"Clmate Change Denial Continues To Be The Strongest Force In Australian Politics"
How the heck can this still be happening? It’s 2021 and we have a government within sight of an election with no policy on climate change that endeavours to reach net zero emissions, and the National party has just re-elected as its leader Barnaby Joyce, whose main policy position appears to be to ensure such a target is never set. Climate change denial continues to be the strongest force in Australian politics.
Instead of a target we have, as foreign affairs minister Marise Payne articulated so circuitously last week on Insiders, a “broad position of the Australian government that we want to achieve net zero emissions as soon as possible and preferably by 2050”. That is a shift from their once saying they wanted to achieve it in the second half of this century – that’s what counts as progress in this country.
EDIT
We already have the EU and the G7 musing about carbon tariffs that almost seem designed with Australia in mind, and then this week came the news that Unesco has recommended the Great Barrier Reef world heritage site be listed as “in danger”. Both these aspects highlight that climate change policy is actually economic policy. And you need to act right now – not in or “preferably by” 2050.
Environment minister Sussan Ley – the same person who in 2019 went for a snorkel on the reef and declared it “vibrant” – instead blamed Unesco’s processes and argued that it blindsided the Australian government – a charge Unesco strenuously disagrees with. It is odd, however, that this could be a shock to anyone, given Graham Readfearn reported earlier this month that such a listing was very much on the cards, and the government’s own Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority had listed the reef as “very poor” back in 2019.
EDIT
https://www.theguardian.com/business/commentisfree/2021/jun/27/from-barnaby-joyce-to-the-great-barrier-reef-coalition-climate-inadequacy-is-on-parade
