Michael Keating’s summary and review of Ross Garnaut’s latest book Reset: Restoring Australia after the Pandemic Recession is stimulating and important. While massive sustainable transformations in Australia’s economy and society are required, the emphasis on macroeconomic policies and the faith shown in technology is concerning.
Books can never be satisfactorily summarised, and neither Garnaut’s conclusions nor Keating’s critique should be judged based on a blog post. Both are well-credentialed to comment on macroeconomics and fiscal policy. Nevertheless, Keating’s piece leaves some questions hanging.
Garnaut is quoted as saying that Australia is exceptionally well-endowed“ in relation to “the absorption of CO2 into land and sea and growing biomass”, and that “Australia has a cost advantage” with respect to biomass. Yet CO2 sequestration options for soil, geological formations, or in the oceans is still unproven at scale and very costly, and won’t be commercially available for many years, if ever. But most problematic is the biomass solution.
The effectiveness of biomass for energy in achieving zero or negative CO2 emissions depends on the feedstock used, the production techniques, and the transportation distances and methods. It also depends on the basic efficiency of the process for converting biomass into electricity. Where forest timber, including from sustainably managed forests, is the biomass source, there are potential adverse environmental, ecological, and biodiversity outcomes and the expected overall net CO2 reduction outcome is a matter of scientific dispute.
Garnaut, according to Keating, writes that CO2 sequestration “can provide one-third of the cost-effective climate mitigation needed between now and 2030 to stabilise temperature increases below 2.0°C, and one fifth of the required reductions between now and 2050”. It is beyond aspirational to believe that in 9 years these nascent sequestration techniques can be developed, effective markets created for them, and the investment found to deploy new technologies or retrofit legacy infrastructure.
Australia must, of course, make the necessary contribution to these among other global efforts. But whatever Australia does alone will not avoid 3.0°C plus warming this century and the prospects are slight of Australia even partially achieving the transformations required for the reduction of CO2 emissions to zero in 2030 or 2050 timeframes. Currently, Australia is not even planning on zero emissions by 2050.
The messianic belief in a just-in-time technological solution is not a substitute for real action. More pertinent is the unrecognised need to go well beyond adjusting macroeconomic settings and tax regimes, not that they don’t have an important role. But the pandemic has demonstrated how important government intervention into social, health and economic matters is in big crises. However, unless the general population understands and accepts that actions are in their interests, governments will not be able to move forward on the big crises.
On top of a post-pandemic economic revival, global warming, biodiversity loss and environmental degradation inevitably will require disruptive economic and social transformations. Without a citizenry that has a stake in making the sacrifices involved the changes won’t happen. People will need to believe that their cooperation will deliver a better life experience for themselves and their descendants than would the alternative of maximising short term benefits. Why bother to embrace a transformation that doesn’t have as a key goal a better life for themselves and their children?
The policies Keating attributes to Garnaut are easily set out in impersonal macroeconomic terms. In practice they will impose disruption and costs on citizens; and generate anxiety and uncertainty. That’s why strengthening citizens’ rights and the effectiveness of welfare provision are important for mobilising general support for the necessary changes. Governments must accept that establishing a just and equitable system of welfare, and a fair distribution of the benefits as well as the costs of action, is essential.
At international conferences, in Cabinet offices, and in boardrooms, commitments to action on the crises are everywhere. But in the absence of widespread engagement by citizens, even the best intentions and most vigorous actions of the political and business elites will fall far short of success. For citizens to become engaged, a revolution in the prevailing social and political norms must accompany climate action, putting the rights and obligations of the citizen at the centre of governance.
Employment needs to be made more secure. Wages liveable. Housing more affordable. Quality healthcare and quality education more accessible. And they must be sustainable in a hotter, less habitable, drier future. More than that, citizens will need guaranteed access to a fair justice system and a clearly enunciated set of enforceable citizens’ rights to free speech, freedom of assembly, privacy, and freedom of conscience. These things are not available for many Australians, and without them they have no stake in the future.The public’s sense of impotence in the face of big-tech, big-finance, big-pharma, big-agri, and big-security needs to be addressed.
Over recent decades, confidence and trust in democratic governments around the world has plummeted in parallel with the outsourcing or privatisation of vital functions and services. Citizens have been turned into customers and consumers, while being spoken to in macroeconomic terms. Citizens have seen basic services become more costly, private debt grow, and a massive transfer of public wealth to a small elite of private actors.
