Tag Archives: Carbon Tax

You’ll go riding on the horses

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by Climate Change, politics • Tags: , , , , ,

Next year the carousel (I grew up calling such things “merry go rounds”) in the heart of Canberra is 100 years old. It is a classic of its kind, lots of old-fashioned horses, with names, and two elephants, in which children, brave enough to go round and round, but unsure about the whole up and down thing, can sit, with or without parents.

But for the children on the horses, giddeyup, it also has the advantage that parents and grandparents, left bravely behind on the ground outside, can be comfortingly seen and waved to, still in exactly the same place (“don’t move”), on every circuit. “Hullo”….. “Hullo” ….. “Hullo” ….. However brave you are, or are not, it’s comforting to know cuddles are not far away if needed. And if you know that, then the ride can, should, must go on forever. “Not yet, don’t stop yet” you might hear as the operator shows sign of heading for the Off Switch, and he might, fearing unpopularity, let it go round just once more.

Reminds me of the inexplicable failure of governments to do anything significant to deal with the now obviously runaway climate change. There we all are, going round and round, being reassured by politicians that nothing need ever change, that we will go round and round, exactly the same way, forever.

And we keep calling, “Not yet, don’t stop yet!” if a politician even looks as if they might be heading for the Off Switch, even the Slow Down Switch, we scream in protest.

And so the Merry Go Round keeps going round, in spite of ominous rumblings from underneath, puffs of black smoke, the smell of hot oil, the happy music sounding increasingly like a dirge. No maintenance you see, and it can’t run forever. The Operator looks more and more anxious, but there is no denying the cries “Not yet, don’t stop yet!” And the politicians, unmoving, waving and smiling happily to the riders, ready to cuddle away any doubts. Don’t you worry about a thing little girl.

So round and round we go, merrily riding on the horses yeah yeah.

Yes Prime Minister

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by Media, politics • Tags: , , , , , , ,

I wrote the original version of this piece in July 2011, at a time when Julia Gillard had been PM (and won an election in her own right) for less than a year. Now as we approach three years, and the next election, I thought it was time (also prompted by the excellent recent post by Rodney Lever on the same topic) to re-evaluate, see if my view had changed. And to spell out in more detail my reasoning. See what you think.

In the last 70 years (a period which neatly uses the war years as the start of modern Australia, and allows me to consider only prime ministers serving in my lifetime) Australia has had 13 prime ministers (excluding the temporary Mr Forde, Mr McEwan) just as both the US and UK have had 13 leaders each. You would have to say by any objective measure, and ignoring sniping by people like me, we have been by and large very lucky and very well served by our baker’s dozen. We have avoided having any real dunces (unlike the US with Ford, Reagan, Bush and Bush) or crooks (Nixon). Our 13 also exceed the average quality of 13 British PMs (who avoid the US highs and lows) over that period.

I have, in the past, tried to separate out tops and bottoms. But this would be invidious among a continuous spectrum, and besides I find my opinion alters over time (Fraser up and Keating down for example). So let’s try to assess them over a range of qualities (not including IQ which I reckon averages high and pretty even).

OK, how might we judge the best of these thirteen? Lack of ideology; flexibility of mind; ability to relate to people; difficulty of political circumstances faced; ability to work with colleagues; concern for ordinary people; concern for minorities and the powerless; awareness of the big picture; ability to embody some aspect of the country; hard-working; willingness to take expert advice; someone I can imagine having an intelligent conversation with; someone I could imagine having a beer with; someone who can achieve outcomes; someone who can stand up to vested interests.

Applying those filters quickly begins to whittle down the big thirteen. McMahon, Holt disappear immediately, lightweights who were barely up to ministerial level, let alone PM. The next seven go for different reasons. Rudd and Gorton because of inability to work with colleagues; Howard because of his narrow-minded stubborn ideology; Keating because of his obsession for free markets and against environment; Fraser because of the unprincipled way he seized power, all go out in the first round. Then it gets hard Whitlam and Chifley are reluctantly, because of the magnificent achievements of both, eliminated in the second round. Chifley because of the miner’s strike. Whitlam because his best days were the duumvirate with Lance Barnard. After that he saw himself as the Emperor leaving his cabinet to do their thing, which after 23 years they were mostly not up to in the face of the Murdoch onslaught.

Which leaves just four in the grand final of Australia’s Got Prime Ministerial Talent – Curtin, Menzies, Hawke and Gillard. Now any of those would be a Winner you could argue for, give a standing ovation to, and I reckon you, my fellow judges, might easily disagree with me. Curtin is there because he seems by any measure one of the most decent, and  was the only one faced with stopping Australia being invaded in wartime in face of the self-interest of UK and US. Menzies, not because I think much of him (or his over-rated wit), but because you simply can’t ignore 18 years in The job. Hawke, again not because I think much of him but because, in contrast to Whitlam, he put together an extraordinarily good team, arguably the best in Australian history, and kept the public and media onside 

But, drumroll, my Winner is, on the basis of consistent performance overall – Julia Gillard. Yes, I know, I was surprised too. I fed all the data back into my PM “Difference Engine” (the very latest from Mr Babbage), and waited while the cogs whirred and spun, differences calculated, levers pushed for carries. Yes, it was still Julia by a nose. Do the calculations yourself (and get Ms Lovelace to double check, be analytical) I am sure you will agree.

So, what did the print-out show? That she’s really the only one who has had to deal with complex minority rule (Curtin did briefly in simpler circumstances). That she has had to deal with an Opposition determined to smash parliamentary conventions, and also in extraordinarily unprincipled moves force out two members of parliament to try to destroy the majority.

