Senator Andrew Bartlett
Wednesday, February 16, 2005
 
The Über Issue - Climate Change

The Kyoto Protocol comes into force today. This is a significant step forward in global collaborative efforts to prevent rapid climate change. The Protocol is a completely insufficient set of measures for tackling this major threat, but the very act of it being adopted is a very important first step. We must keep moving on the next steps, which need to be as big and as rapid as possible.

If you can't find out information on climate change or the Kyoto Protocol on the Internet, you're not really trying, so I won't put up a whole bunch of links. I will just make two statements to reinforce my belief that climate change is by far the most pressing and important environmental issue.

Firstly, it is an issue which is now widely accepted as real and serious, even amongst organisations, parties and people who would not normally be seen as environmentalist. I believe the new federal Environment Minister, Senator Ian Campbell, is genuine in his concern about the issue, but he is totally hamstrung in the actions he can take because of the stone-age, ideologically driven inflexibility of his Prime Minister. There are still a few greenhouse sceptics, but there are always some people determined to be sceptics – there's even a Flat Earth Society, 400 years after Galileo developed his telescope.

Secondly, if we don't do far better at slowing climate change, then many of the other efforts of so many people to protect the environment will be futile. To quote Peter Garrett's First Speech to Parliament, this is "a supra issue which presents the most profound environmental and political challenge we will face in the coming century." (I prefer über-issue, but maybe I've been watching too much Buffy, which uses that prefix on occasion.) To use an example that is both stark and close to home for me, reports in last weekend's paper suggest that the Great Barrier Reef's coral could disappear in as little as 20 years. In other words, it is possible it is already too late. Just doing a quick database search, I've mentioned the Reef on 48 separate occasions in the Senate in the last 6 years, including as recently as last week, in addition to a range of questioning in various Senate Committees. Leaving aside wisecracks about what effect all the hot air from my speeches has had on climate change, all the efforts by so many people to protect the Reef will go to waste if we fail on climate change.

The big challenge with any huge, global issue is to overcome the feeling that it's too big and hard to do anything about as an individual. My well reasoned response is to say that such a view, while understandable, is totally crap. So get out there, tell people who aren’t sure that this is as serious as it gets and encourage any sort of action that will help reduce the danger.

There will be probably be heaps of different web logs mentioning the Kyoto Protocol over the next couple of days where you can have a say. John Quiggin has got in early, taking 47 words to say what I've said in 540.

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Wednesday, February 16, 2005 Permalink
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