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Five years ago I woke in the middle of the night and wrote a letter to myself about climate change. 'The world around you no longer exists. The conditions that created it have already changed and the society you know remains the same only due to inertia.' Now I know I'm not the only one who's lain shuddering with this awful premonition.
In addressing these issues as priorities, I would argue for not focusing on big ideological statements or on a one-size fits all climate policy, but rather invest in the resilience and adaptability of a capitalist/consumer system to meet our environmental concerns.
There's a lot of work to be done to ensure the Australian government has the best guidance it needs to prepare the policies and deliver the services Australians urgently need. To strengthen ourselves into making that contribution, let's begin by rejecting 'brutal retail politics' and instead champion generous community expertise.
By setting the boundaries of what is considered politically acceptable, Tony Abbott has influenced the level of ambition in every party's climate policy, and has even caused environment groups to shift their positions. How has he manage to wield so much influence for so long? There are three reasons he cut through when Labor didn't.
While in many ways this decision was uncontroversial — in that it merely upheld an earlier ministerial decision — Chief Justice Preston's judgment was significant in the Australian context both for its extensive reference to climate change and for his honour's clear acceptance of the science.
Just as the focus of post-war reconstruction was not merely demobilisation but the maintenance of full employment, developing social security and economic development, decarbonising Australia must involve rebuilding faith that politics can deliver a better Australia. We need to ensure our response leads to a good society.
We are already suffering from the effects of global warming and the intensification of extreme weather events, and things are going to get worse. The question now is what we do to both limit the damage and adapt to the inevitable. Fortunately many of the actions that we must take will actually make our lives better.
In light of the evidence, a national energy policy prioritising renewables should be uncontroversial. But is seems ideology is impermeable to evidence. Instead, we have the government continuing to try to pressure AGL into keeping the Liddell coal-fired power plant open despite clear-cut economic and environmental reasons for its closure.
With every passing year the government is siloing its building and expansion funding from the money needed to prevent the environmental consequences. In this budget, we see an environmental agenda hijacked to reinforce ideas of growth, using environmental buzz words which convince constituents it's for the earth.
Every time the self-appointed Ambassador for the Little Black Rock fronts up to the cameras he reinforces the message that coal power is the technology of a bygone era. The Coalition old guard's thinking hasn't changed since Abbott's 'carbon tax' sloganeering of 2012 and 2013. But the landscape has changed considerably.
The complexity of environmental policy in SA echoes a broader trend in environment issues: climate change has monopolised the debate, squeezing out local conservation concerns. The upshot is a Left-leaning government can be progressive on clean energy, while holding a regressive stance on less prominent topics.
The digital currency Bitcoin consumes more electricity per year than New Zealand. Yes, the entire country. Escalating energy intensity is actually a security feature of the currency. With the related carbon dioxide emissions from this escalating electricity consumption, Bitcoin is a formula for climate change catastrophe.
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