Tonight’s Four Corners has a piece on the Coalition’s views on climate change. The blurb makes clear that much of the party rank and file are denialists. That’s not news.
However, they’re also promising some kind of meta-analysis of public polling on climate change, that purportedly makes clear “…that concern amongst voters about climate change has “softened” over the past eighteen months.”
I’ll be interested to see what the poll bloggers make of it…
Id say that poll was worse than an outlier or rogue – its just a flawed question. It didnt control for the possibility that a certain % of people now think something is being done about it, and accordingly dropped it a notch.
And on this, its worth repeating from the Poison Dwarf’s oped today:
“…think of it this way,” the polling insider said, “more people in Australia believe in climate change than God. As far as politicians are concerned the view is that in late middle age you either develop prostate problems or you become a climate change denier.”
The poll wasn’t a major part of it, in any case. Watching those turkeys on parade was terrifying. I even felt sorry for Ian McFarlane.
And it was lovley see Minchin voicing his concern for the little 12 year girls who have been brainwashed. Julian McGauran – what a clueless wonder he is.
From what I’ve seen so far, the Libs have essentially produced Labor’s election year ads for them.
So it remains valid,that the voting intention makes a remarkable difference to wether the AGW is occuring or not! And those who represent the “Nay sayers” as in Liberals are permanently wrong wherever there is a earth based temperature gauge!?Actually,you are right,the flight to those places would have tonnes of CO2 emitted that it would be unforgiveable of anyone of them following the predictions of record low temperatures on and in some other country and meteorological services!?
And what’s with Julian McGauran?
Agree completely with Mark.
The other interesting things out of the program:
* how intensely so many of the conservatives seem to believe their own side’s BS.
* McFarlane’s comments on clean coal.
Yeah, Rob, that was interesting – and I suspect he is probably right. Macfarlane probably came across best – though maybe that’s just in comparison to the embarrassing idiocy and grandstanding of the rest of them?
Jeebus, just read that blurb. What a bunch of neanderthals!
Here is a question. If a bunch of senior Liberal wets (including prominent supporters of that viewpoint in the community) split from the current Liberal party and ran on an election platform that much more “liberal” (proper action on climate change, a more balanced position on industrial relations, compassion towards refugees, sensible position on economic stimulus, etc), could that splinter group take away a substantial amount of Liberal party support? Is it even a remote possibility? The current leadership of the party appear to be comfortable with their trend toward electoral oblivion, encouraged by those in the Murdoch press that seem to not understand just how far our political culture and ideology is from that of the Republicans in the US. Given the demographic voting trends identified by Possum, things are only going to become more difficult for the Libs over time, if they don’t push back towards the centre of Australian politics. Assuming they lose the next election badly, how long before an ambitous, articulate senior Lib(s) comes to the conclusion that with its current base, the party can’t be turned round?
I loved the fact that none of those who claimed the science supported their delusions bothered to turn up to hear the, um, scientists.
That, and Bob Carter’s disingenuous avowals that he had no political agenda.
That was kinda Don Chipp and the Democrats, LO, and before that the dissident Libs in SA. It would be interesting if it was a large scale defection. It would really pose huge problems for the Labor Party, too.
I don’t think it would give Labor any problems, Mark. There’s nothing better than dissension in the Conservative ranks. As a Queenslander, I’m sure you remember “Joh for PM!”
As a matter of fact, if there were a credible green conservative platform, I’d hold my nose and give the fuckers my 2nd preference (Greens primary, of course). Despite the fact I’ll never forgive them for conscription.
Four Corners was a disaster for the Opposition writ large. I couldn’t believe that so many damaging quotable quotes could emerge from a single programme. Even Plimer got a nod.
Beginning to think that the ABC is in the government’s pocket. Just joking.
Turnbull must be aghast. How could they possibly do a deal and retain any semblance of political credibility.
LO: it’s an interesting question.
How many Liberal wets are there from the smaller states (SA excepted) though?
Incidentally, does anybody think it was coincidence that Rudd gave that speech about denialists a few days before this screened?
Well at least one politician has told us the truth about clean coal technology, ie its bullshit. Strange it had to be a Liberal.
And as for the ETS – 1. Something twedge the Libs with. 2. Something nobody will do anything effective about, exceopt talk, because big business wants things to stay the way rhey are + a pointless carbon credit scheme they can make more profit from.
Somehow, i think the pollies better start woirrying about the price of electricity and what they must do to keep it down.
Interesting question, Rob!
@11 – David, that’s probably right in the short term, but a viable small l Liberal party with a strong human rights position on a range of issues would place a lot of pressure on the ALP’s ability to hold different portions of its electoral coalition together.
Just watched it online. Cripes, talk about men whose time is passing. If you think its bad for Malcolm now, how’s the LNP going to split when they world puts us in a headlock and we have to go to 20% cuts?
Robert – further evidence that the ABC is in the Labor camp?
Seriously, if he didn’t know then his minders weren’t doing their job.
The opposition’s best chance of making gains on climate change was to oppose CPRS and to propose a simple alternative that people can actually understand. However, brother Minchin and his mates have effectively blocked this strategy. No-one is going to take a coalition plan seriously when they know over half the coalition MP’s believe they should do absolutely nothing.
I think Malcolm was a fool for trying to negotiate on CPRS instead of coming up with something completely different but I can’t help feeling sorry for him.
I agree with Mark….I’ve long thought about this as someone that doesn’t feel (hasn’t felt for a long time) that my own views (small l liberalism) are well served by Australia’s current poltical party configuration….At the moment, such a person can stay outside of politics all together, join the Liberal Party and accept that they will be an outsider in a party that serves conservatives on social policy best, or join the Labor party and have to deal with illiberalism on a range of other issues (while not an issue for many LPs, it is the illiberalism on matters economic that most concerns me, combined with a half hearted committment to liberalism on social issues)….The Democrats are the obvious antecedent to this, but by the time they went out of existence, they weren’t particularly centrist…I guess what i have in mind is something closer to the liberal democrats in the UK….’
