The whole Australian blogosphere is seething with feverish excitement about the government’s green paper on carbon emissions trading so I suppose I should write something about it too. One does want to appear to be on top of the Most Pressing Issue of Our Time.
Trouble is I’ve long been a climate change fatalist, by which I mean that I don’t believe the human race has the social or political skills and institutions required to make any sort of sensible response to what most scientists agree is going to happen to us. As a subscriber to the “Why worry about things you can’t change?” philosophy, I’ve let most of the argie-bargie about CO2 and Kyoto and IPCC and the Arctic ice cap go straight over my head.
Rudd’s green paper seems to be a bog-standard bit of political pragmatism: it fulfils his election commitment to do something about global warming, avoids any major fights with vested interest groups, and rather cleverly minimises the scope for the opposition or the media to create massive scare campaigns. It will apparently do bugger-all to change carbon emissions any time soon but that’s hardly the point, is it?
I’m sure about 5% of the population will now spend months arguing every fine point up hill and down dale while the remaining 95% go about their business, happy that the government is Doing Something about Climate Change.
A lot of the discussion at Public Opinion and LP starts from the premise that the Rudd Government wants to do something substantive to reduce carbon emissions. I think that’s a misplaced belief; I think the government devoutly wishes the whole issue would go away and is only interested in smoke and mirrors tricks that make it look like it’s being proactive without upsetting anyone much in the process. Given the undeniable truth that anything Australia does means three fifths of five eighths of SFA in terms of the global problem, I rather think the government’s approach is eminently sensible.
At least Kevin Rudd is not John Howard and Australia is a better place for it. Be grateful for small mercies.
