One of the striking elements about the public’s belief in climate change that emerges from today’s Essential Report findings is its highly politicised nature.
Only 34% of Liberal voters believe climate change is caused by humans; 55% believe climate change is purely natural. It’s almost a straight reversal of community sentiment overall — 50% of voters believe climate change is human caused and 39% don’t. Greens voters, in contrast, rather strongly believe in man-made climate change.
The framing of climate change as an issue of political ideology has been one of the more successful achievements of those opposed to taking action. Climate change, like environmental conservation, is not an issue that belongs to one side of politics or the other. As Malcolm Turnbull likes to note, Margaret Thatcher was one of the earliest politicians to call for action to address a warming planet. Indeed, at the 2007 election both sides of Australian politics were committed to an emissions trading scheme; John Howard, as he’s often reminded, was committed to “the most comprehensive emissions trading scheme in the world”.
But the framing of climate change as a left-wing issue guarantees reflexive opposition from many on the Right, for whom rejecting the need to address climate change — indeed, rejecting its existence per se — becomes a matter of partisan faith rather than common sense.
I’d hazard a guess that the 55% of Liberal climate sceptic voters are also of a certain age-group – Tony Abbott’s age and over – only worried about their share portfolios.
One could be forgiven for wondering if the sole motivation of Climate Change deniers is if an idea emerges which has a whiff of the intangible about it. Slap a left-wing label on it, get out the spurs and ride it into the ground. (When do the Andrew Bolts of this world ever produce an idea of their own?)
Whether or not our predicament is man made is not of paramount importance. What is of paramount importance is the world is fu^cked, and something has to be done about it. Putting a left-wing label on the problem is just another excuse to do nothing. Which is, of course, what the right-wing is all about.
Something else to ponder while remembering (while some will tell us what a man of resolve he was) in conjunction with that “commitment” from our “Mr Slinky – Man of Steal”, was his “timing”. So far behind in the polls at that point in ’07 – after 11 years of studied ignorance he also dove into his bag of red herrings for “commitments” to “help” the “Murray-Darling”, and “Intervention”, after more than a decade of neglect of Aborigines, as well as that “committal” to an ETS – he was also “Non-core Promises Man”.
KLEWSO: With all humility I beg you. Not dove- it’s an Americanism- dived. Please?
Our Man of Steel was the encapsulation of conservative thought. Get into a good position. Do nothing. Scream blue murder about the Labor party. Undermine all progressive thought and bring in an even greater slice of the pie to his supporters. Go on a lecture tour. Love foreign royalty. Kowtow to Britain and America. What a forlorn CV.
Surely the fact that the world refuses to warm has something to do with the continued general fall in support, along with the lack of all the PROJECTED disasters, the farce of Copenhagen, the IPCC errors and those “hide the decline” climategate emails. I note that only 47% of Americans now believe in man made climate change. Belief will surely fall to a minority in Australia soon too.
The conservative/progressive split comes because the progressive side of politics has invested so much in this particular bandwagon. The conservative side has been more reticent so its supporters have been more sceptical and generally don’t like governments trying to change peoples behaviour.
Nonetheless, when the climate-scare was at it’s peak back in 06/07 many conservatives also climbed on board. But the errors shown up in the science since then have made it easier for conservatives to jump off and let the bandwagon crash headlong into reality as it is doing right now.