Cause to not celebrate: Kirribilli solar installation marks 10 years of Howard’s climate failure

 If you had to place that sentence, you’d probably say it was from a Greenpeace press release last week, or during the APEC meeting last month; a response maybe to yet another refusal by John Howard to take real action on climate change. And you’d be wrong. It was taken from a statement released 10 years ago to mark Greenpeace’s installation of solar panels on the roof of Kirribilli house on October 20, 1997. Yes, 10 years ago. Could there be a better illustration of Howard’s decade of inaction on climate change?

When you look back over those 10 years, and contrast what has happened on climate change in comparison to the sheer bloody-minded inertia of the Government’s response, it’s hard not to get angry. Future generations certainly will. As the science firmed up, and the warning bells rang louder, Howard dug in, and we spent a decade sacrificing Australia’s national interest for the coal industry.

In 1997, when we installed the solar panels, the climate debate was at a crucial period. The international community had agreed that the only way to reduce greenhouse pollution was for developed countries to accept legally binding targets to do so. Governments were due to meet in Kyoto, Japan, in December and finalise the details. John Howard had only been Prime Minister for a little over 12 months, but had already set his course on climate change. The European Union was proposing relatively bold targets of 15% reductions below 1990 levels. Howard dismissed this as “utterly unacceptable” and through threatening to derail the entire process, got a laughable target for Australia that allowed us to actually increase our emissions.

But even that wasn’t enough for Howard. When George Bush was appointed President in 2000, he immediately rejected the Kyoto Protocol, in his case to protect American fossil fuel interests. Howard saw his chance and announced Australia would also refuse to ratify. From there it was all downhill. Despite a new report from the world’s top climate scientists in 2001 that ended the debate about whether climate change was real, and growing evidence about the severity of the possible impacts, Howard did everything he could to prevent Australia taking action, and tried to stymie international efforts as well.

In the following years, Howard twice rejected the idea of an emissions trading scheme that would have put a price on greenhouse pollution, despite the support of key members of his cabinet. He scrapped the national renewable energy scheme that had seen investment and jobs in renewables boom, gutted renewables R&D schemes and precipitated a flight of renewable experts and investment to other countries. His ministers went overseas too, on a mission to sabotage efforts by the international community to strengthen and extend the Kyoto Protocol, along the way throwing up red herrings like AP6 and the APEC Sydney Declaration. And all the while, Howard kept denying that climate change is real. As late as February this year, Howard told Parliament that the jury is still out.

As they say, a week is a long time in politics. Since we installed solar panels on Howard’s roof, there have been 520 of them. Plenty of time to have done something real to address the greatest threat this country, and our planet, faces. Yet nothing. Scientists now tell us that we have less than a decade to see our emissions peak, and then start declining rapidly. It will be difficult and expensive, no doubt. Yet imagine how much easier it would be if we’d started 10 years ago?

Emily Johnston, Greenpeace campaigner arrested in 1997 for installing solar panels on Kirribilli House