1st July 2008
In the wake of the surprisingly large swing against Labor in the Gippsland by-election last Saturday, Kevin Rudd could well do with a Peter Walsh in his Cabinet. The West Australian senator was the finance minister during Bob Hawke’s reforming Labor government in the 1980s. Walsh’s strength, which was demonstrated in his memoir Confessions of a Failed Finance Minister, turned on his aversion to prevailing fashions – including those prevalent within Labor circles. It was not that Walsh played the role of devil’s advocate. Rather, he did not readily embrace fashionable causes and examined issues with a healthy scepticism.
It was evident from the moment of Labor’s stunning victory on November 24 that the key challenge during its first term would be to successfully manage climate change in general and an emission trading scheme (ETS) in particular. Ratifying the Kyoto Agreement was easy. For starters, the evidence indicates that Australia was meeting its Kyoto targets during the Howard Government’s time. In any event, quite a few nations which ratified the treaty have failed to meet their targets. The case of Canada comes immediately to mind. The potential problem for the newly elected Rudd Government turned on its election promise to introduce an ETS by 2010 – that is, before the next election which is scheduled for late November that year.
Labor’s three key economic ministers – the Prime Minister, Treasurer Wayne Swan and Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner – are all true believers in the science that contemporary climate change is caused primarily by human behaviour and all maintain Australia should act as soon as possible to play its part in preventing environmental catastrophe. As Malcolm Turnbull revealed on The World Today yesterday, official advice to the Howard Government was that – due to the complexities involved – it might not be possible to implement an ETS until 2012. But Rudd has promised to finalise the task two years earlier than that. It appears that no senior member of the cabinet is challenging the implementation of Labor’s ETS by 2010 election promise.
I am not trained in science. I accept that a large majority of qualified scientists believe that human behaviour has contributed substantially to climate change and that only a few experts do not agree with this thesis. Even if the prevailing view is correct, it is not clear why a nation like Australia – which is responsible for about one per cent of the world’s emissions and which is one of the most environmentally conscious nations in the world – should be an international leader in responding to climate change.
The climate change debate crosses political lines. Among political leaders in recent times, the key climate change sceptic has not been former Liberal leader John Howard. This position is held by New South Wales Treasurer Michael Costa – as he made clear in a Lateline Business appearance last Wednesday. During this interview, Costa expressed concern about the expressed views of Professor Ross Garnaut, whose personality-cult titled Garnaut Climate Change Review will be released next Friday.
Costa’s approach enjoys the broad support of quite a few trade union leaders – including Paul Howes, the national secretary of the Australian Workers Union. There is a potential division in Labor on any ETS between its inner-city tertiary educated green voting base and its suburban and regional supporters who are employed in manufacturing and mineral industries. Sections of the former group can be disturbingly intolerant.
This is evident in the approach of ABC Radio National science broadcaster Robyn Williams. Last year he bagged ABC TV for running an edited and corrected version of Martin Durkin’s The Great Global Warming Swindle documentary and maintained that it was “demonstrably wrong”. Apparently Williams believes that ABC viewers cannot be trusted to form their own opinions about what is credible and what is not. On last weekend’s Sunday program he was at it again – telling presenter Adam Shand that the views of meteorologist William Kinnimonth “haven’t stood the test”. The implication was that he did not deserve a hearing on Radio National or anywhere else.
On his ABC Ockman’s Razor program, Williams has downplayed the views of political scientist Doug Aitkin and British economist Nigel Lawson on the basis that they are not “science trained”. This overlooks the fact that neither Nicholas Stern in Britain or Australia’s own Ross Garnaut are science trained. It also overlooks the fact that Williams’ own undergraduate science training is in biology, which is quite different from climatology.
Australians do not need to be protected from either the near consensus scientific view on climate change or from the small number of scientists who disagree with their colleagues. From a non-scientist perspective, it is reasonable to assume that the near consensus view is correct. But this does not lead to any necessary conclusions about when Australia should embrace an ETS in the short term. In criticising the climate change sceptics on Ockman’s Razor in May, American climatologist Stephen Schneider acknowledged that “a ton of carbon emitted in Beijing does exactly the same damage to the ecology as one emitted in Boston or in Brisbane”.
So far neither China nor India show any sign of embracing a carbon emissions scheme. In the United States, both Barack Obama and John McCain have indicated that they will be more environmentally friendly than George W. Bush. But, as president, one or the other will be subjected to Congress’s directives. In early June the US Senate rejected a plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions by a vote of 48 to 36 – in spite of the fact that the Democrats have a Senate majority. Moreover, the Clinton administration did not ratify Kyoto when the environmentalist Al Gore was vice president. These are the kind of facts which Walsh would have raised before the Cabinet.
Gerard Henderson
The Sydney Institute