Climate policy caught in the crossfire of warring sides

Even if you accept the science is real and the effects are profound, it’s a leap to then believe we can stop it.

Illustration: Eric Lobbecke

The climate change debate has been an unedifying spectacle for years now, with too many polemicists espousing too much passion on the issue, such that the experts get lost in the milieu that follows.

The issue has been turned into an ideological battle. Reactionaries dress up climate change as a furphy, claiming it’s some sort of international conspiracy. The basis for such uneducated commentary is flimsy at best, and gets only flimsier as evidence and scientific consensus grows.

However, these commentators and politicians have platforms to spruik their non-expert opinions, and the cynicism they tap into within the community is a by-product of the ideological zeal on the other side of the debate.

When climate change activists argue the end is nigh, they lose the mainstream, or at least some of it.

To be sure, society needs activists — without them slaves wouldn’t have been freed, gender rights wouldn’t have advanced as quickly as they have, same-sex marriage wouldn’t be on the statute books. But activists also can have a counter-effect. And in the siloed-media age we live in, the self-reinforcing scepticism towards scientific experts on climate change grows when activists overstate their case.

Of course, sceptics on climate change hypocritically argue for experts to be listened to in other spheres. I had to laugh midweek when, while channel surfing, I stumbled across a high-profile oppon­ent of climate change who ignores the consensus of the experts. He was talking about the bushfires on this occasion, and made the observation that anyone in affected areas needed to “do as the fireys tell you to do”. I couldn’t agree more. It’s important to listen to the experts, Alan.

One reason some Australians are disinclined to answer the call to do more on climate change is because reversing its effects could be nothing but a pipe dream. In other words, spending money trying to stop further climate change may be a lost cause. This is something public policymakers need to consider in the context of what the experts tell us.

Even if you accept the science is real and the effects are profound, it’s a leap to then believe we can stop it. Slow it down, maybe, which would give humanity time to adapt.

While per capita emissions in Australia are very high, it’s also true that our emissions as a percentage of global emissions are very low. That’s not an argument not to act, as some sceptics superficially trot out. Were such an attitude applied to other policy areas nothing would ever change.

But it does cause some people to pause for thought — to wonder if spending large amounts of money on climate change action to prevent it getting worse is really worth it.

The hard reality is that the developing world is going to continue to increase its emissions for decades to come. And with the populations in these rapidly developing states already large or predicted to grow rapidly, trying to prevent climate change, although worthy, may be unrealistic.

Adaptation therefore could be the better focal point, spending time and energy preparing for the inevitability of what climate change will do to communities, to the environment, so we can minimise the harm.

This is a traditionally conservative approach and it is one that recognises the science.

Which is not to say efforts to reduce emissions should stop altogether; of course not. Just that the focus — practically speaking — should shift to planning for the inevitable.

I’ll leave it to the polemicists on both sides to argue over the effect climate change is or isn’t having on the worsening drought and fire seasons here in Australia.

Clearly change of some sort, however, is afoot and policymakers need to help society prepare for it.

Which is why 23 former emergency services chiefs wrote to Scott Morrison in the middle of the year asking for a meeting to discuss the impact of climate change on our environment, and what needed to be done to prepare for what they said could be a devastating fire season.

Unfortunately, they have been proven right.

The letter wasn’t ignored but it was handballed to the relevant minister, Energy and Emissions Reduction Minister Angus Taylor. The fact Taylor’s office ignored the request for a meeting for months, not responding until the issue was raised in parliament and the media in September, was unfortunate.

While the Prime Minister can’t meet everyone who seeks to do so, I’m surprised a letter of this kind didn’t elicit a more careful response. It now just looks bad, even though the issues canvassed in the letter really are for state governments to respond to, not the federal government.

Those who wrote the letter would know that, having been employed by state and territory governments when they worked in emergency services.

Yet they didn’t write to this tier of government. It shows either a lack of understanding of how our federation works (which I doubt) or an intent to politicise the issue (which I suspect). There is nothing wrong with the latter, as long as it’s acknow­ledged.

One of the things that can be frustrating for anyone seeking a national unified response to any issue the states (not the commonwealth) have responsibility for is the difficulty of achieving a consensus. It is easier to write to the commonwealth than a plethora of state and territory governments with all manner of partisan colours.

Federal governments that whinge about this need to reflect on the many years of federal governments usurping state government responsibilities.

In other words, after decades of commonwealth takeover of state government duties — alongside an ever-present willingness to keep doing so — it’s no wonder those lobbying for change choose to start with the commonwealth.

When it wants to, the commonwealth is always happy to ­violate principles of federalism and step on the toes of state policymakers.

The precedent of having done so, time and time again, means that when Australians are looking for who to blame when things go wrong, they invariably blame the commonwealth, not the states.

Peter van Onselen is a professor of politics at the University of Western Australia and Griffith University.