With global warming passing 1 degree and inarguably contributing to the recent, devastating bushfires, Australia’s politicians are falling over themselves to avoid blame for their inaction.
Crikey checks in to see how they’re all going…
We haven’t had the capacity to easily access reduction burns because of all of the paperwork that is part of [Greens] policy.
Barnaby Joyce
Joyce was joined by Steve Price, Miranda Devine, and a single politically useful hippy in blaming the Greens’ fuel reduction policies. It’s a furphy in that a) the Greens support controlled burns; b) the party has not had the power to reduce them; and c) fire authorities have already conducted them, but were restricted by earlier than normal fires and cuts from the NSW Coalition government.
Joyce also threw the sun’s magnetic fields into the mix. Never stop muddying the waters, Barnaby!
We are making sure we meet all our international obligations.
Michael McCormack
Alongside his attacks on “raving inner city lunatics”, the deputy prime minister repeated Scott Morrison’s (false) claim that Australia will meet its Paris target (even with our credit cheat).
[The Bureau of Meteorology is rewriting records] to fit in with the global warming agenda.
Gerard Rennick
Sky News reporter Tom Connell did a terrific job of fact-checking Rennick’s claim from March, forcing the Liberal senator to admit he hadn’t bothered to read BOM’s explanation for data homogenisation, just a conspiracy theory from an IPA wonk at The Spectator.
Tony Abbott didn’t deny climate change … and there is no one in the government who doesn’t accept it.
Jason Falinski
Almost everything the moderate Liberal tried to spin on Q&A has been called out as false: that emissions and energy prices are falling; there are no denialists in the Coalition; the government isn’t trying to subsidise new coal power; and that Labor’s Renewable Energy Target had nothing to do with recent investment growth.
If Australia hadn’t repealed the Gillard government’s carbon tax would we have been spared the current fires?
Alexander Downer
The former foreign minister tried to deflect from Australia’s (and particularly the Coalition’s) inaction by deploying the tired “what difference would it make?” defence. Of course, literally no one is claiming that Australia is the sole contributor to climate change, just that the world’s largest coal exporter should maybe have a climate policy beyond “magic dirt“.
If it weren’t for the Green party’s political opportunism in 2009-10, we would now be 10 years into an emissions trading scheme…
Kevin Rudd
Rather than take the fight to the party responsible for five years of emissions increases, Rudd, Joel Fitzgibbon and Craig Emerson have all complained about the Greens’ “hypocrisy” for rejecting the 2009 Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.
Nevermind that the scheme was a) condemned by climate experts for its generosity to polluters and “pathetically low” target b) shelved by Rudd himself after being knocked back twice by the Senate c) replaced with an extremely effective, Labor-Greens carbon price in 2011 or d) happened a goddamn decade ago.
If we want a PM who burns for us the collateral damage of a few bushfires is a price worth paying. Sarcasm intended.
We’ve wasted decades when we could have been mitigating these effects : because these fossil fuel dependent fossil fools (political and their media pimps) have been in power, and continue to be there, as they play to the fears of a demographic that doesn’t want to look at a bigger picture, that doesn’t want to countenence a future afflicted by such a profligacy of a resource that was cheaper exploit and burn than alternatives with less down-side.
The Greens defence that the Rudd CPRS was inadequate is self serving; as Gough Whitlam said, only the impotent are pure. If it had been passed, that at least would have been a start, Tony Abbott would not have been gifted the opportunity to knock off Malcolm Turnbull, and we wouldn’t have had a decade of anti-climate change rhetoric and inaction from the Coalition. Tony Abbott’s political resurrection is one of the unintended consequences of that short sighted decision of the Greens.
I agree with you Rob – the Greens showed lamentable foresight in judging the power of the fossil fuel funded LNP/IPA coalition to undermine and nobble any kind of progress toward climate action…the opportunity of the CPRS should have thankfully grabbed with both hands as a foot in the door to firmer action in the near future.
I reckon they should show some remorse over the debacle that has ensued, and give up their never ending sniping at Labor, and focus instead on cooperation to try and bring a swift end to this denialist nightmare.
Yep, the foot in the door argument, but it would not have developed from there, and would have been gamed by the money market boys in 2 seconds.
It’s specious to argue this was pivotal when a better scheme emerged 2 years later.
Labor supporters also should acknowledge that it was Rudd who squibbed it, not taking it to a double dissolution. Him blaming the greens is laughable.
Yes the Greens may have allowed their wish for something better to block somthing that was at least better than nothing. Probably a mistake. But under Gillard an effective carbon price was established with Greens support and it was working. Then the Coalition abolished it and established a system of giving money to polluters. Under the carbon price our carbon emissions decreased. Since its the Coalition abolished it emissions have resumed their climb. Labor and the Greens could have done better but we’re now into the seventh year of a Coalition that abolished the good that they did manage to achieve. Isn’t it time to look at that and hold the Coalition to account for the harm it’s doing?
