The federal election will be upon us very soon and all serious political parties have released something that looks like a climate policy or in some cases a set of policy initiatives. Pundits have already started to analyse the offerings and soon there will be modelling critiques that will typically reflect the position of the groups who sponsored the modelling.
I would like to offer a high level perspective. For serious centre right parties – the Liberal Party in Australia – the challenge is accepting that decarbonisation is a legitimate and in all likelihood inevitable outcome even if over a longer time frame than some are aiming at. The perception one gets from the current Liberal position is that they understand the need to look as though they are doing something and even that some of their climate related actions might actually be good public policy. They don’t, however, give the impression that they see decarbonisation as anything other than a fad that will go away when power prices get too high or individuals start to be personally inconvenienced. While a dose of cynicism is potentially warranted they need to do a better job hiding this and being open to the possibility that decarbonisation might be real.
Serious centre left parties – the ALP in our case – have much less trouble signing onto zero carbon. The challenge is being honest about the impacts of decarbonisation and the fact that it will come with real costs to some sections of the Australian economy and real impacts and inconveniences for everyone. Allowing the easy fiction that there is no downside and that decarbonisation simply means more renewables and that this will inexorably lead to cheaper, cleaner power will come back to bite. I am sure the wiser heads in the ALP understand this but “tough times ahead” is not a winning election slogan. If the ALP wins the upcoming election they may have an opportunity at the start of their term, should they chose to use it, to reset expectations.
For the less mainstream political groups their message is probably already locked in. The far left sees climate and decarbonisation as an ideal vehicle to reframe the political system and to discredit lightly regulated free market economics as well as the white patriarchy, colonial oppression and whatever else takes their fancy. Decarbonisation doesn’t really work as part of far right messaging unless it can somehow be sold as a conspiracy perpetrated by foreigners. Upon reflection President Trump did call climate change a Chinese conspiracy aimed at hobbling the US economy.
In an earlier post (1), I suggested that “change…. is often actually realised under the leadership of those who have traditionally and often ideologically opposed it”. I remain of the view that rapid and well managed decarbonisation won’t happen in Australia until the Liberals come to the conclusion that there are more votes in reducing CO2 than the status quo. In the meantime we will see if a new ALP government stays the distance on reducing deforestation and favoring EVs over gas guzzlers.
April 3 2019
- Advocacy vs Partisanship
