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‘Tax burden’, ‘tax relief’, ‘tax breaks’… the very way we talk about it implies tax is something inherently onerous. An unreasonable imposition. Even an unfair one.

This is of course a great shame. It holds us back from pursuing all manner of important and exciting ventures together.

Exactly how we arrived at this aversion is difficult to say. Perhaps we have an innate tendency to hoard for ourselves rather than contribute to common goals. Whether or not that’s the case, politicians and pundits have spent decades exploiting our more selfish and individualist tendencies and stirring up suspicions, turning the simple raising of capital to support shared goals and common goods into a political minefield. Parties compete for our votes by promising lower rates and new exemptions while accusing their opponents of squandering our hard earned resources. To dare to propose raising taxes, no matter what for, is usually to commit political suicide.

No one would deny that public funds need to be used judiciously and efficiently or that governments are capable of getting things wrong and that resources are often wasted.

Nor can we deny that a portion of our community face genuine financial hardship.

But the reality is that most of us, despite what we’ve been led to believe, do not. And that in the long term we might just find more reward and meaning through a willingness to invest in a shared future than through fighting to keep every last penny of our earnings for ourselves.

Let’s do a simple thought experiment on this.

Imagine the kind of country you want Australia to be in twenty years time. We’ll keep it simple for now and think just about the physical fabric as opposed to public services, shared values, behaviors, and other non-physical attributes. The basic infrastructure in other words: transport, energy, water, telecommunications, public spaces, etc.

No doubt there’s plenty of variety between our respective visions. But also many commonalities. I suspect most people would like a clean and efficient energy system, fast and convenient public transport, and sustainable, livable cities.

Whatever our vision, it’s likely there are now few technological barriers to its fulfillment. It’s also likely that it requires a significant chunk of public money. For while no one would deny then importance of entrepreneurism and private finance, most truly transformative projects require first a substantial injection of government money.

Let’s look at the much talked about high-speed rail network for example. The lifestyle benefits of this would seem to be huge. Whether for those of us used to reluctantly skipping between Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra by way of either an uncomfortable overnight bus or costly plane journey, or for those living out in the sticks and wanting to be better connected to the city. Far more important of course is the potential to significantly reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.

64mins to Canberra, 2hrs 44mins to Melbourne. I want this. Who doesn’t?

The only barrier – a $144bn price tag.

Can we afford it? Let’s see. Time for a little maths:

Before we think about leveraged private finance, cost recoveries or anything, let’s start by seeing what it would cost if we covered the entire upfront cost between us.

So that’s $144bn. And there are about 23 million Australians. (We’ll get to such things as how many of us are able to contribute in a minute.) So that’s about $6,000 each. Spread it over 20 years, for it’s going to take a while to build afterall, and we’ll call it $300 a year.

Okay, so that’s a little more than pocket change. But to put it in perspective, it’s roughly the same amount we spend on shoes, about a third the amount we spend on baked goods, and about a fifth the amount we spend on meals out (Source: www.moneysmart.gov.au).

Let’s add in another big project. How about we transform our energy system to 100% renewables. A few years ago Beyond Zero Emissions cost this out at $370bn, including doubling our current power capacity so we can power all transport, including the high speed rail network we’re now building, on clean energy.

So high speed rail plus 100% renewable energy. That’ll be $1,100 each.

Okay, to be fair and since these projects aren’t yet in the national budget we should add them onto our existing tax bill.

According to treasury, the average tax rate for a worker earning an average wage in Australia has been steady at around 22% over the last 40 years. The internet tells me an average Australian income is $70k. So seems we’re currently paying about $15k in tax each.

Adding these two mega projects would therefore mean each paying about 7% more tax each year for the next two decades.

Now, I don’t deny that these sums are simplistic. Not all of us can contribute equally to public funds and not all 23m of us will be paying tax at any one time. Against this, clearly not all the money would need to come from public coffers.

But this is just a thought experiment after all. And now we’ve done a few simple sums, it’s time for the next question.

What is likely to be a greater source of happiness and satisfaction to us in twenty years time? a) Having saved enough money to build a slightly bigger house than we could have done otherwise, or b) having real pride in Australia because together we faced up to the climate crisis, transformed the way we did things, and built a strong, sustainable community?

If a mere 7% increase in tax could transform our energy and transport systems. What could we do with 20%? In other words, paying on average 18k each a year, up from 15k. And let’s say we phase out those fossil fuel subsidies and make a few other sensible adjustments while we’re at it. Just think what we could do towards education, health, and properly assisting anyone facing disadvantage.

The choices I’ve outlined may not be to everyone’s taste. My real point is that we ought to be able to have sensible debates over tax. Be willing to dream big and be open to collectivizing our efforts. It should be possible to propose a tax increase as part of a compelling vision for our future without it being immediately slammed down for political points.

