Medieval ignorance against climate action seeks a privileged voice we should reject

The federal government's threat of further job and funding cuts to the CSIRO - among Australia's premier scientific truth-finding research organisations - fits neatly with the recently reported comments of Federal Attorney-General George Brandis in claimed defence of freedom of speech for climate change deniers.

As reported by The Guardian, Brandis used an interview in online journal Spiked to describe as "ignorant", "medieval" and "authoritarian" those he says exclude deniers from the debate and fail to engage them with arguments.

Brandis' comments should be seen for what they are - an arrogant exercise in normalising a self-interested and irrational stance through the privilege of a powerful but insufficiently accountable voice.

Climate change deniers are not prevented from voicing their dangerous, anti-scientific falsehoods. And they are routinely engaged with arguments they ignore or fail to convincingly answer, most recently in the compelling form of the latest IPCC climate assessment.

Yet, despite the disproportionate impacts of climate disruption on the disempowered, not only do deniers remain unsilenced, they are championed by the powerful, such as Prime Minister Abbott and Attorney-General Brandis, whose actions amount to effective climate denial.

Brandis' claim of exclusion from the public debate of alternative views on climate change risks leaving a disengaged public with the false impression that there is a body of credible scientific research suggesting the case for climate action is overblown.

If that were the case, the Federal Government has the access, power and resources to ensure such research is presented to the public - something the defunded Climate Commission (now Council) was readily able to do in arguing the case for urgent climate action so repugnant to the Coalition.

Should the Abbott Government now fail to produce any coherent response to the evidence and conclusions produced by the IPCC's latest report - let alone the previous and overwhelming case already presented by the global scientific community - it will only underline its complete abdication on the science.

As for the denialist commentators, a government lacking the ability to rigorously substantiate its case for climate inaction (also known by the policy name of "Direct Action") has a distinct need to protect the space denialist commentators occupy in the media as a meagre substitute for the vacuum of scientific fact underpinning fossil-fuel-driven business-as-usual.
While we may tolerate climate denialist speech, we should not tolerate governments who enact it against all the evidence in the shape of disastrous climate laws and policies.

As the CSIRO cuts play out, I will wait for Brandis to denounce as medieval and ignorant all the medical scientists who rightly dismiss those denying the link between tobacco and cancer.

In the meantime, the climate cancer spreads through voices amplified by power and access to the media - their flawed and disingenuous arguments undermine our environment, our standards of government, and our international reputation as a country of progress and decency.

A letter based on this text was published in today's edition of the Sunday Age.

An open letter to The Age on "financial terrorism"

Dear Mr Holden,

As bushfires rage around Australia, let me suggest an alternative to yesterday's editorial, shriekingly headlined, "Sharemarket damaged by financial terrorism".

You might have instead considered "Climate damaged by carbon terrorism" - it gets you much closer to the truth.

A vastly larger group of "shareholders" is hurt by the exploitation of fossil fuels and routinely deceived by lies and misinformation denying the impacts of the resulting carbon emissions - including more frequent and severe bushfires.

That tragic fraud affects the global population, far beyond those affected by market changes following a media release purporting to announce ANZ's withdrawal of funds from a coal project.

Jonathan Moylan's corrective activism certainly has The Age fired up. More urgently, the reckless pursuit of fossil fuels such as coal is, quite literally, setting the world on fire. Where's your moral outrage at that?

Sincerely,


Darren Lewin-Hill

P.S. Your editorial follows recent excellent coverage by Tom Arup of projected increased insurance costs for State assets in Victoria based on climate change and resulting bushfires.

Earlier this week, Peter Hannam reported that money for bushfire research is running out. In his piece today on Meekatharra, he quotes Dr David Jones, head of climate analysis at the Bureau of Meteorology, regarding new record temperatures set for Australia in the present heatwave.

In terms of climate change trends, the rising mean temperatures provide a clearer "finger-print", not to mention the rate and scale of the new records being set, Dr Jones said.

Unfortunately, as "A Nation Burns" - in the words of yesterday's page one headline - your editorial tips the "balance" of your coverage towards a perspective that values the market over damage to the climate, and those who live with the impacts of climate change - or die from them.

Minchin's denial pays no mind to climate science

It is unsurprising that former Liberal Senator Nick Minchin has followed up his appearance on last night's ABC climate special and Q and A Climate Debate with an opinion piece in today's Age stating the thoroughly expected "news" that they failed to change his mind about climate change.

Yet, if anything emerged from last night, it was that there is no climate debate as such (as opposed to mere disagreement), Minchin's position is irrelevant to the issue, and there's little, if any, common ground between those who argue cogently for urgent action to address climate change and those who deny it.

I Can Change Your Mind About Climate sent Minchin and Australian Youth Climate Coalition co-founder and chair, Anna Rose, on a string of encounters with noted sceptics and scientists around the world.

It was a pity that a meeting with Naomi Oreskes, a professor of history and science at the University of California San Diego, failed to make the final program, for it was on the link between climate denial and the denial of tobacco as a cause of cancer that Minchin was most clearly rattled by Rose's clear and measured questioning.

