Enough of this fanciful rhetoric on climate change Prime Minister

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has made some widely-reported comments defending Australia’s emissions reduction policies, in the wake of quite widespread criticism, verging upon scorn, for Angus Taylor’s performance at the Madrid climate change conference and the Government’s hitherto denial of any link between (anthropogenic) climate change and the widespread bushfires that have occurred widely around Australia over the last couple of weeks.

In what I think may turn out to be quite a significant moment, Mr Morrison has found it within himself to acknowledge that climate change does have something to do with the fires, but still had to qualify it with “and many other factors”, in a nod to the “climate is changing but it has always changed as part of a natural process” sector.

I have been particularly struck by comments that the Prime Minister went on to make. The first parts are familiar: “Australia is in the enviable position, unlike most countries, where we have actually exceeded our [2020 Kyoto Protocol] targets”. He then went on to justify the use of carry-over credits from the exceeded Kyoto targets to set against the 2030 Paris targets. This is where the rhetoric jumped the shark.

(Of criticising the use of these credits): “It’s a bit like saying that if you get ahead of your mortgage, it doesn’t count. Australia has got ahead of its mortgage on emissions reduction and our commitments that we made for Kyoto 2020.”

I’ll leave aside that the Kyoto targets for Australia were both manipulated and, even allowing for that, pretty weak. But the analogy with a mortgage I cannot let go. Now, a simple description of a mortgage would be that you borrow some money from the bank, it takes your property as security, you pay back the money with interest, following which the security is released. Let’s see how this analogy fails on all counts.

Borrowing money from the bank: at a stretch I can possibly allow this, in that through our historical emissions we have incurred a debt that we should repay at some time in the future.

The bank takes your property as security: I can’t even imagine where to begin in trying to square this with the lack of accountability and appalling lack of acceptance of responsibility that Australia displays in this matter. The Government of this country seems to imagine that it can duck and weave to avoid the facts and that there will be no consequences for its actions.

Paying back the debt: this could only reasonably mean that we are going to take back the historical emissions. Given that we clearly have no intention of even curtailing our future emissions, let alone offsetting the past ones, I think this is more like redrawing the principle up to the maximum amount every year, and leaving it to our children to pay back the loan.

The security is released: not applicable since at the second point above we failed to hand over the title in the first place.

However, in the spirit of the matter, I would like to offer a couple of metaphors of my own for the way Australia is treating this matter.

Firstly, apparently Australia is going to meet it’s Paris commitment of emissions reductions of 26-28 percent by 2030 “at a canter”. I am going to call this the two-pushup fitness campaign excuse. I am overweight and unfit, but nagged by those around me I decide to do something about it. I decide that my fitness campaign will consist of two pushups every day. On the first day I manage to do one pushup. Since I’ve allowed 3 months for the program, I am well ahead of schedule and will meet my objective at a canter.

Never mind that I and most everyone around me knows this is completely useless. The attempt at self-delusion will fool anyone that wants to be fooled, hopefully there are enough of them around to get re-elected. But after two pushups every day I will still be fat and unfit, especially if I keep eating meat pies for lunch.

Then there is the line that Australia is only responsible for 1.3% or so of global emissions and therefore there is nothing that we can do to change the overall outcome. This one I call the litter in the street excuse. I know it’s the wrong thing to litter. But I am only one of 25 million people in Australia, whether or not I drop my rubbish on the ground can’t possibly make any difference to the total amount of litter. So I might as well throw my trash down and leave it to the big rubbish producers to take care of things.

I hope that I wouldn’t really indulge in this sort of feeble rationalisation myself. But I am certain that we shouldn’t accept it from our Government. 

Our targets are weak and we’re not taking responsibility. We all know where we are going to end up, this issue is not going to go away. We just need to stop making excuses and get on with it. Let’s do better Mr Morrison.