Howard was not sceptical, or even agnostic; for many years he had been a card-carrying atheist, as his actions made clear. He would not ratify the Kyoto agreement; he would not consider carbon trading, let alone a carbon tax; he would not set serious targets for renewable energy, or even for a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. From time to time he would politely suggest that the bigger polluters might like to have a look at ways to cut back; if they did, good, and if they didn't, so it went.
As the number of headlines about global warming increased through 2006, Howard remained unconvinced, but he recognised the political usefulness of the issue. If, he mused, there really was a problem (though the jury was still out), then perhaps we should try for cleaner coal; and, of course, any solution had to include nuclear power, because that would wedge the ALP. And would everyone please remember to turn off unwanted lights and put a brick in the cistern, because although Australia was such a small player in the emission stakes that nothing it did by itself could have the slightest effect, individuals could still make a difference, and what do you mean, "Humbug"?
None of this amounted to much, so when Malcolm Turnbull, the newly appointed water and environment supremo, was asked whether the government had a policy on climate change, he was in a sense quite right when he replied that the government had had a policy for 10 years. What he didn't say was that the policy went like this: Climate change probably isn't happening. But if it is happening and there is a problem, then the scientists will fix it. And if they can't fix it, then we'll have to adapt. And if we can't adapt, well, tough. But in any case, it probably isn't happening. This is less a policy than a state of mind, a fatalism of which Mother Teresa might have been proud. It is, however, an unsuitable attitude to take for a government which is meant to prevent rape, rather than invite the prospective victim to lie back and enjoy it.
It was always going to be risky for Howard if the issue suddenly became a significant one, which it duly did at the end of 2006. A wet American political has-been produced a science-fiction movie and a chinless British dilettante came out with a doomsday prophecy, and the bloody mob went mad. Or that's the way it must have looked to Howard: after all, there was nothing really new in either Al Gore's film or Sir Nicholas Stern's report. The scientists had been saying it all for months, if not years, and the lavishly funded critics had successfully held them at bay. Now, suddenly, what had been a scary but far-fetched hypothesis was received truth. The drought probably had something to do with it; even if, as Howard maintained, there was no proven link to climate change, it was a taste of what might be in the not-too-distant future.
There were still sceptics around, and they were getting an inordinate amount of media play. Interestingly, many of them were economists: the pseudo-scientists who delighted in their own warnings of doom and gloom were apparently unwilling to accept the same when it came backed up by hard evidence.
Certainly denial was no longer a tenable position for Howard; the voters demanded action. So they got it - up to a point. They got the Great Big Splash. Announcing it, Howard drew on Crocodile Dundee: Rudd called his education policy a revolution, laughed the prime minister. Well, that wasn't a revolution - this was a revolution. And so it was: a proposal to put $10 billion towards fixing the Murray-Darling Basin, if the states would hand over their water powers to the federal government - which meant to Aquaboy, Malcolm Turnbull. As policy, it presented problems, not least the almost complete lack of detail. But as politics it was Howard at his best, or so it appeared at the time. The government burst back into the game, grabbing the very territory on which it was thought to be weakest. Howard audaciously challenged the traditional federal structure, which Rudd had marked out for reform. He trumped Rudd's water summit and wedged the Labor premiers: in spite of some huffing and puffing, it was really an offer they could not afford to refuse. And of course, the sheer scale of the announcement drove all the other problems off the front pages.
With splendid serendipity the popular environmentalist Tim Flannery was named Australian of the Year. A week earlier this would have been an embarrassment to Howard: Flannery had been a constant critic of the government for its lack of action on global warming, and indeed warned that he would continue to be so. But in the circumstances, the front-page snaps of Howard and Flannery shaking hands seemed to presage a new dawn of environmental concern. You wanted the big picture? They don't come much bigger than this.
The $10 billion figure itself was more than somewhat suspect; it turned out that neither the Treasury nor the Department of Finance had been involved in its preparation. Indeed, neither had done any significant work on the problems associated with global warming and the consequent water shortages.
It quickly became obvious that the figure had simply been plucked out of the air; after all, it was a nice big round number, eminently suitable for a tabloid headline. Detailed costings were simply not available. The National Farmers Federation, which might have been expected to call for a week of thanksgiving at the size of the handout, said it might take a full year to work out the detail, and it wasn't giving the Great Big Splash so much as a tentative tick until the work was done.
