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| A wind farm in Warrnambool, Australia. In a country as economically reliant on coal as Australia, alternative forms of energy and climate change debates are deeply divisive topics. Credit Mark Dadswell/Getty Images |
SPRING
RIDGE, Australia — Mark Coulton and his daughter, Claire, both believe
there is a future in rural living. They are both active members of Australia’s
National Party, which traditionally represents farmers and voters
outside the main cities who lean conservative, and they agree on most
things — but not on how to deal with climate change.
Mr.
Coulton, 59, thinks measures like carbon trading are “symbolic things
that really won’t have any impact.” Claire Coulton, 33, supports carbon
trading as a means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and worries that
Australia’s economic dependence on coal could undermine her future.
“I
think it’s something all young people should be looking at with real
interest,” she said, “because if there are negative effects of opening
up that coal mine, our generation will be the one to bear the brunt of
it.”
The
elder Coulton is a lawmaker in the Australian Parliament, representing
the electoral division of Parkes in New South Wales, and his daughter
belongs to the party’s youth wing, but their disagreement is not limited
to family debate. Last month, the regional youth wing, the NSW Young
Nationals, including Ms. Coulton, went against party leaders at an
annual meeting and voted to endorse a plan that would place a cost on
emissions, known as an emissions intensity plan.
Their
vote is provocative. After being passed by the young party members, the
plan has been added to the agenda at the state party’s annual
conference, which starts Thursday. If it is debated and put to a vote,
it could become National Party policy in the state.
The
Young Nationals’ push for an emissions plan is one way the issue of
climate change is contributing to generational clashes in Australia, the
United States and elsewhere.
In the United States, where attitudes on carbon pricing and other measures are divided mostly along party lines, age still matters. A 2015 Pew report
found 52 percent of Americans ages 18 to 29 considered global warming a
very serious problem, compared with 38 percent of those 50 and older.
The younger group was also more likely to support United States
participation in efforts to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
Conservatives
globally have been the party of doubt when it comes to global warming,
but the debate playing out at the Coulton kitchen table suggests the
younger generation may shift direction.
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Many
of the NSW Young Nationals’ more than 300 members, ages 16 to 35, see
their role as pushing their leaders even as they support whatever the
party ultimately decides.
Ms.
Coulton, a former high school English teacher and political staff
member, grew up on a farm between Warialda and Gravesend, about 300
miles north of Sydney. She now works in Sydney for a rural charity,
though she says she does not plan to stay in the city long.
Her
vote for the emissions intensity plan, she said, was born of her belief
in the resilience of rural life — a life she hopes to return to. “Young
regional people are really concerned about climate change,” she said.
“It’s not just inner-city students.”
An
emissions intensity plan sets an electricity industry baseline for how
much carbon dioxide can be emitted per unit of electricity. Coal-power
generators emitting above that benchmark can buy credits from passive
emission providers like wind farms.
In Australia, one of the world’s biggest coal exporters,
the mention of any such plan is politically explosive. In 2011, Tony
Abbott, then the conservative opposition leader of the Liberal Party,
waged a relentless campaign against a carbon pricing plan by the Labor
Party, which passed. He continued to fight against the plan after
becoming prime minister in 2013, warning of skyrocketing energy bills,
and with assistance from the National Party his government repealed it in 2014.
And
their success at framing the initiative as a “great big new tax” has
left Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull unable to even whisper the idea
without political cost.
History suggests the broader National Party, which is part of Mr. Turnbull’s governing coalition, will also be hard to shift.
Ms.
Coulton’s father boasts of blocking a previous carbon pricing plan by
former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in 2008, and his party is generally
supportive of the coal industry. His electoral division of Parkes is
bigger than Arizona and is one of the country’s poorest
areas. He said he spent about 800 hours driving around the area last
year, visiting with voters and talking about their concerns.
They
worried about water, education and disadvantage, he said. If global
warming did come up, most proposed solutions were seen as leading to
higher power bills. “Representing a lot of poor people, they don’t have
the luxury of just paying more,” Mr. Coulton said. He added that members
of the Young Nationals, who were likely to be better educated and
higher paid, might not feel the same financial pinch.
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| Coal terminals in Mackay, Australia, last month. Some younger Australians worry that the country’s dependence on coal could undermine their futures. Credit Daryl Wright/Reuters |
Some
young farmers in his district disagree. Anika Molesworth, 29, whose
family has a 10,000-acre sheep farm near Broken Hill, said she had
raised the issue of global warming with Mr. Coulton. “As a young farmer,
climate change is the issue of our generation,” she said in an email.
“I don’t support any party that discounts science and jeopardizes the
rights and well-being of future generations.”
Generational disagreements also emerge when the party’s youth wing pushes other socially progressive issues. In 2015, it voted in favor of same-sex marriage,
but Mr. Coulton said his constituents largely opposed it. “I’ve got a
lot of faith in the young ones coming through, but I think they get
influenced a lot by the schools, universities and TV,” he said.
Some
Nationals share his view. Don Hubbard, 57, a cattle and crop farmer in
the state’s fertile Liverpool Plains agricultural area, also disapproved
of the influence of a so-called green agenda on rural youth. Both Mr.
Hubbard and his 28-year-old daughter, Sarah, oppose an emissions
intensity plan and don’t believe climate change is caused by human
activity.
Mr.
Hubbard said the Young Nationals would come around to his view once
they had businesses of their own. “Call me a cynic if you like, but I
think my generation, we’re the last ones to come out of the school
system that didn’t have this stuff pumped into them, force-fed day after
day, about climate change,” he said.
Not
far from the Hubbards’ farm, train carriages rattle through the
countryside carrying grain and coal. The rich black soil of these plains
is covered in cotton and sorghum, but underneath run deep coal seams. A
protest over fossil fuels mining is never far away in Australia, and
the Hubbards are fighting new mines near their prime farming land.
In
late March, an unexpected rainstorm tore through their 10,000-acre
property, drowning valuable sunflower crops and leaving deep gashes in
the earth. For the Hubbards, it was just the cruelty of weather,
unpredictable as ever.
As
they bulldozed the paddocks back into submission, Mr. Hubbard said he
saw carbon trading, in a resource-rich country like Australia, like
“tying both hands behind your back.”
Alex
Fitzpatrick, 21, the policy officer who proposed the emissions plan at
the Young Nationals’ conference last month, said that an emissions
intensity plan could help Australia reach its Paris climate agreement
target: an emissions reduction of 26 percent to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2030.
Ms.
Fitzpatrick said she was eager to make her case at the annual
conference this month. “We will push this because it’s something we
believe in.”
Links
- To Simulate Climate Change, Scientists Build Miniature Worlds
- Two Australias? Readers Tell Their Stories
- Large Sections of Australia’s Great Reef Are Now Dead, Scientists Find
- To Simulate Climate Change, Scientists Build Miniature Worlds
- A Parable From Down Under For U.S. Climate Scientists
- As Rising Seas Erode Shorelines, Tasmania Shows What Can Be Lost
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