Australia now leading the fight against climate change?
The Minister for the Environment, Malcolm Turnbull, said the prognosis was already "well known to us". "We know that there is the possibility or the probability of a hotter and drier future in southern Australia … We have to recognise there are changes to our climate likely to occur and we have to adapt to them."
Mr Turnbull said there was "no government in the world, not one, that has done more to adapt to climate change than the Australian Government".
Sorry?
- This is the government that denied it's existence?
- the Prime Minister has not even read the International Panel of Climate Change report despite having an advance copy last year
- refused to sign Kyoto even with AN 8% INCREASE in emissions over 1990 for Australia?
- the government has refused to set up an emissions trading scheme
- rubbished the Stern Report ("Don't get mesmerised by a single report")
- made the forestry deal in Tasmania to continue old growth logging?
- a government that has not supported solar options despite our climate advantages?
- rubbished anyone who warned about the possibility of global warming for a decade?
- how does our actions compare with the British who have put the issue on the table with the Stern report?
- the Swedes who have committed themselves to a 100% reduction in greenhouse emissions?
posted by Martin J Cowling @ 9:50 AM
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1 Comments:
Mr Turnbull's rhetoric is utterly bizarre and you are correct in listing a few appropriate "nay-sayers".
Today he has added another element to his already peculiar rhetoric by equating the ALP's stance on setting emissions-targets as a religious belief. He then churlishly maintains that religion is not a good guide to public policy. Then he asserts that Labor's problem is that it does not understand that climate change is a global problem.
His latter comment beggars belief if one takes the remarks of Rudd and Garrett in the past two months as an indicator of Labor having any grasp of the "global" nature of the problem.
I would also add that Turnbull's religion analogy is not only unhelpful but also very dismissive and obnoxious. For every example one can definitely point to of "bad religion" in the public square, one can also point to fine examples where religious convictions have yielded good public policy - like the abolition of slavery, animal welfare, opposition to child labor, Charles Malik's contribution to framing the UN Declaration on Human Rights, the shaping of the common law tradition, the Magna carta and so on.
If Turnbull's remarks are taken to heart in conservative religious circles in Australia, then he is helping to saw off the limb on which part of his party has found traditional electoral support from.
I am a theologian and do not hold to conservative social and political values. Turnbull's remarks simply add to my top-heavy pile of reasons why I will not cast a vote for his party.
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