPRS (current or amended) is eventually passed.
As well as the CPRS, the other development that could potentially disorient people is Copenhagen – which even if it is wildly successful by “mainstream” standards will still be a long way short of what is needed.
I think we need to continue protesting and campaigning and raising our voices in whichever ways we can.
Here in Perth, the next big action that we are planning is for the “less than 350″ international day of action on October 24 – details soon to be uploaded at:
http://www.safeclimate.org.au/
Yes! When the CPRS failed in the Senate I thought our slogan should be TALK TO THE GREENS.
Our protest on the day was covered by SBS but you can see their take on it from the URL: http://player.sbs.com.au/naca/#/naca/wna/Latest/playlist/Mixed-reaction-to-ETS-vote
And now the MRET with phantom RECs and coal-seam gas for godsake.
We’re busy planning for http://ClimateCamp.org.au 9-11 Oct and
http://350.org/Australia day 24 Oct but let’s at least get stuck into our Federal MPs en masse to demand greening up the CPRS not $%^&*! browning it down. I hear at least one of the Libs’ amendments is actually good: to allow for voluntary action to make a difference. I don’t think we’ve done particularly well countering the fearmongering about job leakage overseas, though.
Considering that an agreement with the Greens to ‘green up’ the CPRS would require the support of climate denier Fielding, I think we can safely rule that out. It makes the idea of ‘talk to the Greens!’ silly. There is no point in talking to the Greens, since any deal with the Greens can’t get through the Senate. It seems to me the only way anything decent can even theoretically be passed is with a new Senate. This seems like exactly the reason why we have provision for a double dissolution in the Constitution. While we also need to campaign to convince the government to support a stronger scheme, it is also necessary to make clearly the case that the current Senate is dysfunctional on climate change and needs to be dissolved.
While the Greens can’t say that because we need to be seen to be cooperating with the Government and because it would be seen as self-serving, the climate movement needs to be saying now that we need a new Senate. The current numbers in the Senate, even if you got the ALP to move, mean it is impossible to pass anything decent.
Regarding the CPRS’ chances, I tend to think the most likely outcome is either the CPRS is blocked or it is passed with almost no amendments.
Clearly Turnbull’s strategy is to avoid a DD trigger at any cost. However, I think that when you consider his extremely weak position within the party and the push from elements within his party to oppose any CPRS, I think this pragmatic position may not get the support of his party.
Even if Turnbull can get his party to agree to supporting a CPRS, he simply won’t be able to agree to the current proposed CPRS. If he supported the government’s position without changes he would be humiliated and it would be the final blow to his leadership. So he needs amendments, even if they are minor amendments, so he can spin it as negotiating agreement with the government, rather than simply being browbeaten into doing what he’s told by Penny Wong.
Considering that, why would Wong and Rudd move an inch? Why would they give Turnbull a win, even if it was a mutual win? If they say “take it or leave it”, either Turnbull blocks it, giving them a trigger and something to beat over his head, or he backs down, passes their policy and is even more damaged as a leader.
In that case, I think I would give a 50% chance of the CPRS being blocked, a 40% chance of it being passed with little or no amendment, and only a 10% chance of it being passed with Coalition amendments browning it down.
I can see your reasoning there, Ben, on “why would the Govt move an inch”, but then I see what they did with the RET. They moved far closer to the Opposition’s position than they needed to on the RET – there was no way the Opposition would have blocked renewable energy! It’s the motherhood of climate change. They should and could have just stared them down.
Thing is, there is a simple answer to “why would they give an inch” – coz they want to! They actually want to brown down the scheme…
True, Tim. But there are two motivations why the government wouldn’t move an inch:
a) to ensure they get the policy they want.
b) to humiliate Malcolm Turnbull.
I tend to think the second is a much stronger motivation for the government, and the CPRS has a lot more tied up with it than the RET.
