This week data from NASA showed that the past 6 months was the hottest 6 month period since global records have been kept. It also has been the hottest ever 7 month period of March to September. According to the National Climatic Data Center which uses a different method to measure global temperatures, so far this year April, May, June and August have been the hottest April, May, June and August on record. July was a bit chillier – it was only the 4th hottest (the September data hasn’t been released yet). According to both the NCDC and NASA data, 2014 shapes up to be among the top 2 or 3 hottest years.
So, it is probably good timing that this week the Prime Minister opened a coal mine and the Treasurer, while in the UK, refused to countenance that Australia was a large emitter of greenhouse gasses.
It was ‘coal is great’ week for the government, and both Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey used lines that sounded as though they came straight from a coal industry PR campaign - probably because they bore an uncanny similarity with an actual coal industry PR campaign.
Even Greg Hunt, who this week was the only one still pretending to think Direct Action is a policy worth promoting, told ABC’s AM that “electricity and gas and the capacity to have energy are fundamental” to “bring hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.”
As Lenore Taylor at Guardian Australia revealed, in August the world’s largest coal miner, Peabody, made a presentation to the G20 Energy Sustainability Working Group meeting. The presentation involved some of the very dodgiest use of graphs. For example, one graph suggested that increases in life expectancy over the past 1,000 years was linked with increased coal consumption.
It was the type of presentation which most intelligent people would have watched and found difficult to keep from laughing out loud. But among its claims and pitches was the need for coal to keep producing energy in order to improve the life of everyone throughout the world. It mirrored the coal industry campaign “Advanced energy for life” which would have coal being the harbinger of all good things in the world.
So when Tony Abbott opened a coal mine in Queensland this week it was no great shock to hear him spout such lines as to argue that “coal is essential for the prosperity of the world” and that “coal is good for humanity”. Moreover, Mr Abbott suggested a carbon tax was misguided because it suggested to the world that coal was “some kind of environmental villain”.
By this stage anyone who actually believes that Tony Abbott agrees with the science on climate change is either drunk or so gullible that they would be silly enough agree to be his Environment Minister.
While Tony Abbott was talking up the ability for coal to be “clean”, and also denouncing Bill Shorten’s ever so timid suggestion the ALP may campaign at the next election for a price on carbon, the one thing he went nowhere near mentioning was his government’s own policy of Direct Action.
Neither was the Treasurer over in London caring to mention the government’s dog of an environmental policy. Instead, he was taking issue the suggestion that Australia was “one of the dirtiest, most greenhouse emitting countries in the OECD group of developed countries”
Rather than such as statement be “absolutely ridiculous” as Joe Hockey replied, Australia is actually the 7th biggest emitter out of the 34 OECD nations, which certainly qualifies as being “one of the dirtiest”. The interviewer, Stephen Sakur, even acknowledged this by correctly noting that Australia was “highest per capita emitter of greenhouse gases of any nation in the OECD” - so any suggestion Hockey was misrepresented is false.
Hockey was clearly pushing the coal barrow rather than facing climate change reality when he told Sokur that “we are exporting coal so that nations can lift their people out of poverty”.
Even Greg Hunt, who this week was the only one still pretending to think Direct Action is a policy worth promoting, told ABC’s AM that “electricity and gas and the capacity to have energy are fundamental” to “bring hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.”
The Liberal Party since Tony Abbott became leader has been scornful of environmental policy and climate change. But at least until the election it used Direct Action as a fig leaf. Now it has shifted into full fossil fuel advocacy. And from the Prime Minister down to the Environment Minister, all are spouting coal industry PR lines.
So long at the ALP remains utterly scared to advocate its own climate change policy with any volume, don’t expect that advocacy to stop anytime soon.
