PLEA Network

8 October 2018, Renew Economy, Coalition’s breathtakingly stupid response to IPCC climate report. It wasn’t too hard to predict what the Coalition government’s responses to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report would be – you just needed to know where they would be making them. Prime minister Scott Morrison chose two different media forums to espouse his views – that of far Right shock-jock Alan Jones on Radio 2GB, and Sky News, where the lunar right have been gearing up for this event for the past week. As ABC’s Media Watch host Paul Barry noted of the Sky News “after dark” coverage on Monday: It’s either irresponsible or “bat-shit” crazy. You could categorise the Coalition government’s response along the same lines. Morrison’s first response, as we reported on Monday, was to promise that Australia would be spending no money on climate change conferences and “all that nonsense.” He doesn’t dare pull Australia out of the Paris treaty, but he has no intention of doing anything while it’s there. Pretty much Australia’s standard response to international efforts for the last few decades. “We are not held to any of the (IPCC recommendations), and nor are we bound by them,” Morrison insisted. In short, Morrison was backing miners over scientists, as the Sydney Morning Herald headlined. In the fantasy world of the Coalition, according to deputy prime minister Michael McCormack, Australia can have its cake and it eat too: He says Australia can keep on burning coal for decades, and encourage others to do so, and still have a tourism industry on the Great Barrier Reef. McCormack says Australia will not be dictated to by “some sort of report.” Some sort of report? Read more here