Economic eyes wide open!

Our state premiers now spruik for every fossil fuel God once saw fit to bury beneath the Earth as if they were endangered species! And what is their catch cry? Responsible government must resist irresponsible policy and choose projects ahead of planet. The carpet bagger’s ultimate triumph.

Official documents and action plans scattered across State Government offices pledge solemnly to combat climate change - subject to just one proviso: that the economy is not compromised (PDF 156KB) in the process.

Yes “economic eyes” are “wide open” here in the Labor camp. In part, the states fear that the federal government may still have one foot immersed in an authentic civic culture. And they are ready to begin snarling like corporate lapdogs the moment they sense something untoward - a larger than commercial interest, a planetary interest, perhaps. But they worry on no account. The federal government’s Green Paper on the forthcoming Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) makes it clear that, when push comes to shove, they are all singing from the same corporate song sheet.

Getting the design [of the proposed ETS] right requires that the scheme complement the Government’s integrated economic policy framework. In particular, the scheme design, and accompanying schemes for household and business support, need to be consistent with the Government’s fiscal strategy and the focus on expanding the productive capacity of the economy while restraining inflation.

To be sure, this is not surrender to a project. It is a strategic surrender to the general template for all projects, for vigorous commerce in its totality. Here, as a result, the planet must submit to more abstract and often mystifying disciplines deriving not this or that project but from the national economy as a whole (e.g. maintaining the conditions for low-inflation growth). And the effect of scaling up like this is actually to further uncouple the economy, both philosophically and materially speaking from biophysical disciplines of the planet. People may agree to sacrifice a project for the planet but low inflation growth? That’s more like defying God isn’t it?

In a post-denial world, liberal economies are searching for climate change policy that does not interfere with the beating heart of the growth economy. The important and powerful gather here to measure, monitor and, like Nelson, keep watch, nay “keep economic eyes wide open”.

This and not the planet’s fevered condition is the key point of reference in all official discussion, often confounding it before it event starts. The green movement, like the liberal, needs its finely calibrated basis points and the endless footage or air time their minute movement commands as tens of thousands of economist ply their trade.

In comparison with this propaganda machine or, more politely, cultural resource, the IPCC is a joke. And if the liberal economy remains ascendant in this way, the planet will die its death of a thousand cuts inflicted by the project it can never out bid in this sadly rigged argument.