In the news...Climate Change again.
A clear and unequivocal statement from the government on the fact of Climate Change would be appreciated because what's implicit in this election is that Climate Change is not relevant to the here and now and that any future Queensland government should be free to pursue -- and sponsor -- business as usual...as though Climate Change doesn't exist.
That's true of BOTH major parties, by the way...It's also why our own re-zoning dispute keeps cropping up in the national media.
That's true of BOTH major parties, by the way...It's also why our own re-zoning dispute keeps cropping up in the national media.
On the other hand we have a local council conceding to reality, but preferring to bureaucratically fob off any consequences of Climate Change impacts onto individual householders rather than join with any communities so effected in order to generate a collective response.
As Cr Sutherland was reported to have said last month:
As Cr Sutherland was reported to have said last month:
On December 9, Moreton Bay Regional Council mayor Cr Allan Sutherland said the council was concerned about it liability if a property was inundated by rising seas in the future. Despite public pressure, the council has been reluctant to remove any assumptions about sea level rise from the scheme, arguing it would open future administrations up to legal action, he told the Caboolture News. ..."In lay terms, we can take it out and get rid of it [predicted sea level rises] - it's out of our planning scheme and no one can see it," he said. "But when someone comes along and puts an application in we have a very real obligation to include that and take that into account in our DA assessment, otherwise we could be held liable in that instance."
The ABC report is no doubt seeded for the sake of electoral shenanigans and mischief (as neither major party is any better than the other on this matter)...In the middle, squeezed by the parties' competing neo-liberal preferences and political petulance are the people of Beachmere.
While it is all very well for Queenslanders to celebrate their take up of domestic solar, the local economy is still driven by fossil fuels:
The world recognises -- the UN, almost every climate scientist (some 97%), most of the leading scientific organisations* worldwide, most governments (even our own) -- the reality of Climate Change. Even the Pope has signed on. This should be the year of extinction for the climate-change denier.
Last year was the hottest year on human record.
Last year was the hottest year on human record.
The year 2014 was the warmest year across global land and ocean surfaces since records began in 1880. The annually-averaged temperature was 0.69°C (1.24°F) above the 20th century average of 13.9°C (57.0°F), easily breaking the previous records of 2005 and 2010 by 0.04°C (0.07°F).
It's no longer a topic of dispute and the consequences are being logged in the seas off our coast (eg: warmer waters, migration of fish stocks south, increasing water acidification, rising sea levels, etc)and in our weather (eg:more frequent weather extremes, longer bushfire seasons, warmer air and soil temperatures, etc).
So the question is straight forward: what do we do about it?
Well, the first thing we do is recognise it exists...then we ALL WORK TOGETHER to deal with it because we are facing an emergency.
* Locally this list includes:
Australian Academy of Science, Australian Bureau of Meteorology, Australian Coral Reef Society, Australian Institute of Marine Science, Australian Institute of Physics, Australian Marine Sciences Association, Australian Medical Association, Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society ...