Rolling coal: Abbott blows black smoke into Australian economy

In the United States, the latest craze among conservative red-necks and anti-green types is known as “Coal Rolling”. Guys and gals in massive pick-ups install a smoke stack and a device that tricks the engine into needing more fuel.

The result, says Slate, is a burst of black smoke that doubles as a political or cultural statement against green energy and climate, and for the right to pollute. They get a particular kick out of aiming the smoke at electric cars and hybrids: hence the other nickname of this activity – the “Prius repellent”.

This week, in Canberra, the Abbott government will achieve the political equivalent of “Coal Rolling”, blowing smoke directly against green schemes its hard-right rump hates so passionately, and tearing apart what was once regarded as the world’s best carbon pricing scheme.

On Monday, Abbott greeted the passage through the House of Representatives of the third version of his carbon price repeal bill with as big a smile and as loud a chuckle as the idiots in the Iowa pick-ups. Call it what you will – axe the tax, repell the Prius or roll the coal, these are acts of breathtaking lunacy.

None of what Abbott has said about carbon pricing and climate policy has been held to be true. On the domestic stage, Whyalla did not collapse, lamb roasts did not reach $100, businesses did not close, jobs were not lost.

On the international stage, it’s not even the world’s biggest carbon tax. And contrary to what he claims, and what the Canadian prime minister might tell him, the world is moving. And it’s moving fast. China, which has signed climate pacts with both the US and the UK, last night said it would soon announce an emissions cap.

Xie Zhenhua, vice chairman of China’s National Development and Reform Commission, told reporters yesterday in Berlin, that the cap – which will set the path for a national emissions trading scheme – will be one of a number of measures designed to secure an outcome at the Paris climate change talks. It’s not just the Australian negotiating position that will be stranded, it will be large parts of its economy.

The only thing Abbott can deliver is short term windfall gains to the fossil fuel industry, and a free-polluting pass to big industry, too lazy to act in its own long term interests.

It’s not that Abbott should be the only one to blame on this. The legislation will pass the Senate with the support of the Palmer United Party, which has no real intention of building its own emissions trading scheme, despite the hopeful rhetoric of its leader.

Labor, which spent the early part of its term in government successfully trying to wedge Malcolm Turnbull, has ultimately only wedged itself.

Its party leaders have made two great speeches about carbon pricing in the last few years. And, unfortunately, only two.

The first came in November, 2011, when Julia Gillard, a day after unveiling the Clean Energy Future package, delivered a terrific speech in Melbourne at Carbon Expo that was completely ignored by mainstream media.

“The carbon price has a small beginning, less than one-third of the price impact of the GST, yet the scale of the transformation it unleashes will be immense,” she told delegates. “A new industrial revolution that will change the way we live and change it for the better”.

She noted – even then – that the big political hot point of the legislation was the threat of repeal, and the government’s ability to protect the legislation with an “Abbott-proof” fence.

Gillard seemed to think no fence would be needed, as the threat would diminish on its own. “It’s not credible and not believable,” she said. “When you step back from the heat and fire we have experienced in last 12-18 months, it is true to say every living Liberal leader has been in favour of carbon pricing.”

Sadly, that turned out not to be true. And it took another 31 months for another great speech to be delivered on the subject.

And it came as a belated apology, as current leader Bill Shorten attacked the Abbott government just as the repeal bill was about to finally pass the Senate.

Shorten adopted some of Gillard’s themes:

“… this Liberal party, the once great party of the free market and free enterprise wants no part of this solution.

“They want to tear down everything that has been built and replace it with an amateur, ill-conceived, centralist, Soviet-style voucher system that gives the nation’s biggest polluters great wads of taxpayer money to keep polluting.

“The logic is baffling and the hypocrisy is staggering.

“Direct Action is a policy designed solely for the Prime Minister’s personal core constituency – the flat earth society.

“It is a policy concocted purely to appease the rag-tag militia of the internet trolls, the cranky radio shock jocks and the extreme columnists.

“The ideologues and demagogues who have held the climate change debate hostage for too long.”

The problem with Labor was that in between these two fine speeches, it has been unable to enunciate clearly and convincingly why carbon pricing is such a good idea.

The only party that has been consistently good on this subject has been The Greens.

Adam Bandt, the deputy leader, was in form again on Monday:

“History will condemn this government for going backwards on climate change, but that reckoning will probably come fairly quickly.

“Today (when the repeal bill passed the House of Representatives for a third time) was Parliament’s ‘asbestos’ and ‘tobacco’ moment, where the government knew the harm of ‘business as usual’ but decided to do it anyway.

“Much of what the Greens achieved in the last Parliament has been preserved, like the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and the Climate Change Authority, but now we begin the campaign to get back the price on pollution.”

The irony is that the Greens are still marginalised in the Australian debate as “extreme”. Yet their rhetoric, their policy positions, and their understanding of the economic impacts is no different to that expressed by the likes of Barack Obama, China’s President Li Keqiang, UK Tory PM David Cameron , and even the likes of US banker and former Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson.

Abbott’s message is tailored for a particular audience – the vested interests intent on eking out every fossil fuel dollar while they still can, the right wing ideologues, the conservative commentariat that cannot accept the Greens could be right about anything, and the small group of influential crack-pots that deny the science at every turn on their talkback radio programs and newspaper columns.

Tragic, really.