We might fret at having to pay tax, asking what the government has ever done for us. The fact we do this while riding a bus home along a well-maintained road after a trip to a medicare-funded doctor while listening to public radio doesn’t seem to register.

There are many ways in which we all contribute to the community. Taxes are only one of them. But at the end of the day they’re what pays for almost all of the things that the market alone cannot provide. And if we want a truly awesome future, then we’ve got to be willing to invest in it.

Continue reading »]]> Wow – what a week so far!

You may have been following the saga of the Dalai Lama’s visit to University of Sydney. To cut a long story short, last week a courageous student and friend Sophie Bouris spilled the beans to the ABC about the University’s bizarre efforts to distance itself from the Dalai Lama. Tibetans, students and supporters rapidly mobilised to let the Uni know what they thought. One week and15,000 signatures later and we’re back on. Boom.

While it all happened very quickly, it’s hard to overstate the significance of this as a campaign win. Against a growing tide of Chinese state interference and vested interests, enough people came together in a powerful and well-coordinated rapid response for the University to have to backtrack and do the right thing. A week ago I really didn’t think this campaign was winnable. Am incredibly proud of Kyinzom and everyone else who worked so hard for this. Has really given me hope

I wanted to share this piece written for New Matilda, reflecting on what happened. The original title was What’s the true cost of Sydney Uni’s Dalai Lama shun? but it was changed after the University’s sudden change of heart on Tuesday evening.

Uni gets a lesson on vested interests

Originally published on New Matilda, 24 April 2013

In the same week that the ABC broke the story of the University of Sydney’s perverse handling of a visit by the Dalai Lama, the man himself was being welcomed by Cambridge University’s Global Scholars Symposium. The world-leading university said it hoped the Dalai Lama’s talk would “motivate scholars to use their careers to help reduce violence and promote peace”.

In under a week, 15,000 individuals signed a petition urging the University of Sydney to preserve its integrity by reversing its decision to quietly distance itself from the Dalai Lama. Yesterday the University quietly backpedalled. While details are still scant, in June the Dalai Lama will be welcomed on campus to give a talk to students, organised by the Institute of Democracy and Human Rights under the theme “Education Matters”.

The University has made a wise choice. And while it is regrettable that the right decision was not made out the outset, the public outcry that ensued sends a very strong message to any other university or institution that may face such choices in future.

So what was it about the university’s recent behaviour that had people particularly riled up? And not just Tibetans? After all, we have become used to Australian politicians and business leaders kowtowing over Tibet. We don’t like it but it no longer shocks us, no longer provokes the public outrage it once did. But for one of our most prestigious universities to have made such a decision struck an altogether different chord. One that cuts to the very heart of a fear shared among Tibetans and a wider cohort of Buddhists, democrats and academics.

For Tibetan Buddhists, like scientists and scholars, there is nothing more sacrosanct than free enquiry, unimpeded by ulterior interests. It is a core value, explicitly recognised as a precondition to a healthy society. We find exactly the same understanding in the opening lines of the University of Sydney’s own “Charter of Academic Freedom”.

It is through free and clear-minded investigation that we overcome our collective hubris and ignorance and learn to build a compassionate and sustainable global community. Allowing interference in this basic pursuit of knowledge and wisdom, whether through commercial interests or a political agenda, has consequences not only for vulnerable cultures and nations such as Tibet, but ultimately for us all.

Distress over the University withdrawing its support for the planned event with the Dalai Lama was compounded by the fact the University’s Institute for Democracy and Human Rights appeared complicit in negotiations, eventually making a compromise with the Vice Chancellor.

Three years ago the University received a substantial grant from the EU for advancing education in democracy and human rights in the Asia Pacific region. As any student of peace and conflict will attest, the whole point of human rights is that they are inviolable. They form an essential safeguard. They are there to protect the fundamental interests of individuals and of society as a whole whenever these interests come under threat from the misguided pursuit of a “greater good”. A university that has positioned itself as a regional leader in the promotion of democracy and human rights must be willing to uphold this principle.

Uniquely, the Dalai Lama has devolved his own political power in order to encourage democracy among exiled Tibetans. He has never wavered from a commitment to non-violence and has spent decades travelling the world to promote education, universal responsibility, and interreligious understanding.

These views have brought the Dalai Lama under heavy attack from vested interests. He is, in short, precisely the kind of voice that any institution dedicated to free enquiry needs to champion. The world’s leading universities, from Harvard and MIT to Oxford and Cambridge, have all understood this. The University of Sydney is still learning,

It’s no secret that universities, both here and overseas, face both direct and indirect pressure to distance themselves from the Dalai Lama and any issues relating to Tibet. In 2011 Stanford University sensibly turned down $4m from the Chinese Government to establish a China studies centre and professorship. Why? The funding was conditional on the centre not discussing Tibet and other matters that might embarrass the Chinese Government.