She has had other problems shared with other PMs, for example family difficulties (eg Hawke, Chifley), a persistent rival (again Hawke, plus Howard, Gorton), virulent press opposition (Whitlam, Keating, but I’ll come back to this), difficult world financial circumstances (Keating, Hawke, Rudd, Chifley), but no one else has faced them all simultaneously. Nor carried them off while remaining calm and pleasant and working well with all her colleagues except her predecessor and several of his supporters, and succeed in passing record amounts of legislation, much of great importance (carbon price, NBN). A number of them have given fine speeches, but none perhaps as significant as Gillard’s now world famous “misogyny speech”, the response to the constant nasty misogyny from the Opposition, outraged that a woman dared to be in charge.

Oh, look, I am no longer the starry-eyed boy who has political heroes like I once did (Jim Cairns, JFK). Julia Gillard is no Chifley or Whitlam in terms of Labor values. Her lack of interest in environmental matters is stunning. Her approach to asylum seekers leaves Fraser gasping. Her hard line on unemployed and single parents would have had her thrown out of Chifley’s cabinet. Her unconscionable pursuit of the Religious Right, in such matters as same sex marriage and school chaplains must have Whitlam and Hawke shaking heads. And so on and so on. Some of that has been forced on her by circumstances, some seems to be flaws in her thinking. But then all of them have had flaws of various kinds. If there is to be the perfect PM we haven’t quite found him or her yet.

So, best PM in 70 years, but there is another unique feature that distinguishes Ms Gillard from all her predecessors. No, not the size of her ear lobes, her hair colour, her clothes, her voice, her glasses. Give in? She has been subject to more personal abuse, vilification, hatred, death threats, than all of her predecessors put together.

At the same time she has been subject to the most one-sided unfair media coverage and constant virulent media attacks we have ever seen. The move by John Howard to not merely “neutralise” the ABC, but move it so far to the Right as to be able to run in harness with News Ltd has been decisive. As has the role of other media barons, their tame shock jocks, and their supportive “think tanks”. Not a government decision goes damningly uncritised, not a move is fairly reported, not a motive nastily unquestioned, not a fake leadership challenge left unturned. At the same time, the most incompetent, secretive, and low target Opposition in our history, has been not only left unchallenged, unquestioned, but praised in glowing terms, given dream runs, soft interviews, prominent soapboxes, on media outlets.

Both media and Opposition are determined to remove a vaguely left wing government and replace it with a hard right one which will undo all the advances Gillard has made and turn Australia into a ground as fertile for big business profit as America. If they succeed, and I reckon the chances are they will, then the baker’s dozen will end with her, a unique sequence come to an end. If Tony Abbott seizes the top job, then we will have not only taken on Tea Party politics from America, but their roller coaster leadership sequence in which some excellent, or at least above average, Presidents, can be succeeded by real dickheads, people who struggle to read a children’s book about a pet goat.

Anyway, over to you. Have I gilded the lily, overegged the pudding?

Ill wind

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by Climate Change, Economics • Tags: , , , , , , ,

This month, once again, air pollution in Beijing has been in the news again. The only new part was that some enterprising fellow was selling bottled air to the public! Let’s leave that for a moment to sink in.

Yes, bottled air. I mean, once upon a time bottled water seemed the ultimate in environmental madness, but we as a species have now really excelled ourselves.

Still, an ill wind and all that, the right-wing think tanks of the US and Australia will be pleased. You see their major task, and this of course has nothing, I repeat nothing, to do with the big corporations that fund them, is to get rid of all regulations in their respective countries. “The Market”, they profess to believe, and I am sure, almost sure, this is a genuine belief they would hold even without funding, will take care of the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness, once freed of the terrible burdens of red, black, green, purple tape.

And here in China (just a touch ironically, but never mind) is the perfect example of their belief in action. Allow business to pour fumes into the air unchecked and, cometh the hour, cometh the libertarian, someone will be ready to sell bottles of less polluted air to twenty million people.

Not saying their beliefs haven’t been proved correct over and over. Here the collapse of a building erected without the burden of building codes provides work for bulldozer drivers in the clean-up; there people burnt in a factory with no fire escapes or sprinklers will provide work for undertakers. Polluted drinking water provides work for medical personnel, as do train and plane crashes, and cigarettes.

In fact scarcely a day goes by but somewhere in the world someone, as well as the owner, is making money as a result of regulations unwritten or unenforced. And, thanks to the think tanks succesful fight against any action on climate change, the whole world is still the oyster for energy companies as well as forestry industries, fisheries, agribusiness.

What’s the old Yorkshire saying – ah yes, “Where there’s muck there’s brass”.

Steering the ABC Titanic

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by Media, politics • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Every now and then, often enough that the phrase is probably encoded as a single keystroke on ABC keyboards, someone from the ABC (Australia’s national public broadcaster, very similar to the BBC) will say “We get allegations of bias from both the Left and the Right so we must be very well-balanced”.

This specious, self-serving narrative has been increasing in frequency over the last three years in parallel with the increasing observations, by those of us on the Left, of the undeniable lurch to the Right that the ABC has made.

Sometimes this narrative might be accompanied by the observation that both a Labor Prime Minister (Keating) and a Liberal (conservative) one (Howard) in recent years have complained about the ABC. And indeed this is a valid observation in the 1990s (and previously) and tells you something important about what was going on. In both cases the objection was that the ABC was a public broadcaster was, without fear or favour, willing to speak truth to power. And since prime ministers of both parties rely totally on fear and favours to govern, and have absolutely no interest in their power being challenged, both hated the scrutiny by the ABC. The commercial networks of course, also greatly interested in favours and power, had absolutely no interest in rocking a conservative government boat too much.

