Newsflash: Australia’s Opposition Leader thinks climate change is a load of crap. What the??!! happened to get us to this point?
First entry in my Copenhagen diary. OK, I’m not technically in Copenhagen yet – I’m on my way, in Singapore being interviewed for the Rolex Young Laureates program, meeting some incredible youth from the Asian & Pacific region who are working on innovative approaches to social and environmental issues. There are social entrepreneurs from, among other places: China, India, Mongolia, and the Philippines. Had some great conversations with a Chinese entrepreneur who says the level of awareness on climate change is now relatively high in China – and that many Chinese had seen An Inconvenient Truth!
Found out a few hours ago that Turnbull got rolled by Tony Abbot. By one vote. Wow. One of my friends once said, hey, if the Liberals have a freaky uncle, don’t let him hide at the back! Not sure about that… but I do know that the Liberal party has just lost a large chunk (if not the whole chunk) of its youth voting base. OK, it probably wasn’t a huge percentage of its voters to start with – but as a party they’re heading for absolute collapse and eventually, electoral irrelevance if they continue to be dominated by people who deny climate change is happening. It will be interesting to see the outcome of the by-elections on the 5th. AYCC is running campaigns evaluating all the candidates on their climate change policies and getting some good local and state media coverage on the issue. We even held a climate change forum with the candidates in Bradfield where one of the climate sceptic candidates heckled an 18 year old AYCC volunteer!
So…now the Government will either pass the legislation without amendments after a double dissolution, or wait until next year and negotiate with the Greens, and we will end up with a stronger scheme. Or something else could happen. The only predictable thing about climate change politics is that you rarely can predict what’s going to happen.
For example, I can’t believe how quickly the debate on climate change disintegrated into climate denialism in the past few months. Apparently it’s not just in Australia – see George Monbiot’s recent article here. Interesting thesis: that the reason more older people tend to disbelieve climate change is because it reminds them of death, and so they refute its premise because they are avoiding thinking about their own mortality. What do you think? Any truth in that?
It’s strange being here in Singapore – I still have a lot of AYCC work I’m finishing up, so my head still feels like it’s in the Sydney office with Amanda and the team. I’m also thinking forward to Copenhagen – I leave Singapore tomorrow and meet the rest of the team in Tokyo airport, where we go on to Denmark. So I’m thinking and preparing mentally for the next few weeks. But at the same time I’m participating in the program here and making some amazing connections with some very cool people.
Well – short entry but I figure if I’m going to be writing something every day for the next 20 days I don’t want to use up all my good lines in the first post!
I will however encourage everyone to read this recent article by Alex Steffen at Worldchanging.com. Highlights below:
When confronted with generational conflict, we naturally tend to see the elders as seasoned and realistic, and the youth as passionate and ethical, and to seek a middle ground of tempered realism. Middle ground is going to become increasingly hard to find in this debate, though. That’s because realism now means very different, incompatible things to the two generations.
And this is what most older observers seem to refuse to understand: The world looks dramatically different if the year 2050 is one you’re likely to be alive to see. To younger people, Copenhagen isn’t some do-gooder meeting; it’s the first major battle in a war for the future. Their future. I’m in my middle years, in between the two groups, yet even I can see that this war is about to get a lot more heated—far more heated than anything we’ve seen in half a century. To younger people, this isn’t just policy, it’s personal.
To be young and aware today is to see your elders burning our civilization down around our ears. To hear scientists tell us we’re in the final countdown, with the risk of runaway climate change (along with the ecosystem collapses and horrific human suffering it will bring) mounting with every day we run business as usual. To hear nearly a chorus of credible voices—from doctors and scientists to retired generals and former bankers— warning that to lose this fight is to lose everything that makes our world livable and gives the future hope.
You wouldn’t think a war could start over such simple ideas.
