Howard's punt is on the money

Sydney Morning Herald
Friday 30/3/2007 Page: 17

John Howard could not have chosen a more exquisitely churlish moment to truculently, almost exultantly, dismiss the idea of setting any targets for cutting Australia's output of the greenhouse gases thought to be responsible for global warming. It was on Wednesday afternoon during the Parliament's question time. Britain's Sir Nicholas Stern was in the building and waiting to meet the Prime Minister.

Stern is the author of the celebrated Stern report last year that said global warming "could create risks of major disruption to economic and social activity, later in this century and in the next, on a scale similar to those associated with the great wars and the economic depression of the first half of the 20th century".

The front page of the Herald was reporting that Stern had arrived in Australia, asking that the country commit to mandatory targets to cut carbon emissions by 2020 to levels 30 per cent lower than those of 1990, and to cut by at least 60 per cent by 2050.

The Labor Party has supported a target of cuts of 60 per cent by 2050, although, crucially, it has failed to say how it proposes to achieve them. And Howard knew that Kevin Rudd is convening a so-called summit on climate change in Canberra tomorrow where Labor will parade its concern for the planetary future.

So with Howard under pressure from the rock star of climate change, Stern, and the rock star of Australian politics, Rudd, to commit to targets for cutting greenhouse emissions, what did he do? He told the Parliament: "I am not going to join the Australian Labor Party in destroying the jobs of Australian coalminers. I am not going to join the Labor Party in committing to targets which will do disproportionate damage to the Australian economy." Yesterday, at a press conference, he amplified this decision. It would be the easiest thing in the world, he said, for any politician to commit to anything by 2050, knowing he wouldn't be around to deliver.

A wag at the back of the press conference immediately shot back to Australia's second longest-serving prime minister: "Is that a commitment?" Howard, doing the mental arithmetic that puts him at the age of 111 in 2050, decided that this was one retirement deadline he could agree to, and said so.

Of course, Howard is right - it would be dead easy for him to match Labor's unsupported commitment to cut emissions by 60 per cent by the time the babies in the maternity wards today are buying their bright-red midlife-crisis hydrogen cell sports cars at the age of 43. So why won't he do it? Howard is no longer a sceptic about global warming. He now agrees it is a problem, and he has announced policies to try to address it. These include yesterday's decision to put $200 million towards an international fund to help poor countries better manage their forests, which are being stripped away at a rate that contributes 20 per cent of the world's annual carbon emissions.

But his chief aim is to frame this year's federal election as a referendum on economic management. He wants to be able to portray his Government as the reliable and trustworthy manager of a strong economy, and Labor as the party of dangerous neophytes, fiscal madmen and green fundamentalists. Of course, Howard is setting up a false dichotomy in the policy choices he portrays.

What sort of future does Howard think the Australian coal industry faces as the world gradually moves to an era of low emission energy? It will have no future at all.

It is stunning to see that the private equity consortium bidding for the big Texas power utility TXU has offered, as a condition of its $US45 billion bid, to cancel eight of the company's 11 planned coal-fired coal plants. Even to Wall Street raiders and Texan energy shareholders it is clear that coal has lost much of its legitimacy as a fuel.

How does Howard think he is helping the long-run growth of the economy by denying corporate Australia the certainty of a clear carbon policy? Every industry needs clarity on this. Even the leader of the global climate change sceptics, the US oil major Exxon Mobil, has abandoned scepticism, and is calling for the clarity of a framework of climate change policy.

Which sectors does Howard think will be the growth industries of the future? It's alternative fuels and energy-saving that will offer the great opportunities for growth, where the next century's BPs and Exxon Mobils will be found.

The Australian founder of a pioneering solar energy firm, Solar Heat and Power, has moved to California where the regulatory system encourages renewable energy.

So Howard's position is a policy nonsense. But he is putting his trust in cartoon-simple political caricatures for the election campaign. It's a big risk. We know from a Newspoll last month that 76 per cent of Australians think climate change is a major problem. And Labor is prepared to campaign on the issue - it is about to air a TV ad narrated by Peter Garrett pushing its global warming credentials.

Has Howard lost his fabled political nous? He is taking a calculated risk our concern about global warming is widespread but feebly felt. He is punting that it is not a vote-switching issue. The evidence is very sketchy, but it supports Howard's punt. Only 20 per cent of respondents to the Newspoll were prepared to "pay a lot more" for alternative energy sources.

And a poll by the market research firm Pollinate found a similar syndrome. Its director, Howard Parry-Husbands, says: "Seventy-five per cent of Australians are concerned, but understanding is very low at 40 per cent and the proportion prepared to change their behaviour over it is barely in double digits, 14 per cent." So Howard is talking global warming nonsense, but in the confident expectation that we don't care enough to call his bluff.