NEWS AND VIEWS
Australia

Other Countries

Friday, 9 February 2007

The Florentine, Tasmania .
Logging and burning releases large amounts of greenhouse pollution.
Photo: courtesy of Geoff Law and The Wilderness Society

Seeing the Trees in Climate Change

My admiration for Bob Brown's skills as a politician keeps growing. This morning he not only began the task of winning hard core environmentalists back to his party by calling for an end to coal mining, (see the following story) but he managed to start the process of getting trees in to the global warming debate.

Trees are important if the Greens are to add on to their base vote enough support to gain the Senators they need to end up controlling a future Senate. It is the pretty pictures of forests that stir the passions of many city dwellers and the way Sen Brown is bringing them in to his attack on the Coalition and Labor over green house gases is nothing short of brilliant.

The argument the Greens Leader started when talking on Radio National this morning was that the three phase clear felling process in Tasmanian and Victorian forests of cut, burn and replant produces huge tonnages of green house gases. The burning which follows the cutting is, of course, the culprit and both the big parties, Liberal and Labor, support it. Yet as the Stern report detailed, argued Sen Brown, putting an end to the practice would be of more benefit in curbing gas emissions than stopping every transport system in the world.

I can see in my mind already the television commercial showing the before shot of the pristine wilderness and the aftermath of clouds of smoke as the forest vandals prepare the ground for replanting.

Speaking the Unspeakable With the Help of Johnny’s New Friend

For a politician there is nothing better than a third party endorsement to add credence to your claims. That is especially so when the claim is that the Prime Minister is pursuing policies that will ruin the world for our children and the third party is the man just anointed by the Prime Minister as the Australian of the Year.

Greens Leader Bob Brown was in this position this morning when he launched in to a stinging attack on both the Liberal-National Coalition and the Labor Opposition for not moving to shut down Australia’s coal industry. Senator Brown reinforced his already strong environmental credentials with support for the view of Professor Tim Flannery that it is no longer socially acceptable for Australia to keep exporting coal knowing the damage it is doing. “Tim Flannery is right here and this is where politicians will panic, but we are exporting to the rest of the world what is effectively a deadly threat to the whole planet and to our children,” Senator Brown told Fran Kelly on Radio National.

Panic the politicians of the major parties surely will as they clamour to be the first to dismiss the notion, advanced by Prof Flannery and again supported by Sen Brown, that coal fired electricity generation be quickly phased out. In the words of the Australian of the Year: "I think that we do need to ultimately close down those coal-fired power plants, but first we need to build the bridge to the new energy future." Or of Sen Brown: “The Greens are talking about intervening on the market, the big parties won’t, and so therefore saying, let this country and the rest of the planet go to perdition because we won’t take action. We’re a rich and wealthy country, we can look after the coal miners and we can replace their fortunes with a much more job productive industry…”

Within the Labor Party there are already concerns that the party’s modest plans for more controls on carbon dioxide emissions will cost them the votes of miners and power station workers. In this morning’s Australian there was a report of nervous frontbenchers insisting “the future of the coal industry was safe” Those backbenchers clearly believe the Prime Minister John Howard strikes a chord with his promise to balance climate change policies with the need to protect Australian jobs and economic growth. Advocating a phasing out of the coal industry would be impossible without splitting the Labor party so Leader Kevin Rudd will no doubt join government ministers in dismissing Bob Brown as a crazed environmental zealot.

The Greens Leader will not be concerned about that. His team do not have to worry about being seen as extremist. They are not after securing a majority of votes. A militant minority is all that is needed to elect a Green Senator in every state and Sen Brown did not miss the opportunity this morning to advocate the importance of the balance of power in the Senate being held by minor parties. “The sub-plot to the battle between Rudd Labor and the very tired coalition is who will win the senate? … Labor can’t win in the senate, they can’t go from 27 to 38 or 39 seats and it’s up to the Greens to take back the balance of power….Take it [the Senate] back from being a rubber stamp for the Howard government… give back the strength of the senate to be a hand on the shoulder of government…”

