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December 22, 2009
The Australian has increasingly become ever more hostile to the Rudd Government. Its standard line of attack is that Rudd + Co can do no good, that the Rudd Government is on the slide electorally, the dynamic Coalition under Abbott and Joyce is spoiling for a fight, and the populist movement is on the march against Canberra. The Australian has become the equivalent of Fox News in Australia.
Consequently, it now adopts odd positions to sustain its angry oppositional stance. For instance, the latest editorial on Copenhagen---Put Australia's interests first--equates Australia's national interest with the miners and heavy industry who have long opposed an emissions trading scheme.
Australia's policymakers need to protect the national interest by guarding against carbon leakage and the export of jobs to developing nations. Such an approach will also be in the best interests of the global environment, as few developing nations have enforced the strict anti-pollution standards that apply in Australia and other advanced economies....Aside from heavy job losses and economic meltdown, there would be much to lose environmentally by Australia scaling back mining, minerals processing or heavy industry through overly punitive measures.Shortfalls in production would be made up quickly by rapidly industrialising nations and rival raw material exporters.
These are the talking points of the fossil fuel industry that opposes any shift to a low carbon economy. True, the editorial does mention "giving the planet the benefit of the doubt" (Rupert Murdoch's position), but there is no consideration of what that actually means, other than selling more coal and using cheap power from coal-fired stations.
The position is that climate change is crap and that the Rudd Government is selling out Australian's longterm national interest as it is acting to undermine our export competitiveness.This is also the position of the IPA. The implication of the fossil fuel position is that this industry is telling us citizens to get used to living in a warmer world. That is the price to be paid for the benefits of economic growth based on the dominance of fossil fuels in Australian life.
What is problematic about those ideologues who defend the fossil fuel industry position is that there is no mention, or even recognition, that Australia is already suffering the impacts of climate change and this is simply going to get worse until the rest of the world gets its act together. Hence it is in Australia's national interest that it should be concerned at both the failure of Copenhagen, and our failure to substantially invest in renewable technologies in energy and transport. It is this failure that signifies a political crisis.
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Well yes Gary your final paragraph says it all. That is indeed the real (as opposed to rhetorical) position which I expect developed countries to take for quite a few years into the future. The task of putting together an infrastructure that will actually achieve anything useful is beyond our political institutions. Maybe, when climate change is so obvious that a vocal majority demands action and the Bolts and Plimers and the like are consigned to irrelevance and ridicule, something new can be attempted, but of course it will all be far too late by then.