At first glance, the climate change policy decided at the June 2-4 Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) national congress looks serious. Global warming is "the policy challenge of our time", it declares.
But a closer look shows it's less a climate change policy than it is a pro-government press release.
As for rhetoric, the policy gets full marks. It says the scientific evidence for global warming can't be denied and accepts that the cost of inaction will be much bigger than the cost of moving quickly to a low-carbon economy.
Left unchecked, climate change will have "profound economic and social consequences", the policy says. The ACTU supports "urgent and decisive action to transition Australia to a low carbon economy". This action must also include poverty reduction, social justice for the global South, government investment in renewable energy and a "just transition" that creates thousands of green jobs.
All these are necessary goals if we are to avoid a climate catastrophe.
But words like "urgent and decisive action" remain just words. The policy actually commits the ACTU to support the exact opposite.
The new policy gives unqualified support to the Rudd government's deeply flawed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS). Australian economist Geoff Carmody told ABC Online on June 3 the CPRS was destined to fail. He likened it to "the GST from hell".
If the scheme becomes law, it will give billions of dollars in "compensation" to Australia's biggest polluters and will lock in disastrously low emission cut targets. By setting up a carbon market for companies to trade in "pollution rights", the ALP federal government hopes to delay the serious action needed on climate change.
Most environmental organisations and climate action groups have condemned the planned scheme and want to stop it becoming law.
The ACTU's stance on the CPRS ignores the repeated warnings of climate scientists for far stronger action. It also ignores the failure of Europe's carbon trading scheme to make large cuts in carbon pollution.
Far from attacking the massive public handouts to big polluters the ACTU endorsed it as a "recession buffer".
It also endorsed the government's target of stabilising carbon emissions at 450 parts per million — a disastrous target long discredited by climate scientists.
Ironically, almost at the same time as the ACTU formally "congratulate[d] the government" for setting an upper target of 25% emission cuts by 2020, the Rudd government was condemned for this same policy by the 450 groups that make up the international Climate Action Network who met at the UN-sponsored climate change talk in Bonn, Germany.
The conference gave Australia, already the world's worst polluter per person, the "Fossil of the Day Award". They denounced the 25% target because it "puts unreasonable conditions on other countries".
These conditions have been cynically crafted to ensure they have a zero chance of being met. The Rudd government's unconditional target — its real target — is still a paltry 5%.
The ACTU position fails to recognise we face a climate emergency. It shackles itself to government policy designed to protect Australia's greenhouse mafia, instead of the long-term interests of workers — and their children — to a safe and secure future.
The challenge now is for affiliate unions and union activists to shift the ACTU leadership away from its love affair with an ALP government that is driving Australia to climate chaos.