As the Labor Party gets ready to introduce its climate change legislation into Parliament next week, the myth of the 'Greens 2009 sabotage of good climate policy' is doing great service in making Labor look like persecuted saints. We're even seeing the line repeated uncritically on supposedly neutral news shows like the ABC's 7.30. It's a myth or, if you prefer, it's a lie. Don't fall for it. The 2009 CPRS was a fatally compromised piece of pro-fossil-fuel greenwash, and the 2011-12 alternative was a big improvement.
They should also learn that Labor can be mightily incompetent at promoting good legislation. The Gillard Government made a hash of promoting their climate policies, allowing the Libs and media to call the price a tax, focusing all their PR on how much 'compensation' they were giving.
You only need to compensate people if you are harming them. So they were saying to Australians 'we have just passed very harmful legislation, let's make it up to you'. No wonder the public didn't buy it.
As the Gillard Government tore itself apart, it became clear that they resented the Greens for pushing them into it. Yet in 2007 Rudd, quite correctly, called climate change 'the greatest moral challenge of our generation'.
What the Greens should learn is that Labor has no stomach for moral challenges. They call themselves the party of reform but they have not been that for a long time. To make real change the Greens will have to make the most of every ounce of leverage they have.
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| These Liberals! |
By holding out for better in 2009, the Greens made possible a set of genuinely effective policies that were robust enough to survive in the harshest environment. As a result we now have the foundations for reducing emissions in a wide range of sectors, just waiting to scale up.
Labor are trying to present this as sabotage because they don't want to give credit to anyone else. But more than that, like the Liberals and Nationals they are firmly in the grip of the fossil fuel industry and are under heavy pressure to put the brakes on change.
This is why they have set their target so low. The foundations we have in place mean we can easily achieve the Teals' 60% by 2030 target and even the Greens' 75%. But there will be no place in that world for more than a handful of coal and gas mines and power plants. This industry is literally fighting for its life.
We all need it to lose. The 43% is just a sideshow. The main game is in the transition - renewables for coal and gas, public and active transport and EVs for petrol and diesel vehicles, energy efficient electrified buildings, etc. If we focus on these things, 43% will flash by without us noticing.
Instead the fossil fuel industry wants us to believe all this is impossible and focus on things like offsets, CCS and 'gas as a transition fuel', whatever that means. All of these things are just delaying tactics which will keep the fossil fuel industry alive but literally cost us the earth.
If I had any advice for Adam Bandt and the Greens (not that they have asked me) it would be to focus on this transition, with programs, institutions and resources to accelerate it to the max. If they can achieve this, they will create a legacy even more potent than that of 2011.
End of rant. Don't fall for the Labor BS about Greens sabotage. Don't fall for the false promise of offsets and carbon capture. Don't get caught in a zero sum game. A new world is being born. Work with all you have to let it grow and thrive. We may survive this yet.
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