When the truth bows to the national interest ...

Introduction

The big climate change story is not insane factional fighting in the Federal Opposition or the future of the Emission Trading Scheme. Copenhagen, too is already passé. It’s about the shaping of climate change policy. Will that be the work of climate science or of neo-liberal economics? Almost everyone is aware that some kind of break has occurred between policy and science. Few are aware that the jumped-up academic discipline of liberal economics bears much of the blame. This is an epic struggle, and we know not yet whether ‘tis truth or power, scientific or magical thinking, that will prevail. While climate science is subjected to minute scrutiny, liberal economics enjoys unlimited license to deflect, derail and distort.

Disconnection and inversion

Anyone vaguely acquainted with climate policy has heard the call for science-based targets. This typically underestimates the complexity and significance of the fraud taking place when science loses its foothold and authority.

That fraud begins with the inversion of objectives. Most of us believe that climate policy aims to protect an endangered planet from a badly-ordered human economy. Now listen to just about any politician or industry spokesperson and you soon hear something different: the point, all of a sudden, is not to protect the planet but to protect the human economy from the planet. If you have an uneasy sense of arguments traveling at cross purposes here it is this almost surreal opposition you are sensing. The real politics of conservative climate change comes from this point of derailment.

Not carbon, but the price of carbon becomes the menacing presence: “That price will destroy jobs, erode competitive advantage.” Or, up a notch: “It’s not in the national interest.” Of course, this inversion is not official but the punches are thrown from this stance with enough bruising regularity to tell who is on who’s side. I will not drag the reader through a thousand dreary and disoriented citations. Just start listening.

It is the tiniest step from here to official targets and carbon prices that fall below levels advised by science. The disconnection of policy and science is a half-covert assault on the science and this is no sleight of hand. Indeed it may signal a cultural re-alignment that is tectonic in scale as capital accumulation negotiates its last crisis. It wants to force an already compromised state to choose between the truth of science and the power of capital growth that liberal economics celebrates. And, of course, the power and wealth of those who benefit most from it.

The world is, on current commitments, headed for a CO2 concentration of around 650ppm, a figure that suits capital but not the planet very well. The scientific advice, on the other hand, is converging on 300-350ppm as prudent goals, as goals that are planet friendly. We are not talking marginal adjustments. In fact, we are talking about a last wild punt that capital is going to lose - to science and reform maybe but, if not that, to Gaian revenge certainly. Then we all lose.

Science is losing

The most important climate policy arguments today, then, are not about figures; they do not turn on competing scientific assessments. The big arguments are, in fact, power struggles and they turn on competing claims to shape the strategic architecture of policy: is it to be climate science pointing in the direction of a vulnerable planet and its protection. Or is to be liberal economics going to the aid of threatened human economy and artifice? Climate science is seriously losing and the logic of this loss warrants closer scrutiny.

But doesn’t the absence of science leave a vacuum? Who endorses the government’s arithmetic and targets if not science? But I forget, it’s the national economy we are now saving. Climate scientists know nothing about that. Nor is this just a happy accident. It is a change that accompanies the redefinition of purpose.

In fact, the writing was on the wall for scientists long ago. Their job description, it seems, was rewritten while they were off guard. Once the policy objective started to shift, a more streetwise bunch would have seen the end coming: policy geared to save the national economy needed economists, not climate scientists. And that’s just what it got. And this was a takeover, not the beginning of fruitful interdisciplinary work.

Garnaut

Garnaut did that, more than anyone else, setting climate policy off on its new trajectory. He made it the property of his discipline and subjected it to new imperatives. Closer to the coal face, so to speak, he quarantined huge swathes of national GDP as no-go zones for climate change taxes or levies.

He effectively argued that climate change costs could only be levied against growth income. To the casual reader of a 600-page volume, this sounded reasonable enough - if it was noticed at all - but it severely restricted the actions that humans might take to save the planet.

