Matthew Knott at Crikey‘s climate change blog, Rooted, will be live blogging Kevin Rudd’s Copenhagen speech from 8pm AEST. Go here to read.
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Peter Martin thought it short, specify, punchy. Was he watching the same speech I was watching?
We are down to the wire in Copenhagen. If we fail to reach a strong deal, then other methods and approaches will be needed in the future.
http://www.selfdestructivebastards.com/2009/12/down-to-wire.html
It was indeed a good speech. But the speech was a speech not a release of new policy, so you are limited to the usual type talking points.
Everybody is negative on anything now days. The murdoch and fairfax media, TV – all looking things to criticise, all looking for the lead lining. Even Huffington post has become a reflection of the negative murdoch media, looking for angles to criticise, totally ignoring context and circumstance. LP is always looks for the negative slant on things.
Carping, whining, hand-wringing, lead linings to otherwise positive things and so on pretty much describes all the media now, even the blogosphere now apes the MSM.
Is it any wonder Rudd romped home at the last election, he was the only person around being positive about anything. People are weighed down by this expectation that all things have to be criticised, everything has to be seen in a negative light. If you find something good and positive – like a Rudd or Obama govt then you have to go out of your way to bring it down, to have them seen in the same light as a Howard or Bush and so on.
It truly is pathetic.
It seems to me that Rudd is the only positive person in Australia. And Obama is the only positive person in the USA. But they will be made to pay for that, they must be made into failures (regardless of realities, context and circumstance).
Sorry, TP, but fine words are not enough. From Christine Milne’s post
Lumumba Di Aping understands that proposals on the table at Copenhagen have us heading for approximately 750ppm:
Then we have Penny Wong addressing the umbrella group:
Their thinking on the science has not advanced since the weekend in Brisbane in 2007 when Labor’s climate change policy was set.
Pathetic!
The most interesting thing about Rudd’s speech is when he said “And on the future of the Kyoto Protocol and its intersection with a new Copenhagen Accord, we can I believe accommodate a common and integrated future for both international instruments which embrace the legal responsibilities of all parties – developed and developing.” This has been really interesting because previously Australia’s position is that they would prefer a single treaty that would replace the Kyoto Protocol, but could ‘live with’ a ‘two track outcome’ where the Kyoto Protocol would continue.
One of the most difficult aspects of the negotiations has been legal form. Countries like China and Saudi Arabia, and many others, have been blocking discussions on anything that might lead to a legally binding outcome for anyone who is not an Annex I country. It is easy for them to do this because there is a huge amount of distrust that this will lead to the Kyoto Protocol being destroyed, and countries like Japan, Canada, and the US would be quite happy for this to happen.
So the shift in Australia’s position marked by Rudd’s speech is a very positive move. But the fact that Australia didn’t do this a week ago, let alone two weeks or six months ago, is a massive stuff-up on behalf of Australia.
The sound bites of Rudd’s speech sound positive and concerned and have the promise of action.
Rudd has been in power for 12 months and there has been NO ACTION taken to reduce Australia’s carbon emissions or move Australia towards the reality that is the of desertification in our food bowl regions.
So my resolution for 2010 is party hard because the future will be nasty, brutish and short to paraphrase Hobbes.
So Kevin Rudd says he fears a “triumph of inaction over action” at Copenhagen!
I have feared this too after Rudd and Wong handed $6b+ of corporate welfare to Australia’s worst polluters via the sham CPS ETS and have gone to Copenhagen with a mediocre committed target of 5%.
Kevin is part of the problem, not part of the solution. He is a hypocrit.
Thomas Paine @ 3:
No mate, what is truly pathetic is the total lack of progress by our leaders at Copenhagen. Copenhagen will make Kyoto look like a triumph.
If Rudd was serious, truly serious about climate change, he would have used this speech to announce hard targets for Australia for 2020, a no-exemptions price on carbon, and a promise to take these policies to the people early in the new year. Instead we got more empty rhetoric from the world’s largest coal exporter and world’s largest per-capita emitter.
If Abbott were to win the election running an ETS scare campaign and an openly denialist agenda at least Australian would be honest with themselves. We are carbon junkies, and we have no intention of changing if it hurts the slightest bit.
Kevin Rudd the coal emperor has no clothes.
Here’s Christine Milne’s latest comment.
OLIGOPOLIES
at copenhagen
the dictators prevail
leafless trees!
Thanks, Thomas Paine, you voiced my own despair today, not because this amazing and historic congress representing all the world’s peoples is struggling to reach consensus, but because the MSM at large is talking up every bit of doubt and rumor they can latch onto for a “story”. Listening to Fran Kelly this morning one would have thought it was a great theatrical event put on for general entertainmnent and the more dire and dreadful the news the more exciting and colorful the drama she was presenting.
