Can't Believe It
The government of Australia just doesn't seem to get it. I haven't blogged in ages becoz of either work commitments, family, lack of interest or PC gaming, but the current ad hoc debate on global warming responses has piqued my motivation again.
I cannot help but note that a rather dramatic report has been released about the prospects for us as a race facing global warming (GW). The Australian radio has been full of people commenting on the report and demanding action; or, in the case of our government spokes people and their supporters, a justification for further inaction. I listened to one person say they are putting lots of energy and money into high tech solutions for scrubbing carbon out of the waste gases from burning coal. A concerned listener called in and said (words to the affect) "hey what you are doing won't produce results for about 15 - 25 years, get real and put the effort into existing tried and proven technologies - wind, solar, bio-mass, etc". The speaker then said (words to the effect) "well, you have to be careful about high tech solutions". !!! WTF !!!
The Australian government is full of "we are leading the world in this, we are putting billions into that, we are not going to do that". The final analysis seems to come down to "we aren't going to fully respond becoz China and India aren't bound to do anything about GW, they are our chief economic competitors and they buy as much of our fossil fuel as we can throw at them". The view is so backward as to be unbelievable. They have more money than they can poke a stick at and cannot come at protecting our environmental future enough to just get stuck in and make the investment. It's not hard, and every little step counts, and so long as there are enough of those little steps then real progress will be made.
I cannot help but note that a rather dramatic report has been released about the prospects for us as a race facing global warming (GW). The Australian radio has been full of people commenting on the report and demanding action; or, in the case of our government spokes people and their supporters, a justification for further inaction. I listened to one person say they are putting lots of energy and money into high tech solutions for scrubbing carbon out of the waste gases from burning coal. A concerned listener called in and said (words to the affect) "hey what you are doing won't produce results for about 15 - 25 years, get real and put the effort into existing tried and proven technologies - wind, solar, bio-mass, etc". The speaker then said (words to the effect) "well, you have to be careful about high tech solutions". !!! WTF !!!
The Australian government is full of "we are leading the world in this, we are putting billions into that, we are not going to do that". The final analysis seems to come down to "we aren't going to fully respond becoz China and India aren't bound to do anything about GW, they are our chief economic competitors and they buy as much of our fossil fuel as we can throw at them". The view is so backward as to be unbelievable. They have more money than they can poke a stick at and cannot come at protecting our environmental future enough to just get stuck in and make the investment. It's not hard, and every little step counts, and so long as there are enough of those little steps then real progress will be made.
posted by Bruce at 1:11 pm
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