Still cool on Kyoto

WHEN the federal Government was blind-sided on popular opposition to the state-commonwealth sale of the Snowy Mountains electricity generation scheme, John Howard put the whole idea into reverse gear so quickly he didn't even touch the clutch.
The Snowy sale gearbox was ripped out and within an hour three governments dropped the idea.
People power was overwhelming and victorious.
Popular opinion, no matter what the economic arguments, was against the NSW Government-inspired sale and killed the idea. For the Prime Minister, who hadn't detected the widespread opposition and, as a minority shareholder in the scheme, it was a simple political decision.
The economic advantage was slight, the political cost was great, so the solution was to change direction. It was an effortless decision to drift with the tide.
This week, the Howard Government was again blind-sided when Nicholas Stern released his economic assessment of the impact of climate change. The Blair Government-commissioned report recommended urgent action to cut greenhouse gases or face dire consequences by 2050 with the end of the modern world as we know it. Basing his report on computer modelling, Stern said we would face disease, starvation, death and economic collapse worse than the combined effects of two world wars and the Depression if we did nothing about greenhouse gas emissions.
Although the Howard Government was aware of the report's imminent release, it came as bushfires were burning outside Sydney, vast areas of Australia moved into dire drought and water restrictions were biting. The Stern review ignited public interest.
Whether linked or not, cyclonic storms, drought and drying rivers were blamed on climate change and people clamoured for more to be done on cutting greenhouse gas emissions, on investigating solar and wind power and on signing up to the Kyoto protocol on greenhouse gas emissions.
In the gardens of the Lodge, the Prime Minister experienced the falling of a huge candlebark tree, possibly affected by the drought, but a symbol nevertheless of climate change and destruction.
Whatever the reason for trees falling in Canberra, Howard was caught unawares by the depth of public feeling, and Opposition Leader Kim Beazley pounced with his longstanding position of signing the Kyoto protocol. It was a symbolic victory in parliament for Labor, with a clear political differentiation from Howard and his refusal to ratify Kyoto.
Popular politics are now running against Howard but this time he's not drifting with the tide, nor is he lifting his head from the sand. He's going to stand against the flow, confident in his instincts and his faith in pragmatic politics, which demands that he does not panic in response to a large breaking wave but waits for the return of the normal ebb and flow.
Howard clearly does not readily accept the thesis that man-made emissions are responsible for climate change or that climate change will be as dire as suggested, and equally clearly he is not prepared to react to what is one of the world's great political imperatives to the detriment of that other imperative, energy security.
Fear of climate change may be widespread, but energy security for everyone, but particularly for India, China and Japan, is an essential government objective. That is where the other side of the argument lies for Australia.
It was only a few weeks ago that Howard said Australia could become a world energy superpower. Australia's oil, coal, gas and uranium resources make that a given. The demand from China, India, South Korea, Japan and the US for coal, gas and minerals makes it an economic certainty.
Politically, calls for a reassessment of nuclear power from the International Energy Agency and the British Labour Party, as well as prospective uranium deals with China and India, make Howard's pro-nuclear position in the longer term not only tenable but attractive compared with Labor's nuclear no-go zone. As Treasurer Peter Costello said this week, if we, as part of the Western industrial growth over the past century, put most man-made greenhouse emissions into the air so far, why should China or others accept our demands they sign the Kyoto protocol?
Apart from real problems with intellectual property rights not being observed in China for renewable energy and clean coal technology there is a justified Chinese resistance to paternalistic Western environmental hectoring.
As Costello said this week: "If you went to China and said, well look, you know, I know you have all got a very low standard of living here in China - I think the per capita income in China is about a quarter of what it is in Australia -- and you have got to close all of your power stations, I don't think the Chinese would agree with you.
"So I think it is much more realistic to say to countries like China and India, which obviously want to pull their populations out of poverty, power has to be provided to increase their standard of living but it has got to be done in a better way. It has got to be done in clean coal technology, it may well be, in China's case, in nuclear, and if we can have breakthroughs in relation to solar and in relation to other renewables, those as well."
This is where the simple mantra of "sign Kyoto" is not enough. Australia's debate on Kyoto is outdated and being left behind by the rest of the world. British Trade Minister Ian McCartney told Inquirer this week that there needs to be a practical solution, post-Kyoto, and preferably before the Kyoto regime runs out in 2012.
Given that Labor is not proposing any different targets in Australia for emissions control before 2012, and the Labor state governments of coal-rich Queensland and Victoria and minerals-rich Western Australia have effectively vetoed a national emissions trading system, the realistic path is in Howard's favour.
The political problem for Howard is that in the short term, the near hysteria and simplistic arguments about signing Kyoto are against him.
The long-term problem for Beazley is that he is in danger of aligning himself with a doomsday scenario that is short-term scaremongering and a threat, longer term, to Australian jobs. He refuses to concede this is a danger and that it carries a cost.
Sometimes it's a gamble to know when to go with the flow or swim against the tide. It's a delicate moment for Howard and Beazley but the real, and immediate politics of water, energy and jobs suggest Howard's refusal to float is a better long-term bet.