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https://www.theguardian.com/business/grogonomics/2025/jan/16/australians-should-be-angry-about-another-year-of-climate-inaction-but-dont-let-your-anger-turn-into-despair>
"2025 has not started well, and you should be bloody angry.
We are less than five months from the federal election and both major parties’
climate change policies are an amalgam of indolence and lies.
Not one politician in either major party is being honest with voters.
The Liberals claim there is no need to do anything – no need for a target, no
need for more renewable energy, no need for less coal or gas. Labor claims we
just need a few tweaks to fix things – middle-path targets dependent upon
offsets, all the while approving coalmines (sorry, “extensions”), talking up
gas and never, ever requiring mining companies to cease doing anything that
causes climate change.
After the 2019 election, I argued that “the Coalition isn’t being honest about
the climate crisis. But neither is Labor”; but by the 2022 election, that
seemed at least preferable to the deafening silence on the issue.
And now it’s all just a nuclear pantomime by both the ALP and Liberal party,
and much of the media.
The Liberal party is happy because they can keep the deniers in their party
quiet while pretending they have a meaningful climate change policy.
The ALP is happy too, because arguing about the evils and costs of nuclear
means not having to talk about its own policies that encourage fossil fuel use.
Everyone is thus free to carry on, and so too are greenhouse gas emissions,
which have not fallen since the end of the pandemic and, according to the
government’s own figures, are not set to fall until 2028 – at which point they
brilliantly drop at a constant rate to 43% below 2005 levels by 2030.
Enough! Enough with saying you can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good,
when the “good” is at best a farce; at worst, a grift designed to let
questionable carbon offset schemes get rich and allow fossil fuel companies to
carry on as before.
Enough with governments caring more about preventing protests against fossil
fuel use than they are about preventing use of fossil fuels.
Enough with ministers of resources having the most say over climate-change
policy and then easily moving into a role within the mining sector.
Enough with the pretence that these things take time and we need to find a
middle ground.
Just stop it. If you have any soul left in your empty suit, please, stop it."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
