Rudd drops the ball in climate time-on

In his recent “meltdown” on the ABC’s 7.30 Report, Kevin Rudd was ruffled like a man on the boundary receiving a hand-pass under pressure, a “hospital ball” as footy-speak sometimes has it. The ball was climate change, and it was coming back to him after a much earlier play when he’d got free on a wing – steel-rimmed specs clear and in place – surging forward with his eyes on inside 50.

That was the lead-up to the 2007 federal election, when Rudd ultimately swept to power partly on the promise of strong action on climate change, “a great moral challenge of our time”. Now the hot ball came not from Geelong’s Cameron Ling, but another fiery redhead, the ABC’s Kerry O’Brien – put whatever jumper you like on him, the ball was coming in fast.

When O’Brien took the PM back to his own past words on the imperative for climate action, confronted him with the charge of “cowardice” Rudd had himself levelled at an Opposition seeking delay, the prime minister found himself with nowhere to go. He was angry, but inept, and finally, with no-one on the lead, sent the ball out of bounds.

Now is the political moment when the crowd holds its breath waiting to see if the umpire will call for a free kick to the Opposition for “deliberate”, or a throw-in and the resumption of play late in the third quarter in the race to the imminent federal election.

Like a player dragged for a “clanger” and on the phone to the coach, Rudd had plenty of excuses for the ABC audience. He was shelving his emissions trading scheme until after the current Kyoto commitment period because climate talks in Copenhagen had confirmed the stalled progress of international action. His legislation had been repeatedly rejected by the Senate.

There was, of course, nothing to differentiate the starkly divergent motives of the Greens and the Coalition for rejecting the ETS. Tony Abbott will always think climate change is “crap”, but the Greens see the ETS in its shelved form for what it is, a climate placebo that, if enacted, would at best give the mere appearance of action while committing Australia to worsening droughts, floods and bushfires.

While O’Brien challenged the PM on why he isn’t taking the ETS to a double-dissolution election, the possibility of the Greens much simpler interim carbon price was not even canvassed. As for Copenhagen, like a footy writer nailing some weird and unpopular rule-change in the AFL’s pre-season competition, O’Brien highlighted the discrepancy of the PM’s past views on waiting for international action.

All this has given rise to an Opposition narrative about a prime minister who stands for nothing, a prime minister turning aimlessly on the boundary, who has backflipped on home insulation, and now on the climate action he had called for with such urgency. Maybe, Abbott suggests, the ETS is really about – and only about – a Great Big New Tax.

Leaving aside the Opposition leader’s dismissal of climate change – his knowledge in that area has more holes than his budget reply speech – we should consider that the ETS might well have been the wrong tool to achieve the right objective.

The science is clear that we need deep cuts to our carbon emissions, and the electorate needs to be clear that this is a process founded on science, one that can be managed as a transition instead of the drastic disruption painted by the opponents of change – including the fossil-fuel energy generators and the mining industry.

If the public does not understand this, it is partly because, floating between government messaging and the science on climate impacts is a fluid layer of political expedience.

First there’s the budget allocation of $30 million over two years for better climate communication – meaningless when that money is to be drawn from the existing resources of a climate change department expected to find savings of $200 million (1).

More significantly, how can the government be serious about climate change when it actively encourages the expansion of the coal industry? This is the alarming message of Guy Pearse writing in The Monthly. Australia, heavily dependent on fossil fuels for its own energy, is on track to become the world’s largest exporter of carbon – ahead, even, of Saudi Arabia.

Contributing to a massive carbon tally disproportionate to our population is the planned significant expansion of oil exploration off Australia’s coast. In the context of our own Montara spill, and the US Gulf Coast disaster, energy and resources minister Martin Ferguson is willing to countenance unacceptable environmental risk in the rush for deep-water oil.

That’s where mere calls for better communication fail. Unless there is some bedrock of reality to which communication is anchored, unless it is consistent with the government’s other actions, it will be rightfully perceived for what it is: empty spin. A genuine commitment to action precedes honest communication.

Rudd’s difficulty does not result just from a failure to communicate, but on the reality that accurate communication would highlight the yawning gap between the government’s professed commitment to climate and the vanishing opportunities for the urgent action demanded by science.

When I met in April with energy and resources minister, Martin Ferguson, I put to him the pressing need for strong action and a public education campaign. Disingenuously, he said the government had made things very difficult for itself with “political advertising”. Yet the kind of truthful climate campaign we need would be about as political as a televised bushfire evacuation warning, or a public health announcement about the closure of airports due to a threat from avian influenza.

