Turnbull made a strong case both for the absurdity of denialism and for the real stakes of the climate change debate. He compared climate change skepticism to a pub conversation where smoking is alleged to be harmless because Uncle Ernie puffed like the proverbial chimney and lived to be 95:

And this is actually — this war on science and on scientists which is being conducted is much worse than the case of person who ignores his doctor’s advice and follows the advice of his friend down the pub, drawing on the life experience of the fortunate Uncle Ernie.

Because the consequences of getting our response to climate change wrong will not likely be felt too severely by us, or at least not most of us, but will be felt painfully and cruelly by the generations ahead of us. And the people in the world who will suffer the most cruelly will be the poorest and the people who have contributed the least to the problem. There is an enormous injustice here. When people try and suggest to you that climate change is not a moral issue, they are wrong. It is an intensely moral issue raising grave moral issues.

Those of us who do not believe the CSIRO is part of an international Green conspiracy to undermine Western civilisation or do not believe that leading scientists like Will Steffen are subversives should not be afraid to speak out, and loudly, on behalf of our scientists and our science. We must not allow ourselves to be deluded on this issue.

Interestingly, Essential Research found this week, in a question commissioned by Channel Ten, that 46% of respondents are more concerned than they were two years ago about the environmental effects of global warming.

At the same time, of course, public opinion has moved strongly against carbon pricing, or at least against the Gillard government’s carbon price plan. (It would be interesting to see if there were more support for carbon pricing in the abstract, though in practice hard to separate that out from the actual carbon tax proposals on the table).

What accounts for this?

It is largely a matter, I’d suggest, of communications errors from the government (and to a lesser degree from other advocates of carbon pricing). It’s not just the litany of reasons why Julia Gillard has a trust problem (most of which are traceable back to the manner of her ascension to the top job). It goes deeper than that.

Three fundamental strategic errors have been made.

The first was to switch the conversation away from the deleterious effects of global warming. Perhaps this was a response to the noise of the so-called ‘debate on the science’. But it’s had the effect of sundering measures to mitigate climate change from the issue itself. Turnbull, rightly, talks about the moral challenges of climate change. Labor, since Kevin Rudd dropped the ball, is unable to.

A related error is to be reactive and frame the plan in terms of economic reform. This stems from the usual round of criticism from newspapers and commentators that the Labor government pales into insignificance compared to Hawke and Keating. But playing the game in terms of tax feeds the critique. So, when the Clean Energy Future detail was released, everyone rushed to the online calculator to see if they’d be ‘better off’ or ‘worse off’. It became all about short term gain and pain, and reinforced the narrative that Labor was ignoring cost of living pressures.

Again, an own goal.

(Incidentally, it was very regrettable that more effort wasn’t made to make it clear that the modelling which produced the numbers about ‘cost to households’ made the assumption that there would be no changes to consumption patterns. Choosing cleaner energy, which will be able to be done off the grid as well as by installing solar panels or whatever, could well, and in fact should over time, reduce costs.)

And here’s the third error; another one where strategy has been shaped by being to reactive to the agenda of carbon pricing opponents. Releasing modelling, and highlighting it so much, renders the debate both abstract and static. Talk of % increases in employment or whatever pales against the putative reality of lost jobs (and the employment insecurity which drives those concerns). It would have been much better to communicate some concrete examples of people working in ‘Green Jobs’, to highlight the skills needed to re-equip workers and re-equip kids for prosperous and sustainable futures, and generally to shape a message which resonates with the everyday. And makes a contrast with a positive future and what lies ahead for us if nothing is done.

What to do? Turnbull has actually pointed the way. Whether Labor is or is not capable of taking a leaf out of his book is moot. But Labor is not the only force involved in the climate change and carbon price debates. Others should take heed.

Update: Cross-posted at The Drum.

The good thing is that communities with high levels of social capital recover from adverse circumstances faster than those with lower levels of social capital.

Harrison notes a number of sources in the academic literature principally examining Hurricane Katrina and the Asian tsunami.

It has been very positive to see the overwhelming response to calls for volunteers, and also the role Facebook and other social media have played in disseminating information and matching up people with others and skills with needs. They’ve also been helpful in dispelling some myths, rumours and misinformation. Similarly, I have nothing but praise for the superb communications efforts of the Queensland Police (mentioned in my post last week) and the Queensland and local governments more broadly. And Anna Bligh did a fabulous job.

I wouldn’t discount the “demonstration” effect of social media in encouraging volunteering and giving either, and the general affect on people’s morale and spirits, as well as the more specific reassurance able to be given to family, friends, contacts.

Not all is positive, of course. Some volunteers report being distressed to see site seers driving past them gawking as they work. I’d be a little cautious in rushing to judgment, though: we don’t know what people might also have done, and people help according to their capacities and resources, and there’s nothing wrong with that. There’s a downside, too, to social connectivity: the attempts of linkspammers to take over Twitter tags, the misuse of social media to exploit the floods to build marketing lists, the use of social media to spread counter-productive misinformation.

I was interested, also, to reflect on a comment made by a friend on Facebook that social capital is increased by greater social equality. Without wishing to minimise the inequalities we do have, compared to other societies, we are capable of generating higher levels of trust through networks and among strangers, through a greater sense of civic identity and belonging. Thus we can, mostly, avoid the pathologies resulting from survivalist/libertarian mindsets that disasters bring out the underlying “war of all against all”, and I hope, the gross distortions of the social fabric inherent in some disaster reconstruction efforts elsewhere.

We do, however, need to be cognisant of the fact that differential impacts exist now, and shouldn’t be allowed to compound. To that end, and because we also think that there is great scope for extending the base for donating and giving, LP will be announcing a fund raiser with moneys directed to needs that may be overlooked.

Ps: Thanks, on a personal note, to all those who posted good wishes on my Brisbane Floods thread of last Tuesday after I lost regular net access. Really very much appreciated. And I’m glad that many found the information conveyed useful.

Update: Latika Bourke on Tweeting the floods.

<img src="http://larvatusprodeo.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/kevinpm.jpg"

Musings of an inappropriate woman and Stilgherrian discuss developments, including Kevin Rudd’s apparent sign up to Twitter.