But Aquaboy Turnbull was confident. The government's terms would be so generous that farmers would sob with gratitude as they accepted them. So compulsion would not be necessary - except, of course, as a very last resort … This, of course, was precisely what the Nats feared: that this smart-arse little urban playboy was taking over their traditional territory and teaching his grandmother to suck eggs. And it must be said that Turnbull is indeed a courageous choice for the delicate role of salesman-mediator. Turnbull is hugely intelligent, prodigiously energetic and almost insanely ambitious: his macrocephaly is not just physical. And, those who have spent time with him would add, he is an arrogant, abrasive, bumptious little bastard. Irritatingly, he pronounces "nuclear" as "nucular", in the manner of George Bush. Not only that, he has lousy political judgment: at the 1998 Constitutional Convention, Howard played him off a break, manoeuvring him into an unwinnable position which Turnbull was only too eager to take. Anyone with the temerity to try to point this folly out to him was either ignored or, more usually, abused. But defeat at the subsequent republic referendum did not soften the man; he had now brought his messianic temperament into the ministry, this time with Howard's enthusiastic support. His skyrocketing promotion to cabinet, and to a portfolio which was already proving vital in an election year, showed Howard's touching faith in a fellow megalomaniac. When he remembers to use it, Turnbull can exude a certain manic charm; he may be able to woo some of his fellow city-dwellers. But it is a lot harder to imagine him working the suspicious locals in an outback pub.
Even in the Billinudgel Hotel, a place sophisticated enough to serve salt-and-pepper squid on alternate weekends, Turnbull is regarded as just a bit too spivvy. As the No. 1 spruiker for the Great Big Splash, he would have his work cut out - if, indeed, anything remained of the Great Big Splash by the time of the election. A fortnight after its proclamation, its future looked as dubious as that of the rivers it was supposed to save.
Rudd, showing a chutzpah Howard and Turnbull must have found well nigh unbearable, generously offered to help. The issue was so important, he said gravely, that he would roll up his sleeves and get together with the premiers to help allay their misgivings.
Apart from driving Howard to apoplexy, Rudd was driving home the highly relevant point that Howard's Great Big Splash, or at least the trickle that was left of it, was only there to treat a symptom of climate change, not the cause; and on that cause the government seemed as hesitant as ever.
There was a real danger that if it did nothing at all, it would be left hopelessly behind. For instance, Howard had made a political virtue out of declaring the coal industry off-limits: nothing must be done to disturb Australia's comparative advantage as a producer or put at risk the jobs of the miners. And besides, if we didn't sell coal to China, someone else would (the eternal excuse of the arms salesman and the drug dealer). But the industry itself was taking a longer view: its leaders saw that if they ignored the rising tide of public concern, one day it might engulf them.
With great reluctance, Howard - now calling himself a climate-change "realist" - performed another backflip and announced that he would start to initiate the commencement of preparations to consider the theoretical possibility of an inquiry into the desirability of carbon trading. The government, in due course, would act promptly. Trading had been Labor policy for some time, so Rudd and his colleagues could legitimately claim that Howard was just playing catch-up.
It seemed to prove their point when, in reply to a question in Parliament from Rudd, Howard replied that the jury was still out on the link between global warming and man-made greenhouse gas emissions. Several hours later he returned to the House to say that he had misheard the question: he thought Rudd had been referring to the drought, not to man-made emissions, and while he believed the jury was still out over whether the drought was directly linked to climate change, he certainly believed that man-made emissions were, he honestly, truly did.
But, like Howard, Labor regarded the whole issue of coal as basically just too difficult. Rudd made it clear that while he supported all possible efforts to clean the industry up, Labor had no plans to shut it down or even phase it out. However, the Greens, unburdened by the prospect of having to implement their policy decisions, had no such inhibitions.
Bob Brown hit the airwaves to urge the major parties to use the next parliamentary term to come up with a policy aimed at phasing out coal exports - which, in practical terms, meant the industry. Or at least that was what he meant to say; what came out was more ambiguous, and could be taken to mean that the entire industry should be phased out within three years. In a frenzy of anti-Green glee most of the media took it to mean just that, and went on to brand Brown, yet again, as a lunatic zealot, an extremist whose real aim was to destroy industrial society and take humanity back to the caves.
The same tabloids reported a truly demented idea from the US absolutely straight: some deranged (so-called) scientists were proposing to reduce global warming by putting a large number of reflective fragments in orbit around the earth. They admitted cheerfully they weren't really sure what the side effects might be, but hey, it was worth a try. Yeah, and so was the cane toad. In comparison, Brown came across as quite boringly rational."
http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/blown-away-by-climate-folly/2007/12/07/1196813021293.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1