In Oreskes' book, The Merchants of Doubt, the professor considers the key figures common to the denial of climate change and the campaign to discredit the science on the grim realities of tobacco. Oreskes shows how the tactics of Big Tobacco persisted long after the evidence of the disastrous health effects was well and truly in.

That the same pattern has been followed on the climate issue lies at the heart of Minchin's fallibility, but his television appearances and today's opinion reveal differences and limitations in how the media deal with the issue.

The Q and A Climate Debate included not only Rose and CSIRO head Megan Clark on the panel, but also authorities in the audience - including Professor Matthew England - who were in a position to immediately correct the errors of science put forward not only by Minchin, but by coal magnate and fellow panellist, Clive Palmer.

Unfortunately, it will be left to the letters column and follow-up opinion to correct without the same immediacy and effectiveness the errors Minchin repeats in today's Age, but they must not go unchallenged.

Short-term variations in demonstrable long-term warming trends, the continued (but threatened) existence of polar bears, cities that (for now) remain above the sea and the broken drought provide no basis for challenging the unfolding and ultimately catastrophic impacts of climate change, yet Minchin sells these denialist talking points as knock-out arguments.

Last night he also claimed there is "no empirical evidence" that humans are causing global warming and that the "science isn't settled", while today he writes of a "lively scientific debate" that he hopes will continue.

For Minchin, it does not suffice that the science is verifiably in to the extent that global warming is happening, is caused by human activity, and indicates more not less urgent action with each new finding of research. He is forced to deny these facts - to sow doubt in Oreskes' terms - because the acknowledgment of facts would leave him nowhere to go.

Unfortunately for the former senator, the "facts" on which he seeks to stand are an iceberg long-melted in the sea when we consider the nature of verification of the claims of the respective sides, and their status beyond the mere "conviction" and "persuasion" he attributes to those, like Anna Rose, who base their case on peer-reviewed scientific research.

The omission of Oreskes was indeed a pity in this regard because what we do about climate change comes down to what counts as evidence, and how we can be assured that the conclusions put forward are actually robust and reliable. This is where Minchin's side falls away like an eroding coastline. It is the dividing line between claim and argument, between assertion and substantiated fact.

In his parade of sceptics, however, Minchin has offered a fixed target that I now hope will be closely examined by climate scientists and widely reported across the media. Such debunking of myths has been carried out in the past, but last night's programs offer an opportunity to do so in a substantial media spotlight at a critical time for our nation.

A disagreement is not a debate unless verifiable facts are attributed on both sides. While we cannot stop people disagreeing without reason (or for irrelevant reasons of self-interest), we can call them on their hollow arguments and not be delayed from necessary action in the national and global interest.

Last night Q and A ran my video question challenging Clive Palmer to invest his billions in zero-emission renewable energy instead of carbon-intensive coal. I was happy for it to be on, but I actually preferred another question I had submitted for Minchin himself.

That question asked who he thought were the appropriate umpires of questions of climate science. It also asked him why he was willing to appeal to a false debate in rejecting climate action, when he would surely never consider arguing against emergency surgery in hospitals based on a false "debate" about medical science. That is the frame in which we ought to see the self-interested challenges to climate action here and around the world.

Given the sides in this disagreement, it was a somewhat illusory hope that "common ground" would be achieved, and what passed for compromise looked more like the next move in the climate denialists' play-book. We need, according to Minchin and Palmer, not a price on carbon, but far more investment in research and development of green energy - to make it so cheap that everyone wants to use it.

That's actually true, but the rub is what will happen in the meantime if we fail to also price carbon. Without a carbon price and additional measures to curb our emissions, we can only expect that the continued burning of fossil fuels will cause emissions to spiral upwards to the point where they place any safe climate solution beyond reach.

Sounds a bit like telling us to keep smoking while Big Tobacco works on cigarettes that won't give us cancer, don't you think?

Update: Rose has now published her reply at The Age online.

Memo to ASIO re spying on coal protesters

Today's edition of The Age carries my letter (see "Not cricket, chaps") responding to yesterday's piece by Philip Dorling reporting ASIO's spying on green protesters who are fighting the expansion of coal by Australian State and Federal governments. Here's the unedited version:

MEMO to ASIO: Chaps, I need to give you the nod about some dastardly characters conspiring as part of a secret organisation that poses a direct threat to the interests off all Australian citizens, our allies, and a few billion poor people you may not be too concerned about but it would be nice to look after. This nasty outfit is called the Carbon Party, and draws its global membership from the big polluters and mainstream political parties who think climate change caused by human activities is a lot of rot.

Two of the blighters, federal and state energy and resources ministers, Martin Ferguson (codename "The Fossil") and Michael O'Brien, somewhat carelessly gave a joint press conference earlier this year at a carbon capture and storage launch in Morwell, where an extension to meet its funding conditions was also granted to a rather grubby brown coal-fired power project (since given the "green" light by VCAT).

Usually, these darklings are more careful to veil themselves in talk of their flimsy support for renewable energy and aren't quite so brazen, but they're ramping up their efforts to destroy our climate and collect those dirty coal dollars.

