PLEA Network

13 September 2016, Renew Economy, Interminable climate argument is costing us solutions for our future. It is fair to say that people are getting fairly tired of the climate change debate in Australia. Whenever the issue emerges, all you see and hear is heated disagreement. Usually name calling then ensues –  “environment evangelists”, “big polluters” and political “sell outs” become all too common catch phrases. These are points that avoid addressing the fundamentals of what we are trying to achieve.That is, to make effective, pragmatic decisions and to take action now that will address the economic and safety challenges climate change is confronting us with. It’s not a difficult concept. And we have to play a credible part in assisting the rest of the world to do this.Yet, over the last week or so, we have seen tiresome name calling return after the Climate Change Authority – the Parliament’s climate change advisory group –  released a report that suggested a fresh approach to these decisions and actions. It was asked to outline a pathway for the current Parliament to agree on a policy framework that would actually stop Australia’s emissions from continuing to increase, so they would start to fall, in line with the international commitments Australia has made under the Paris climate agreement  last year. This is an agreement around 180 countries of the world have entered into in an historic attempt to deliver economic prosperity and safety to all of us. This report was quickly followed by a dissenting report from two of the Authority’s own members, which stated that the Climate Change Authority had not gone far enough and had made compromises for political expediency. They said it had failed in its own mandate to provide rigorous independent science-based advice to the Australian community. The merry go round continued. Once again we fell into discussing the merits of “emissions intensity schemes” and other arcane policy solutions. Read More here