Robert, it is true that there are fewer wets than was once the case….but there are also more than is commonly thought…The Howard era meant that there were strong incentives for those with such leanings to keep relatively quiet, except in exceptional circumstances…and depressingly little has changed over the past two years…
There are a few obvious problems, not least of which is thinking who would lead such a party….Once upon a time I thought that someone like Turnbull could have done so, but the last 12 months has disabused me of that notion…
Such a party would also have to accept that it would be unlikely to be a party of goverment (except perhaps in coalition)….And that most of its influence would probably be through the Senate, as was the case for the Democrats….Indeed, it is this that most severely limits and large scale defection from the Liberal Party…the prospect of real power in the future is too appealing to give up…
Strangely, such a party could affect the Green Senate vote, as well as the majors. A number of my professional small l liberal friends have voted Green above the line because they saw them as the only party defending things like human rights, importance of dealing with climate change, etc, and thought that needed some representaion in parliament…rather than because they had any deep sympathy with the broader platform of the Greens…
I think that most of that is right, LO. To the degree that there is a small l Liberal vote, it’s poorly represented by either major party. The ALP does tend to end up with a fair whack of the socially progressive vote (sometimes via second preferences), but there are those who aren’t into economic collectivism, as you note. From my own point of view, a truly social democratic state and culture would be a better redress for many inequities and blights on our national conscience than a human rights model, but that’s not something I’m likely to be able to convince a liberal of. It is why I find it hard to give up on Labor, pissed off with them as I frequently get. But there are a lot of folks who don’t have the same set of commitments, who are currently voting Labor.
The two big sticking points are similar to the ones that Don Chipp faced – the tradeoff of possible Senate influence for potential ministerial power is not a particularly attractive one for many professional pollies, as you rightly identify. The other is that such a party would have no identifiable social/funding base – no equivalent to big business for the Libs, the environment movement for The Greens (one of their big pluses over the Democrats) and the unions for Labor.
Civil liberties lawyers and economists do not a strong social force make – they exercise influence in other ways, but don’t provide the building blocks for a strong political party. It’s difficult to build one on the basis of a progressive bourgeoisie. Deakinite Liberals and all that…
Still, if it is ever going to happen, it’ll be while the Libs are in opposition. And if they get smashed two times in a row, anything could happen. But it could also be a sort of declining rump, as we see in some of the states.
I can’t see any difference between what LO is looking for – and what the Greens are right now?
wbb, I think LO is after a party that’s *both* socially and economically liberal.
Also, without wishing to revive the Hamilton debate again, not every element of The Greens is necessarily all that consistently socially liberal.
oh – I see – a libertarian. Nuff said.
MacFarlane has come through this whole CPRS thing so far with an enhanced reputation. I understand he’s not trusted in the bush, but if he can’t broker a unified position, and he probably can’t, then no-one can.
Carter did his “It hasn’t warmed in the past 50 years” thing. When I saw him in Rockhampton the graphs he used simply weren’t familiar to me, and they should have been. I suspect he’s using graphs of the troposphere rather than the surface temperature.
I also have to say that I don’t like the habit of trying to identify a trend by running a straight line through the middle. I’ve done a bit of share charting and you never do it that way. You use two straight lines to identify a channel. Other than that you use running averages, either simple or weighted to give greater value to the recent data.
With temperature I think a simple 10-year running average is most appropriate, which means the “it hasn’t warmed since 1998″ thing simply doesn’t appear.
WBB, actually, not a libertarian at all!! Much more like a Rawlsian liberal….
One can be economically liberal, but think that some redistribution/correction of genuine market failures is just/necessary….
The dispute with the greens would then be about what sort of interventions were appropriate….
Mark, the social/funding base is a genuine concern….Though I would be most worried about the funding base….
The differences with both libertarians and greens would be quite substantial!!
If we end up with genuine public funding, LO, the playing field might be leveled. But the absence of strong grassroots activists was a problem for the Democrats, and it’s more significant than some think – as the Queensland Labor Party will no doubt find out, having completely pissed off most of theirs.
Nothing wrong with least squares curve fitting, it’s done all the time in trend analysis. It also includes a ‘goodness of fit’ term which will give some idea of how likely the curve fits the data.
Zarquon, the trouble with least squares in this instance is that it can give rather strange results if you pick a polynomial of the wrong order. There was a recent instance of a Denier deciding to least-squares fit a 6th order polynomial to the temperature record, which of course gives cooling since 1998, and even more cooling when you extrapolate. A straight line would be fine, of course.
Analyzing trends in noisy data by drawing pictures is not how it’s done anyway.
Most people are pretty smart…not rocket scientists, but pretty smart. And they have noses and can smell the stink of Warmers’ lies and innuendo. I personally believe it was Warmers’ claims that we had to quit eating meat… so we could kill off our livestock and save the planet from deadly cow farts.
Face it… the Alarmist mantra became so common and so increasingly asinine, that together with cooling temperatures, woke up a lot of people to a different take on global warming.
Zarquon, what I’m talking about is taking a straight line and fitting it subjectively using your eye.
Carter was also using a single year point to anchor the left end of his line. It’s standard practice in climate data to use a 10-year average. That is if they are talking about temperature rises from 2000 they don’t take the temperature of 2000 as such, but the average of 1995-2005.
For a scientist to take a point to point line in a time series and call it a trend is dishonest.
Last night’s telecast was incredible, and clearly shows that a good many of the crew on the good ship Parliament are trading in sheer fantasy. In terms of governance and the future, I find that incredibly worrying.
And for Rudd to come out and attack Turnbull because his party is not supporting him, shows that Rudd is willing to aid and abet these fantasies for his own political advantage.
I’ve just had an optimism bypass.
All they have to do is find a way to stop livestovk from farting, JeffM. And what’s this Warmers crap. I live in a region that used to be very very cold in winter. It’s not any more. And its an impossible place to live in summer. Now, I know that’s only anecdotal evidence, but it doesn’t place people who believe in global warming in the same category as as the insane American Birthers who were trying to argue Obama wasn’t born in the US of A.Nice try, though.