Their Victorian colleagues have abandoned the State 2020 emissions target, removed the cap on emissions from new brown coal power stations, and announced plans to expand the industry, including coal-seam-gas - all to be sold by a publicly funded spin campaign to persuade Victorians that brown coal is good enough to sprinkle on their breakfast cereal.

Their Federal operatives are paying a private company (NOSIC), and now seem to be asking you guys and the Australian Federal Police, to spy on peaceful protesters they want everyone to believe are more dangerous than terrorists.

Hmmm. They're actually not more dangerous than terrorists, and it would be a tragedy if you let some real terrorists through the net while you were wasting your time spying on coal protesters who are working hard to protect the national interest.

You should also seriously consider looking into the organisation and support of the Carbon Party in Australia - they're well funded, well connected, and seem to have the run of the place as our carbon emissions climb endlessly higher. That's not cricket, chaps. They have to be stopped. Get on with it!

Related media

• Intelligence officers make home visits to green activists, The Age, 13 April 2012
• Protestor visited by "intelligence", 774 ABC Melbourne, 12 April 2012

Comments welcome.

Ryan's "streetlight" defence of climate inaction

Victorian minister for the environment and climate change, Ryan Smith, last night offered a feeble "streetlight" defence of the Baillieu Government's climate change inaction.

Speaking on ABC 7.30 Victoria, Smith suggested the Government's scrapping of the State's 2020 emissions target, the slated expansion of its emissions-intensive brown coal industry, and the removal of emissions caps for new brown-coal-fired power stations would be compensated by emissions savings from programs such as more energy-efficient streetlights.

Ryan did cite other "complementary" measures to reduce emissions - including the likely-to-be-scrapped Victorian Energy Efficiency Target - but failed to quantify savings from such programs compared to the massive prospective emissions from the expansion of brown coal.

He asserted the State's role was now primarily to adapt to climate change, with responsibility for abatement and mitigation left to the Federal Government.

As noted earlier this week by Environment Defenders Office lawyer, Michael Power, in this the Victorian Government is relying on national measures to justify the scrapping of the State target at the same time as it attacks the carbon price with leader of the Federal Opposition and climate sceptic, Tony Abbott.

Smith asserted that, despite disagreement with the carbon price, there was bi-partisan federal commitment to the 5 per cent 2020 target - nothwithstanding the widespread questioning of the Federal Coalition's plans to achieve it. He maintained that with a federal scheme, a State target did not make sense, noting commentary during the week supporting his view.

State political editor for The Age, Josh Gordon wrote, for example that State emissions targets could be dumped if a national carbon tax were in place. However, he noted as a "crucial, yet overlooked caveat" the advice of the State Government's own review of the Climate Change Act that a State-based target be considered if the national scheme were "rescinded or substantially amended".

The caveat is important, but the central flaw in Gordon's piece is that Victoria's 2020 emissions reduction target should not be abandoned regardless of the adoption or otherwise of a national carbon price. If national measures were adequate on the science it might be another matter, but they are not.

In this regard both the State and Federal Government are guilty of effective climate change denial - making statements and even laws purporting to act on climate, while pursuing activities that render effective climate action impossible.

At both levels of government, this applies especially to the pursuit of coal. In February, for example, Martin Ferguson and Michael O'Brien, the respective Federal and State resources and energy ministers, together launched a carbon capture and storage project in Morwell, where a six-month extension to the contentious high-emissions HRL brown coal-fired power proposal was also announced.

That project has now won VCAT approval, partly on the back of the scrapping of the Victorian 2020 emissions target.

Even if it were granted that the State Government's role was primarily to adapt to climate change, there would be an implicit moral obligation not to make it worse through policies that can only serve to rapidly and massively increase the State's carbon emissions.

To further abdicate responsibility by abandoning prevention of climate change through State measures only mirrors the forlorn argument that Australia should not act as a nation until there is agreement on global action. Climate denial reigns - effective or explicit, the results for our global atmosphere will be disastrously the same.

Comments welcome.

That's a pretty clear "No" to Ferguson's NOSIC

Lots more photos and video will be available shortly, but Say No to NOSIC, today's Occupy Melbourne event at Martin Ferguson's electoral office, was a very positive coming together of disparate groups - all there to defend public interest protest against private interest spying.

I travelled by 86 tram with a group from the City Square, and it seemed an appropriate beginning that Melbourne City Council officials were there to request the removal of Occupy signage - please do not despair, minions, life can be more meaningful, as we were all about to demonstrate.

When we arrived at Martin Ferguson's Preston electorate office, an advance protest party was already there in force, as was a contingent of Victorian and Australian Federal Police with enough vehicles to give the strange impression of an outdoor law enforcement vehicle showroom.

I asked one besuited young officer if she was from ASIO. "Of course," she replied - rather wittily, I thought - before amending her answer: "No, Federal Police". Unfortunately, not all the officers present had so admirable a sense of humour, with reports of officers swearing at protesters who strayed onto the road to connect with the sympathetic passing traffic. Unfortunately, the AFP's own traffic-stopping antics created far more risk, and they were urged to move on by the crowd.

