‣Voters prioritize lower electricity bills over emission cuts ‣Ruling coalition narrows poll gap with Labor as election nears
Photographer: Carla Gottgens/Bloomberg
A new poll shows Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s focus on
getting power bills down may be starting to pay dividends. But it also
suggests his failure to establish a coherent narrative on tackling
climate change could hurt his government at the ballot box.
Scott Morrison
Photographer: Mark Graham/Bloomberg
Morrison’s predecessor Malcolm Turnbull was ousted as prime minister
in August after an internal rift in the ruling Liberal Party over energy
policy -- specifically his plan to include carbon emission reduction
targets in the now-abandoned National Energy Guarantee.
When Morrison appointed Angus Taylor to the energy portfolio,
he gave him the snappy informal title of “minister for reducing
electricity prices.” Morrison and Taylor both say the nation can’t
depend on renewable energy, instead touting coal as power you can rely
on “when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing.”
Monday’s
poll will offer Morrison encouragement that he’s closing down the main
opposition Labor party’s lead ahead of a national election expected in
May next year. The poll showed Labor’s lead over the ruling coalition
narrowing to a 52-48 split on a two-party preferred basis, from 55-45 in
October.
Cheap Power Trumps Climate Concerns Poll asks what should be the top priority for Australia's energy policy
Fairfax-Ipsos poll
Labor leader Bill Shorten wants more ambitious climate targets than the
government, but has yet to fully flesh out his energy plans. He’s set to
do that this week, when he gives a major speech on energy at a
BloombergNEF event in Sydney on Thursday.
Bill Shorten
Photographer: Brendon Thorne/Bloomberg
Labor voters are far more likely to see climate change as the most
pressing priority for energy policy -- 53 percent in the poll said it
should be the main focus -- so in that sense Shorten is playing to his
base. The challenge for him now is to simultaneously keep up the
pressure on energy suppliers to keep prices contained.
Morrison and Taylor may have earned some credit with voters for exerting pressure
on the big energy retailers, but they are also dealing with a backlash
over their lukewarm attitude toward renewables. Morrison says he is
confident Australia will meet its Paris climate targets -- reducing
emissions by at least 26 percent below 2005 levels by 2030 -- but is yet
to articulate a clear policy for achieving that.
Dr Rupert Read teaches philosophy at the University of East Anglia specialising in philosophy of language, philosophy of science, and environmental philosophy, and chairs the Green House thinktank. He studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Balliol College, Oxford, before undertaking postgraduate studies in the United States at Princeton University and Rutgers University where he gained his doctorate.
Not heard of the “Extinction Rebellion” before? Then you heard it
here first. Because soon, everyone is going to have heard of it. The Extinction Rebellion
is a non-violent direct action movement challenging inaction over
dangerous climate change and the mass extinction of species which,
ultimately, threatens our own species.
Saturday November 17 2018 is “Rebellion Day”
– when people opposed to what they see as a government of “climate
criminals” aim to gather together enough protesters to close down parts
of the capital – by shutting down fossil-powered road traffic at key
pinch-points in London.
I’m a Reader in Philosophy at the University of East Anglia and I
have thrown myself headfirst into this movement. Our long-term aim is to
create a situation where the government can no longer ignore the
determination of an increasingly large number of people to shift the
world from what appears to be a direct course towards climate calamity.
Who knows, the government could even end up having to negotiate with the rebels.
As someone who is both a veteran of non-violent direct actions over
the years and an academic seeking to make sense of these campaigns, I’ve
been thinking quite a lot about what’s old and what’s new about the
Extinction Rebellion. Here are my conclusions so far.
From world peace to climate justice
The Extinction Rebellion is rooted in longstanding traditions exemplified by the radical nuclear disarmament movement. The founders of the Extinction Rebellion have thought carefully about past precedents, and about what works and what doesn’t.
They’ve noted for instance that you don’t necessarily need active
involvement from more than a tiny percentage of the population to win radical change, provided that you have a righteous cause that can elicit tacit backing from a much larger percentage.
The Extinction Rebellion is also quite different from its
predecessors. True, the disarmament movement was about our very
existence, but nuclear devastation was – and still is – only a risk.
Extinction Rebellion’s aim is to prevent a devastation of our world that will come – and quite soon, unless we manage to do something unprecedented that will radically change our direction.
Climate activists often compare their struggle to victories from the
past. But in my view comparisons which are often made – to Indian
independence, the civil rights movement or the campaign for universal
suffrage, for example – are over-optimistic,
even fatuous. These historical movements were most often about
oppressed classes of people rising up and empowering themselves, gaining
access to what the privileged already had.
The Extinction Rebellion challenges oligarchy and neoliberal
capitalism for their rank excess and the political class for its deep
lack of seriousness. But the changes that will be needed to arrest the
collapse of our climate and biodiversity are now so huge that this
movement is concerned with changing our whole way of life. Changing our diet significantly. Changing our transport systems drastically. Changing the way our economies work to radically relocalise them. The list goes on.