Roger, I had a similar feeling the day I watched the Senate C’tee on Climate Change holding hearings in Brisbane. Most of the more vocal senators simply behaved like clowns. I was worried about the impression industry representatives were taking away, especially international companies who had investment options elsewhere in the world. You had the feeling that far from deliberative democracy at work, damn near anything could happen.
I hope Minchin’s daughter has a netball game in Adelaide this week.
It couldn’t have been a better week for the Lib cronies to sit there straight
faced and say, “it’s not getting warmer”.
On a different note, I enjoyed the respectful tone that both MacFarlane and Wong had when discussing each others negotiating abilities. Actually, whilst that behind the scenes stuff looked a little like an aussie version of the West Wing, it was still intriguing to watch.
McGauran and Bernardi seem like complete tossers. You know something is up when Chris Pyne is one of the least objectionable people being interviewed.
I wish I knew some conservatives to talk to regarding their reaction to this…do they just think it’s a hatchet job by the ABC, I wonder?
I actually felt quite sad for those rural communities, watching the Barnaby Joyce sideshow rumble through like the snake oil salesmen that he is.
The problem being a proportion of the population votes these clowns in. Despite the fact that this might horrify at least one elite intellectual I know who was banging on the other night about how decent illiterate people are, and what preferable company they are, (what I think he meant was they were too stupid to realise going on never ending obnoxious rants isn’t exactly normal behaviour) give me the intellectual elites any day. I’d rather be surrounded by people who can read and think any day if last night’s rural audiences were any indication, because I don’t really have a deth wish for the planet.
Paul @ 38 – I think there was a poll recently that reported 30% of the australian population don’t think global warming is caused by man – so not surprising that a reasonable number of politicians think that there may be votes in taking that position.
I know a couple of conservative blokes, furious (both of them are geoscientists who’ve worked in the oil industry), and they are not convinced by the climate scientists’ near unanimity. (They think all the attacks on Plimer’s wretched book are ad hominem, just for a start.)
They aren’t stupid by any means (one of them is a lot more intelligent than me), but they are blinkered.
Interesting isn’t it, that denialism is rooted in the geosciences (Carter, Plimer etc). Geological time blah blah, look at this graph blah blah.
Biologists, on the other hand, have been rabbiting on about climate change for around 30 years, because they can see it happening in front of their eyes. Gardeners, birdwatchers, and even some farmers too.
It is worrying that the Life Sciences get so little media space in this faux climate change debate, compared with the so-called “hard” sciences like geology etc. Guess its a guy thing.
…and as noted above@1, the best quote of the day: “…think of it this way,” the polling insider said, “more people in Australia believe in climate change than God. As far as politicians are concerned the view is that in late middle age you either develop prostate problems or you become a climate change denier.”
Denialist categories: (I wish I knew how to do bullet points)
Frankly, I’m amazed that we have Governments engaging in even token efforts given the forces arrayed against them.
Macfarlane’s assertion that no new coal fired power plants will be built in Australia was the most interesting counter-wedge to come out of the program. The subtext was the nuclear wedge (again).
The rest of the show will, as Mark rightly pointed out, save Labor campaign media producers a lot of time and energy.
I’m frankly stunned that renewable energy doesn’t have stronger support amongst classical liberals who support action on climate change. It’s difficult to square the requirements for an intrusive state apparatus of nuclear energy generation with the liberal economization of government. The political and economic externalities of renewable energy technologies, on the other hand, are generally quite easily contained.
dk: they just don’t believe it’ll work.
And, frankly, they do have a point. There remains a great deal of blind faith in renewable energy that’s sadly not backed up by demonstrated successes.
Have to agree with the general consensus here, that the 4Corners program was a horrifying illustration of how uncoordinated and unelectable the opposition has become.
Also agree that McFarlane came across surprisingly well – I previously had little time for him as a minister. He seems to have moved ground on climate change, and on the BS of clean coal CCS to solve all our problems. He seems to be genuinely negotiating in good faith, to try and fashion a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. Good luck to the Libs on this venture, as JohnD said. It will probably be a 3-hump camel when they are done, to further mix metaphors.
The overall impression was that this issue is not being evaluated in a sensible and logical fashion. According to a recent study, Aussies have the 6th most prosperous country on planet Earth, and thus are in the top 1% of the global population. We also have very high levels of education in the general population. You wouldn’t think it from the progress of this debate on climate change.
If we Aussies can’t have some common agreement on the science, and we can’t reach agreement on a sensible course of action to at least hedge our bets, from our lofty position relative to many other countries, then what bloody hope is there?
I think it’s also a libertarian thing as well for some people. I think they’ll be happy for others to do the hard yards as long as they don’t have to or as long as their bills don’t go up.
The logic goes like this.
Why should I change my lifestyle when everyone else around me is thus reducing on average my carbon load?
See also
Why should I vaccinate my kids? If everyone else does I can reap the benefits without putting my kids at risk.
Why should I pay my employees more? As long as everyone else pays their employees a fair wage there will be people there to buy my goods and services and I can rake it in.
Why should I pay more tax? Or any tax? As long as there are enough other people to at least keep the services I use running it’s all good.
Thing is in the long term it works. For instance as a friend of mine keeps banging on about as an example…Clean Up Australia works only because those who didn’t make the mess in the first place roll their sleeves up and just clean the mess up. They don’t appeal to people who make the mess. They don’t try to force them to change their behaviour. They fix the mess. Everyone’s happy in the end. The volunteers can feel good about making a difference and the people making the mess can keep doing what the hell they like safe in the knowledge now that ‘someone’ will clean after them.
It’s the same with global warming writ large. those of us who do believe this will have to work harder not only to offset our own impact…but also the impact of several others. If there’s enough of us doing that well good.
If not…I predict the dying gasps of those on the right will be cursing the left for not warning them effectivly or not fixing it.
