Climate change dominates Australian politics. So much so that, to avoid the prospect of an early election, Malcolm Turnbull has convinced his Coalition colleagues to back amendments to Labor's Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.
In the US, however, climate change is not such a high priority.
A bill to implement an emissions trading scheme is stalled in legislative limbo, with Democrat and Republican senators from industrial states concerned about the likelihood of higher energy prices, and lost coal and manufacturing jobs.
The media coverage of climate change reflects the different political priorities of Canberra and Washington. Measured by print copy and air time, there is much more reporting and commentary about what Kevin Rudd calls "the great economic, environmental and moral challenge of our time" in Australia than in the US. A comprehensive search of newspaper articles on emissions trading (or "cap and trade", as the Americans call it) from January 1 to last week reveals a yawning gap between the two nations.
The Australian, The Australian Financial Review, The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald have altogether published 1030 news articles, editorials and opinion pieces on the ETS this year. By contrast, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times have altogether published only 266 news articles, editorials and opinion pieces. That is a proportion of almost four to one.
Type in climate change and the disparity between the Australian and American press coverage is just as wide. This year, The Australian has published 20 editorials on emissions trading; The New York Times has editorialised on the subject only five times. It's the same story with respect to radio and television.
Hardly a day goes by without the ABC or Sky News airing a news or current affairs segment on the ETS. The major networks in the US hardly touch the subject.
Why is the political atmosphere in the two nations so different? And why is the Canberra press gallery far more focused on climate change than the Washington press corps? After all, as last week's Lowy Institute poll showed, less than half of Australians consider global warming a serious and pressing problem, and climate change ranked seventh in a list of 10 "most important" foreign policy priorities, down from first only two years ago.
In Australia, the political battle over the ETS is such headline-grabbing copy because of its impact on the opposition leadership and election prospects. Coalition disunity has dogged the leaderships of Brendan Nelson and Turnbull over the past 18 months. And the trigger for an early election in the form of a double dissolution depends on whether the opposition rejects Labor's CPRS next month.
Not surprisingly, most of the Australian media coverage of the ETS centres on Coalition divisions, specifically over whether to legislate the scheme before the Copenhagen climate conference in December.
In Washington, the global financial crisis has demoted the environment to a second-order issue. Saving the economy and creating jobs takes priority in a nation suffering from double-digit unemployment. Healthcare is dominating the congressional agenda while the issue of troop increases to Afghanistan preoccupies the White House. Meanwhile, several recent opinion polls show the highest level of public scepticism about man-made global warming in more than a decade.
All of this means that the prospect of a US law to cut carbon emissions before the Copenhagen conference is rapidly approaching zero. Why is this important for Australia? Because if there is no clear leadership from Washington, the UN post-Kyoto climate talks in December will flounder and Australia will be out on a limb. And that is not in our national interest.
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