THE USA IS BACK! But still not good enough.

Well, that was refreshing.

A few hours ago, the new US administration made their first public input into the UNFCCC process! It was yet another pleasurable reminder that G.W. Bush is gone, and that his legacy is slowly dying.

Todd Stern, the new, much-celebrated, US Special Envoy on Climate Change, opened his speech with a message that he transmitted ‘direct from President Obama’:

“We’re very glad we’re back. We want to make up for lost time, and we are seized with the urgency of the task before us.”

This was received with a rapturous, enthusiastic round of applause - the sound of hope ringing in the room.

“You will not here anyone on this very skilled US team cast doubt upon the science of global climate change,” said Stern, again demonstrating how substantive a shift occurred on November 4. Every climate campaigner in the room, when reflecting back to the dark days of climate scepticism in the US administration, seemed to breathe a sigh of relief at that moment.

Stern even said that ‘the US acknowledges their responsibility as the largest historical emitter of greenhouse gases’. Another big step forward. Another sign of hope. With all this hope, it would have been so easy to get carried away.

Thankfully though, Tuvalu, an AOSIS member, brought the room back town to earth after America spoke, warning us to take the words of the US with a grain of salt:

“It is beholden on me as a representative of the most vulnerable country in the world to speak out. We welcome the United States remarks… but we hope the rhetoric is matched by reality.”

With this in mind, I’d like to offer some advice to US activists - don’t pause your campaigning to celebrate the government’s rhetoric. Let’s not be stupid about this. Don’t ‘give them time’ without criticism, naively hoping that they’ll do the right thing, translating good words into real action. If you don’t push them, hard, then you won’t be rewarded. We learned this the hard way in Australia, after the election of Kevin Rudd, November 24 2007. Let me tell a story to illustrate…

Consider the parallels with the current ‘Obama situation’:

One week after his election, our new PM Kevin Rudd publicly ratified the Kyoto protocol, as his first act of government. It was publicly acclaimed as great leadership. The nation celebrated. I was proud to be Australian again. However, in 20-20 hindsight, it wasn’t anything more than a symbolic act, and it certainly wasn’t ‘international leadership’ – it didn’t step out ahead of the pack and lead, it just brought Australia into the ‘Kyoto club’ that they had been out of for so long. Our praise of the government’s action went on for a little too long.

Following ratification, the Rudd government announced a year-long plan of reports, drafts and papers, which now seems to have been designed to placate the Australian environment movement, create the illusion of progress, and distract us from ‘the big picture’. The Garnaut interim report, draft report and review; the green paper and then the white paper on emissions trading, the targets. Australia’s targets were originally scheduled to be announced well before Poznan, but were instead delayed until the day after COP14 closed – and then they were only 5-15% below 2000 levels – a total disaster.

The ‘Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme’ – government-speak for Australian emissions trading – is now so poorly designed and gives out so much compensation to polluters, that the climate movement in Australia is now saying that it must be scrapped in its current form. One year after the ‘inspiration’ of ratifying the Kyoto Protocol, Kevin Rudd and Penny Wong have demonstrated that in fact, they are still laggards, not leaders on climate.

And all this because many of us in the climate movement naively trusted them, placing our hope in government to bring us the solutions that we wanted, and ‘giving them the space’ to make progress through the bureaucracy. It didn’t work.

America – don’t make the same mistake. Don’t trust Obama to save your nation’s climate policies without serious pushing from the people. You of all nations know that healthy public criticism is what makes democracy great.

I am personally extremely concerned - especially after today’s press conference in Bonn of American climate NGOs - about the polite restraint within the NGO sector from criticism of the new administration.

Isn’t it clear to the US movement that Obama’s target of 1990 by 2020 is entirely inadequate, and needs to be shifted? Even the old, conservative IPCC science says ‘at least 25-40% below 1990 levels’ is what is required by 2020. Al Gore’s ‘We’ campaign is talking about 100% renewable energy by 2020. That sort of thing is visionary, and that is where government policy needs to go.

In Todd Stern’s presentation in plenary today, he referred to the possibility of agreeing on a global reduction target of ‘more than 15% by 2020?. Sorry, America, but that’s the wrong answer. The global target needs to be at least 40% by 2020. 15% is strongly likely lead to runaway climate change, and destroy our future. Not good enough, Obama.

Additionally, they new administration is still focused on the ‘economic growth’ paradigm, and on ‘capitalising’ on the solutions to climate change – which is a long way from the total paradigm-shift that many in civil society are now calling for, as an opportunity emerging from the financial crisis. Also, Obama is persisting with Bush’s ‘Major Economies’ process – having renamed it from the ‘Major Economies Meeting’, or ‘MEM’ to the ‘MEF’ instead. That’s ‘F’ for ‘Forum’. By including 16 ‘major economies’ in parallel talks to the UN climate process, they are effectively removing the voices of the smaller, poorer, and more climate-vulnerable nations from their discussions. It is not morally correct.