It was a cause of some amusement to the gathering that Ferguson's office had been closed in response to the protest on "occupational health and safety" grounds. It occurred to me then that if Ferguson is allowed to continue with his lust for burning and exporting fossil fuels, we might just have to close the planet. Fortunately, many worthy campaigners stand in the way.

Occupy Melbourne's Nick Carson did a great job on the microphone, speaking himself but also facilitating a series of speakers in a truly participatory spirit.

Among these was Quit Coal's Shaun Murray, recent author of a powerful opinion piece making the case for democratic protest against coal, and giving the lie to Ferguson's spin regarding the imaginary "risks" posed by protest groups.

Murray had earlier participated in a very funny Tuesday protest filmed to the accompaniment of music from Get Smart.

The addresses continued with Friends of the Earth's Dr Jim Green on Ferguson's complementary delusion that we should not only burn or sell all our coal, we should sell uranium too in a dangerous pretence of action on climate change.
 
Historian and ALP member Wil Wallace voiced his own disappointment at the party he has followed, a disappointment he has channelled into participatory democracy and protest.

Sadly, we also heard testimony of spying on lawful and peaceful coal protests, including on children, in Queensland and elsewhere - spying that simply isn't justified on any public interest basis - whether or not, as one speaker rightly pointed out, that spying is undertaken by government, or by private agencies directed by government, such as the National Open Source Intelligence Centre (NOSIC).

In accordance with the participatory nature of Occupy, everyone was afforded an opportunity to take a turn with the microphone, so I decided I would also say a few words, transcribed here from my notebook scrawls:

We are here today to Say No to NOSIC, the private firm engaged to spy on lawful and peaceful protesters under the direction of resources and energy minister Martin Ferguson, our local Batman MP.

The Australian Federal Police are here not to repel any real threat from us - we are lawful and peaceful protesters.

They are, however, here to defend a threat - to protect and perpetuate the threat of Martin Ferguson to our climate.

We are here today thanks to Occupy Melbourne, to Say No to NOSIC, to say no to spying on behalf of private interests against public interest campaigners seeking a safer climate. We are here to oppose those who work for the benefit of the 1% against the common good.

We are here to say no to that, and to send a message to Martin Ferguson and the Gillard Labor Government, that the 99% will be heard, that they will be heard on the globally urgent question of climate.

The protest wrapped up with a group photo and chalked messages on the footpath in front of Ferguson's office (my own, "Regards, DL-H"). This was a positive protest organised to communicate a very serious message, and I commend Occupy Melbourne for their democratic achievement.

P.S. Don't forget Friday is National Check in with Martin Ferguson Day. Please ensure your heart is in the right place, and report on yourself to help the government save money on spies!

Comments welcome.

Ferguson spy skit has point of serious protest

If you haven't seen Quit Coal's very amusing short video about Tuesday's action against Martin Ferguson's spy-on-the protesters campaign, it's a must-see, with a very funny punchline about a certain fictional cat.

Unfortunately, the video is also a perfect illustration of the misuse of public resources not to fend off a threat, but to defend and perpetuate one - the Member for Batman himself, resources and energy minister, Martin Ferguson.

That's right - Ferguson is the threat we need to worry about as he works to expand exploitation of the fossil fuels that - burnt here, or exported then burnt - threaten to wipe out any carbon emissions savings from a carbon tax and clean energy development.

In the terms the Batman MP might use, there was no threat from the protesters, who dressed as spies to deliver a "secret" dossier about the coal barons. Ferguson knew there would be no violence or unlawful activity, just an inconvenient point to be made about his contribution to disastrous climate change. Unfortunately, he's the real face of the Gillard Labor Government on climate.

The assembled Australian Federal Police must also have known of the lack of any non-imaginary threat, and yet there they were, perhaps as genuine but unrelated threats elsewhere went unaddressed - witness the parallels between this action and Robert Doyle's nonsense with police attendance at various Occupy sites around the city while real crimes elsewhere just had to go unprosecuted.

The point Ferguson was really making is that he thinks he has the power to not hear directly from protesters, those among the 99% championed by Occupy Melbourne, and of course in this case from the ranks of the worthy activists of Quit Coal and Friends of the Earth.

In that sense, the video's use of the theme music from Get Smart was very appropriate. I can hear Ferguson grumpily pronouncing, "I didn't hear you", and - when the protesters ask "What part didn't you hear" - Ferguson replying, "The part after you said, 'Now listen carefully, Martin'".

If you'd like to contribute to the effort to improve Martin's hearing, please come to the second of this week's three actions, Occupy Melbourne's Say No to NOSIC* protest, at Ferguson's 159 High Street Preston electorate office (Google Map) on Thursday 12 January from 4.30pm, or meet at the City Square at 3.30pm to proceed there together by tram.

Further details are available on the Facebook page for the event.

After that, Friday is National Check In With Martin Ferguson Day, in which you let Martin know what you've been up to in the way of public interest activism to help the Government save money on spies by cutting out the middle-man (sorry, NOSIC*).


*NOSIC is the private intelligence-gathering firm spying on climate protesters for the Government.

Comments welcome.

More bad news for spymaster Ferguson

Updated 6.54pm.

