Green light on the hill is hard to miss

By setting the pace on climate change, Kevin Rudd seeks to lock the PM into a catch-up position, writes editor-at-large Paul Kelly
April 04, 2007
KEVIN Rudd has just made himself the ultimate big target. At the weekend's climate-change summit he pledged Labor to a restructuring of Australia's economy, a remaking of its energy industries, a new environmental diplomacy and, in effect, a new Light on the Hill.
"Climate change is the great moral challenge of our generation," Rudd declared. Not jobs, tax, interest rates or health. Such issues are vital for Labor but there is no doubting what Rudd did last weekend: he enshrined climate change as the new moral passion for the Labor Party in a way that recalled Ben Chifley's invocation of the Light on the Hill.
Rudd spoke at the summit as the alternative prime minister making announcements that presumed him becoming the real prime minister.
He announced his aim was "to forge a national consensus on climate change" and examine how "we best reorganise as a nation to deal with this", thereby highlighting what Rudd and his mostly sympathetic summiteers had long before concluded: the Howard Government had failed to provide leadership on climate change.
Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull is increasingly frustrated at the depth of this perception, which seems almost impervious to the regular greenhouse abatement initiatives of the Howard Government.
This is because the politics of climate change are unique and are playing Labor's way. They are symbol-laden; witness the Sydney "lights off' Earth Hour last weekend, when organisers could pompously declare it showed "hope for humanity" and be taken seriously.
Alarm over climate change is legitimised by science and has entered popular culture. It is a staple of compassion, faith and responsibility.
Political action is deemed a moral obligation, empty gestures at abatement are a civic duty and solutions are based on a half-century time line that destroys immediate distinctions between good and bad policy responses.
John Howard's prime ministership has been engulfed by a force utterly foreign to his temperament, experience and emotional intelligence.
He treats climate change as a sensible incrementalist coming to grips with a new challenge but finds instead that he is being judged according to faith, fervour and passion, and found to be wanting.
Rudd's skill is to treat climate change both as an issue and as a symbol. He has taken a simple strategic decision; he will own climate change as a policy issue and a political crusade. By setting the pace on policy, Rudd seeks to lock Howard into a doomed catch-up position where everything he does is dismissed by the media and the public as inconsequential. This mind-set seems entrenched. By branding Howard a sceptic, Labor turns Howard's usual assets of pragmatism, balance and reliability against him.
The essence of climate-change politics is belief. This is implicit in Labor's embrace of an ambitious 2050 benchmark of 60 per cent emission cuts. Nobody knows how this will be achieved or what effect it will have on Australia's economy and its public. The sheer extent of faith-based politics is highlighted by the fact that no other nation in the Asia-Pacific embraces this target. Understand what this means: you set a target and work backwards to devise the policies to reach it. This arbitrary figure of 60 per cent is an act of belief rationalised by science. The significance of Nicholas Stern is that he adds economics as a further rationalisation for the target.
So science and economics are recruited to Labor's 60 per cent stance, investing this figure with a misleading aura of authority.
For Labor, climate change embodies in a new form its instincts for state planning targets, multilateral action and a universal moral cause. But this cause, unlike some past Labor causes, represents a popular wave. Rudd has calculated that climate change is the perfect issue on which Labor should make itself a big target.
His summit was a show of contempt for the Howard Government. While Howard says the 60 per cent target will seriously damage our economy, Rudd seeks to mobilise elite and popular opinion behind this target, saying he wants to tap into scientific, industry, community and government sectors to convert Australia from follower to leader in this global quest.
This is a complete reversal of Australia's climate-change strategy. Howard was not just a sceptic. He believes our fossil-fuel economy dictates that Australia must move only with the international consensus on greenhouse gas abatement and that any embrace of a leadership position (tying Australia to the European Union and becoming the odd man out in Asia) will prejudice our energy industries and our competitiveness.
The scale of Rudd's policy ambitions on climate change is immense. Most people who attended the summit left impressed with his vision and methodical approach. He sees climate change as a whole-of-government undertaking; he views the task as a challenge of economic restructuring. It is Labor's new economic reform project. Rudd wants a national framework that, once imposed, means you "let technology and finance respond to the signals". It is a market-based strategy. He envisages action on multiple fronts: emission cuts, energy efficiency, higher targets for renewable energy, clean-coal technology and an emissions trading regime with a carbon price.
But the over-arching urgency comes from the 60 per cent target.
Rudd accepts the Stern philosophy; the economic downside lies in any failure to act. The power of Stern's report lies in its nexus between aggressive action on climate change and economic responsibility. This alters the politics of climate change. It means that whenever Howard hesitates, Rudd and shadow treasurer Wayne Swan attack him for being economically irresponsible.
It is no surprise that Rudd, with the ALP premiers, wants to commission an Australian version of Stern. (There are risks here unless they pick the right candidate.) The aim is to legitimise a restructuring of Australia's energy sector away from its historic greenhouse gas dependence.
Rudd plans to reorganise the nation for a low-carbon economy. This will be a prime ministerial priority. An office of climate change will be established within the Prime Minister's Department, with Rudd saying he envisages climate change as a parallel priority with national security.
Drawing on the analysis of University of Sydney professor Alan Dupont, he will commission "a national risk audit of the entire impact for this country" of a no-policy-change environment. This goes to the national security and disaster implications for Australia and its people of refusing to act on climate change.
Finally, Rudd's initiative for a Labor delegation to China in June shows that he knows the great risk at the heart of this project. Rudd must persuade China and the US to enter into the post-2012 global emission reduction system. If he fails, the public will ask why Australia decided to sacrifice its comparative advantage in energy ahead of other nations.