The Liberal Party of Australia is now officially a party split in half by climate denial. Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young explains.
We have no chance of seeing the Liberal Government take any type of climate policy to the election.
After dumping Malcolm Turnbull for daring to utter the words “carbon emissions”, Scott Morrison, the man who brought a lump of coal into the Parliament, has appointed a climate sceptic as Environment Minister. He has put an anti-wind farm campaigner at the helm of the Energy Ministry.
While Scott Morrison’s new front bench will spend the week sopping up blood and repeating unconvincing lines of “unity and renewal”, the rest of the country looks on in disgust.
As the nation burns in winter, drought ravages New South Wales, and the Murray Darling River runs to a trickle, the mob governing the country couldn’t give a damn.
In a last-minute attempt to save his own job, Malcolm Turnbull served a fatal blow to the environment making it near impossible for the Coalition to have a climate policy for at least a generation.
Roughly half of the Liberal Party room don’t believe in the science of climate change, and now their leader is a bloke whose pet rock is a lump of coal.
A growing number of Australians, tired of waiting for leadership out of Canberra, are taking matters into their own hands. And the good news is, there’s plenty of ways to make a difference.
Whether it is about the waste we create, the food we eat and putting solar panels on our homes to reduce power bills and pollution, we all have the opportunity to help reduce our impact on the planet and environment. But, while everyday Australians are chipping in, our politicians are tapping out, and unfortunately, some problems can’t be solved without political leadership.
The environment needs a strong political advocate. Sadly, the people Scott Morrison has put in place will do nothing to alleviate fears of Australians worried about our impact on the health of the planet.
New Environment Minister Melissa Price is a climate sceptic and advocate for the mining industry, and Angus Taylor, a known anti-windfarm campaigner will put a wrecking ball through renewables as Energy Minister.
After all the internal drama that stopped the Government from governing last week, political leadership on climate change is further away than ever. Dumping any emissions reduction target means there is now no prospect of a roadmap to help drive pollution down or support a transition to renewables. This is worse than policy paralysis, it is policy regression.
We need strong action to save the Murray Darling River system for future generations, arrest climate change by reducing pollution, protect our oceans and stop the extinction crisis in its tracks.
The battle lines are clear. The only way to do any of this now is to kick this mob out.
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