If the global response to climate change is not fair, it wont happen.
If it doesnt happen, were all stuffed.
And for it to be fair, those of us who live in countries pumping more
than our share of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere are going to have
to accept the principle of “contraction and convergence” — i.e. equal
per capita emissions, which means that a 60% cut in emissions by 2050
translates to a 90% cut for Australia.
This will require more significant changes than have been promised to
date. It means economic reform of the scale seen in the 1980s or greater
– designing markets, taxation, and regulation to make it cheaper to do
business sustainably than unsustainably.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Miriam Lyons, Director of the Centre for Policy Development, takes a
look at remaking Australian culture, for want of a smaller topic:
http://www.crikey.com.au/Politics/20071130-Remaking-Australia-part-four-Miriam-Lyons.html?CurrentDate=15%20/%2004%20/%202008
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
New settings for the cultural thermostat
Writing about culture is like trying to catch a butterfly with a pin.
Culture is a complex, living thing, not easily understood, let alone
broken down and built up again into something shiny and new. It’s also
intensively subjective, and attempts to define a single national culture
are inevitably biased and incomplete.
So instead of a plan for “remaking” Australian culture, I’d like to look
at what we “need” from Australian culture. What cultural traits will
make us resilient in the face of global change and capable of dealing
with future challenges and what, if anything, can policy makers do to
help foster those traits?
Exporting cultural progress
I believe that Australia can become a net exporter of cultural progress
by finding Australian answers to a global question — perhaps the most
important question that we will ever be asked. How can we transform our
economy and lifestyle fast enough to prevent not only dangerous climate
change but the irreversible depletion of other “ecosystem services” that
sustain human life on earth?
This may not seem like a cultural question, yet the answer is definitely
more than economic and political in nature. It involves trust, openness
to change, capacity to cooperate and willingness, in some cases, to
prioritise the needs of future generations over the desires of present
ones. It involves a shared sense that “we’re all in it together”, and an
ability to think of ourselves as citizens as well as workers, consumers,
and family members.
In other words, it involves the shift in mindset which Judith Brett gave
in March as the reason that John Howard would lose this year’s election:
… the looming environmental crisis is one which confronts us with our
interdependence, not just on the environment but on each other, and so
it is likely to propel increasing numbers of people into public action
to seek collective solutions to a collective problem.
Governments do not control a nation’s culture, thank God — but they can
have a strong influence over it. Politicians can choose to appeal to the
worst in us or to call on our better angels, to exploit our fears or
engage our hopes, and these choices in turn can shape how we think of
ourselves and each other. This power is then amplified by the media –
journalists have a habit of overstating the extent to which governments
are representative of the population as a whole.
The choices made by the Howard government in exercising this cultural
power were both cruel and negligent. In a decade when we could have been
taking advantage of the resources boom to ease the social cost of
transition to a more sustainable economy, we instead got nothing but
bread and circuses.
(”Circuses” may seem too light a word for the Tampa election, the
invasion of Iraq under false pretences, or the inflammation of racial
tensions for political ends, but the phrase “bread and circuses”
actually comes from Roman times, when senators attempted to keep the
populace under control by handing out bread and hosting gladiatorial
bloodbaths in which slaves, prisoners of war and condemned criminals
fought each other to the death for public entertainment.)
As the Liberal’s new leaders clamour to distance themselves from
Howard’s cultural legacy, it is important to remember that only last
year Howard claimed victory in the culture wars. Very few people then or
since pointed out that this was the equivalent of standing on the ship
of state in a flak jacket under a sign reading “mission accomplished”.
There is a long tradition of politicians promising to govern for
everyone, and there is an equally long tradition of them breaking that
promise when they get a bit comfortable. In 1963 Menzies promised to
govern “for all of you.” In 1996 Howard’s campaign slogan was “for all
of us,” which quickly came to mean “people like us.”
Kevin Rudd’s election night pledge to govern “for all Australians” may
be a variation on a theme, but it’s an important variation. Like a
conscientious Oscar winner who’s anxious to thank everyone, he rattled
off a list of identities so all-encompassing that no one could possibly
feel left out.
The message was clear. Australian politics will no longer be driven by
the Reagan-era maxim that if you divide the country in half, you get to
pick the bigger half.
