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December 2, 2009
Tony Judt, in his What Is Living and What Is Dead in Social Democracy? in the New York Review of Books defends social democracy in the context of the Libertarian critique that the best way to defend liberalism, the best defense of an open society and its attendant freedoms, is to keep government far away from economic life. This classic issue of the role of the state and economy is crucial in the context of global warming, mitigating greenhouse gas emissions and the commons.
Judt argues that if social democracy has a future, it will be as a social democracy of fear. By this he means:
Rather than seeking to restore a language of optimistic progress, we should begin by reacquainting ourselves with the recent past. The first task of radical dissenters today is to remind their audience of the achievements of the twentieth century, along with the likely consequences of our heedless rush to dismantle them.The left, to be quite blunt about it, has something to conserve. It is the right that has inherited the ambitious modernist urge to destroy and innovate in the name of a universal project. Social democrats, characteristically modest in style and ambition, need to speak more assertively of past gains. The rise of the social service state, the century-long construction of a public sector whose goods and services illustrate and promote our collective identity and common purposes, the institution of welfare as a matter of right and its provision as a social duty: these were no mean accomplishments.
This defense of past achievements of the welfare state does not really help us to address the new politics of climate change, given that global heating will have such a big effect on our economy and society--from its impact of the Murray-Darling Basin, or the Great Barrier Reef, or Australia's rainfall patterns.
The science says that if we keep to our present course then we bring about warming well beyond 2 degrees, perhaps 4 degrees or 6 degrees, or more. Since the market by itself, is not doing much to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, so the necessity for action by the state to introduce an emissions trading stream. However, as James Risbey points out in New Matilda:
While the science of climate change is clear in pointing out the need for rapid action in order to avoid monumental climate change, the politics seem more designed to avoid responsibility than to avoid climate change...Australia has made virtually no progress in reducing carbon emissions from energy and transport to date. Most of the reductions have come about due to a reduction in the rate at which land is cleared....The Australian Government's argument is effectively that it is preferable to adapt to large climate change than to prevent it. Their argument is not usually stated in this form, but that is the inescapable consequence of their policy of postponing meaningful carbon reductions. On the one hand the Government calls for rapid action to prevent climate changes, while on the other hand it has crafted a policy that would guarantee that effective action is not taken
The Government policy of adaptation without effective mitigation is implicit in its actions (its GPRS) and not in its rhetoric.
Those who defend the classical liberal view that the state needs to be held at a safe distance --- ie., politicians should be barred from planning, manipulating, or directing the affairs of their fellow citizens--- appear to have a simple view on how to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. The ETS should be scrapped.
This is the position of the IPA, for instance, and it basically boils down to a defence of the interests of Australia's energy intensive industry structure, coal based electricity generation industry, and coal and gas exports. An ETS endangers Australia's prosperity because it jeopardizes Australia's international competitiveness. This position is tied up with others: namely dissent from the global warming consensus, criticisms of the science around carbon dioxide pollution and its impact on global temperatures, and critiques of green political ideology.
If the ETS is scrapped, what then? How do we mitigate greenhouse gas emissions? Deferring action until 2020, as advocated by the IPA is a strategy of avoidance. The going nuclear call is at odds with not believing in climate change and opposition to state intervention and subsidy.
The key point here is the logic and legitimacy of market failure analysis, and its public-goods corollary. The notion of public goods is that they cannot be supplied by the market, and instead must be supplied by government and funded through its taxing power.
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The Liberal Party has a big problem on addressing reform re greenhouse gas emission. And it is not just the angry wingnuts in the conservative base. It's a policy crunch.
Abbott, in his 1st press conference, has signed up to 5% reduction unconditionally by 2020. Bi partisan on targets etc, disagreement over mechanism. So what is the mechanism?
1. There cannot be an ETS because the Party has rejected an ETS.
2.there cannot be a carbon tax because the Coalition has dismissed the ETS as a giant carbon tax. So they cannot be for and against a tax at the same time.
3. going nuclear? That is big government subsidy, very expensive, with long leadtimes.
4.clean coal? It's still a pipe dream.
4.self-responsible voluntary action? What does that mean?