Correspondence to ‘the coal curse’ by anna rose
first published in Quarterly Essay 79 ‘the end of certainty’
Judith Brett has offered Australians a great gift: a detailed understanding of how our country got so stuck in our response to climate change, and who we can hold responsible. Describing how coal and gas companies converted their financial power into political influence over the federal Coalition, Brett makes the invisible blatantly visible. The mess Australia is in today did not just happen. It was never inevitable. It came about through particular people’s choices and actions, and through other people choosing to look the other way.
As a climate campaigner over the past twenty-three years, I’ve seen hordes of coal and gas lobbyists at Parliament House and at party conferences; the handshakes and backslaps and laughs. Like Brett, I’ve despaired at the revolving door between politics, the senior public service and fossil-fuel companies. But it’s not too late to turn things around.
The final chapter of Brett’s saga is still being written, by the actions that we take today. In the decade or so the world’s leading scientists say we have left to limit irreversible climate change, I see two viable pathways to get Australia unstuck on climate: first, shifting the Coalition, and second, shifting money away from coal and gas.
As Brett outlines, the fossil-fuel lobby has been incredibly successful at “capturing” the Coalition and using it to protect its financial interests. But for how long can this success continue? More fires will burn in places previously thought safe. Seas will continue to rise. More houses will fall into the ocean. More desperate people will be driven to our shores seeking safety from conflicts driven by food and water shortages. Many in the Coalition know it’s only a matter of time before their position must change. The rise of groups like Coalition for Conservation and Parliamentary Friends of Climate Action, which has six federal Liberal Party members, shows that internal climate champions do exist.
For the past two decades, trying to support internal change in the Coalition has not been a priority for climate NGOs. Until the 2019 election, the better strategy seemed to be to pressure the ALP to improve its climate policy and hope for its election. But that strategy debate is now moot: we have already entered the critical decade for action, and the Coalition is in power federally and in three states. The latest Newspoll shows Scott Morrison’s approval rating at 68 per cent, and he is preferred prime minister at 58 per cent (over Labor leader Anthony Albanese at 26 per cent). It is probable we will be dealing with Coalition governments until at least 2025. We simply do not have time to find a path to change that does not include the Coalition.
Just like John Howard’s gun reforms, climate policies are much more likely to stick if introduced from the right of politics than the left. If it can muster the courage to reduce political support or financial subsidies for coal and gas, the Coalition is far better placed than Labor to withstand the inevitable attacks from the fossil-fuel lobby and its allies in the Murdoch media. This has been demonstrated in the United Kingdom, where the Murdoch newspapers have largely supported the significant climate leadership shown by the Conservative Party.
There are signs of progress in the three Coalition-held states. NSW environment minister Matt Kean stood up at the Smart Energy Council’s annual conference in December 2019 and linked bushfires to climate change, making the case for stronger support for renewable energy. He couldn’t have picked a more appropriate moment: the room, in Sydney’s Hilton Hotel, was literally filling with bushfire smoke. Now Kean is forging ahead with two huge renewable energy zones for regional New South Wales, and Tasmania and South Australia have made rapid progress on renewables under their moderate Liberal premiers. Tasmania has a set a world-leading target of 200 per cent renewables, and South Australia is aiming for 100 per cent renewables before 2030. Every state and territory now has a target of net zero emissions by 2050. Should they choose to do so, the state premiers could work together, bypassing the federal government, to accelerate the transition to clean energy.
But what about Coalition politicians from the centre-right (Scott Morrison’s faction) or the far right? In 2011, I spent four weeks filming an ABC documentary with former Liberal finance minister Nick Minchin. After over a hundred hours in conversation with Nick, I understood why he and others in the far-right faction were so opposed to accepting climate science. The science itself wasn’t the problem – rather, it was its implications for policy. This is what Professor Naomi Oreskes calls “implicatory denial”: accepting climate change means accepting that the neoliberal project of free markets and small governments produced a seriously large externality (a cost not reflected in the market price of fossil fuels, paid by the community in the form of climate change). In the words of Sir Nicholas Stern, climate change is the “greatest market failure ever seen,” and governments must step in to fix it. This calls into question the ideology that Nick Minchin and others like him have devoted their whole lives to advancing.
The political reality is that change inside the Coalition cannot happen until enough of these “climate blocker” politicians leave federal parliament to allow the rest to move forward, or unless the moderates increase their powerbase to render the blockers’ opposition irrelevant. Ultimately, it seems unlikely that the Coalition will feel the urgency to act that the science demands unless the federal Liberal Party is at serious risk of losing seats over climate change. Independent Zali Steggall’s successful campaign for the seat of Warringah was a turning point. It has inspired long-time conservative voters in other seats to take matters into their own hands and find and back pro-climate independents. Ironically, those whose heads are next on the chopping block are Liberal moderates in inner-city seats who do accept the science. These Liberal MPs – people such as Trent Zimmerman, Tim Wilson, Katie Allen and Jason Falinski – may argue that their presence in parliament is critical to transforming the Coalition’s climate policy. But these moderates have been so unwilling to risk any political capital over climate policy to date that voters in their electorates may decide instead that electing pro-climate independents and hoping they gain the balance of power is a more viable pathway to change. Perhaps the threat to the moderate Liberal voter base will prompt them to become more effective internal champions for climate action.