The continuing public backlash over resources and energy minister Martin Ferguson's spy-on-the protesters campaign spells more bad news for the Batman MP turned private interest campaigner and spymaster.

The wave of letters in yesterday's editions of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald continues in today's Melbourne broadsheet. Quit Coal and Friends of the Earth campaigner Shaun Murray has also today published a powerful opinion piece making a strong case that the risk to Australia is from the coal barons, not protesters.

The coverage came as protesters prepared to gather at Ferguson's 159 High Street Preston electorate office today at 12.30pm (Quit Coal) and on Thursday at 4.30pm (Occupy Melbourne).

Together, the coverage and protests send a strong message saying no to a spying campaign that pits the private interests of emissions-intensive resources companies against community campaigners working in the public interest to achieve a safer climate for everyone.

Here's my letter in today's edition of The Age ("Ferguson must be resisted").

FOLLOWING Saturday's excellent reports by Philip Dorling, it is heartening to see such a united voice opposing the Minister for Resources and Energy Martin Ferguson's undemocratic ''spy-on-the-protesters'' campaign.

Accounts by protesters are emerging across Australia, but notably also in Mr Ferguson's Victorian federal electorate of Batman - a focal point for public interest campaigns to achieve a safer climate.

Mr Ferguson has shown that his local constituents don't count - it's his ''carbon constituents'' from the resources companies he really represents. Sadly, he's willing to engage the government's intelligence-gathering machinery to ensure the companies get their way. He must, and will, be resisted.

 Comments welcome.

"Carbon Party" undermines Gillard on carbon price

John Brumby made a good case for carbon pricing and low-emissions economic opportunities in his Saturday opinion piece in The Age. In it he makes an admission that State and Federal Labor need to act on, not just acknowledge. Standing in the way is the "Carbon Party". Here's my letter, published today (scroll to "Green initiatives are totally cancelled out").

It's good to hear former Victorian Premier John Brumby acknowledge that "Australia won't always be able to rely on what we dig out of the ground". That's true not because of the exhaustion of our large fossil fuel reserves, but because under the inevitable global pricing of carbon, the market for fossil fuels will disappear, and products we produce from emissions-intensive energy sources will become very expensive, and therefore uncompetitive.

Given the greed of large corporations and the short-sightedness of our less reflective investors and shareholders, it is understandable they will seek to capitalise on fossil fuels to the maximum possible extent before this happens. Understandable, but not acceptable.

As they rush to squeeze value out of their dinosaur powerplants and fossil fuel reserves, they push Australia and the world towards or even across the boundary of dangerous climate change. Their misleading campaigns foretelling economic ruin and energy insecurity place dollars above disaster.

While John Brumby argues well for the economic benefits of low-emissions investment and development, the timeframe in which too many Labor governments see the transition would allow the exploitation of fossil fuels and their climate impacts to substantially play out. We are, in fact, expanding our search for oil, coal and gas, and we operate in a deluded two-climate economy - one where we invest in green initiatives, and one where we cancel these out through the headlong pursuit of fossil fuels.

It is this duality within Labor at state and federal levels that is undermining the argument for carbon pricing. With federal Labor MPs like Martin Ferguson, it is almost as if there's an implicit Carbon Party at work in Australia, drawing its members in lesser or greater numbers from Labor and the Coalition respectively. If we're not to lose the race - the human race - that has to stop.

Comments welcome

OurSay on climate must be more than popularity poll

Today the Sunday Age launched its OurSay initiative on climate change, entitled "You Decide: The Climate Agenda". A Sunday Age team will investigate the ten most popular questions submitted to the OurSay website by 2 September. Here's my first question, which you can comment or vote on at the site (you'll need to scroll down to "The Question").

How will the Sunday Age ensure that questions of little value in terms of the peer-reviewed science do not, through mere popularity, displace genuine questions that can be answered by scientists in a way that will help people understand the climate challenge and the need for urgent action? Perhaps the newspaper's team should investigate the top ten questions assessed as genuinely at issue or judged as subject to popular misconception by an expert scientific panel. The panel could comment on any popular questions they omit from the top ten, giving their reasons for doing so - for example, where a question seems intended to mislead on the science. The panel could also be consulted by your team in responding to the top ten questions that make it through this quality check.

This is a really interesting project, but one that needs to be carefully thought through if its results are to genuinely progress the climate action agenda in Australia.

I hope you will engage with OurSay on climate, and feel welcome to leave your comments here as well. I will be tweeting on progress @NorthcoteIND

Climate sensitivity over jobs shows double-standard

Two letter-writers in yesterday's edition of The Age wrote about the "invisibility" of workers affected by a carbon price, despite many projections - including by the ACTU - of projected gains in green jobs in the shift to a low-emissions economy.

Today's edition carries my letter in reply, which questions why those opposing a carbon price are so concerned about selective estimates of job losses claimed as likely to result from action on climate, while they are less so to the business-as-usual job losses in the marketplace in pursuit of "efficiencies" and profit. Here's the unedited version:

It is unrealistic to suggest that the transition to a low-emissions economy will be without disruptions that will certainly impact on individuals and families. That's why a principled approach to implementing an environmentally necessary carbon price must take care of those in our communities who will be most affected - workers in the Latrobe Valley, but also in other areas where employment is currently carbon-intensive.