To be young and aware is to see old people—from the U.S. Senate to Wall Street, from newspaper editorial desks to corporate boardrooms—stalling action on every front, spouting platitudes about “balance,” committing themselves wholeheartedly to actions to be undertaken long after they’ve retired and died. To be told that the world’s scientists are participating in a giant hoax; to be chided for not understanding how the real world works; to be warned that doing the right thing will bankrupt us; to be told that not wanting to melt the ice caps and circle the equator in deserts makes you too radical to take seriously.
To be young and aware is to know you’re being lied to; to know that a bright green future is possible; to know that we can reimagine the world, rebuild our cities, redesign our lives, retool our factories, distribute innovation and creativity and all live in a world that is not only better than the alternative, but much better than the world we have now.
To be young and aware is to suspect that, in the end, the debate about climate action isn’t about substance, but about rich old men trying to squeeze every last dollar, euro, and yen from their investments in outdated industries. It is to agree with the environmentalist Paul Hawken that we have an economy that steals the future, sells it in the present, and calls it GDP. It is to begin to see your elders as cannibals with golf clubs.
Over and out - Anna Rose
11 Comments
Geez Anna, are you deliberately baiting me? I might have to dob you in to your mum.
Otherwise, nice piece, looking forward to your perspective from here on in.
I don’t think much of Monbiot’s hypothesis … how would you prove it? Ask Ian Plimer if
he has more thoughts of death and mortality lately?
In any event, Possum’s presentation of the polls shows
that your gut-level claim, that “the debate on climate change disintegrated into climate denialism in the past few months.” isn’t an accurate reflection of what is happening.
My take is that a few things have combined to make it appear that the debate
has disintegrated as you assert. 1) newspaper letters to the editor are
clearly not fact checked which allows all manner of rubbish to be printed … and
“why would they print it in the paper if it wasn’t true” is still a widely held
myth. 2) The Four Corners expose of the scientific ignorance in
the Liberal party has made displays of ignorance positively cool and socially
acceptable. 3) The Plimer factor. Plimer has been travelling the country speaking
to anybody with the price of his book in their pocket. But who goes to hear
such talks? Not the young. But he filled the services club where my elderly parents
live in Forster NSW.
These three things have combined to allow the “undecideds” to fess up. They
were never undecided, but were more than a little shy about it. Now they
are “out” and proud.
Monbiot or Barry Brook on BraveNewClimate.com have both spent
months fighting with moron climate skeptics. This makes it seem
like skeptics are more numerous than they are and perhaps those who
have followed such debates and seen the obvious difference between
science and spin have been too sparing with their praise. Plimer
Vs Brook is no contest but it’s sad to think that Plimer hasn’t worked this
out.
So why are old people more skeptical than the young? Because they have stuffed
up the planet, they have been being told about it for many decades but could
always rely on engineers to solve problems as they arose, and to point to the rising size
of the middle class as evidence of great wealth creation … and how could wealth
creation possibly be wrong? Now it looks like all the greenie rat bag Club of Rome geeky nerdy types will have the last laugh (or tears). Scientists, in general, could formerly
be relied upon to back up the power brokers for 30 pieces of silver (or less) but this
group has risen up and is now chomping the hand that feeds it.
Of course the elderly didn’t do it on their own, they had plenty of help from
the rest of us, but they are more likely to feel a sense of responsibility and to
fight the guilt with denial.
This reads as parody…banal, breathless,naive,patronising…An evangelical tract.
Such a BIG carbon footprint, just to impart wisdom like the following:
“the reason more older people tend to disbelieve climate change is because it reminds them of death, and so they refute its premise because they are avoiding thinking about their own mortality.”
“in Singapore being interviewed for the Rolex Young Laureates program, meeting some incredible youth from the Asian & Pacific region”
“I’m participating in the program here and making some amazing connections with some very cool people.”
Glad you are going Anna, and I will enjoy reading your 20 posts in the coming weeks.
I just hope that the Rudd Government has a fallback for Copenhagen that will allow us to stand with our face forward, rather than ashamedly staring at our shoes.
I guess the reason that frank hasn’t turned up on the climate change cage match [1] is because he hasn’t got the balls for it, or the scientific literacy. The science of the delusionals does not stand up to scrutiny.
