Just like history never ended, the climate wars roll on.
Science and the weather might be catching up with the nattering nabobs of negativity, to cite the delightful phrase used by former US vice-president Spiro Agnew towards Congressional critics of Richard Nixon, but the relentless politics of the predominant divisive issue of our times stand as an immovable roadblock to settlement.
About a century ago another American politician — with a real identity disputed — said the first casualty of war was truth. Again the maxim holds in the contests over climate. People have their own sets of facts and data, and conclusions are consistent only in the disputes surrounding them.
All players in the latest skirmishes of the climate wars in Canberra in recent weeks are claiming fundamentalism that seemingly defies progress.
The Coalition says Labor policies are inflationary and add new taxes; Labor says Coalition intransigence will herald a repeat of the death of Kevin Rudd’s carbon price in 2009; the Greens insist their purity was right 13 years ago and will be right again as they demand “no new coal or gas projects, full stop”.
As well as the regular mishmash of lies and half-truths, a new assumption has come into view. At best it’s questionable.
The Greens — especially the trio of new House of Representatives MPs who scored three inner-Brisbane seats (two from Labor, one from the LNP) last May — reckon their electoral success in 2021 had climate action as its bedrock.
There’s no doubt climate played a big part. The seats of Griffith, Ryan and Brisbane are the most prosperous electorates in Queensland, all featuring multimillion-dollar homes with “Climate Action Now” signs on their fences or hanging from upper decks.
This affluence brings the luxury of concern about climate — concern that’s genuine but not based on the absolutist approach of “stop all mining now” demanded by Greens Leader Adam Bandt and his Brisbane cheerleader Max Chandler-Mather (the MP for Griffith).
The swings enjoyed by the Greens in the three Brisbane seats mainly sat around 5% or 6% in a majority of booths. The bigger swings were in the parts of each electorate easily characterised as more wealthy (predominantly in low double figures but nudging 20% at some polling places).
The other factor inflating swings to the Greens wasn’t anything as urgently altruistic as climate action. The Greens try to ignore the fact climate action was a second order issue in these inner-city electorates, especially in some of those streets and communities where the anti-Coalition sentiment was greatest. In these parts, aircraft noise was just as much a driving vote changer and it remains the chief complaint and concern among many voters.
Chandler-Mather and his colleague Stephen Bates (MP for Brisbane) will hear it forcefully on Thursday evening at a community strategy meeting in Brisbane’s best known pub, the Breakfast Creek.
Bates deserves credit for organising the meeting but sentiment among residents is not going to be a lot of sympathy for his refrain of “I’m on your side and fighting for you”.
The common response is that the Greens were elected with “Stop Aircraft Noise” as a critical rallying cry and many voters think not enough (if anything) has been done. Brisbane voters say blaming the government for inaction has a fairly short shelf life. The reality is aircraft noise in Brisbane has been a contentious issue since the airport was expanded almost 40 years ago.
The problem has become entrenched ever since, with a final barrier to change happening when Labor was last in government in Canberra and Anthony Albanese was the infrastructure minister with responsibility for airports.
Another reality check in all this is the exposure of the Greens as the preeminent populist party in Canberra. As we’ve seen with climate action, they take unrealistic absolutist positions and then demagogue the other side. It’s the same populism they’re playing on public housing and infrastructure — two ambitious government programs built on the earnings from multibillion-dollar investment funds.
Chandler-Mather sounded more like (former radical leftist British Labour leader) Jeremy Corbyn than a Bob Brown figure when he railed against the sharemarket earlier this month while explaining the Greens’ refusal to support Labor’s social housing policy based on a $10 billion investment fund.
It’s still to be seen whether the Greens will repeat the historical error of Brown and his colleagues in 2009 when they voted with Tony Abbott to demolish the Rudd government’s carbon pricing mechanism, condemning Australia to a decade of inaction, indecision and investment uncertainty.
It is also going to look inelegant to say the least if Bandt, Chandler-Mather and the rest of the Greens side with Peter Dutton and the Coalition to stop any expansion of federally funded housing for the socially disadvantaged, women living in danger, and others unable to access shelter.
These are hard decisions for Bandt and his colleagues who feel pressure from an activist base empowered by the overhyped “Green-slide” of May last year.