Ultimately, this is why the Coalition shifted on marriage equality. The few genuine champions inside the Liberal Party worked in partnership with Coalition MPs who weren’t personally passionate but who felt enough heat from their electorates that they understood they risked losing a generation of young voters. Climate campaigners have learnt from the marriage equality movement and are getting better at making climate change relatable through personal stories and more targeted work with conservative-leaning voters and constituency groups. There are now organisations focused on working with farmers, veterinarians and vet nurses, emergency leaders, bushfire survivors, parents, doctors, other health professionals, elite athletes, psychologists, engineers, lawyers, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, the Jewish community, various Christian denominations, ethnic communities in south and south-west Sydney, and retirees – to name just some. These groups understand that a “one size fits all” climate message hasn’t worked. To be effective, messages need to be delivered by people trusted within these communities, using stories and data that resonate and inspire action. Targeted campaigns can also influence stakeholder groups that are traditionally aligned with, and trusted by, the Coalition. Journalists often point to the National Farmers’ Federation’s shift to supporting action on climate change as an example of how out of touch the Nationals are with their traditional backers. But the influence of groups like Farmers for Climate Action in shifting the position of the Farmers’ Federation is less well known.
These new groups – which I refer to as “Climate Movement 2.0” – can change the information environment not just for voters, but also for politicians, their advisers, friends and families, donors, and the think-tanks and lobby groups they listen to and accept advice from. And they, like all of us, can focus their efforts not just on the politics, but also on business.
With the second pathway to change – shifting money from coal and gas – the headwinds are blowing less strongly. Brett describes the “shareholder and customer campaigns to divest from fossil fuels.” Many of Australia’s most strategic climate campaigners are now focusing their advocacy on banks, insurers and asset managers, such as superannuation funds. This simple but powerful tactic was described by author and 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben in an influential New Yorker article last year: “the key to disrupting the flow of carbon into the atmosphere may lie in disrupting the flow of money to coal and oil and gas.” New fossil-fuel projects are the main driver of climate change, yet very few, if any, fossil-fuel companies can self-finance and self-insure. If they can’t get loans, investment or insurance for their coalmine expansions or fracking wells, these projects simply can’t proceed. As Brett notes, BlackRock’s decision to offload its thermal coal shares and “put climate change at the centre of its investment strategy” was a key moment. Blackrock’s CEO Larry Fink did not just wake up one day and have a moral epiphany: the company was the target of a concerted campaign by the Sunrise Project and other groups.
Banking, asset management (superannuation and other companies that aggregate and invest money) and insurance companies are in a powerful position in Australia, too. If the fossil-fuel industry’s plans to extract more gas and coal from New South Wales, Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory can’t get insurance, finance or investment, they won’t proceed.
Businesses in other sectors of the economy can also play a role, by leveraging their historical and ongoing relationships with the Coalition. It is much more acceptable within the Coalition to be influenced by, and seen to be influenced by, business than it is to be seen to be influenced by environmental groups. This means any business (particularly ASX200 companies, which have more economic and therefore political clout) has a platform and power that it can use to champion climate action. Or, if it doesn’t voluntarily choose to do so, it can be encouraged to find its voice by the same customer, shareholder or employee activism that has been so influential with the banks, investors and insurers to date. All of us can play a role in this, through organisations that run effective corporate campaigns, such as Market Forces and the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility. The ACCR, for example, aggregates 100 shareholders, including large institutional investors, every time it puts forward a shareholder resolution at a company AGM. These shareholder resolutions are the thorn in the side of companies such as BHP, Woodside and AGL. The ACCR played a key role in getting the Minerals Council to the point where it now has a climate policy – ACCR was demanding that BHP cease being a member.
As Brett writes, right now “Australia is at a crossroads,” as the pandemic has paused so much of the world’s economy. There is an opportunity in the National Cabinet, formed initially to respond to the pandemic, but now extended. Energy policy is on its list of issues to consider. With no Nationals in the National Cabinet, and all three Liberal premiers being moderates from states committed to net zero emissions by 2050, perhaps we will finally see the bipartisan progress on climate that most Australians crave.
Brett describes many points in Australia’s economic and political history when things could have taken a different turn. A small group of determined people created the situation we are in today – to protect their profits and advance their ideology. There was no guarantee they’d win. The history of social movements across the world shows that groups of committed people, small and large, can overcome even the longest odds. Progress is happening on climate change within both the Coalition and corporate Australia. The key question for ordinary Australians is: how can we accelerate it in the time scientists tell us we have left?
As Martin Luther King Jr said: “Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: ‘Too Late’.” And in the words of Antarctic explorer Robert Swan: “The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it.”
Anna Rose
Quarterly Essay 79, Correspondence
Read Judith’s Quarterly Essay ‘The Coal Curse’, in full here.
