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Just the Point with David Freeman 21/Jul/2010
FEDERAL Labor is caught in a wedge it knows could be election-losing.
The ALP is leaking votes to the Greens for not doing enough on climate change – yet Labor leaks to the Coalition if its policy costs industry and householders.
This conundrum is interesting for a few reasons:
- ALP votes are drawn from two groups that may each want a different climate policy.
- Blue-collar workers' jobs depend on such industries as coal-fired power generation, while
- urban "progressives" generally support restraining coal.
- Climate change policy may raise the price of electricity and petrol, for which low-income earners will need compensation.
- Former PM Kevin Rudd lost public support partly because he backflipped on climate, which reveals a growing electoral consensus for effective climate change policy.
This was unthinkable just 20 years ago.
Whatever lags in government action and technological solutions, electoral opinion increasingly renders political parties unelectable unless environmentally determined. This may explain something that snuck under the radar last week – in the past five years, many, including the Liberal-National Coalition, sought to revisit nuclear power use. They argued that anyone concerned about global warming must consider nuclear power – because it did not emit carbon. But on July 12 Tony Abbott said the Opposition had "no plans to promote nuclear power".
This is a watershed. Politicians now fear the electorate's environmental commitment, and its preparedness to punish lax environmentalism. So let's use our electoral power. The flipside is personal responsibility. Let's make a few lifestyle sacrifices, embrace smart green technologies in homes, workplaces and urban policy and, through taxes, subsidise low-income folks to do so too.
We may be moving from the industrial revolution of the past 300 years toward a healthier Industrial Revolution, Mark II.
David Freeman is the director of Edmund Rice Institute for Social Justice. Follow ERISJ on Twitter: @erisj_au or log on to www.erisj.org.au
