Thanks Hans Lovejoy for the recent (Byron Shire Echo) editorial on the federal government’s quixotic decision to fund Bjorn Lomborg’s think tank at UWA.
But you’re far too generous in describing Lomborg – the poster boy of the dissembling right – as a ‘contrarian’. Let’s call spades spades. He is a denier.
One cannot accept the science, as he claims to, and then reject action. It is like accepting that you’re pregnant and then ridiculing, as ‘alarmist’, the doctor’s theory that a baby will be born.
The only thing that this ‘consensus center’ aims to achieve is dissensus. That people like Lomborg are still taken seriously in this country when the rest of the world has moved on is a travesty of good sense.
It is some comfort though, that reports are circulating indicating considerable angst among staff and students at UWA.
The Fairfax press is reporting that the decision to fund Lomborg originated from the prime minister’s office – not Pyne’s as originally reported.
After all, Abbott has staked his entire career on a dangerous charade – that climate change is ‘absolute crap’; or if not crap, then certainly not worth addressing in any meaningful way.
The politics of climate change are so ugly because, for the first time since the enlightenment, knowledge and power are pulling in different directions.
The right sees itself fighting a culture war – bravely defending freedom and liberty in the face of a rapacious socialist movement that cloaks its totalitarianism in the shroud of environmentalism.
Dave Lisle, Mullumbimby
34 years of 97% certainty was not certainty and 34 yrs of climate failure proves it.
If science can’t say “proven” for a comet hit of a crisis then it’s thankfully not a crisis and the last 34 YEARS of failure at achieving the targets needed to save the planet 25 years ago “proves” it.
Telling kids science isn’t allowed to say proven makes you “believers” fear mongers worse than neocons.
Now bring on the climate change war crimes trials.
*Occupywallstreet now does not even mention CO2 in its list of demands because of the bank-funded and corporate run carbon trading stock markets ruled by trust worthy politicians.