Raising Hell: Issue 71: Dreaming Of A Net Zero Lee Kuan Yew
"Repression, sir, is a habit that grows. I am told it is like making love -- it is always easier the second time! - Lee Kuan Yew, Prime Minister of Singapore and dictator, 4 October 1956
It was day two of the Australian gas industry’s annual conference when talk started to get vaguely seditious. On 22 March 2023 — a day after the IPCC had released its final synthesis report expressly linking fossil fuel consumption to climate change — the leading lights of the industry had gathered in the Sheraton hotel in Sydney to discuss the issues facing their business.
Over the previous 24 hours, the tone had been mixed. There had been off-hand comments about the industry going to war with the federal government to stop its intervention on gas prices and mutterings about going on strike by withholding investment from the east coast gas market. They talked about the need for “better messaging” on the importance of gas and its centrality to Australian life — and disclosed their fear the Albanese government was going to kill them off for good.
For the most part, couldn’t understand why no one would just let them drill, baby, drill. Their biggest fear was “permanent demand destruction” — the notion people might seek alternatives to gas if prices was too high. They warned a gas supply shortfall approaching, if not in 2024 then sometime before 2027, as existing wells dried up and no new projects came online. The Australian government needed to let them frack and drill and extract whatever they could get, from wherever they could get it. Net zero, according to the logic of this crowd of suits, was insane.
But it was mid-way through day two when. during a panel with the unwieldy title, “How can government policy re-invigorate exploration and encourage investors and new players to embark on new projects?”, investment banker David Carland and Australian Pipeline and Gas Association CEO Steve Davies flirted with the fantasy of a “benign dictator” coming to power to sort out the country’s energy industry for the benefit of fossil fuel producers.
It began with a dull conversation about the division of powers between state and federal governments that keep any central authority from overturning policies like the Victorian moratorium on fracking. Davies, to his credit, tried to steer the conversation away from the more authoritarian impulse by suggesting dialogue was critical:
“You know, if we were redesigning Australia from here, maybe we wouldn’t have a federation of states. But we do, and you how know how do we find the next wave of solutions? It’s going to be by working together rather than each state fending for itself.”
It was this line, however, Carland seized upon. After laying out some of the costs he considered to be associated with any move to net zero, he then seemed to suggested Australia needed a “benign dictator” to “clean all this out” — a kind of business-friendly, Net Zero Lee Kuan Yew to step in and protest their interests:
There seems to be, your comment might be right Steven, like a benign dictator here. Come in and clear all this out and say this is why we want to do it and this is how we best do it, for the whole of Australia, having in mind our emission targets, having in mind our costs, having in mind all the elements here and make a decision.
Carland might say he was speaking only in hypotheticals, and he probably was It’s also worth noting, however, that Carland himself has never been the biggest support of action on climate change. Back in 2018 Carland was acknowledged for his “considerable assistance” in a report from the Institute of Public Affairs titled, “Why Australia must withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement.”
Overall it was a telling moment. For an industry in the doldrums in this historical moment, the best they have is loose fantasies about authoritarian rule. Of course, in case anyone was feeling too sympathetic to the oil and gas guys, it’s worth remembering how the industry ran a three-decade campaign to stall action on climate change. Up until now, they have been determined to do sweet fuck all.
It’s almost become a cliche, but one worth repeating: Exxon knew. Back in the ‘60s the American oil company had tried to build itself a privately-owned version of the CSIRO which included an entire research group devoted to climatology. The researchers working there were good, so good they “skillfully” predicted what would happen as levels of CO2 in the atmosphere if humanity kept burning fossil fuels. Armed with this information, the public relations arm of the multi-national oil company put out a brief on 8 March 1988 where it explicitly said it would lie about what it knew. That document is available online after it was dug-up in an investigation by the LA Times. In it, Exxon spokesperson Joseph M Carlson began with three dot points by way of background:
The Greenhouse effect may be one of the most significant environmental issues for the 1990s.
Gases that favour absorption of infrared (IR) radiation: Carbon dioxide, water vaper, methane, nitrous oxide, chloro-fluorocarbons and halogens.
The principal Greenhouse gas are by-products of fossil fuel combustion.
Later in that document Carlson laid out the “The Exxon Position” on climate change by describing how the company would, “emphasize the uncertainty in scientific conclusions regarding the potential enhanced Greenhouse effect.”
“Urge a balanced approach,” he advised.
According to the IPCC, the oil and gas industry’s “urges” are likely to get us all killed — and I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that a couple hundred of the best scientists in the world who work for free to pull together these report, and who are far better at math than I will ever be, are to be believed above, say, the government of Saudi Arabia.
How and when Exxon’s early insights into climate change came to Australia is not clear, but what is known is that the local branches of these oil companies and their industry representatives fought like hell to make sure nothing was absolutely done on climate change.
And yet here was the industry, sitting in the Sheraton Hotel’s level two conference room complaining that it was all too hard and all too expensive to do anything to ward off a future of crop failures and rolling climate disasters. It was, you might say, a bit rich. As I sat there watching this absurd spectacle play out, I had to resist the urge to seize the microphone and start asking questions:
“So, guys, can you tell me again what happened to the carbon price? Where are the programs to retrofit homes at a time when interest rates were at zero and money was free? Who were big supporters of Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison from this room? From the earliest attempts to generate and collect emissions data in the early 2000s right through to meaningful policy action now, you people have been opposed every step of the way with their calls for “pragmatism” and “balance”. Now you have run down the clock, the pressure was on, and you can’t understand why the public hates you?”
But I did not, because I am a professional. Instead, I took notes. Lots of notes, so now I can tell you all about it.
Like investigations? Love politics? Walter Marsh, friend of Raising Hell, has a new book about on the early days of Rupert Murdoch through Scribe. Walter delved into the archives to find out when the future media baron broke bad. Pre-order now.
