‘We are all accountable': Atlassian chief slams Morrison protest crackdown

Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes has dismissed the Morrison government's plan to stop protesters boycotting companies they oppose, declaring all Australians had a "basic right" to try to force a business to change its behaviour.

Mike Cannon Brookes (left) "the government is quiet on the climate".

Mr Cannon-Brookes broke with other business leaders to attack the government proposal on the grounds that Australia had a "proud history" of protest on women's rights, the decriminalisation of homosexuality and opposing wars in Vietnam and Iraq.

"The people protesting over climate change are not quiet Australians. They are being loud because the government is quiet on the climate," he said.

"Choosing not to do business with companies that threaten the health of the planet is everyone's basic right. It's a way to get business to do the right thing, because we are all accountable."

Read the story from The Age by David Crowe - “‘We are all accountable': Atlassian chief slams Morrison protest crackdown.”

Morrison a 'bad dad' for denigrating young climate protesters

Scott Morrison failed an entire generation last week. He dismissed the 300,000 young people and their parents who filled our city streets in the School Strike 4 Climate, as lacking “context and perspective”.

Steve Biddulph.

It was an outrageously insensitive response, and if young Australians were anxious before, they will be doubly so now. They are the most science literate generation in history, and the science says this is the most dangerous time our world has ever faced. But the leaders of the nation think everything is fine.

I was out among those young people. They are the generation raised while I was this country’s leading voice on child-rearing, and I was so proud of them it brought me to tears. They struck me as the mature ones in the whole picture, their speeches were wonderful, their manner dignified and their demands (no new coal, cutting exports and fair treatment of workers) were moderate and thoughtful. They were the prefects, sports kids, and the thoughtful nerdy ones who get their facts right. And their parents and grandparents were supporting them.

And here is the thing - many of their placards referenced Scott Morrison in person, as the one they were asking desperately to help. In response, Morrison accused them of being stooges for the unspecified aims of others. That’s hugely disrespectful, and it doesn’t begin to understand the nature of teenagers, which is in every generation to ask awkward questions we really need to answer.

Read the opinion piece by Steve Biddulph from The Sydney Morning Herald - “Morrison a 'bad dad' for denigrating young climate protesters.”

San Francisco Sends Climate Costs to Taxpayers as Liability Suit Idles.

When U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup dismissed San Francisco and Oakland’s climate liability suits against five of the world’s largest oil companies last week, his ruling ignored the central question of the suit: who should be responsible for paying for the impacts of climate change? In his earlier hearing, Alsup seemed to struggle with the idea that cities could even anticipate what those costs are, imagining them to be unpredictable and far in the future.

The cost of climate damage foisted upon the ratepayers.

But climate change adaptation costs are already piling up for the Bay Area cities. And in place of another way to raise money, San Francisco is sending a referendum to voters this November to vote on paying $425 million to repair the Embarcadero seawall, which is only a small part of a projected $5 billion long-term plan to upgrade the seawall to protect the city from sea level rise.

Globally, seas have risen 8 inches since industry started burning fossil fuels and forecasts predict 2 to 4 more feet of sea level rise this century.

Read the Climate Liability News story by Amy Westervelt - “San Francisco Sends Climate Costs to Taxpayers as Liability Suit Idles.”

Turnbull government MPs ridicule claims of 'looming backbench revolt' over electric cars

A Liberal MP purportedly leading the charge against increased taxpayer support for electric cars says there is no looming backbench revolt, as other Liberals dismissed divisions over the issue as “nonsense".

Liberal MP Craig Kelly at Parliament House in Canberra.

Craig Kelly, the chair of the Coalition's energy and environment committee, played down ructions despite having warned that electric vehicles have a bigger carbon footprint than conventional cars - a view that has since been rubbished by the expert who created the website upon which the assertion was based.

Read the story by Nicole Hasham and Mark Kenny in today’s Melbourne Age - “Turnbull government MPs ridicule claims of 'looming backbench revolt' over electric cars.”

(It has been argued that only a child sees a project half completed and that is what has happened in the electric car debate - Craig Kelly argues that an electric car using power generated by a fossil-fuelled power station is more carbon intensive than existing traditional, existing cars, ignoring the fact that power drawn from solar plants would significantly reduce that carbon footprint. The electric car must be paired with solar or wind power - Robert McLean)

'Wasteful stunt': Turnbull government accused of doing too little to save reef

The Turnbull government's pledge of an additional $60 million to help improve the health of the Great Barrier Reef has been dismissed by environmental groups and scientists as insufficient and a "wasteful publicity stunt”.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull visits the Australian Institute
 of Marine Science (AIMS) to unveil the 'rescue plan' for the reef.

The government's pledge of the funds over 18 months includes $10.4 million for "an all-out assault" to reduce the impact of coral-eating crown-of-thorns starfish, the government said in a statement.

Read Peter Hannam’s story in The Sydney Morning Herald - “‘Wasteful stunt': Turnbull government accused of doing too little to save reef.” 

Trump calls for some 'good old global warming' as US experiences bad weather

He once dismissed it as a “hoax” created by the Chinese to destroy American jobs, but right now Donald Trump is pining for some of that “good old global warming”.

 Climate scientists have long warned against using individual
weather events to assess global warming, but now
 Donald Trump wants some "good old global warming".

While on holiday in Florida on Thursday, the US president wondered whether global warming might not be such a problem after all.

As severe cold and record amounts of snow sweep across the US east coast, Trump wrote on Twitter that the country “could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming that our Country, but not other countries, was going to pay TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS to protect against”. 

“Bundle up!” he added.

Read Michael McGowan’s story on The Guardian - “Trump calls for some 'good old global warming' as US experiences bad weather.”

EPA dismisses climate change scientists 'to replace them with industry reps’

The Environmental Protection Agency has dismissed at least five members of a major scientific review board, the latest signal of what critics call a campaign by the Trump administration to shrink the agency’s regulatory reach by reducing the role of academic research.

Donald Trump with Scott Pruitt, administrator
 of the Environmental Protection Agency. 

A spokesman for the EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt, said he would consider replacing the academic scientists with representatives from industries whose pollution the agency is supposed to regulate, as part of the wide net it plans to cast. “The administrator believes we should have people on this board who understand the impact of regulations on the regulated community,” said the spokesman, JP Freire.

The dismissals on Friday came about six weeks after the House of Representatives passed a bill aimed at changing the composition of another EPA scientific review board to include more representation from the corporate world.

Read Coral Davenport’s story on the Independent - “EPA dismisses climate change scientists 'to replace them with industry reps’.”

Barnaby Joyce's 'duck pond' claim under fire as Adani coal row deepens

Barnaby Joyce has been called "irresponsible" by one of Australia's most senior conservationists after the Deputy Prime Minister dismissed wetlands adjoining Adani's Abbot Point coal port as little more than a "duck-shooting pond”.

Coal dust on the beaches next to
the Abbot Point coal loading facility. 

The brawl over Adani's threats to the onshore environment and the Great Barrier Reef escalated as Liberal backbencher Sarah Henderson broke ranks to question a potential $1 billion government loan to develop rail infrastructure for the Indian conglomerate's proposed Carmichael mine in Queensland's Galilee Basin.

Read Heath Aston’s story in today’s Melbourne Age - “Barnaby Joyce's 'duck pond' claim under fire as Adani coal row deepens.”