15/12/2019

(AU) What Albanese Could Have Said: We Lied – Australian Coalmines Have No Future

The Guardian - *

Richard Flanagan imagines an alternative speech from the Labor leader this week as the climate crisis rages
‘It strained belief of both our supporters and opponents that we could be for Adani and not for Adani. In truth we were too much for ourselves.’ Photograph: Saeed Khan/AFP via Getty Images
On Monday, ahead of a visit to Queensland coalmining communities, Anthony Albanese announced that there would be no ending of coal exporting under a Labor government. Here is the text of an alternative speech the Labor leader could have given that day instead.

 Today we witness an unprecedented situation as a people and as a nation. Our country is burning and there is no end in sight, nor will there be an end unless we have the courage to face the truth. Our country is burning because it is warming up and drying out, and these things are happening because of a climate crisis for which human beings all over the world are responsible.
We cannot escape our responsibility to act on these truths.
Last election we lied to Australia because we lied to ourselves. We thought we could run with the hares and hunt with the hounds. But in the end, the hares didn’t believe us and the dogs came for us.
It was not possible to say we were serious about addressing the climate crisis and yet promise $1.5bn to subsidise the development of the Beetaloo gas basin as we did during the election. It strained belief of both our supporters and opponents that we could be for Adani and not for Adani. In truth we were too much for ourselves.
All we achieved was to entrench the fossil fuel industry as our most powerful vested interest. Today that industry has as its handmaiden the most authoritarian government in our history. It attacks journalistic freedom, derides those who question it, uses parliament as a forum for lies and criminalises democracy.
Today fires burn over an extraordinary 2.1m hectares in New South Wales alone and yet, despite the lies, our carbon emissions are rising. In the greatest city in our country Australians are choking and falling sick with the resultant pollution that make its air rank among that of the worst polluted cities in the world. Our beaches are black with soot, our towns are running out of water, and yet we are opening new coalmines and gasfields.
Where is our prime minister? Where is the leadership the country is crying out for?
Agreeing with the government, staying mute on the great issue of the day is not clever politics. It is capitulation. It is collaboration. It is, finally, criminal.
My policy will not be to out-Nero Nero Morrison. That is his crown of ash, his name, his infamy, his shame and his destiny.
And so from today our position is no longer ambiguous. Our policy means only one thing: to stay alive. Today, in the smog and suffocating filth of Sydney, at a moment of despair for all Australians, I am announcing that our policy of appeasement of the coal industry ends here and now.
Today I say to the fossil fuel industry this: we will no longer gift you endless billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money in subsidies and tax breaks, only in order to see the Australian people’s gift repaid as more fire, worse drought, rising seas, more floods, increased cyclones, soot in our lungs and despair in our souls.
Today I am announcing that if Labor is elected to government there will be a moratorium on all future coal and gas projects. Because if we don’t we will by 2030 be the sixth-largest producer of carbon emissions in the world. We are already the largest per-capita carbon polluter.
These simple, terrible facts shame us. Worse, we now are paying their terrible price. That is why today I am announcing that if we should win government we will end all thermal coal and gas exports. This will be a complex process but that process begins the day we take power.
I could pretend that it’s not against the rules of the Paris accord to export fossil fuels, that we have only committed to a reduction of carbon emissions in our own country. But such an argument is either a nonsense made in bad faith or shows no understanding of the science underlying the accord, an ignorance so profound as to be implausible. It is only consistent with a party which values neat tricks of language over the substance of public good.
And under my leadership we will not be that party.
I could argue that if we do not sell our coal, others will step in and fill the hole in the market. It is the seductive excuse of the pusher, the smuggler, the slaver. It is the argument of every criminal enterprise. Are we a people who make no distinction between a criminal act and knowingly aiding a criminal act?
No, we are not that people.
I could lie that there is a distinction between domestic emissions and international exports. But scientifically there is none. Science makes clear that the problem doesn’t stop at our borders; that the problem is shared, that the horrific consequences are shared, and that the solutions must also be shared. Far from being a crucial distinction, it is cowardice posing as realism.
The coal cuddlers say that we are insignificant in the world. They have no belief in Australia. I do. I believe we are something, and that we can be something more. Australia can be, as it once was, a leader in the world. We are a significant country. If we take this step it increases the pressure on every other coal-producing country to hasten the transition out of fossil fuels. It allows us to resume our place at the seat of civilised nations, rather than as the dirty rogue nation we are becoming. It permits us to argue with the force of example for recalcitrant countries to join the coalition of the clean.
The hard people of my party argue that the realpolitik of Australia in 2019 means carrying Queensland coal communities. And they are right. But that doesn’t mean lying to them.
If Labor supports the Paris deal – which we do – that means zero emissions by 2050. If that is achieved globally what future is there for the thermal coalmines of Australia and their communities in 30 years? Closure in 30 years or less. It is the cruellest hoax for politicians to tell these communities they have a future in coalmining when they do not.
The new coalmines that the Morrison government wishes to greenlight will be automated, roboticised and short-lived. They will be zombie workplaces whose promise of jobs are hollow. They will exist only for the greed of their owners.
Any leader with a shred of decency would be seeking to work with these communities to find the best and most just ways for them to find good jobs in a new economy. And that’s what I intend to do.
Today I am announcing that I am going to visit the coalmining communities of Queensland. They deserve to know the truth, and it will be my difficult task to tell them that no matter who they vote for, thermal coalmining is ending. It is ending because the market for coal will collapse – at first, as it already is, slowly – and then catastrophically and completely.
I could pretend these things are not so. I could lie as so many politicians have and will. But I respect the good, hardworking people of these communities and, with them, we will begin the hard work now of ensuring that the end of coalmining is not a catastrophic collapse but a just transition that guarantees good futures with good jobs. They will not be left behind.
It is well known that my hero and mentor was Tom Uren. Uren was a political realist. But he also believed in principle. At the great historic juncture of Australian history, when Menzies’s idea of Australia, backward, reactionary, was firmly in place, Uren marched at the head of the young, as a leader of the Vietnam moratorium movement, to change Australia.
It’s time for Labor to once again walk with those young people on the street demanding action.
To the prime minister I say this: join with us to fight this terrifying problem. It is not a Liberal problem or a Labor problem or a Green problem. It is a practical problem. It is a threat to our very future as a society, as an economy and perhaps even to us as a species. It is the greatest threat in our history. Whatever our beliefs, we are choking on the same smoke. Whoever we voted for we face the same water restrictions and, in more and more of our towns, no water. Across parties, classes and regions we are possessed of the same fear. The fire that now consumes our country doesn’t discriminate whose home it destroys or who it kills because of politics. And in fighting this horrific force nor should we. Human beings have collectively made this problem, and only collectively can we solve it.
Let me be clear. There is no other way. The climate crisis no longer just means the Great Barrier Reef and our ancient forests will die. It means we will suffer too. The climate crisis no longer means our children will experience shorter and more difficult lives. It means we will too. It means our homes becoming uninsurable. Our agricultural sector shrivelling. Our fisheries vanishing. Our economy unravelling. Clean air and water becoming increasingly scarce. I say this not to panic you but to alert you to the scale of the challenge.
I cannot tell you where we will end up. The hour is late, the situation is dire and we have left action to the last moment. I can promise you only this: that I will fight shoulder to shoulder with you in the hope of a better tomorrow. And I ask only this in return: will you join with me?

*Richard Flanagan is the Man Booker prize winner for The Narrow Road to the Deep North. His latest novel is First Person
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