What Damien Cremean and Ben Dziekan fail to acknowledge is that we are routinely impacted by large-scale job losses through the quest of powerful corporates for cost-cutting and market efficiencies that in general have no climate benefits as their goal. It is perverse that many of those corporations, including the big polluters, now project undoubtedly exaggerated job losses from a carbon tax when their usual approach is to strive to cut their workforce to the bone.

Those who will be affected by job losses through pricing carbon should never be "invisible" as these writers claim, but the right to fair compensation would never be denied by the highly visible thousands who demonstrated for a strong carbon price on Sunday. We also know that if we do not act on climate the impacts will be felt by billions.

 Comments welcome.

Say Yes Australia draws big Melbourne crowd

Today more than 10,000 people gathered in Melbourne - and more than 45,000 nationally - to support a strong price on carbon to help tackle climate change at the Say Yes Australia National Day of Climate Action.

Here Don Henry, CEO of the Australian Conservation Foundation, makes the case for saying yes to a strong price on carbon.

A great campaign, and a great turn-out, but more needs to be done to define what "strong" means. If it means setting a price, and ultimately emissions targets, that agree with what the science says needs to be done to achieve a safe climate, then I support the campaign wholeheartedly.

The coalition of community groups involved in the campaign need to ensure that saying yes isn't simply construed as saying yes to the inadequate pro-polluter action currently proposed by the Gillard Government, most recently seen in a group hug with industry at the Minerals Council dinner last week.

We need to say yes to something that counts. That said, today was a wonderful show of support for effective action on climate, and I applaud everyone who had a role in organising it. Well done!

This film was not made in association with the Say Yes Australia Campaign.

Labor survival runs second to sustaining the planet

Today's edition of The Age carries my letter, "Bigger issues than an ailing ALP", responding to Michael Pearce's excellent opinion piece on the future of Australian Labor ("Should the ALP labour on, or is the party over?"), which questions the ultimate survival of the party.

There follows my edit of the longer version I submitted, which makes my point more clearly - that sustainability is a common theme among the issues Pearce considers in his search for a Whitlamesque "crusade" that might unify the ALP. It is also one with a strong basis in fairness and social justice - the traditional values of Labor.

I argue, however, that it is more important to consider sustainability as an imperative for the planet than for its potential contribution as a narrative for the renewal of the Labor Party. Sustainability is also a cause being progressed more urgently by social movements, independents and Greens than by a party that has lost its way.

Michael Pearce has written an eloquent and fascinating big-picture analysis of the Labor Party. We should, however, care less for the survival of the party than for the progress of the growing social movements concerning the vital issues it has so badly failed to capture.

Our federal minority government shows that in an era of converging major political parties, minor parties and independents can help steer the course of government back towards the public good. They may be maligned for doing so, but their measure is not the esteem of so-called "mainstream" politicians, but the degree to which their actions are informed by the values that no longer enliven Labor - and certainly not the Coalition - at state or federal level.

Nor is their measure, as Pearce observes, their position inside or outside the "economic paradigm". Increasingly, that paradigm is being recognised as uneconomic in a far deeper sense than questions of surplus or deficit.

One clue lies in what is common between the issues Pearce considers as potential sparks for renewed "crusades" - the national broadband network, the processing of asylum seekers and the carbon tax.

As Melbourne University's Voice supplement [in the same edition] announces a new research centre to "green" the internet, it is also projected that many more asylum seekers will need to be "processed" by Australia as they flee the impacts of dangerous climate change imposed on them by the spiralling emissions of developed and developing nations.

Yet the effective denial of Labor's weak climate action - with its looming capitulation to the big polluters over the carbon tax - is little better than the Coalition's denial outright. We can sustain civilization fairly and with humanity only if we work to sustain the planet on which we live. Shouldn't that be the business of politics across the trivial divisions of party power?

At present, Labor is masquerading as a climate progressive party to hold on to power by attempting to capture the green vote while placating conservative free-marketeers and the big polluters with weak climate action. Prime minister Gillard instead needs to recognise that a vital object of power is not its own preservation, but sustaining civilization itself.

Comments welcome.

IPA "remedy" for climate suits big polluters

Last week's edition of The Sunday Age carried another missive from the Institute of Public Affairs on how the world can be saved from the impacts of climate change by making countries rich enough to adapt.

Unfortunately, Chris Berg's free-market prescription amounts to little more than a get-rich-quick scheme for poor countries based on the same high-emissions growth that has led to our current climate emergency. This claimed panacea of profit-fuelled adaptation is deeply flawed.

Aside from the certainty with which the big polluters would flee the queue to pay for expensive adaptive measures, recent disasters give the lie to our ability to adapt to large-scale impacts. Among these, floods and bushfires are set to increase in frequency and severity if we do not act to sharply curtail our carbon emissions.

With Fukushima now adding to Windscale, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, there is also a nuclear cloud over Berg's failure to even mention renewables as a viable alternative to fossil fuels.

A full  accounting of the mortality, health and broader environmental impacts of climate change points to the urgent necessity of a strong carbon price. It also highlights the risks of the proposed compensation and current massive subsidies by the Australian Government for the polluters who work against a safe climate future.

