Sadly, as this guest post from Australia by Professor Stephan Lewandowsky reminds us, the United States is not the only nation under siege by Anti-Science Syndrome Haters Of a Livable Economic System in positions of political power.
Australia is experiencing the mother of all heat waves. Records are tumbling everywhere: For the first time in recorded climatic history, the country experienced 7 consecutive days above 39C (90F). Extremes are everywhere, and the Bureau of Meteorology issued a special climate statement.
As stated by Bureau of Meteorology’s manager of climate monitoring and prediction, David Jones, ‘
‘The current heatwave – in terms of its duration, its intensity and its extent – is unprecedented in our records. Clearly, the climate system is responding to the background warming trend. Everything that happens in the climate system now is taking place on a planet which is a degree hotter than it used to be.”
It’s so hot, the Bureau had to add another color to the temperature map–Burning Deep Purple:
This actually means something.
It means that people suffer, like the heroic grandparents who saved their children from a bushfire, taking pictures because they thought they might never see them again alive:
It means freakish dust storms off the coast of Western Australia, awe inspiring in their beauty:
That is what climate change means.
But this reality is not shared by everyone. There are some politicians who live in an alternate reality. Just today, one of them reiterated their commitment to abolishing Australia’s price on carbon, because it allegedly fails to cut emissions and because “genuine domestic emission reductions can be achieved without taxing electricity.”
And therein lies the problem. We have one world, one reality, and an alternate fantasy world inhabited mainly by politicians, mining magnates, and their enablers in the media.
In reality, there is some evidence that the price of carbon, however imperfect a first step it may be, is having an effect on emissions.
1 response so far ↓
1 Gordon Chamberlain // Jan 10, 2013 at 9:35 pm
Are political plus corporate leaders and organized crime capable of profiting from ecocide the large scale long term damage or destruction of our environment, the web of life our life support systems?
Is global climate destabilisation a threat to national security, human mental, physical, spiritual, environmental and economic well being, living sustainably?
Should the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecute ecocide ?
The campaign has begun lead by Polly Higgins a UK lawyer and author of Eradicating Ecocide Law and Governance to prevent the Destruction of our Planet and the Earth is our Business to have ecocide subject to criminal prosecution by the ICC.
Exxon Mobile recently announced intentions to spend 4.6oo,000, 000 to develop the Hibernia oil field in Newfoundland Labrador Canada. What would criminal negligence in addressing global climate destabilisation look like?