Page 127 - Carbon Capitalism and Communication Confronting Climate Crisis

116 D. McKNIGHT AND M. HOBBS

Thus market forces limit carbon emissions by providing a cost disincentive
for the use of fossil fuels. However, the Rudd government was forced to
abandon the CPRS before it could be introduced, after the coal industry
developed an under-the-radar public relations campaign in regional areas
that influenced community sentiments and emboldened climate change
‘sceptics’ within the parliamentary Opposition.
Shortly after, in 2011–2012, the coal industry fought the introduction
of a ‘carbon tax’ by Rudd’s successor as Prime Minister, Julia Gillard. This
carbon-pricing scheme required most businesses that emit over 25,000
tonnes per year of greenhouse gases to purchase permits, called carbon
units, from the government. The carbon tax was successfully introduced as
the Clean Energy Act 2011, with the Gillard government intending that it
be replaced by an emission trading scheme (ETS) in 2014–2015, where the
available permits will be limited in line with a pollution cap. However, like
the Rudd government’s ETS, this policy also became the centrepiece of a
political attack on the Gillard government and was instrumental in its
defeat in 2013 by an opposition leader, Tony Abbott, who argued that
“coal is good for humanity” (McCarthy 2014).
In this chapter we examine the public relations strategies and tactics
used by the coal industry to defeat legislation intended to reduce
Australia’s contribution to anthropogenic climate change, especially those
policies implemented by the Rudd and Gillard Labor governments (2007–
2013). The case studies explored below demonstrate the significant power
of the coal industry to shape its operational environment in resource rich
countries.

USING PUBLIC RELATIONS TO MAINTAIN THE STATUS QUO
In their book Merchants of Doubt, Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway
(2011) explore the different public relations strategies and tactics devel-
oped by the tobacco lobby, which mining and energy conglomerates
around the world have subsequently adopted. In December 1953, the
presidents of four of America’s largest tobacco companies met with John
Hill, the founder and CEO of one of America’s largest public relations
(PR) firms, Hill and Knowlton (Oreskes and Conway 2011, p. 150). Hill
helped the tobacco industry to devise and implement a public relations
strategy that would seek to undermine the development of a scientific
consensus on smoking and cancer.