Change is possible: Australia needs a Green New Deal

When I dropped my kids off at childcare just a few weeks ago, the air was so dangerous that the warning on my phone showed someone in a gas mask.

Australians are angry and anxious because the government
clearly doesn’t have the climate emergency under control and
 has no plan to get it under control.’

As I stood on the burned-out property of Nick Hopkins in Malua Bay last month, he summed it up perfectly, feeling two parts shattered and three parts angry.

Australians are angry and anxious because the government clearly doesn’t have the climate emergency under control and has no plan to get it under control. But people are also angry and anxious because the basics of life are no longer guaranteed.

Study hard and do Tafe or university and you get underemployed in an insecure job with low pay. You get a job and then find you can’t afford a house because the government has rigged the housing market against you.

Read the opinion piece from The Guardian by Adam Brandt - “Change is possible: Australia needs a Green New Deal.” 

If we care it seems we are 'medieval' and 'ignorant'

Adam Brandt.

George Brandis has labelled those of us who care deeply about humanity’s survival as “medieval’ and “ignorant”.

Beneath the Wisteria supporters could rightly feel insulted and rather indignant about the Attorney General’s comments, but should avoid that sort of reaction for the matter is simply far too important to allow personal sentiments to interfere with a belief in what is decent.

Nor should we allow the attorney general’s rhetoric to distract us from what we feel is the right and proper way to respond to climate change and its attendant rigours.

Mr Brandis was reported in today’s Age in a story by Lisa Cox in a story headed: “Debate on climate ‘medieval’”.

However, we should draw comfort from the observation made by Greens MP, Adam Brandt when interviewed this morning on Radio National who said, “This Abbott Government is using every trick in the book to hide the fact that they're not taking the action that the science calls for on climate change. And to suggest that somehow people in this country are being restricted from airing albeit very wrong views on climate change is completely misleading.

Drought and human health costs on The Drum



The human health costs that can be attributed to our wounded atmosphere have been discussed in a first person account by Fleur McDonald.



Drought and its human costs.

Working with her husband, Fleur manages a large station near Esperance in Western Australia and wrote on The Drum in a story entitled “The human cost of drought can’t be counted”.

Fleur asks: “There are many questions being thrown around at the moment: Are agriculture resources being handled correctly? Is climate change causing these droughts and floods? Do we need drought plans? Is the farm viable and therefore entitled to help? And the big one - who, in fact, is responsible for helping which farmers at crisis time?”

Although she thought they were really good questions, she felt now was not the time to ask them, “Not while farmers in New South Wales and Queensland are suffering”.

The prompts, naturally, the response, “If not now, when?” and echoes with the question asked by Melbourne Greens MP Adam Brandt about the connection between the New South Wales bushfires and climate change.

Brandt was admonished by many, including Tony Abbott, for asking such a question when many people were obviously suffering massive privations.

Again, it was one of those moments that brings the response; “If not now, when”?