The same could be said for the early days of coal-fired power. It’s taken almost a hundred years to get the efficiency we take for granted now, in no small part due to the fact that we built technologies and corresponding social patterns around it.
I swear 90% of people who profess some concern about climate change think it can be solved with a few wind farms and rooftop solar. If only it were so simple!
Monbiot made the point recently that when people make a few ‘soft’ lifestyle changes (e.g. rooftop solar) it allows them overlook the big ones and still believe that they are environmentally responsible.
Labor Outsider:
Would you vote for David Cameron’s Conservatives ahead of Rudd’s Labor? I have to say, it would be a close run thing for me.
1) I took from the show that the key ‘rebels’ on the Liberal side were effectively going for Turnbull’s head with that litany of deep, gouging attacks. They weren’t saying ‘we disagree on this’, they were saying ‘he’s not fit to lead the party’.
2)I wonder how many ‘sceptics’ out there are actually more concerned about the vague, messy, poorly articulated nature of the/any proposed ETS? I have such a concern, although I won’t take it so far as to use it as an excuse for complete inaction, but it does seem to be a messy, indirect method of addressing the problem, replete with the jargon, appearance and flavour of a complex free market energy trading scheme.
I worry that even if implemented it will founder on Occam’s Razor… or as PJ O’Rourke put it, ‘beyond a certain point, all complexity is fraud.’
So carbonsink the idea is to do nothing whatsoever, in fact pollute and use as much energy to your hearts content because the little you do is not worth a smick in the greater scheme of things?
No first step, it must a giant lifestyle changing massive leap.
Sorry my friend, it is the little things like changing people’s habit to recycle where they can, not matter how pitiful the amount, start the habits of being energy and water waste aware even if one birthday party at home wipes out months of frugality and being conscience that the holiday flight they take is causing more harm than they will in a year, but then they can always pay extra to offset that in their airfares, just as I do.
If you don’t start the baby steps and raise the conscience in anyway possible then the big steps when required will be impossible, we might as well all roll over and give in now.
M.E. – I know quite a few people who genuinely think they’re doing everything they can, by “only” getting a 4-cyl car, and only running the aircon at 24c, and recycling their bottles and paper, and putting a bucket in the shower for the veggie patch.
If everyone in Australia did all these things, it would still make stuff all difference.
The problem is pretty much out of control.
That comment pretty much proves Monbiot’s point.
We don’t have a hundred years, we have ten (at most) to make big changes. Renewables almost certainly can’t do the job by themselves, and nukes are politically impossible in most developed countries. Crazy geoengineering schemes circa 2030 seem increasingly likely.
Coincidence my ar*se. The Coalition denialists are a political gift for Rudd. This amusing sideshow distracts from the main game and allows Rudd to point the finger of blame for a likely failed Copenhagen and a p*ss weak CPRS. The last thing Rudd wants a Coalition on-side. My God, he might actually have to do something then!
Indeed, DK. And it’s point that’s either optimistically and repeadtedly flogged to death (we don’t _have_ a hundred years), or categorically ignored. I would love to see more focus on it; it’s one of the reasons why I find Better Place very interesting (though overhyped).
Talking about the “but I’m doing something” crowd. I’ve always been annoyed at Tim Blair and his chums doing the anti earth hour party. It seems a stupid response to turn on everything in your house for an hour to “get one up on the hippies.”
But I can understand it a lot more now given my greenie mates with their air-cons, plasma TV’s and big cars telling me that they did their bit by turning off their stuff for one hour. It’s not only an empty gesture…it actually gives people the idea they’ve made this big sacrifice.
Gah, I’m a hyprocite though, I still play video games on my big grunty PC when I should be using a notebook or even a DS.
Part of the problem I am.
I believe its far too lste to fix the problem but I still think we should force our politivcians into doing something to at least mitigate the effects. Trouble is, even if they do stuff, they’re not going to do too much to affect the workings of big business. And I don’t know, short of a very bloody world revolution on the same day in every country in the world that has as its aim nothing except to do whatever is necessary to STOP global warming, how we can force our current crop of self-satisfied dummies to listen.
That’s the rub. In the end some of us can try and consume less and try and develop methods and technologies to mitigate climate change. In the end if the worst comes to worst we’ll know we tried.
I can see the other side’s point of view. If it is too late why should they do without their plasma tv? Their 4 wheel drive? Their air con?
I’ll continue with our old TV (picked up curbside), no air con and taking public transport. But I won’t expect or lecture my neighbour to do the same.
What’s simply awful, daaahlings, is how frightfully horrid some of these Liberal politicians are being about each other in the Oz online:
just awful
Jeffum@32:
… so we could kill off our livestock …
Er, Jeff, I think you have a basic misunderstanding of what normally happens to the livestock.
Jeez, I think its bloody wonderful. But perhaps the most revealing comment in that article is the one about the fuss about asylum seekers going along very well. Talk about cynical manipulation of the electorate being revealed in letters so large that even the stupid could recognise. And as for Minchin being a fruit-loop, he sort of proved that some time ago on Q&A, if not before. Wonder who has the biggest knife, Minchin or Mal?
I bet the Labor Party are right now really busy oiling the wheels of the tumbrils for the Howardistas’ hand-built guillotine. So who’s going first – Malcolm XVI or Nicholas XVI?
It’s worth reading and watching the poll analysis Sarah Ferguson commissioned on attitudes to climate change. It demonstrates that belief in strong action in climate change is probably pretty soft, particularly in regional and outer suburban electorates. Labor may well be more vulnerable to an anti-CPRS campaign based around economic insecurity than many realise. Incidentally, Possum has been making this point for a couple of years now.
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IMHO, where Labor has really missed a trick is in not campaigning harder on the economic benefits of climate adaptation, along the lines of the arguments Ben McNeil makes. The Treasury modeling – clearly the most credible, despite the “clean coal will be invented and work” assumptions – demonstrates that the CPRS won’t actually cost any jobs in the aggregate at all (growth will continue, even in carbon-intensive industries) and will cost very few jobs compared with business as usual.