And what sin did ABC journalists and presenters commit in those far-off, almost mythical times? Why, they asked questions of prime ministers and government ministers, of whichever party was in power. Asked questions! And sometimes, and my younger readers will hardly credit this, they would ask a follow-up question when the minister evaded a question the first time! Sometimes even repeat a question, quote a fact or two. If there is anything governments hate it is having their evasions and secrets and fact-free actions exposed to all the world like an Emperor’s new clothes.

So that is the first point. In my observations over many years the only bias in ABC programming was daring to ask questions that governments didn’t want asked, and being so presumptuous as to not accept answers governments wanted accepted. It could be suggested that conservative governments, with their born-to-rule mentality, resent questioning even more than left-wing governments do, and are more likely to see the asking of a question itself as evidence of bias, but neither kind of government is fond of scrutiny.

And so to the second point. The actual actions by Keating and Howard in relation to their anger were quite different. Keating kept on muttering away about how outrageous it all was, or would front a journalist at a function (or in a late night phone call) and set them straight about the error of their ways. But he did this to commercial and ABC journalists alike. No fear or favour there. And no consequences either.

No such ineffective inaction for Howard, who knew the importance of stopping the questioning. “We will decide what questions are asked and the circumstances in which they are answered”, I guess. No mucking around. Appoint members of the ABC Board who were not merely right-wing but culture warriors certain to be sympathetic to Howard’s agenda – not just one or two, but the whole Board. Then appoint a Chairman who in addition to that ideological qualification was also a close personal friend of John Howard’s. Appoint Managing Directors who had the right stuff and then they in turn would appoint senior managers who were politically correct for the new conservative times, and they in turn would appoint reporters and presenters with the right attitudes (often, I understand, from commercial media networks in all three cases). In the meantime shift one presenter, a particularly persistent question asker sideways, and have the Board ensure that there were no mistakes. Pretty soon the thing runs itself, although if evidence of recalcitrance emerges or might emerge, issue instructions, and, if that fails, issue reprimands of staff and apologies to the offended conservatives.

As well as getting the right personnel in place, start playing with the way the organisation does news and current affairs, long its great strength and glory. Add new current affairsprograms designed to be venues on which opinionators can spout forth in prime time. They have to be opinionators, not the “experts” who once appeared on the ABC, because reality has a well-known left-wing bias. And they will be almost all from the far right of the political belief spectrum – preferably the worst former conservative ministers and political staffers and the members of far right thing tanks (see my earlier post here). You justify this by saying you have to get these people on to “balance” the ABC. But since these programs didn’t exist before, the presence of so many right-wing opinionators completely unbalances the ABC, since the rest of the organisation is largely uninvolved in anything to do with politics and current affairs. This torrent of right-wing ideology pouring out of talking heads day after day, all over radio and tv outlets and the new online venue, unchallenged by any fact-checking (because fact-checking has been successfully framed as “bias”), has in itself shifted the ABC a long way to the Right. But wait, there’s more.

ABC News was always the jewel in the crown, the most trusted source of independent objective news in the country. Can’t have that. With a Labor government elected in 2007 it wasn’t enough just to have conservatism rampant in current affairs, the news itself needed to be massaged so that the public would both get the “right” news in the right form, but know the right way to think about it. So, almost un-noticed, the style of ABC News began to change. Instead of just reporting, factually with some information about content, say a Cabinet reshuffle, a policy change, a Prime Ministerial speech, no news bulletin could proceed without a cross to “our political reporter in Canberra” who would massage the news with his or her own ideological prejudices. It would turn out, inevitably, that the reshuffle was a sign of chaos in the government, that the policy change was a backflip, that the speech was shrill or strained. All said with the kind of sorrowful air that precedes a beating from a Thwackum or a Squeers. I can’t remember a single major government action in the last three years presented as simple news without it being massaged to be a negative for the government by a clearly right-wing reporter. Once upon a time this kind of “news interpretation” was left to radio shock jocks or commercial tv breakfast shows and would have been thought outrageous on an ABC news bulletin. Now it is taken for granted as the way one “does news”.

As is the more subtle manipulations involved in the choice of film clip or photo to illustrate a piece, the headlines and captions used, the terminology used (eg “carbon tax”) as derived from the conservative framing, the way the Prime Minister is referred to, the choice of which bits of an event to broadcast, the constant promotion of Opposition stunts, the carefully framed pictures of crowds and their reactions. There is the ubiquitous, apparently obligatory use of the phrase “Tony Abbott says”, “The Opposition said today” to begin items about something the government has done or announced, with or without a later brief comment from the minister concerned. There is even a constant use of Opposition members to comment on some internal Labor Party matter – a promotion, a retirement, a policy debate – which they could not possibly know anything about (the reverse process doesn’t happen). And there is the complete failure of ABC journalists to think or act in any independent matter at all. They no longer it seems do any research or work on their own questions, they simply ask a question that has been framed by the Opposition. Or, even more insidiously, as it has been framed by Rupert Murdoch’s News Ltd publications. Members of whom also regular appear on the ABC to offer spin and interpretations, with any sense that there should be a line drawn between the ABC and its rivals totally gone.

Which brings us back to the proposition we began with about “criticism from left and right = Balance QED”. In spite of all that I have outlined above, the ABC still gets hammered by shock jock columnists and politicians of the stripe of Eric Abetz. In their eyes though the ABC can never be far right enough. If the totality of ABC programming consisted of someone from a Right Wing think tank reading press releases from Menzies House all day they would complain that the sound wasn’t turned up loud enough, or the set was the wrong shade of blue. They get outraged when the ABC dares to mention climate change for example (the stacked Board having insisted that the ABC run, in prime time, the appalling “Great Global Warming Swindle”), or might be perceived as doing something positive about refugees or same-sex marriage. No matter how many right-wing commentators spout their ideology, no matter how the news is massaged, it will never be enough for Eric and friends, in fact they won’t notice.