Sometimes smart politics is about recognising a win for the community at large, owning it and reaping the rewards. If the Greens want to build on the success they enjoyed in May 2022 they should play a longer, smarter game and reject the easy path of Trumpy populism.
Hmmmmm……………..
From the general tone and plethora of derogatory remarks, I’d say the author is a confirmed Climate Change Denier.
Did the Teal revolution somehow pass him by?
Did it not register that previously Blue-Riband Liberal seats fell to candidates who unanimously wanted real action on Climate Change, like RIGHT NOW?
Did he somehow miss the multiple nationwide polls that all show that the (large) majority of Australians want real action?
Far from “explaining” why the Greens should go soft on action (and I just don’t get the “Trump” aspersion – sounds remarkably far-fetched) the author simply devolves to shouting antediluvian LNP slogans.
Reads more like a thesis on why the “Climate Wars” should persist…………..
Perhaps he has a large shareholding in a coal company.
great, great comment. utterly on-point. thanx thuc.
why are you so frightened of publishing my comment, eric beecher?
The bot is having a bad day today. Refusing to publish some of mine, no matter how I re-word them.
I had a similar experience today, with a post of one short sentence that contained no words anyone would suggest were likely to cause any problems, and that includes any ‘bad’ words hidden inside an otherwise innocent word (such as past tense of ‘control’) and no names of anyone. My best guess is that it was snapped up by the ModBot because it consisted of exactly 13 words, so, well, you know… 13? Ooh… scary.
I had the same problem over several weeks; perhaps the people who designed robodebt designed Crikey’s algorithms ?
Once you’re on the blacklist, it can take days to rectify. I ended up emailing Crikey after not being able to post anything at all for several days.
Atkins formerly worked for Brisbane’s Courier-Mail a Murdoch paper
From their Bowen Hills Bolt-hole.
Agree Thucydides. Having read some of Atkins articles in Crikey, he seems to come from the new Australian journalistic tradition of reporting his opinions rather than looking at what’s happening on the ground. He doesn’t compare well to the rest of the Crikey stable.
To quote just one example – breezily referring to the Greens position on the CPRS as a “historical error” without acknowledging that this position is at least contested, much less one of THE most contested debates in Australian politics over the last 15 years.
The position may well be contested, even hotly contested, but insofar as the politics are concerned, it is a decision that only the Greens contest. What the majority of punters accept is that the Greens sided with the cons to deny a piece of legislation, that while far from being perfect, was still an incremental advance by the Labor government in a parliament that had rejected ALL previous attempts to control emissions and a voting public that did not support the Greens’ stance.
Their vote went down and stayed down for years – so was it a mistake ? Perhaps in a perfect world, yes, but politically, a huge mistake.
That’s because the entire political and media establishment has spent the last decade pretending the Gillard Government never existed.
Repeat a lie often enough, and it becomes truth.
It’s just wrong to say Rudd’s bill “was still an incremental advance by the Labor government”. The bill was good as it started, and the Greens supported it accordingly. But Rudd incrementally weakened it until its final iteration had so many loopholes and offered so much compensation it became an incentive to increase pollution. The Greens had to oppose it because it was a bill that would do real harm. Unlike the major parties parties who treat all this as a game played for partisan advantage, the Greens recognise that policies have real-world consequences.
Rudd, to his eternal disgrace, had lost sight of his greatest moral cause of our time because he sensed he could use the bill as a wedge on the opposition. So he played that tawdry game by trashing his own legislation, and his reward was that his mutilated-beyond-recognition bill failed and Turnbull was replaced by Abbott. So at least he succeeded in getting the Liberals to put somebody totally unelectable in charge of their party, which secured Labor many more years in office. Ah… remind me, how did that work out?
Not to mention that Labor refused to even speak to the Greens about the CPRS.
Bernard Keane’s analysis still the most clear-eyed on this entire debacle.
https://uat.crikey.com.au/2019/12/02/labors-cprs-nostalgia/
My conclusion exactly. The line that begins
is enough on its own to expose Atkins’ position. Anyone who imagines that the results of glabal warming will not be catastrophic for us all has no idea what is happening and where it is headed. There is no question of any ‘luxury’ in this. It is a basic question of survival for every one of us over coming decades, except perhaps those who, already old, will die before the worst of it.
affluence buys you insulation, AC, double-glazing, solar-panels, new non-gas stoves and water heaters etc – it’s the poor who will suffer most as the temperatures soar
Affluence also buys you a riverside home in the Brisbane or Ryan electorates, and consequently a keen interest in the likelihood of said home being flooded. The voters may be well off, but their concerns about climate are just as valid as anybody else’s. Not wanting to end up homeless is not a “luxury of concern about climate”.
