Note: Next week, this site will start a short series on the state of climate politics in Australia, with some emphasis on the future of the community activist and non-for-profit sectors. In part, it will be a follow-up to the
Bright-siding series, plus also sober assessment of our present circumstances, how we got here and a few thoughts on what to do. But there is no better place that this piece by the US environmentalist
Ken Ward, first published in 2008. It remains fresh for our circumstances today which, if anything, have deteriorated in the last four years. This could be Australia today:
Why so? Because we think that if we hit upon just the right formula –
the perfect blend of incentives, quasi-free markets trappings, tax
breaks and so on – we can accomplish the political equivalent of
changing lead into gold, and pass effective climate legislation without
major opposition. But political power is immutable and we are not alchemists. Policy – a plan of governmental action – is an outcome of power, not a
means of achieving it. We do not have enough power to win functional
climate policy in the US, and until we do so, there will be no global
climate solution.