Conversely when I complain about right-wing bias it is because of what I have outlined above. I am not suggesting that every right-wing opinionator be replaced by a member of Socialist Alliance or Greenpeace, or that news bulletins be vetted by the prime minister’s office. I am suggesting that the obvious sources of bias be removed. That experts once again replace ideologues, that news bulletins contain, well, simply news, that unflattering photos and headlines are not deliberately chosen. The former board members and chairman have now been replaced by a much more neutral group, and this is a good start (although we need a mechanism to ensure that the blatant Howard Board stacking can never occur again). But it is going to take as long to turn the ABC Titanic around as it took to steer it towards the ice pack in the first place. Most of the young people on the staff now have had no experience of what a neutral, professional, objective ABC would actually be like. If I am asking for neutrality, and the Right is asking for even further movement right, it suggests not that the ship is balanced but that it is listing a long way to the right already.

With an Abbott government installed by the media the ABC is going to hit an iceberg and sink totally. We need to change its course before it is too late.

[Once again, apologies to my international readers for parochialism, but I suspect many of the points raised here will ring a bell with concerns about media in other countries]

The Colour Purple

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by Climate Change, Media, politics • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Media Matters has analysed media coverage in the US media of climate change in recent years and found, in spite of record temperatures and droughts etc, that coverage was actually declining. Furthermore, even when climate change was mentioned, the vast majority of those interviewed were Republican climate change deniers, with actual climate scientists rarely if ever interviewed. I don’t know if a similar study has been done recently in Australia, although there are studies of the abysmal News Ltd newspapers coverage, but it is absolutely clear that similar, if not worse, statistics would apply. I’m looking here a one particular Australian case which probably has relevance everywhere.

The record high temperatures in Australia this week, followed by devastating bushfires, were an obvious “teachable moment” for the media to join the dots for the public. This is what climate scientists have been predicting, this is what happened, this is what the future holds. Instead there was again a studious silence. It was as if there was no such thing as climate change, as if (like the America drought last year) these things were happening by chance in some world in which nothing else had changed.

Here is a recent example from Australia’s national broadcaster the ABC. Some background. The “7.30 Report” is a relatively serious current affair program, immediately following the main evening news bulletin, and often expanding on the main stories from the news. On the 8 January, as temperatures soared and fires raged, a great deal of the News Bulletin was devoted to those events, and then the 7.30 Report devoted the whole program to them.

None of the news items mentioned climate change, nor did the 7.30 Report in its first half, to my increasing frustration and yelling at the tv set. Then came an interview with “Alasdair Hainsworth from the Bureau of Meteorology”. The presenter, Ben Knight, introduced the segment by noting temperature records, and then noting that the Bureau had been forced to add more colours, black and purple, to its temperature maps to cope with the new high records. Extraordinary, right, and the obvious time to have a discussion about climate change, and indeed Mr Knight began the interview with the question “why are we in this situation where Australia is breaking these temperature records?”

Yes, I thought, here comes a decent climate change discussion at last. But I was wrong. Whether by design, or because that was the way the meteorologist interpreted the question, we immediately moved into a routine that has become very familiar. The ABC (and other networks) when it asks about the cause of events, means only the proximate cause, not the ultimate one. By this means, turning climate discussions into discussions about weather, every time, it avoids every opportunity to talk climate change. And so it was yet again, Mr Hainsworh talking about the trapping of heat on the continent, lack of cloud and moisture, delay in monsoon season and so on. Now, fair enough, this seems to be Mr Hainsworth’s area of expertise (a manager, Assistant Director Services, a meteorologist involved in IT systems and so on, his team recently won an award for “Our Next Generation Forecast and Warning System was highly commended at the Comcover Awards for Excellence in Risk Management in March 2012. These awards recognise exceptional and inspiring leadership in the management of risks faced by Commonwealth Government agencies. The judging panel recognised that the system improved our ability to manage and inform the community about severe weather events, including severe thunderstorms and flash flooding. These events present a significant risk to the safety of the Australian community”). But that being the case, why was he asked to appear? Well, apparently because he is responsible for the area that had to put new colours on the map. OK, now we have an another opportunity to talk climate change.

And here we go, the conversation proceeding as follows:

“BEN KNIGHT: It’s always a difficult question but how much of an aberration is this or does this actually fit into this pattern we’ve seen over the past decades where it’s been progressively getting hotter and hotter?
ALASDAIR HAINSWORTH: Certainly I can comment that this has broken the record as the hottest period. We’ve had six days in a row where the national average maximum temperature has been in excess of 39 degrees. The previous record was four days and we’ve also seen the hottest average day in Australia which was Monday and perhaps it could have been broken again today, although it’s somewhat cooler in Tasmania today. So, that may not be the case. Certainly it’s almost unprecedented as far as records are concerned.
BEN KNIGHT: And you now have this really quite interesting situation where Australian temperature maps have actually had to change because previously they only went up to 50 degrees, we’re now seeing that you’ve got an extra couple of gradings in purple and black to show temperatures which go beyond 50 degrees and indeed on Sunday and Monday in parts of Australia are forecast to do just that?
ALASDAIR HAINSWORTH: Yes, that’s right. The charts previously did go above 50 degrees, our models certainly were picking temperatures above 50 degrees but they were, it was showing up as white and so we decided that we would alter the temperature scale to ensure it showed it properly and we’ve added the extra two gradations which take the temperatures up to between 52 and 54 degrees Celsius.
At this stage we’ve only seen the first gradation, which is between 50 and 52 populated but yeah, it’s certainly extraordinarily hot over South Australia and central Australia and unfortunately it does appear as though it’s going to, it’s set to continue.
BEN KNIGHT: Do you think we are seeing a new reality, a new paradigm?
ALASDAIR HAINSWORTH: Well, as far as the models are concerned then yes. We haven’t seen these temperatures before but by the same token our computer modelling is getting better, it’s getting more accurate, it’s getting higher resolution. So it could be a combination of these factors which in actual fact just means that it’s actually modelling these things better, that it may not necessarily mean that they haven’t happened before but it’s simply that we haven’t been able to model it before.”

