Antinuclear

Greg Hunt gets his ‘do nothing’ climate policy from Bjorn Lomborg

Lomborg’s particular brand of environmentalism – which says yes, the world is warming but it is nothing to worry about – is particularly appealing to the Coalition government. It is an approach that doesn’t have to get tangled up with opposing the science and also public opinion, while it is able to take a purely economic approach to doing nothing.

Or better yet, do something, but not at the expense of big business.

In fact, it is better to pay big business not to pollute, which makes the debt levy being flagged for the upcoming budget all the more comedic. The A$2.4 billion per year fuel tax credit scheme, which managed to escape the Commission of Audit, are simply handouts that go directly to the immense profits of mining companies.

The Direct Action path to poverty, The Conversation,5 May 14 David Holmes  The current gallery of columnists at The Australian are always interesting to read. There is a core of them that display the views of Coalition politicians only with more colour and erudition, and often more transparently than Canberra soundbites and doorstops would allow.

Where government ministers might be seen attacking an institution or a policy, these columnists are adept at rallying to such an attack, be it on the ABC, human rights, education, health, foreign affairs, the public service and, of course, climate.

One such occasional columnist who chimes in over climate change is the Danish “sceptical environmentalist   Bjorn Lomborg. Lomborg is well-known for subordinating the importance of climate change to other global issues such as health and development. His work effectively focuses on short-term solutions to “immediate” problems, arguing that global warming will actually provide a net benefit to the globe up until 2065 by reducing cold-related deaths and improving crop production, after which, he tells us, heat will take over as a health and food security problem.

Lomborg’s disregard for the plight of subsequent generations might appeal to politicians whose sense of time is tightly bound to electoral cycles. But it does not sit well with anyone who has even the smallest appreciation of telos.

In his column last week, Renewables pave path to poverty, Lomborg went all-out attacking renewables, just as the Renewable Energy Target (RET) and Direct Action was beginning to spike in news cycles across the country.

Lomborg is unusual. He is not your regular climate change denier and says, as government ministers do, that climate change is real and that we have to tackle it.

But also like the government, Lomborg’s suggestions for tackling climate change are so riddled with doublethink as to render his claims to have accepted the science as implausible and disingenuous.

Critics of Lomborg’s work on the economics of addressing climate change describe him as a dangerous propagandist working on behalf of vested interests (namely the fossil fuel industry); that he “advocates what he does not believe in”; and that “all he cares about is how he can make the general public react the way that he wants”.

Does this sound familiar?

Lomborg’s arguments look impressive because he cites a large amount of economic statistics and data, but such a technique is marred by the fact that the statistics are demonstrably twisted and flawed; that he generalises them out of context; and that they are replete with deliberate errors.

Take his column last week. Lomborg argued……….

Last year, Lomborg also proved to be at the ideological centre of the groupthink displayed by the Coalition and Australian business leaders around questioning climate change science, a groupthink which is alive and well in 2014.

In this sense, it is worth looking at how Lomborg’s views have influenced key Coalition figures including environment minister Greg Hunt. When he was shadow minister for climate action, Hunt gave a speech to the Sydney Institute where he revealed Lomborg as the researcher who had shaped the Coalition’s “Direct Action” policy.

Lomborg has an unpaid position – running the “Copenhagen Consensus Center” (based, oddly, in Massachusetts), a centre which appropriates the word “consensus” that otherwise carries the power of denoting the 97% agreement amongst climate scientists worldwide……..

Lomborg’s particular brand of environmentalism – which says yes, the world is warming but it is nothing to worry about – is particularly appealing to the Coalition government. It is an approach that doesn’t have to get tangled up with opposing the science and also public opinion, while it is able to take a purely economic approach to doing nothing.

Or better yet, do something, but not at the expense of big business.

In fact, it is better to pay big business not to pollute, which makes the debt levy being flagged for the upcoming budget all the more comedic. The A$2.4 billion per year fuel tax credit scheme, which managed to escape the Commission of Audit, are simply handouts that go directly to the immense profits of mining companies.

These two forms of corporate welfare reveal the true nature of the government’s class war agenda, which goes beyond keeping election promises, as we see a corporate state materialise by the minute. http://theconversation.com/the-direct-action-path-to-poverty-26298

May 6, 2014 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, climate change - global warming