But while it’s easy to sympathise with the pressure that many university staff would have found themselves under in relation the Dalai Lama’s upcoming visit, complying with the short-sighted rationale that it was “in the interests of researchers” to disassociate the University from the Dalai Lama was a serious error of judgement.

Our cherished universities were founded on precisely the values of education, unimpeded enquiry, honesty and integrity so eloquently and steadfastly championed by the Dalai Lama. Criticism of Chinese investment in overseas universities has often centred on the scores of state-funded “Confucius Institutes” that have been popping up like mushrooms on campuses since the mid 2000s. We may value the language education and other services provided by such programs but must acknowledge that their function is fundamentally different from what we traditionally associate with our universities. Put simply, when Party-run institutions partner with our universities, it is not in the spirit of academic discovery but primarily for advancing the agenda of the Chinese state. Just as China’s state media and judiciary exists primarily for the enforcement of Party policy rather than the protection of truth and justice. This is not a value judgement on either of our cultures, but simply recognising a spade as a spade.

Ultimately, if we believe that independent enquiry, democracy, human rights, and a willingness to weigh long-term consequences over short-term gains are all fundamental to a peaceful and sustainable future, then we will naturally have felt that the University of Sydney made a serious error in trying distance itself from the Dalai Lama. The consequences of which would have been felt long into the future.

Furthermore, if we wish, as laid out in the Government’s White Paper on the Asian Century, for ten Australian universities to be among the world’s top 100 by 2025, and for institutions like the University of Sydney to sit proudly alongside the world’s best, then we had better start by taking heed of this lesson.

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Two trillion dollars

That’s the value of global fossil fuel subsidies, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF)

Yes, TRILLION – $2,000,000,000,000

Twenty-six trillion dollars

That’s the value of global pension funds (superannuation), a high proportion of which is currently invested in high-carbon industries

Again, twenty-six TRILLION – $26,000,000,000,000

Eighty percent

That’s the proportion of fossil fuel reserves that are technically ‘unburnable’ and set to become stranded assets.

Okay, at first these numbers may seem scary. But they’re not. They’re rock solid proof that we can, and indeed will, create a sustainable future.

How so? Well, to tell you the truth it takes a lot to get me excited about economics. But look at those numbers and think of the capital waiting to be unleashed once the penny drops. Once superfunds and institutional investors cotton onto the carbon bubble, divest from fossil fuels and begin catalyzing the renewable economy. Once the big countries begin dismantling inefficient subsidies and pricing carbon.

And if we’re in any doubt as to whether this will actually happen: Remember the World Bank and IMF – yes, two titans of capitalism who we’ve become so used to slamming for their conservatism – are already screaming for subsidies to be wound back and externalities such as carbon pollution and climate change to be accounted for. We’re just waiting for governments to catch up. Some of course already are, and others surely will, the more international market forces tilt against them.

And the 80% of known fossil fuel reserves that must be left in the ground. Remember, this is not a choice at the end of the day. This is our reality. This is what science has revealed is necessary to keep warming to within two degrees Celsius – the threshold for a safe climate and the goal to which every major government has already signed up. We just need to connect the dots.

So let’s be clear – change is coming!

Want to read more?

The new Australian initiative Market Forces are doing some really innovative work to persuade  Australian super funds – worth nearly $1trillion – to divest from coal and gas. See also The Climate Institute’s climate action plan for super funds. And if you want to be part of the mother of all divestment campaigns, check out the ever inspiring and powerful 350.org.

Finally, if this piece by Paul Gilding that’s been doing the rounds doesn’t leave you feeling more upbeat about the world, nothing will…

“The science is clear, the technology is ready, significant sections of the elite are on side and the financial momentum is with us.” Paul Gilding from Victory at Hand for the Climate Movement?

Continue reading »]]> How to eradicate poverty and increase ‘human development’ while staying within ecological limits is to many the defining challenge of the twenty-first century.

I’ve found no better illustration of this challenge than this simple diagram from the report that launched Oxfam’s GROW campaign back in 2011:

To keep within planetary boundaries we must reduce overall consumption while redistributing resources towards the poorest and accommodating for a further 25-40% increase in the size of the global population before an expected peak later this century.

I was reminded of this fact again while reading the latest edition of the UN Development Program’s influential Human Development Report. Released last week, the report is titled “The rise of the South: Human progress in a diverse world”.