Now I had to not only listen to this extraordinary exchange, but read it several times, to try to make sense of it. I think we have here not really a conspiracy of silence, as it were, but more a combination of circumstances resulting in the same outcome. Mr Hainsworth, I’m guessing, is there because the ABC researcher rang the BOM and said we want to do an interview about this heatwave and about the altering of the weather map parameters could you put us on to one of your people to interview please? And the BOM public relations person has said, oh, you want Mr Hainsworth, his area is responsible for the map. So there we are. Mr Hainsworth is there to talk about the map (and is in any case not a climatologist), Mr Knight is there to talk about record-breaking hot weather (although I am guessing he is also under some kind of ABC protocol that doesn’t let him use the phrase “climate change”).

So, potential cross-purposes established, we start this part of the interview. Mr Knight tries to ask whether this hot weather is the result of the changing climate (without using the term, instead going for the euphemism “past decades where it’s been progressively getting hotter and hotter”) or is some kind of “freak event” as it were. Mr Hainsworth is there to talk about hot weather events, and about his map which reports them, so he does. The map and nothing but the map.

Mr Knight, perhaps hoping that although he can’t mention climate change, perhaps he can get his interviewee to do so (again, I am guessing that an ABC protocol may specify this) tries again with a different euphemism. Are we, he asks “seeing a new reality, a new paradigm?” Knight (again I’m guessing) hears his own question as “come on Buddy, talk about climate change FFS, ‘new paradigm’, get it?”. Hainsworth, having been invited on to talk about his map, hears “how did you construct your wonderful new map on your computer, what were the computer paradigms?” and answers accordingly, yes indeed, our computers are bigger and better so the maps are getting better. Or perhaps I am being too kind.

Whatever, the outcome is that extraordinary weather, a clear prediction of climate science, and obvious further evidence that the planet is warming, are both apparently “discussed” in serious tv programs on the national public broadcaster without climate change ever being mentioned. Furthermore the guest manages (I think unintentionally) to suggest that all of this could be just some kind of computer modelling glitch and we aren’t really getting hotter at all. In any case, it’s all because of some odd combination of weather circumstances. (It’s worth noting that the Bureau of Meteorology has apparently issued a statement I can’t find that “Clearly the climate system is responding to the background warming trend”. Which is fine but too mild, and as far as I know was little reported if at all).

Now, if I were to complain to the ABC about this, I would be met with incredulity. “What are you talking about? We talked about the map and got the senior person from the BOM responsible for it to talk about it. What more do you want?” And, at one level, fair enough. But at another level, why not get a climate scientist on? Why not mention climate change by name even once in half an hour of news and current affairs tv?

The next day, by contrast, the media was full of the statements by Warren Truss, leader of the Right Wing National Party and future Deputy Prime Minister in a conservative government. No problems with euphemisms, or being cautious for Mr Truss. He announced that linking heatwaves and record temperatures and bushfires with climate change was “utterly simplistic”. He went on to say that “carbon dioxide emissions from bushfires over the past week would eclipse those from coal-fired power stations for decades. Indeed I guess there’ll be more CO2 emissions from these fires than there will be from coal-fired power stations for decades”. It hardly needs saying that Mr Truss has done no research in climate science, has done no postgraduate degree in the subject, and in fact has no undergraduate qualification of any kind. He began work as a farmer, then went into politics.

It also hardly needs saying that his CO2 from bushfires comment is mind-numbingly wrong. “bushfires this year have emitted an amount of CO2 equivalent to 2% of Australia’s annual emissions from coal-fired power. The current bushfires must burn an area of forest greater than Tasmania to generate CO2 emissions equivalent to a year of burning coal for electricity. And the current bushfires must burn an area of forest the size of New South Wales to generate CO2 emissions equivalent to a decade of burning coal for electricity.” In addition of course, the CO2 from bushfires will be reabsorbed as burnt trees regrow, so, unlike coal power stations, there is no net gain of CO2 from bushfires at all. Again, to my knowledge, there was no fact checking of Mr Truss on tv when he was interviewed, or subsequently. Certainly there was none, nor any contrary view in the News Ltd paper report I saw.

So Climate Change denialists, Right Wing politicians, are able to make any outrageous nonsense claim (Mr Truss also said “‘I’m told it’s minus one in Mt Wellington at the present time in Tasmania. Hobart’s expecting a maximum of 16. Australia’s climate, it’s changing, it’s changeable. We have hot times, we have cold times… “!) they like and it will be hyped up by the media (big headline in the Herald-Sun “Climate change link to heatwave, bushfires ‘utterly simplistic’, says Warren Truss”). Conversely, it seems, any situation in which the reality of climate change might by chance become obvious to the public is played down, or structured in such a way as to avoid the possibility of information transfer to public ears.

It has so far proved impossible to get past the media who are guarding the gate against any possibility of action on climate change. The time has come for more direct action, more big claims, like those of Truss but based on reality not fantasy. Aim to generate headlines in spite of the media. And every time you get a chance at an appearance on tv or anywhere else in the media, keep saying “climate change” over and over. The time for being shy, unobtrusive, in the climate change closet, is over, the time has come for purple prose to go with the new purple patches on the map.