[1] http://blogs.crikey.com.au/rooted/2009/04/08/climate-change-cage-match-a-fight-to-the-death/
This reads as parody…banal, breathless,naive,patronising…An evangelical tract.
Such a BIG carbon footprint, just to impart wisdom like the following:
“the reason more older people tend to disbelieve climate change is because it reminds them of death, and so they refute its premise because they are avoiding thinking about their own mortality.”
“in Singapore being interviewed for the Rolex Young Laureates program, meeting some incredible youth from the Asian & Pacific region”
“I’m participating in the program here and making some amazing connections with some very cool people.”
kdkd: there you are KD, thought I heard something rustling under the bushes..
(sorry I accidentally put the previous post on twice here…)
KD, I’m collecting all AGW Millenarian cult insults and putting them in the fridge. They normally come without any argument at all, like yours, so they don’t take up much space. They’ll go well with the hacked East Bumcrack Uni emails.
Now you mention it, I never even looked at the cage match…I’ll pop along now. I think I was far too busy then writing about Black Saturday to be bothered. It was months ago, right?
Wow, KD, the cage match is a scream! Flicked through the last 100 or so posts, and its entirely KDKD, Tamas and Ken someone…
Purely at random I picked out one quote which tells everything crikerions need to know about KD:
“the early warning signs are although unequivocal, are clearly not very observable by someone as privileged and stupid as you?
I’m a statistician, not a physicist I have to read a book for the laws of thermodynamics … Tamas is on the other hand an economist, and so knows nothing about anything.”
I think your anonymous balls are dominating your head, KD. Looks like (if I could be bothered) I could fill an entire cool-store with repetitive KD insults just from that one site.
And yes I vaguely recall the thing, early April. Just weeks after Black Saturday. I thought “Jesus, all these tossers wrangling about climate when we have disaster right now caused by bad fire “science”, bureaucratic incompetence etc etc…” Few if any of you had anything to say about the firestorm, right? I realise that the nearest most of you get to “the environment” is parking on the nature strip. You’re so busy saving “the planet” that the daily pack-rape of the environment goes unnoticed….like on this blog for instance. Just scroll through the topics and see….
Frank,
Aah the environmentalist who wants to pretend climate change is unimportant. Nice wedge manouver. All the environmental symptoms are really caused of the same problem, but climate change is the hardest symptom to address. Because of the long time frame, climate change is the hardest to address, and addressing it will probably get many of the other symptoms at the same time.
p.s. The insults from my end are mainly about making sure the scientific illiterates know where they stand.
Be fair, Frank, you make it look like that first quote is of Anna Rose herself, when it’s clearly indicated as the ‘wisdom’ of George Monbiot.
Mark: it’s quoted approvingly, but I should have spelled it out…
kd: Climate change is extremely important. You haven’t been reading the admittedly verbose comments I’ve posted in the last cupla weeks…In fact climate change is far too important to be left to the Millenarian cultists. Their “solutions” are most of time time irrelevant and very expensive. That makes things worse. Wind, the only big expenditure so far, is the prime example, soon to be followed by other dead-ends I fear.
Anyone who denies global warming is occurring is (and I choose my words carefully, not crikely or in a KDKD manner here), deluded. There. I’ve said it. No doubt the Uni of East Bumcrack emails show ample and normal academic corruption- but its not relevant to this issue because there are a variety of global temp measures which broadly agree: consistent warming trend c 1970 to 2000. It’s plausible that anthropogenic CO2 is a factor- not only fossil fuels… (people seem to have forgotten deforestation which also closely parallels temp rise after the 1960s), but the odds of this being a major cause of observed GW are slipping, not least because of the decadal plateau we’re sitting on now. Time will tell. As even Father Abbott realises, sensible precautions need to be taken. Rudds ETS is eminently unsensible. As I keep saying, I’m prepared to leave the farm and fix all this for a packet of crisps, but no packets have arrived.