Antinuclear

Tony Abbott just doesn’t ‘get’ the connection between climate change and economics

Abbott wrangles with his own climate paradox The Drum, By ABC’s Jonathan Green 12 Jun 2014, Tony Abbott’s language so far on his overseas tour betrays a complete lack of connection between what climate change is and what it might do, writes Jonathan Green. In September 2003 a young man with a fair degree of climbing talent scaled an old power station chimney in central Melbourne and then lowered himself down its long concrete face, painting as he went.

The result was a towering vertical billboard that read, in painstakingly rollered sweeps of white paint: “No jobs on a dead planet.”

It stood for ages as a daily reminder to commuters exiting Spencer Street station, that they owed their material wealth and wellbeing to the benign, mild, generosity of this pleasantly hospitable moment in nature……..

Abbott assures us he is convinced that human induced climate change is a real and happening thing. From that point of agreement we are only arguing about the severity of consequence. On this point the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is fairly clear and succinct.

In its view there is every chance that our world may warm by about four degrees come the end of this century. This will have consequences. As the IPCC puts it, a four degree warmer world would lead to:

Severe and widespread impacts on unique and threatened systems, substantial species extinction, large risks to global and regional food security, and the combination of high temperature and humidity compromising normal human activities.

This four degree world would be the outcome, says the IPCC, if nothing is done to change the rate of carbon emissions from this point. Doing a little would change that, but only by a little.

Chew over the IPCC’s words for a moment. “Compromising normal human activities” is an interesting turn of phrase … you might call it evocative; it kills with understatement.

Bear that phrase in mind when you now consider Abbott’s expressed thinking this week on the notion that we ought to act, as people, as countries, as a world, to ameliorate climate change.

It’s not that we don’t seek to deal with climate change, but we seek to deal with it in a way that will protect and enhance our ability to create jobs and growth and not destroy jobs and growth in our country … We should do what we reasonably can to limit emissions and avoid climate change, man-made climate change, but we shouldn’t clobber the economy.

No. Let’s not clobber the economy. There is a ghastly paradox lurking in this kind of thinking, the sort of giddy inconsistency that should be apparent to a man with Abbott’s intellect and learning.

As the IPCC says, climate change, unchecked, will destroy the economy we recognise. Isn’t that what we can read beneath its anodyne, phlegmatic phrasing: “compromising normal human activities”? The idea that acting to thwart climate change might “clobber the economy” is so disconnected from logic and simple common sense as to suggest some other line of thinking entirely. Language, as ever, is full of meaning. Parsing the Prime Minister’s repeated offerings on climate and economy reveals a politician with concern for one, and at best a watching brief on the other. The language betrays a complete lack of connection between what climate change is and what it might do.

To suggest that the economy needs to be protected from the only policy path that might in the long term secure its very existence, is so close to absurd as to leave you wondering just whether in fact Abbott does accept any recognisable concept of climate change.

There is another possibility: that he does concede the menace of a warming world, but for the sake of effective short-term politics has elected not to act in its interests. It’s hard to imagine any greater betrayal of national – human – interest.

It’s a position that can be countered in just a few words: no jobs on a dead planet.http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-06-12/green-abbott-wrangles-with-his-own-climate-paradox/5517210

June 16, 2014 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | General News