Pissing Into A Strange Wind: Australia Abolishes the Carbon Tax

The reason you don’t piss into the wind is because the piss would immediately gust back onto your body. But what if the wind you were pissing into wouldn’t gust back all at once? What if instead the piss came back at you slowly, little particles of your own urine hitting you day after day? If such a wind existed it wouldn’t be until many years later when you were just walking around, a much older person, perhaps in a retirement village, when it would suddenly occur to you. You’ve got piss all over yourself. Would you piss into the wind then?

Watching this last two weeks of the Australian parliament generated the time and bitterness necessary for me to craft the above metaphor. It’s about our current approach to climate change. If you don’t like it: good. I hope it makes you as angry as parliament is frustrating.

I’ve also got a simile for you (it’s been a long fortnight.) Watching the back and forth in the Australian parliament these past weeks has been like watching blindfolded children box each other in molasses. There’s a lot of confusion, some temper tantrums, and it leaves you wondering—why is this happening and where are the adults? Isn’t anyone going to put a stop to this shit?

After weeks of death rattles the climate tax is actually dead. Australia has the questionable honour of being the first country to abolish a carbon pricing system. If you trust the majority of scientists it’s cause for dismay because there’s no way in hell we should be scaling back any legislation designed to mitigate the worst outcomes of climate change.

The argument most often put forward for why the repeal was appropriate was the mandate Abbott won in the last election (it was even put forward by US president Barack Obama). It was the will of the Australian people, we were told.

But is it so clear-cut? We have a bicameral parliamentary system; a clear democratic mandate would’ve presented itself as an overwhelming victory for the Coalition in both the senate and the house of reps. How many seats did the Coalition win in the Senate? None, it lost one.

What’s happened to delay the abolition of the carbon tax? The minor parties, who are the only parties to have won senate seats in the last election, waylaid the legislative agenda of the government. That would appear to be a clear demonstration of the will of the people - an expression of their dissatisfaction with Australian politics.

If you haven’t been following the news (I really, really don’t blame you if you haven’t) this lack of a majority in the senate has required the Coalition to negotiate with the minor parties and, due to ideological similarities and their numbers in the senate, the Palmer United Party has been the chief negotiating partner.

Clive Palmer is quite the man to negotiate with. The primary reason his party delayed passing the carbon tax repeal bill was a concern that the savings made would not be passed onto consumers. It’s questionable whether his amendments achieved that goal but the manner in which he operated seems to suggest that he is a manifestation of both the Australian public’s dissatisfaction with major party politics, and Australian political disarray.

He’s gone back and forth on whether he believes in man-made climate change. He’s accused the Coalition of “pulling a swifty” on him, proposed last-minute amendments that were unconstitutional, and when he was told that by a senate clerk he bullied her.

His party’s own climate plan, an Emissions Trading scheme that lies dormant and only begins operating once the Climate Change Authority deems major emitting nations around the world have similar programs in place, was already rickety. But recent changes have turned it from a vote about a dormant scheme into a dormant vote about a dormant scheme. It’s an ETS that would have to be passed twice. Once now and again when the Climate Change Authority makes it call on our biggest trading partners.

Not to mention his ETS, which requires the existence of the Climate Change Authority, is a proposed amendment to the Climate Change Authority repeal bill. That bill’s title is not misleading, it was originally designed to eliminate the Authority. How’s that for disarray?

Anyway enough about the parliamentary headaches. Was the carbon tax effective? Did it cut emissions? Yes, it looks like it. It also appears it might’ve been more effective if the power companies had believed it would be permanent. Will the Coalition’s direct action plan, assuming they can get it through the unruly senate, be just as effective? Not according to economist Ross Garnaut, who has said of plans that don’t put a price on carbon, “(they) are more expensive, more difficult, and less certain to deliver good results.”

Climate change is an odd thing for us to wrap our heads around; the ultimate repercussions of our actions may not be felt in our lifetimes. Perhaps you believe mainstream science is wrong, or is overstating the facts. But even if you do, taking into account the consequences of getting this wrong , abolishing carbon pricing and replacing it with carbon-reduction incentives seems like a flimsy gambit.

Australia is taking that punters path; we’re going to piss into the strange wind. Hopefully it won’t hit our kids in the face.

Follow Girard on Twitter: @GirardDorney