12/08/2019

We’Ve Been Arguing About Climate Policy For Five Elections: How Many More Before We Get It Right?

Sydney Morning Herald - Matt Wade

A decade ago I visited a dusty shanty town in India’s capital New Delhi to interview a remarkable Australian family.
Mark and Cathy Delaney had left Brisbane suburbia to settle among the urban poor and explore a different way of living.
Their sons Tom, now 22, and Oscar, now 17, were born in India and have spent much of their lives there.
Mark and Cathy Delaney on the roof of their house in a Delhi slum in 2009. Credit: Brendon Esposito





I wrote about the Delaney family for The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald in 2009 while working in India as a foreign correspondent.
They lived in a small brick room in a densely populated slum on Delhi’s sprawling outskirts. They had no running water, no TV, no fridge and no washing machine. Meals were eaten sitting on the floor and they shared a tiny squat toilet with their landlords. The family’s possessions were kept in a few steel trunks.
But the Delaneys spoke passionately about the personal fulfilment and deep friendships they had found in the slum.
“The longer we’ve stayed here, the more we can see the positive effect it has had on us as people,” Cathy Delaney told me at the time.
This week the Delaney family were in the news again.
Mark, Cathy and Oscar, who returned to Australia in April, were arrested with eight others at a climate change protest at the Brisbane offices of GHD, an engineering contractor linked to the construction of infrastructure for the Adani coal mine.
The protesters were calling on the firm to do no further work to facilitate the controversial Adani project.
Mark and Cathy were charged with “contravening a police direction” and will face court later this month. Oscar was not charged.
Mark and Cathy Delaney lived in an Indian slum in Delhi. Credit: Brendan Esposito
A legacy of the years the Delaneys spent living in slums is a deep concern about climate change, especially the way it disproportionately affects poor communities.
Low Carbon & Loving It:
Adventures In Sustainable Living From The Streets Of India 
To Middle Class Australia
Mark Delaney and his son Tom, who still works in India as a volunteer educator, spent a long period researching climate change. Last year, the pair published a book which draws together their reflections on slum life and the need for climate action.
The book, called Low Carbon and Loving It: Adventures in sustainable living from the streets of India to middle-class Australia, describes the family’s many experiments in low-carbon living including using trains rather than flying. On a trip from Delhi to Brisbane they substituted air travel as much possible - it took seven times longer and was three times more expensive than a direct flight, but had a carbon footprint of around one third.
When the Delaney’s returned to Australia they were surprised by the lack of action to combat climate change.
Mark Delaney, who is a lawyer by training, met with local MPs and urged them to do more to reduce Australia's emissions.
He has reached out to schools, churches and other community groups in different parts of Australia offering to speak about how the family’s experiences in the slums and their concerns about climate change. The reception has been lukewarm.
Mark has decided the non-violent resistance which led to his arrest last week is now his only alternative.
“We have tried talking calmly to politicians, participating in the political process, doing education work in schools and churches, even writing a book,” he said.
“Now there seems to be no other option but to engage in civil disobedience … the time has come for ordinary Australians to say enough is enough.”
Mark Delaney (pictured) and his son Tom wrote a book about climate change which draws on their experiences living in Indian slums. Credit: Louise Kennerley
Some will disagree with Mark’s conclusion. But his frustration is understandable.
As public anxiety about climate change grows it seems effective policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions become more elusive.
The Lowy Institute's annual poll, released in June, found climate change topped the list of threats to Australia’s vital interests in 2019, ranking above cyber attacks from other countries, international terrorism and North Korea’s nuclear program. Six in 10 Australians (61 per cent) agreed global warming is a “serious and pressing problem” about which “we should begin taking steps now even if this involves significant costs". That share has surged by 25 percentage points since 2012.
A separate survey published in March by social research firm Ipsos found 46 per cent of Australians now agree climate change is “entirely or mainly” caused by human activity. That's the highest share since 2010 when Ipsos began asking the question in its annual study of attitudes to climate change. Only 13 per cent of respondents said the Morrison government was doing a good job tackling climate change.
To make matters worse, the toxic nature of climate politics has contributed to an erosion of voter trust. That will make it all the more difficult to craft effective policies to reduce carbon emissions, which are inevitably complex.
Australia’s fruitless struggle over climate policy has also left less political legroom for other important economic reforms to boost productivity.
Climate policy has featured in the past five elections but I fear it might take another five before Australia settles on a high-quality, economically efficient mechanism to reduce carbon emissions.
No wonder the Delaney family is resorting to civil disobedience.

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