Nationals Senate leader, Barnaby Joyce, let fly in today’s press and radio with an attack not just on emissions trading but on climate change science, effectively calling it “just a load of rubbish”.

According to Godwin’s Law, Joyce immediately lost his argument by invoking Nazism, referring to “environmental goose-steppers” and coining a new term: “eco-totalitarianism”. He also made that classic climate-sceptic mistake of raising Y2K as an example of a doomsayer prediction that never came to pass, adding this time “population explosions, food shortages, fuel running out [and] communism taking over the world.” The population, food shortage and peak oil time bombs are still ticking, of course, as Joyce well knows in the case of food! But the others are arguments for strong action, not for an ostrich-like head-in-the-sand attitude. The reason Y2K didn’t cause chaos and totalitarian communism (and Nazism for that matter) didn’t spread far further and destroy far more lives than they did is because people actually stood up and did something about them!

But let’s leave those arguments aside for the time being and consider what these comments, from a man who considers himself a future leader and the great white hope of his party, mean for the future of the National Party.

There is certainly a long-term tendency in the bush towards climate scepticism, born, perhaps, in the old city greenie / bush farmer tensions of the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s. Farmers who, quite reasonably, didn’t appreciate being told what they could and could not do developed a mistrust of environmentalists which still exists, with a stranglehold on the National Party itself. But that mistrust has long been waning in the broader rural constituency, as has the converse position amongst many environmentalists. For many years there has been an ongoing rapprochement, led by people such as Christine Milne, who grew up as a sixth-generation dairy farmer, has a positive vision for greener rural communities and who worked closely between the two ‘constituencies’ in her campaign against the Wesley Vale pulp mill and then her years in the Tasmanian Parliament.

Closely connected with the waning of anti-green feeling in the bush is the waning of climate scepticism. Christine’s Senate office is regularly in touch with farmers and rural communities across Australia who are concerned and expressing support for her work. Many farmers are now linking the drought with climate change, are deeply concerned about their future, and are beginning to do what they can. The issue of changing tillage practice to store carbon in soils is becoming quite hot. Ideas such a green tractor powered by farm waste are spreading. Support for renewable energy feed-in tariffs, to help farmers diversify their profit streams, insulate themselves against drought and reduce emissions at the same time, gain strong support across regional Australia as well as the city.

Given all this, it seems odd that Barnaby Joyce, who is supposedly looking to the future of his party, is leg-roping it to the past.

Surely the positive, future-focussed position would be to campaign hard for help to get the bush being part of the climate change solution and to secure all the benefits that will go with that – diversified income streams, more jobs, revitalised regional communities and the knowledge that what you are doing is giving your kids a better chance in the future.

That would be right, and it would be smart politics. Instead, Joyce is making a big mistake, jeopardising regional Australia’s future, leading the charge into the past and risking a serious voter bleed. This strikes me as yet another nail in the coffin of the National Party.

Swift parrot and young

On Monday, Bob Brown launched a new report by Margaret Blakers and Isobel Crawford into the state of the Swift Parrot (pictured). This amazing parrot, named in honour of its ability to cross Bass Strait in 3 hours (the ferry takes all night!), is listed as endangered, but, as the paper argues, should be upgraded to critically endangered as its population has recently crashed below 1000 pairs thanks to the logging of its only breeding grounds – the forests of south-eastern Tasmania.

Last Friday, Forestry Tasmania proudly announced that they would halt logging in the Wielangta coupes where the birds are nesting this season. Once the birds are gone, of course, Forestry will continue the slash and burn, destroying forever one of the last remaining nurseries for this beautiful little bird.

Bob made the point to Fran Kelly on Radio National breakfast on Monday that, with a species on the brink of extinction and the State Government doing nothing to protect its long-term future, the Federal Government has the right and the responsibility to step in and terminate the Regional Forests Agreement that covers the area preventing the Federal Government from taking any action to save thebird.

When challenged on the issue by Fran Kelly on this morning’s breakfast, Peter Garrett ducked the issue, passing the buck to the Tasmanian Government:

“Under the RFA Act, it is the responsibility of the Tasmanian government to ensure that those management prescriptions that have been identified as necessary are undertaken and it’s our expectation that that would be the case… The EPBC [Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation] Act does not apply, and hasn’t for some time, to override or to provide … any necessary or additional actions over the RFA. Now that’s always been the case.”