The distraction we must resist is not a carbon price, as Berg would have it. Instead, it is the false reassurance of selective statistics and scant scientific support for doing nothing beyond business as usual.

Growing our emissions so we can get rich enough to supposedly adapt to the climate change those emissions cause just doesn't make sense.

It is to be hoped that Julia Gillard and her government recognise this as a basic physical constraint on how the world works - ignoring it could have extreme consequences for our shared global climate.

Gillard's sleight-of-hand on extremism

Friday's edition of The Age carried my letter responding to Julia Gillard's opinion piece the day before calling for the rejection of "extremists" following Wednesday's rally in Canberra against the proposed carbon tax.

The rally, attended by federal Coalition leader, Tony Abbott, featured offensive placards attacking the prime minister. Abbott has drawn much deserved criticism for his attendance, including Friday's Age editorial.  However, Julia Gillard used the opportunity to label as extreme not only those who attended the rally, but those opposing them who are urging stronger, science-based action than is currently being proposed by the Australian Government. Here's my letter:

Gillard lumps all in the extreme basket

IN CALLING for the rejection of extremists, Julia Gillard tries to create a single negative category including not only the ilk of Wednesday's ignorant and offensive rally against a carbon tax, but also those who urge stronger science-based action to achieve a safe climate (Comment, 24/3).

A valid critique of Australia's present weak emissions reduction targets does not render the holders of such a view extreme. They base their case on the same science referenced by Professor Garnaut in his climate review for the federal government. Perhaps Ms Gillard would like to explain her government's more than $12 billion in annual subsidies for the fossil fuel industry, or the recent approval of the largest open-cut coal mine in the southern hemisphere at Wandoan in Queensland?

It is just those kinds of actions that will work against household and industry assistance to choose low-emissions alternatives. This debate shouldn't be about some "fine Australian" calling the Prime Minister a "witch", or worse.

 Comments welcome!

Combet must unite the science and economics of warming

Today's edition of The Age carries my letter ("Unity on warming") responding to an opinion piece by Barry Jones in yesterday's edition of the paper.

Jones made an important point about the need to link the separate economic and scientific approaches to climate change - something that, despite its progress on the climate issue, the federal government is still failing to do, including in a recent speech by climate minister Geg Combet in the week before the latest international climate talks in Cancun.

My letter makes the additional point that the two-degree "guardrail" limit to additional global warming to which Combet refers in the speech is increasingly thought unsafe by the latest research, which also considers that the measures proposed by developed nations are unlikely to achieve it anyway.

First, the published version:

Unity on warming

IT'S hard to agree with Barry Jones that it's probably too late for Australia to lead in setting stronger greenhouse targets (Comment, 7/12). But we still need him on the new federal climate committee.

His most urgent message for government is the perils of the ''two-cultures approach that separates scientists and economists''.

Climate Minister Greg Combet showed remarkable bias to economists and blindness to science in an address on November 30.

First, he claimed our weak 2020 target was comparable with international efforts on a per capita basis and given our dependence on fossil fuels. He missed the point that action needs to be distributed according to a scientifically determined global carbon budget, not by futile promises by recalcitrant nations.

Second, Combet continued to claim that Australia was committed to working towards an agreement to keep average global warming within 2 degrees of pre-industrial levels. Not only will our proposals fail as a contribution to that goal, it is a level of warming increasingly deemed unsafe.

The two cultures must come together: there can be no economic solution to climate change that is not fundamentally calibrated against the science of ''what needs to be done''.

Now, the version submitted:

It's hard to agree with Barry Jones that it's "probably too late" for Australia to lead in setting stronger greenhouse targets, but we still need him on the new federal climate committee.

His most urgent message for government is the perils of the "'two cultures' approach that separates scientists and economists" in framing climate action.

Set to depart for the latest climate talks in Cancun, climate minister Greg Combet showed remarkable bias to the economists and blindness to the science in a 30 November address at the Australian National University.

Firstly, there was his economic sleight of hand in "justifying" Australia's climate stance. Our weak 2020 target was comparable with international efforts on a per capita basis and given our dependence on fossil fuels, he claimed - missing the vital point that action needs to be fairly distributed according to a scientifically determined global carbon budget, not on the lowest common denominator of futile promises by recalcitrant nations.

Secondly, he continued to claim that Australia was committed to working towards an agreement to keep average global warming within two degrees of pre-industrial levels. Not only will our current proposals fail as a contribution to that goal, it is a level of warming increasingly deemed unsafe by the latest findings of the UK's Royal Society.

The two cultures must come together: there can be no economic solution to climate change that is not fundamentally calibrated against the science of "what needs to be done".

 Comments welcome

Here's how to move to renewables

The Victorian Government likes to downplay the practicality of a rapid transition away from coal to renewable power generation, but has never responded in detail to the innovative Zero Carbon Australia Stationary Energy Plan produced by Beyond Zero Emissions.

In short, the plan calls for a ten-year transition to 100% renewables using 60% concentrated solar thermal (CST), which can produce baseload power, and 40% wind. 

