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> The issue of the reef and climate-change in general is a fairly untouched issue in Australian politics. I'm not sure that we are going to get anywhere without

by hannob 10y ago

> The issue of the reef and climate-change in general is a fairly untouched issue in Australian politics. I'm not sure that we are going to get anywhere without foreign intervention. I'm surprised by you saying this. I was in australia last year and saw TV news a couple of times. And multiple times climate change was mentioned as one of the election issues. Of course mentioning the issue doesn't mean it's being taken seriously or that politicians will do something about it. But I felt this seems to be at least a topic that is talked about. Just to give you some contrast: Hillary Clinton completely stopped talking about Climate Change at all once Bernie Sanders was out of her way [1]. In Germany, there was a statistics about the topics of TV talk shows recently, which was picked up by a number of media outlets, because it had an overwhelming bias towards having the refugee crisis as the major topic. Talk shows about climate change? Zero. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/sep/20/hillary-clinton-dropped-climate-change-from-speeches-after-bernie-sanders-endorsement https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/sep/20/hillary-...

crawrey 10y ago
You are right that it is an issue that is talked about and it was discussed in the lead up to the the 2016 election. However, since the election there has been very little attention paid to climate change and there is some evidence that Australia is on-track to be in violation of the Paris Agreement[1]. Australia chose to elect a party with policies that target greenhouse gas emissions the least, 26-28% 2005 levels by 2030, where the next most popular party has target of 45% 2005 levels by 2030. The former Labor government introduced a tax on carbon emissions[2] and a mining resource rent tax[3] in 2012. These taxes were later repealed in 2014 by our current Liberal/National government. Since the repeal, our emissions have been steadily increasing[4]. Talk is cheap and when push comes to shove on climate change, the majority of Australian's give into the scaremongering of conservative politics. [1] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-09/australias-energy-policy-cant-meet-current-targets/8105386 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-09/australias-energy-poli... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_pricing_in_Australia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_pricing_in_Australia [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minerals_Resource_Rent_Tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minerals_Resource_Rent_Tax [4] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-22/australia-greenhouse-gas-emissions-increasing-environment-report/8143110 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-22/australia-greenhouse-g...
saiya-jin 10y ago
I think there will be some good out of all the bad things we're doing now to our environment. Bad things are going to happen, I think this part is pretty clear. But out of the misery will come a hard lesson about respecting our environment, and added value of nature in our lives. So mankind could be better off after this. Something along the lesson from 2 world wars to not allow it in this scale again, it seems to work so far. Basically, we as our generations are fucked in sense that we can do little to affect our lives, to move the masses to do something not directly beneficial to them, actually in contrary. Only build/protect for the future generations. what we can do - similar to seedbank, preserve DNA of all the animals that live now, in various places. We will repopulate once the technological barrier for it will be crossed, probably even with long extinct species ie mammoth just because we can. They will behave differently, so records of their behavior now in wild species might help.

by hannob 10y ago

crawrey 10y ago

You are right that it is an issue that is talked about and it was discussed in the lead up to the the 2016 election. However, since the election there has been very little attention paid to climate change and there is some evidence that Australia is on-track to be in violation of the Paris Agreement[1]. Australia chose to elect a party with policies that target greenhouse gas emissions the least, 26-28% 2005 levels by 2030, where the next most popular party has target of 45% 2005 levels by 2030. The former Labor government introduced a tax on carbon emissions[2] and a mining resource rent tax[3] in 2012. These taxes were later repealed in 2014 by our current Liberal/National government. Since the repeal, our emissions have been steadily increasing[4]. Talk is cheap and when push comes to shove on climate change, the majority of Australian's give into the scaremongering of conservative politics. [1] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-09/australias-energy-policy-cant-meet-current-targets/8105386 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-09/australias-energy-poli... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_pricing_in_Australia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_pricing_in_Australia [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minerals_Resource_Rent_Tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minerals_Resource_Rent_Tax [4] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-22/australia-greenhouse-gas-emissions-increasing-environment-report/8143110 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-22/australia-greenhouse-g...

saiya-jin 10y ago

I think there will be some good out of all the bad things we're doing now to our environment. Bad things are going to happen, I think this part is pretty clear. But out of the misery will come a hard lesson about respecting our environment, and added value of nature in our lives. So mankind could be better off after this. Something along the lesson from 2 world wars to not allow it in this scale again, it seems to work so far. Basically, we as our generations are fucked in sense that we can do little to affect our lives, to move the masses to do something not directly beneficial to them, actually in contrary. Only build/protect for the future generations. what we can do - similar to seedbank, preserve DNA of all the animals that live now, in various places. We will repopulate once the technological barrier for it will be crossed, probably even with long extinct species ie mammoth just because we can. They will behave differently, so records of their behavior now in wild species might help.