Energy policy captive to lobbyists and 'mad ideologues', Tim Flannery says

Five years since the Abbott government scrapped the Climate Commission, the environmentalist Tim Flannery says our energy policy remains hostage to lobbyists, political self-interest and “mad ideologues”.

‘We’re being held hostage at a federal level,’
Tim Flannery told Guardian Australia.

But the organisation Flannery helped start from the ashes of Abbott’s climate bonfire, the Climate Council, says that attitudes have shifted substantially since 2013 – at least those outside federal parliament.

“We’re being held hostage at a federal level,” Flannery told Guardian Australia.

“It has been a disgrace. Our failures are the failures of a small group of politicians who are supposed to be acting in the national interest. Instead, they’re using energy policy as a cudgel, they’re listening to paid lobbyists and doing their bidding.”

Read the story from The Guardian by Ben Smee - “Energy policy captive to lobbyists and 'mad ideologues', Tim Flannery says.”

Halfway to Paris - Australia has much to do

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 new report from the Climate Commission has much to do to hold its place in the world community.

The report reveals that an emissions reduction target of 40-60% by 2030 would be the bare minimum for Australia to keep pace with its major trading partners and do its part to tackle climate change.

Read the report - “Halfway to Paris: How the World isTracking on Climate Change”.

Building a business and building a government are similar

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any successful in business attribute the flourishing of their company to the fact that they have assembled around them the smartest minds in their particular field.

Australia’s Abbott Government is, despite its many protestations, populated by people who deny human-induced climate change.

Setting the tone for the government is the Prime Minister himself, Tony Abbott, who has declared climate change as “crap”.

Running a government is not unlike orchestrating a company and whatever ideology you align yourself with, it is imperative that all the decision makers within your company reflect and promote your beliefs and values.

Subsequently when Abbott and his cohort strolled into Canberra’s halls of power, they immediately got rid of the Climate Commission, an independent body abreast of developments in the climate change conversation and advised what action the government should take.

The now defunct Climate Commission, announced by the Gillard Labor Government in February 2011, was headed by Professor Tim Flannery, and other commissioners included Professor Veena Sahajwalla, Professor Lesley Hughes, Professor Will Steffen, Roger Beale, and Gerry Hueston, who are now all members of the community funded Climate Council.

Although the Commission was projected to cost $5.4 million over four years, the Abbott Government thought it had no need of such advice and in what in the overall scheme of things is a tiny amount, save some money, a decision on which it has changed tack and has now spent $4 million employing the scientifically discredited Dr Borj Lomborg.

However, as the Abbott Government is eager to advance its ideologically-driven position on climate change, it has dispensed with a commission staffed by qualified, thoughtful and diplomatic Australians to give the role to a Dane whose beliefs are at odds with nearly all of the world’s leading climatologists.

This appointment, defying all the protocols, has not gone unnoticed and has caused serious disquiet among academics and now the Labor Opposition has joined the choir of complaints, pointed out in the ABC story, “Labor criticises $4m Government grant for Dr Bjorn Lomborg think tank”.

Australians dig deep for an independent climate body

Professor Tim Flannery - he headed
 the Climate Commission and has
offered his services pro bono to
help launch the new Climate Council.

Australians obviously want an independent body to consider the implications and consequences of climate change.

The Tony Abbott lead government immediately shut down Australia’s Climate Commission and the sacked commissioners have reformed themselves, pro bono, as the Climate Council.

The public has rushed to support the new council and in less than a week nearly a million dollars has been contributed to a fund to allow the former commissioners to continue their work.

Today’s Melbourne Age (Tuesday, October 1) tells in a story by Ben Schneiders headed: “$900,000 raised for new green body”, that a social media campaign to fund the new body has succeeded beyond expectation.

Coal industry polarising many Australians

Coal - villain or otherwise?

The maintenance of Australia’s coal industry is polarising many Australians.

Some, primarily those who profit from it, want us to keep digging and exporting the coal they see as beneficial to humanity, while others object to the mining of the fossil fuel for they see it as the arch-villain in the world’s wrestle with carbon-dioxide emissions.

Australia’s Climate Commission has recommended that 80 per cent of the world’s fossil fuels need to remain where they are, in the ground, while the Federal Government has rejected those calls to wind down the coal industry.

The conversation is outlined in an ABC story headlined: “Government says coal industry vital despite Climate Commission's warnings against fossil fuels”.

What we felt was real, here are the facts

The Climate Commission today released its report:  “The Angry Summer” underlining the reason, and need, of Slap Tomorrow – A Wake-Up Call.

Opening its report, the Climate Commission says: “Extreme weather events dominated the 2012/2013 Australian summer, including record-breaking heat, severe bushfires, extreme rainfall and damaging flooding. Extreme heatwaves and catastrophic bushfire conditions during the Angry Summer were made worse by climate change”.

 

Flannery featured in Britain's Guardian newspaper

Tim Flannery.

Tim Flannery is probably the best known Australian advocate of the science of the climate change.

The former Australian of the Year and now the boss of the Federal Government’s Climate Commission, along with being among the most vocal about the loss of species because of climate change, was only recently featured in Britain’s Guardian Newspaper.

In the article headed: “As Australia burns, attitudes are changing. But is it too late?”, Flannery argues that in this summer, life in Australia represents a game of Russian roulette.

Actually, according to Flannery, it was no ordinary game; it was a “very unpleasant game”.