If Keating, and Garnaut, hope to deliver their ambitious projects they will need to explain to the public how they will be better off. They will need to create an enthusiastic ownership of their projects among an empowered and positive citizenry. Australians will need to be prepared to make life-style adjustments in order to deal with climate-related challenges in the short term, while undertaking the social and economic transformation required in the medium term, and planning for living with a hotter world later in the century. Without supportive citizens governments will fail.
Without meaning to do Garnaut’s book an injustice, it does sound like ‘business as usual’. It does seem to treat global warming as just an economic problem rather than a social and scientific one as well. Global warming, environmental degradations, and biodiversity cannot be separated from the economy. Without a citizenry that can see a more equal, just and better future progress won’t happen.
Mike Scrafton was a Deputy Secretary in the Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment, senior Defence executive, CEO of a state statutory body, and chief of staff and ministerial adviser to the minister for defence.
Comments
12 responses to “Radical people, not technology, are needed for a sustainable revolution”
“If Keating, and Garnaut, hope to deliver their ambitious projects they will need to explain to the public how they will be better off”
It’s interesting that when it comes to implementing climate action in a “Western democracy”, we readily recognise the need to convince the public that they will be better off under it. But when it comes to implementing climate action in developing countries, hardly anyone acknowledges the need to convince the citizens of developing countries that they will be better off under it.
Usually developing countries are called on to commit to ambitious climate action, taking it for granted that their citizens readily recognise that they are better off under it. In fact, it is not at all clear that citizens of especially poor countries are indeed better off under climate action. Certainly they are better off if global carbon emissions fall due to actions taken by other countries. But a reasonable case can be made that their own governments ought to prioritise ending poverty vs ending carbon emissions.
Ultimately, I would argue that if we expect poor countries to take action on climate change, the rich countries need to finance the incremental cost of adopting low-carbon production – e.g., subsidise building wind farms vs coal generators.
Water is by far the most powerful greenhouse gas. That is a gas that reflects the IR part of the spectrum of enrgy flowing from the Sun to the Earth and from the Earth to the sky. “Cosmic rays” are increasing steadily. They form clouds. Clouds are water. They warm the Earth at night and cool it by day.
That is the science.
Mike – sorry but I think you have completely ignored/overlooked (at least) one essential, basic and simple political reality.
Ordinary Australian people have actually been leading the charge. Their adoption of renewable power has been outstanding. Australians will keep adopting renewable power because 1. they feel justifiably that “at least they are doing the right thing” even if Government and other nations are not; 2. the States – and big corporations – are taking an increasingly credible lead on the emplacement and adoption of renewable power; 3. voters know very well that it was the politically expert surgical address of the vulnerability of each Federal electorate which won the Coalition the 2019 election; 4. voters also know very well that the Federal Coalition is hostage to the troglodytic perspective of its most rabid backbenchers and 5. that such rabidity is – as it would – proving to be implosively self-destructive.
Think about it. If an ordinary person can buy a contemporaneously equipped ‘shopping cart car’ for under $15,000 and have no outlays on petrol, oil, mechanical repairs – and incur but minimal depreciation – who needs the Feds to take any sort of ‘lead’?
There again, this might be a sentiment beyond the perspective of former Federal Governmental heads!! I’ve yet to see them make the case.
Genuine democracy these days is economic in 1st world countries and big capitalism can pave the way, if accountable
I think the key point Garnaut makes is that renewable energy is already cheaper than energy derived from fossil fuels. Thus reducing carbon emissions represents an opportunity rather than a threat. Of course, all change involves some disruption, but looking after the losers should be much easier on this occasion.
Mike Scafton makes the point that with out citizen support on the climate government’s will fail. I make the point that with out true leadership from government. Citizens will fail to support climate change
Their behaviours – and those of other ‘legal persons’ – contradict you.
If the elites provided more options for action (instead of pandering to wealthy corporates) citizens could do much more – as they give every indication of wanting to do.
Citizens have been well ahead of the elites on this for decades, doing what they can: putting solar panels on the roof, buying recyclable and sustainable etc.
The bankers always fear innovation as it makes their sunk capital a loss. It’s as if they make war on the little people, ensuring that we pay their taxes …
Good points. However, it usually takes catastrophe to full galvanize action and fully engage citizens. There are plenty of reports that give the dire figures of five and even six degrees warming, as more realistic scenarios. Moreover, conservatives in particular love technological solutions. No doubt technology will play a part, but enlightened leadership may yet prove to be the most crucial component for abandoning both our present industrial practices and reliance on hydro-carbon economies.
HC actually cools the planet but to a tiny extent. Solar fluctuations, from a magnetically variable star, means the Earth is getting cooler and the weather is more ‘sticky’.
Let us adopt new tech but keep an eye on HC in case we need it as we might in the future.