Timely discussion Tim and well resoned. I agree with your analysis on the need to continue the campaign for substantial action, to remain focussed on the science and to vote down the CPRS. I believe the browned down Bill (Scenario four) is very likely. This scenario allows the bill to pass with Rudd/Wong able crow about doing something (however useless) and Turnbull able to avoid the DD whilst saying he has protected jobs, coal mines, cement plants and the climate! The Nats will vote against it, remaining true to their climate sceptic constituents, but this will not threaten the Coalition or be too difficult for the coalition to manage in terms of mixed messages.
British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan responded when was asked what can most easily steer a government off course, he answered “Events, dear boy. Events”. It is in this context that I disagree with your position that..
“…once the CPRS passes, the heat will very swiftly go out of climate debate in Australia. Mainstream opinion will be that something is being done. It will be incredibly difficult for us to bring the issue back to the boil in time to deliver a safe climate.”
If you look at the history of the Murray Darling Basin there are lessons to be learnt in regards to the CPRS. Specifically that the need for action and political imperative in both cases is derived from an ecological “event”. In the case of the MDB the event has been severe drought. Once the CPRS is passed I do think that some of the heat will go out of the debate, initially, but that the momentum will quickly return when we are faced with self evident ecological event/disasters attributable to climate change. Specifically another, or series of, catastrophic mega bushfires, heatwaves, the collapse of the MDB or a major coral bleaching event.
Some, if not all, of these events however nightmarish are likely to occur in Australia, in the short term. As in the failed efforts to save the MDB (Hawke in the 80’s and Howard and Rudd more recently) the community very quickly determines that legislation and governments are useless and should go much further if they fail to prevent the ecological event or disaster they set out too.
Rudd might say his scheme needs time to work but this position will be difficult to sandbag against a a raising tide of public concern which demands more action.
I am all for more vehement and more voluminous protest. I agree that the CPRS is terrible. (unlimited international credit buying, unlimited extra permits at a fixed price and unlimited domestic reforestation credits make the idea that this is a “cap” and trade scheme totally ludicrous.) BUT to those that think this legislation should be interred, and that we should immediately thereafter begin a pathway to deep emissions cuts in the order of 40% by 2020, I have (like tim) one critical question: how?
It has taken two years for the CPRS to get to this point. And there has been as much protesting in those two years as people could muster. Don’t think we weren’t trying. That was the time for the strong campaigning and protesting — BEFORE they took the bad road. If all that campaigning couldn’t stop them watering it down and making it worse at every step on the way, how much protesting does everyone imagine it will now take to tell them to go back and take another road entirely? If this scheme is ditched, how long will it take for something else to be developed in its place? And will the coal-powered forces that emasculated this CPRS let another mechanism be developed that is more effective?
Aus. emissions need to peak by 2012 at the latest. I would like to hear a plan about how people imagine we will do that given how much campaigning and protest effort has gone into the crap outcome we’ve currently got.
A good correspondence. I believe that:
1. Nothing the environmental movement does politically now will make any difference to whether the Senate passes the CPRS in its present form, or as a cosmetically modified slightly browner version. This political outcome will depend on Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull. My hunch is that Rudd will cut Turnbull some slack here, because Rudd will enjoy the spectacle of the Liberals and the Nationals voting in different ways in the Senate ( or passing the bills ‘on their voices’ – but I think Barnaby Joyce would insist on a counted vote to make his point that the Senate Nats are going their own way on climate change).
2. The CPRS as it stands is peripheral policy. It is so weak target-wise, and so open to financial ‘engineering’ (read corruption – see the news from PNG last week) – that it won’t do anything to slow global warming. It is essentially phoney legislation, designed to create an illusion that the government is serious about global warming. Maybe it will serve some positive consciousness-raising function in industry over time, and it puts a carbon-accounting system in place. I’d vote for it now on those grounds, I think.
3. The environmental movement should stands back from this now, husbanding its energies for the more important battle that it should be launching now – focussing all its strength and enthusiasm on educating the public to support the need for early government-initiated action to decarbonise national energy generation by 2030 – by building a geographically and functionally diversified 100% renewable energy grid by 2030.
