French minister Nicolas Hulot calls out Trump on climate change as Irma wreaks havoc

Paris: French Environment Minister Nicolas Hulot said extreme weather conditions like the powerful hurricane bearing down on Florida risked becoming the norm, and took a dig at US President Donald Trump's stance on climate change.

The links between cause and effect:
French Environment Minister Nicolas
 Hulot's message to Donald Trump. 

In an interview with France 2 TV about Hurricane Irma on Friday evening French time, Mr Hulot implied that Mr Trump - who has called global warming a hoax - was ignoring the reality of man-made climate change, which most mainstream scientists regard as an established fact.

Mr Trump said in May he was pulling the United States out of the landmark 2015 global agreement to fight climate change that was brokered in Paris, saying it would harm the US economy and cost jobs.

Irma - described by Mr Trump as a storm of "absolutely historic destructive potential" - pummelled Cuba and the Bahamas on Friday, and a second powerful hurricane, Jose, was tracking towards the northeastern Caribbean, with a third, Katia, right behind.

Read the story in today’s Melbourne Age - “French minister Nicolas Hulot calls out Trump on climate change as Irma wreaks havoc.”

5 Shades of Climate Denial, All on Display in the Trump White House

Whether dismissing global warming as a hoax, questioning humanity's role in it, exaggerating the unknowns, playing down the urgency of action, or playing up the costs, President Donald Trump and his team have served up every flavor of climate denial.

We developed a guide to what the science says about the five types of
climate denial we've heard from Donald Trump and his team.
Behind Trump are Vice President Mike Pence, EPA Administrator
Scott Pruitt, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, and Energy Secretary Rick Perry.

Although the arguments varied—as if they were different shades or stages of denial—they all served the same purpose: to create an exaggerated sense of dispute in order to bolster a case against decisive climate action. The latest gambit is to avoid the subject entirely.

In his announcement last week that he would pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate agreement, Trump didn't bother addressing temperature trends, carbon concentrations, sea level rise, extreme weather or changing wildlife and vegetation patterns, the kinds of climate change information that his administration has also been scrubbing from government websites. He certainly didn't talk about the 2-degree Celsius goal of the Paris accord or the carbon budget for keeping that goal within reach. Trump didn't even use the words "climate change."

Read the Inside Climate News story - “5 Shades of Climate Denial, All on Display in the Trump White House.”

Running naked, civil disobedience and climate change

Edmund Burke.

Those who gather Beneath the Wisteria in Shepparton recently discussed the idea of civil disobedience.

The tongue in cheek conversation was about running naked through the city’s Maude St Mall, but all agreed much more could yet be done to draw the public’s attention to the seriousness of climate change before resorting to such tactics.

Dr Jeremy Sammut, a research fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies, discussed civil disobedience in a recent article Melbourne Age headed: “Coal hoax fails to dig deep without a martyr to the cause”.

A “kicker headline” on the story said: “Protesters need to face legal consequences to sway public opinion”.

Alerting us to this story, supporter Terry Court said: “I wonder who the gutless ones in this argument are. Nevertheless I have to do more”.

Terry’s sentiment is understandable, but the forces ranged against accepting the realities and implications of climate change are driven by massive self-interest and so those of us who gather Beneath the Wisteria need to remember the observation of Edmund Burke.

The 18^th century statesman, author, orator, political theorist and philosopher once said in an almost prescient manner: “No one could make a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little”.

Those of us who regularly gather Beneath the Wisteria are really doing only a little, but at least we are doing something!