While it rightly celebrates the extraordinary shifts and gains of the last decades, surmising that “never in history have the living conditions and prospects of so many people changed so dramatically and so fast”, buried beneath the headlines is a stark warning: The number of people living in extreme poverty could increase by 3.1 billion to 2050 unless we acknowledge these boundaries and take greater action.  

As Oxfam Australia’s Climate Change Advocacy Coordinator, this disturbing reality is never far from my mind.

From water to phosphorous to the rare earth elements in our mobile phones, we’re rapidly butting up against a succession of resource constraints. The fact we’re approaching the safe limit for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is no longer a matter of contention. And without progress on this front, many of the development gains of the last century will be halted or even reversed.

Thankfully, the challenge is not insurmountable.

Let’s not beat around the bush – access to cheap, fossil-based energy has been a key factor in the gains so apparent in this year’s Human Development Report. And while emissions per person remain far higher in developed countries, much of the more recent growth in global emissions today comes from China, India and the many other rapidly industrializing nations.

But that does not mean that human development and the burning of fossil fuels are inexorably tied.

In Australia and other advanced economies – who bear the overwhelming historical responsibility for the climate crisis – the barriers to reducing consumption and transitioning to a low-carbon, sustainable future are neither technological nor economic, but a matter of public pressure and political will.

Significantly, several of the emerging economies championed in the report are outpacing their northern rivals in the transition to cleaner energy sources.

And many of the most encouraging signs are to be found not in the pages of UN reports but out in the communities. Oxfam works with local partners from Mozambique to Timor-Leste with strategies that ensure sustainable production while boosting food security and resilience to future challenges.

All that said, when viewed at the global level, the scale of the task before us remains colossal. Last year the International Energy Agency concluded that two thirds of known fossil fuel reserves must be left in the ground if the world is to avoid dangerous levels of climate change. In other words, we need nothing short of a revolution in the way we produce energy.

Many of the findings in the 2013 Human Development Report are indeed encouraging. In an age when we’re all too accustomed to bad news, the release asserts that “more than 40 developing countries have made greater human development gains in recent decades than would have been predicted”. Achievements it attributes to “sustained investment in education, health care and social programs, and open engagement with an increasingly interconnected world”.

But if we wish to protect these gains and support the nearly one billion people who still go to bed hungry each day, it’s time to get serious about climate change.

Continue reading »]]> After years on the increase, food prices in Australia have recently been falling, according to New Limited analysis published on 7 January. Among the key factors, researchers cited the ‘nomalising’ of fruit prices after their sudden rise following natural disasters in Queensland and Victoria.

Sadly, this reassuring news came before the record heat wave claimed the lives of 10,000 sheep and cattle across New South Wales alone, and caused some stone fruit to literally cook on the trees.

While it’s too early to gauge the exact impact this latest extreme weather event will have on food markets, we can be certain that prices will not be staying down for long.

This is the reality in a warming world.

Slow changes in average temperature and shifts in rainfall patterns are causing yields in many regions throughout the world to decline. But the real hazard comes from the new weather extremes. In driving up temperatures, we are turbo-charging the climate and increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events. Floods, tropical storms and heat waves can wipe out entire harvests in a stroke.

In the same week that Australia set a new record of 40.33 degrees Celsius for the national average maximum, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration confirmed that 2012 was the hottest year on record for the US. Globally, November was the 333^rd consecutive month of above average global temperatures. The occurrence of extremely hot events has risen by a factor of around 50, according to a paper published last year by NASA’s James Hansen and colleagues. The message from the Bureau of Meteorology has been unequivocal:

“The current heat wave – in terms of its duration, its intensity and its extent – is unprecedented in our records,” said David Jones in the Sydney Morning Herald on 9 January.

“Clearly the climate system is responding to the background warming trend. Everything that happens in the climate system now is taking place on a planet which is a degree hotter than it used to be.”

A hotter and more hostile climate is no longer a prediction. It is our new normal.

Australians are no strangers to extreme weather and the suffering it can bring. Heat waves in Australia reportedly harm more people than any other natural disaster.

But while climate change affects us all, it hits poor people in developing countries the hardest – ironically, those with the least responsibility for rising greenhouse emissions.

For those living on the edge, a sudden loss of livestock or a spike in global food markets such as followed the 2012 drought in the US can be a matter of life and death. Furthermore, communities may be unable to recover from one shock to the next. This cumulative impact can mean a downward spiral of worsening food security and deepening poverty.

Oxfam estimates that the price of key food staples, including wheat and rice, may double in the next 20 years – up to half of this increase caused by climate change. Predicted drought and flooding in southern Africa could increase the consumer price of maize and other grains by 120 per cent by 2030. Price spikes of this magnitude today would mean the cost of a 25kg bag of corn meal – a staple which feeds poor families across Africa for about two weeks – would rocket from around $18 to $40.

