There are few national leaders in the world who had more at stake in Copenhagen last week than Kevin Rudd. He and his government managed to manoeuvre themselves into having the most to lose if things didn’t pan out – apart from the government of Denmark.
And pan out is what Copenhagen did not do. The Chinese delegation went home elated, popping champagne in the Peoples’ 747, while a bedraggled Kevin Rudd and Penny Wong would have sat miserably with their seat belts firmly buckled, glum-faced and barely speaking, thinking about having to face a euphoric Tony Abbott.
It seems only yesterday that Climate Change Minister Penny Wong emerged from negotiating with Opposition Energy spokesman Ian Macfarlane declaring “peace in our time”, with predictions of a rapid passage of the CPRS legislation and, at last, certainty for businesses.
Since then, Macfarlane and his boss Malcolm Turnbull have been turfed out in a coup by the anti-appeasers, and the carnival in Copenhagen that was supposed to support the emergence of emissions trading schemes everywhere turned into a circus instead.
We will never know whether that conference would have produced a better result had it been better organised, but it wasn’t, and it didn’t – although it’s probably reasonable to assume China would have blocked a binding agreement no matter how well organised it was.
These sort of multilateral summit meetings never produce concrete results themselves: the work is always supposed to be done in private and the leaders simply show up to sign the communiqué and do a photo op.
It’s clear that the Danish government thought that’s what was going to happen this time too: that there wouldn’t have to be actual negotiations in Copenhagen, just ratification followed by drinking, so they didn’t organise anything.
Meanwhile, the Chinese delegation descended on this mess with a clear agenda that they pursued with ruthless efficiency.
The result is a humiliating spin-fest. The leaders arrived on Friday to chaos and everyone had to solemnly agree to things that had already been agreed and pretend it was new.
Kevin Rudd now has two choices: go early with a double dissolution election and campaign on his economic record to win a second term and then force the CPRS through a joint sitting of parliament, or wait until after the next climate change conference in Mexico and hope it comes up with something that supports his proposed emissions trading scheme.
The next federal election could be held any time up to April 16, 2011, which means it could come after the next UN Framework Convention on Climate Change conference of the parties (COP16) in December 2010.
When Mexican President, Felipe Calderon, showed up in Copenhagen last week, he took one look at the chaos around him and suggested that his meeting will be rather better organised, but whether that is likely to mean a better result will probably be up to China and whether it fears the isolationism that would come with inaction on climate change.
Nothing in its behaviour on human rights or exchange rate policy up to this point suggests that it would.??So unless there is a quick double dissolution election in the next few months, there will be no emissions trading in Australia next year and Australia’s coal and electricity industries can get back to business as usual – except for the protesters chaining themselves to the trains of course.
This article first appeared on Business Spectator.
James was the editor and publisher of SmartCompany and LeadingCompany for five years. He is now the Australian Financial Review‘s companies & markets editor, and a former BRW editor.
