Tory Shepherd: PM caught between a rock and hard place: Solid evidence of climate change and an intractable deputy PM

Whatever the Prime Minister’s “Australian way” is, it’s not working, writes Tory Shepherd.

Two roads are diverging in a parched and blazing wood, and for some (political) reason Australia is choosing the one less travelled by.

The Aussie way. Not the UK way (cutting emissions by 68 per cent by 2030 from 1990 levels); not the EU way (55 per cent), or the US way (43 per cent), and net zero emissions by 2050 for all three.

The Aussie way is 26-28 per cent by 2030, with a vague preference to get to net zero by 2050, and to hope like the fiery hell of a summer bushfire season some magic technology will come to our rescue.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s latest report is clear. The climate is changing, it’s changing because of human technology, and the risks of catastrophic bushfires, rising sea levels, and deadly heatwaves are already being seen. In Wednesday’s The Advertiser Michael McGuire pointed to extreme heatwaves in Europe, raging wildfires in the US and Russia, floods in China, Belgium and Germany. This is upon us.

In response to the IPCC report Scott Morrison used the phrase the “Australian way” four times. “We have an Australian way to deal with this challenge and it’s been put into place,” he said.

Politically, he’s stuck between a rock and a hard head. The rock is the solid bulk of scientific evidence about science change, and the resulting wish of most Australians to avoid disaster.

The hard head is, of course, the deputy Prime Minister, Nationals’ firebrand Barnaby Joyce (and a stubborn bloc of malcontents who stand with him). The Prime Minister will have to negotiate any sort of plan with Mr Joyce.

“We have an Australian way to deal with this challenge and it’s been put into place,” Scott Morrison said, without detailing what that way was. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

And Mr Joyce is on a very weird and winding road indeed.

Usually he just lazily paints climate change as in issue for “inner-city latte-sipping elites”, as opposed to the “real” people in the bush.

Maybe he’ll give that rubbish a rest now it’s clear the “real” people are also affected by climate change, by bushfires and floods. (The National Farmers’ Federation supports a net zero by 2050 target – but maybe it’s the fossil-fuel lobby he thinks is “real”.)

This week he said he won’t back action until he knows what it will cost, so he must have missed the almost 4000-page IPCC report that spelt out clearly what the costs of inaction will be.

He now says someone must “lie down the plan” for action. When ABC radio host Fran Kelly asked him what the federal government’s plan would be, he said “we don’t actually come up with a plan”.

So Mr Morrison has to come up with a plan, deal with Mr Joyce on that plan, but Mr Joyce says the plan is not the government’s responsibility.

Now he sits there, a bewildering roadblock, the man who returned to the Nationals leadership in June by a spill, a man whose level of power was never put to a vote by the ­people.

The IPCC is not throwing its proverbial hands in the air. It says there is still time – if the world does enough, soon enough – to pull back from the brink of disaster.

The warming and drying trend is clear, in Australia and New Zealand, from the IPCC.

“The choice of climate future is ours to make,” Professor Mark Howden – a contributing author and head of the Australian National University’s Institute for Climate, Energy and Disaster Solutions – said.

It is an urgent problem, an emergency situation, but we have many proven, existing ways to reduce our emissions before it’s too late. To choose the right path.

Robert Frost’s poem, The Road Not Taken, is often misunderstood as an ode to the nonconformist, to striking out on one’s own. But literary experts and historians say Frost initially wrote it as a jokey tribute to a friend of his who always dithered. “No matter which road you take, you’ll always sigh, and wish you’d taken another,” Frost wrote to his friend.

When it comes to climate change, Australia is heading down the wrong road. We need to get back to where those two roads diverged – or find a shortcut – and make a better choice. It really will make all the difference.