I joined the Liberal Party in I989, I remain
a member and I never imagined campaigning for the defeat of
my own party. But a continuation of John Howard’s response
to climate change is also unimaginable and it’s something I
can’t support. My politics haven’t changed a great deal
since I989 but the Liberal Party’s greenhouse policy sure
has.
In I990, the Liberal Party led by Andrew
Peacock had a policy to reduce Australia’s greenhouse
pollution by at least 20% by the year 2000. It was promising
bigger cuts sooner than the Labor Party and was proud of the
fact that it embraced national emission reduction targets
first. That 20% emission reduction target was a commitment
John Hewson retained as leader of the party in the early
I990s. John Howard has taken a very different and dangerous
direction. But before I get into that, a bit about my
background.
I spent most of my career either working in
or around the Liberal Party. Since about I994, I’ve also
been immersed in environment policy, especially climate
change; writing speeches for the first Howard government
Environment minister, consulting to the Australian
Greenhouse Office, lobbying for various industries, and as a
PhD researcher.
With a political career in mind I hoped these
were good career steps; environment policy specialists are
thin on the ground in Liberal ranks. Instead, I found myself
unable to ignore my party’s shifting response to climate
change, the industry lobbying behind that push and the way
we were deceiving the public about the consequences.
Much of this was revealed through my PhD
research the conclusions of which were very unwelcome to me
as a Liberal Party member. I raised my concerns with various
senior Howard government people but to no avail and
ultimately I made the fateful decision that it was unethical
to self-sensor my research for political reasons.
Plan A, right up until mid 2005, had been to
move my young family back to Queensland and more
specifically to the Sunshine Coast hinterland, where I had
the strong support of senior Queensland Liberals to run for
federal parliament. But Plan A was finished as soon as I
decided against self-censoring my PhD. In early 2006, some
of my findings were aired on the Greenhouse Mafia episode of
Four Corners. From then on, it was clear my party was
complicit rather than oblivious. As expected, the shutters
came down on me and any prospect of a political career.
So I decided to write High & Dry. If the
party didn’t want to know that our greenhouse policy was
being high-jacked, let alone the implications, then the
whole story of how John Howard came to confuse the national
interest with polluter interests needed telling.
Of course, if you believe John Howard, it’s a
story that needs no telling because Australia ‘leads the
world on climate change.’ But behind the smokescreen, the
reality is very different:
*We’re told we will meet our Kyoto target,
but not that it is an emissions increase target which,
thanks mainly to land clearing cuts, enables us to increase
emissions 27%;
*We’re told there’s $3.5 billion being spent
on climate change but not that, on an annual basis, twice as
much is being spent on government advertising; more than a
million dollars a day. And, on day one of this election
campaign he spent ten times as much as his entire climate
change budget in just one round of tax cuts.
*We’re told banning incandescent light bulbs
leads the world but just how world-leading is it given we
need over 800 measures on that scale to cut our projected
emissions in half by mid century?;
*We’re told Australia is being prepared for
the impacts of climate change but not that eleven times as
much is being spent on the war in Iraq as on Howard’s entire
greenhouse adaptation program?;
* The Prime Minister says we’re on track to
be an energy superpower but on his watch Australia actually
started paying more for energy imports than we make from
energy exports;
*We’re told uranium and LNG are saving the
global climate but this looks decidedly shaky when you
factor in the far greater emissions caused by our coal
exports which are projected to double by 2030;
*We hear the Asia Pacific Partnership is a
superior alternative to the Kyoto Protocol, but it rings
hollow when you consider the AP6 requires no emission cuts
of any country this century;
* We’re told clean coal is just around the
corner but not that coal-fired electricity providers reckon
they don’t expect it to be commercially viable on any
meaningful scale until at least 2020?
*We’re told nuclear is the clean green
saviour but not that John Howard’s own inquiry into its
potential, found that even with a dozen nuclear power
stations our emissions would still be 90% above I990 levels
by 2050?
And we’re told renewable energy can’t replace
baseload power when it is already doing that elsewhere in
the world.
Once you strip away the spin, the truth
emerges; the cumulative impact of Howard’s policies after
eleven years is that our emissions are on track to rise 70%
by mid century. While he loudly claims that by slowing
emissions growth he is doing the equivalent of taking
fourteen million cars off our roads, the emissions growth he
is allowing have us on track to add the equivalent of at
least seventy million cars by 2050.