Ferguson, himself a champion of fossil fuels, is a symptom of the climate split-personality of this Labor government. When the government should be vigorously taking on the miners, the minister has embarked on a “listening tour” of mining companies to gather the views he seems to have missed from their Canberra lobbyists.

Instead, Rudd should be communicating that strong action on climate – including a price on carbon – is consistent with the need for an appropriate resources tax. Aside from the fact that the royalties paid by mining companies have been declining as a percentage of their super-profits, the climate cost of mining activities will never feature in the strident blasts of the Minerals Council of Australia.

With the election fast approaching, Kevin Rudd should be hoping like hell that the ball is thrown back in, not handed to Tony Abbott for a free kick that will lose us the larger game. It might be the third quarter in the electoral race, but it’s time-on in the fourth for climate, and the siren’s coming. Prime minister, for the moment you’re the captain–coach. Whose side are you on?

(1) Katharine Murphy, "Of backflips and backchat", The Age Insight, 15 May 2010, p.5

Comments welcome

Rudd should swap denial for a baton

Today's edition of The Age carries my letter in response to the paper's coverage of Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's recent address to the Lowy Institute on climate change. It was edited a little, but captured the essential point that Rudd needs to match his rhetoric - which was quite strong against the sceptics - with stronger actions he must take to Copenhagen. The unedited letter with links to the coverage follows this published version:

IT AMAZES me that our Prime Minister can show such a clear understanding of the problem (''Rudd blames climate sceptics for global sabotage'', The Age, 7/11), and of the interests ranged against its solution, yet propose action that can only fail by the measure of the science he so strongly invokes.

Rejection of the emissions trading proposal is not necessarily driven by scepticism, but also by the knowledge that the scheme should only pass the Senate if it is strong enough to do the job.

When the Prime Minister says the sceptics' ''prescription for inaction has all the legitimacy of a roulette wheel'', it's not so much bizarre but more of a denial that Rudd himself has a hand on the wheel in the global climate gamble.

A team of emergency services workers is running 6000 kilometres down Australia's east coast in the Run for a Safe Climate. On November 29 they'll arrive in Melbourne. Kevin Rudd should meet them with real solutions that back the force of his climate rhetoric. Pick up the baton, Prime Minister, and carry it to Copenhagen - time is running out and it's a sprint to the finish line.

Now, the original, with links to the coverage to which I was responding:

The prime minister's spirited climate address to the Lowy Institute reported in your newspaper was a welcome departure from the bland "balance" of many of his speeches. I therefore disagree with Michelle Grattan's appeal for the PM to turn the volume down ("Turn the voulme down, PM", 7/11), but that doesn't mean Kevin Rudd is right.

What amazes me is that our prime minister can show such a clear understanding of the problem, and of the vested interests ranged against its solution, yet propose action that can only fail by the measure of the science he so strongly invokes. Rejection of the current emissions trading proposal is not necessarily driven by scepticism - as in the case of the hopelessly denialist Opposition - but also by the knowledge that the ETS should only pass the Senate if it is strong enough to do the job.

So when the prime minister says the sceptics' "prescription for inaction has all the legitimacy of a roulette wheel", it's not so much "bizarre" as Grattan claims, but more a denial that Rudd himself has a hand on the wheel in the global climate gamble.

Right now a team of emergency services workers is running 6000 kilometres down the east coast of Australia in their Run for a Safe Climate. On 29 November they'll arrive in Melbourne. Kevin Rudd should meet them there with real solutions that back the force of his climate rhetoric. Pick up the baton, prime minister, and carry it to Copenhagen - time is running out and it's a sprint to the finish line.

Comments welcome.

Run for a Safe Climate

Run for a Safe Climate, a fantastic campaign by Safe Climate Australia, will see 25 runners run 6000km down the east coast of Australia, cut west along the Victorian border to Adelaide, and then finish in Melbourne on 29 November.

The runners are emergency service workers who know we're facing a climate emergency and are calling for strong action to meet the challenge of catastrophic climate change that, among many severe impacts, will raise sea-level and spark more frequent and devastating bushfires.

Their short film is a powerful statement of why they're doing it - they're running for a safe climate because we're running out of time. Every Australian should know about this campaign. Get involved to say you care about climate.

Carney detects faint pulse in climate patient

In today's edition of The Age Shaun Carney assesses the progress of climate talks in New York, discussing movement by China, India and Japan, and the political challenges faced by US President Obama. I've started the ball rolling in the comments:

I disagree that climate change is 'ultimately a domestic question', though effective solutions certainly face domestic political barriers, such as those besetting President Obama in the US.