Just fauxing

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by Climate Change, Environment, Media • Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Interesting article (“Martha Raddatz and the Faux Objectivity of Journalists“) by Glenn Greenwald following the Biden-Ryan VP Debate. “The highly questionable assumptions tacitly embedded in the questions Raddatz asked illustrate how this works, as does the questions she pointedly and predictably did not ask.” “That is what this faux journalistic neutrality, whether by design or otherwise, always achieves. It glorifies highly ideological claims that benefit a narrow elite class (the one that happens to own the largest media outlets which employ these journalists) by allowing that ideology to masquerade as journalistic fact.” Greenwald gives examples of the “Medicare going broke” and “Iran is the greatest national security threat to America” questions to illustrate his point.

I just saw a discussion on one of our tv networks about the effects of the “carbon tax” in Australia after “100 days” that is a slightly different example of the same thing. As these things go it wasn’t so bad. They had actually got an expert to talk about it instead of a politician or shock jock as they normally would. The questions were based on the “sky is falling in” scare campaign of the Liberals, and his answers were calm and measured. So what am I complaining about (never satisfied am I, even when they do the right thing, whinge whinge whinge?)?

Three things. The segment was advertised for an hour preceding with the words “Carbon Tax”, the term used throughout the segment except occasionally by the guest. Now “Carbon Tax” is the term the conservative politicians and shock jocks have been using for two years (alternating with “Great Big New Tax”) for two reasons. First to continue the lie that the Prime Minister had lied in saying she would not introduce a “Carbon Tax”, and second so they can scare the living bejeebus out of all the punters out there by pretending that they were going to be paying so much tax that the Apocalypse would be a walk in the park.

In fact the PM had gone on to say words to the effect “but I intend to put a price on carbon” and that’s exactly what she did. A carbon price isn’t a “carbon tax”. No one is paying extra tax. In fact because of the package of compensation measures almost everyone is better off. Instead of introducing a punitive tax to stop people using so much carbon-generated power, the government used the carrot of compensation so that if you began producing less CO2 you would do even better. To keep on using the term “carbon tax” is to keep selling the conservative meme.

Second, all of the questions, as I said above, were based on the dire warnings the conservatives have been running for two years – businesses ruined, towns wiped off map, pensioners dying in unheated rooms, lamb roasts costing $100 and so on. But still presenting them as questions on 14 October 2012 implies that they were indeed valid points to raise. Proved by the last 100 days to be wrong (although one of the hosts, whose politics are always worn on her sleeve, muttered that meat prices might have gone down but that was because of good seasons – still fighting the battle to the last), but who could have known that?

Well, you could have. You were told plenty of times. There was endless modelling to show the effects, but even without that a moment’s thought about the way the scheme was set up would have told you that all the conservative publicity stunts and deceptive parliamentary questions were as fake as the ones involving an antique shop and a pensioner’s electricity bill. That is “100 days” tells us nothing we couldn’t have known in advance if you hadn’t constantly legitimised the conservative campaign by merely reporting it as fact for the last two years.

And finally the Polar Bear in the room was never mentioned. The Arctic is melting at a frighteningly rapid rate, America has been frying, Barrier Reef in big trouble, and yet reducing greenhouse gases, the whole reason for putting a price on carbon was never mentioned. Nor has it been very often during the last couple of years in this context. So for the public the government has inexplicably introduced a “great big new tax”, apparently for no other reason than to ruin antique shops, wipe towns off map, and kill pensioners, because they are such nasty people. And still, today, the carbon price was discussed without this frightening context.

Australian journalism, like American journalism has a history in recent years of this kind of acceptance of what Lakoff calls conservative “framing”. Perhaps, to give them the benefit of the doubt, unknowingly, but I suspect often in full awareness of what they are doing.

Watch out for it.

The War on Terra

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by Climate Change, Environment • Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

In these strange times we need, I think, a new paradigm, a new way of looking at the world, which can best come from new terminology, new phrases, new words. Change the language and you change the world, or, as George Lakoff famously almost put it “Think of an elephant” and as the other George famously put it “Mission almost accomplished”.

Let me point out the strangeness to you. Here we are, the year 2012. We are near the start of an unprecedented experiment – see how many people are left on the planet if you burn all the fossilised carbon under the earth and convert it into CO2. Or, if you prefer, just how hot can we make this mother? It is a brave endeavour, a courageous decision. I mean there probably are people in the universe who wouldn’t try this without a second equally livable planet nearby, just in case. But that’s never been the way of this particular branch of the ape family. “Live for today and let tomorrow take care of itself” has been the motto of the residents of this ancestral home.

So, here we are, planet in a pot on the stove, getting warmer, getting warmer, but is that enough for us? Hell NO! While the rest of us are busy burning as much carbon as we can in the shortest possible time (trying for a new record for “The Guiness Galactica Book of Records”) there are others hard at work in other directions. They have declared war on the planet and their mission is nearly accomplished.

But there is only so much whimsy a Polar can Bear. You get my drift. It has seemed, in the last fifty years, that the worse damage was done to the planet, the more people wanted to damage it. That instead of saying, “Oh, hang on, bit of a mess here, time we stopped the party, sent the guests home, and cleaned up the house before the Oldies get home” we have turned up the music, ordered more alcohol, and published the location of the party on the Australian Bikies Club Facebook Page.

Bulldozing and burning forests, polluting the seas, overfishing, coal fracking, oil drilling in Arctic, plastic waste, whaling, poisons, hunting, killing tigers and rhino for aphrodisiacs, killing elephants for ivory, chimps for meat, well the list is endless, feel free to add your own. And then the big one – climate change denial. We tend to see these actions as separate, each one to be fought by different groups of activists in different places. But just as the Global War on Terrorism brought together apparently disparate groups under one heading, so that authorities worldwide could more effectively cooperate and work together, so we need a new approach to planetary destruction by whatever means.