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In summary, it appears that the Coalition’s messages regarding the jobs impact of the CPRS are biting … but to a much smaller extent than many Liberals and Nats appear to believe.
The discussion above on whether every little bit helps misses the point.
Every little bit does help, but it only helps — err a little bit. We need lots of help if we are to cross the decisive threshholds we must in order to avert catastrophic climate change.
I’m very much in favour of stsunts like Earth Hour not because I beleive for a second that the power saved during this hour will make a serious difference of itself to the problem but because it is part of getting all of us to put the issue of our footprint at the front of our minds and to think about the issue in practical and concrete terms rather than purely notional ones. And a community that feels mocved to participate actively in Earth Hour is more likely to underpin the kinds of policies that are needed at state level to deal with the problem. It helps us feel connected with others, and that too helps when you are trying to get everyone on to the same page.
Symbolic gestures are not unimportant. That chap who stood in front of the tank at Tien an Mien square really wasn’t protecting anyone. His gesture was symbolic, and yet in stopping one tank crew it stayed the hand of many tank crews. The PLA lost the initiative.
Sure you can turn off your lights for an hour once each year and leave it at that. But why would you? Precisely the thought that this won’t count for anything might prompt you to turn off unnecessary lights at other times and to recycle more, and to reject plastic bags and walk to the local shops instead of drive, and car pool and use public tranpsort more often and encourage your friends to do likewise. You want to make your symbol into something that really does make a difference, and so you will write your politician and speak up at your P & C and participate in blogs and press for the kinds of change that make that one hour more than a mere symbolic gesture.
Amusing as this is, its a sideshow. Rudd could have his DD election tomorrow if he wanted it, and there’s little doubt the Greens would end up with the balance of power. The really depressing reality is that’s not an outcome Rudd wants.
I actually feel sorry for Turnbull, Hunt and even MacFarlane. These guys are possibly more committed to effective climate change than many in the ALP (e.g. Marn) but they’re handcuffed to a bunch of denialist nutters.
Did anyone follow the links from the ABC website to the piece on the Psychology of Global Warming? It was an interesting speech about how relatively lacking we [our brains] are to deal with any threat that is neither human, imminent or visible.
The link to it is here:
http://www.desmogblog.com/dan-gilbert-on-the-psychology-of-global-warming-video
Ben Eltham, I agree re: the lack of campaigning on the economic benefits of action/adaption.
For me, this was one of the more damning quotes:
Minchin: “For the extreme left it provides the opportunity to do what they’ve always wanted to do, to sort of de-industrialise the western world. You know the collapse of communism was a disaster for the left, and the, and really they embraced environmentalism as their new religion.”
Sounds like a looney conspiracy theorist.
As for the discussion on whether every little bit helps:
I’m coming the conclusion that the ‘think global act local’ mentality is possibly doing more harm than good now. In the past it succeeded mainly as an awareness raiser, when no other policies would get up. But awareness is raised now, and the problem of people getting jaded is perhaps a bigger worry.
Everyone interest group loves individual action kind of policies, precisely because they aren’t effective:
* Polluting industries like them because it takes responsibility off them
* Governments like them because they can announce community programs with a bucket o money, cut a ribbon and get some feel good publicity
* Green groups like them because individual action means membership, and an activity to run to create some publicity.
* Business likes them because they can throw in a bit of sponsorship and get some greenwash.
AGW isn’t going to be mitigated with individual voluntary action, any more than a voluntary tax scheme makes sense. National and global initiatives are needed for this global problem.
Ben, I read it. Frankly, given the economic shock we were potentially facing, it’s damn surprising that support for action on climate change didn’t drop a lot more.
BE,
Agree. I really think the biggest problem Labor will face in this will be the rising cost of electricity and costs that flow on from that. Have no idea how they’re going to deaden that hip-pocket nerve.
“IMHO, where Labor has really missed a trick is in not campaigning harder on the economic benefits of climate adaptation, …”
Agreed, Ben. But perhaps they’re working towards that. In my neck of the woods (South West Vic), the lead story of the Warrnambool Standard last Saturday (under a cute heading of “On a Wave”) was a $66m federal funding of a wave energy project off the Portland coast likely to generate 100s of jobs. It s already claimed to be viable. The story is claiming this area has become the energy hub with goethermal in Koroit, wind turbines at Yambuk-Codrington, and gas-fired plants at Mortlake and Orford (Port Campbell has a huge off shore natural gas production)in addition to the Wave Energy. Portland also has geothermal energy potential.
This region (Wannon) is safe Lib-NP country and will likely remain so. But you can bet that local businesses will be doing their sums and become rather keen supporters of alternative energy benefits. Where will that leave country-based coalition MPs on their opposition to climate change action?
The other funding projects announced by Marn were the “Hot Rocks” geothermal one in the Northeast of SA and a King Island hydro-electricity project. Not many local votes likely to be affected by these, but they will help lead to a softening of positions in the denialist camp. No wonder Barnaby is making so much noise about boat people. Probably doesn’t want to see too much attention given to these.
“Would you vote for David Cameron’s Conservatives ahead of Rudd’s Labor? I have to say, it would be a close run thing for me.”
Me too, though the Tories’ committment to liberal principles in the run-up to the election may not translate into liberal policy once in government…
“The Treasury modeling – clearly the most credible, despite the “clean coal will be invented and work” assumptions – demonstrates that the CPRS won’t actually cost any jobs in the aggregate at all (growth will continue, even in carbon-intensive industries) and will cost very few jobs compared with business as usual.”