We have a good PM who is doing his best for us all in Copenhagen, constrained and limited not only by the Opposition but by the ridiculous posturing of the Greens who claim the high moral ground on climate change. Why, Brian, would I go to Christine Milne for her perspective on this, when I find her intransigent resistence to compromise more morally reprehensible than Steve Fieldings idiocy?
This is not Kevin Rudd’s failure. It is ours collectively and if you are a “Greenie” yours particularly for not doing more to persuade your party to work constructively in the Senate.
Patricia, the Greens offered to negotiate. The government showed no interest.
The Greens are not posturing, as they have the only credible policy on climate change. The government’s scheme would have locked us into increasing our emissions, while at the same time enriching the spivs and coin-clippers who infest the finance and mining industries at public expense.
Sorry Patricia WA but you have the wrong end of the stick on this one.
The CPRS would have locked in failure for years. The opposition of the Greens opens the door to a fundamentally better scheme.
It’s as simple as that.
DI(nr) “Posturing” was a poor choice of words, I admit. I was aware too that the Greens had offered to negotiate, but one has only to listen day after day to Milne and other Greens relentlessly attacking the government on this to understand their preferring to deal with the then then more accommodating Coalition. Quite apart from the reality of the Senate numbers.
I think I understand as well as any of the general public what needs to be done, but I am also aware of just what is politically possible. The change of government in ’07 changed the political landscape dramatically in favour of action on climate change, but not enough for the Greens to be so uncompromisingly purist.
Until you have a mandate from the electorate to push through your agenda unchanged you have a responsibility to work more pragmatically.
Patricia WA said:
I disagree. The failure to procure a senate majority for action on climate change reflected a vagary of our senate system, which, in an attempt to secure continuity, allows senators to remain long after the constituency that inserted them has changed its mind. The votes that blocked action on climate change came substantially from people who were elected during the ill-fated Latham election of 2004, when hostage voters with mortgages were bothered by interest rates and saw the ALP split in Tasmania on the forest question.
There can be little doubt that if November 2007 had been a DD, a senate in favour of strong action on climate change would have ensued. Fielding would not have survived. His presence was also an anomaly as he received a fraction of the vote received by the Green candidate in Victoria, but the desire of the ALP and the Democrats to keep the Greens out of the Senate resulted in them preferencing Fielding, with the result that when the Democrat failed a candidate with less than 1% of the vote was elected.
The morons were triumphant. In a way, this was a gooed thing because it marked a fitting end for the party that once claimed to be “keeping the bastards honest”. Their dying act was to help elect someone whom most Democrat supporters would regard with horror. It turns out they were bastards too.
But I digress …
The point here is that haste makes waste. Locking in a long term scheme tainted with the vagaries of a system to which senate selection processes were ill-suited when a short delay could see a better senate and a better long term policy doesn’t stack up. While waiting a year longer might be disappointing, locking in a scheme that sets back progress by 15 years would have been even worse.
And you will recall, I feel sure, that even had the Greens supported this rotten deal, it would still not have got the numbers.
Personally, were I in charge, I’d have pushed a much more aggressive scheme, and when it was rejected, moved to act by regulation as an interim measure, pending approval of the scheme after the next election.
“Before I left Australia, I was presented with a book of handwritten letters from a group of 6 year olds. One of the letters is from Gracie. Gracie is six – “Hi” she wrote. “My name is Gracie. How old are you.” Gracie continues “I am writing to you because I want you all to be strong in Copenhagen… Please listen to us as it is our future.” I fear that at this conference, we are on the verge of letting little Gracie down.”
CO2 emissions make little Gracie cry. It’s just too much. The substance was right. Pity about the form.
BBB
Patricia, the climate doesn’t care about what’s politically possible, and it doesn’t negotiate.
The fact that our rulers don’t seem to realise that is precisely why I don’t think any of them take it seriously.
I totally agree with you Patricia. I have always given the Greens my preference at election time. never again. I now realise that my vote was not only wasted, but,indeed, foolish. Never ever again
The Greens are playing this for the long haul. The November version of the CPRS is only the first (or second) of what will be many many more over the coming decades. Some will pass, some will fail.
I was feeling it’d be nice to get something up this year. As a foundation stone. But the Greens chose to fight a longer term battle. It’s valid strategy.
At some point “the public” will have to reconcile its position that it wants “something” done, with its refusal to pay for that something. The Greens are waiting for that watershed moment.