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On a superficial level, it makes no sense to commit so strongly to managing the impacts of climate change (adaptation) on the one hand while refusing to significantly reduce emissions (mitigation) on the other. On the other hand, when you start to unpack the logic of so much adaptation policy, this contradiction fades away.
A common argument is that publicly-funded artists take unnecessarily from the ‘average Australian’. In the current international crisis, this argument fails to recognise that artists and arts workers are just as deeply impacted financially by COVID-19 as the ‘average Australian’ in other industries.
The pandemic has afforded us a preview of how a crisis plays out when the science is not properly heeded. The overwhelming majority of climate scientists have long been sounding the alarm that the health and safety of large parts of the population are at serious risk, both here and around the world. We are already seeing the damage to health and to the environment that they predicted.
While the world is largely focused on COVID-19, a recent report from Global Witness revealed that murders of land and environmental defenders, defined as people who take a stand for land and environment in a peaceful manner, reached a high in 2019.
On July 22, Katta O'Donnell filed an action in the Federal Court in Victoria hoping to make good her promise to put the government on trial for ‘misconduct’. The action notes that, ‘At all material times there has existed a significant likelihood that the climate is changing, and will continue to change, as the result of anthropogenic influences.’ Australia was ‘materially exposed and susceptible’ to the risks posed by climate change.
Multiple media reports have focused on individuals and households moving away from sustainability — mostly because of understandable concerns about contamination — and yet, the conversation about the impacts of our biggest businesses and corporations hasn’t been as loud.
While the federal government has set a zero net emissions target by 2050, along with the states and territories and local councils in some areas, the steps that are taken to get there are vitally important. Yet there seems to be no signs of a rapid move away from fossil fuels.
Even during this period of disruption (and, indeed, even because of it) it is so important that we pay attention to the bigger picture. So much of what we do now will lay the groundwork for the kind of future that we are able to build at end of this crisis.
Unfortunately, when it comes to limiting our emissions there’s no silver bullet, and there’s unlikely to be one before we hit an increase of 1.5 degrees. However, scientists do say that we already have all the technology we need to get to net-zero. What we don’t have is the political willpower.
The annexation of eastern Balochistan by Pakistan after the withdrawal of the British from the Indian Subcontinent in 1948 gave rise to the Baloch independence struggle against Pakistani state. Since then, Baloch have fallen victim to forced disappearances and brutal killings by state forces and state sponsored militants.
49-60 out of 200 results.