Pragmatics v Fanatics

One side has a policy with a strategy, the other has empty rhetoric that could only appeal to overeducated elitists. No prize for guessing which side the electorate is on. By Nick Cater.

Two years away from the next federal election, the battle lines have been drawn in the contest on climate policy.

The disappointing news for Labor is that the contest will not be between believers and sceptics. Just because the ABC wants to make it into one doesn't mean that it is true. It is a contest between pragmatists and theoreticists. 

On one side there will be a practical response to the risks of climatic variation limited by the available technology and cost.

On the other side there will be a theoretical response with little attention paid to the here and now. It will appeal to a growing constituency of Australians who prefer to see the world in abstract terms and thrive on complexity.

This latter constituency could be loosely described as the intellectuals. A classically trained sociologist might note that they are chiefly university graduates and are found in disproportionate numbers in the larger cities, particularly in the suburbs closest to the core. They are inclined towards public service occupations and the creative industries.

That Labor's zero 2050 target is uncontested and devoid of strategy worries them not a bit. Their eyes are trained upon the glittering prize rather than where to place their feet.

The Labor Party's intellectual wing rose to prominence in the late 1960s under Gough Whitlam, Labor's first federal parliamentary leader equipped with a university degree.

Today the faction of pragmatists has shrunk to a size that allows its members to sit comfortably around a modest restaurant table.

Their rearguard action to keep practical concerns to the fore in deciding climate policy has come to nothing. Their leader's declaration of a zero 2050 greenhouse gas emissions target was a repudiation of everything for which they stood.

Not everybody who went to university falls into this class, but the growth in the proportion of graduates in the population serves as a useful proxy for the rise of theoreticism.

The size of the graduate population has more than doubled in per-capita terms in the 24 years since John Howard became prime minister. It has risen from roughly one in eight adult Australians in 1996 to close to one in three.

The growth is spectacular. Some might call it alarming. But it is still roughly a third of the population at best.

That is why the pragmatists have won every decisive contest when matters have been put to the vote. They will win the contest on climate policy providing the arguments are clear, and do not get muddied by the tendency of pragmatists to lapse into the theoretical when under pressure from the intellectuals.

The polarisation of the climate debate leads some to conclude that the electorate is split into two warring tribes fiercely defending their totems with hatred in their eyes.

The truth is somewhat different. Polling published by the Menzies Research Centre last year showed that the pattern of the responses to climate policy was much like any other political issue. Those with firm views on either side boiled down to less than 30 per cent. A clear majority wanted to reduce emissions providing we don't destroy living standards.

The Coalition must target its policy and hone its language to appeal to this pragmatic centre. It can best be done through practical demonstration, countering the barrage of misinformation that slurs the Coalition's record and intentions.

It must become the party for people whose concern about the variable climate is more than theoretical. These are the people who feel a strong attachment to the land, those who suffer the consequences of droughts, floods and bushfires and want practical action from their government to reduce the risks.

For them the response from government will not be measured in tonnes of carbon dioxide abated, hectares of solar panels or fleets of electric cars. It will be measured in the increased reliance of the landscape and communities, in the drought resistance of the soils, fuel hazard reduction, support for small business, in reconstructed powerlines, embankments and culverts that are less likely to burn down or get washed away than the ones they are replacing.

It will be measured not in the failed theory of wilderness preservation or landscape management that problematises humans. Success for them comes from mustering ingenuity and enterprise to reshape the landscape in ways that improves the chances of survival of wildlife and people.

Success for them will be the restoration of carbon to its rightful place as the element common to all known forms of life. It is an element that can be put to productive use when returned to the ground from which it came. It is a process to which humans have been lending assistance on this continent for thousands of years, getting better at it over time.

Success will be measured in a transition of energy production that recognises nothing can be achieved by destabilising the grid or destroying the world's 14th largest economy.

The angry summer has immersed the federal government much further into land management than our constitutional forefathers intended. It is an opportunity not be wasted.