Australia has resources with which to bounce back from extreme weather disasters. Nonetheless, new research by The Climate Institute shows that the emotional and psychological toll from floods, heat waves and other traumas can linger for months, even years. Higher rates of drug and alcohol abuse, violence, family breakup, self harm and suicide are all apparent in the wake of these tragedies.

For poor countries, a hot world is a hungry world. For all countries, a hot world is a world of increased financial, psychological, emotional and other pressures.

Global temperatures are currently about 0.8 degrees above pre-industrial levels. The consequences of this are already stark. Contrary to some perceptions, there are no insurmountable technological or economic hurdles to keeping warming below two degrees – the widely accepted threshold for a safe climate.

All that is needed is political will and, to achieve that, public pressure.

Unfortunately, some further warming is inevitable, no matter how rapidly we manage to reduce emissions, and we have a responsibility to help vulnerable communities in poorer countries adapt.

Australia must meet its fair share of ongoing international climate finance – the promised funds to assist poorer countries with low carbon development and building  resilience to the changing climate.

We’ve spent two decades squabbling over appropriate emissions reductions, carbon pricing, the safe number of parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere, and other technical matters.

It’s time we looked up from our calculators and balance sheets and recognised the human cost of a warming planet.

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As with any seemingly intractable conflict of opinions, to understand the argument currently raging over gun control we need to dig a little deeper. It is not an argument over evidence or readily observable facts but a veiled expression of different fundamental beliefs about the way the world is. And it’s these underlying feelings and premises that need to be drawn out if we’re to do any more than butt heads and walk away perplexed at how our responses to the latest tragedy can be so wildly different.

If you’re the National Rifle Association (NRA), the world is home to a perennial struggle between good and evil. You don’t perceive humans as all one family. Conceptually we fall into separate groups – a community of virtuous folks (‘us’) infiltrated and encircled by baddies (‘them’). It is an inherently dangerous place where good people must protect themselves and each other from the forces of darkness. This is how the world is and always has been. Those against gun ownership are simply deluding themselves about the nature of reality and are a danger to the good people of the world.

This sort of view may well have predominated through much of human history. It would have seemed more defensible at the time the infamous second amendment was introduced to the US Bill of Rights. Violent conflict over land and resources was still normal. Lawlessness was common, particularly along the Western frontier. The American Constitution was still young and people were reluctant to give up a means of defending themselves should the Government go rogue on them.

There is no better expression of how such a worldview shapes attitudes to gun ownership than the NRA’s response to Newtown shooting: “The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”

Whether or not this view was ever an appropriate take on the world, for the other fifty or more percent of Americans it seems a very poor fit for today’s society. They see all people as fundamentally the same and the potential for a world that is cooperative and loving. There is no good and evil. Killing and other harms are the result of ignorance, inequality and other human failings. The solution is always to work towards mutual understanding, empathy and trust. The notion that the solution to gun deaths lies in more guns feels simply crazy. It just doesn’t fit with this view of the world.

So just like so many other issues, when we fight over gun control, utterly confused by other people’s logic, we are in fact bumping up against a profoundly different schematic of the world. A different mind map of reality, we might call it. This is important to accept. For once the basic tenets of each position are revealed, the reasons for disagreement become clearer.

However, we are not yet any closer to an agreement. These conflicting worldviews have deep roots and remain bulwarked against attack. The former is enmeshed with modern American Christianity and fed by vehement theological beliefs about god, virtue, heaven and their respective opposites. In other words, at its core is a set of religious convictions upon which a whole edifice of beliefs and perspectives then rest. Fueled by media and politics, and with the decline in the kind of education that encouraged free thought and critical analysis, it is a powerful and entrenched force that shows remarkable resilience to rational argument or evidence.

Opponents tend to be equally steadfast in their beliefs. Religion may again play its part. But for increasing numbers, the notion of an interdependent world in which people are essentially good simply accords more with their lived experience, intuitions and observations. The more our lives are intertwined, the harder it is to see oneself as any different from anyone else or to maintain many of the archaic notions to which gun advocates appeal.

But none of this means that efforts to roll back gun ownership are doomed to failure, only that we should consider approaching the problem a little differently. After all, the situation in the US, where ordinary citizens carry lethal weapons and tens of thousands are murdered each year, is a total anomaly among industrialized nations.

Emotional pleas, even from the President, have done little to curb people’s desire to own guns. Nor has rational argument made much of a dent. Railing against each other’s convictions rarely did us much good. Yes, there need to be new laws. But we also need to gently yet determinedly challenge those inherently confrontational notions about the world – not by attacking them but by presenting a better picture of reality. And by equipping people from an early age with the critical capacities to shed old beliefs and forge a more constructive and cooperative take on the world.

