Election landslide brings challenges for those who care

Saturday’s Federal Election brought some rather special challenges for those of us interested in the welfare of people and the environment that sustains them.

The Tony Abbott lead Coalition was swept to power in what appeared to be a competition between the environment and the economy.

It was, and is, an immeasurably unfair race – with the environment (long-term concerns) being something of a turtle and the economy (immediacy and short-term gains) being the hare.

The climate skeptics, many of whom populate our new government, are unable to disassociate the two, as are, obviously, many of those who voted on Saturday.

The environment and the economy have always been dissimilar with one being driven by nature and the other by a human construct.

Until we have the intellectual athleticism to be able to recognise that difference and add the cost of what damage we do to the environment to the cost of human endeavours, then the complications of climate change will only worsen.

Saturday’s election the Coalition pushed, in a public sense, our concerns about the environment to the periphery of the social agenda and in an article headed: “Australia rips up climate-change policies” NewScientist argued the landslide election result was bad news for the climate.