And not a minute too soon. Mr Howard’s impact on Australian culture
didn’t go as deep as many assumed, as research by Gabrielle Meagher and
Shaun Wilson has found. Australians are still, on average, more
generous, compassionate and liberal than their representatives in the
major parties.
Avoiding distractions
But the culture wars were a very effective distraction from a number of
serious, complex and interrelated problems:
The retreat from Multiculturalism policy robbed us of a flawed but
necessary tool for dealing with diversity. The Department of Immigration
and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs was replaced by the Department
of Immigration and Citizenship (presumably because the Department of
Immigration and Aspirational Monoculturalism wouldn’t have worked on a
letterhead), but the word citizenship seemed to refer only to new
citizens, not existing ones. There is evidence that, all things being
equal, social trust tends to be higher in more homogenous societies.
Couple this with the fact that monoculturalism is both practically
impossible and morally abhorrent, and we obviously need invest a lot
more in other things that build trust: like education, free time, shared
spaces, and universal social services.
We face a future of rising international competition for skilled labour,
rising mobility of unskilled labour and much larger movements of
refugees, and we need to shape our policies on immigration and asylum
seekers to respond to these trends, based on a bedrock of respect for
human dignity. Mr Howard had to work very hard to dehumanise refugees, a
self-imposed heartlessness perhaps symbolised most powerfully in Philip
Ruddock’s reference to a traumatised refugee child as ‘it’. A simple act
would be to open the doors of the detention centres to journalists,
including citizen journalists. Protect detainees from unwanted prying,
but let those who want to tell their stories do so. Hearing the personal
stories of desperate people who risked their lives to escape persecution
is perhaps the most powerful way to breathe some life back into our
better angels. The pledge to dismantle Nauru is a good beginning. In the
long term, we could look at the idea of processing drawn-out asylum
cases in ‘welcome towns’ as recommended by Rural Australians for
Refugees.
If the global response to climate change is not fair, it wont happen.
If it doesnt happen, were all stuffed. And for it to be fair, those of
us who live in countries pumping more than our share of greenhouse gases
into the atmosphere are going to have to accept the principle of
“contraction and convergence” — i.e. equal per capita emissions, which
means that a 60% cut in emissions by 2050 translates to a 90% cut for
Australia. This will require more significant changes than have been
promised to date. It means economic reform of the scale seen in the
1980s or greater — designing markets, taxation, and regulation to make
it cheaper to do business sustainably than unsustainably.
This is not without danger. When Paul Keating combined radical economic
liberalisation with progressive social policies, it prepared the ground
for both One Nation and the Coalition to associate the economic pain
with the progressive politics. And, even without implementing major
changes, economic pain is on the way, due to a combination of
international instability, domestic profligacy, and the plain old
business cycle. Several economists are already calling Saturday’s
election “a good election to lose”. A few things will make this easier:
There are signs of a gradual increase in citizens’ economic literacy,
meaning that we’ll be somewhat less likely to blame governments for
those factors which are out of their control.
The last of the resources boom, combined with the auctioning of carbon
permits will be a major source of revenue which can help ease the costs
of transition.
Lastly, and most importantly, the push for action on climate change is
coming from below, not above. Grassroots networks of unprecedented size,
making effective use of communications technology, should be able help
keep climate change policy connected to people’s lived experience.
The blueprint
Together Australians can set our cultural thermostat to a level that
will help keep the planet at a liveable temperature. Somewhere between
“relaxed and comfortable” and “alert and alarmed” - how about “hopeful
and engaged”?
Comments:
A Meyer
Friday, 22 February 2008 10:02:19 PM
Garnault’s carbon emissions countdown is modelled here: -
http://www.gci.org.uk/Animations/BENN_C&C_Animation.exe
http://www.gci.org.uk/Animations/BENN_C&C_Animation.hqx
Nelson
Monday, 3 December 2007 12:59:51 PM
Well done and thanks. What a great idea to leverage the imminent
environmental challenges as a way to building a better Australian
culture.
Chris Doonan
Saturday, 1 December 2007 2:35:24 AM
What an excellent article, it really gets to the heart of the matter.
Climate change is a wonderful opportunity for human beings as a whole to
start working together, its urgent and it matters