Such barriers cannot, however, be used as a licence for failure by leaders such as Kevin Rudd, who seems to prefer being seen to fail heroically as he feigns leadership while taking inadequate action and talking up the difficulties before him.

As you point out, other nations have shown some movement in these talks, and Kevin Rudd could offer true international leadership by advancing stronger, science-based targets for 2020. The test is whether such targets, if adopted by all developed nations, would be effective in limiting warming far below the 2-degree level at which we'd see far more of the catastrophic impacts we are already seeing at less than 1-degree warming above pre-industrial levels.

Our resilience in the face of the global financial crisis, our abundance of renewable energy, and our culpability as the world's largest coal exporter all argue strongly for our climate leadership. Kevin Rudd must overcome the self-serving climate scepticism of the fossil fuel industry, and of his own energy and resources minister, Martin Ferguson, and take a stand.

Rudd's false leadership flags climate failure

The Age recently reported that, on Kevin Rudd's New York visit to the UN and G20 talks, Australia's PM was pushing to 'restore momentum' in climate change negotiations, lest the December climate negotiations in Copenhagen become a 'wall too high to scale'.

Judging by Australia's 2020 emissions targets, I suggest that, far from breaking down the wall, Rudd is more concerned to be seen as heroically failing to climb it. The Age has run my letter responding to the article in today's edition (See also, 'Break down this wall, a brick at a time' on their letters page):

IF, as reported, Kevin Rudd sees a need for world leaders to restore momentum in climate negotiations, he should face up to his own role in building a wall too high to scale at the international talks in Copenhagen. Instead, he makes a show of false leadership that risks merely flagging the expectation of failure.

The Prime Minister wrote recently that 'there will always be differences of opinion, but arguments grounded in fact will always win the day'. Given his acknowledgment that climate change is real and that its impacts are already happening, what better case could he make for basing Australia's emission reduction targets on science?

Unfortunately, if Australia's inadequate targets were adopted by the developed nations Mr Rudd purports to lead, science shows we would come nowhere near a solution to catastrophic climate change. If the Prime Minister wants to break down the wall at Copenhagen, he needs to go beyond lip service to the problem and adopt strong, science-based emissions targets for 2020.

The talks at the UN and G20 in New York would be a good place to start.

Comments welcome.

Energy minister needs a new perspective

Having attended the recent opening of HP Zwar Park in Preston, I wrote to The Melbourne Times about the irony of it being opened by Martin Ferguson, MP for Batman, and the anti-climate, pro-fossil-fuel-industry energy and resources minister in the Rudd federal government. Here's the unedited version of my letter:

As one of the protesters at the new, greener HP Zwar Park in Preston, I could not help but notice the irony of its opening by energy and resources minister, Martin Ferguson ["Keep it clean, protesters beg", TMT, 26/8/09]. Ferguson's lust for the exploitation of Australia's fossil fuels will, if unopposed, smother with greenhouse gases the many small, local measures to create a more sustainable world.

Unfortunately, the contribution of federal money to the park obliged the involvement of our minister for climate destruction, who is also our federal member for Batman.

Mr Ferguson, veiling yourself in feel-good local projects does nothing to lessen the damage of spruiking emissions-intensive energy sources while paying lip-service to renewables. The true test of your policy is whether Australia's emissions take a much-needed plunge towards a safer climate with fewer devastating bushfires over time. The science is against you. It's time for tougher emissions targets and Australian leadership at international climate negotiations this December.

Comments welcome, Martin.

Update: Photos of the Saturday 22 August demonstration at HP Zwar Park in Preston are now available on DarebinCAN's Flickr page.

Climate blindness at the bushfires royal commission

My response to the 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission interim report was published today on ABC Unleashed. In the article I argue that the interim report was a missed opportunity to consider stronger climate policy as a means of long-term bushfire prevention. Had the Royal Commission recommended that Australia's climate policies be assessed for the impact on global bushfire risk, it might well have influenced the policy position we take to Copenhagen and show leadership towards a stronger post-Kyoto climate treaty. That in turn would reduce Australian bushfire risk over time.

While the Royal Commission will look at climate change in the next phase of the inquiry, any recommendations in its July 2010 final report will be well and truly too late for Copenhagen. An analysis of climate policy and recommendations to strengthen it were therefore urgent tasks for the royal commission before the next fire season, and should have been accommodated within the terms of reference. While such action would not influence that fire season, it may well have impacted on fire seasons to come. Unfortunately the opportunity to consider climate in a timely and urgent manner has been squandered through climate blindness.

