Australia’s two levels of climate denial

Peter Boyle
September 16, 2011
Issue 
896
Green Left Fighting Fund
Three hundred thousand people in south Pakistan are homeless due the this month's floods.

This is a country in serious denial. Australia is a world leader in per capita greenhouse gas pollution and in fossil fuel exports. It produces 30 tonnes CO2-equivalent a person a year and 54 tonnes if Australia’s exported CO2 pollution is included.

Pakistan produces 0.9 tonnes and Somalia produces 0.1 tonnes. Yet in these two countries people are dying from climate change as we speak.

On August 5, two activists from Rising Tide scaled a coal conveyor belt in Newcastle and hung a sign that said “We’re sorry Somalia. Coal = Climate Change and Starvation.”

At the same time, an unholy coalition of fossil fuel companies, reactionary media shock jocks and politicians are trying to organise a so-called “peoples revolt” built on climate change denial.

It is monstrous and outrageous, but the complete denial of human-induced climate change is really a minority phenomenon. They are a noisy bunch, but so were the defenders of the slave trade in the 19th century.

However, a much bigger climate denial is also at play in Australia.

There are influential people who are trying to fool themselves and others that the Gillard Labor government’s climate change measures, now before federal parliament, are real attempts to tackle the climate change emergency.

These include, unfortunately, some spokespeople of several big environmental groups and even the Greens politicians, who have otherwise taken good stances on most other issues.

Nearly every time Labor’s minister for regional development, Simon Crean, opens his mouth, the real agenda behind the carbon price/pollution trading scheme comes out.

Australia is poised to become the “Saudi Arabia of gas,” Crean boasted in August.

Continuing the slave trade analogy, what the Gillard Labor government is doing with fossil fuels today is the equivalent of supporting the right of some slave traders to continue trading because they claim to treat their slaves a little better.



Green Left Weekly rejects the argument that the climate movement should put a positive spin on Labor’s carbon price/pollution trading bills.

We will speak the truth no matter what because we know that the climate change emergency is real.

The people dying or being dislocated in Pakistan and Somalia right now remind us of that hard truth.

And science tells us what our society must do: move rapidly towards 100% renewable energy sources and sustainable practices in all fields.

If you support us in reporting the facts about the global climate change emergency please dig deeply. We need to raise $20,000 each month for the rest of the year to make our annual fighting fund target of $250,000.

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Climate crisis
Australia

Comments

Anonymous replied on

What I find monstrous is the total lack of creedence given to peak food and water. This problem will affect us much sooner than climate change and is in fact being felt already by the worlds poorest in the substantial hike in food prices. Unless you do something about population you're spitting into the wind with climate change because no matter how much good you can do, population growth will always outpace you. So population will increase 40% by 2050 and energy demand by 120% even at a very pessimistic 2% growth rate. There is no way on earth you can do something about the climate change SYMPTOM unless you deal with its root cause: population. We've already reduced fish stocks by 70%, arable land by 30% and fresh water supplies by 20% just to get where we are. Next month we will have made the fastest billion human beings in history: just 12 years. Anyone who thinks technology will save them is a complete idiot. You're up against thermodynamics, which clearly shows that the earth will not survive the population it has now- even if we ALL lived like Somalis or Pakistanis. The catch-22 is that you need to improve living standards to reduce population growth, which takes more energy. At our present 3-and-a-bit average growth in energy useage in 300 years we will be pumping so much heat into the atmosphere that even if we use solar panels for all our power generation the Earth will resemble Venus. Less people or die.

Anonymous replied on

Is it true that the Earth has experienced higher concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere in the past as the ice core samples do prove ? Also while I am here, why do the proponents of AGW not distance themselves from the raving eugenicists that have always been there at the genesis of these "human induced anti industry holding capacity climate change theories" . John P Holdren should instantly be put in prison for genocide and never once have I heard the left criticize people like this.

Anonymous replied on

Humans are the only species able to change climate activity to a cooler future. I really don't care who caused it although I suspect (strongly) we had a part, it simply comes down we need to fix it. Our temporary reprieve is that the missing heat is believed to be stored in the deep ocean, for now anyway. The colour of the earth is just as important as the carbon. If the ice caps suffer an oil spill the slick would cause increased heating. Forest cooling changes the heat signature of the land as well as reducing carbon. Why not fix a few problems like onshore processing of illegal arrivals. Onshore processing is about 12 times cheaper. Finding or planning real jobs for skilled and unskilled workers could be from programmed work on a pipeline with the $3 billion budget from offshore detention funds. The line is already planned from Lake Argyle to Perth is a $1 billion option. In one step a humane and organized solution straight into real work from funds currently wasted. With the excess funds worksafe and literacy training and skills the arrivals can take back home if their situation permits in time. Even those unskilled in finding work could take up the challenge on the excess of funds and Australia gets a water solution to grow plants and promote food and cooling for thousands of kilometers. Take this solution one step further with any funds that can be found from growth from employment to make 100 meters of solar paneling along the track of the pipeline to give about 250 sq kilometers or about 10% of the area needed to supply electricity to all of Australia. The water moved could be cached in hydro electric storage dams at sites suitable in non sensitive areas to become a gravity battery so a solar powered pipeline becomes a real base line power provider. Water promotes growth. Growth provides food and vegetation. Vegetation provides cooling and renewable building materials. Planned forests can stop erosion. All that is needed is political will power. Sure it will take time. Unfortunately time is not something we can continue to count on unless the oceans can go on storing our messes indefinitely.

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