OPINIONOne of the less encouraging definitions of the word ''sceptic'' in the Oxford English Dictionary is ''... a philosopher who denies the possibility of knowledge, or even rational belief, in certain spheres''. Recent remarks by Queensland Nationals Senator Barnaby Joyce suggesting the reactions of those supporting action on climate change towards sceptics are akin to Nazism can be written off as intemperate hyperbole.
However, the disarray in the Coalition as to how Joyce's opinion on this matter should be dealt with indicates there is still considerable sympathy in those circles for his basic position on climate change, if not his manner of expressing it.
Scientific denialism has a sorry history: For years in fact generations the US tobacco lobby successfully denied the mounting medical evidence of the harmful consequences of smoking. As that campaign eventually began to falter, despite the prodigious funding it received (much of which went directly into the campaign funds of congressmen, senators and US state legislators), a strong back-up strategy swung into action, based on promoting the idea that people who wanted to discourage the smoking habit were wowserish extremists; enemies of freedom. Sound familiar?
Exactly the same strategy has been applied to denying climate change notably by the Bush White House itself, which established a special directorate for this purpose. The Exxon-Mobil group has poured money into bogus public interest organisations such as The Competitive Enterprise Institute and The Heartland Group, which have attempted to co-opt respected climate scientists, or to misrepresent their work, in the cause of climate change denial.
The link becomes clearer when considering the Oregon Petition, which claimed to represent the views of 31,000 graduates confirming that there is no scientific basis for human-induced climate change. This ''evidence'' is still frequently cited in this bald form by climate change sceptics as if it had been compiled yesterday, despite the fact that it was done in 1998.
As far as can be judged, some of the 31,000 were not graduates, very few were qualified in scientific disciplines, and almost none had any knowledge of climate change. The petition was organised by a Dr Frederick Seitz, a former president of the US Academy of Science in the 1960s, who worked as a consultant to the tobacco lobby in the 1970s, and who, apparently, has published little research of his own on any subject in 40 years, none of it on the science of climate change. The common strategy in climate change denial is not to offer serious scientific, economic or policy arguments against effective action, but to utilise prejudice, fear and inertia to undermine the case for action.
Barnaby Joyce asks his audience to think about the ''disastrous'' impacts on employment that action on climate change will have, offering no evidence whatever for this claim, let alone explaining how and why the recent Treasury projections could have gotten this so very wrong.
Nicholas Stern and Ross Garnaut offer detailed, reasoned analyses which show that the costs of effective action on climate change in the medium term would be manageable, and that the costs of inaction in the same time frame really would be disastrous. The only question the denialists and sceptics want us to consider is: what if the climate scientists, the IPCC and everyone else who believes climate change is real, and serious, are wrong?
The question they want us never to ask is: what if they are right? At least, where the antediluvian denialists are concerned, we know where they stand. Their faith in fear and prejudice doing the trick is touching, but probably is no longer working. The last card they have is the inertia one: let's do nothing until we are absolutely, really, unarguably sure.
Fifty years or so of further consideration should do it, or at least see most of us off before anything needs to be done. In this, they now appear to have an ally in the Rudd Government.
This Government has an Orwellian ability to hold two contradictory propositions in its head at the same time: first, that climate change is serious, the science on it is right, the time to act is now, and that this will require wealthy countries with high emissions to take the lead with significant emission reductions; and second, that Australia itself will not be participating in this manner. Or at least, not until this Government has enjoyed two or perhaps three terms in office first, with the climate change issue being a rather useful wedge on the Opposition to assist in this goal.
Pessimists among those who voted for this Government with the understanding that it would take immediate and effective action on climate change will now see it as one which is deliberately moving away from this commitment.
Optimists may prefer to see this as a temporary measure: a government playing necessary short-term politics around a committed underlying agenda on climate. Time will tell: the longer the Government stays with its derisory emission reductions target, the more people will begin to discern the difference between what they thought they were going to get as an effective climate change abatement response from this government, and what it is attempting to sell them.
Recall that the last time a government introduced a major policy that had no electoral mandate - it was called WorkChoices, and the political consequences of that for the government of the day were severe. And remember that in the 2006 mid-term Congressional elections in the United States, a majority of the large number of traditionally Republican voters who voted Democrat on that occasion costing the Republicans their Congressional majority said in post-election polling that they did so not because they believed the Democrats had a coherent or desirable policy on Iraq, but because they wanted to punish the Bush government for its incompetence on the Iraq engagement. Sometimes, a punishment vote is all you can choose.
Imagine that, quite apart from any public protest that develops, just 20 per cent of people who voted Labor in 2007 take the climate issue so seriously that they pledge themselves not to vote for the Rudd Government again, unless its climate policy reverts to what they voted for. This would not imply they will vote for the Coalition, or even the Greens just that they will not vote for this Government: an informal vote, in other words, with no allocation of preferences to leak back to the Government.
Some (the Rudd Government included) will argue that this would be a self-defeating strategy for voters, leading to the election of a government even worse on the climate issue. But if it became obvious to the Government that this protest non-vote is actually developing, then it would at least have to consider the risks to its survival ahead of the next election. If it did not respond, and this core of voters carried out their threat, then a strong political message would be sent on the climate issue, and perhaps all parties would take a lesson from it.
The mighty coal lobby might begin to look a deal less attractive to Kevin Rudd in the face of development of an implacable voting intent like that.
Jim Douglas has worked with the World Bank, United Nations agencies and international environmental organisations on forests and natural resources, and is now a consultant on rainforest and forest carbon issues.
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