John Howard would be proud

By Roger Hanney

When is Kevin Rudd going to actually face off against major carbon emitters? It’s what he promised to do at the election. It’s the first implicit commitment he made by ratifying Kyoto on Day One. It’s the big play that has massive popular support but seems unlikely to ever be made.

Kevin promised a blistering run up the middle, but now he’s not even talking as if he’s in the game. Indeed, far from being the player he promised to be, he has become a commentator, declaring how hard it will be for world leaders to reach agreement at the Copenhagen climate negotiations in December.

His big act of climate courage so far was to stand in for Penny Wong at the Canberra Press Club when it was time to announce carbon emission targets that ‘barely touched the sides’ – a nice little ockerism he has yet to deploy.

He’s happy to tell the G8 that they face “a hard slog” without going so far as to say that it’s time to stop being a pack of sheilas and get into it, maaaaaate.

Apparently, we should all be happy the G8 leaders have agreed that warming the planet by only 2 degrees is a good idea. This is despite the fact this means a carbon target that is 28 per cent higher than the level scientists recommend for sustaining life as we know it. This is despite the fact that 2 degrees of warming was a politically convenient target set in the 1990s when a lot less was known about global climate science.

This is despite the fact that we have f@#&ed the planet.

Now Kevin is cheering the fact that we have put a bow on it.

Here’s a good one doing the rounds of fossil fuel think tanks and lobby groups:

Q. What happened when Midnight Oil went to Canberra?

A. Nothing!

Get it? Get it?

Strewth, mate. Fair programmatic development of the sauce bottle, eh