It’s been all about moving money and people
between the carbon lobby and Howard’s circle of trust. When
you look at who funds the economic advice produced by the
Australian Bureau of Agriculture and Resource Economics (ABARE)
you find our worst polluting industries bought their way
onto committees overseeing some of this as recently as last
year. Some of the same industries pay hundreds of thousands
to hire ABARE (not based on independent assumptions but on
the paying client’s own assumptions), some even donate money
to ABARE’s overall research program, all of which helps
ABARE meet an external funding requirement.
Look behind the scientific advice produced by
sections of the CSIRO, and the CRSs who have been in John
Howard’s ear on clean coal and you find polluter funding.
Look at who funds the think tanks and front
groups denying the science and warning of doomsday, were we
to cut emissions, and you find the carbon lobby writing more
big checks. And it’s the same with the hired guns; the
economists, lobbyists and other policy gurus who have had
the ear of the Prime Minister.
Look at who funds he Liberal Party itself and
you find millions of dollars from the same polluter
interests, being channeled from our worst greenhouse
polluters, much of it through the back and side doors to
avoid public scrutiny. And the career paths follow a similar
trail as the money. A constant rotation of personnel between
carbon intensive industry, federal bureaucracy and the
Liberal Party builds careers for quarry visionaries and
ensures they have the inside running. And it has thoroughly
corrupted my party’s response to climate change.
Taking care of much of this day to day is a
small group of Canberra based lobbyists working together
under the banner of the Australian Industry Greenhouse
Network- otherwise known as the ’greenhouse mafia’.
We’re in this position because John Howard
was sold what I call a ‘quarry vision’ of Australia’s
future. A flawed belief that cheap fossil fuel and the
mining, metals and fossil energy sectors are not just the
key to our current prosperity but the key to our economic
future and protecting them at all costs is the underlying
goal of our greenhouse policy.
Meanwhile as is so apparent in a place like
the Sunshine Coast, 90% of GDP, and 95% of jobs in our
economy are not generated by these ‘quarry industries’. John
Howard might talk up carbon capture as the way to clean up
coal but it is he who has been captured by the carbon lobby
and their quarry vision for Australia.
So how did they sell that vision to John
Howard? To find out, we need to go inside John Howard’s
Greenhouse policy ’circle of trust’, a concept many of you
will be familiar with from the movie Meet the Fockers. It is
only a shame Robert De Niro was not there with the polygraph
in this case too.
When you look closely at the Howard
government’s greenhouse policy - how it evolved, where the
arguments originate - you find that he has consistently
listened to relatively few sources. They are key political
allies inside the Liberal Party; the Bush administration; a
few government departments and a few agencies like ABARE;
Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation(ANSTO),
the chief scientist, and sections of CSIRO focused on clean
coal technology.
He’s listened to; a small group of
conservative commentators; a few conservative think’ tanks;
the work of a small group of innocuous sounding lobbyists
and economists; firms like ACIL Tasman, CRA International,
and ITS Global. He’s heard the top end of town mainly
through an equally innocuous sounding lobby group called the
AustralianIndustry Greenhouse Network.
When you listen closely to these sources, you
hear a complementary mix of denial and delay. Deny the
scientific basis for action and/or delay emission cuts by
Australia. What I found over a decade of work was that
denial and delay were two sides of the same coin and the
coin was coming from the same source as most of the
pollution.
The AIGN represents about a dozen industry
associations and a similar number of multinationals, mostly
foreign owned. They account for Australia’s most carbon
intensive industries: Coal, oil, aluminium, steel, cement,
carmakers, and a few others.
In my PhD research I interviewed over a dozen
senior past and present AIGN executives. They referred to
themselves as the ‘greenhouse mafia’ and it was soon clear
why. They run the country’s greenhouse policy remotely on
behalf of the few industries they represent. They explained,
in great detail, how they fixed the game time and again.
They said they’reverse-managed’the greenhouse
ministerial committee; to stop emissions trading, to prevent
Australia ratifying Kyoto, to avoid greenhouse emissions
triggering federal environmental approval processes and to
water down the Mandatory Renewable Energy Target.
They told how they reverse managed the
broader business community into towing the line of the
biggest polluters and how they got included in Australia’s
official delegation to international greenhouse
negotiations. They even told, on tape, how they were able to
get inside the bureaucracy and help write cabinet
submissions and ministerial briefings and costings on
greenhouse policy.
