'Future Earth' rises into view, thanks to Lesley Hughes

“Future Earth” rose into view when mentioned just last week by Climate Councillor Professor Lesley Hughes.

Professor Hughes was speaking at the launch of the Climate Council’s latest report: “The silent killer: climate change the health impacts of extreme heat”.

Fellow speaker, Research Professor at the University Western Australia, a Vice Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of Melbourne, a patron and founding director of the Telethon Kids Institute, and former Australian of the Year, Professor Fiona Stanley, said Future Earth was something new to her.

However, again illustrating her willingness to explore, Professor Stanley said she intended to get involved with Future Earth just as soon as she could.

Future Earth describes itself: “As a major international research platform providing the knowledge and support to accelerate our transformations to a sustainable world.

“Bringing together and in partnership with existing programmes on global environmental change*, Future Earth is an international hub to coordinate new, interdisciplinary approaches to research on three themes: Dynamic Planet, Global Sustainable Development and Transformations towards Sustainability.

“It also aims to be a platform for international engagement to ensure that knowledge is generated in partnership with society and users of science. It is open to scientists of all disciplines, natural and social, as well as engineering, the humanities and law,” it says.

The Climate Council’s latest report was launched last week at a special function in the Ella Latham Auditorium at Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital.

Stanley wants GPs and specialists to prepare for inevitable deluge of sickness

G

Professor Fiona Stanley - she wants GPs
and specialists to be prepared for the
inevitable increase climate change
will mean for childhood sickness.

Ps and specialists need to train and prepare for the “inevitable increase” in childhood sickness and pressure on health services linked to climate change, leading epidemiologist Professor Fiona Stanley says.

A new report on child health and climate change, released by Doctors for the Environment Australia (DEA), warns that Australia’s federal and state governments must take immediate steps to curtail rising global temperatures or risk an increased burden of disease, particularly for children.

The report, No Time for Games: Children’s Health and Climate Change, presents key research findings that predict a frightening future for children and the healthcare system.

Read story published by Doctors for the Environment, Australia - “Grim future for children: global warming report”.

Will it be climate-change action or freedom of speech?

Intellectual access to the anthropogenic climate change discussion is governed by how the matter is framed.

Attorney General George Brandis.

Frame it one way your opinion is subsequently shaped, frame it another way and your opinion shifts accordingly.

Judith Brett illustrates this dilemma perfectly in her piece in The Monthly headed: “Must we choose between climate-change action and freedom of speech?”

She discusses the ABC Radio National interview with former Australian of the Year, Fiona Stanley, and that in the public affairs magazine, Spiked, with Australia’s attorney general, George Brandis.

Ms Stanley has described herself as “anxious and angry” because the politicized climate-change conversation had led to the denigration of climate science and scientists.

She has criticized by Labor and Coalition governments for their inaction on what the science unequivocally says will happen and within what will happen to her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.

George Brandis cites two recent examples that had convinced him of the “mortal threat freedom of speech faces in the modern era”.

One was the racial vilification case brought against the conservative commentator Andrew Bolt, and the other was the climate-change debate.

Thoughtful writing by Judith Brett, who can also provide copies of the Monster Climate Petition and can be contacted at judymbrett@gmail.com

The website for the Monster Climate Petition will go live on August 8 at monsterclimatepetition.com.au.

Prof Stanley adds her voice to the climate change conversation

Neither you nor I, and most certainly not former Australian of the Year, Professor Fiona Stanley, need any further convincing about the slow motion train wreck that is climate change.

Just today on a Radio National interview, Prof Stanley talked more about climate science denial following a withering attack earlier in the week about how science, and its findings, are being disregarded.

She has told an audience of doctors and medical students in Perth that the looming health impacts of climate change were “scary” and were being politically ignored.

Prof Stanley said the medical profession had failed to sell the health co-benefits of individual and community action on climate change.

Listen to what Prof Stanley had to say here on "Health impacts of climate change being politically ignored”.