How would one begin? Well, when it comes to better education I recently found some great insights in this book. And removing at least some of the influences that skew our perception of reality would help, whether violent video games, the bombardment of violent images and storylines through almost every form of media, or the standard journalistic bias towards conflict. (Contrary to popular belief, the world has become steadily less violent over time.) Strengthening communities, building cross-cultural ties and all the measures that we know build empathy and awareness of commonality are important.

In other words, it means taking the long route. I doubt there’s a quick fix. But if we can take even modest steps along that road, we’ll be solving more than just gun violence.

Continue reading »]]> So what I thought would be a quiet week of tying up loose ends and taking stock of the Doha climate conference became altogether more interesting. And maddening.

As tired delegates were boarding their flights home, a certain newspaper, which had shown almost no interest in the negotiations up to that point, suddenly sniffed that Australian taxpayers might face new costs under future measures to address “loss and damage” from climate change.

Had the folks involved taken time to read and fully comprehend the Doha decisions, the stories in question might never have been written. But who knows? Maybe it’s okay these days to knowingly mislead if it helps sell a few more papers or bring people on side.

(Indeed, I often find myself wondering whether certain agitators actually believe what they are saying or if they’re relying on the fact that things said often enough tend to stick.)

Anyway, from there things started getting a little out of hand. What happened next was, for me, a brutal reminder of the dishonesty of Australian politics right now. As colleagues worked to clarify exactly what had been agreed and what had not, a press release arrived from a certain senior Opposition spokesperson. Seeing a chance to take a free kick against the Government, they’d decided to simply echo the misleading analysis provided by certain newspaper.

To cut a long story short, both the conservative media and now the Opposition were exaggerating our commitments under existing climate finance arrangements – the flow of funds from developed to developing countries to assist those communities least responsible for climate change and least able to cope in a warming world – and completely misrepresenting the state of negotiations on “loss and damage”. Before we knew it, the attack dogs were on our radios talking about a fictitious “$3bn blank cheque”.

It was the latest effort to fuel cynicism around long-running international climate talks. For those genuinely concerned about future cost burdens, the only rational move is to increase the ambition of emissions reductions and hasten international processes.  But seems some prefer to use the hot button issue of finance to spread confusion and further derail negotiations.

If you care about the details, have a read of this OpEd from later in the week trying to debunk the myths. As I said in that piece, for the sake of a political point, the Opposition was willing to give poor communities in developing countries a “kick in the teeth”.

While the initial stories seemed at least in part the result of putting pen to paper before getting one’s facts straight, it is hard to believe that the Shadow Minister did not know he was misleading people. In other words, the individual most likely to govern our future climate policy was willfully spreading misinformation to turn people against action on climate change. Nothing unusual you might say. But in the wake of report after report reaffirming the gravity of the climate crisis, coupled with emotional testimonies from some of the worst affected communities, I found it pretty hard to take.

Of course, efforts were made, both through the media and directly with the Shadow Minister’s office, to point out the errors in their analysis. But by then the “$3bn blank cheque” line had obviously tested rather well for them. Why let facts get in the way when you’ve found a neat new way to get people on your side?

As I write, this particular story has run its course. I hope. It’s time to lick our wounds and think about how to approach things in the New Year. Mr Hunt and Mr Abbott, urged on by The Australian, have drawn a new battleline on climate finance. One that, as ever, is out of step with the wider world, rests on an edifice of misinformation, and shows extraordinary disregard for those for whom climate change is not about political point scoring but the very survival of their community.

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Pic: Oxfam International

For those involved, whether as campaigners, delegates or journalists, it’s the most exhausting two weeks of the year – at times exasperating, occasionally empowering, but never wholly satisfying. Even watching on from afar felt like a marathon.

As each “COP” draws to a close, the chasm between what’s been agreed and what really needs to happen seems to grow only wider.

While Doha had little of the hype that surrounded Copenhagen in 2009 or even last year’s conference in Durban, it was preceded by an extraordinary string of new findings and real-world crises that surely should have shocked us into greater urgency. But as powerful delegations from the US, Russia, Canada, Japan and other rich countries worked through the night to wear-down the poorest and most vulnerable nations, it was as if Hurricane Sandy, the Sahel drought or the World Bank’s warning of catastrophic temperature rises this century had never happened. Even as parties watered down agreements, the Philippines and Palau were being ravaged by cyclone ‘Pablo’, to which the Philippines’ head of delegation memorably drew people’s attention.

Cruelly, it is those least responsible for climate change that face the greatest losses. Hunger is the most savage impact of a warming world.

