From Trump’s Australia (Bruce Wolpe, 2023) pp87-91
Trump made no secret of his deregulatory agenda: cripple Obama’s green energy ambitions and transform the United States from a net energy importer to a global energy superpower.
The Trump administration did not hold back in implementing its new energy vision. It lifted ‘burdensome’ environmental and other restrictions on the domestic energy sector. This included the rollback of about seventy environmental regulations, including the Obama-era Clean Power Plan. Permissions were granted to construct new oil pipeline infrastructure (the Dakota Access Pipeline, the Keystone XL Pipeline and the New Burgos Pipeline). Trump promoted American energy exports in foreign markets, and tightened sanctions against large energy-producing countries such as Iran and Venezuela. Trump appointed cabinet members who shared his ambitions and vision, including Rex Tillerson, a former Exxon Mobil chief executive, who was secretary of state; and Rick Perry, former Republican governor of oil- and gas-rich Texas, who served as secretary of energy.
Trump’s war on climate policies was wide-ranging. Over one hundred rules were adopted to eliminate or neuter regulations on air and water pollution, drilling, toxic substances, wildlife and species protection, and wetlands. Trump officials conceded nothing about their scorched-earth approach to protecting the environment. Days before the end of his presidency, an Environmental Protection Agency spokeswoman said, ‘We have fulfilled President Trump’s promises to provide certainty for states, tribes, and local governments [while] delivering on President Trump’s commitment to return the agency to its core mission: Providing cleaner air, water and land to the American people.’
Climate denial was convenient. It enabled Trump to turn a blind eye to the environmental costs of his sought-after shale revolution—to open up as much fracking as possible to expand gas supplies-and his goal of reopening coalmines. Trump’s regression of climate action enabled Australia to similarly take a back seat in terms of the urgency with which it looked to transition its own economy from heavy-emitting energy sources to greener alternatives.
To be certain, Australia had gone through the climate wars for several years before Trump won the 2016 election. In 2009, the Greens entered into an unholy alliance with the Liberal Party under Tony Abbott to defeat Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s landmark carbon pollution reduction scheme, which would have established a carbon trading system. In 2011, Prime Minister Julia Gillard enacted one of the most far-reaching programs to establish a price on carbon to drive reduction in carbon emissions. Tony Abbott’s highest objective on winning government in 2013 was to repeal Gillard’s law, and he succeeded. In the ensuing decade, the Liberal-Nationals coalition was locked in an endless battle with Labor on carbon reduction targets and the means necessary to meet them.
The bitter debate in Australia over global warming, and energy and climate— which over a decade would come to destroy the prime ministerships of two Labor and three Liberal leaders—was fully entrenched by the time Trump became president. For years, the Murdoch media was deeply invested in the political debate on these issues, attacking’ Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s election pledge to combat climate change as the ‘moral challenge of our time and Julia Gillard’s prime ministership, when she was lacerated for her carbon tax’ policies. These media campaigns fed a hyper-political atmosphere on energy and climate issues, leaving in its wake a lost decade’s on addressing climate change.
Trump’s utter hostility to climate change goals and programs had an echo-chamber effect in Australia. Objections to coal and fossil fuel emitting industries were seen as a ‘war on coal’ and a ‘war on jobs. The president’s relentless prosecution of pro-carbon energy resources-oil, gas, shale, coal— encouraged Australia’s debate on climate change to become ever less susceptible to compromise.
Throughout the Trump presidency, which coincided with the Turnbull and Morrison Governments, Australia refused to give up on coal. Scott Morrison, then Treasurer, brought a lump of coal into Parliament. ‘This is coal. Don’t be afraid. Don’t be scared, he said to all the MPs. Morrison’s message: coal would keep the lights on. Government policy provided support for new coalmines and billions in tax subsidies. Instead of phasing out coal, Australia was committed to digging for more. Coal remained the country’s second biggest export.
During Morrison’s visit to Washington in September 2019, Trump had high praise in the Oval Office for Australia and its commitment to coal: ‘Australia has really been so focused on the economy. They do minerals. They have incredible wealth in minerals and coal and other things. And they are really at the leading edge of coal technology. It’s clean coal. We call it “clean coal,” but it’s also great for the workers. And things that would happen to-because it was very dangerous years ago, and very bad for a lot of people. And you’ve rectified that 100 per cent. It’s incredible. I looked at your statistics the other day and coalminers are very, very safe in Australia. A month before meeting Trump in Washington, Morrison refused to join a Pacific Islands Forum communiqué highlighting climate change and coal-even though climate change and rising seas are threatening several Pacific Island nations and their livelihood, and these nations view Australia’s reliance on coal with intense alarm.
Leading into the 2020 presidential election there was a sense in the United States, and in countries committed to action on global warming, that a second Trump term would make any climate action or efforts to mitigate emissions an impossibility. Trump enabled climate deniers to have space in Australia’s national debate on global warming, continuing the decade-long trend of slowing down and politicising strategies to reduce climate change.
It changed the conversation from prioritising action to prioritising debate on the cost of action. For Australia, Trump provided a buffer for its lagging efforts to face up to carbon reduction targets, The Morrison Government was shielded to a degree from international accountability for Australia’s relative lack of restrictions on coal emissions. The Pacific Island nations were despondent, but Morrison had a climate mate in the White House and there was no pressure on a heavy-polluting nation such as Australia to act.
It was only when Joe Biden took office in 2021 that the Morrison Government shifted its position in the runup to the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) at Glasgow. Under intense pressure from the White House, Morrison finally committed to Australia adopting net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. But he did not outline any improvement on the interim 2030 targets of 26 to 28 per cent reduction, nor was any pledge made to phase out coal-fired power.
The bushfires and floods that ravaged Australia from 2019 through 2022 transformed public opinion on climate change. There was a new politico-climate syllogism: climate change = weather catastrophes = drought and fires or deluges and floods = economic hardship and destruction of our way of life.
Morrison paid the highest price for his equivocation on these issues in the 2022 election as blue-ribbon Liberal seats were lost to ‘Teal’ candidates who championed much stronger action on climate, cleaning up government corruption and securing real progress on women’s equity in the workplace. The Australian people, and growing sectors of the business and investment communities, were way ahead of the Liberal-National Government on climate.
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