Antinuclear

PM Malcolm muddled in the middle – defending coal while conceding solar-battery edge, Business Spectator TRISTAN EDIS  27 OCT Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull found himself today badly wedged in between the need to satisfy his more conservative Liberal-National colleagues and his own personal desire to align Australia in line with leading scientific thinking and the frontier of technological innovation…..

61 eminent Australians — including a science Nobel Laureate, Peter Doherty, and Australian of the Year for her service to medicine, Fiona Stanley — had issued an open letter urging world leaders to place a moratorium on new coal mines and expansions.

Meanwhile The Australian newspaper reveals that the Prime Minister is facing an internal push from some of his Liberal National colleagues, led by Nationals senator Matt Canavan, to push through with legislative amendments removing the right of environmental groups to mount legal challenges to environmental approvals such as what occurred in relation to Adani’s huge Carmichael coal mine.

Developing new coal mines, particularly ones that involve billions of dollars in upfront investment requiring several decades of production to show a reasonable return, such as Carmichael, are incompatible with scientific advice about containing climate change to manageable levels — period.  Malcolm Turnbull knows this. He has pointed out the need to move to near zero emission electricity within a few decades himself on multiple occasions.

But on that stage with the new chief scientist he felt compelled to defend Australia’s coal industry.

Turnbull said, “If Australia were to stop all of its coal exports … it would not reduce global emissions one iota. In fact, arguably it would increase them because our coal, by and large, is cleaner than the coal in many other countries.”

This was, of course, an old debating trick employed by Turnbull to try to reframe the issue in terms where they could be easily dismissed as unrealistic.  The open letter hadn’t called to a complete ban on Australian coal exports, but rather that we back an effort to stop sinking even more money into further expanding coal production.

But Turnbull can’t afford to concede to such a demand because it would upset a significant section of his colleagues who only reluctantly backed him as leader in desperation.  Instead he skirted around the issue by redefining it as a strawman.

Yet at the very same time Turnbull simply couldn’t help himself in essentially repudiating Abbott’s ‘coal is good for humanity’ argument – that stopping expansion of coal mining would act to deny the benefits of electricity to the hundreds of millions that current aren’t able to access it.  He explained to the assembled media that in many cases where grid infrastructure was yet to be built solar plus batteries represented a batter option. In doing so he conceded a pivotal point to those seeking a moratorium on new coal mines while selling out his new Energy Minister’s argument about there being a moral case for the Adani coal mine.

The fragility of Turnbull’s popularity

This episode serves to illustrate Turnbull’s incredibly tricky balancing act…….

this appeal is heavily dependent on his image as a modern progressive — a person who embraces and understands new technology, informed and driven by scientific evidence and not beholden to the social taboos associated with historical religious teachings. In short he is happy to tear up the old and accepted ways of things if new knowledge dictates something new.

Yet these are all the things that also made him so deeply unpopular with his conservative colleagues like Matt Canavan.

To avoid an insurrection, Turnbull faces the challenge of not straying too far from the views of his colleagues. Yet at the same time his key political advantage is his ability to appeal to those voters who can’t stand the likes of Canavan and Abbott.  http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2015/10/27/policy-politics/pm-malcolm-muddled-middle-%E2%80%93-defending-coal-while-conceding-solar