I came to the conclusion that humanity (rather than the planet) was threatened by global warming in 2008 and that we were in a climate emergency. I resolved to become politically active standing for office whenever I could to publicise the matter, trying to form and then join a single issue climate party that appealed across the political spectrum and more recently blogging and using the social media. When I have the opportunity I often quote the English divine Thomas Norton “hope for the best prepare for the worst.” And the worst is definitely a climate emergency.
In all this I have been heavily influenced by former CSIRO Atmospheric physics scientists – Barrie Pittock, Ian Enting and Roger Francey. David Spratt and Phil Sutton’s Climate Code Red was published the same year if I needed any further encouragement. Since then my political efforts in Gippsland – one of the conservative bastions in the country – have so far made little progress. In my six previous efforts at office, for instance, I have always lost my deposit.
The recent storm events in South Australia may be a foretaste of the climate emergency. That extreme weather events will become more common and more extreme has been one of the major predictions of climate scientists for more than 30 years. These events are surely an example of both of these predictions with severe winds and more than 80,000 lightning strikes across the state. With 22 power pylons blown over the whole State was blacked out. We can safely conclude that climate change has heavily influenced this event. Imagine a similar circumstance in Gippsland with fires everywhere (from dry thunderstorms) in a heatwave and the state’s electricity blacks out.
In their madness our leaders have attacked SA’s renewable energy sources, wind in particular. They are obviously still prisoner to the coal lobby and advocating the opposite of what needs to be done. I find it difficult to believe that anyone could accept such brazen lies when looking at the physical evidence – photos of twisted power pylons lying on the ground. In the wartime emergency which we will eventually have there will probably be censorship and prison terms for those that act or propagandize against the emergency. Our deputy PM (and a substantial proportion of the media) would be in jail.
On 16 June the Climate Emergency Declaration petition was launched with an open letter from prominent Australians called for “an immediate ban on new coal and gas developments and an emergency-speed transition to zero emissions. We must begin the enormous task of safely drawing down the excess greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere. We call on the new parliament to declare a climate emergency.” – See more here.
Among the signatories of the original letter were Philip Adams, Judith Brett, Ian Dunlop, John Hewson, Robert Manne, Bill McKibben, Peter Singer, David Karoly and Christine Milne. I signed the Climate Emergency Declaration in June or July, and then forgetting, tried to sign it again recently. But all the evidence around us of warming is not good and we need many more around us to sign, push and promote the Climate Emergency Declaration Petition.