Emissions trading | The Monthly

Australia’s Patrons of Climate Change Activism

The Climate Movement

By Guy Pearse

It’s a far cry from 2009 when the environmental movement split over the so-called Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS). The Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF), World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the Climate Institute went one way – backing the CPRS in exchange for Labor adopting a highly conditional 25% emission-reduction target for 2020. The Greens, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth,

Greenwash

By Guy Pearse

Next time you fly, grab your in-flight magazine or newspaper, carefully rip out a few pages, jot a few words on each, smile knowingly to those seated next to you and stash them away. Upon arrival, use your phone to photograph some billboards in the terminal with the same care you’d give family portraits. If you spot hybrid taxis or rental cars outside emblazoned with the companies’ enviro

Rudd's Collapse

Comment

By Robert Manne

The story of the Rudd government falls rather neatly into three discrete chapters. The first involves the fulfilment of promises and the conjuring of dreams. In coming to office, the Rudd government ratified the Kyoto Protocol, an important but easy and essentially costless exercise. On the first sitting day of the new parliament, with considerable eloquence and grace, Kevin Rudd offered an apology to the stolen generations, by almost u

Rudd’s ETS Backflip

Comment

By Tim Flannery

Kevin Rudd’s decision to defer his emissions trading bill until 2012 represents an abrupt and dramatic policy reversal, the significance of which, both nationally and globally, will only grow with time. It’s a funk in the true sense of the word: a shirking of responsibility. And despite its profundity it’s easy to imagine the kind of arguments that mig

After Copenhagen

Comment

By Robert Manne

Over 200 years ago human beings began burning large quantities of the coal, oil and natural gas that had been buried under the Earth’s surface for hundreds of millions of years. This may eventually come to be seen as the most fatal misstep in the history of

Turnbull's Challenge

Comment

By Robert Manne

Already it is becoming clear that his attempt has failed. A decade ago, when John Howard led the Coalition and Pauline Hanson fascinated the country, the ideological balance of the electorate tilted very clearly to the Right. Since 2007, however, opinion polls

Carbon Omissions

Comment

By Tim Flannery

Over the past four years, there has been immeasurable progress on climate change - in public awareness, in media interest and in the political response to the problem. In early 2005, one of us was completing The Weather Makers; the other was working at 10 Downing Street

Comment

By Guy Pearse

Kevin Rudd wasn't the only one licking his lips on election night last year. For millions of Australians, an end to John Howard's lamentable response to climate change couldn't come soon enough. Unlike Howard, Rudd harboured no doubt about the seriousness of g