GWPF Newsletter: After Election Defeat, Labor Premier Now Calls For New Coal Mine

Labor Party Faces Existential Threat 

In this newsletter:

1) After Election Defeat, Labor Premier Now Calls For New Coal Mine
Financial Review, 22 May 2019 
 
2) Labor Faces Existential Threat As Greens Warn Party Over Climate Change Shift 
The Australian, 22 May 2019 

 
3) Australian Election Could Have Global Climate Impact
AFP, 21 May 2019   

4) Why Climate Change Alarm Is A Big Vote Loser
Paul Ormerod, City A.M., 22 May 2019
 
5) EU Elections: Influx Of Populist MEPs Likely To Water Down EU Climate Policy, Experts Warn
The Guardian, 22 May 2019  
 
6) Benny Peiser: Bringing Sound Science To The Climate Debate
The Heartland Institute, 21 May 2019 
 
7) Washington To Punish Builders Of Putin’s Gas Pipeline
The Times, 22 May 2019 

Full details:

1) After Election Defeat, Labor Premier Now Calls For New Coal Mine
Financial Review, 22 May 2019 

Labor’s wipeout in Queensland in the federal election has forced the state’s Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk to clear the way for the approval of Adani’s controversial $2 billion Carmichael coal mine.


Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk at Hay Point coal terminal in Mackay on Wednesday.  

Amid fears her own second-term Labor government could face electoral oblivion by turning its back on blue-collar workers in Central and North Queensland, Ms Palaszczuk has ordered bureaucrats to provide a “definitive timeframe” on approvals for the project by Friday.

“We need some certainty and we need some time frames. Enough is enough,” Ms Palaszczuk said in Mackay on Wednesday.

“I think the federal election was definitely a wake-up call for everyone. I hear that message.”

The declaration by the Queensland Premier clears the way for Adani’s Carmichael project, which has been held up in the courts and approval process for the past 10 years, to be granted final approvals possibly within weeks.

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2) Labor Faces Existential Threat As Greens Warn Party Over Climate Change Shift 
The Australian, 22 May 2019 

The Greens have warned Labor it will face a “brutal” campaign in key inner-city seats if it shifts to the Right on climate change and the Adani mine under a new leader in an effort to reconnect with blue-collar workers.



As Labor contemplates a return to the political centre and a more pro-jobs stance on coalmining after its electoral drubbing in Queensland, Greens deputy leader Adam Bandt flagged a fresh attack on the ALP’s Left flank, including Anthony Albanese’s seat of Grayndler.

“If Labor lurches to the Right under new leadership and back-pedals on climate and Adani, the Greens will mount a fierce inner-city push to represent voters abandoned on the Left,” Mr Bandt said.

Mr Albanese, Labor’s likely next leader, has flagged a push to reconnect with voters in regional Australia, earning the endorsement of senior NSW Right MP Joel Fitzgibbon, who said the party was punished for “fence-sitting” on issues like the Adani coalmine.

Mr Bandt, who received a nearly 6 per cent swing towards him on Saturday in his seat of Melbourne, said inner-city voters would punish Labor if it endorsed the Adani mine and backed away from its environmental pledges, including its vow to slash carbon emissions by 50 per cent....

Labor suffered a 3.76 per cent swing against it in Queensland as it sent mixed messages on the future of Adani under a Shorten government, with LNP MPs Michelle Landry, George Christensen and Ken O’Dowd returned in their mining seats with big swings to them on preferences.

Full story

3) Australian Election Could Have Global Climate Impact
AFP, 21 May 2019 

SYDNEY (AFP) - Brutal droughts, floods and wildfires were expected to make the environment a pivotal issue in Australia's election last Saturday.  Instead, victory for the climate change-sceptic Liberal party could have global implications.

  

Australia's Liberal-National coalition secured a surprise victory despite polls suggesting an opposition Labor Party win.

In coal-rich Queensland, voters swung hard to the government fearing a Labor government would curb mining projects and cost them jobs.

Concerns that Labor would block the creation of the massive Indian-backed Adani coal mine helped voters abandon the party in their droves.