That argument will appeal to a lot of Australians and the cries of anger from industry, affected trade unions, Liberal, National and Labor will not cause any moderation of the Green view. Expect to hear more such statements over the coming months as these from Bob Brown this morning:

We have to move in that direction. To suddenly ban coal exports would be massively dislocating [KELLY: ABSOLUTELY]… but we have to do it.. and we have to do it within a period of a government… [KELLY: WITHIN A PERIOD OF ONE GOVERNMENT?] that should be the sort of aim we’re looking at…

Tim Flannery is right here and this is where politicians will panic, but we are exporting to the rest of the world what is effectively a deadly threat to the whole planet and to our children… the prime minister might say 4 or 6 degree temperature rise which is the upper end of expectations this century is going to reduce the comfort level of people but in fact it’s going to see massive death tolls, particularly with eldery people in Australia…massive extinction of Australia’s wildlife, it will see the Murray Darling flow shrink in a way that is almost unthinkable, water shortages for our big cities, massive dislocation of the lives and jobs of Australians and…. tens of millions of people displaced around the world…

I’m talking about an aim of getting in place a plan for the reduction of the coal exports to the world and replacement with renewable energy exports, we have been talking about that now for a decade in this place….

And here’s the problem, if I was saying 10 years ago we should have a plan to rphasing coal exports in 13 years people would have said that’s ok…

We’ve had 10 years of increasing coal exports, making worse the problem and if I was a green saying let’s within 3 years have a working plan to remove coal exports and diminish the burning of coal in this country and replace it with clean safe renewable energy which is going to produce tens of thousands of jobs and a multi billion export which is a healthy one rather than the multi billion export coal which is deadly to the future of the planet .. people would have said that’s ok… but we’ve had 10 years of failure of this gov…

This government has let this country down, this gov ahs become a menace to the future of our children, it’s taken its eye right off the ball, the pm has his back turned on the problem and we say yes, we do have to tackle what’s happening with coal…..

I’m talking about a plan within one term of government for the phasing out of coal and we do need extreme measures compared to what’s been done in the past…

But the extremists here…. is the Howard government, the extreme attitude has to be a government saying we will not only facilitate coal, but we’ll put hundreds of millions of dollars into the coal industry and strip millions of dollars out of the funding for solar research in this country. We’ve got fantastic solar research which can save the planet languishing here and being bought up by Berlin, Shanghai and Tokyo.

We really have good alternatives, and as far as the jobs are concerned, and as far as prosperity is concerned that will come out of the green view of going to a technological change and Flannery is right, we’ve got to look at solar thermal, the hot rocks and in particular , right up front, we’ve got to look at energy efficiency because they will allow this country’s economy to grow in a world that’s going to be environmentally sensitive in the years ahead.

Playing for Kevin in the Grandstand

The newspapers this morning might be talking of states baulking at the planned federal water grab but Prime Minister John Howard on television reviewing his meeting with the Premiers looked very relaxed that everything was going to turn out fine in the end. The Premiers were doing their best to pretend that there were still serious concerns about the Howard plan but their body language suggested too that agreement was not far away.

Only as far away as this morning's meeting in Sydney where the Premiers allowed Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd to pretend that his intervention was important in securing the future of the Murray Darling Basin . Letting their man in the grandstand get his face on the television was the least a set of Labor colleagues could do. Who knows, Kevin might be Prime Minister one day and it never hurts to have a federal leader grateful for your help.

Howard is a politician and he well understands the rules of the game. For him the reality of a major change in the way the country is run is worth allowing the other side a few moments of glory. Achieving a hand over of powers from the States to the Commonwealth to end the years of interstate rivalry will be a major plus. The votes in protecting the River Murray eventually will go to the Howard government not to the pretender.

Of far more concern to Mr Howard will be the need to further refine his climate change message. A good drop of rain would be a start with that followed by six months of absolutely normal temperatures. That would make global warming seem less important to the voters but in the absence of such help from nature there is a need to ensure that the balance is right between showing a concern for the future and the now. The busiest person in the Liberal team over the next few weeks will be the pollster charged with determining what weight to give to each.