As much as I don’t want to say this, you have to be very very careful when interpreting the Treasury modelling on the impact of the CPRS on employment. The models used for this analysis are general equilibrium in nature and are better suited to modelling the potential long-run impact of policy changes (steady state)than the short-run impact (less than 5 years). One reason for this is that they generally assume that real wages adjust to offset any negative impacts on employment from a negative shock such as the CPRS is to an economy with a capital stock currently adapted to using low cost fossil fuels. While that assumption is appropriate for thinking about the long-run, in the short-run labour markets can be quite rigid, as nominal wages tend to be sticky. Even Treasury acknowledge that in the short-run the employment effects will be larger (without quantifying it), especially when you take into account that the incidence of the CPRS will vary considerably across regions.
The reason I say this is that it is short-run (say an election cycle) that voters pay more attention to when thinking about the employment effects from policies. Think of it this way, when was the last time a politician said, in response to rising short-run unemployment, that it didn’t matter because in 10 years employment will have grown significantly?
None of this means that proper carbon pricing isn’t necessary. But it is something that supporters of significant action need to be cogniscent of, in the same way as advocates of tariff reform need to be aware that while welfare improving in aggregate, the costs tend to be borne by specific displaced workers that cannot easily find employment in other industries, whether for skill reasons, or locational reasons.
Fran Barlow @62, I suspect you are quite right there: “Precisely the thought that this won’t count for anything might prompt you to turn off unnecessary lights at other times and to recycle more…”
We all like to think that we are consistent. If we can be pursuaded to take the first baby steps, as someone else put it, then most of us would probably continue with other actions, on the consistency principle.
Giant, lifestyle-changing leaps in behaviour, as Mobius Ecko @51 put it, will only happen with a giant leap in understanding. As the story of Charles Darwin shows, these giant leaps in understanding are won only slowly and at great personal cost to those leading the charge. We could only hope that people manage to understand a bit faster this time…
Shorter Minchin: where fact suits my opponent, fact becomes my enemy.
“I actually felt quite sad for those rural communities, watching the Barnaby Joyce sideshow rumble through like the snake oil salesman that he is”
furious balancing @ 37 I had the same feeling watching Joyce last night thinking that country people deserved better than him and his ilk. Then I remembered that the NFF doesn’t see eye to eye with him and still have their ties with the ACF forged for them by the likes of Rick Farley of blessed memory. I think the dismissive attitude he displayed to the NFF in the program will tell against him.
My own understanding of some country people comes from my few years running a rural district high school almost thirty years ago. My appointment had some locals up in arms even before they met me and sending deputations to the Minister about my incapacity to deal firmly with the Nyungars, because of course I couldn’t cane them. I don’t think anyone ever publicly acknowledged that our abandoning corporal punishment had anything to do with the drop in absenteeism and our subsequent and consistent domination of every major sporting activity in the region. Nor has that particular(white)community ever acknowledged the contribution of local Nyungars to their own history, let alone their sporting prowess. There was a similar dismissal or even active resistance to school initiatives to encourage Aboriginal attendance with programs around their art and music. Yet individuals in neighbouring small towns jumped on these ideas and now have museums attracting tourists devoted to both pastoral and native history as well as proud collections of artefacts ranging from firestones to didgeridoos as well as the bullock carts and threshers of early white settlers, to say nothing of very saleable paintings from all parts of their communities. The difference between one community and another really seemed to depend on the existence of individuals prepared to take on leadership roles about race and community issues. I imagine that this is particularly true about climate change,
It’s worth remembering that the ABC’s Country Hour has a widespread and loyal audience throughout rural Australia and judging by recorded and broadcast audience comment there are plenty of enlightened and intelligent people out there already putting in the hard yards getting their communities to start dealing with the impact of climate change. We can’t judge all of rural Australia by Barnaby Joyce and the National Party, or unenlightened Liberals, though I was very disheartened yesterday to see one of my bete noires of three decades ago on the TV news speaking out at a Liberal Party meeting and being roundly applauded as he put the climate change sceptic point of view and urging “resistance” to the CPRS by the Libs.
Am I naive in hoping that Rudd and Wong’s apparently “lite” ETS program for change is deliberately designed to pull in as wide support as possible before Copenhagen so that with some sort of national consensus they can later tighten parameters, perhaps after the next election? Surely there are enough enlightened Liberals to back any compromise reached by Wong and MacFarlane
Did anyone else notice that the Australian has apparently abolished its section on climate?
True Pat WA – that was one of the big breaktrhoghs for me last night. As an inveterate city boy, part of me does actally entertain the notion that maybe people like Joyce DO represent country people’s views.
Possum’s got some great graphs up with large-sample survey data which suggests – Joyce doesnt. Then there’s the NFF opposing him too – theyve realised about eh only cash crop they’re going to have to 30 years is greenhouse mitigation planting.
National Party: dangerously out of touch with rural Australia.
Patricia: there is something to that, and something to LO’s point about the difference between long-run and short-run impacts of the change.
But the problem is that the CPRS locks in so much compensation to polluters that it’s going to be very expensive to buy them out later.
“But the problem is that the CPRS locks in so much compensation to polluters that it’s going to be very expensive to buy them out later.”
Yes and no. Yes there is a lot of compensation, but most of it is time limited, or at least there will be no requirement to roll it over. The assistance to TEEI is a good example of this…
How likely do you think removing compensation over time from powerful corporate interests, perhaps when an aging government is losing electoral support, is, LO?
Thre are a few things to consider, and a great deal of uncertainty but:
Premise 1 – Australia will eventually be obligated to make deep cuts in emissions in line with other developed countries. However, there is uncertainty about how deep those cuts will be in the shorter term (out to 2020). If I had to guess, I’d say most progress on cutting emissions will take place between 2020 and 2050.
Premise 2 – Following Premise 1, Australia will have no choice but to phase out coal fired elecricity generation, unless CCS becomes commercially and environmentally viable. Given this, assistance to coal fired generators will be temporary (over before 2020). They will either be retired and replaced by non-coal technologies, or replaced by CCS.
Premise 3 – There will not be an international agreement in the short-term that avoids the possibility of carbon leakage from TEEI industries. Accordingly, assistance to these sectors will remain until mitigation in China, India and other relevent developing countries reaches a scale that makes such assistance unnecessary.