For more on climate change and the 2009 Victorian bushfires, click on the links under the masthead of this page. Comments are welcome.

Weak climate law won't help us in Copenhagen

Today's edition of The Age carries my letter responding to a report that Al Gore thinks passing Australia's weak climate law might help achieve an international climate agreement in Copenhagen in December.

Gore's suggestion seems to reflect the kind of incrementalist view currently dividing environment groups in Australia. The argument is that we should support any step forward in the hope that further improvements will be possible down the track.

The trouble is, the timeframe for achieving such intermediate steps to a safe climate will see us run foul of climate tipping points that science shows are being approached far more rapidly than anticipated. Better to acknowledge the science and aim for an effective (and fair) agreement now.

An inferior international agreement will likely be sold politically as mission accomplished on climate, even though it sets us on a collision course with further severe climate impacts such as the Black Saturday bushfires.

Consequently, I think Gore, the Australian Conservation Foundation and the Climate Institute are wrong in their endorsement of Australia's current climate policy. They are dealing themselves into a losing game and fragmenting the climate campaign for strong policy based on the only yardstick that matters - science.

Here's my letter, as submitted:

Despite the contribution of Al Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth, to raising awareness of the climate threat, I cannot agree with Gore's suggestion that passing inadequate Australian legislation will help frame an effective international climate treaty in Copenhagen this December. On the contrary, an emissions trading system with weak targets can only serve to curtail the ambition of these crucial negotiations.

It would be a different story if our legislation set strong science-based targets, including a 2020 reduction of at least 40% on 1990 greenhouse levels. That is not the case, however, and it is difficult to see how the proposed legislation's weak targets, once made law, could influence, or indeed be strengthened by, anything that played out in Denmark.

By the yardstick of the Coalition, Fielding and the climate denialists, Gore, Rudd and Wong look like climate progressives. The trouble is, that's the wrong yardstick. Targets can now be very specifically linked to levels of warming, and in turn to severe impacts such as the Black Saturday bushfires. We must heed the science and acknowledge the link between the targets we set and the impacts we will suffer. Only then will there be hope of returning to a safe climate.

Comments are welcome.

Australia makes the climate news in Copenhagen

The Danish Government has an official website and blog for December's climate negotiations in Copenhagen (COP15). Australia features in a recent post, 'US Bill has an effect Down Under'. Here's the comment I posted in response:

The Australian Federal Opposition may well fold and end up voting for Australia's climate legislation when the Senate resumes in August. However, should a compromise be reached on the legislation and it is voted in, that will not mean Australia has a policy that will help lead us back to a safe climate with fewer severe bushfires and other climate change impacts we are already experiencing.

Nor will being guided by the US guarantee an effective outcome. Every government's position must be tested against the science, and international agreement reached that brings greenhouse gases much closer to pre-industrial levels. Science is the only true yardstick; not the relative merits of one scientifically inadequate position compared to another.

In Australia's case, we should be looking at 2020 cuts of at least 40% on 1990 levels, with the further aim of contributing to global stabilisation of carbon dioxide at around 300ppm as soon as possible.

As prominent US climate campaigner Bill McKibben has said, the earth's climate doesn't negotiate. In Copenhagen this December, the world needs to listen to the science and, hopefully with Australian leadership, work out a way to share the burden of effective action in a way that is fair for developed and developing nations.

Updates to the Copenhagen website can also be followed on Twitter and Facebook, or you can post your 'climate thoughts' on their spinning globe that shows climate views from around the world.

Bushfires should be remembered in Copenhagen

With the 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission gearing up to deliver its interim report next month, it will be interesting to see what recommendations are made regarding climate policy as a means of addressing future bushfire risk in the broadest sense.

So far, the inquiry has been reticent even to utter the words 'climate change', yet the interim report is the only real opportunity for it to influence the position Australia takes to international climate negotiations in Copenhagen this December.

The Copenhagen negotiations will underpin world climate action post-Kyoto, and will be a big factor in determining whether countries such as Australia encounter ever more severe climate impacts like the Black Saturday fires, or whether the world turns the corner and heads back towards a safer climate.