Full video is now available of the University of Melbourne launch by the Melbourne Energy Institute back on 14 July. To see it, go to the university's Live@Melbourne website.

It's a long video, but you can skip forward as needed, and to answer the question: "Who is that climate campaigner challenging the federal government to produce any sort of plan to justify the pipedream of carbon capture and storage?" (@106 mins 28 secs)

Fiona Richardson climate protest tomorrow

Update: A picture from the protest at Fiona Richardson's office. There were plenty of cars "honking for real action on climate change".

Local climate groups will tomorrow morning hold a pre-election protest outside the Northcote electorate office of Labor's Fiona Richardson MP. As a climate-progressive independent candidate for the 2010 Victorian State election, I will be joining them.

At the protest, Darebin Climate Action Now and the Australian Youth Climate Coalition will send a strong signal to the Brumby Government that its weak climate measures will be swamped by emissions from the continued burning of brown coal to generate electricity. The clock is ticking before we cross irreversible climate tipping points.

Despite initiatives such as the Zero Carbon Australia Stationary Energy Plan, which shows that a ten-year transition to renewable power generation is possible, the Brumby Government persists with the myth that a few renewables projects are enough to compensate for dirty emissions from brown coal - it just isn't true.

A good start to a more positive approach would be the total closure and renewable energy replacement of the Hazelwood brown-coal-fired power station within the next term of Government. Unfortunately, John Brumby is too committed to listening to the coal lobby.

Fiona Richardson is the local representative of Labor's climate destructive policies, so please join the protest and use your vote on Saturday to support a candidate promoting strong, science-based action that stands a chance of securing a safe climate.

Is it it coal or climate, Mr Brumby? The science says you can't have both. 

Where: 404 High Street, Northcote
(Just north of Separation Street, on the right heading out of the city)
When: 8.00-9.00am, Wednesday 24 November

For further information:

Carol Ride
Convenor
Darebin Climate Action Now
0408 320 080

Telephone pole set to vote Labor in Northcote

Media release

Independent candidate for Northcote, Darren Lewin-Hill, has been shocked by the discovery that even local telephone poles are succumbing to ALP propaganda, with one Clarke Street pole stridently declaring, "I'm voting Labor".

"I've heard of telephone polls, but this is ridiculous," Mr Lewin-Hill said.

"There's no human face on the placard, so we can only assume it's the voting intentions of the pole being referred to in the message. As an independent committed to accountability, I'll get to the bottom of this - I very much doubt that that pole is on the electoral role for Northcote," he said.

The distracting signage, on a speed-limited section of the notorious traffic rat-run, covers an earlier sign featuring Northcote MP Fiona Richardson, wife of former Victorian ALP State Secretary, Stephen Newnham.

"I did stop letter-boxing for a while to try to talk the pole out of such a foolish move, explaining that in its exposed position it would be among the first to experience the impacts of severe climate change driven by the Victorian Government's disastrous climate policies, not to mention Australia's status as the world's largest exporter of coal.

"I also pointed out that the Government's mania for roads would likely see even more traffic using rat-runs through local residential streets, and it was likely the pole would be a sitting-duck. My plea fell on deaf ears, so-to-speak," Mr Lewin-Hill said.

He said the sheer prevalence of Labor propaganda had given him the brilliant idea for a "Replace a Placard" scheme, in which Labor placards would be replaced with an equivalent surface area of solar panels.

"By the end of this election, I'd say we'd have enough renewable energy to power Victoria ten times over," Mr Lewin-Hill said. "We could close the Hazelwood brown-coal-fired power station immediately."

"At the moment, emissions savings from the renewable initiatives slated by the Brumby Government would be quickly overtaken by our continued burning and likely large-scale export of brown coal. Lip-service to renewables can't compensate for the emissions from brown coal," he concluded.

He said that until his Replace a Placard scheme kicked in, it still wouldn't be a bad idea to shine a light on Labor's propaganda machine.

Climate encounter at Northcote Plaza

Just a short post about a climate encounter while out leafleting at Northcote Plaza yesterday. A fellow took my flyer, went in to do his shopping, then spoke to me when he came out. Turns out he works on the coal-fired power stations in the Latrobe Valley!

We talked about closing Hazelwood, Australia's dirtiest brown-coal-fired power station, and he agreed it had to close but there needed to be a plan to replace the generating capacity. Enter the Zero Carbon Australia 2020 Stationary Energy Plan! The plan uses 40 per cent wind power to complement 60 per cent concentrated solar thermal (CST) power generation.

He hadn't heard of the plan, didn't like wind power because of its intermittency, but also hadn't heard of CST power generation, which allows baseload power to be produced by using solar energy to generate heat that is stored in molten salts. That heat can then be released when needed to drive a turbine when the sun isn't shining - voila, baseload power supply.

This fellow thought it was a promising idea. He said he thought Morwell was actually dirtier than Hazelwood, though I know Morwell is quite a bit smaller (165MW and 5 turbines, versus 1600MW and 8). Maybe in emissions per MW generated it is, I'm not sure. The big thing for me was who you can bump into outside a suburban supermarket, and how they can add to your understanding. Amazing!