Steaming coal is both the lowest-hanging emissions fruit and, as Hansen says, 80% of the global warming problem. The real game now is to convince public opinion of the truth that full decarbonisation of Australia’s electricity production by 2030 is both possible and necessary. The CPRS is possibly useful in future as a market support for real targets in industry, if it moves to higher carbon targets, but as it stands now it is pretty much irrelevant to real decarbonisation.
I develop such ideas more fully in my new book ‘Crunch Time’, now going on on sale (release date 14 September).
Words, words, words and not one suggestion as to HOW I am to put the pressure on the Government (or anyone else) to change/improve the legislation. I will certainly support “less than 350″ but is that it? Tell me more please.
I think that the only way to get proper action is to demonstrate results are quick and easy. Anyone want to try to organise a 10:10 campaign in Australia?
If we could get the government to look at what is happening out in the real world, they would see that organisations are are already able to reduce emissions quickly.
Where I work at the University of Melbourne we have reduced our energy consumption bill across the board by 5% compared with last year – this is an actual result. Effectively what you have here at the University is the workings of a small town when you consider all the different faculties, departments and facilities. Our overall target is carbon neutral by 2030 (which I hope to get shortened) and there are other University’s with even more ambitious targets than this.
There are real demonstrations of proper action out there, they just have to get into the ears of the people at the top – you see we have the advantage of not having the fossil fuel lobby in our ears.
Much as i hate to say anything positive about the former Howard government, but they did the first step, in the right direction, by starting the phase out, of incandescent light bulbs, in favour of the more efficient bulbs. There was no ETS necessary to do this, nor would there be to improve building codes, phase out electrical hot water systems, etc. An ETS is designed by wall street to start the next GFC.
I found some more on the 10:10 campaign. I think it would be good to get this moving in Australia. More info here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/audio/2009/sep/01/george-monbiot-1010.
The idea is to “provoke government into producing much faster and swifter cuts”.
Any activists around with the ability to get this ball rolling?
The green movement has completely mishandled this issue and is light years behind Kevin Rudd on climate change. He has exposed the lack of ideas, political strategy and negotiating capability of the green movement.
The green movement has argued for years that environmental policy should be at the heart, not the margins, of government; that environmental concerns should be fully integrated with economic and social policy. With the caveat that the CPRS does not deal with the full spectrum of environmental issues, it does achieve integration of environmental and economic policy – I would argue that this is the first instance of this ever occurring.
I accept that the CPRS is not going to deliver the deep cuts in emissions that we need in the short term; nor is it going to avoid climate change. That is not the point. It is too late to avoid climate change; what we are debating now is how to avoid the worst impacts. If that is accepted, then the question of how deep emission cuts should be is really about searching out a sustainable level of emissions.
Which brings me to coal. We cannot have a sustainable level of emissions and have 90% of our power supplied by coal; nor can we run an economy where coal is our largest export. Nor can we change either of those things in the short term. Our electricity grid is geared to delivering constant power from a few large generation plants, not multiple, small and intermittent plants. The scale of infrastructure change required is huge, and it will take some years. As for coal export, it is a fallacy to suggest that we can simply turn off this source of national income and expect negligible social impact. What we need to do is develop an Australia that can thrive in the post-coal age.
That task is bigger than the CPRS. But the CPRS is a critical part, because it is the bridge between the environmental issue and the social and economic issue. It provides the architecture to deliver cuts – paltry at first, but with a reducing cap cuts will ultimately have to occur. What Kevin Rudd has done is design a policy that places a ticking time bomb under the coal industry. It’s a flag that says ‘we have to change this fundamental aspect of our economy’, and it delivers the architecture for doing that.
