Australia in denial
While Australia is still in severe drought, and still recovering from a few recent cyclones up north, and global warming continues unabated, its strange to see our trusty leaders with their heads in the sand:
SMH: World awake to climate but not us
In summary: Australia is behind the rest of the world in 1) even acknowledging climate change, let alone 2) doing anything about it.
You really do feel like giving someone a kick up the pants and shouting "This is really not a joke guys!". Australia is the highest greenhouse emitter per capita in the world. That we can lag behind the Bush-administration led US in our emissions, and in our motivation to do anything is something to hang your head about really.
I won't spend this blog trying to convince anyone of the reality of climate change.
For a summary of the evidence, Wikipedia is a good start.
For a slamming indictment of Australia's counter-productive effort so far, go here.
Or, for the perspective of top Aussie scientists, look here .
So why the apathy to do anything? It seems to come down to three issues:
1. A conservative, finance-oriented government deeply suspicious of green issues
2. Costs to industries
3. Ties with the US
The third point, ties with the US; a useful thing to have in times of war, but I think Australia should be very sceptical of tying itself down to a policy that is, quite frankly, unpopular with a lot of US citizens, and likely to be ditched if the democrats get in next term (if in doubt about the Democrat's agenda, you should read Al Gore's book, and imagine what the world would be like if he won Florida instead of Bush).
The 2nd point, costs to industries, is essentially bogus. By introducing a carbon tax, and making it costly to emit tonnes of crap into the atmopshere, you will find industries very quickly find ways to cut emissions cheaply. In a lot of cases, its not that hard. And besides, a quick "cost to industries" vs "cost to the world" - in pollutants, health issues, rising sea-levels, destabilisation of water-side properties, loss of land, people displacement, climate irregularities, crop failures, water supply problems (we have enough of them already!), fluctuating weather patterns (including increased cyclone activity in Australia, and hurricane season in the US), and you can see the cost of not doing anything is orders of magnitude more severe.
NB: the direct link between destructive weather and global warming is contentious. But cyclones are caused by lots of evaporation of warm water, if you heat the water up, you have a more powerful engine to drive cyclones. Its hard to see how this wouldn't affect weather.
In terms of point 3: why? Maybe its got something to do with the personalities in power. I really don't have an answer to this. It really wasn't so hard for us to make Kyoto. There is a long scepticism, not just in Australian politics, but in the Australian community, of greens and green issues. First there is the unfortunate label "watermelons" - green on the outside, but red on the inside, referring to the infiltration of the green party by people with communist/socialist tendencies. Ever since the disbandonment of the ACP, I guess they have nowhere else to go. But it hards to trust a party with such an obvious ulterior agenda. Or maybe that's to narrow, it could just be a mental inertia as the ramifications slowly trickle through community awareness.
In the mean time, we can look forward to a lot more of this:
SMH: World awake to climate but not us
In summary: Australia is behind the rest of the world in 1) even acknowledging climate change, let alone 2) doing anything about it.
You really do feel like giving someone a kick up the pants and shouting "This is really not a joke guys!". Australia is the highest greenhouse emitter per capita in the world. That we can lag behind the Bush-administration led US in our emissions, and in our motivation to do anything is something to hang your head about really.
I won't spend this blog trying to convince anyone of the reality of climate change.
For a summary of the evidence, Wikipedia is a good start.
For a slamming indictment of Australia's counter-productive effort so far, go here.
Or, for the perspective of top Aussie scientists, look here .
So why the apathy to do anything? It seems to come down to three issues:
1. A conservative, finance-oriented government deeply suspicious of green issues
2. Costs to industries
3. Ties with the US
The third point, ties with the US; a useful thing to have in times of war, but I think Australia should be very sceptical of tying itself down to a policy that is, quite frankly, unpopular with a lot of US citizens, and likely to be ditched if the democrats get in next term (if in doubt about the Democrat's agenda, you should read Al Gore's book, and imagine what the world would be like if he won Florida instead of Bush).
The 2nd point, costs to industries, is essentially bogus. By introducing a carbon tax, and making it costly to emit tonnes of crap into the atmopshere, you will find industries very quickly find ways to cut emissions cheaply. In a lot of cases, its not that hard. And besides, a quick "cost to industries" vs "cost to the world" - in pollutants, health issues, rising sea-levels, destabilisation of water-side properties, loss of land, people displacement, climate irregularities, crop failures, water supply problems (we have enough of them already!), fluctuating weather patterns (including increased cyclone activity in Australia, and hurricane season in the US), and you can see the cost of not doing anything is orders of magnitude more severe.
NB: the direct link between destructive weather and global warming is contentious. But cyclones are caused by lots of evaporation of warm water, if you heat the water up, you have a more powerful engine to drive cyclones. Its hard to see how this wouldn't affect weather.
In terms of point 3: why? Maybe its got something to do with the personalities in power. I really don't have an answer to this. It really wasn't so hard for us to make Kyoto. There is a long scepticism, not just in Australian politics, but in the Australian community, of greens and green issues. First there is the unfortunate label "watermelons" - green on the outside, but red on the inside, referring to the infiltration of the green party by people with communist/socialist tendencies. Ever since the disbandonment of the ACP, I guess they have nowhere else to go. But it hards to trust a party with such an obvious ulterior agenda. Or maybe that's to narrow, it could just be a mental inertia as the ramifications slowly trickle through community awareness.
In the mean time, we can look forward to a lot more of this:
posted by code_monkey_craig at 1:43 PM
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