Combining ministerial responsibility for energy and the environment — now the fiefdom of Josh “Future Leader of the Liberal Party” Frydenberg — makes a lot of sense. As Australian Climate Foundation CEO Kelly O’Shanassy tells Crikey today:
“We know that in the 21st century you can’t have coal and healthy reefs. So it means the one person has to look at greenhouse emissions coming from the way we produce our energy and look at the impact those greenhouse emissions have on the places we love, and that Australians want protected.”
But any hope environmental groups had around this government getting serious about climate change were, typically, met with an immediate reality check. Here’s new National Party cabinet member and Resources Minister Matthew Canavan’s garbled climate take on Sky News yesterday:
“There is a level of uncertainty about the impact of carbon emissions. Indeed, in the last IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] report, the level of confidence reduced in the forcing effect of carbon emissions.
“There is a lot about the climate system we don’t understand, a lot of assumptions we have to make with projections of course. I just feel we should all be a little more humble about our climate and our system.
“To think that we know it all and exactly how to fine tune the temperature, to talk of half a degree of temperature that we could somehow manage that and hit that target, we don’t understand all the impacts.”
It’s about the known unknowns, see. Or something. Know this: members like Canavan will nobble Malcolm Turnbull at every climate turn.
This is not skepticism and these clowns are not skeptics. Skepticism is fundamental to the practice of science, including the peer reviewed climate science that underpins the various IPCC reports.
What the liberal party clowns are engaging is simply politics (which has scientific credibility as creationism). Don’t do them the honour of describing it as skepticism.
Akshally it is skepticism – straight out of the Benighted States and the foul Heartland Institute.
On tuther hand, scepticism is indeed “fundamental to the practice of science”.
Canavan probably thinks his anti-abortion friend in the sky can be relied upon to deal with a warming planet.
Humility before our climate then doesn’t mean we shouldn’t throw as much carbon at it as our shovels can dig up?
Making the rather big assumption there, that Turnbull genuinely wants to do something meaningful in regards to climate policy.
I suppose that it could have been worse, giving Environment, like Water Resources, to Barnaby Rudge.
It’s a clever move giving Josh Frydenberg this twinned challenge. He’s not a dill and full of ambitious drive, and the argument about CC isn’t a matter of debating the science any more, it’s a simple matter of not missing out on the big global money shifts. The energy-financial world has moved so far ahead of Australia on this that yesterday men like Canavan will simply get steamrolled by the global suits. There is no money in coal now. It’s done, and the CC denialists are the horse-drawn cart nostalgists of our time. Sidestep them politely and move on.
With this dual portfolio Frydenberg will be forced to choose between the fiscal suicide of hanging the country’s energy shingle off retrograde lunacies like the Katter-Adani-Carmichael Express, or embracing renewables and battery technology etc at last, at which Oz could – if we chose – excel on a global scale ie make a frigging fortune. It’s actually going to heaps of fun watching one of the Coalition’s best performers patiently explaining to good ol’ country Bob et al that unless they want to blow vast wads of cash like a bunch of hickbilly dupes, they’d better start paying attention to the world’s climate scientists or, if that’s too much, then at least those hardheaded and far-sighted energy disruption industrialists like Elon Musk who have been for decades now.
I only hope that Josh takes good care to employ staff in his new ministerial office who are well versed in the proper handling of classified material. Some of the new energy technology is of course very, very sensitive, and the corporate world tends to take leaks of commercial-in-confidence files far, far more seriously than, for example, the AFP, in times of war. Apparently.
Knock those energy dinosaurs outta the park in those cabinet debates, Fryds!