Resetting the Political Moral Compass on Climate Change

                                 - Thea Ormerod, president of the Australian Religious Response to Climate Change.

We are at a critical point in human history, and the major political parties are having difficulty keeping up.

Thea Ormerod.

Global warming is seriously beginning to bite; at the same time, we are witnessing market shifts towards low carbon technologies and an explosion of civil society activity aimed at saving the climate.

In increasingly large numbers, people of faith are joining the effort and are calling on our political representatives to change the direction our country is headed.

The latest polling results show that global warming is no longer just a theory for many Australians, and they are prepared to change their vote accordingly.

The unseasonably warm weather is a regular topic of conversation, for good reason. We've had month after month of heat records being broken with April scoring the largest margin. Hundreds of Australians have lost their homes because of bushfires, floods and storms. The Great Barrier Reef is seriously affected by bleaching, with much of the northern part of the Reef predicted to die.

Record temperatures in India and Thailand do not escape our attention either, nor the severe drought in east Africa or catastrophic wildfires in Canada. The cyclone that hit Fiji in February was the most intense storm ever to make landfall, and the melting of Arctic sea ice is accelerating.

The climate system is going through an El Nino event, but global warming is making it more severe.

The term "climate emergency" is being used by some people. The head of disaster planning at the U.N. has spoken of "inconceivably bad" consequences. He spoke of "cascading crises where one event triggers another event, which triggers another event." Syria is an example. Years of drought - the worst for 900 years - led to a massive migration and became a factor in starting the civil war. Climate change adds to other issues, be they religious or social, thus greatly exacerbating the consequences.

Realigning the moral compass

The natural limits of the earth's physical capacity to absorb greenhouse gases are being disrespected, but the consequences are falling unevenly. The central concern of people of faith in this is that the impact of climate disruption fall heavily on vulnerable people who have not created the problem, while those who have created it are evading responsibility. It is also a question of intergenerational justice, as our children and grandchildren will pay the price for the action, or inaction, of our generation today.

Regrettably, the collective preoccupation of those who have the power to act is to minimise any economic disadvantage to themselves, rather than the common good. The moral compass is thus set in the wrong direction.

Prominent leaders in major faiths have long made their moral positions on these issues clear. Before the Paris climate negotiations, statements were released one after the other by faith leaders and leadership bodies. Pope Francis's encyclical Laudato Si' was the best publicized, but there were numerous others - all calling for much bolder leadership from politicians.

All of the statements accept the scientific consensus that global warming is real and that it is largely human-induced. They encourage acknowledgement of our dependence of the integrity of creation, personal responsibility in caring for the environment and an ethic of collaboration for the common good among those in public office. Specifically, they urge a rapid transition away from fossil fuels in favour of energy generation from renewable sources.

The Federation of Australian Buddhist Councils wrote:

"Instead of increased coal production we encourage the Australian government to actively pursue the development of renewable energy technologies and help developing countries toward the same end. In the face of overwhelming scientific consensus, urgent action is needed ..."

The international Islamic Declaration on Climate Change, among other things, called on wealthy countries to lead the way in phasing out their greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible and limiting warming to, preferably, 1.5 degrees. It noted that this would mean keeping two-thirds of the earth's proven fossil fuel reserves in the ground.

The Rabbinic letter on climate change signed by over 400 Rabbis in the United States lamented the damage done directly to local eco-systems and communities by coal and coal seam gas mining, as well as damage done to the climate system. The letter urges the removal of subsidies to fossil fuel companies and instead the "swift deployment of renewable energy" at emergency speed.

Pope Francis's encyclical echoes these messages, but the pontiff goes further by naming the corruption of political processes which has stymied progress. In paragraph 54 he wrote:

"The failure of global summits on the environment make it plain that our politics are subject to technology and finance. There are too many special interests, and economic interests easily end up trumping the common good and manipulating information so that their own plans will not be affected."

Australia's lack of action

Naomi Klein, who was recently awarded the Sydney Peace Prize, has decried Australia's political inaction: "A great many people know in their hearts that now is the time for bold action. Yet political leadership is still lacking - and nowhere more so than in Australia."

Klein is not alone. The 2016 Environmental Performance Index, released every two years by Yale University, ranked Australia as 150th out of 169 countries for its trend in carbon emissions from electricity generation. Among wealthy nations, only Saudi Arabia had a lower ranking than Australia for the decade to 2012.

Commensurately, global warming is getting nowhere near the prominence it deserves in the election debate. It barely rates a mention from the Turnbull Government.