This runs up against powerful vested interests – but also places considerable demands upon ordinary citizens, especially in “developed” countries such as the UK. It is therefore a much harder ask.
This means that the chances of the Extinction Rebellion succeeding are
relatively slim. But this doesn’t prove it’s a mistaken enterprise – on
the contrary, it looks like our last chance.
Risking arrest is a small sacrifice when life itself is on the line.Andy Rain/EPA
From the lecture hall to the streets
This all leads into why I sat in the road blocking the entrance to
Parliament Square on October 31, when the Extinction Rebellion was
launched – and why I will be “manning the barricades” again on November
17. As a Quaker, I cherish the opening words of the famous Shaker hymn: Tis the gift to be simple.
What does it mean to live simply at this moment in history? It means to
do everything necessary so that others – most importantly our children
(and their children) – can simply live. It isn’t enough to live a life
of voluntary simplicity.
One needs also to take peaceful direct action to seek to stop the
mega-machine of growth-obsessed corporate capitalism that is destroying
our common future. That’s why it seems plain to me that we need peaceful
rebellion now, so that we and countless other species don’t face
devastation or indeed extinction.
The next line of that Shaker hymn goes: “Tis the gift to be free.” In
our times, to be free means to not be bound by laws that are consigning
our children to purgatory or worse. If one cares properly for one’s
children, that must entail caring for their children, too. You don’t
really care for your children if you damn their children. And that logic
multiplies into the future indefinitely – we aren’t caring adequately for any generation if the generation to follow it is doomed.
As mammals whose primary calling is to care for our kids, it is
therefore logical that an outright existential threat to their future,
and to that of their children, must be resisted and rebelled against, no
matter what the pitifully inadequate laws of our land say.
I’ve felt called upon to engage in conscientious civil disobedience before, at Faslane and Aldermaston against nuclear weapons and with EarthFirst in defence of the redwood forests threatened with destruction in the Pacific Northwest of the USA.
But the Extinction Rebellion seems to me the most compelling cause of them all. Unless we manage to do the near impossible, then after a period of a few decades at most there won’t be any other causes to engage with. It really now is as stark and as dark as that.
If you too feel the call, then I think you now know what to do.
The huge postcard was rolled out on the Switzerland's Aletsch Glacier, which is melting.
It had more than 125,000 individual drawings and messages.
Organizers hoped to set a world record.
An
aerial view shows a massive collage of 125,000 drawings and messages
from children from around the world about climate change seen rolled out
on the Aletsch Glacier at an altitude of 11,155 feet near the
Jungfraujoch in the Swiss Alps on Friday, November 16, 2018. (Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images)
More than 125,000 drawings and notes from children around the
world were put together on a glacier in the Swiss Alps on Friday to send
a big message.
The message: Fight climate change and help the environment.
"They are asking us and their leaders to take action to preserve the
planet Earth for them to have a future on it," said Oceane Dayer,
founder of Swiss Youth for Climate.
Kids Leave Climate Change Message in Swiss Alps
125,000 drawings come together to send a large message about climate change in the Swiss Alps.
The mosaic laid out on Switzerland's Aletsch Glacier measured 26,910
square feet, about half the size of a U.S. football field. It was
organized by a non-profit conservation group called the WAVE Foundation
and the Swiss government's Agency for Development and Cooperation.
The Aletsch Glacier is the largest glacier in the Alps, and it is
melting at an alarming rate. Losing nearly 40 feet of ice a year, the
glacier could be gone by the end of the century, experts warn.
The
postcards bore messages of efforts to fight climate change and help the
environment: limiting water use, promises to use public transportation,
or recycling old goods before buying new ones among them. They covered
an area the size of half a U.S. football field. (Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images)
The
children's postcards were pinned down with clamps and nets, and
laminated in long glued-together strips to protect them from the ice and
snow. Organizers said they hoped to set a Guinness World Record for the
"postcard with the most contributions." (Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images)
The project's aim was to "boost a global youth climate movement ahead
of the next global climate conference (COP24) in Poland," next month,
according to the WAVE Foundation.
Organizers said the 125,000 individual postcards set a Guinness World Record for the "postcard with the most contributions."
However, according to the Associated Press, Guinness said the attempt
has not been registered. The current record is only 16,000.
The
giant postcard was rolled out on the Aletsch Glacier near the
Jungfraujoch in the Swiss Alps. Organizers want to launch a "global
climate change youth movement" to play into the U.N. Framework
Convention on Climate Change in Katowice, Poland, known as COP24, next
month. (Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images)
From overhead, messages spelled out on the card were "Stop global
warming" and "#1.5C," a nod to the goal of keeping global warming below
1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).