Premise 4 – When developing country mitigation does become sufficiently large, Australia will phase out support for TEEI industries, though the generosity of such support may be wound down earlier. Regardless, developing country mitigation will signficantly reduce demand for TEEI production, making assistance to such sectors pointless. This will probably not occur until at least 2020.
Premise 5 – When the US has imposed proper carbon pricing through its ETS that is not capped (or not capped at a low level making it effectively a carbon tax), Australia will abolish its own price cap, so as to allow proper trading with the EU and US schemes.
Premise 6 – There is significant danger that no international agreement is reached that is acceptable to the key G20 countries for a decade or more. In such a situation, developed countries may impose border taxes on developing country exports.
Given all of this, the burden of phasing out all assistance will not fall on any one government. The next election that Labor will have the possibility to lose is the one that will occur in 2015/16 (they win the next with an increased majority and the one after with a narrower majority). If that is the case assistance to non CCS will be ended by whomever wins that election (assuming the libs climate scepticism is so electorally unpopular that their views have changed by then to something more similar to that of Cameron’s tories). Full TEEI phase out will occur some time after that.
The big question facing Labor in its next term will be less “how quickly to phast out assistance” as it will be, should we start on the path to commissioning nuclear energy…
Interesting thread of thought you are developing there Patricia, LE and Robert. The Country people vary quite from Regions to regions and often from town to town, even if they are only a few klms apart. There is a diversity of opinions on the subject but more so a diversity of interests. On one side there is the cash crop LE was talking about on the other side, all this cattle fart emission talk ain’t funny to them burly blokes with big hats. But there is too the industrious vertically integrated agribiz empires as well as the contemporary squatocracy, the country town professionals and merchants. So I tend to share Patricias naivety and hope into the ‘lite’ ETS program to get most ‘on board’ and sort the remaining ‘opposing sketics’ in to neat targets.
Recently there was great upheaval in regional Queensland caused by Shire amalgamations. In our Shire what present Councilors have commented on, is on how they are surprised at the diversity within even the the old shires they were was indeed still is and indeed still is. The process of amalgamation is only baring that out. Having lived through the period of closure of timber industry by World Heritage zoning in Far North Queensland, I could observe these various temporal cycles of impacts as well as opportunities they presented. So how you model economic impact with some relevance given such a diversity as well as the dynamics of the impact of change beats me. My hope further is that ‘lite’ has built in stress points, such as the generous concessions Robert mentions. Maybe then the CPRS is designed to crash to evolve into the ‘heavy’ version.
I can’t imagine anyone trying to convince the people that McNuclear McPower/McWaste is needed in Australia now: can you?!!?
By which time the cuts required will be monumental and near-as-dammit impossible. The science says cut early and cut deep for the best outcome and lowest cost. Its a pity no-one is listening to the science.
Significant danger? Are you kidding me? Its a near certainty.
Yeah right. The developed world has almost completely outsourced its manufacturing sector to the developing world. Go to a mall, and show me something not made in China. Are we really going to whack a tax on everything sold at the mall, and simultaneously p*ss off out biggest trading partner? It won’t happen.
Geoengineering here we come.
Also I can see the appeal for some high energy users. Why sshould they mitigate their lifestyle? That’s something OTHER people do.
The problem is that if we do enter an energy crisis I think you’d see the US looking after their own. Confiscation of energy in the form of the Timor oilfields or Australian uranium? You betcha! Sometimes there’s a downside to being an outpost to an empire.
It’s my understanding that the CPRS will not lower emissions until the 2020s, simply make it possible to purchase offsets from developing countries. Some of these will be to persuade people not to cut down forests, with no guarantee that those forests foregone will not be replaced by forests cut elsewhere.
Hilariously developing countries are pretty keen on Contraction and Convergence which allows per capita emissions in developing countries to rise, and forces developed county emissions to fall to the global per capita average.
The CPRS does precisely the opposite by offloading our emissions reductions onto developing countries.
Like carbonsink I’m very gloomy about the prospects of the world doing the smart thing and reining in carbon emissions in time. Which is damned frustrating – the net economic costs of so doing really are chickenfeed (they’d have been even less if we’d started earlier). We could have stayed rich but we’ve pissed the opportunity away.
I’ve told my kids to enjoy the Barrier Reef and (relative) world peace while they can. And I’ve told them to make sure they spit on the graves of the greedy business lobbies, wilfully ignorant denialists and unprincipled politicians who are bringing us to this pass. Because together they’ll kill many many times more people than Hitler or Stalin ever did.
carbonsink, the CPRS offloads the emissions reduction to developing countries but not the cost of them. As it still reduces global emissions – which geographic location the CO2 is emitted from is irrelevant to AGW – and as we, not the developing country, bear any cost I really can’t see what’s wrong with that.
Not that it matters anyway – see my previous comment.
CS (82) “Geoengineering here we come”…
Madness of course, but very profitable madness for the Bechtels, Fluors, GEs, Mistsuis, Leightons etc of the world: those who profited by building the problem intend, with extreme prejudice, to collect on the attempted solution as well.
Just pray Jeff Tracy, and Brains, and Virgil and the rest of the International Rescue team make it in time.
“Although this atomic station is still very much on the secret list..
the reclaiming of the dead land of Australia takes up millions and millions of gallons of this sea water…
Can you give us some kind of statement on the safety factor?…
the chances are very very slim indeed…
lets not go sky high even on a slim channce….
the reactor is under the complete control of the project staff, nothing can go wrong…
The explosion at the atomic irrigation project…
caused a radioactive cloud…
unless the weather takes a hand…
in the cause of general safety, Melbourne will have to be enacuated”
re: dd’s comments.
The phrase ‘useful idiots’ comes to mind and is a sad irony given Minchin’s obsession with the ‘extreme left’ (which is quite hilarious in it’s own way given that the authoritarian left wrote reams and reams on the evils of environmentalism in the 60s and 70s).
Fair point, but it still diverts efforts away from creating low-carbon energy sources in developed countries, and allows us to simply buy forests in developing countries. Not that that’s a bad thing.
