Good to see the honorable Kevin Rudd has “…decided to kick off my blogging career with a focus on climate change“:
The latest scientific research on climate change confirms our worst fears. Climate change is happening faster than we previously thought, creating a more serious threat to our economy, our environment and to future generations.
I recently returned from a meeting of leaders of the world’s major developed and developing countries in Italy, where our discussions focused on our global efforts to tackle climate change. This meeting – the Major Economies Forum on Climate and Energy – made some important progress. In particular, it recognised the clear message from climate science that the increase in global average temperature must not exceed 2 degrees celsius. That means the international community is accepting the need for tough long-term targets on reducing carbon emissions.
For anyone not following Australian politics, this is a huge step up from our last Prime Minister John Howard, who somewhat famously said “I accept that climate change is a challenge, I accept the broad theory about global warming. I am sceptical about a lot of the more gloomy predictions” (shortly before he was voted out of office). Great to see mention of our research here, too!
The Great Barrier Reef – one of Australia’s most iconic natural wonders which generates jobs for around 60,000 people and more than $4.9 billion in tourism revenue – is particularly vulnerable to climate change.
An interesting anecdote about John Howard, which pre-dates the quote above by a few months: at one of the regular meetings of his scientific advisory group, he asked the then Chief Scientist to convene a group of scientists to “debunk this climate change rubbish” or words to that effect. The then Chief Scientist, to his credit (and this was a man seconded from a major mining company), replied that he suspected that such a group of scientists could not be found. Howard was silent for a moment, then moved on to another topic. I believe it was only after this incident that Howard publicly acknowledged the reality of global warming and started talking about an ETS.