Prominent Canadian climate scientist Dr David Suzuki’s reaction to Australia’s new conservative Liberal-National government’s scrapping of key climate institutions can be summed up as: “what the hell?”
One of Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s first acts in government has been to abolish the Climate Commission and move to dismantle the Climate Change Authority (CCA), bodies set up by the former Labor government.
The move has angered environmentalists, including the prominent Canadian scientist who is in Sydney to talk about marine pollution along Australia’s east coast.
“What the hell kind of government is it that comes into office and the first symbolic act is to shut down a source of information?” Dr Suzuki told AAP Newsagency today.
“The minute you shut down solid scientific information then you can run it on your ideology.
Drr Suzuki also defended the former Labor government’s move to put a price on carbon as a very important step.
“Why do we not object to paying for putting garbage into landfill, but we shout like mad when we put a price on putting carbon into the atmosphere?”
Drr Suzuki, in an interview with EcoTV’s Lara Shannon, said “We’ve just got to put a price on carbon. Why is it that our atmosphere can be used for free?”
“I think your government in Australia is too much under the influence of the mining sector and the mining and coal industry puts a huge amount of pressure on the government and is not willing to pay the price of what their emissions are doing to the atmosphere,” he said.
Dr Suzuki said “if you’re going to tax carbon that goes into the atmosphere, you’ve now got a tax and a tax payer.
“The taxpayer will have much more incentive into what they’re doing to the atmosphere.”
Dr Suzuki was critical of the slowness with which Australia embraced renewable energy.
He said, “Australians have something that Canadians will kill for, that is sunlight.
“Australia should be leading the world with something that has so much dependence, not just capturing that sunlight but manufacturing the products to exploit that sunlight.
“I think Australia being so tied to the fossil fuel industry is missing a massive opportunity.”
Dr Suzuki said both ecology and economics began with the same three letters and he urged governments to find ways of blending the two.
“Right now, we elevate the economy above everything else and so our politicians are saying what we can’t afford to put a price on carbon, we can’t afford to put a price on that, what the hell is going on.
“The economy cannot come before the air we breathe or the food that comes from the soil, surely the goodness of our highest priority should be keeping those things we live on, healthy.
“We’re doing it the wrong way.
“We must elevate the ecology above the economics and put the ‘eco’ back into the economics.
“We must elect politicians that can lift their vision beyond the bottom line.
“Their bottom line is the next election and so I think it’s up to civil society to become much more active in the political process and say ‘we want you to be looking at the consequences of what you’re doing to my children and my grandchildren’.
“What is being done or not done by our politicians I believe is an inter-generational crime,” Dr Suzuki said.
“In the name of keeping our economies growing now, we are leaving a bigger and bigger mess for our children and grandchildren to deal with, and that is criminal.
“I think it’s relative blindness and that is an illegal and criminal category.
“I think it’s criminal neglect not to be putting a price on carbon and not to have a huge incentive on renewable energy.
“We’ve got to elect politicians who can lift their vision beyond just the next election.
Dr Suzuki said politicians needed to loo to the longer term, adding that the only way that could happen was if voters demanded it on behalf of their children and their grandchildren.
One Response
The current Australian government should be arrested and charged with crimes against humanity as their actions as puppets of the mining industry and Ruphert, have resulted in a government that will kill billions of people through their greed and utter stupidity. This government has been falsely elected trough our corrupt media brainwashing Mr and Mrs moron through news on channel moron and all the shock jock stupidity. We now have efforts by the government to preserve the dishonest media through continuing our hopeless sub 3rd world internet service. If proper internet is allowed it will destroy Ruphert and his cronies.