Another Australian Federal Budget Climate Failure
I don't think I heard any news items about our federal budget showing fiduciary responsibility for action on global warming. News publications are similarly silent, only David Pope had a decent cartoon. Below is a link to a thoughtful Ian Dunlop piece, strategically published pre-budget.
Climate Change: The fiduciary responsibility of politicians & bureaucrats
But as most of society believes its own lies, not much chance here.
Democracy in Australia is broken, and apart from the greens and very minor senate seat chasers, major political parties are corruptly owned, either by direct donations, or by economist derived excuse for "business as usual", from free market ideology - for example Matt Canavan, Abbott and the "Monash" Forum. Too many economists need to be hung, drawn and quartered, for their stoppers on climate change mitigation. Too bad developed societies, particularly Anglo-American, cannot face a cut to their privileges and would rather tell the biggest Trumpy Lies instead.
In Australia, governments promise growth, the benefits of which largely go to the wealthy. Growthists have always wanted more growth, and have never wanted to do significant climate change mitigation, because it is fossil-fueled growth which is actually the root cause of our global warming emergency. This is particularly true of Anglo-American nations. No-one wants to shrink their GDP-Economy, so closely linked to greenhouse gas emissions, because a that steep reduction in average consumption is exactly what is required for serious global warming mitigation. Such a steep reduction is entirely survivable, given a re-organisation of life styles, work and society. Our culture wants the growth box, and denies that it also the catastrophe box.
author:
Michael Rynn
description:
Australian Budget 2018 is a recurrent failure on Climate Change mitigation and adaptation
keywords:
Another Australian Federal Budget Climate Failure 2018
og:title:
Another Australian Federal Budget Climate Failure