Before they joined the greenhouse mafia, most
of the lobbyists were once Branch Heads, Assistant
Secretaries or Ministerial Advisers in the industry
portfolio. Their former underlings now ran the relevant
sections of the bureaucracy. So, if the public servant
looked forward to a well paid industry job later on, it made
good sense to go along with the greenhouse mafia bosses.
This dynamic operates right across Howard’s
trusted circle; a blurred line between public, private and
partisan; a shared belief that the interests of the nation
are the same as the interests of carbon intensive
industries.
It’s tempting perhaps to think that the PM is
a victim in all of this, that he has been unwittingly
captured by nefarious vested interests. That was my hope for
quite a while. However, the evidence suggests otherwise.
John Howard’s greenhouse scepticism goes way back. He said
of the UN climate change convention: "We should never have
got on this particular truck in Rio in the first place."
Since about I999 Howard started to take
control of greenhouse policy because polluters felt his
environment ministers were too green. He took over as
chairman of the Cabinet committee overseeing greenhouse
policy, unilaterally announced Australia would not ratify
Kyoto, blocked emissions trading in cabinet twice - once
effectively rolling half a dozen of his ministers after
consulting a group of high polluting industry executives
hand-picked by him. And his 2004 Energy White Paper ticked
off the carbon lobby’s entire list.
He let a greenhouse sceptic run his backbench
environment committee. He intervened in preselections to
keep greenhouse sceptics in parliament. He appointed a coal
industry executive as chief scientist, even allowing him to
keep working three days a week at Rio Tinto. He hired the
same consultants as the carbon lobby to advise him on
greenhouse without any open tender and, when he decided
emissions trading was unavoidable, he let our Australia’s
worst polluting industries design one to their liking, even
seconding the head of the AIGN to his department.
Time and again, he goes out of his way to
give Australia’s ‘carbon club’ their way.
And one of the real problems has been the
people around John Howard.
His Finance minister is an avowed sceptic and
has publicly defended mining industry executives who have
denied the science.
His Industry minister is another sceptic.
When AI Gore visited Australia in 2006, this minister
dismissed Gore’s documentary as incorrect and as nothing
more than entertainment.
His Forestry minister is on record saying
weeds are much more serious than the problem climate change
may or may not be.
The Foreign minister hired as his
speechwriter a conservative columnist who still denies
humans have anything to do with climate change.
His Vocational Education minister, reckons
the science is unproven, the warming we’re seeing mostly
natural. He dismisses climate change as a trendy cause for
lefties, seized since the fall of communism.
His Tourism minister who seriously suggested
shade cloth as a way to save the Barrier Reef from climate
change now says wind power is a fraud that belongs in the
northern hemisphere, not here.
The Chair of Howard’s environment policy
Committee launched a document at Parliament House saying
climate change is a ‘scam’ and even suggesting those in
charge of the (Intergovernmental Panel on climets Change (IPCC)
should be jailed, presumably along with the Nobel Peace
Prizes they now share with AI Gore.
So, many of Howard’s closest colleagues don’t
believe climate change is a real problem caused mainly by
humanity and this response has gone totally unchallenged.
The challenge for John Howard of late has
been what to do now that the public has switched on to
climate change. He’s had to feign a conversion on climate
change while still planning to delay emission cuts in
Australia. Let’s run through what’s being hatched right now:
First, he’s trying to appear to embrace the
idea of emissions reduction targets when in fact he’s
backing three types of target that are distant cousins at
best:
I) emission increase targets like Australia’s
Kyoto target which is non-binding because Australia hasn’t
ratified;
2) regional or global reduction targets that
are non-binding; and
3) targets which will be met anyway, as with
the ‘business as usual’ improvements in energy intensity and
forest cover which were dressed up as targets in the APEC
Sydney Declaration.
Next, Howard is shifting the focus onto
individuals with the’Climate Clever’campaign- which really
ought to be called ‘Climate Conned.’ The more people can be
coaxed into obsessing with their own emissions, the less
likely they are to realise that emissions would rise 60% by
mid century even if Australians cut residential emissions to
zero; or that one million of us could take our cars off the
road tomorrow and just one new aluminium smelter would wipe
out the emissions saved.
Third, Howard’s giving the appearance of
backing renewable energy without doing so. He’s merely
bundled up the existing renewable energy mandates; the
federal one he refused to increase and the state ones he
opposed. Then he’s lumped in existing renewable capacity and
broadened the eligibility to make clean coal and nuclear
qualify. This is now dressed up as a grand I5% renewable
energy target when in fact it’s basically business as usual.