A mystifying number of politicians, many of whom claim to be religious believers, don't even accept the scientific consensus around anthropogenic global warming. This is nothing short of morally irresponsible. It is also entirely out of step with the public positions that nearly all leaders and leadership bodies of the major faiths in Australia have taken over the last several decades.

While Labor's policies on renewable energy targets are much more ambitious than those of the Coalition, Labor is equally inclined to maintain massive subsidies and other forms of assistance to fossil fuel companies. Neither of the major parties plan to wind back coal, gas and oil mining.

We know why. The major political parties receive large donations from fossil fuel companies. 350.org Australia has worked out that around $3.7 million dollars made its way into the coffers of the Labor, Liberal and National Parties since the last election. This kind of money clearly sets the moral compass spinning.

The Australia Institute and others have also shown that executives of fossil fuel companies in Australia have ready access to government representatives, and a "revolving lobby door" exists by which politicians and senior civil servants move into roles with fossil fuel firms or lobby companies, and sometimes move back again.

In the decade to 2014, the fossil fuel industry in our own country spent $484 million on major lobbying bodies such as the Minerals Council of Australia and Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association (APPEA). This figure does not include money paid to third party lobbyists. Think what this kind of money is doing to distort the viewpoints not only of politicians, but media and the general community.

According to Lock the Gate, Australia now has 53% of its land under coal, oil or gas exploration licenses. Defying all reason, the Labor, Liberal and National Parties favour the opening up of new mines. Most disturbing is the political support given to the development in the Galilee basin, which would be like setting off a world-wide "carbon bomb" to destroy our future.

Consistent with this lack of ethical judgement, Australia's pledged contribution to the U.N. Green Climate Fund for developing countries is merely $1 billion over a five-year period. This is not new money, but money that would be taken out of an already-diminished Overseas Aid budget. Oxfam and academics at the Australian National University have calculated that our fair share internationally, given our relative wealth, would be in the order of billions per annum. To be truly fair, it would need to be additional to existing overseas aid.

Australia's reluctance to do our fair share of cutting emissions and of contributing to the Green Climate Fund functions as a brake on international action - just when action needs to be accelerated. A concerted push to end the fossil fuel era is needed. That will require a dramatic change of attitude and practices.

Implications for the election

We are now in a race for survival. On one side there are climate scientists, civil society, innovators in low carbon technologies and conscientious investors. These are working for a transformation of our economies and societies in order to protect the ecological systems on which life depends. A rightly-aligned moral compass is needed so a new course can be set.

On the other side is "business as usual." Sheer inertia is part of this, but fossil fuel industries have also been hell-bent on fortifying resistance to change in an effort to protect the ongoing viability of their business model. Many millions annually have gone into funding climate denialism and nurturing the political support necessary to protect these industries' short-term interests.

The Australian Religious Response to Climate Change calls on voters to back one side of this race. Our highest priority at the coming election must be protection of the earth's systems that sustain life as we know it. We can no longer postpone action.

Australia needs to transition the economy away from its addiction to fossil fuels to one which is broadly based, innovative and sustainable. We need to declare a moratorium on any new coal, oil or gas mining developments or expansions, and put an end to public assistance to fossil fuel industries.

We need to commit to both public funding and incentives to rapidly transition to renewable energy. As well as meeting our environmental responsibilities, it would also contribute to a stronger economy post the mining boom. Renewables are now cheaper that fossil fuels and, investment dollar for investment dollar, they create many more jobs.

We need restructuring plans to ensure mining communities are not left behind as Australia transitions towards a low carbon economy.

Finally, Australia should restore trust internationally by contributing new money, not money from the overseas aid budget, to Climate Finance for developing countries. Ours is a relatively wealthy nation so we have the capacity. We should also take a compassionate and fair approach to those made homeless through climate change.

God has a season for everything - springtime and autumn, planting and harvesting. Humanity is altering the basic structures of the world, causing untold pain to its creatures and towards humanity itself. A young Aboriginal man from the Northern Territory captured this well recently when he told a meeting of Indigenous people:

"We've got a calendar that never been changed in 60,000 years. You can predict everything off this calendar. It tells you when the dugongs are fat, when the turtle are fat, when to go look for magpie geese. It was all perfectly done so that we could survive off our land. But now we have to freestyle it."

Leaders of the various faith traditions are speaking with one voice: our society must change course. It makes no economic, ethical or ecological sense to continue to our addiction to polluting fossil fuels when alternative energy sources are available.