Politicizing Climate Change and the Dismissal Misses the Point.

I’m often perturbed by the impetuous uptake of digital systems by people whose ethical standards should slow them down. Microsoft’s Windows and Office and Meta’s WhatsApp are for-profit systems. There are more secure, stable and donation-based options like Linux, Libre Office and Signal. These are perfectly functional for most people’s everyday needs. Yet most people aren’t even aware of them. They follow the herd rather than do some research.

Impetuously following the herd applies to politics, too.

Dumping Net Zero

One of the reasons the Coalition parties have dumped Net Zero is, they claim, that electricity prices are hurting the hip pocket. I don’t buy it. Judging from the people who come and go from my home (tenants, BnB guests, etc.) electricity isn’t expensive enough. Even people who feel tied down to their job don’t do simple, easy things that would reduce the bill. It seems only people on really tight budgets do it.

I wonder whether all the cultural side-lining of Australians hasn’t provoked a ‘patriotic’ rejection of Net Zero? Of course there are many other, more complex reasons for the new Coalition policy. It’s a relief to me that it is only a rejection of deadlines, not the ultimate goal.

The ALP’s claim that Australia will make a difference to climate change by converting to renewables is misleading. That decision is ovewhelmingly in the hands of the northern hemisphere. We should do our bit, but we needn’t make a moral crusade out of renewables when there are other, more effective, simpler and much cheaper choices.

What most people are in denial of is the fact that we are in a time of energy constraint. At least until some miracle technology proves otherwise, like thorium or something.

Judging from Australia’s energy flows 2023-24, there is plenty of coal and gas to go around. True, but we live in a closed system called Earth. It should already be abundantly clear that we can only burn so much fossil fuel within a given time before we upset the balance of nature’s ability to reabsorb it safely. There are contentions about whether C0₂ concentrations max out (stop raising atmospheric temperatures). A quick AI check debunks that and in any case, there are other greenhouse gases such as methane that are far more potent and are yet to be released from permafrost.

Because there are 8 billion+ of us living on a finite planet that we’re not getting off any time soon, we are living not just with energy constraint, but environmental constraint. Facing up to the Polycrisis of limitations and the coming Great Simplification is our biggest challenge. Shrinking to abundance is the bullseye on the dartboard.

We are much better off dispensing with unrealistic pipe dreams. In other words, business as usual.

The simple, easy, cheap alternative is doing with less. Less unnecessary stuff and growth. That includes consumption and – particularly for Australia – immigration. Despite the government misleading us by highlighting temporary, short term easing trends, immigration has continued to rise, as Jane O’Sullivan demonstrates in her latest report in Pearls and Irritations, When Will Immigration Return to ‘Normal’?.

Semicentury Dismissal

Remembrance Day last week was the 50th anniversary of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam’s Dismissal by the Governor-General Sir John Kerr. If you only saw the mainstream media’s coverage, you would have also been swept along by the herd that missed the point.

Perhaps most misleading were Anthony Albanese’s comments:

Of course it was a constitutional crisis – brought on by a Labor government ‘acting like it only had a short time to live’, as Labor NSW leader Neville Wran described it, and the ‘ambush’ by the Coalition parties blocking supply in the Senate. It’s what politicians on both sides do – make the most of every advantage at their disposal.

Much of the controversy about the Dismissal, even after 50 years, is based on ignorance and unfounded resentment.

I was 15 when Gough was sacked. I’ll never forget it. At the time, the impression was that something unprecedented was happening – and it was. In our young nation’s history, it had only happened before at the state level, most notably when the NSW Governor sacked Premier Jack Lang. I didn’t learn about that until decades later. At Whitlam’s funeral, I cried. He was like a father figure to me. But I’ve come to accept his flaws, in the same way I came to an acceptance of my own, troubled mother’s humanity.

Whitlam was a constitutionalist. That’s why he obeyed the Governor-General. Paul Keating said ‘Whitlam froze. I would have had Kerr arrested.’ As Professor Anne Twomey says in her video The Whitlam Dismissal – 11 November, 1975 (17:00), ‘Now, this just goes to show how profoundly ignorant some politicians are’.

Whitlam left Kerr’s office and went to The Lodge for a steak lunch. Prof Twomey points out how strange it was that he didn’t go to parliament to deal with the unfolding drama. She implies that he might have been able to block supply in the Senate and get a vote of no confidence in the the care-taker Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser passed and then get himself reappointed by the Governor General. Now maybe Whitlam just didn’t think of it, or the idea of doing to Fraser what had been done to him was unpalatable. I haven’t heard or seen anything about this other than what Professor Twomey implies. It seems to have been more to do with Whitlam’s hubris that he acted as he did.

The Dismissal might have been a first at the federal level, but the system worked. Look at the USA govt; in shutdown yet again, this time for a record 40 days.

Meanwhile, our system continues to improve. The Referendum in 1977 (with bipartisan support from both Fraser and Whitlam) introduced a reform ensuring Senate vacancies are filled by the same party helps minimize the likelihood of a repeat of 1975 (not by much, though). We haven’t had another shut down since.

Hitting The Mark

The one big pipe dream there is overwhelming agreement on in Australia is immigration. 70% of people say Australia doesn’t need more people. If we shut the mass immigration tap, our problems will get immeasurably easier on multiple fronts. It will help the rest of the world, too, although it seems counter-intuitive to some.