The luxury on display here appears to be Dennis Atkins’ luxury to stand back and belittle people who are attempting to do something about a massive problem. It looks a lot like the way that Murdoch hacks attempt to characterise anybody who makes any sort of sacrifice or demonstrates the empathy they can’t themselves understand as “virtue signallers”. It’s so much easier to do that than trying to be a better person yourself.
Affluence also buys you a sea view from a big house which will be the first to be drowned.
On that subject, you might be interested in The Atlantic‘s website article, Every Coastal Home Is Now a Stick of Dynamite; Wealthy homeowners will escape flooding. The middle class can’t, by Jake Bittle
It won’t buy you insulation from the anarchy that will result from a disintegrating society.
True enough, but what else are private armies for?
Useful for biding some time (and creating a false sense of long-term security).
And gated communites.
It probably will for as long as it needs to.
No shortage of places in the world already where the rich live in walled estates.
Those walled estates had better be completely sealed off and off-grid to cope with the apocalypse – independent in power, sewerage, fuel, water, food, manufacturing, slaves.
Why ? They aren’t/weren’t in other places and times. The same people that live in them just need to make sure they’re the ones in control of the essential and strategic resources (like the ones you mention) as well – which broadly speaking, they do.
I read it to mean that it was a luxury for the wealthy about whom Atkins was writing to take that position. A luxury we well know that the wealthy flout with their high consumption, aircraft travel, etc. etc.
Criticising The Greens? My God – cancel him now and resort to ad hominem attacks and ludicrous claims that he has a large shareholding in a coal company.
He is talking utter bollocks.
I reserve the right to cancel anyone who talks utter bollocks.
You have a problem with that?
I agree that you have the right, but if you do choose to cancel, then at least do it from a rational basis, not just from animus.
I find the talking of bollocks to be an entirely rational reason………..
……….it is an avoidable waste of perfectly good air, it wastes my time reading it, it uses up perfectly good brain cell storage that could be more usefully applied elsewhere.
A bit like every single thing that Trump ever did or said.
Mmmm. I haven’t minded Dennis’s offering so far but this article could have been Grundle (minus the verbose, purple prose).
Where’s Bernard Keane when you need him? Greens = Trump-like populism? We wouldn’t get nonsense like that from Bernard.
https://www.themonthly.com.au/the-politics/rachel-withers/2023/02/21/climate-cover
Much better than Dennis.
You can show me polls of people wanting real change on climate change but tell me what the polls look like when the question is “would you like real climate change if energy prices go up and the grid is less reliable with renewables” Results are going to be way less positive. The key to polls is what question is actually asked.
That said, having new and more coal projects and land clearing make me nervous but I’d have to know if we actually need these projects to “get by” or is this just greedy people trying to cash out the last reserves of coal.
If you ‘ just don’t get the “Trump” aspersion’. then I suggest that is indicative of your whole approach to what to me seemed a fairly even-handed approach to the politics curently being played by the Greens.
Your assumptions about Atkins’ stance on climate change may be true, but nothing he has written is evidence of such. Or is it just the ‘vibe’ informing your views ?
What is it about Greens and a large number of commentators that they cannot rationally dissect and rationally criticise the subject, rather than just attacking the messenger ? Your ad hominem attack reveals more about your views than it sheds light on Atkins’.
A good indication of how far it is off the track of rationality is that has commendations from Jack Robertson.
You miss the point……………
………as with a lot of “opinion” pieces, what is NOT said is equally important.
Atkins failed to even intimate that the Greens result was reflective of a far wider-ranging (and for the Liberals – terminal) concern being expressed not only by traditional Green voters – but previously solidly Liberal supporters.
Trying to suggest that their result was purely the result of a local aircraft noise issue is naive in the extreme.
Or deliberately deceptive.
Either way, it was pure bollocks.
