Just Released! Order “Waking Up to Climate Change” by George Ropes, and receive 25% Discount. Learn More

Search
Close this search box.
Search
Close this search box.

HOME          CATEGORIES          OUR TAKE

OUR TAKE: Climate Deniers show their colors in Australia

An opinion piece recently ran in the Guardian by Gerry Hueston, chairperson of the Climate Council and former BP Australasia president. Mr. Hueston said debates over climate policy in the last ten years have “taken U-turns, a lack of bipartisanship, short-term populism, denial and misinformation, not to mention the scoring of political points rather than developing a long-term framework for what is a global and intergenerational issue.” For us here at ClimateYou and as Americans, we thought we had it bad, with all the Republican climate denialists and now President Trump withdrawing from the Paris Agreement. Well, the Australians have it worse.

 

The whole country is perfect for solar energy and Elon Musk is building a huge factory to make lithium batteries to store the solar energy produced during the day to be used at night. But even though the head of BP Australia 10 years ago proposed a cap and trade scheme to price carbon, the country’s leaders have dithered, reversed course repeatedly, and generally fumbled the ball. Australia just lobbied to keep the Great Barrier Reef off the list of endangered World Heritage sites, calculating it would earn more from coal exports than it would lose from a decline in tourism. Very short sighted, very sad. When the Reef dies, there will be no tourists, and the whole world will be the poorer. Australia, like America, needs strong forward-looking climate leadership.

 

Comment on this article

ClimateYou moderates comments to facilitate an informed, substantive, civil conversation. Abusive, profane, self-promotional, misleading, incoherent or off-topic comments will be rejected. Moderators are staffed during regular business hours (New York time) and can only accept comments written in English.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *


The reCAPTCHA verification period has expired. Please reload the page.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE


More Posts Like This

OUR TAKE

Art Inspired by Climate Change Data

Last week about 20 students stood next to small, blank canvases placed on tables. They were about to pour paint of various colors onto the canvases as part of a unique approach to understanding climate change. The students were in their weekly Natural Disasters class taught by Professor

ART & CLIMATE SCIENCE

When Art & Science Collide

What happens when artistic creative energies are inspired by raw, scientific data? Experimenting with this very idea in 2020, at the height of the COVID pandemic, the Climate Impacts Groups at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies started the “Science & Art Initiative,” seeking to challenge scientists

CLIMATEYOU

My Take on Climate Change

Imagine it’s Christmas time and there’s no snow outside. In fact, it’s late December and the weather has mostly been warm for a long while since Halloween. The temperature for the most part has been remaining in the 30’s and sometimes early 40’s. Outside, it still looks like