Rudd's green credentials on the line
Kevin Rudd received a standing ovation at the international climate change conference in Bali last December, having just signalled a change in Australia's environmental policies with the flourish of his prime ministerial pen: his move to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. A year on, he may well have just lost any pretensions of being in the vanguard of global leadership on climate change after adopting cautious greenhouse emissions targets of cuts between 5% and 15% by 2020.
Earlier this month, the European Union adopted the goal of 20/20/20: a 20% reduction in greenhouse emissions, with 20% of energy from wind, sun and other renewable sources by the year 2020. Before that, Gordon Brown and Al Gore had personally lobbied Kevin Rudd to adopt bold targets. So he will not get quite the same green carpet welcome anymore when he struts the international stage.
Mr Rudd has argued that when you take population growth into account, Australia's per capita targets are comparable with Europe. But last week, the Climate Action Network claimed it was "Groundhog Day" in Australia, and likened his cautious approach to that of the former Prime Minister John Howard. European NGOs have ranked Australia below almost all developed countries in its performance on climate protection. Of the 57 largest CO2 emitters, Australian ranked sixth from the bottom, ahead of just Kazakhstan, Luxembourg, the US, Canada and Saudi Arabia. Australia also has the highest per capita greenhouse emissions rates in the OECD because of its heavy reliance on coal-fired energy.
Yet Kevin Rudd is, after all, the Australian prime minister, and he appears to have decided that the international green lobby is less important than the domestic energy and business sector. Neither does he want to inflame the voters.
Some leading figures in the business community wanted a delay to the emissions trading scheme, because of the global downturn and its impact on the Australian economy. With growth for the last quarter virtually flat-lining at 0.1%, Heather Ridout of the Australian Industry Group has argued that Labor's pre-election climate change commitments were based on the 'politics of prosperity' and thus obsolete. With so many opposing constituencies and lobbies to appease, no wonder Ross Garnaut, the government's advisor on climate change, called this the "most diabolical" policy conundrum of the age.
In announcing his policy - a speech at the National Press Club that was interrupted by three protesters shouting "not enough" - Mr Rudd repeatedly used the words "balance" and "responsibility". But pragmatism is the unspoken watchword. His environmental strategy runs in tandem with his economic strategy and his political strategy. The three are inextricably linked, and the global downturn has made that more so.
Slamming it as dismal politics and dismal policy, the Greens have already claimed that the Prime Minister's timid approach will mean the death of the Great Barrier Reef, and make it much more difficult for Barack Obama to achieve a truly significant international agreement at the vital Copenhagen climate change conference next year.
Trying still to burnish his green credentials, Kevin Rudd claimed in his speech that after eleven years of climate change scepticism, Australia is now part of the solution rather than part of the problem. But some might concur with the Greens leader, Bob Brown, who said: "I think John Howard would be making the same announcement were he at the press club today had he won the last election."
So "a global embarrassment," as the Greens suggest, or a sensible act of environmental protectionism?
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