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No coal miner left behind has emerged as the reality of the Rudd government of Australia’s once acclaimed position on the environment. 

Australia, one of the world’s largest emitters of carbon per head due to its reliance on dirty coal-fired power stations, was poised to change tack after the landslide victory of the Labor Party in November 2007.

In his election platform, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd promoted climate change as his “top priority,” and the almost immediate ratification of the Kyoto Treaty by the Australian government—the last country apart from the US to do so—thrust Rudd into a global leadership position on climate change.

A year is a long time in politics. Back in late 2007, global economic recession was the last thing on everyone’s mind, and companies were falling all over themselves to “go green.” But when finally unveiled in December of last year, the government’s paltry five percent 2020 emissions reduction target was seen as nothing short of breathtakingly insipid by many voters and, of course, environmentalists. The government even had the gall to water down its own advisors’ recommendations of a ten percent reduction by 2020—itself conservative in light of what many other governments are doing.

The upshot of Australia meekly dipping its toe into the climate change policy arena is that things are right back to where they were under the previous—green-skeptical—conservative government of John Howard. At election time, when expectations of change were high, The Financial Times heralded the Australian poll as likely the first to be decided by the electorates’ views on green. But now Labor supporters (and even those from the other side who understand the implications of climate change) are simply seeing red. Adding to their anger is a further bailout of the hugely inefficient local car industry and more money being thrown at dubious “clean coal” initiatives to ensure Rudd’s foes cannot accuse him of being soft on jobs. Greenpeace Australia commented on the climate change U-turn by saying “That’s not a target, it’s a betrayal.” It accused Rudd of giving in to “the bullying tactics of the coal and other polluting industries.” It states: “This five percent condemns us to losing the Murray-Darling River, the Great Barrier Reef and Kakadu National Park”—Australia’s iconic environmental wonders.

The Rudd government’s decision has fueled a spate of stories in the Australian media echoing those in the United States that commitment to green has waned with the economic slowdown. However, the “jobs or green” tradeoff is both simplistic and incorrect. It ignores growing signs that social responsibility from the corporate and government sectors is now a key element of the brand promise and no longer an option. Edelman’s Goodpurpose division revealed a survey across ten countries that 68% of consumers would remain loyal to a brand, even during a recession, if it supported a good cause. It also ignores the possibility, even likelihood, that moving to a green economy could potentially be part of the new “New Deal” that we’re going to need to haul us out of what’s going to be a long and deep global economic slump.

But the Rudd government may not be let off the hook after all. Jim Thompson, a Visiting Fellow in the School of Resources, Environment and Society at the Australian National University, writing in The Canberra Times, raises the possibility of voter backlash from an electorate not as ready to compromise as their political leaders:

“Optimists may prefer to see this as a temporary measure: a government playing necessary short-term politics around a committed underlying agenda on climate. Time will tell: the longer the government stays with its derisive emission reductions target, the more people will begin to discern the difference between what they thought they were going to get as an effective climate change abatement response from this government, and what it is attempting to sell them…

“Imagine that, quite apart from any public protest that develops, just twenty per cent of people who voted Labor in 2007 take the climate issue so seriously that they pledge themselves not to vote for the Rudd government again, unless its climate policy reverts to what they voted for.”

The desertion of such a large number of core voters at the next election could potentially have disastrous effects for the Labor Party’s showing, possibly even throwing it out of government.

Voter reaction to being let down is still to be determined, but for some there’s no going back. In Iceland, riot police were called out as huge crowds protested the incompetence of an administration that has led to the tiny nation’s economic ruin. But in the land of Björk, they proved eco-conscious till the end. Instead of pelting government buildings with paint in protest they hurled yogurt. Politicians everywhere should weigh that up.