I watched on ABC TV the Prime Minister's lunch-hour Press Club address 'Australia's Low Pollution Future: Launch of Australian Government's White Paper on the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme'.
Reaction was immediate and forceful. In less than one hour, the ABC News interactive website on Rudd's emissions target announcement received 181 comments, which must surely be a record, before closing the channel. Most comments seemed to be from younger people, bitterly indignant at betrayed hopes, in light of the highly conservative 5–15 per cent 2020 emissions reduction target range that Rudd announced today.
A young woman protester was ejected from the Press Club, due to her heartbroken screams of 'No!' as Rudd announced the target. This dramatic moment will define the day. By mid-afternoon, GetUp had launched an internet protest mobilisation campaign. New Matilda website carried a strong condemnatory article by Anna Rose, founder of the Australian Youth Climate Coalition, who attended the just-ended UN Poznan conference.
Such rage is understandable. In Tony Blair style, Rudd today talked the talk but didn't walk the walk. His own lofty words are the best condemnation of his policies. He accepts the science of climate change, but thinks that by putting his government somewhere in the middle of the range of views in Australia, he offers 'balance'.
But on science-based issues, being balanced between right and wrong policies is not being right. The Government claims to accept IPCC science, but it has offered a policy outcome that will prove destructive for our children.
Rudd today tried to push real concern for the future out of mainstream political discourse in Australia, to again cordon it off safely in a politically powerless Green ghetto, as Howard did for 12 years.
He offered us greenwash. His policies announced today effectively lock Australia into 12 more years of tokenistic, half-hearted spending on mitigation and adaptation at home, while generously feeding the present coal-based economy. Rudd today guaranteed effectively unimpeded growth to 2020 in our worst carbon-emitting industries.
Globally, the announced policy is supine, waiting for other countries to lead, in which case Australia might follow — but only by lifting our 2020 targets, not to 25 per cent, the minimum recommended by the IPCC, Stern and Garnaut, but to a miserable 15 per cent. What an example to the world.
Rudd claims special treatment on grounds that Australia's population will expand by 45 per cent between 1990 and 2020. He argues that we need more latitude to emit greenhouse gases than other countries. This is morally dishonest.
What gives Australia a special licence to pursue population increase and population-driven economic growth policies, when we implicitly hope developing countries will not do the same? Are only wealthy countries like Australia allowed to grow their populations?
Morally, the world must aim for sustainable populations and equal per capita emissions everywhere.
By 2050, Rudd won't be around as prime minister. He talked airily of going to the people at our next election, seeking a mandate to lift the 2050 target from its present Bali-agreed 60 per cent (many scientists now recommend 80 or 90 per cent decarbonisation of the world economy by 2050, if we are to avoid the worst global warming effects), if world opinion moves that way.
By announcing such weak targets for the years that matter, 2010-2020, Rudd treats us with contempt. He patted people on the head for offering to wash their clothes in cold water and turn off their computers at night, while giving industry licence to pollute as much as it likes over the next ten years. Are we to accept such patronising drivel?
I cannot believe that Rudd, a former diplomat, so badly misreads the crucial global negotiation over the lead-up to Copenhagen. He must have read Garnaut's clear expositions of the prisoner's dilemma and the global commons. He knows that somebody has to lead in public-goods negotiations, if anything good is to happen.
When so many people of eminence and judgement reported back on Australia's large responsibility for the failure of Poznan to advance global targets, that our delegation brief had betrayed the cause, how could he have announced the policies he did today?
The answer must be that this is a weak prime minister, beholden to the powerful corporate and trade union elites of heavy carbon-producing industries, and scared of antagonising them or destabilising his chances at the next election. Rudd has put short-term political survival ahead of his responsibilities to the next generation. Where is Bonhoeffer now when we need him?
The Canberra Times carried an ominous report today by Philip Dorling, 'Crackdown on anti-coal protesters: law to be strengthened'.
Dorling reports that federal state and territory energy ministers agreed at a meeting in Adelaide last Friday to recommend 'as a matter of urgency' to federal, state and territory attorneys-general 'a formal review of penalties that should apply to unlawful disruption [of critical coal power generation and coal export facilities], noting the importance of energy security to the Australian economy and way of life'.
We saw Rudd's silken glove today. In coming years we may see his iron fist, as desperate physical protests against the stupidity of persisting with expansion of coal energy are suppressed as eco-terrorism. With Rudd's capitulation today to Australia's power elites, this is the bleak future that awaits us, unless GetUp's and other campaigns restore some environmental responsibility to our political leaders.
Tony Kevin retired from the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in 1998, after a 30-year public service career in DFAT and Prime Minister's Department.