While the final agreement was, as ever, absurdly short of what the science demands, I’ve been feeling very proud of the Oxfam International team this week, headed by my colleague Kelly, as they worked round the clock to support the voices of vulnerable communities and fight for stronger outcomes. The deal was not what we wanted and what poorer countries so badly needed, but was a whole lot better than if they hadn’t been there.

Here are a couple of quotes from people at the conference that reminded me what we are truly dealing with:

“The coconut trees are dying and breadfruit trees are dying. Our people are struggling to survive. But they sweat, they try harder, they work harder. They are very resilient and will even try harder to survive and stay in their home land.

“For some developed nations climate change is about the rising costs of electricity. Climate change for them is putting price on carbon emission, lack of jobs, life will become more expensive and it’s about the economy. For the people of Kiribati, climate change is about human rights, right to our land and losing our land, losing our culture, losing a sense of belonging and losing our identity.”

-Maria Tiimon from Kiribati, a delegate with the Pacific Calling Partnership

I am Yvette Abrahams from Gender and Climate Change South Africa – Women For Climate Justice. My ancestral lands are due to become between 4-6 degrees hotter – that is if we can keep the world average temperature increase to 2 degrees. My family is meeting this Christmas to discuss moving, where we would move to and how it would happen. We cannot stay, I have observed that the grass stops growing at about 38 degrees and so there will be nothing to feed our livestock soon. It is very emotional for us as a family. When indigenous people lose their land, it is not just about food and material welfare. When we lose our land we lose our culture also, and our spiritual practices which are deeply tied to the land. So the little that we have managed to preserve through slavery, genocide, colonialism and apartheid, we are about to lose to climate change. That is why I do not understand why climate finance is so difficult for developed nations to deal with. I experience compassion fatigue when I hear developed nations talk about the recession. I have already paid. What I have paid is all that I have.  I do not how I am going to explain this to my descendants.

-Statement delivered at Oxfam side event: “Avoiding the Climate Finance Cliff and Filling the green Climate Fund”

If you want to read more from folks who really know how to cut through the jargon to reveal the human face of climate change, check out some of the articles on The Verb.

For a clear and detailed breakdown on the outcomes, have a read of Jane Stabb’s blog.

Finally, here’s a link to an interview I did with Fran Kelly at the start of negotiations, as a co-author of Oxfam’s report The Climate ‘Fiscal Cliff’:

Continue reading »]]> When George W. Bush, then president of the most powerful country on earth, began using the word “evildoers” in supposedly serious foreign policy speeches, I wondered if the world could possibly become any more insane.

While Mitt Romney may have a marginally less idiotic turn of phrase, that same divisive, polarising, good-versus-evil mentality lives on. Of all the disturbing things about this election campaign, except perhaps the unfathomable silence over climate change, it was one of Romney’s opening salvos in the foreign policy debate that made me feel most uneasy.

“My strategy is pretty straight forward: to go after the bad guys.”

When Obama was the surprise recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, almost everyone thought it was premature. But the Committee was clear in its reasoning. Obama, they said, had put the emphasis back onto dialogue and negotiation “as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts” and prioritised cooperation over conflict.

While the extent to which he has stayed true to this early promise can be debated, a clear contrast remains between Obama’s outlook and that of his Republican opponent.

Bush’s “axis of evil” was as illogical as it was destructive, steeped in hubris and Christian populism, a world of good versus evil, of blindness to our common humanity. Yet such attitudes seem commonplace on the conservative side of American politics.

We cannot solve the problems of the twenty-first century with this kind of thinking. We cannot have leaders feeding rather than countering such attitudes.

When it comes to foreign policy, we must first recognise that we are seven billion human beings, with far more in common with one another than divides us. Recognise that conflict lies not in a battle of good and evil, but in differences of perspective, culture and circumstance, and that the only way to a more peaceful and secure world is through reducing ignorance (beginning with our own) and seeking greater empathy and trust.

This may seem too far removed from the immediate challenges that Obama or Romney must face. And no doubt I’ve wildly oversimplified each candidate’s perspective. But underlying the policies is a fundamental difference in disposition between the two sides of American politics and one that has profound implications for the years ahead.

To friends in the US: we worry more than you might think about which course you take next. Let me be honest – the thought that you might just elect Mitt Romney is giving many of us sleepless nights. I think this graph showing how people round the world think you should be voting says it all.

Please, let’s give it another four years!

Continue reading »]]> “Ask a stupid question, expect a stupid answer,” as one of my early schoolteachers was fond of saying.

I’m now in no doubt it’s true that an awful lot of confusion and stupidity comes simply from asking the wrong questions. And sadly, in some cases we’re inclined to ask them again and again and again.

So standby, I’m about to become the 11,768th person this week to try and explain the link between climate change and extreme weather. Yes, I too thought this had now been more than adequately explained. But since the same misleading question has been posed over and over in coverage of Hurricane Sandy, it would seem not. You know the question I’m talking about. And to be honest, I don’t expect my 2cents on the matter to make that much difference. The reasons for that will become clear.