So how might the Royal Commission seek to contribute to fire-proofing Australia through its interim recommendations? In my May submission to the inquiry, yet to appear on its official website, I concluded with the following specific recommendations:

1. Granting that human-caused climate change falls within an appropriate construction of the terms of reference, I call on the Commissioners to acknowledge its contribution to the 2009 Victorian bushfires, especially with regard to the influence of climate change in pushing the Forest Fire Danger Index (FFDI) to unprecedented levels during Black Saturday.


2. To satisfy themselves of the above, the Commissioners should call such expert scientific witnesses, and avail themselves of such peer-reviewed scientific research as deemed necessary.


3. The Commissioners should call for current State, Territory and Federal climate and energy policies to be assessed as a matter of urgency for their effect on bushfire mitigation in the broadest sense. The timing of such assessment must enable Australia's strengthening of its climate policy leading into international climate talks at Copenhagen in December 2009 (COP 15).


4. The Commissioners should call on the Australian Government to adopt an unconditional emissions target as a parts-per-million measure of atmospheric carbon dioxide that would maximise the chances of bushfire mitigation if adopted universally via the international agreement to be considered at COP 15.
   
   The target set must consider the most recent science indicating a level of the order of 300ppm CO2 is now considered necessary to offer a good chance of achieving a safe climate. It should also include the aspiration to achieve a zero carbon emissions economy at the earliest opportunity.


5. The Commissioners should call for the publication by the Australian Government of the target it adopts for the Copenhagen negotiations, explicitly detailing the corresponding level of global warming related to international agreement at that level, together with the consequent reduction or increase in Australian fire danger according to the Forest Fire Danger Index.


6. The Commissioners should acknowledge the Copenhagen negotiations as the key remaining opportunity for Australian action to influence international climate measures before tipping points are crossed, rendering further human intervention ineffective, and entering an inexorable trend of more frequent and extreme bushfires in Australia.

At a community climate event back in April, Kelvin Thomson, the Federal Labor Member for Wills, said he considered the connection between climate change and the fires to be 'blindingly obvious'. It would be a great pity if the Australian Government were then to develop a case of policy blindness, and the Black Saturday bushfires were not remembered in Copenhagen.

Read more about the 2009 Victorian bushfires.

Show the world Australians want serious targets

The official website for December's international climate negotiations in Copenhagen has launched a novel way of promoting views on climate from around the world.

Climate Thoughts allows anyone to post their thoughts and have them represented on a globe as a point of light. The globe can be spun to browse thoughts posted from anywhere on the planet, and you can share and support thoughts, as well as post your own.

Australians (and everyone else, of course) can help light this globe in a new and hopeful way by posting their ideas to fight climate change.

You can read the climate thoughts of the famous, the top ten, and the most recent thoughts posted by anyone. Here's mine:

Australia must lead with strong targets

If we are to have an international agreement that will help prevent the worst climate impacts, countries like Australia must lead with strong, science-based emissions reduction targets.

We should be aiming for at least 40% below 1990 levels by 2020, and stabilisation at 300ppm CO2 as soon as possible. A heavy per-capita polluter already experiencing severe impacts such as floods and deadly bushfires, we can't afford to sit on the fence, but must instead help lead the world towards a safe climate.

Penny Wong dubbed minister for 'not yet'

Australian climate minister, Senator Penny Wong, was tonight dubbed the minister for 'not yet' by Bob Ellis, fellow panellist on ABC TV's Q&A program. The quip referred to the government's proposed delay to its emissions trading scheme from 2010 until 2011. Unfortunately, with Australia's weak proposed emissions targets and the release of a new MIT study modelling warming using economic and climate data, the Senator might also be the minister for 'too little too late'.

The study, undertaken by MIT, ran 400 simulations on its data and examined the most likely warming outcomes. It found the median projected outcome by 2100 was 5.2C, which more than doubles the 2.4C result predicted by a 2003 study quoted in the new paper. It also found there was a 90% probability that the range of 2100 warming will fall between 3.5 and 7.4C - well and truly suggesting an overwhelming chance that critical climate tipping points will be crossed in the absence of strong action at December's international negotiations at Copenhagen.

Instead of correlating Australia's target with the sort of warming it might lead to if similar cuts were universally adopted by developed nations, Senator Wong chose a familiar tactic favoured last year by the Australian Industry Group. She painted Australia's conditional 25% cut on 2000-level emissions by 2020 not as the ineffectual and defeatist target it is, but as a heroic reduction from where we are currently projected to be in 2020 based on current emissions trends. Under the government's scheme, by 2020 we will drop from the business-as-usual 120% of 2000-level emissions to 25% below them, the Senator proclaimed.

