Howard and Kyoto: was he wrong for the right reasons?

Tackling climate change is widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest policy challenges facing the international policy community. Yet from 1997 until it lost office in 2007 (and in particular from 2002 onwards), the Howard government refused to ratify the Kyoto protocol on climate change, despite the fact that Australia’s accession would have been on quite favourable terms. As a result, valuable time was lost in constructing and testing a viable policy response.

The Rudd Government ratified the Protocol, to great acclaim, at the Bali conference of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in January 2008. But even as the Howard years slip further into the past, it is important to understand why such a vital issue remained off the government’s “to do” list for so long. There are lessons, both for those wanting to maintain the momentum established by the new government, and for those interested in understanding more about the nature of power in this country.

There are three possible lines of explanation for the government’s inaction on Kyoto:

1. John Howard was simply a puppet of the CO2-polluting industries (this is the line put forward by Guy Pearse and by Clive Hamilton in their respective accounts of the period);
2. John Howard simply did not “get it” when it came to climate change, and was able, using the power of his office, to keep the issue off the substantive policy agenda (this was essentially the line argued by Rudd as Opposition leader); or
3. the reasons for non-ratification were as Howard put them and as he (presumably) believed them to be: there was little point in signing onto a deal that would create major costs for the Australian economy, and that did not include commitments from developing countries and the United States.

So, were Howard and his government captives of the major greenhouse-gas emitters in general and the fossil fuel industries in particular?

Guy Pearse in his book High and Dry records the formation and activities of a cross-industry alliance of lobbyists representing the coal, oil, cement, aluminium, mining and electricity industries. This alliance, the Australian Industry Greenhouse Network (AIGN), claimed (in interviews with Pearse) to have enjoyed unparalleled access to decision-makers, even to the point of playing a direct role in the drafting of cabinet submissions.

Clive Hamilton goes further, charging in Scorcher that the Australian government had “hoodwinked” the community into believing lies about climate change peddled by vested interests. Moreover, the government was determined to favour the fossil-fuel industries over the renewables sector. “In summary”, wrote Hamilton, “we have a government that has allowed policy to be determined, even written, by the large corporations that have the most to lose from change” (p15).

It is easy to infer that, if industry X wants a certain outcome and government produces a policy favourable to that industry, then industry pressure must have produced the result. The reality is a little more complex. We won’t know, until and unless John Howard chooses to tell us, exactly how his views on climate change developed. But to suggest that he was a “greenhouse captive” overlooks what we know of his character, personality and ways of working.

I would suggest that John Howard was his own man on climate change and that his attitudes (including his aversion to many environmentalists) structured the part played by industry, as much as the other way around.

Members of the AIGN certainly worked hard to influence the government. Had they not acted, it is possible (although in my view not likely) that the government would have ratified the Kyoto protocol. But lobbyists will always claim to be influential, even when (as seems likely in this case) they were pushing at an open door.

We know that the Howard government’s modus operandi across a number of fields was to exercise power through the granting of access to people whose views the Prime Minister shared. This access included membership of key task forces, the Prime Minister’s preferred mode of operating when he believed he needed to bypass more conventional bureaucratic channels.

This occurred, for example, in the remaking of the social welfare agenda from 1996 through until 2006. Closeness to the government was a badge of acceptance, rather than an indication of power. On this point, then, we have to say that the verdict is “not proven”.

What of the argument that John Howard was, as Rudd claimed, “asleep at the wheel” on climate change?

This charge seems a little distorted. Howard was not convinced by the science on climate change, but he was not asleep at the wheel. Indeed, he clearly felt that he needed to be seen to be doing something: hence the numerous programs devised by the government to encourage reductions in carbon-emissions. It is true that for the most part, these programs took the form of incentives, rather than regulation of the major polluters, but this is consistent with Howard’s perception that Australia should not push too hard on climate change.

Finally, there is the possibility that Howard might not have ratified Kyoto because he thought that, even if climate change was real, Kyoto was (a) not going to achieve very much to counter it and (b) Australia’s involvement would be particularly costly and (in itself) not very effective.

On both points, Howard had an arguable case. The absence of the United States fatally undermined Kyoto. Let us hope the Americans reverse this soon. But the other problem, what to do about developing economies, is more intractable. Moral arguments are all very well. But unless ways can be found to limit emissions growth from the two massive developing economies of China and India, the efforts of the rest of the world will have been largely in vain.

The other point - the likely costs to Australia - is now exercising the mind of the Rudd Government and its advisers. If cuts are to be made, carbon will have to be priced, and with that price will come increases in the costs of electricity and of fuel. The corporations in the energy sector are not so much evil, as fearful of being caught in the middle, once the public starts to understand the implications of emissions-trading.

With no nuclear industry, or even the prospect of one, and a pattern of energy-generation and settlement that is hugely carbon-intensive, cuts of the magnitude canvassed in the Garnaut discussion papers will bite hard.

But these are issues for the future. Why, as a shrewd politician, did Howard not ratify anyway? There would have been plenty of feel-good factor, and as his government constantly pointed out (to the electorate’s continuing bewilderment), Australian emissions (once cuts in land-clearing were counted) were roughly tracking the 8 per cent increase on 1990 levels that would have been permitted. The carbon-polluters could have rested easy.

My own view is that the government’s stance reflected Howard’s particular (and perhaps peculiar) view of fairness. Australia had contributed relatively little to the overall problem, and our doing anything about it would not make a lot of difference either. He certainly did not see the issue as a moral one, in the Al Gore sense.

But the political price was considerable. As a result of his intransigence, Howard lost control of the agenda on climate change - and towards the end, he was back-pedalling rapidly, commissioning a proto-report on emissions-trading, and trying repeatedly to engineer new groupings of countries that would address the issue.

What, then, are the messages from this saga? For those who want to see real action on this problem, I would suggest there are two.

First, the Howard story highlights the immense power of the office of the Prime Minister in our political system. Howard used this power to frustrate action in relation to climate change. Kevin Rudd’s task will be to find ways of using it to the full if his government is to take the country with it.

Second, the developing world will have to make a contribution to any credible international agreement on greenhouse-gas reductions once Kyoto expires in 2012. The Garnaut discussion paper’s clear message that Australian efforts make sense only in a comprehensive framework of international commitments reinforces this point.