A bold move by one of my former heroes.

Meanwhile, the Tasmanian Government, in whose trust Minister Garrett places the fate of the Swift Parrot, is led by a man crassly and wilfully ignorant of science. A recent study by the ANU has backed up what many of us have been arguing for years – that standing forests are far more valuable as carbon stores than they are as woodchips.

Premier Bartlett, on the other hand, told The Australian newspaper that “I don’t think the logging of old-growth forests is necessarily related to climate change” and called the clear global position that standing forests are more valuable than logged forests “bullshit”. You can read what Christine Milne has to say about that here.

But just to confirm one of the worst weeks for Tasmania’s forests in years, we were notified last night of a horrific attack on protesters in the Florentine Valley yesterday, brave people from Still Wild, Still Threatened, trying to protect forests on the eastern edge of the World Heritage Area. They had locked onto a car in the middle of a forestry access road, peacefully but effectively blocking the ability of loggers to gain access and chop down the trees. They were attacked in their car, with loggers bashing the vehicle with a sledgehammer, eventually dragging one protester out and kicking him in the head. One particularly brave protester caught it on a phone camera and the footage is now making its way around the globe.

A warning. This footage is not for the faint-hearted, or for those who dislike coarse language.

Click here to view the embedded video.

It can sometimes be hard to interpret Australian attitudes towards climate change. Lowy Institute polling over the years suggested most Australians are very concerned about it and want action. The ALP seemed to tap into this sentiment in the lead up to last year’s election when it portrayed itself as more serious about climate issues than the Coalition. Against that backdrop it was a little surprising to see the reaction to a recent spike in petrol prices: public uproar and politicians debating the pros and cons of a few cents per litre price cuts.

With the ongoing onslaught of the credit crisis the task of developing responsible climate policy seems to have been even further complicated. The 2008 Lowy Poll, released a couple of weeks ago, suggests support for taking immediate action to address global warming has softened since 2006 while economic concerns have increased.  

Support for the most activist response – “global warming is a serious and pressing problem; we should begin taking steps now even if this involves significant costs” – was down from 68% in 2006 to 60% this year. And when Australians were asked to rank a list of ten foreign policy goals the goal of tackling climate change slipped from equal first place last year to equal fifth this year. In its place economic concerns crept up the list. As for addressing the problem by paying extra on their electricity bill, 53% of Australians didn’t want to pay more than $10 extra a month or by the ubiquitous caffeine gauge: less than a coffee a week.

These results don’t mean Australians think the problem has gone away. Only 4%, for example, said ratification of the Kyoto Protocol had gone a long way to solving the problem of climate change. The majority (64%) said ratification has not solved the problem but was a step in the right direction.

Climate change is also seen as a major threat: three of the four top ranked threats to Australia were climate change-related. And as we saw when it comes to options for taking action, a majority (60%) still chose the most activist approach.

Against this background, it’s interesting to speculate what kind of climate policy Australians expect the government to deliver. Clearly they are deeply concerned about climate change and a majority want to see immediate action to start addressing the problem. So would they accept a modest policy that doesn’t seriously try to reduce emissions? Given the strength of feeling on the issue, it would seem unlikely that a modest approach would meet expectations, or do much to boost confidence in the government’s ability to deal with the issue. A half-way policy would also be tough to tout at the next election.

That seems to leave the government with the option of taking a more aggressive response, but as this can easily be maligned as threatening jobs and hitting working families (especially during a global economic crisis) the government would have to balance the positives of taking a leadership role on climate change versus any backlash from economic concerns.

So are we just left with Ross Garnaut’s diabolical policy dilemma? Well not according to Greg Clark the UK Conservative spokesman on climate change. In response to the British government’s announcement it was raising its long-term emissions target to 80% of 1990 levels he put it nicely: “The choice between aggressive and ambitious action on carbon reduction and a successful, powerful economy is, in fact, not a choice at all — they are one and the same.”

