Hotter weather could turn people against Abbott’s climate change policies
The polling suggest that from a carbon tax-inspired nadir last year, concern about climate change is creeping up……..two separate studies of polling show that people are more likely to be concerned about climate change if they have directly experienced hot, dry weather.
Abbott’s climate change Achilles heel: the weather November 9, 2013 The Age, Tom Allard National Affairs Editor Hotter days could bring with them a potent political wildcard.”……….Neither Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop nor Environment Minister Greg Hunt will now be attending global talks in Warsaw on how to reduce global greenhouse emissions. Not even a parliamentary secretary will represent.
And, perhaps most ominously, the Queensland government launched its plan to develop the Galilee Basin coal deposits, flagging royalty concessions to miners – including Clive Palmer and Gina Rinehart – who will build the mega mines slated for central Queensland.
Development could double Australia’s coal output, and add massively to global carbon pollutants. Port developments and increased sea traffic also threaten the Great Barrier Reef.
It is the first initiative from Queensland Premier Campbell Newman since a deal with the Abbott government giving him oversight of the environmental assessment and approval of resources projects in the state.
Abbott famously decried climate change science as ”absolute crap” and, as Howard observed, rose to the leadership of the Coalition and the nation by harnessing doubts about the reality of climate change.
The Prime Minister these days says he believes in climate science and that human activity has contributed to global warming but Abbott’s actions since reaching power suggest his real views track closer to his earlier scatological assessment of the issue.
In the short-term, expect the government to milk the carbon tax issue further as it exploits Labor’s opposition to its repeal.
Further out on the horizon though, the politics are far more tricky. The polling suggest that from a carbon tax-inspired nadir last year, concern about climate change is creeping up……..
two separate studies of polling show that people are more likely to be concerned about climate change if they have directly experienced hot, dry weather.
As the author of one of the studies Ye Li, from the Columbia Business School, observed: ”Global warming is so complex, it appears some people are ready to be persuaded by whether their own day is warmer or cooler than usual, rather than think about whether the entire world is becoming warmer or cooler.”
The La Nina-El Nino cycle is now in a neutral phase but Australia has still experienced record hot temperatures this year, and the fierce, early start to the bushfire season.
If El Nino reasserts itself, the weather will get even hotter, and the politics of climate change could swing again dramatically. http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/abbotts-climate-change-achilles-heel-the-weather-20131108-2x6r8.html#ixzz2kBTuW8m7
No comments yet.
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 
Leave a comment