OPINION: In Part 1 of this article, I proposed that the Liberal Party, at least at federal level, has been ideologically unanchored ever since it rejected carbon pricing as a key climate change action mechanism late in the 1990s. Putting the conservatives at odds with their own pro-market belief system. Immersed in a series of intellectually-compromised culture wars, of which the dual wars on climate science and carbon action are by far the most consequential. Part 2 brings us to 2024, and a wrong-for-the-times nuclear power crusade.
Run the tape back to the 1990s. I was at the landmark UN Climate Summit in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997, covering the environment round for The Sydney Morning Herald. The nuclear lobby was there too, they always are, ever hopeful of a revival, looking to leverage climate change for their own ends.
It was the Americans, Australia’s always allies, who put the seemingly radical market-driven idea of pricing and trading carbon pollution on the table.
This was based on American experience with using a similar strategy to cut polluting gases – sulphur dioxide and nitrous oxide, known collectively as SOx and NOx – which were causing acid rain from the industrialised US to fall on Europe.
This market did its job, and eventually was closed down. But carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases were a much bigger, global economy-wide challenge.
The largish Australian delegation played diplomatic hardball, which allowed us to keep increasing carbon pollution above 1990 levels (by +8 per cent), when other wealthy nations had to start cutting, and to count phasing-down land clearing for agriculture as pollution reduction.
Al Gore, then US Vice President, later of An Inconvenient Truth (2006) climate documentary fame, flew into Kyoto representing President Bill Clinton. This signalled US commitment to climate action.
So loyal Australia, America’s deputy dawg in the South Pacific, had to at least look like it was tagging along.
Kyoto, which followed five years after the historic Rio Earth Summit in 1992, was the first of the big-attendance UN climate summits, known informally as COP3, or formally as the Third Conference of the Parties for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
COP28 was held in Dubai late last year, and COP31 may be hosted by Australia, in partnership with a number of sea level rise-endangered Pacific island states, in 2026.
The Howard coalition government went to Kyoto as genuine if somewhat consensus-challenging participants, led by Environment Minister Senator Robert Hill. A Liberal progressive “wet”, by contrast to the more conservative and dominant ‘dry’ brand, Hill was in no way a climate sceptic or denier.
Nor, at least publicly, was Prime Minister John Howard, a conservative icon to this day, who my former journalism colleague Marian Wilkinson, in her deeply researched book The Carbon Club (Allen & Unwin, 2020), recalls telling the Australian parliament: “The world’s climate scientists have provided us with a clear message, that the balance of evidence suggests humans are having a discernible influence on global climate.”
The largish Australian delegation had figured out that climate was a major trade and economic negotiation, more than an environmental talkfest. They played diplomatic hardball to win the best deal for Australia, which allowed us to keep increasing carbon pollution above 1990 levels (by +8 per cent), when other wealthy nations had to start cutting, and to count phasing-down land clearing for agriculture as pollution reduction.
Fighting carbon pricing was weaponised as a carbon “tax”, by Tony Abbott
As American allies, conservative-led Australia at first appeared supportive of at least entertaining a carbon market, while the environment movement and the political Left initially were appalled at what they perceived as a neo-liberal, markets-obsessed notion of cutting pollution by trading it.
Yet, as Wilkinson writes, behind the scenes Howard was opposed to the complex and far-reaching market concept, and wanted a simpler “sell” for voters. So, instead, Australia got a meagre 2 per cent Renewable Energy Target, later to become 20 per cent by 2020, plus a grab-bag of worthwhile but underdone measures for energy efficiency, scaling back deforestation, and planting native vegetation.
Subsequently, the Americans also abandoned carbon pricing and the market option. Paradoxically, it came to be embraced by many environmentalists and politicians from the Left – and quite a few from the reasonable Right as well, especially in Europe –supported as it was by leading economists and widely-accepted market theory.
Shortly before he lost power in 2007, Howard did make a last gasp election pledge to introduce a limited form of carbon pricing, in the face of the near certainty that an incoming Labor government would do so anyway, as finally came to pass in 2012.
Carbon pricing weaponised
By then, fighting carbon pricing, weaponised as a carbon “tax”, had become an article of faith for many Australian conservatives.
Most people know the history that followed. When Tony Abbott became Liberal prime minister in 2013, having infamously been credited with deriding climate change as “absolute crap”, he set about repealing the Labor-Greens carbon trading scheme, succeeding in 2014.
Pricing carbon – AKA “a tax on everything” in the language of the Liberals – has been political kryptonite ever since. For the Liberals themselves, and Australian politics in general, with Labor scared off too.
The largish Australian delegation had figured out that climate was a major trade and economic negotiation, more than an environmental talkfest. They played diplomatic hardball to win the best deal for Australia, which allowed us to keep increasing carbon pollution above 1990 levels (by +8 per cent), when other wealthy nations had to start cutting, and to count phasing-down land clearing for agriculture as pollution reduction.
As American allies, conservative-led Australia at first appeared supportive of at least entertaining a carbon market, while the environment movement and the political Left initially were appalled at what they perceived as a neo-liberal, markets-obsessed notion of cutting pollution by trading it.
Yet, as Wilkinson writes, behind the scenes Howard was opposed to the complex and far-reaching market concept, and wanted a simpler “sell” for voters. So, instead, Australia got a meagre 2 per cent Renewable Energy Target, later to become 20 per cent by 2020, plus a grab-bag of worthwhile but underdone measures for energy efficiency, scaling back deforestation, and planting native vegetation.
Subsequently, the Americans also abandoned carbon pricing and the market option. Paradoxically, it came to be embraced by many environmentalists and politicians from the Left – and quite a few from the reasonable Right as well, especially in Europe –supported as it was by leading economists and widely-accepted market theory.
Shortly before he lost power in 2007, Howard did make a last gasp election pledge to introduce a limited form of carbon pricing, in the face of the near certainty that an incoming Labor government would do so anyway, as finally came to pass in 2012.
Carbon pricing weaponised
By then, fighting carbon pricing, weaponised as a carbon “tax”, had become an article of faith for many Australian conservatives.
Most people know the history that followed. When Tony Abbott became Liberal prime minister in 2013, having infamously been credited with deriding climate change as “absolute crap”, he set about repealing the Labor-Greens carbon trading scheme, succeeding in 2014.
Pricing carbon – AKA “a tax on everything” in the language of the Liberals – has been political kryptonite ever since. For the Liberals themselves, and Australian politics in general, with Labor scared off too.
Murray Hogarth is an independent guide to business and other organisations, specialising in positioning strategy, stakeholder engagement, thought-leadership and storytelling for sustainability and the energy transition.