Al Gore, Politician.

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13/07/09 - 12:40 I had a great deal of respect for Al Gore. He brought the attention of the world to climate change. He said in his speech at the launch of Safe Climate Australia this morning that he was a recovering politician. Sorry Al, you’re not. You are as much a politician as ever. The climate is changing a lot, but in Mr Gores world, it’s the politics that have undergone the step change since An Inconvenient Truth. Obama is now in the Whitehouse, and in Australia Kevin Rudd is PM. These people are from Al Gore’s side of politics. That means whatever they are doing is the best that can be done. He told us that Rudd and Australia were showing global leadership on climate action. Never mind our inadequate targets, never mind our fatally compromised Carbon Polluters Rewards Scheme, or that his hosts at breakfast, Safe Climate Australia, aim to prepare a plan that shows how we can reduce carbon emissions to zero.

Al Gore said he was being apolitical. That’s bunkum. Gore was being deeply political in buying into the Australian debate as to whether what is being proposed by our Labor government should be supported. Every word that Al Gore uttered this morning about the need for emergency action on climate change was silenced and negated by his politics. Whilst he spoke of the need to take action like never before he gave support to the incrementalism that is spelling doom for a safe climate future.

His pronouncement that what Rudd is doing the best that can be achieved in the current political climate is a powerful attack on those who say we should and can be going much further at far greater speed. What’s more it’s wrong.

Kevin Rudd had a mandate to act on climate change. He has the support of the Australian community for strong action. He has scientific consensus that emergency action is needed. He has Greens and an independent in the Senate who will support real action. The political challenge he could have set himself is to achieve the one extra vote he needs in the Senate for strong action. Or to face the community at a double dissolution election on a platform of real action and genuine global leadership on climate change.

I came away from breakfast feeling deeply depressed. But then I reminded myself. No-one said it was going to be easy to beat the vested interests, the resource industries, the coal industry who currently are dictating policy. We know strong grassroots action is needed and it’s abundantly clear that the only way we are going to get it is through strong Green politics. I’m happy for the Gores, the ACF’s of the world to keep scratching backs and thinking they can reform the ALP from within. I wish them luck but to me I see absolutely no evidence that working that way is going to deliver results.

Gore finished his speech by acknowledging that we are still lacking political will for strong action, but that at least political will is a renewable resource. I look forward to a hasty renewal of that political will when the old parties discover, maybe at the next election , maybe the one after,  that they need Greens support to form government. Till then I’ll keep on campaigning.
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