So I propose we call actions that damage the planet Terrarism, and that we declare a new Global War on Terrarism.

Any questions?

Upon this rock

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by Climate Change, Environment • Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Saw first part of a terrific tv documentary (How to grow a planet) on the history of plant life on Earth the other night. Struck me that the first episode should be compulsory viewing for every one of the seven billion people I share this planet with. It showed how this ball of sterile, and extremely inhospitable rock we call home was actually turned into a habitable place by plants. Habitable not just for us but for all the other animals we are related to. The first primitive one-celled plants began to generate oxygen, later ones helped to break down rocks, generate more oxygen, began to create an atmosphere protecting us from UV rays. First marine animals were able to eat plants as food. Plants coming on to land paved the way for first land animals. First advanced trees with roots began to break down rocks even further and create soil (there had been no soil). Their shading of the ground helped other plants to establish, shelter formed for animals. Their recycling of water formed clouds and resulted in rain. The deeper roots of trees brought up nutrients from far underground. And so on.

In short then, what we take for granted as a planet on which the living is easy is totally dependent for its benign environment on the plants that cover its surface, from the simple algae in the water to the complex giant trees, and all the plants in between. If a plague of some virus that killed all organisms with chlorophyll erupted, and plants disappeared, animals, including human animals, would be gone a very short time afterwards as the planet went back to being an inhospitable hot rock.

If a plague sounds a bit unlikely, what if one of the organisms, evolved quite recently on this benign planet, decided, inexplicably (the idea is crazy of course), to start large-scale clearing of plants? What if people were logging and clearing forests or sending in hunters and trail bikes? What if grasslands were overgrazed, over fertilised, monocultures, being damaged by fracking? What if “National Park” was merely a synonym for “Exploit Later”? What if marine vegetation was being damaged by run-off full of chemicals, and by rising sea temperatures? What if increasing CO2 levels and temperatures were beginning to damage all plant life?

All of the animals that were evolving in the last 5 million years or so alongside Humans did so in a world whose characteristics had been established by the plants that they lived on and among. Those characteristics of soil, water, temperature range, indeed the very air itself, essential to human and other animals, are not the result of some fixed aspect of this planet Earth, but have been developed over billions of years by plants. Damage extensively, remove completely, the ecosystems containing those plants, and we are sending the Earth back towards its natural status as a barren rock incapable of maintaining life.

Probably not the wisest choice, eh?

One hit wonders

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by Economics • Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Bill Clinton, presidential candidate, famously had pinned to his wall by his campaign manager (the glib James Carville) a sign saying “It’s the economy, stupid”. It was shorthand for “all the voters are interested in is their hip pocket so give them what they want, not any high falutin’ stuff about environment, or arts, or foreign affairs, or infrastructure, or health, or education, Dumbo”. It was instantly adopted as the kind of ageless political advice on stone tablets brought down from the Acropolis by Machiavelli after everybody said “gosh darn why didn’t I think of that?”

And away they went. And because it was the preferred political fighting ground of the Right it suited them down to the balance sheet to have progressives always focused on “the economy” and not the hundreds, thousands of other aspects of daily life that the Right don’t have a clue about. While the strengths of progressive politicians were left undiscussed. As time went by this became a self-fulfilling bon mot because progressives were expected to focus on the economy, so only those who were happy to do so, looked the part, and talked the talk, could become political candidates. Game set and match to the corporations and banks. Bravo Mr Carville.

But the ramifications of this ratty little bit of paper with its fortune cookie sentiment went even further. The public began to believe that you only had to utter the phrase “the economy”, and, like a Hogwarts’ spell, demons would be defeated, all put to rights, happy ever after. An answer to a perceived problem which is “the economy” ignores all the other aspects of society and culture that combine to keep the wheels of history turning. Ignores environmental issues, education, health, infrastructure, culture, technology, communication, ethnic relations, population parameters, geography, history itself indeed. To pretend that there is some magic economic lever you can pull and everything comes good is fooling both yourself and the people.

But it has got worse since that golden age when the Clinton-Carville political renaissance was in full bloom, like a hundred flowers. At least then the post-it note’s wisdom for the ages encompassed the whole economy. In more recent times politicians have come to reduce the language of a campaign to three word slogans, and the “policies” to glib single issues. Modern Carvilles I guess pin-up notes saying “It’s the Dummies, Stupid”. Can’t confuse the dumbed-down voters, so politicians wander around, repeating the same mantra endlessly – all will be well if you elect me and I just do this one thing. The one thing might be the removal of a tax, the change in a law, the building of a railroad, the bulldozing of a forest, the cutting of “red tape” (or these days “green tape” or “black tape”), the stopping of immigration, the reduction of minimum wages, fighting terrorism, and so on.

Our very own Tony Abbott, who three word slogans suit just fine because he can’t remember sequences longer than three words (Romney in America the same) has been telling the public, daily for two years that the “Big New Tax” (ie what is actually a price on carbon applicable only to a few hundred big companies) will be removed and the Golden Years of Howard will be restored. Nothing else needed, just keep telling people (ranging from fishermen to antique dealers to coal miners), over and over that the removal of this ‘tax’ will solve all their problems, for ever and ever amen.

Tony Abbott, Opposition Leader and prime minister manque, doesn’t bother explaining to the businesses that, if they do have “problems”, those problems have nothing whatsoever to do with a carbon price. Their businesses are the way they are (for better or worse) because of the exchange rate of the dollar, free trade agreements, global financial crises, lack of funding for education, inadequate infrastructure, the labour market distortion caused by the mining boom, the adequacy of workplace safety regulations, health care for workers, business tax concessions, the wages that potential customers get, the presence of sufficient housing for a workforce, adequate transport and communications, and so on. If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a society to support a business.

