It’s the environment, stupid

No matter how much The Australian may try to spin the palace coup against Kevin Rudd as arising from his mishandling of a proposed tax on mines, the big swing against Labor in the polls has consistently been towards the Greens.

I’m not sure in what universe The Australian lives, but in this one, people do not desert a ruling party for the Greens out of empathy with embattled miners, at risk of losing some of their massive profits to the public purse.

In 1992, Bill Clinton’s campaign strategist James Carville hung a sign in his campaign headquarters:

The economy, stupid

Given that Labor campaigned in the 2007 election on taking climate change seriously and has achieved almost nothing, with an emissions trading scheme proposal weaker than the Howard administration’s, that has gone on the back burner, maybe they need a reminder:

The environment, stupid

The clean energy imperative

I’m increasingly convinced that the reason for so much opposition to climate change science is not because of some flaw in the science but because there’s fear of the collapse of industrial society if we stop using fossil fuels. This is not an irrational fear but it leads to irrational behaviour like attacking scientists personally, and pay good money to attend vaudeville shows where deniers reassure audiences with rubbish.

The best response is to study clean energy alternatives.

I recently gave a talk at a Transition Towns meeting in Kenmore, Qld. I’ve published a PDF of the slides at scribd, and will add commentary here as time permits. Meanwhile the Kenmore TT people have posted a TED talk on how to roll out the electric car. Interesting.