21/01/2019

Business, Insurers At Odds With Coalition's 'Problematic' Climate Policy

AFR - Ben Potter

Last week global business leaders warned the World Economic Forum in a survey organised by insurance giants that climate change was the gravest risk facing the plant, eclipsing short term risks of political and economic instability.
"Of all risks, it is in relation to the environment that the world is most clearly sleepwalking into catastrophe," the survey of 1000 business people, policymakers and academics conducted by Zurich Insurance Group and Marsh & McLennan warned ahead of the forum's annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland.
If that reflects the views of Australian business leaders, the Morrison government - which downgraded climate targets as a priority in August - could become the second Coalition government in little more than a decade to be wrong-footed by the politics of climate change during a bout of extreme weather.
Wrongfooted on climate change, 12 years apart: Former Prime Minister John Howard (left) and Prime Minister Scott Morrison (right).  Alex Ellinghausen 
In late 2006, the Howard government took its cue from Business Council president Michael Chaney, who redefined climate change as a business risk, and from Coalition polling showing voters were being "catalysed by the drought", said Mark Triffitt, a political scientist who worked for the BCA at the time.
But it was too little too late, raising questions about whether it was a credible policy switch or a political bandaid in the face of Labor leader Kevin Rudd's climate policy onslaught, said political scientist Paul Strangio, of Monash University. Labor won the 2007 election so easily that Howard lost his seat.
"It became one of the issues [suggesting] that the Howard government was losing touch with the contemporary concerns of the electorate," Mr Strangio said.
Now there's another big dry and last week brought five of Australia's 10 highest mean maximum temperatures, a record 45.3 degrees Celsius for Albury, and record overnight minimums in Noona and Borrona Downs in NSW.
There's also an environmental disaster on the Murray Darling River with the deaths of a million fish being blamed on government mismanagement.

Government not doing enough
The Morrison government elevated cheap power over climate change as a priority when it ousted former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in August, and faces a Labor Opposition arguing voters don't have to choose between lower prices and emissions cuts because of falling clean energy costs.
Polling by Essential Media shows voters are more than twice as likely to think the government isn't doing enough on climate change than to think it is doing enough. Essential Media
An Ipsos poll for The Australian Financial Review in November found 47 per cent of voters prioritised lower energy prices, ahead of 39 per cent prioritising emissions reductions.
But MPs from prosperous heartland Liberal seats in the inner eastern and southeastern suburbs of Melbourne - such as outgoing member for Higgins Kelly O'Dwyer, Goldstein MP Tim Wilson and beaten MP for the state seat of Hawthorn John Pesutto - didn't mention prices when they said the lack of a credible climate change policy was a big problem for the Coalition in the Victorian election.
Polling by Essential Media also shows that for at least three years, voters have been more than twice as likely to think that the government isn't doing enough on climate change than they are to think it is doing enough.
What can change is where climate change sits in voters' priorities, and its impact shouldn't be exaggerated, Mr Strangio said.
Climate change, which will likely cause more bushfires and extreme weather events, is increasingly considered the major long-term risk by business. Dean Sewell
"If concerns about climate change intensify I don't think there is any doubt that it will be problematic for the Coalition government," Mr Strangio said.
But Nick Economou, also from Monash University, said that while it was true the Coalition was struggling to reconcile the attitudes of its inner city "elites" to climate change with those of its rural and regional constituents, "the appalling treatment of Malcolm Turnbull" was far more important in recent elections than climate change.
In Australia, Sean Walker, Zurich's chief underwriting officer in the general insurance division, warned the effects of climate change would have real impacts on business.
"Australian businesses should be building climate-change resilience and adaptation strategies into their broader business plans. These plans need to be real and tangible, not treated as some 'horizon three' or 'black swan' conceptual event but as something to be addressed as part of a new operating environment," he said.
The insurance industry has spoken out with increased urgency on the issue. In November, IAG's Jacki Johnson warned that if global temperatures rise 4 degrees on pre-industrial levels – as some models suggest they are on track to do – then the world could become "pretty much uninsurable".
Back in November 2006, after Chaney had said that business needed to tackle climate change, Howard told the BCA's annual dinner that the government now accepted the science of climate change and would set up an inquiry into a carbon emissions trading system.

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