Fergus Hanson has a Masters in International Law from the University of Sydney. His published thesis focused on regional stability in the Pacific. He worked for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) from 2004 to 2007. From 2005 to 2007 he served at the Australian Embassy in The Hague where he was responsible for Australia’s relations with five international legal organisations and domestic political issues. 

To read more his work, visit the Lowy Interpreter, the blog of the Lowy Institute for International Policy.

Photo of Terry McCosker who through his private consulting company RCS had trained over 10,000 Australian farmers in green farming over the last 25 years

I have just read through Natalies Williams post and the comments it has stimulated. As an originator of much of the “green” change which is accelerating through rural Australia I am very happy to see the quality of the debate and the similarity of ideas.

I would like to summarize what I see as some key issues which you influential people can help address.

1. Farmbiz has been a catalyst in bringing about change in rural Australia. I have data which shows that a one off $1m expenditure by Farmbiz to our clients has increased the ROA on those same people by $56m pa.

Most of this change has been brought about by reducing external chemical, fuel & fertilizer inputs and
changing the fundamental practices of land management to ones which are ecologically renewing.

One of the first actions of the “Education Revolution” party, was to scrap this investment.

2. Change does not occur without an attitudinal shift combined with motivational forces. Very high quality Education is the key to both these. One can only wonder why subsidised education is not seen as a good investment in the future.

3. I totally agree with the comments about Australian farmers having the ability to change quickly, effectively and profitably to become carbon farmers if properly incentivised.

In many regions in Australia, the Gross Margin per Ha from soil carbon sequestration can exceed the GM/ha of the production system currently running on it (@$25/t CO2e).

To achieve this, soil carbon should be included as an “opt-in” programme within the ETS. Soil carbon can be effectively measured to a 95% confidence level, NOW.

Without acceptance of soil carbon at a Fed and Kyoto level, we are losing a great deal of time we do not have to squander.

3. Extreme positions either from the rural community or an urban green community are not productive. At the centre we are aligned.

Having trained over 10,000 Australian farmers and graziers over the last 25 years, I know that our rural community is generally very concerned about the environment (Natalie & Glen are just one outstanding example).

However, just like the extreme greens, there are extreme rednecks still kicking. We must all ignore the 10 to 20% on each end of the distribution curve and get on with trying to save our planet. It desperately needs our collective help!!

Yours in positive change. Terry McCosker

Any arachnophobes should look away now. It has emerged that numerous species of non-indigenous spider, some venomous, are spreading across England at an alarming rate thanks to rising temperatures.

The problem has become so acute in some parts of the country that people are beginning inundate experts with worried calls about a host of frightening-looking species that have started turning up in their gardens and houses …

One such species, Steatoda paykulliana, used only to be found on rare occasions in imported goods but has now created colonies in and around Plymouth. Part of the false widow spider family, it is distantly related to the black widow that, on occasion, can administer a fatal bite.

Frequently mistaken for the more dangerous black widow spider, Steatoda paykulliana is part of the false widow family and has created colonies in Plymouth. It is mildly venomous and can deliver a nasty bite, likened to a bee sting.

Of course, this is precisely the inverse of the species loss being experienced on continents like our own. You’ll remember this from only a few weeks ago:

The biodiversity “bible” is the work of 1700 experts, and scientists who took part say it will make for grim reading. The 2007 edition already shows more than a third of 41,000 species surveyed face extinction: one in four mammals, one in eight birds, one in three amphibians, and 70% of plants.

More than 8000 ministers, UN officials, NGOs, scientists and business chiefs will be in Barcelona, Spain, for the World Conservation Congress, held every four years. The release on Monday of an update of the Red List, the global standard for conservation monitoring, will include the most comprehensive study made of the survival status of Earth’s more than 5000 mammal species.

Our closest evolutionary cousins, primates, are especially vulnerable. Hunted for food and traditional medicines, their habitat dwindling, more than 70% of known species in Asia, for example, are under threat.

A planet out of balance? You bet. This sort of thing must play havoc with the foodchain, which itself has huge implications for the habitats of these critters, those who rely on eating them and those who rely on being eaten by them. 

Does anyone know of any bugs which have hitchhiked their way to Oz only to prosper as the continent gets dryer and hotter? Is the UK spider story being replicated here?

