Oz Political Steel Cage Death Match - John Howard Vs. Peter Garrett - IHT

[hatrack]

Australian Peter Garrett got famous for tunes such as "Beds Are Burning" as lead singer of rock band Midnight Oil. Even Prime Minister John Howard once counted himself among the song's biggest fans. These days, Howard may be wondering if it's his bed that's on fire. Garrett is now the main opposition Labour Party's spokesman on the environment and climate change, and an unrelenting one at that. It's bad news for Howard, whose government has an impressive record on the economy, but a woeful one on the environment.

"The Howard government is again on notice that its position on climate change is untenable," Garrett said in a statement on his Web site last week. "Mr. Howard has been left behind by the global business community and the Australian public." Australia had the highest per-capita level of greenhouse- gas emissions among developed nations in a 2004 report released by the Australia Institute. This month, a senior Treasury official, David Parker, admitted Australia hasn't done a detailed assessment of the economic effects of climate change.

Officials in Canberra had better get on that. Howard is up for reelection this year and Australia's long-running drought is focusing attention on the environment as rarely before. The visit to Sidney of the U.S. vice president, Dick Cheney, last week served to remind voters that Howard was in lock-step with the Bush administration in not ratifying the Kyoto Protocol, which sets mandatory targets to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.

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Yet the environment will say more about Australia's economic future, and Garrett is turning up the heat. Howard already has been forced to backtrack on a recent comment that the jury is still out on the connection between emissions and climate change. It had him sounding like a member of the Bush White House. A move to ban incandescent light bulbs by 2010 announced last week by Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull is a baby step that's more about politics than a sea- change in policy. Howard, it's worth noting, has dismissed Al Gore's Oscar- nominated documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," as entertainment. Turnbull said this month that the Labour Party was trying to frighten the Australian people "with threats of a massive Al Gore-style, 'Day After Tomorrow' inundation" of climate-change risks. Howard is realizing such positions are lowering his support rate.

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http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/25/bloomberg/sxpesek.php