The northeastern district of Herbert had been the most marginal seat at the last election, with only a 0.02 per cent difference between the main parties. This time the Liberals took 58 per cent of the vote.

That result - and others like it - could have ramifications far beyond Australia.

In the emissions stakes, Australia is a minnow compared to China or the United States, the world's top two greenhouse gas polluters.

But its role as the world's largest coal exporter gives the country outsized influence in the climate stakes.

Burning coal is the single largest source of mankind's carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and coal is more polluting than oil and gas.
 

Experts say the coalition government's election victory makes it much more likely that the Adani project will go ahead.

Eventually, they say, billions more tonnes of coal will be available to export and burn in places like India, fuelling global warming and a growing climate crisis.

"It is probable that they will push for the final approvals to go through as quickly as possible," Samantha Hepburn, an energy and resources law expert at Deakin University, told Agence France-Presse.

The Labor-led Queensland state government - which also has a say - is likely to come under enormous pressure to approve the project despite concerns about the environment.

"Adani is the thin edge of the wedge," said Hepburn.
The wider area around Adani - known as the Galilee Basin - is believed to have enough coal to produce up to 600 million tonnes a year, she said.

"Approving Adani will provide a strong precedent for the development of further mines in the area."

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4) Why Climate Change Alarm Is A Big Vote Loser
Paul Ormerod, City A.M., 22 May 2019

Whoever becomes Conservative leader might find it useful to learn from the Australian election.

The Labor opposition had led every major opinion poll for the past two years. But Scott Morrison of the Coalition is still Prime Minister – and it is his Labor opponent who is resigning as leader.

Economists, regardless of their own political views, can take pleasure in this result. It is yet another illustration of the importance of what economics calls revealed preference over stated preference.

The concept of stated preference is the bedrock of the entire polling industry. People are asked to give their views on hypothetical questions. Who will you vote for? Do you prefer Pepsi or Coke?

George Gallup introduced opinion polls in America in the 1930s. His flash of genius was to combine questionnaires with what at the time was the infant science of statistical theory. He used the latter, for example, to work out that a broadly accurate picture of opinion in the whole of the US could be obtained from a sample survey of only a few thousand people.

Since then, polling techniques have become much more sophisticated. Their fundamental problem is not the statistical science, but the fact that their results depend upon stated preference. In contrast, with revealed preference people quite literally reveal their preference by making an actual choice. They vote for the Coalition and not Labor. They buy Pepsi and not Coke.

On social media, people – perhaps unwittingly – reveal a great deal about themselves, their opinions, and their emotions. Analysis based on this data will surely supplant the existing approaches of the polling industry.

This is of course by no means the only close result which opinion polls have failed to call. In our own 2017 election, for example, most polls indicated that Theresa May was heading for a comfortable majority.

But the Australian election is also particularly interesting because of the issues over which it was fought, reflected in the results.

There were big swings against Labor in Queensland, for example. A key issue here is coal mining – in particular, a major new mine proposed by the Adani company.

A secret opinion survey was leaked on 14 May. It claimed to find that in Queensland itself the coal mining industry was “nearing crisis” and had “strong negative perceptions”.

Yet on 18 May, the Queensland electorate swung decisively against Labor, which had made climate change and emissions control a major part of its platform.

Similarly, Labor campaigned on the policy of abolishing franking credits. These may seem esoteric, but the effect was widely understood: pensions would become taxed more heavily. As a result, over-65s voted overwhelmingly against Labor.

No matter how right-on they may seem and how much support they get in polls, many environmentalist policies are not popular in practice. The gilet jaunes movement in France is further testimony to this.
And people reveal a consistent preference for paying less rather than more tax.

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5) EU Elections: Influx Of Populist MEPs Likely To Water Down EU Climate Policy, Experts Warn
The Guardian, 22 May 2019  

An influx of climate-denying far-right MEPs could pose a “toxic” threat to EU climate policy after the European elections, according to senior MEPs and academics.


