PLEA Network

12 February 2019, Sydney Morning Herald, Morrison must break with climate denialists. Prime Minister Scott Morrison took a big step forward on Monday by saying what most Australians have long been thinking about the link between climate change and the bushfires, droughts and catastrophic floods that have ravaged the country in recent years.  Hopefully he will now do something about cutting Australia’s carbon emissions, too. The remarks on climate change were perhaps the biggest surprise in a major speech to the National Press Club in Canberra yesterday ahead of the first parliamentary sitting week of 2019 and the federal election. reviously, Mr Morrison has refused to accept a causal link between climate change and weather events despite the overwhelming consensus in the scientific community. As recently as last week, Mr Morrison visited the site of devastating bushfires in south-west Tasmania in forests that had not caught fire in millenniums. Yet he described as “pretty offensive” a suggestion by Greens senator Nick McKim that the fires were made more dangerous by the Coalition’s pro-coal policies. So it was welcome that Mr Morrison on Monday turned around and emphatically accepted the science. “I acknowledge [climate change] is a factor. Of course it is. Australians do – the vast majority of Australians,” he  said. It has taken a long time for these words to come out of Mr Morrison’s mouth but the real issue is what he plans to do about them. Mr Morrison promised  to do more on climate change before the next election but he still suffers from a credibility gap on the issue. In the next breath he repeated his prediction that Australia will meet its emissions reductions targets under the Paris Treaty “at a canter” despite strong evidence that it cannot on current settings. Read more here