Ok then, so “was Hurricane Sandy (or any other extreme weather event for that matter) caused by climate change?”

Well, as George Lakoff has said, we should probably just say YES and be done with it.

Why? First of all, change the climate and you change the conditions under which all weather forms. We can touch in a minute upon the complex interplay between different variables and the specific weather trends we should expect in a warming world. But let’s start from the basic recognition that weather and climate are inherently linked.

Seems obvious? You’d think so. Yet one online poll I saw seemed to have 60% of respondents disputing even this piece of basic logic.

Exactly how today’s anthropogenic changes to our climate are affecting weather, and in particular the intensity of tropical storms, is where it gets more interesting. At risk of oversimplifying, I’ll run through some of the things that a warmer planet means for hurricanes.

Hurricanes get their energy from water vapour. When moist air rising from warm tropical seas meets cooler air higher up, the vapour condenses to form clouds. The latent heat released during condensation (which is, if you like, energy that has been transferred from the warm ocean below as the water first evaporated then condensed) is what powers the storm. It heats the surrounding air, causing it to rise and making way for more moist air to rise underneath, beginning a cycle.

That’s not quite a full explanation but it will do for now. It is enough for us to see that warmer oceans are likely to result in stronger hurricanes.

Secondly, we know that a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture. So in addition to packing stronger winds, in a warmer world a hurricane can produce more rainfall, with greater risk of flooding.

Unrelated to the power of the hurricane itself but very much related to the human cost, are higher sea levels – a consequence both of ice melt and the slight expansion of water as it warms. This means higher storm surges.

When we get into the finer details, there is an almost infinite amount more that can be said. In truth, the full picture is vastly more complex. For example, global warming also affects jet streams. Studying how changes in the speed and pattern of these high-altitude winds affects the strength and path of hurricanes adds another layer of complexity.

However, as Lakoff argues, we should be quite happy answering the question “was Hurricane Sandy caused by climate change?” in the affirmative. Why? Well, as we have established, global warming is a systemic cause of more powerful hurricanes.

The difficulty, of course, is that the questioner is probably not thinking in systemic terms and is fishing in vain for a more linear explanation. Which means no scientist, campaigner or politician for that matter can give an unqualified “yes” to the question “was Hurricane Sandy caused by climate change?” There’s simply a structural asymmetry between the question and reality, which any honest person has to correct before they give their answer.

A number of good analogies have been offered up to try and undo the confusion and to get us thinking in a more systemic way. For example: We can say smoking causes lung cancer. But we cannot say that smoking caused Bill’s lung cancer. Why? Well, it is possible for a non-smoker to develop lung cancer. Just as it is possible for a life-long smoker to never develop lung cancer. But we do know that smoking dramatically increases the probability of a person developing lung cancer. To put it another way, the higher the incidence of smoking in a population, the higher the incidence of lung cancer will be.

We’ve established that as the world warms we are likely to see more intense hurricanes. But asking whether climate change caused Hurricane Sandy is flawed in the same way as asking whether smoking caused Bill’s lung cancer. The right thing would be to ask whether, as the world warms, we should expect hurricanes to be more intense. In other words, was Hurricane Sandy consistent with what climate models are suggesting and consistent with what we should expect in future? Are our current actions increasing the probability of more such disasters?

What inclines us to ask the flawed question in the first place, and seek a linear explanation for the behaviour of a complex system? I think there are at least three possible answers: a) we are dumber than we think; b) we are deliberately trying to mislead; c) there is something about our language structure and worldview itself that inclines us to seek linear explanations.

Most likely, I suspect, it’s a combination of these three and more. The latter is a fascinating subject that I explored in depth in my PhD thesis. But of these three factors, I think it’s the least significant and I’m not going to use it to get us off the hook. And I’m willing to admit that we’re capable of being pretty dumb. More particularly, our education does not always prepare us well for critical analysis and systems thinking. But to be honest, I’m beginning to think that b) has the most to blame. In other words, I believe the questioner is often out to mislead and is fully aware of the difficulty in providing a straight answer. It is thus a good way to propagate doubt and confusion, if that is what one wishes to do.

There will come a time, no doubt, when we experience storms whose probability would have been so low under earlier climactic conditions that we’ll be far more comfortable in saying this event was caused by climate change. But to wait until then before taking more decisive mitigation action would be absurd. Extreme weather affects everyone. But it’s impact are always worse for those who are poor, less able to adapt and, ironically, usually least responsible for the emissions that are driving the changes.

If we would begin with the right questions, we might just waste less time arguing and spend more time fixing the problem.