Firstly, there's something odd about her statement that, under the conditional 25% cut, we'd be going from 120% to -25% by 2020. If we're talking in 2000 terms, it's more accurate to say we'd be going from 120% to 75% by 2020. Doesn't seem quite so drastic, does it?

Perhaps the minister has been talking to too many coal and industry lobbyists, but there's also something not right about judging our target not against the reduction we need to achieve a safe climate, but against how much we are giving up relative to the accumulated emissions from 11 more years of unconstrained, climate-destroying greed.

My challenge to Penny Wong is to publicly state the level of warming scientifically associated with the government's targets if similar cuts were adopted internationally by developed nations. We can then match that warming, and its corresponding atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, against a scale of likely tipping points - uncontrollable bushfire, drought, floods and numerous others - all of which have been established by science. Because that's what her policy is - a pro-bushfire policy, a pro-drought policy, a pro-flooding policy, and the list goes on. Not quite as bland as 'CPRS', but so much closer to the truth, especially with these latest findings from MIT.

See the video question I posted at Q&A.

We don't agree to burn, Mr Rudd

Citing the recession, the protection of jobs, and certainty for business, Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, has further undermined the possibility of a strong international climate agreement this year by delaying the start of Australia's emissions trading scheme until 2011. Changes to the proposed scheme also include targets inadequate to secure a safe climate, a reduced carbon price in the first year of the scheme, and additional compensation to heavy polluters.

The changes extend high-emitting business-as-usual for Australia, putting us on track to cross what may well be irreversible climate tipping points. The proposed targets also fail to act with sufficient urgency even when emissions trading is implemented, continuing the government's fudging on a baseline for measurement of emissions (2000 v. 1990) and claiming the consistency of its target with a stabilisation level of 450ppm atmospheric CO2 - itself now frequently deemed inadequate by leading climate scientists.

With a group of eminent Australian scientists having recently written a letter to the coal industry describing its contribution to dangerous climate change, the government must surely also be on notice. It stands to significantly contribute to dangerous climate change through continued ineffective action, and a failure to show the kind of international leadership that would strengthen the chances of effective global solutions being agreed at the Copenhagen climate negotiations this December.

Already with melting of Arctic sea ice, the growth in bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef, the Queensland floods, and drought in south-eastern Australia, we are seeing the severe but only beginning impacts of climate change. Among these were February's Victorian bushfires, which have been increasingly related to climate change, with bushfire itself a significant contributor of greenhouse emissions fuelling subsequent warming.

Prime Minister Rudd's scuttling of Australia's international leadership puts transient economic cycles and vested interests ahead of permanent dangerous changes to our climate that are within our capacity to control with effective and concerted national and international measures. The failure of his government will correlate to worsening climate impacts over time, including more frequent and severe bushfires such as those we have seen in Victoria.

As University of Tasmania researcher, David Bowman, recently told Radio National's The World Today program:

We have got to understand increased bushfire activity as a direct consequence of uncontrolled climate change. This is a very good reason for Australia to do everything we possibly can to bring down the global temperature, to control carbon emissions and other gases which are resulting in the warming of the planet.

We don't agree to burn, Mr Rudd.

Update: Disappointingly, major environmental groups such as the Climate Institute and the Australian Conservation Foundation have given qualified support to the changes. While they have both offered more ambitious hopes for Australia's ultimate position, saying that 25% by 2020 in the context of a global agreement is a starting point and that Australia needs to do more, this was all lost in tonight's grabs on ABC Television's The 7.30 Report, which simply noted their support for the package, which will do nothing for Australia's international leadership on climate at December's Copenhagen negotiations.

As Kerry O'Brien did well to note against evasive climate minister, Penny Wong, Australia's unconditional commitment remains a 2020 cut of 5% on 2000 levels, with the still-meagre 25% only kicking in with a global agreement.

While the impulse for consensus is no doubt correct, it is interesting that the climate groups chose to align with the government, rather than unify around the position of the Greens, which is closer to the science in its push for a 40% cut on 1990 levels by 2020.

If we're going to build consensus, shouldn't it be around a position that stands some sort of chance of solving the problem? It seems the politics of compromise, the dangers of which have been well identified in Spratt and Sutton's Climate Code Red, have emerged to significantly weaken Australian climate advocacy - clever politics by Rudd, but the climate will respond by degrees.

See also this article outlining the Greenpeace response that Rudd needs to start again and look at a 50% cut in the next decade. In the article, deputy PM, Julia Gillard, claims to have consulted widely on the delayed start for the scheme. With whom did she consult?