On the politics, with respect Tim I believe you are wrong. The only likely outcome is that the Government will negotiate an outcome with the Liberals. The Greens will oppose to maintain the moral high ground and the Nats will oppose to appease their constituency. The Government will not negotiate with the Greens (why bother when they can’t deliver an outcome), nor will they negotiate with Fielding (why bother when he’s a nutcase). There won’t be an early election – for reasons check out Antony Green’s blog.
Which leaves us with what the green movement should do now. A look at the Greens policy statement on climate change reveals how utterly bereft of ideas the green movement really is. Roof-top solar panels and individual action will not address climate change; this is just cheerleading the faithful from the sidelines of the debate. The task for the green movement is to identify an aggressive, but viable path to the post coal age.
Check out this campaign to ‘Switch on Renewables and Switch Off Coal’ at Hazelwood power station in Victoria, Sunday September 13th. We’ve switched our light globes, met with our political representative, Walked Against Warming, written countless letters and lobbied for a transition to renewable energy. Now it’s time for the next step – take part in a mass peaceful community protest at the gates of Australia’s most-polluting power station.
http://www.switchoffhazelwood.org
It can be done!! Note the lead article which points out that the Canadian province of Ontario has announced it will permanently close four of its 15 coal-fueled power units by October 2010 and study whether it can convert the 11 remaining units to other fuels, such as renewable biomass.
I think Geoffrey has a point. Emissions can be reduced by a thousand small cuts. Its a frustrating slow and slightly inefficient way to do things, but it is much harder to get side-tracked and hijacked like the CPRS has. Instead you apply a single simple idea/solution.
Once it is proved how easy such changes are and how profitable it can be due to the savings then it is much harder for industry to obstruct.
The other thing it is worth campaigning strongly on is carbon content labeling (ala food) because this enables consumer “choice”. Lack of information is a major problem for informed decision making (because you aren’t informed beyond a single dollar figure). This enables product switching and allows no/low carbon branding. This labelling should have a real carbon emission and the purchased offset listed separately.
I’m feeling very cynical about the government’s environmental policy. I don’t believe they are really interested in trying to slow climate change or improve the environment. I’m afraid I think it’s all about them trying to get voted in at the next election – it’s all just lip service. Like how they counted ‘not’ logging Queensland forests towards our improved environmental credentials as a country. I’m all for holding out for something meaningful – but how do we actually get them to listen? And then to actually DO anything before we all die of natural causes?? Really, it’s enough to make me wish for a benevolent dictatorship…
Where to now?
upon looking I cant help being reminded of the childrens crusade. Innocent honest concerned children that were used/misused by people that claimed to understand and offer solutions. They were overwhelmed by religious dialectics, for us scientific data again separates us from reality. Especially for the young, rich in idealism but poor in wisdom
That Maggie thatcher wanted to break the coal unions and the middle east oil interests, instead using nuklear, gives the whole global Warming argument an illegitimate birth. That the sellafield nuklears are now a blot and a drain on britain and her coffers indicates the fruit of such a push.
The net is electrified with GWco2 opinions. The world splits into jeering teams; bankers, pollies, and powermongers, haughty, greedy and contemptuous. No Socrates in sight. (The wisest man in Athens according to the oracle). We have no man who is aware of his own mental/imaginative shortcomings.
Worse we are distracted from the (at home) essential,
to learn to live harmoniously with Nature,
With Sun Moon and Stars,
with this Earth and our Fellows.
To experience nature’s complexity.
To begin to imagine natural processes rightly,
and the human connection with these processes.
we squabble on..
I appreciate Tim’s call to arms, but we in the Australian Greens have contributed to the political problems in the climate movement. Since 2007 we have backed some form of emissions trading (cap & trade) as a central plank of addressing climate change. Of course we have talked about other measures, but the fact that we refer to these as “complementary measures” indicates we have essentially agreed with the mainstream view that the main solution to climate change is one based on market principles.
Even now we still talk about “improving” the CPRS or compare the really existing ETS to some imagined effective model of cap & trade. And as climate activists on the ground have struggled to work out what was wrong with emissions trading we have provided precious little clarity.
