(continued)

Even during the dying days of the 2009 Turnbull era, #Coalition #ClimatePolicy extended as far as tepid support for the deeply flawed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme introduced by #KevinRudd and his #ALP government.

Rudd's #CPRS had a 2050 emissions target of a measly 60% reduction from 2005 levels, had no mechanism for increasing ambition, grandfathered in a generous gift of pollution certificates to the worst polluters, and did nothing about Australia's massive and rapidly growing #DirtyEnergy exports (Australia's worst climate crime, dwarfing domestic emissions—a grand atrocity yet to be addressed in earnest by either side of the duopoly).

But the CPRS was nonetheless a climate policy with mechanisms that might have actually reduced Australia's domestic emissions over time, something the Coalition have never embraced in the almost-sixteen years since then.

Dropping the #NetZero2050 fig leaf is on brand.

(NB Once Abbott rolled Turnbull, PM Rudd could have easily passed his signature legislation if he had been at all willing to negotiate with the Greens under #BobBrown, who would have voted for the CPRS as literally better-than-nothing, with just one or two small tweaks—tweaks later conceded by #JuliaGillard in minority government. But Rudd wouldn't even talk to Brown.)

The Giants
Octogenarian Bob Brown, environmentalist, doctor and former politician, stands on the stump of a #Eucalyptus regnans, in the southern forests of #Lutruwita/#Tasmania. Known variously as mountain ash, giant ash or swamp gum, eucalyptus regnans is the tallest flowering plant in the world. “If this can’t be saved from the jaws of industrial development in the second quarter of wealthy 21st century #Australia, what can?”
Photograph: Matthew Newton

#photography
#portraits
#BobBrown