It is a bitter irony that as the scientific evidence for action on climate change mounts, the political consensus supporting that action is retreating — at least in Australia.
Australians have more reason than most to be alert to the dangers of global warming. Living on the Earth’s driest and hottest continent, we are already seeing the harsh impact of climate change with devastating droughts, heat waves and bush fires.
And until recently there was bipartisan support for the establishment of an emissions trading scheme (ETS) that would enable the transition from a high emission economy to a low emission one by putting a price on carbon. Because of Australia’s abundant and cheap reserves of coal we have enjoyed cheap electricity, but at the price of very high emissions per head. Cutting emissions will always come at a cost. The saying “It’s easy to be green” is right up there with “Your cheque is in the post”.
But this debate is not just about cost. It is turning into an ideological, perhaps theological, issue where faith replaces reason and prejudice pragmatism. And many in the northern hemisphere will wonder, that if the consensus for climate change action is retreating in Australia, the land of droughts and flooding rains, what are the prospects of staying the course in countries where the impact of climate change is, as yet, much less apparent?
Climate change has been a very difficult issue for the Liberal Party — our equivalent of the Tories — for many years. While in government we were able to achieve some considerable, even revolutionary environmental reforms. Indeed, the first legislation to establish an ETS was introduced by me, as John Howard’s Environment Minister, in 2007. However, there was always a strong thread of climate change scepticism, even denial, among the ranks of Australia’s centre right.
As Prime Minister, John Howard was sceptical about climate change science and refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. Australia had no good reason not to ratify Kyoto, as it was one of the few developed countries that could readily meet its target. However, we paid a political price: the failure to ratify Kyoto was one of the critical issues that led to the Howard Government’s defeat in 2007.
However, the establishment of an ETS was not an election issue, because both parties were proposing a scheme. As Liberal leader, the objections I had to the legislation introduced by the new Labor Government were essentially issues of design.We were anxious to ensure that the transition to a low-emission economy did not result in us simply sending industries offshore to countries without a carbon price; exporting the emissions and the jobs.
You cannot achieve a massive reduction in emissions of the kind the world needs without putting a price on carbon. There has been until recently a broad consensus that the most efficient way of doing this is by a market-based mechanism such as an emissions trading scheme. That bipartisan consensus is now gone. Earlier this month I lost the leadership of the Liberal Party because of my support for ETS. The election of Tony Abbott led to a dramatic change in policy. Opposition senators, or most of them, ensured the Bill was voted down.
Most leadership ballots are driven by personalities; this one, however, was driven by some of my colleagues’ relentless determination to change the party’s policy on climate change and, above all, to vote down the ETS. A colourfully self-confessed climate sceptic, Mr Abbott became leader with the support of a group of vocal climate change deniers, the most significant of whom was Nick Minchin, the leader of the Opposition in the Senate. He has said that the planet is cooling not warming, that the majority of the Liberal Party does not believe that human beings are causing global warming and that the climate change issue is being used by what he described as “the extreme Left” to “do what they’ve always wanted to do: to sort of de-industrialise the Western world.”
I was much more disappointed by the change in policy direction than by the change in leadership.If Mr Abbott were a leftist you could understand his reluctance for market-based mechanisms for putting a price on carbon. After all, the whole point of emissions trading is that it allows industries to choose the best means of abating their emissions. The challenge of climate change is so great that no party can credibly or responsibly fail to take effective measures to address it.
I recognise that many people are sceptical about the science. But as Margaret Thatcher pointed out 20 years ago, this is an exercise in risk management. Given that the consequences of unchecked global warming would be catastrophic, responsible leaders should give the planet the benefit of the doubt. Few of us imagine our house is going to burn down tonight, but most of us will have taken out insurance.
So the political or indeed moral issue is not whether you are totally convinced by the climate change thesis, but what you propose to do about it. Being sceptical about climate change is not unreasonable; doing nothing about it is reckless.
So given the basic common sense of taking out insurance for the sake of all humanity, why is it that we are seeing this surge in climate change denial?
To some extent the explanation is psychological. It is human to deny that bad things are happening. Britons turned a blind eye to the reality of Hitler’s rearmament in the Thirties; smokers still deny their habit can kill them; all of us are reluctant to acknowledge inconvenient truths.
A curious feature of climate change denial is that it seems to be found overwhelmingly in the ranks of the old. I have never known a contentious issue where one side of the debate is so old. While I cannot explain this phenomenon, it does have a political significance. The membership of Australia’s Liberal Party is much older than the population at large.
We can see the growing influence of climate sceptics in the ranks of the US Republican Party, and even stirrings in David Cameron’s Tories — an extraordinary thing when you consider how successful his “Vote Blue, Go Green” approach has been in repositioning the Conservatives.
I should note that when I was in London earlier this year and spoke at the Policy Exchange, a centre-right think tank, I was stunned that the audience was so young. Mr Cameron’s Tories have started to reconnect with younger Britons, and his environmental credentials and commitment to action on climate change have been a key part of that.
We should listen to the young — their passion for action on climate change and their concern for the environment reflects the fact that they have the most future at stake. 2050 is often cited as the target date for big cuts in emissions, and for many of us that is a date so far beyond our lifetimes it may as well be 2500. But for our children and their children, 2050 is not so far away. A 14-year-old will be my age in 2050.
Our responsibility as leaders, as voters and as citizens is to ensure that our planet is kept safe for our children and their children. We must not fail them.
Malcolm Turnbull was leader of the Liberal Party in Australia, 2008-09
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