Cap & trade is not evidence-based, and the theoretical attraction to a market approach strikes me as simply not questioning enough of neoliberal ideology. In fact, the Greens’ argument as to why cap & trade *should* work is little different from the ALP’s… the disagreement is on the detail.
The result is that after spending a couple of years extolling the virtues of emissions trading, we are now rejecting really existing emissions trading. No wonder people are confused (even if, thank goodness, we are generally trusted as morally best on this issue).
Movements need to know more than what they are against to survive. In 2007 everyone was against climate change. Now our movement is split because there was a tacit assumption from 2007 that emissions trading would solve the problem. It can’t, and any serious consideration of the theory of cap & trade should indicate that it never could. But our movement is not clear or united about this—and we Greens have taken a mixed-up, half-way position. This movement will not survive if it continues to be mainly *for* emissions trading.
What astounds me is the continued attraction to a market solution by our party. Surely in the 12 months since the collapse of Lehman Brothers we should have learned some lessons about markets?
If a Carbon Tax had been applied, that is, where all carbon pays taxes soon as it comes out of the ground, it would be much easier to instigate and much easier to ramp up.
In the first instance, every pressure group that would under a ETS insist that its special mates are Good Guys and should avoid punishment, are instead reassured that the carbon tax is utterly tiny and everybody else has to pay anyway. The public too, can be reassured that everybody else has to pay and that it is only a Bad Thing that is being taxed.
Then, at Budget Time every year, the carbon tax could be ramped up an extra fraction as public opinion allows. This contrasts with the ETS, where a new industry has to be nominated as a Bad Guy every time the pressure has to be increased.
I wish I shared your optimism about a carbon tax, Roger. However, everything I’ve seen tells me that a tax will be as badly rorted as an emissions trading scheme. You’d have tax loopholes and exceptions introduced all over the place, and doubtless a range of tax concessions added separately to make it as difficult as possible to keep track.
What makes you say that the carbon tax would be utterly tiny? And how tiny are you suggesting? We have polluters right now complaining that the $10 a tonne capped price for permits in 2011-12 under the CPRS will kill them, and you’re surely not suggesting that a tax less than that will actually do any good, are you?
And I think the idea that the tax could be progressively ramped up each Budget is only conceivable in a world entirely divorced from the one we are currently living in. Have you looked at the massive effort polluters are expending on campaigning against the CPRS? You’d get that each and every year in a carbon tax situation, fighting to have the tax reduced, not increased. And governments would be as willing to do the polluters’ bidding in that circumstance as they are right now.
It’s often been pointed out that to every question there is usually a simple answer but usually the simpler the answer the harder it is to implement.
Just an example – in the 80s Sydney used over 2,000Ml per day – now, despite a 50% increase in population, and who knows how many more private swimming pools (there’s a tax opportunity!) usage has averaged under 1800Ml for the last ten years. Not just higher costs (miniscule), not even the official water use restrictions (the drop began before the present drought forced that on the dead heads in Macquarie St). It seems to have happened because of public awareness.
The public currently, according to ALL the polls (except the pens-for-hire Heartbeat), is far more aware of the name of the creek in which we are drifiting in the barbed wire cannoe without adequate/any propulsion devices yet both “sides” of politics play silly buggers and the only honest brokers are the Greens & Xenophon.
Brng on the DD.
tad tietze [comment 22, sept 20] was very much on the ball. reliance on carbon market signals – whether as indirect carbon trading or straight carbon taxing – will not do the job in time. we need to get physical – with ambitious national programs to build and hook up diversified renewable energy infrastructures, using keynesian deficit financing. it is so simple – so why isn’t it being talked about by more than a handful of people in the environmental movement? i’ve been trying to say this for three years. but we seem paralysed by the way in which status quo conservatives continue to frame the debate. reliance on market signalling just ties environmentalists’ hands – we cannot progress at all. in the climate crisis we are facing, the market should correctly be seen as ancillary – not central. central is political will and political resource allocation.