Source : the age
Not surprisingly, Matt Canavan was as forthright in his views about Australia’s net zero goals after he lost his leadership bid for the Nationals as he was before the vote.
Senator Matt Canavan addressing a rally against renewable energy last year.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
Australia should dump its goal to reach net zero by 2050, he told anyone who asked, as he lobbied for the top job. “Our renewable strategy, our energy system, our net zero policy is completely stuffed; we need to dump it,” he told Sky News. The goal, he wrote in The Australian, was “futile and unachievable”.
After he lost the vote, he took a few more swings too. “I may have lost the battle today, but the war against this net zero madness is not over,” he said, again on Sky News.
“I welcome the fact that the … re-elected [Nationals] leader, David Littleproud, has said today that he’s open to reviewing the net zero policy.
“So if you’d like to see the net zero policy scrapped … get on to your local member of parliament in the Nationals Party and tell them to get rid of this madness and actually put up a fight for our country.”
Littleproud batted away questions about energy policy with the ever-reliable “I’m not getting into hypotheticals”.
Questioned on energy, newly elected Liberal leader Sussan Ley observed only that it was necessary “to get energy policy as a whole right”. By her side was the party’s new deputy, Ted O’Brien, a chief author of the nuclear policy just rejected by the electorate.
At a glance, then, you’d be forgiven for thinking that little had changed throughout the election campaign. Labor backs net zero goals and renewables; the Coalition remains torn.
But there is at least one change. In his interviews and on his social media, Canavan has been citing former UK Labour prime minister Tony Blair as a fellow traveller in his campaign against net zero.
Responding to an Australian Financial Review editorial warning against a populist resumption of the carbon wars with his focus on scrapping net zero, Canavan wrote, “Well, Tony Blair disagrees. He recently called the net zero goal ‘irrational’.”
This might be a surprise to those who know Blair as an elder statesman of climate diplomacy.
Blair’s bombshell intervention came in the form of an introduction he wrote for a paper published by his think tank, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, at the end of April, calling on UK Labour to reset its net zero policies. He argued that “voters feel they’re being asked to make financial sacrifices and changes in lifestyle when they know that their impact on global emissions is minimal”, and that “any strategy based on either ‘phasing out’ fossil fuels in the short term or limiting consumption is a strategy doomed to fail”.
Rather, he called for a renewed focus on technological solutions such as carbon capture and storage, and nuclear energy.
Labour’s antagonists were delighted, not least Nigel Farage, leader of Reform UK, a Trumpist outfit that days later surged to victory in UK-wide local elections. “Even Tony Blair now says the push for Net Zero has become ‘irrational’ and ‘hysterical’. We are winning the argument!” Farage said in a social media post on the eve of the polls.
Former British prime minister Tony Blair.Credit: Getty Images
Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch said she felt vindicated by Blair’s comments.
The backlash against Blair within Labour and in UK climate circles was immediate.
Nicholas Stern, a former World Bank chief economist, author of the landmark Stern review of the economics of climate change, and chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change at the London School of Economics, said the Tony Blair Institute report was “muddled and misleading” as “there is far more progress being made around the world to decarbonise the global economy than it suggests”, The Guardian reported.
“The UK’s leadership on climate change, particularly the elimination of coal from its power sector, is providing an influential example to other countries. So, too, its climate change legislation and its Climate Change Committee. If the UK wobbles on its route to net zero, other countries may become less committed. The UK matters.”
Others noted that Blair had not in fact questioned the net zero target, but methods for getting there, and soon Blair’s think tank issued a statement declaring its support for Labour’s net zero targets.
But as Stern noted, Blair’s comments in a political economy that was once unified in its support for concerted efforts to reach net zero matter far beyond the UK’s borders.
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