IN your Rural Notebook column last Thursday (Western Advocate, February 14), John Seaman talked about government assistance to people who have been badly affected by exceptional droughts and floods in Queensland.
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I doubt many will argue the importance of that.
But he also said that arguments about climate change must be put aside, and called for real apolitical decisions.
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I am inclined to think he is being political himself, like some of our politicians who never mention the possibility of a link between global warming and recent droughts, heatwaves, fires and floods.
These silences are despite the fact that average temperatures are at record highs, as is the CO2 in our atmosphere, and despite predictions from climate science of a very high probability that warming will be associated with extreme weather.
Why is it political to talk about what is almost certainly a serious risk?
Might the really political be avoiding such discussion?
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Heatwaves, fires and floods are serious, causing deaths of people and domestic and native animals, destruction of property and vegetation, and great expense.
Those are what we will be leaving to our children and grandchildren, and other life, if we don’t act decisively to limit and possibly reverse global warming.
We who have benefited so much from burning fossil fuels in the past, pouring the waste CO2 into the atmosphere (more than 30 billion tonnes per year, now), might feel we have a responsibility not to burden future life with the climatic results. That could be done. We, and many like us, live in wealthy countries.
Why do many of us resist this scenario? Are we looking into this serious issue thoroughly and with open minds?