You’re looking in a mirror mate. The vast majority of criticism of the Greens is irrational nonsense and, as I said earlier, the biggest and most reliable giveaway that any given piece will be just another pointless Greens-bashing screed by someone desperate to constrain political discussion to Libs & Labor is a mention of the CPRS.
Criticising and ignoring the purveyors of these templated fart-sniffing exercises is the complete opposite of “shooting the messenger”.
There is literally nothing in the article above that is new, insightful or analytic. With minor edits it could have been written just about any time in the last decade, and would have been equally useless then.
There is plenty to criticise the Greens about, this is pretty lazy though. Firstly, times and climate have moved on since 2013. It’s not a ‘luxury’ to be concerned about Climate Change. Ask the people who were fried by the 19/20 fires, washed out by the floods around Lismore, the Kimberley and elsewhere, devestated by the cylone and flooding in New Zealand. It’s a ‘comfortable commentariat class’ meme to think being freaked out about these increasing extreme events is a ‘luxury’. The only ‘luxury’ here is journos to lazy to move beyond a few one liners they habitually trot out. Especially when the research shows climate extremes impact the poor and Indigenous groups hardest, unsurprisingly. There is a million things Labor can do short of ‘closing down all coal and gas mining overnight’ which by the way the Greens are not asking for. As for the social housing approach, it’s clear that direct govt funding of social housing AS WE USED TO DO via Housing Commissions and other means, is proven to deliver quality housing fast. But the govts limp ‘market based’ solution will probably go the way of most, costing an absolute bomb to make a marginal positive influence. If journos did their homework more rather than relying on lazy tropes about ‘perfect is the enemy of the good’ we might actually get a real policy debate and some progress. Start listing the additional things Labor could do short of the ‘complete shut down of everything’ falsity youre peddling. You’ll find there’s a hell of a lot. And you don’t have to be a Greens fan to understand that.
The ALP’s social housing “plan” is to encourage super funds to invest in it, amounting largely to “thoughts and prayers” as a brilliant solution to a problem. Their sustainability “solution” is to let miners get away with throwing a pittance (yes, the money has a lot of zeros and looks impressive, but it’s token amounts for the big polluters) towards a scheme that has been shown not to do achieve anything worthwhile.
The perfect may be the enemy of the good, but so also is the greenwash the enemy of the effective.
The International Energy Agency reports that 2022 was the first year that governments’ support for fossil fuel companies reached one trillion dollars US. Also that in 2023 more coal will be burnt than in any previous year. It seems reasonable for someone to mention that we need no new coal, gas or oil projects. In fact, it seems insane to say that we need them, as do the ALP and LNP. To vote for them is to hop on the “Destination Stupidity” bus. No?
So without access to gas, how do we transition to renewables before 2027, the date given by the experts for the closure of most of Australia’s coal-fired power stations ? I’m genuinely interested.
Read the AEMO report, which confirms that we ALREADY have sufficient gas generation to support 85% renewable electricity.
Don’t forget that during the term of the previous “government”, gas production TREBLED.
Unfortunately, with no gas reservation policy, and export contracts being wildly oversold, the local price ALSO trebled.
There is NO shortage of gas – there is a deficit in the backbone department.
We have access to gas. We have access to more gas than we will ever need.
Pity we get almost nothing for it……………….
………..still, I suppose that would be “Better Economic Management”.
Ho ho ho! That isn’t a “transition to renewables”, it is a “transition to gas”. The bean counters would quickly discover that renewables backed by OCGT gas is about as gas-efficient as 100% CCGT, gas by itself.
It is true that backing renewables requires dispatchable sources. Backing could be done with nonfossil nuclear, and plenty of Australians believe that we can avoid both gas and nuclear by using energy storage. There is no excuse for continuing to use fossil gas.
So when someone uses the term “gas is a transition fuel”, ask them, “transition to what?” Because you and I know they intend to keep using fossil gas forever.
Good post.
The Greens may not have complete immediate closure on the table, but it is their policy and they did try it on.
When ?
It’s good that vapid screeds like this usually mention the CPRS early on, so you know the author doesn’t have anything intelligent or useful to say.
Magnificent!
Atkin’s article seems based on dishonesty. Quote, “based on the absolutist approach of “stop all mining now” demanded by Greens Leader Adam Bandt”, isn’t factual. It is not the Greens position and not what Bandt has said. The Greens position is simply to not open any new coal or gas mines.