It implicitly placed expenditure on climate change a long way down the list of established expenditure priorities. As we shall see, pretty much everything came before it. When Garnaut wrings his hands and declares this a tough, even a “diabolical” policy … well … that difficulty is one he has made himself.

The planet can access only a sliver of national income - the growth bit. The theoretical justifications are left implicit in Garnaut’s Review. But let’s have quick look at where this growth-income strategy can take us: suppose the adverse impacts of climate change slow economic growth to zero or, even take it into negative territory - then the sliver has gone. Garnaut says we can no longer afford to protect the planet at that point: i.e. as its needs for protection become more substantial. It’s fatuous nonsense.

That said, the Review is also the work of his disciplinary tools. However, Garnaut’s success also depended on his urbane and charming manner. Like Danny Oceans of the famous movie series, he was the kind of guy you would help if you found him robbing your safe. Resisting him, accusing him of wrong doing was out of the question. I am sure that many scientists still think of him as a nice guy. Four Corners virtually made him a saint.

The bearing of the Review

The Review sets out to save the planet but, then, diverts. At that point, Garnaut begins to tell us what he thinks Australians are able or willing to pay for a damaged planet. And that’s a completely different question, nothing holds those two inquiries together. If you can’t see this, ask a poor person receiving dental treatment (ask me) to explain the difference between what you need and what you can afford.

As it turns out, we don’t even hear directly from Australians on this question -what they can afford. We only get to hear what Garnaut thinks they can afford. That’s another huge leap, and there’s room here for whole lot more error and distortion. Not only have we stumbled into a human-centred world when we should be in a planet-centred one, we are provided with ugly but demonstrably false accounts of those who occupy this world.

Straight from the horse’s mouth

Garnaut’s human economy possesses a familiar architecture. He confidently tells what most Australians willing to pay to protect the planet How does he know? Was there a survey or even reference to one? No and no. We will see in a moment, but there’s not even a momentary concession to the demands of evidence-based argument. We are dealing with fantasy and ideology.

Garnaut’s Australians are willing to pay what self-interested consumers everywhere pay for anything: as little as possible. Why would we behave like that? Because that’s what we are on the understanding of economic liberalism: acquisitive, possessive, self-interested and shortsighted.

But are we not also, sometimes, generous neighbours, caring friends, selfless teammates, anxious or loving parents and so a long list might go on. And might we not pay for the planet acting in these capacities? A simple change in perspective here would mean the difference between future treaties that saved the planet and current ones that look like failing. But economic liberalism has no place for such moral complexity or depth. Garnaut’s Climate Change Review is actually a dangerous and dystopian fairy tale.

(This is not wishful thinking. It is a case of recognising, perhaps talking up, but not of inventing human moral resources than don’t exist. Then it’s a case of harnessing them for the purposes of wider governance. Not governing as if we were all sociopaths - and then insisting that this is best possible of all worlds.)

The Review’s introduction provides more than just important clues. “Global and national mitigation”, Garnaut says:

… are only going to be successful if reductions in emissions can be made and demonstrated to be consistent with continued economic growth and rising living standards. (p.xxvii)

There you have it, straight from the horse’s mouth: “What does the planet need?” does not even register as a question. It’s all down to: “What can our economy afford or what are we willing to pay?” Given that the selfish and acquisitive will tolerate no reduction in anything, that growth must continue unabated, we are down to that thin sliver again.

Conclusion

Science was pivotal in the 500-year long journey that has taken us from mercantile to industrial capitalism and from absolute monarchy to liberal democratic state. Its endeavours underpinned both the secular freedom and material abundance of this state.

To be sure, the emphasis on material abundance was overdone in recent times. But now that the message of science is increasingly one of caution and limits, it is cast aside by compromised politicians and by corporate business leaders who are encouraged to believe that they are above science and the laws of nature when they are driving economic growth and capital accumulation. They are apparently willing to place the human future in the hands of post-industrial and we can also say, post-modern, magical thinking. This will end in tears - and lots of them.