Fourth, he’s giving the appearance of
embracing emissions trading but saying nothing about the
strength of the scheme. Four years before it starts, he’s
calling his ETS the ‘best in the world’ but won’t provide
any of the crucial details which will determine whether the
scheme will actually result in deep cuts in Australia’s
emissions.
He’ll say now that pensioners will be
compensated for the impact of a carbon price on energy bills
but he’s hiding the reason why pensioners will need
compensation and that is that he has allowed our worst
polluting industries to carve themselves from the scheme’s
impact, which according to ABARE roughly doubles the burden
of a carbon price on the rest of the community.
So we have an audacious plan to dress up
business as usual as ‘leading the world’ and so keen are
many in the media to write the ‘Howard back flip on climate
change’ story that most of them have bought it.
So, what about Kevin Rudd and the Labor
Party? Are they going to be any better than John Howard and
the Coalition? Well, Labor has committed to some of the key
steps Australia needs to take to have an effective response
to climate change.
They have committed to long term emissions
reduction target; a 60% reduction in Australia’s emissions
by 2050; Immediate ratification of the Kyoto Protocol; and a
substantial increase in the Mandatory Renewable Energy
Target.
They’ll establish an Emissions Trading Scheme
(ETS) and crucially, one which will be consistent with deep
cuts in Australia’s emissions by mid-century (this is
important because Howard has not tied his scheme to any
emissions reduction target). Labor has also committed to
phasing out new electric hot water systems from 20I0.
And they have also commissioned Ross Garnaut
to conduct the first ever full investigation of the
economics of climate change; finally costing the impacts of
climate change, and incorporating the benefits of emissions
reduction, not just the costs. So there are some good signs
from Labor.
But there are also some areas of concern: The
lack of detail about the strength of the ETS and the
loopholes it may allow big polluters; the lack of a medium
term emissions target; the lack of detail on how much they
plan to increase the renewable energy mandate; and no major
attention yet to adaptation. As well the ALP has its own
sceptics and some of its state governments have been
vulnerable to the same sort of carbon capture we have seen
with John Howard.
With all that in mind, I’m cautiously
optimistic about a Rudd government when it comes to climate
change but I’ll be even more optimistic if the Greens hold
the balance of power in the Senate to keep them on track.
Whatever happens, this issue won’t be fixed on election day
no matter what the result.
So what has to be done to get us back on
track? Well, the first thing is to embrace the idea that
Australia has to do to its own emissions what it expects of
the rest of the world. We have to lead by example.
So we need to abandon the idea that there is
some way around binding emissions reduction targets and
timetables. We need a long term emissions reduction target
consistent with what is required globally and we need a
short-medium term target or target range, knowing that once
we ratify Kyoto we will negotiate a new binding target
covering the next commitment period.
Then we need to establish an emissions
trading scheme that sets a price on emissions sufficient to
stay on track with these targets and doesn’t carve out our
worst polluting industries.
This needs to be complemented with additional
measures for the simple reason that emissions trading is not
a fix-all. To ensure that emission cuts are not merely
outsourced to other parts of the world, we need a much
stronger Renewable Energy mandate and energy efficiency
regulation in various sectors, especially transport.
Unless we do this we may find we are merely a
donor to the global clean energy transition, rather than
part of it. While we’re at it, we need a moratorium on new
coal fired power stations and we need to start rethinking
our involvement in coal mining because this is an industry
which could end up losing the race to become a commercially
viable low emissions technology in time and we need to be
ready for that possibility as a country.
This all needs to be complemented with a
nationally led adaptation policy so that the nation can
start preparing for the huge impacts of climate change-some
of which are inevitable.
And we shouldn’t fall for the myth that doing
the right thing will wreck the economy. Few people
understand that when John Howard tells us that if we cut our
emissions in half it would cut GDP by I0%, what he actually
means is that, according to ABARE’s own projections, in 2050
it would be 246% higher than today rather than 28I % higher.
Similarly when Howard says that real wages would be cut bys
20%, what he means is that they would only be 8I % higher.
We should also keep in mind that the path we
are on, 70% higher emissions by mid century, is simply not a
long term viable option so it’s not a very useful point of
comparison.
So where does this leave Australians? What
can they do. Well here are three suggestions on how you can
be Climate Clever without being Climate Conned into ignoring
the big picture.