Similarly the general public, offered, say, a tax cut by a wannabe leader, might want to consider what that wannabe might to do public transport, public schools and hospitals, road maintenance, whether they will ensure the air and water are clean (whether indeed they will help to stop the climate itself changing), whether they will be tempted to take the country to war for some less than adequate reason, whether they will encourage development of the arts, and so on.

It is no good making promises about what you will do about one tiny element of people’s lives. What counts is the entirety of the society in which we all live. And the entirety of the people who ask to lead us.

The C Word

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by Climate Change, Media • Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

An odd discussion on one of the Australian tv networks yesterday morning. They had run, to their credit, a segment looking at extreme weather events in different parts of world and tentatively suggested that these might be due to climate change. Well done (more than our public broadcaster has been permitted to do).

At some point during the editing of the segment (and obviously I am guessing this) someone seems to have said “hey, guys, balance, remember, we must have balance”. So they had created “balance” by saying something like “of course all major disasters can’t be ascribed to climate change”. Curiously though, they clearly hadn’t understood their own attempt at balance because they gave an example about flooding. I forget which major flood it was, Thailand perhaps, and the comment was that the damage there was the result of people building in the wrong places, and drainage being impeded (there may have been other factors I forget). So, “not climate change in that case”.

So the discussion by the bright young things began. One was delighted that the presenter of the segment had been “moderate” by pointing out that one even couldn’t be “blamed” on climate change. In her view in general in fact there was far too much talk about catastrophes associated with climate change, and what we wanted was a much more moderate view. The others agreed that, yes indeedy, moderation every time was their preferred option, and that it was really bad to scare people by warning about calamities. The first speaker, who makes much of her origins in the country, said farmers were getting the idea of climate change, but resisted it because of the lack of a “moderate” approach.

Now a number of things occurred to me while listening to this. First, while the media determination to prevent any serious information about climate change reaching the public, and hence prevent any action on greenhouse gases, is as strong as ever, the changes we are seeing in the Earth’s climate are becoming so obvious that they can’t continue totally ignoring the matter. Hence the segment.

Second was the total misunderstanding of what the issue is with extreme weather events and climate change. Events can’t be ascribed or not to climate change based on whether they were made worse by human activity on the ground or not. It isn’t the effects (in loss of life, crops, infrastructure) that is the measure, but the origin of those events. Were they caused by record high rainfall or temperatures, or record numbers or extent of storms, is the question to ask, not what happens afterwards (though of course one of the responses to the now inevitable serious climate change must be improvement of infrastructure to try to make effects less severe on the ground).

My final thought was what a confusion of thinking (not unique to this bunch of tv identities) about what is actually happening to our planet was represented. They were again unable to separate two different issues. Partly they were saying – mustn’t tell people bad stuff that’s going to happen because then they will get scared and react badly and not do anything. Fear not a good motivator. A rare Republican with the nous to understand climate change is saying similar things in the US currently. This sounds kinda logical until you think about it. There are two major aspects to climate change. The first is the gradual rise in CO2 levels, gradual rise in average world temperature, gradual seal level rise and increasing acidity, gradual melting ice caps and glaciers, gradual changes in plant and animal distributions. The second is the manifestations of these changes in weather patterns – record hot days, extreme rainfall events, storm intensity and frequency, droughts, Now the first kind of change is impossible for the average human being to perceive. We rely on scientists to measure such things over time, and report, but we can’t experience the changes for ourselves from one day to the next or even one decade to the next. The extreme weather events however are what we can experience. They are not only a major way in which humans are being directly affected, but the only way we can sense that change is happening and what the implications are. So what these tv personalities (and the Republican, and others) were saying was don’t emphasise to the public what is going on by pointing out to them that what they are sensing is happening is indeed relevant. Instead concentrate on the slow changes that they can’t perceive. This is a recipe that has been in operation for 20 years now and it has resulted in precisely no public awareness or alarm. It is the classic frog in boiling water syndrome.

But partly what these tv icons were also saying is that the “moderate” view was by definition the correct one. That, three bears-like, climate change would be not too hot, not too cold, but just right. Not too wet, not too dry. And so on. It is the kind of mentality that sees a driver whose petrol gauge shows empty driving faster to get to the petrol pump before he runs out. That sees people believing that after a run of “bad luck” they are due some good. That a lump somewhere in the body must be benign, because, well, it just must be. That people who behave well get rewarded. And so on. The climate cannot be changing in a major and disastrous way because, well, it just can’t be. So people who tell us we are in big trouble must be wrong. And while people who tell us we don’t have any problem might just, possibly, also be wrong, it is those who tell us things will change a bit, moderately, but won’t be too bad, who must be right. If change wasn’t going to be moderate, these tv clowns would have to say something, do something, but they aren’t so it must be.

Reality check, guys. The planet, indeed the universe, has absolutely no concern about human beings at all. Knows nothing and cares less about our existence. Doesn’t in fact have the wherewithal to care. Is not sentient. Things happen as a result of physical laws. That’s it. If you pour CO2 into the atmosphere of a planet that planet will warm up, whether or not it contains naked apes. If it warms up enough the consequences for ice, water, soil, oceans, are also inevitable, Homo sapiens or no Homo sapiens. There is no moderator, there is no “moderate”. There are no bargains. There is no good behaviour that keeps you safe, there is just what there is.

And what there is represents calamity ahead, coming ready or not. And if tv clowns think everything will be fine as long as we don’t mention the C word, then we are in really big trouble.