Australian society accommodates similar existential contradictions in its response to climate change. Informed Australians know now that this is really happening, that it is caused by dangerously high global greenhouse gas emissions, and that our world is approaching tipping points when polar ice-melt will spiral out of control, causing inundations within two generations of large areas of low-lying land where most of the world’s (and Australia’s) people live and work. And that to have any hope of avoiding such consequences, we must urgently cut emissions’ annual upper limits to something less than 450 parts per million of CO2-equivalent.

Yet we equivocate when action is required. Why?

Getting off cigarettes or booze takes immense discipline and a commitment to re-engineering your lifestyle. In a perfect world, a world which operates rationally, recognising that you are killing yourself should be a strong enough incentive to “choose life.”

Of course, there is a feedback of loop that resonates in the mind of the addict that prolongs the behaviour. Deals are made with oneself, justifications and excuses pile up like empty stubbies or cigarette butts in an ashtray. It’s always tomorrow, next week, next year. Maybe that’s the role currently being played by folks like Paul Kelly and Heather Ridout:

Paul Kelly on ABC Television’s Insiders of September 7 says, ”the debate in Australia is now over, and anyone seeking an Australian emissions reduction target higher than 5 per cent or 10 per cent lives in a fantasy world”. Australian Industry Group chief executive Heather Ridout warns of up to one million lost jobs in Australia if Garnaut’s scaled-back target of between 5 and 10 per cent emissions reduction by 2020 is exceeded. AIG also opposes a national target of 20 per cent of energy from renewable sources by 2020, supporting continued dominance of coal-sourced energy.

That’s where the analogy loses some traction.

Like it or not, the problem of climate change is a problem of politics, and the problem of politics is one of complexity and compromise. While it’s important to decide to stop creating carbon pollution, it’s impossible to stop creating carbon pollution tomorrow. And that’s paralysing for pols. As Tony Kevin argues:

[Rudd] leans to the traditional politician’s approach of split-it-down-the-middle-and-see-what-happens.

For a man who rode to government at least partially on a promise to change the game on carbon emissions, it’s that hesitancy that rankles onlookers. Has a politician ever had a clearer mandate to inflict some short term pain for long term, well, survival?

I have to wonder if ordinary Australians get away from the computer long enough to get outside and actually make a difference to the world … and sequester some carbon.

Farmers and graziers are sequestering more carbon in a week than other Australian would in a lifetime.

How do I know? Because I am walking the talk. We have documented and satellite evidence that our pastures have changed from D class to A class in just over 5 years (look up the DNR&M website for clarification of pasture assessment if you don’t already know).

We have done this over our entire property of 17000 acres. My husband and I are not anything unusual. Farmers and graziers are doing this everyday of the week in Australia and this goes on unrecognized and deliberately avoided.

In our situation, we have spent $1.5 million on getting our property to the point at which it is sustainable and in the best environmental state that has been achieved in our country type.

Cattle Watering on a dam at our property "Granville" in the Central West North QLD

I wonder how much of urban Australians’ wages have been put into directly sequestering carbon? Zero or at best not much would be my guess.

Would you believe that this cash input is from my husband’s entire underground coal mining wages over the years?

Yes. The dreaded coal mines provide their workers with cash to do such things as improve the environment!!! The percentage of miners who own acreage and farms is high, therefore, miners also are contributing more to carbon sequestration than your general run of the mill urbanites.

While policy makers sit in ivory towers and maybe plant a tree on the weekend, their net contribution to carbon sequestration would be a negative now and probably will be for the rest of their natural life.

The ETS would be far better served charging urbanites and do-gooders who are negative carbon sequesters, and leave the real fixers of the environment to do what they do best.

I wonder how much of Peter Garrett’s wages have gone into direct carbon sequestration? I reckon, about the same the majority of Australians … bugger all. As stated earlier, there is a difference between walking the talk and talking the talk.

We, on the other hand, can hold our heads up high and know that we have sequestered more carbon in our lifetime than our family could ever use.

But I guess that urban Australia’s views and morals are that of policy makers and environment gurus in their climate controlled worlds – that it’s everybody else’s fault.

But if you think about it, they are part of the problem and not really part of the solution.

Cheers and keep breathing that clean Aussie air!!! Natalie Williams