#I -.Focus on cutting emissions in ways that
save money: I don’t buy the idea that we need to cut back on
our quality of life to cut emissions. There is too much
evidence to the contrary. If you take up just some of the
easy options then spend a few dollars a week on I00%
renewable energy, you can easily do at the household level
what is required globally and be financially better off. If
you go to the long version of this presentation on my
website you’ll see lots of specific suggestions;
#2 - Start your own adaptation planning: Just
because government is abrogating its responsibility doesn’t
mean we should too and we need to realize that the impacts
of climate change affect all sorts of equations in our own
lives from where we live to what careers we choose. Once
again, on my website and in the book you’ll find more
suggestions on what we can do as individuals.
#3 Use your political clout: Our own efforts
are wasted unless we also force change at the political and
corporate levels. We have to vote on this issue and judge
political parties on whether the cumulative effect of their
policy is to cut Australia’s emissions in line with the deep
cuts required globally; and whether they are preparing
Australia for the inevitable impacts of climate change.
And don’t think your political clout is
confined to the ballot box or to this election. We need to
keep pushing by joining and supporting environmental
organizations at all levels, writing to politicians at all
levels and to business leaders too, raising awareness in the
workplace, with community groups, and among family and
friends.
If enough of us are truly’climate clever’ in
these ways and not merely ‘climate conned into ignoring the
big picture, we will move the bounds of acceptability for
governments and industry and make delay less and less viable
for the few interests it serves.
And not wasting one’s political clout seems
an appropriate place for me to end.
They say you are supposed to get more and
more conservative as you get older and I was not a very
radical young man. In fact when I was introduced at a
Liberal Party meeting by a Townsville City Alderman in 1989
I was described as ’2I going on 40’.
Well in a couple of weeks I turn 40, and if
you’d said to me at the age of 2I that, in 2007, I would be
working hand in hand with Greenpeace or giving such a
politically seditious speech during an election campaign at
an event like this, I would have given you pretty amazing
odds.
But such is life and such is the gravity of
the challenge presented by climate change to this generation
and those who follow us. It is forcing many people already,
to challenge conventional or partisan assumptions, and,
inevitably, it means doing things we never imagined possible
to prevent equally unimaginable harm.
Hopefully my own actions of late will help
others to seize that challenge and to confront the many
other threats to our environment.
(back to the top)
Whoops, Bill Nighy's glasses are skewiff, hold the presses -
and what's that you said? Saudi oil expert reckons
we're cactus? Nah, can that . . .
(back to the top)
Date: 4/11/2007 10:47:14 AM
Subject: Bill Nighy & Sadad
al-Husseini
|
|
|
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From Kim Bax, to David Fagan
Hi again David,
Looking forward to a formal response on my
formal questions, but in the meantime I wonder
if you realise that oil depletion is an evolving
story, that's certainly not "Done and dusted" in
one headline?
And I'm genuinely scratching my head as to how
and why you think the angle of Bill Nighy's
glasses is more important than Sadad al-Husseini's
recent comments, as reported on the Reuters news
wire (30th Oct 2007):-
"Sadad al-Husseini was a key
architect of Saudi Arabian energy production
policy for more than a decade whilst a top
official at state oil firm Saudi Aramco. He was
even more pessimistic, saying world oil
production had already plateaued.
"We are already three years into
level production," Husseini also told the annual
Oil & Money conference, a gathering of top
executives."
http://africa.reuters.com/wire/news/usnL30807475.html
. . . Considering T. Boone Pickens is
saying
the same thing, as is a
detailed new report
commissioned by the German Government (both
items reported, though not in your
paper, towards the end of October 2007)?
I believe this was also discussed at the
recent
ASPO conference in Houston (and T. Boone
Pickens was there), a gathering of oil experts
from around the Planet. But I DO
understand David, why an earth
would your paper report on (or send a
correspondent to), such a trivial event when
Bill Nighy's glasses are falling off his face,
Kirsty Hinze is in town and Tom Cruise has a new
film out. Completely understandable.
Best wishes, Kim
(back to the top)
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Andrew
Bolt's take on a John Cleese classic - "Don't mention the
bourse"
(back to the top)
Andy's blog:-
http://blogs.news.com.au/couriermail/andrewbolt/index.php/couriermail/comments/some_zionist_conspiracy/
My added comment:-
"Ah, that "Don't mention the new
Iranian oil bourse" thing again, or the fact OPEC is also
flirting with dumping the US dollar"
. . . though I
won't hold my breadth when it comes to seeing that
allowed on Andy's blog (though I could be pleasantly
surprised? who knows . . .) - and yep, I was
pleasantly surprised (thanks Andrew). No reply
though Andy?
(back to the top)