Antinuclear

The week in climate and nuclear news

Climate change and bushfires.   This topic has divided Australia. On one side, there are our government leaders – PM Tony Abbott and Environment Minister Greg Hunt.   Abbott has declared that any link between the two is “complete hogwash” and dismissed  the United Nations’ expert climate negotiator Christiana Figueres as “talking through her hat”.    While the Greens’ Christine Milne deplored these statements, the Labor leader Bill Shorten was curiously silent. He said that he “didn’t want to speculate on the fires while people’s homes were still on the line”  . Sadly, it is probable that a majority of Australians, fed by the Murdoch media, agree with them. Apparently the Labor Opposition agrees with the Liberal government that the bushfires are irrelevant to climate change and that it’s bad taste to talk about any link.

Greens’ MP Adam Bandt thought it was worse taste to just ignore climate change,  Many others, including Victoria’s Country Fire Authority take the link seriously.   Clearly one can’t identify a particular bushfire as caused by climate change. However, climate change has brought conditions of more intense heat, dryer vegetation, and bushfire seasons of earlier onset and longer duration.

Nuclear power.   As Australia’s Liberal government determinedly pursues a climate denial agenda, the nuclear lobby is publicly fairly silent.  Australia’s nuclear lobby bides its time, until the fuss subsides. Once all effective climate action has been dismantled by the government, it will no doubt become politically correct to again believe in climate change.  Then the nuclear lobby can swing into action – promoting nuclear. power as the solution.  The Liberal government will be all for it,  Labor Senators Gary Gray,  Mark Bishop and Alex Gallacher are among the Labor pro nuclear faction.  We’ll need to watch Bill Shorten, who is likely to even weaker  on Labor’s anti nuclear policy than he is on Labor’s climate action. The ALP’s 2011 policy platform expressly forbids “the establishment of nuclear power plants and all other stages of the nuclear fuel cycle in Australia”.

October 26, 2013 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Christina reviews | Leave a comment