Climate ChangeGiz recognises that climate change is a serious problem that requires urgent Government action. She is concerned that the current approach to industrial development in Western Australia is moving us in the wrong direction. The past twelve months were the hottest in recorded history. According to NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the global mean surface temperature for April 2010 was the hottest of all Aprils since their record began in 1880. March 2010 was similarly the hottest March, January-April 2010 the hottest start of any year. The twelve months from May 2009 to April 2010 were the hottest consecutive twelve months in history. For more evidence read the 'Illustrated guide to the latest climate science' published by Climate Progress in February 2010. The '2010 State of the World' report by the US-based Worldwatch Institute calculated that the world’s richest 500 million people (roughly 7% of global population) are responsible for 50% of the world’s CO2 emissions, while the poorest three billion are responsible for just 6% of global emissions. Our global commitment on global change so far has been akin to setting out to individually polish each one of the Titanic’s deckchairs prior to attempting to rearrange them on the deck in response to our collision with an iceberg. If we carry that analogy to include Western Australia, it is fair to say that our policymakers have just decided to go below deck, to order dessert in the grand ballroom. The government's response to date has been to tinker with inadequate and short-sighted policy that has been woeful and blinkered. Much of our direction is still predicated on “greed is good”. Endless global economic growth is pursued regardless of the environmental and the human limits of a finite planet. Signs of ecological collapse are emerging around the world. Values equating welfare with possessions and conspicuous consumption prevail amid unhappiness and stark social and economic poverty. The belief that the “marketplace” is dominant implies that the environment is a subsystem of the economy and that social values exist to serve that market. The reverse is the case. The economy and society are very firmly subsystems of a global environment. Population and economic growth have exceeded the carrying capacity of this earth. The prevailing conservative value system is therefore fundamentally flawed. We see this in the uncontrolled expansion and support of the hydrocarbon industry and the desire to mine one of the world’s most toxic elements, uranium, with little concern for the tens of thousands of years of contamination and health hazards that future generations will have to deal with. Currently, we in Western Australia are spiralling towards doubling our carbon dioxide equivalent emissions from those established for our state in 1990, the year of the Kyoto Protocol. We need to make decisions today that will move us towards a sustainable future. Giz has been advocating for clear government policies to oppose new coal-fired power stations, reduce our carbon footprint and promote renewable energy. Great links:
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