Beyond the wasted decade

It is also important to conceptualise the overall economic performance of Howard and Costello in terms that go beyond narrow fiscal indicators. As Costello boasted, it is true that no hidden budget deficit has been uncovered by Wayne Swan, but grave debts of another kind still fall due for the Howard government’s profligate mismanagement. The concept of ecological debt was pioneered by British economist Andrew Simms in Ecological Debt: The Health of the Planet and the Wealth of Nations, who has argued that people in wealthy nations using up far more than their fair share of the global atmospheric carbon budget and by not paying for the consequences of global warming, were running up huge ecological debts to the poor, majority world.

The concept of ecological debt is fundamental in much of the work of the London based New Economics Foundation where Simms is policy Director.

In December last year Clive Hamilton applied the concept of ecological debt in a powerful essay, entitled “We will all pay for Howard’s hidden greenhouse debt.” Agreeing with Costello that after checking the nation’s accounts, Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan had indicated that there was no hidden debt, Hamilton then set out the grim arrears of climate change:

Over 11 years, the Howard Government allowed Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions to grow so profligately that the task of cutting them back and meeting international expectations appears almost impossible.

The figures are severe: as Langmore points out in his book, Australia has the highest per capita greenhouse gas emissions in the developed world, with the fastest growing emissions in the last decade of any OECD country.

In other words, Howard and Costello have indeed left the country in a debt-ridden mess, albeit that the currency is carbon emissions. Given that climate change is the single greatest issue facing humanity, the failure of the Howard government is of epic proportions and Costello’s shrill glee in defeat could not be more misplaced.

During the wasted decade progressive political and intellectual energy in Australia has of necessity been directed towards struggling with the Howard juggernaut; contesting the advance of the dunes of arid politics, step by policy step. Now that he’s gone, priorities can shift.

Progressives of the left (but hopefully also, within the Liberal Party, wet liberals and conservationist conservatives) must now seize the agenda and embark on policies that reinstate fairness to the centre of the national narrative, insist on investment in the res publica and begin the urgent business of dealing with the climate debt.

Eyes turn to the Rudd ministry, faced with the solemn responsibility of redressing the decade of waste and neglect and most urgently, responding to global warming. Inhaling the fresher air beyond the wasted decade, the renewal of the nation can begin, but there is a great deal of work to be done and time is short.