US Elections

Tossing around the political football on climate change

By Jonathan Bradley in Newcastle, Australia

8 March 2011

US President Barack Obama and Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard toss a an Australian Rules football in the Oval Office

Australian PM Julia Gillard is in D.C. today, where she will meet President Barack Obama, address a joint sitting of Congress, and speak before the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, among other things. According to the Sydney Morning Herald's Phillip Coorey, however, one thing she won't be talking about is climate change.

That's a shame, but it's to be expected. The combination of a still shaky economy and the Republican takeover of the House has all but completely driven thoughts of combating climate change from the American political agenda. I do believe criticism the U.S. receives on its lack of action in addressing global warming can be a little overblown, but the change in awareness of the issue I've experienced since returning to Australia a couple weeks ago has been striking. Whether it's because we in Australia have a centre-left government or because of the summer of climate-driven destruction the country has just gone through, unlike Washington, Canberra is willing to say terms like "emissions trading" and "carbon tax" as if this were still 2009 and the Copenhagen Summit was stil a gleaming beacon of hope.

Speaking of 2009, back then I pointed out that America actually had been working to combat global warming, despite its inability to legislate for a scheme to limit emissions. I said that even though the U.S. did not have a national scheme, it had constructed a number of regional schemes to address climate change. Such intranational efforts might not attract a lot of attention, but they are on the radar of those in the political sphere. Gillard, for instance, mentioned them on the floor of the Australian parliament recently [PDF], in support for her own carbon scheme:

Our country too, as the world moves to a lower pollution future, needs to be there moving with the rest of the world. We cannot afford to be left behind. And the world is moving. Thirty-two countries have moved, 10 US states have emissions trading schemes, and as we move and as the world moves to a lower energy future we need to price carbon.

Sadly, however, the U.S. influence works in both ways. The previous day, the Australian opposition's Shadow Minister for Climate Action Greg Hunt used American hostiity to argue against the government's scheme:

Let us look at the United States, with 19.7 per cent of global CO2 emissions. We know that they will not adopt a cap-and-trade system at any time in the near future. The most likely combination to have done that—the House of Representatives, Senate and the President—has passed. One of the Democrats’ own Senate candidates, Governor Joe Manchin from West Virginia, stood up with a gun, nailed the cap-and-trade bill to a tree and shot the cap-and-trade bill. That is what the friends of the bill do—they shot the bill on national television. There will be no change in the United States.

Manchin's stunt was a campaign commercial for West Virginia, and as a representative of a coal mining state, he'll almost certainly be pleased to hear that his words are having such a wide hearing. Good or bad, what America does influences the whoe world. Not just West Virginia.

Indeed, if Gillard is to say anything to America on the subject of climate change, it should be defensive, not offensive. Manchin refers in this commercial not just to cap and trade, but to the EPA. That's the Environmental Protection Agency, and it is currently required to regulate carbon emissions. Republicans — and some Democrats — would like to strip it of that power. The success of such an attempt is by no means assured, and it is to be hoped that it should fail. America does have the capacity to play a leadership role on this issue, and the world does not need it to lead in the wrong direction.

Tags: Australia, Barack Obama, Cap And Trade, Carbon, Carbon Tax, Climate Change, Emissions Trading Scheme, Environmental Protection Agency, Epa, Global Warming, Greg Hunt, Joe Manchin, Julia Gillard, Prime Ministers Visit To Washington March 2011, West Virginia

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