RANT WARNING: I’ve been trying to make sense of where the climate change debate in Australia has suddenly got to. Frankly I’m a but baffled at how we went from “the world’s going to end unless we do something now” to “its all fine, climate change is crap, we can carry on as before as long as we plant a few trees;” which is frankly where we were in the mid-eighties.
In my view, Abbot is being outrageously cynical and is, in the old cliché, “playing politics with our future” just in order to get elected; as his old mentor and Dr-Frankenstein-to-his-monster was always so adept at.
The right the world over have exacted a crime in political reasoning in recent months. They’ve taken a few dodgy email s from the University of East Anglia and a typo from the IPCC – amid the zillions of words in research and mountains of data all pointing to certain doom if mankind doesn’t take drastic action to make our existence on this planet sustainable – and used it to give people exactly what they want: a way out. An excuse to bury their head in the sand. Sure, Copenhagen didn’t help. It was mankind’s chance to save itself and in reality all it really seemed to achieve was produce more carbon and other forms of hot air. All in all, the failure of those agreed on the need for change to reach consensus on what that change should look like (and more importantly on what their respective electorates could wear) has let the right in. Suddenly we have lunatics like Monkton and Fielding feeling quite unreserved and bold about spouting their various forms of reality-denial and conspiracy rubbish and, what’s worse, are getting column inches and air time from the media.
Lyndsay Tanner the other night on Lateline came up with a very useful analogy for what climate change demands of us – its like smoking, he said. You come to the conclusion that the science is proven and that it will kill you and so you have to stop. Its hard, and involves considerable self-sacrifice and avoiding immediate self-gratification in return for a long term reward – but you do it because you want to stay alive. In the role of Tobacco companies, what the right is trying to do the world over suddenly – and Abbot in particular – is to give people that very delusion they crave. To make people believe that if they just smoke “Light” cigarettes, or they only smoke in the evenings, or if they only inhale every other drag then they can carry on regardless and be fine. Go back 12 months and there’s no way anyone in their right mind would have worn that – but right now it’s got political capital and its affecting a polls bounce for The Coalition. And what’s worse, perfectly sane Liberals like Joe Hockey - who 6 months ago lobbied for action on climate change as vehemently as everyone else - is supporting this insanity. I never thought I’d say this but: I think Malcolm Turnbull has proven himself to be one of the most respectable politicians of his generation.
Rudd has failed to communicate an overly complex ETS scheme and has been outflanked by some simplistic messaging and spin around a “great big tax” (which as someone said “debases environmental debate in this country) – but everyone knows unless you put a price or a cap on carbon, our existence will remain unsustainable and self-destructive.
All this reminded me of a line in “Withnail and I” where over a long and obviously boozy lunch, Monty laments: “we are shat on by Tories, shovelled up by Labour” (Page 30)… <To be Continued>