My main point is, it allows profligate energy users such as Australia to continue on our merry way, and doesn’t force us to conserve and innovate.
Quite rght DD@87
If 100% of Australia’s emissions reductions were in countries such as Ghana and Bangladesh and Guatemala, that would be every bit as good/poor as if they occurred here, providing of course that method of accounting these offsets was the sdame here and there and properly audited.
In so far as this would entail pouring cash into the economies of Ghana, Bangladesh and Guatemala so they could develop clean energy or protect their forests this would make for a more equitable world because they are a lot poorer than we are. We would still have the burden of cost and they would be paid for their acceptance of an alternative path.
That’s not how it will happen of course, but there’s nothing at all wrong with that, providing the accounting method properly specifies actual emissions avoided
I’ve arrived at the same position carbonsink and derrida derider have: gloomy realism that it’s probably all too late anyway, Australia along with the rest of the world is firmly on the path of climate ruin.
I’m minutely optimistic that sometime in five to ten years everyone will wake up, realise that the scientists were right all along, and put in an urgent crash order for 25 Gen 3+ nuclear power plants, getting to zero emissions by 2050. Though of course we’ll be in competition with lots of others to build the suckers, but still it’s surprising what economies can do on a war setting. Even with that, we’ll still get above 500 ppm, and in one century have at least 2 metres of sea level rise. Don’t even talk about the biodiversity loss.
Well, we won’t be reducing our emissions by much then…
Australia 372,013*
Ghana 9,240
Bangladesh 41,609
Guatemala 11,766
*Thousands of tonnes of CO2 emitted in 2006.
CS said that we couldn’t reduce our emissions by much if they were all concentrated in Ghana Bangladesh & Guatemala …
But that’s misleading because with forestry projects, or algal farms, for example, we might make them carbon negative. Also some of the emissions of these countries are embedded in the imports they demand, so if we were able to foreclose, for example imports of certain CO2-intensive goods and have them made there near zero …
Of course, I was only doing a for instance … Plainly, we’d want a much wider pool than that.
Speaking of forestry projects and algal farms, why are we proposing to use ETS to support forestry in other countries, and yet apparently not allow our farmers to claim credits for biosequestration projects here?
I don’t understand the logic. Are the Rudd government and their advisors more interested in the “market” idea than the actual practical implications?
And why aren’t there more stories about “green oil” instead of black oil? Our farmers must have a few spare paddocks that they could devote to green algae farming, if there was a market for it?
Fran@94: A carbon negative country? Good luck with that. Are we going kick 153 million Bangladeshis out of their homes and farms and turn the whole country into forest?
Its just excuse after excuse for not doing anything in Australia.
No idea. Seems like a win win to me. Perhaps its because Barnaby is running around scaring the bejesus out of the farmers?
Carbonsink @96, Barnaby looked and sounded like a total prat on the news segment where he was supposedly informing the farmers.
Barnaby didn’t say anything sensible at all. Just a pile of blustering hot air. Hopefully the farmers are smarter than he thinks.
This Elise is why agriculture and forestry and transport ought to be in an ETS.
Let all of their emissions and sequestration activity be properly accounted for. Those farmers who were doing high quality biosequestration could be paid for their efforts.
Of course not. But lets face it, if there’s a country better placed to have algal farms I’d like to know which it was. 1/3 of the place regularly floods.
All I want to know is: where are the reactors going??!!?? Anyone?!?!
Keithy@100: Dunno, ask the Poms, they’re building ten of them.
Are they just replacing the 50% that are over 30 years old?!?
I think the greatest hope for rural Australia is actually a carbon economy. The NFF position statement on the CPRS is actually a genuinely conservative position, which is why Joyce’s position is such a joke and such a traitor to his constituency.
I thought the limiting factors for biosequestration were only short-term problems. ie: the scientific data for each land-type/usage is not there yet. I know it’s being done, or at least it is in some of the ecotypes I work in.
Mind you there are also some really silly things happening in terms of carbon accounting. I heard something about only counting vegetation that’s higher than 2 metres, that’s something that could actually prove to be quite counterproductive, in my opinion. That’s just anecdotal from a land management officer a while ago, it’s possible things have progressed significantly since then.
Also, I was pleased to see some comments in the NFF policy regarding forestry as a landuse.
As one who belongs to the former group I must say, reluctantly, I agree with that statement Herr Bahnisch, but the construction of that 1st sentence, does it not denote some reversion to certain ancestry?
peter kemp,
he speaking yoda, he is
Herr Doktor Bahnisch, please Peter!
And hehe.
Though if you read a bit of Chaucerian and Elizabethan literature, I reckon English lost something when it fetishised the subject verb object word order!
I, Herr Doktor Bahnisch corrected stand.
(and congratulations if I had forgotten at the time!)
And the “fetish” for us at school Mark was definitely the Millers Tale but not necessarily the verb object word order of that pre-internet soft prOn.
Keithy, I’d be perfectly happy if there was a reactor where the newport gas power station is, just a few klicks down the road. Except I’m not sure about cooling water, but in principle I have absolutely no problem if reactors were put anywhere that’s appropriate for a large industrial facility.
Modern nuclear power plants are ridiculously safe, only a completely irrational and uninformed person (of which there are plenty) could be the remotest bit concerned about risks of an accident. They essentially don’t happen.
Please don’t quote chernobyl back at me (or rather, feel free to, if you want to talk complete irrelevancies).
@108 – thanks, Peter!
Ah, Chaucer. [Sighs for lost days of colourful days wild orthography brought to an end by that evil genius of the eighteenth century, Dr. Samuel Johnson.
Wilful , the only people who throw the word Chernobyl around like it was hot sauce are the pro-Nuclear trying to desperately find an element of leverage. Industry doesn’t need Nuclear Power unless already addicted to it! *** Addictions are hard to break! *** Face it: those people who are preaching it just want to bury other peoples waste as an easy way to balance the budget!