On the sidelines of Australia’s political debate, the issue about prime minister Scott Morrison’s religious beliefs and the so-called “prosperity doctrine” of his Pentecostal church sometimes rise to the surface.
Morrison doesn’t like to talk about it much, but the prosperity doctrine is basically this: The world’s resources are there to be exploited, whatever their impact on the environment, and Christians have a duty to exploit them, and only Jesus can have an influence over climate.
It now seems to form part of Australia’s policy.
Just days after unveiling its “net zero by 2050” plan, and effectively kicking action down the road to another decade, the Morrison government is refusing to lift its 2030 climate targets, and has now announced it will snub a global pledge – launched by key allies – to slash methane emissions by 30 per cent by 2030.
And it is using “prosperity” to justify this, arguing that cutting methane – one of the most potent of greenhouse gas emissions – would be bad for coal, bad for LNG and bad for agriculture.
“We won’t sign our country up to policies that undermine the prosperity of our regions or make life harder for everyday Australians, energy and emissions reduction minister Angus Taylor wrote in The Australian on Thursday, in a piece titled “Coalition’s plan is to cut emissions the Australian way.”
“We have reduced, and will continue to reduce, Australia’s methane emissions in a way that protects our economy, jobs and our way of life.”
Taylor said “activists” supporting the target wanted to “end the beef industry” and “shut down production” of the LNG industry.
And who are these “activists”? They are the US, the UK, the EU, Canada, Japan and even Saudi Arabia, who in September signed the “Global Methane Pledge” to cut methane emissions by 30 per cent by 2030, and who are urging others to follow.
“This will not only rapidly reduce the rate of global warming, but it will also produce a very valuable side benefit, like improving public health and agricultural output,” US president Joe Biden said at a Major Economies Forum in September. Australia was one of just three countries present that refused to sign up.
Why is methane so important? According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report methane heats the climate by 28 times more than carbon dioxide when averaged over 100 years, and 84 times more when averaged over 20 years.
Methane emissions mostly go unreported. The gas industry barely measures them, preferring instead to pretend they’re not happening. To counter this, the Clean Air Task Force is using special cameras to highlight the extent of methane plumes across the UK, and Europe.
CATF member Kames Turitto has been travelling around England in a rented camper van and with an infra-red camera, and has found methane leaking from gas infrastructure operated by one of COP26’s primary energy sponsors, National Grid.
And Taylor’s scare tactics, like those he and the Coalition have used against renewables, carbon pricing, battery storage and electric cars, don’t cut the mustard. And neither does Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce’s claims that the only way to cut methane emissions is to shoot cattle.
One of the biggest advocates of cutting methane emissions is the very livestock industry that Taylor says would be slaughtered by this measure.
The Meat and Livestock Corporation intends to be “carbon neutral” by 2030, and among the technologies it is looking to deploy is seaweed-based and algae-based feed supplements from breweries. Seaweed is even cited in the government’s own expensive Positive Energy propaganda campaign.
The methane rejection appears to be one of the deals struck with the Nationals for the agreement to net zero, and confirms the overall assessment of the net zero package that Morrison and Taylor will take to Glasgow is a joke.
Basically, it’s about slogans and what Greta Thunberg describes as “blah, blah, blah.” Nothing has changed over the last decade.
There is no plan, there is no effort to reduce emissions, and the only gains that have been made are the result of policies the Coalition tried to destroy and technologies they continue to ridicule.
It confirms, also, that the Coalition is primarily focused on protecting fossil fuel interests. There is little it can do to save coal. That much is made clear by its own forecasts of a remarkable switch to 84 per cent renewables in NSW, Australia’s most coal dependent state, in less than a decade.
But it thinks it can save the gas industry. It is the basis of its “gas-led recovery” and the arguments that Australian LNG will save emissions elsewhere.
The reality is, as many increasingly argue, that “prosperity” will grow from protecting the environment and pursuing green industries, not from destroying the environment and ignoring the future. They don’t even understand their own religion.