For the Fortnight: March 15 to March 28
Reporting In
Where I recap what I’ve been doing this last fortnight so you know I’m not just using your money to stimulate the local economy …
Talk about mad-March — as I write this, I’ve just landed after the third trip to carry out field work in nearly as many weeks. Between this, I’ve been moving house. The good news is, I have a lot to talk to about…
At the start of March, I was on the ground in Lismore with friend of the newsletter and photographer, Isabella Moore, for the anniversary of the flood that killed five people in the two and twenty people across. A week later I was back in Sydney for Violet CoCo’s appeal hearing at the Downing Centre and then the week after that, I spent three days kicking around the Australian Domestic Gas Outlook, an industry conference held at the Sheraton in Sydney.
This week I’ll be publishing the transcript of a speech given at the conference — it’s tangential to my broader research on the book, but I think gives a pretty good insider look at how some are thinking about the politics of climate change right now.
I’ll also be publishing some photos from Lismore and Violet CoCo’s successful appeal from Isabella Moore — an incredible photographer — who accompanied me on both trips. This will be published for paid Raising Hell subscribers only.
In terms of stories I’ve published in this recent period, it’s just one:
“Climate activist Violet CoCo and protest laws” (The Saturday Paper, 18 March 2023).
In terms of public appearances, I was invited to take part in Adelaide Festival’s Breakfast With Papers event at 7.30 in the goddamn morning on 18 March 2023. The average age of the panel was about 35, and there wasn’t a single social media questions — which was ace.
You Hate To See It
A dyspeptic, snark-ridden and highly ironic round-up of the news from our shared hellscape…
ICE Cold
For years a vigilante group in the UK calling itself TyreExtinguisers has encouraged citizens to take matters in their own hands by deflating the tires of SUVs parked on city streets, but the petrol heads are making a counterattack. Drivers of diesel utes have responded by “ICE-ing” EV charging stations — that is parking their SUVs across charging bays to stop EVs from recharging. The EV v ICE war raises the interesting question about whether drivers of both vehicles should just have it out in a thunder-dome style battle to the death — though it would be a mistake to write off EV drives as nerdy, lovey-dovey types. Tesla Motors Australia's CEO recently plead guilty to two insider trading offences after using super-secret squirrel information to enrich himself and or friends. Kurt Schlosser won’t be going to prison — he just has to give up $28,883.53 in ill-gotten gains — but a few years in the slammer may have made him a real asset in a street brawl.
A World Without Landlords, Can You Imagine?
According to an analysis by Long View, a company that buys and sells properties, three in five Australia landlords only made an average of 6.3% return on investment after tax between 1990 and 2020. These poor, pitiless landlords would have been better off investing in superannuation with all the insurance, mortgages and other costs, making you wonder why they even do it? The Victorian Landlords Association has seized upon this report with a warning that only doom will follow “if there are nil new landlords in ‘23”, but uber-landlord, billionaire Harry Triguboff seems unperturbed. Australia’s fourth-richest man has just crowned Tim Gurner, another Sydney property developer, as “the future.”
Smooch-o-Matic
In a long-distance relationship? Caught in an inconvenient lockdown during a global pandemic and separated from your lover? Well, capitalism has the solution for you, thanks to one plucky Chinese start-up. Behold, the “MUA” or, phonetically speaking, the “Mwa”, a remote kissing machine that emulates the feel of a smooch with your lover, anywhere on the planet. Using motion sensors, the device captures your lovers kiss and transmits the data across the planet — including the sounds made. But there’s more! The device not only warms up to make the experience more “authentic”, but it also spies on you, collecting reams of kissing data that can be downloaded via an app and probably sold off to a third party shilling lip balm. Of course, there are those who have pointed out that despite claims from the inventors, this smooch-o-matic is likely to find a somewhat different application, not unlike the Hitachi Magic Wand.
Failing Upward
Where we recognise and celebrate the true stupidity of the rich, powerful and influential…
Dominic Perrottet has fallen; the man who replaced Gladys Berejiklian, the Premier who was so Catholic the arts industry had to screen who they sent to meetings to ensure they weren’t LBGTQI. Of course, every failson and washed up figure from Australian politics over the last two decades was on deck to lend a hand. Homegrown oligarch Gina Rinehart helped hand out meet pies and flyers in Lane Cove, but you know it did a lick of good. As the results walked in, Sky News went into meltdown as they could not process how their “Go woke, go broke” line of analysis on the election maybe caused the loss to begin with. John Howard was wheeled out, looking like he had one too many whiskey’s, as a reminder for the Coalition it was actually possible to hold power in mainland Australia — and then use that power to join an invasion of Iraq despite mass protests.
And the cruel irony? All of them will still have jobs or generous stipends in the morning.
Good Reads, Good Times
To share the love, here are some of the best or more interesting reads from the last fortnight…
Here’s a fun read about how a budding podcast media empire, aptly named Crooked Media, killed a popular climate podcast.
Before You Go (Go)…
Are you a public sector bureaucrat whose tyrannical boss is behaving badly? Have you recently come into possession of documents showing some rich guy is trying to move their ill-gotten-gains to Curacao? Did you take a low-paying job with an evil corporation registered in Delaware that is burying toxic waste under playgrounds? If your conscience is keeping you up at night, or you’d just plain like to see some wrong-doers cast into the sea, we here at Raising Hell can suggest a course of action: leak! You can securely make contact through Signal — contact me first for how. Alternatively you can send us your hard copies to: PO Box 134, Welland SA 5007
And if you’ve come this far, consider supporting me further by picking up one of my books, leaving a review or by just telling a friend about Raising Hell!
Mind boggling as usual