marklynas.orgAustralia's 'green future' an illusion 21 June 04
An Australian climate scientist emails me, furious about the Aussie government’s latest proposals for (not) dealing with climate change. Asking to remain anonymous, the senior scientist reveals that the new White Paper entitled ‘Securing Australia’s Energy Future’, announced with great fanfare last week, actually isn’t so green after all. Apparently the new policy actually REMOVES taxes on diesel fuel for non-transport uses; FAILS to update the renewables targets, thus forcing wind farms to shelve plans for expansion; and ENTRENCHES coal (the dirtiest fuel of all) as the dominant energy source. In fact, it’s more of the same from the Howard government, which – after the Bush administration of course – is the most extremist anti-environment administration in the world.
Comments
Tara
June 25th, 2004 at 03:47 AM
I’m really at a loss as to how they can say with a straight face that their energy paper represents a positive for the environment. Surreal. On a related matter, it’s been an interesting week down here in the land of Oz. In the lead up to the meeting of the Council of Australian Governments, members of various state governments have been appearing on the idiot box and radio to express, in a fairly panicky way, their concerns about climate change. With substantial parts of the country, including several capital cities, experiencing water shortages as a result of drought it’s not too surprising that this has finally started to happen. Unfortunately, most of the talk seems to be directed along the lines of adaptation rather than mitigation of greenhouse gases. What’s it going to take to get them to seriously address this?
Vicki Falde
July 1st, 2004 at 02:54 AM
Amazing what politicians will do to make it LOOK like they’re doing something about the environment…pity that they don’t actually ACT—it’d probably be easier for them than looking for, or creating, even more loopholes. But that would make sense, and since when did governments make sense??