So what should the movement do about this? While it’s great that Obama is not Bush, and we should smile about that – let’s not allow this to create an illusion that the new administration is somehow a ‘leader’ on climate. Because they certainly aren’t. The real leadership is from the most vulnerable nations – AOSIS and LDCs. And it is with them that our solidarity and focus should lie.

Strengthening the US climate movement is crucial. The next four decades to 2050 will be a people-led but government-supported sustainability revolution. The USA, even after today’s progress, still doesn’t support the growing movement. The government is still a block to action.

If Obama’s reputation as ‘a movement man’ – a man who listens to the people – has any substance to it, then the path to removing their block and replacing it with support is clear.

As the climate movement, we need to not pause, but to keep criticising, encouraging and pushing the USA in the right direction, in negotiations and in the public sphere, until their political walls give way.

This post first appeared in Climate Change Perspectives.

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When one considers the social progress that has been made in the course of human history, there is a great deal to be grateful for. We used to live in societies where women and non-whites were subjugated, where sexual expression was repressed, where healthcare and education were rudimentary and hardly available to the lower classes. However, over the course of centuries, progress has been made. The evolution of more democratic forms of government seems to have facilitated the improvement of health and education services. Many forms of discrimination have been abolished or legislated against, generally as the result of a mass movement. Ideas previously overlooked, such as animal rights, have also seen progress - the Great Ape Project, founded in 1993, aims to have non-human great apes granted several basic rights.

Reflecting upon this, it seems that there is some sort of path that human civilisation is on. This path leads to a society that is characterised by greater equality and respect for all of its members. Whether or not there is some ‘city on the hill’ where all conceivable social progress has been made, or whether it is an endless journey, there is no doubt that humanity as a whole is more than just it has historically been. While recent developments in the context of global terrorism have seen these rights violated in some instances, this situation of human social progress, can be thought of like a ratchet, such that each step, once made, is almost irreversible, and that a right or recognition, once granted, is now available for all humans.

This sort of advancement can also be seen in humanity’s attitude towards the environment. While it is true that human environmental destruction is greater than it ever has been, even to the point of threatening current civilisation, our awareness of the vulnerability of the environment seems to be more acute than ever, no doubt partly motivated by a selfish awareness that environmental destruction will spell our own demise. The banning of CFCs, in terms of environmental protection, is comparable to other developments in social progress: there was something wrong, laws and attitudes changed, and now humanity is in a better place than it was. Personally, I see a lot of hope in this regard. Opportunities to help the environment abound more than ever, and people are taking advantage of these. On a recent trip to Melbourne, I was able to bus to and from the airport. I took a bus back to Adelaide and offset my emissions. The camp I attended had an ‘Environmental Sustainability Officer’, who had overseen revegetation projects and the installation of rainwater tanks, which supplied water for showering or gardening. A friend who put me up for a night or two had an awe-inspiring vegetable garden. Her organic waste went into a compost for this garden and other waste was recycled as much as possible. In South Australia, a ban on plastic bags has been introduced and, once it takes effect, customers will have to use the re-usable ‘green bags’ that are the obvious solution to the problem of disposable bags. In addition to this, the state has met its target of 20% energy from renewable sources. Federally, a similar target is to be instituted, and the introduction of a Carbon Trading Scheme in 2010 will no doubt also encourage environmentally sustainable practises. One might think that, on the environmental front, things are just peachy.

Well, it’s not quite a case of ‘you couldn’t be more wrong’, but there is one difference between making social progress and making environmental progress. The social advances that have been made didn’t occur in an environment of urgency. Women campaigning for women’s rights didn’t need to achieve their goal by a certain time and, while the existence of discrimination in the past would always be sad, it would be possible to prevent it from directly affecting the present once equal rights were gained. Regarding gay marriage, while I think that it should be made legal, I don’t fervently campaign for it: when Prop. 8, a proposition to remove the right of gay people to marry, passed in California: 62% of voters over 65 voted for it, a similar proportion of younger voters voted against it. This demonstrates that the legalisation of gay marriage is almost inevitable – it is a simply a matter of time, as those who would vote against it are gradually taken to the grave. While it is shameful that it will take maybe twenty more years for this injustice to be righted, those twenty years aren’t much considering the centuries of injustice that preceded them.

Environmental progress is a different ball game, because even if it may be desirable, there is an inescapable deadline on making change. Lowering of our carbon emissions is definitely set to happen, as technologies continue to improve and people continue to realise how easy it is to change. This lowering is urgent, and must occur within the next few years. Head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Rajendra Pachauri, a scientist and an economist, has made it clear:

“If there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment.”

