On Monday this week, the United Nations Climate Summit began in New York. World leaders gathered to talk about global warming and what their countries were doing to limit it by reducing emissions. Australia wasn’t invited to speak because our country isn’t doing enough. So our PM, Scott Morrison, didn’t bother to turn up, even though he was in the States.
We have brilliant scientific minds in Australia. We should be leading the world in finding ways to reduce carbon emissions and make more use of renewable energy. But we’re not.
It was just 12 years ago that Australia’s then-PM, Kevin Rudd, called climate change the “greatest moral, economic and social challenge of our generation”. Now, it’s obviously not a high priority. Yet every day seems to deliver more and more grim predictions of how the earth will suffer if we don’t act now. The latest: rising sea levels mean Australians need to be prepared for more extreme coastal flooding, and less fish in our fisheries.
Top Comments
I’m fine with being an Australian. I don’t fly in private jets around the world to tell some people to use less because I’d be a bit of a hypocrite wouldn’t I?
So help me out here. China is the worlds leading producer of coal fired energy with 1000GW. They have plans in motion to increase that by at least 220GW more (about as much as the entire US, number 2 in the world, currently produces) whilst Dave and Greta are traveling to not there, to criticise the west. China produces about 1/3rd of the worlds Co2, more than the US and all of Europe combined.
Since we seem to need to pay attention to foreigners lecturing us, can I ask in all honesty, will we ever be seeing an article criticising China at all? If not, why?
Well according to Morrison it's racist to even question Gladys Liu regarding her connections to the CCP propaganda unit.
If the PM calls us racist for questioning an elected Australian MP, then criticising China is off limits in his books.
That would because we are not responsible for China. We are only responsible for we do. We cannot even ask the Chinese government to do more to stop global warming when we give up the moral high ground by not leading the world on reducing emissions or even doing as much as we promised.
As a middle aged woman I am ashamed that my cohort of adults have not forced the government to do something earlier. It is an indictment on us that our children need to lead the way. It's even worse for politicians who are paid to take responsibility for their country's well-being and they need unpaid children to lead the way.
You do raise a good point regarding China. Short of boycotting them. What's your strategy to incentivise them to do their part?
Because we don't live in China.
Because we can't take immediately effective action in China.
Our vote holds no sway in China.
Because we're Australian.
So, we talk about what can be done in Australia and avoid being sidetracked down ineffective dead ends. Time wasting whataboutisms.
We discuss and act on what is within our control.
Carbon emission in Australia, not China.