Matteo Salvini’s rightwing League party voted against almost all key climate proposals in the last EU parliament. Photograph: Claudio Longo/AP

Populist parties are expected to take up to a third of the parliamentary seats in Thursday’s vote, with Matteo Salvini’s League in contention to be the largest single party, and Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) overtaking Emmanuel Macron’s La République En Marche in some polls.

Cooperation among the fractious far-right forces is far from assured, but those at the centre of an alliance Salvini is trying to craft with Le Pen, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Jarosław Kaczyński’s Law and Justice party (PiS) in Poland view climate action as a potential barrier to fossil fuel-led growth.

With key decisions looming on EU emissions targets, fears are growing that rightwingers could block or water down EU climate action.

Alexander Carius, the director of the Berlin-based Adelphi Institute thinktank, said: “Climate policy is going to be the new battleground between the democratic centre and rightwing populists attacking institutions and questioning the scientific foundation of decision-making. The challenge for democratic parties will be to find an answer to that.”

The UK Labour party’s environment spokesman in the EU parliament, Seb Dance, said: “They [populists] will seek to be disruptors and saboteurs. If they return in sufficient numbers, my fear is that they will act as a magnet moving the political centre to the right.”

A strong populist vote could also “lead to nasty nominations from member states for European commission posts”, he added. “That combination could be quite toxic.”

A bigger number of populist MEPs would win greater visibility and access to resources. They would also have more leverage in battles to select commission officials, committee members, rapporteurs and legislative amendments.

“The tone in discussions is going to change,” Carius warned. “EU climate policy and debate on the level of ambition in the next European parliament will be significantly lowered.”

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6) Benny Peiser: Bringing Sound Science To The Climate Debate
The Heartland Institute, 21 May 2019 

Benny Peiser, director of the UK’s Global Warming Policy Forum, says climate researchers are acting like autocrats, suppressing dissent and enforcing majoritarian conformity to the detriment of science and sound policy.



At its current rate, climate change does not threaten human society or the environment. Extreme weather events have not gotten worse; contrary to the claims of leading climate researchers wedded to the idea that humans are causing catastrophic climate change. They are acting like inquisitors of old, punishing dissenters or climate skeptics, and enforcing doctrinaire majoritarian conformity to the detriment of good scientific practice and sound public policy. In truth, none of the attempts to fight modest warming thus far have had any effect.

Full interview

7) Washington To Punish Builders Of Putin’s Gas Pipeline
The Times, 22 May 2019 

The US is drawing up a list of sanctions to punish the German and Russian companies involved in building an undersea gas pipeline beneath the Baltic that Washington characterises as a geopolitical tool of the Kremlin.

Most of Germany’s allies, including Britain, France and Poland, oppose the €11 billion Nord Stream 2 project because they fear it will increase Europe’s dependence on Russian energy and starve Ukraine of the funds it derives from its own pipeline.

The scheme will add two extra conduits to an existing pair that run some 750 miles from Vyborg, on the west coast of Russia, to Greifswald in Germany, doubling their capacity.

Gazprom, the Russian gas company, upped the stakes this week by raising the prospect of laying a third set of pipelines along a similar route.

The US, which hopes to increase its own natural gas sales to Europe, has been ratcheting up the pressure on Berlin since President Trump claimed last year that Nord Stream 2 would make Germany a “captive of Russia”.

Over recent months American senators and diplomats have brandished the threat of sanctions against some of the businesses involved, including European energy companies such as Shell, Wintershall and Engie.

Yesterday Rick Perry, Mr Trump’s energy secretary, issued the first official confirmation that the president would approve the measures in the “not too distant future”.

“The opposition to Nord Stream 2 is still very much alive and well in the United States,” Mr Perry, 69, said on a visit to Kiev. “The United States senate is going to pass a bill, the House [of Representatives] is going to approve it, and it’s going to go to the president and he’s going to sign it. That is going to put sanctions on Nord Stream 2.”

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The London-based Global Warming Policy Forum is a world leading think tank on global warming policy issues. The GWPF newsletter is prepared by Director Dr Benny Peiser - for more information, please visit the website at www.thegwpf.com.