That’s such BS Rob. Australia lost 2 years of an emissions scheme that was a poorly designed mechanism, and more than made up for the lost years with a much more effective scheme that was working.
It’s a re-write of history with no purpose, except perhaps settling scores between feuding brothers. Enough of the whinging, the article gives this sufficient coverage.
We actually had the best of all possible schemes in place. That is the important point. The LNP ratbags tore it down. All other conjectures veer into windbaggery.
I think you have missed my point. I was not arguing about the merits of various ways to lower emissions. Rather, I was saying that the Greens enabled Abbott to topple Turnbull as Opposition Leader, as a by-product of their decision to oppose the CPRS. That decision may have been sound or not, but the unintended consequence was the disaster that was Abbott as PM, and his demonising climate change.
Have you thought that Turnbull’s negotiations with a newly-elected Labor government was anathema to Abbott and his extreme right colleagues, on any topic at all? The CPRS was just a sprat to catch the mackerel. The Greens were incidental – Turnbull was a very skilled negotiator and his success there was to produce a “Clayton’s CPRS”.
My anger is caused by the continual bleat that Australia can’t do much about greenhouse emissions.
Yes, that is largely true.
What annoys me is using that as an excuse and BS for not doing anything much.
If the media and pollies would deal with the problem AS IT EXISTS NOW, we could be a lot better off.
Sure deal with greenhouse emissions as well, but that is a long term project. I believe it’s too late anyway.
However DO SOMETHING NOW – not just waffle and pray. Train the Military in bushfire fighting, increase firefighting assets, reward volunteers better to attract more. get drought mitigation programs underway, stop the bloody infighting between pollies and departments and advisors. Stuff the “budget surplus”, it’s an emergency get moving.
If the enemy was bombing Darwin would Scumo and Co. be saying ” now is not the time to be talking about it”?
Again back to that cartoon,
Panel 1 ; Scumo on his knees praying ” Please God send some help with the drought. Panel 2 ; a voice from the clouds ” I already sent you 23000 scientists”.
I still hear many political commentators, even some that I would consider moderate, claim that we would have today a carbon (dioxide) pollution reduction scheme had the Greens not rejected it in 2009. It is true that the Greens were unhappy with the CPRS agreed between Rudd and Turnbull, because it was vulnerable to rorting, as many environmental scientists had pointed out. The Greens were negotiating with Labor to amend the scheme, without much success, but Abbott was totally opposed and overthrew Turnbull just before the vote. If the Greens had supported Labor’s CPRS, sure it would have passed, but was now condemned by the Abbott opposition. Do people really believe that Abbott, once in power, would have not overthrown the CPRS, as he did later with the so-called “carbon tax”?
Abbott was only able to overthrow Turnbull because the Greens would not support the CPRS. At the time, Rudd was negotiating the Coalition’s support in the Senate, because the Greens were opposed. This gave Abbott the ability to unite the anti-Turnbull anti-climate change forces in the Coalition. The rest, unfortunately, is history.
That’s a very truncated ‘history’ you’re invoking there. No mention of Rudd’s dummy-spitting, hot-potato-dropping performance after the Paris conference failure. For a more nuanced account, which doesn’t flinch from the Greens’ ‘wrong call’ on the second vote on the CPRS but nails Rudd properly, read Paddy Manning from last Friday’s Monthly. I think you can read one free article.
https://www.themonthly.com.au/today/paddy-manning/2019/15/2019/1573787713/2009-forever
The Greens offered to support the bill, with merely 3 amendments. Rudd point blank refused to even countenance the amendments.
This is not the way that I read the history. Some claim that the Green’s stance was an example of the perfect being the enemy of the good. Rather, I believe that it was the good being the enemy of the poor. If Rudd had persisted and negotiated with the Greens it could have passed, but he threw in the towel. Abbott and right wing supporters are to blame for the lack of carbon mitigation policy today.
Exactly right Rob G – and maybe also Labor didn’t like being called ‘arsonists’ by the Greens. The CPRS rejection happened at a critical time for climate change. The ‘pure minded’ Greens displayed a habitual attitude that explains why they fail to make any real progress as a party and effectively disrupt the left of politics. They would rather grandstand than compromise and achieve the possible
“The CPRS rejection happened at a critical time for climate change.”
FFS, that takes the cake. This will take centuries to unwind. Current temperature changes are the result of carbon emissions up to the 80’s, there’s about a 40 year lag. There was nothing critical about 2009 compared to 2011.
Of course the timing was critical for ‘climate change policy in Australia’, if you need it to be spelt out in simple precise words. If the CPRS had been introduced in 2009, it would have been in place for four years if and when Abbott got in. It was introduced by a government that had a very comfortable lower-house majority, and Abbott’s claims about the world falling in would have been seen for the scaremongering they were. There would have been no need to push for a carbon tax and this is why CML’s ‘conjecture’ below is very reasonable, not ‘amazing’.
Let’s face it – the Greens blew a great chance. The statement above is typical of an approach that attempts to portray those with opposing ideas as idiots, while leaving the real enemies unscathed.