I wish the idiots would learn that you do not have gas mines. It sounds dopey, you have wells.
Well, gas being neither a liquid nor solid both “Mine” and “Well” seem inappropriate. How about, “Gas field”? Seems to work for most people.
The field is the area where the resources are located. To produce any fluid (liquid, gas or both together) a well is required.
because they were.
Garbage. Campaigning against any new coal mines, which climate scientists agree that we need to do now, is not even close to “stop all mining now”.
Grown-ups can do more than one thing at once.
The author’s alternative reality, like Kellyanne Conway’s “alternative facts”, The real resemblance to Trump is obvious, and it ain’t the Greens.
“because they were.”
Yeah that last decade was great for environmental outcomes, real good job there.
“Grown-ups can do more than one thing at once.”
What environmental and aircraft noise related outcomes have The Greens achieved this term?
Quite literally the only aircraft noise related outcome I can think of is Little Johnny Eyebrows re-directing the take-off pattern in Sydney.
Aircraft used to travel down what was known as the “Bennelong funnel”, the flight path from the north which passed over the electorate of the Prime Minister, John Howard.
After winning government in 1996, Howard defused anger in his electorate over the opening of the third runway at Mascot by developing a strategy to spread noise over more of Sydney.
Is that the sort of “aircraft noise related outcome” you had in mind?
The inner-city aircraft noise in BNE has been exacerbated by the opening of the 2nd runway in July 2020 – it now puts my property in the electorate of Griffith directly under the flight path. Despite this, in the lead up to the federal election, I did not hear a single word from neighbours about it being an election issue &/or something that may swing their vote. There’s always plenty political discourse in this electoral patch &, apart from denigrating the incumbent Morrison, it was concentrated on affordable housing & global warming.
Incidentally, BNE’s second runway was approved by the Howard government many moons ago therefore no blame can be sheeted to Albanese for his stint as as Infrastructure Minister.
They’re not in power, Ben. A policy is a statement of what you will do when in power. With most people voting for coal, oil and gas there is not a lot the Greens can do. And to avoid voting for them because they’re not in power is a reality way beyond my reasoning ability.
Brian Harridine was never in power, either, but he leveraged his position in the senate for otherwise unforthcoming benefits.
Being in government is not the point, it’s who’s in POWER. And the Greens have it in the senate.
Dawp?……………..
…………so Brian (Nutbag) Harradine exercising his balance of power is good, but the Greens exercising theirs is bad?
You really can’t argue both sides of the street.
I’ve got one Greens supporter telling me they can take action on both enviroment and aircraft noise, one saying they can’t do anything nor should they have it expected of them as they aren’t in power, and in another response someone asking if we support The Greens efforts to fix Labors housing plan (which is poor).
If Max and Greens don’t deliver on Ircraft noise, what hope does he have of running on doing something about it next time?
You can blame Kevin Rudd for the last decade’s failures.
He’s the one who squibbed doing anything useful about climate change, and then opened the way for Tony Abbott by white-anting Gillard..
Spot on MAC. So it’s once again claimed that the Greens did us a disservice by opposing the CPRS. I wonder haw many people who believe that ever go back and check the facts. It was in itself an attack on the Greens, born of a time when there was hope that Labor would be active in the fight against Global Warming. In that respect it’s still only a hope.
Forlorn.
Whether or not your understanding of the ‘facts’ is correct, and it’s a view I have some sympathy with, the fact is that it was the Greens who sided with the denialists, and the general consensus is that they let the perfect be the enemy of the good. And that meme will take some shifting. Couple that with their refusal of Labor’s ‘Malaysia solution’ and you have an ingrained belief that the Greens are too destructive to ever be in power.
Oh – Add the aboriginal MPs who are campaigning against the Voice, and you have more reinforcement.
Bill .. that loaded language undermines your position.
Greens sided with the denialists'. The language of theGreens voted with Abbott’, and whatever it is this time around. The LNP deniers and the Greens may oppose the same thing, but for completely different reasons. That doesn’t suggest some sort of alliance on an issue as that often used, loaded language suggests. Should the Greens vote on environmental matters on the basis of science or with a sly look at what others are voting for or against?Thank you for calmly putting into words some of the thoughts I was having reading this article which is so desperately clutching at straws.