The public cry for clarity regarding the so-called carbon tax, and Labor’s problem with communicating clearly, continue to threaten its existence.
Building a clean-energy future is a good step towards framing the policy in positive terms, but “carbon pollution” language is confusing people.
If we are going to introduce a tax in a world where conservative media frame taxes as bad, the public needs to understand it is a pollution tax — that is, something we should tax. Pollution is what happens when we burn coal. Australians don’t want pollution ruining their kids’ health, our air, our water, and making climate change worse.
A carbon tax is just another tax with no clear rationale and carbon pollution confuses people. It’s gold for Tony Abbott.
Carbon pollution takes a simple, powerful concept and turns it into something complex and unclear. Carbon pollution works a bit like noise pollution — most people don’t understand that you are talking about pollution in the conventional sense of the term.
In communications world, carbon pollution and a carbon tax are “weasel” words. No one gets them.
Tabloids seize on “carbon” and tell us CO2 is natural — just like climate change. We are back in a complex debate, contesting the existence of the problem.
During Q&A with Julia Gillard, a sympathetic audience member asked: “Why is it explained so poorly? Even the word carbon … my parents don’t understand …” Similar complaints can be heard from people of every demographic in every state. I recently sat in focus groups with soft voters, who said: “If it’s about ‘pollution’ then why not say so?”
The rule in communications is to keep it simple. Carbon pollution fails the test horribly. Abbot’s unrelenting simple sloganeering election campaign keeps building momentum.
Here is some good advice: just say “pollution” and “price on pollution”. When carbon tax is used, say “pollution tax”. It’s so big polluters pay a price for their pollution. Do you think it should be free to dump pollution in public space?
It’s great we are finally getting on with the job. Let’s not fail simply because we didn’t explain it properly.
*Alex Frankel is a communications researcher and strategist (formerly GM at Auspoll) and led the climate campaign research for The Climate Institute, ACF, ACTU, ACOSS and Get Up in 2009 and 2010
Couldn’t agree more! At last! Thank you Alex. Perhaps you’ve heard me yelling at the TV and Radio – daily!
While I agree with the thought that coal is a major pollutant, the thing which rarely gets discussed is that virtually all generating plant in this country was built by government, all generating plant is licensed by government, any new and proposed plant is licensed by both state and federal government.
If our government is genuine with regards to their concern of these polluting power generators, why do they continue to license new coal burning power generating plants, and renew licenses for obsolete generating plant.
Why not force them to move to gas, which still attracts the carbon tax, or better still, explore thorium as an option (we have massive deposits, in fact amongst the largest in the world and unlike the often mooted uranium based reactors, thorium reactors are actually safe and considerably cheaper to build).
To place the onus on the consumer, large or small by allowing these power companies, be they state owned or private, to pass on any impost to the consumer, that, I think is what has the consumer society confused and has gotten their backs up. After all, we as consumers have no say whatsoever in what gets licensed and what gets built but we are expected to pay the price for what the governments continue to encourage.
I’ve been saying this for a while.
It’s great advice, but will Labor listen?
or ‘waste disposal charge’.
ZHONN – A constant source of frustration to me is the persistence with coal. How can the govt be serious about lowering pollution while we continue to mine and use this stuff. From what I’ve read, gas at best is only marginally ‘cleaner’ than coal. There are serious concerns about getting this gas out of coal seams, in fact, there’s been protests around the country, but a recent one in the Illawarra was very successful – about 4,000 spelt out their protests on Austinmer Beach a couple of months ago. There’s also concerns in the Hunter Region and the Liverpool Plains – NSW!
Have you watched Gasland – you can see the trailer and interview with the young man who made this documentary. It’s been on SBS twice and can be purchased for about $25. (I’m not involved in it in any way, so am not pushing for sales??) It is very thorough, informative and clearly illustrates the negatives re coal seam gas mining.
Have you heard of the recent thermal solar plant in Spain. It is very exciting as it can store heat for up to 15 hours. Gets rid of the night time issue – no sun! The good thing about it is that it can be used for peak times, or I suppose at times when weather isn’t ideal. It’s suitable to provide base load power needs. While it is rather pricey now, it’s envisaged that costs will decrease with numbers of plants built.
This would remove any need to go down the nuclear path – of any type! This is ideal for Australia! The sun shines at the snow fields, so it should be perfect for us. No nasty radiation problems, no getting rid of waste and we could create lots of jobs – re-employ coal miners???
Did you know that the US still has no long-term storage depositories – anywhere, and that there’s now a grave danger of ‘explosions’ due to cooling ponds being too full! Very scary indeed! Every time a govt airs their desire to build one, legal suits follow and the issue dies down – again! This has been going on for decades!
http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/48104
This is the link to the article. It’s in Issue No 886 and is the Editorial.