A Nielsen poll published in the February 8 Sydney Morning Herald showed a sharp drop of support for Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's key climate change policy, the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS).
Rather than rejecting the proposed carbon trading scheme, slammed by many environmentalists as grossly inadequate, in favour of a stronger climate policy, more poll respondents (45%) said they now favoured opposition Coalition leader Tony Abbott's so-called "direct action" scheme over the CPRS (39%).
Abbott's plan would give taxpayer funded rewards to companies that voluntarily cut emissions, but would not make such cuts mandatory.
The Coalition's woeful scheme has little to no chance of actually cutting emissions. But Abbott has sold it as a cheaper and simpler alternative to the complex CPRS.
Rudd's flawed CPRS proposal is hardly much better than Abbott's plan. Behind the facade of Rudd's rhetoric on fighting climate change, the CPRS — with its tiny 5% target and huge compensation payouts to the big polluters — reveals an unwillingness to act seriously to cut emissions.
But the poll results raise a question: why are more people switching from supporting the CPRS to embrace a Liberal party scheme that is even worse?
The support for Abbott's scheme indicates a certain shallowness in many people's understanding of global warming. In the past few years, the climate movement has made a lot of ground in the battle to convince people that global warming is a reality and must be combated.
However, the public discussion about what kind of political and social change is needed has only just begun.
The poll results show that the mainstream political "debate" about climate change and its solutions has baffled many. Hence public support for climate action is easily confused and redirected to the Liberals.
The confusion is further suggested by other results in the same poll. When asked if they supported the CPRS, 56% said yes. When asked who had more credibility on climate change, 43% said Rudd and only 30% said Abbott.
Abbott's fraudulent climate action policy is part of the Liberals broader agenda to shift Australian politics to the right. The Coalition's "direct action" policy was launched in the context of a growth in public climate denial, attacks on the integrity of some minor statistics in the latest report of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the recent Australian tour of prominent British climate denier Lord Monckton.
The mainstream media has given ample time to all these attacks, magnifying peoples' doubts about how to address climate change.
The truth is that neither Rudd nor Abbott's plans respond to global warming on the emergency footing that climate scientists tell us is necessary. Yet in the media they are pitted against each other as polar opposites.
This shows the outrageous levels of theatre, spectacle and empty rhetoric that dominate Australian politics. It's little wonder that Australians are confused about global warming.
The problem also impacts on some social justice groups, who have come behind Rudd's faulty CPRS scheme because they believe a bad policy is better than nothing.
The SMH said World Vision and the Uniting Church called on the Greens to end their principled opposition to the CPRS.
This means that the climate justice movement and the socialist left must be clearer than ever in putting forward alternatives to the false policies of the major parties.
A genuine climate action policy, such as the one put forth by the Socialist Alliance, would follow the "polluter pays" principal — industries that have polluted the most should fund the transition to a low carbon, socially just society.
On the contrary, both Rudd and Abbott reward the biggest corporate polluters for doing only a fraction of what is necessary.