Tackling climate change isn’t comparable to opposing apartheid or supporting the legalisation of euthanasia: climate change is a threat to human civilisation that demands immediate and urgent action. If this action occurs doesn’t occur in time, even if it does eventually, the carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere will contribute to irreversibel change. A rapid reduction in emissions from 2010 would still result in 2.1 – 2.8ºC rise in global temperature by 2100. On our current emissions path, we are looking at 5.5 C: mass extinction, ocean acidification, desertification, brutal heat-waves and rising sea levels.

Climate Change isn’t an unfortunate injustice that ought to be righted some time in the future. It is a threat to human civilisation as we know it.

Image courtesy of westcoastclimateequity.org

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Climate change has not been addressed by either side of politics in the election campaign.

Welcome to Queensland: home of the Great Barrier Reef, the Daintree rainforest, the Torres Strait Islands and the pastoral Darling Downs.

Sadly, each of these Queensland icons is at serious risk from climate change – whether by drought, cyclones, ocean acidification, rising sea-levels, or, as our North-Queensland communities will testify, floods.

Given the importance of addressing climate change to our state’s future, you’d think that it would feature more highly in the 2009 election debate.

But the climate change elephant – the most important issue of our time – doesn’t even appear to be in the room. It’s been crowded out by the global credit crisis, the police force, and payroll taxes.

Meanwhile, in our so-called ’sunshine state’, renewable and sustainable initiatives are going offshore because they can’t find support here.

Welcome to Queensland, the coal state: home of the Bowen basin, Macarthur coal, and what is set to become be the world’s largest coal export terminal at Gladstone.

We’ve got certainly a lot to change, and the public is ready for it.

Shifts in our climate policies would yield not only massive environmental dividends, but also political dividends for whichever major party proposes them.

Thus far, however, the election campaign hasn’t hasn’t mentioned ’sustainability’ or ‘climate change’ in a statement from either side.

It’s no wonder they are avoiding talking about it – the climate policies of both the ALP and the LNP are decidedly lacklustre.

On the ALP’s watch, Queensland Rail is set to invest $654 million – not on the ailing suburban train network in Brisbane, but on expanding the capacity of regional coal export lines.

They introduced the ‘ClimateSmart’ package which could be more accurately renamed ‘ClimateStupid’, handing out over twice the amount of public money to rich coal companies than to start-up renewables. Bligh and her government are masters at the fine art of spin over substance. 

Could ‘The Borg’ and the LNP be a better option? Let’s explore…

They do rightly oppose the Traveston Dam, which the ALP – aided by recent rainfall – conveniently ‘postponed’ until after this election. They could do some serious damage in north-Brisbane ALP marginals by talking up their water management credentials.

Another saving grace, aside from Traveston, is the LNP campaign website – vastly superior to ‘Anna4Qld’. Perhaps that’s where they directed the massive donations from mining magnate Clive Palmer – one of the biggest vested interests in Queensland coal.

It’s no wonder Palmer wants to help get Springborg into power – The Borg is a climate change denier who thinks that global warming is caused by volcanoes. The LNP doesn’t even have a climate change policy.

These are facts that Bligh would do well to highlight – the 2007 federal election showed that the electorate no longer tolerates climate sceptics like John Howard.

To make matters worse, the Nationals wing of the LNP still wants to reverse Queensland’s restrictions on broadscale landclearing.

So a change of government wouldn’t help the climate, or future generations, at all.

With no confidence in either major party on this crucial issue, the best election outcome that I am left to hope for is that enough people vote for independents or minor parties to produce a hung parliament.

Perhaps such a result would be consistent with what seems to be the prevailing view of Queensland politics – that we dislike the mess that the ALP is making of our state, but that the LNP, our only major alternative, is totally incompetent.

Maybe with a hung parliament, both main parties would start listening to community concerns, competing with each other to determine which policies – on climate, healthcare, education, crime or industry – are the most representative of public opinion.

After all, isn’t that the way that democracy is meant to work?

On climate, I suspect that the vast majority of Queenslanders – especially those who’ve recently been flooded out or hit by worsening cyclones – would put their vote behind a major party that came out with an inspiring, Obama-style, science-based climate policy.

The right policies could build a sustainable state, with renewable industries, public transport, and green jobs that Queenslanders could be proud of. Policies like that are just such an easy sell in an election campaign, and look a hell of a lot better than becoming the world’s largest coal exporter.

Sadly, I sincerely doubt that such a seismic shift could happen in the next two weeks. Nonetheless, I issue the challenge to Bligh and Borg: give us – the citizens who you work for – a climate policy that we could vote for with pride.

Go find the climate elephant, and make it your pet issue.

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