It’s clear that the world is indeed boiling and that climate-related records are being smashed with alarming regularity.
Warnings have not been heeded, greenhouse gas emissions are still rising, and feedback loops and multiple effects have kicked in.
We’ve already gone beyond some tipping points. Tens of millions of people have been impacted. And it’s set to get a whole lot worse.
We can’t duck and dive around this any longer. Surveys by the Climate Council show that most Australians have direct experience of extreme weather events and they’re terrified of what the future holds.
Facing Up
And yet, according to the next Facing Up speaker, Ian Dunlop, the government is failing to provide the full facts about the nature, scale and consequences of the climate emergency. In fact, along with fossil fuel corporations, they’re a core part of the problem.
As a former senior executive of Royal Dutch Shell and chair of the Australian Coal Association, Ian Dunlop knows a thing or two about how governments and corporations manoeuvre around climate issues. He’s seen close up the obfuscation, the deceit, the suicidal pursuit of profit.
Albanese government’s obsession with militarisation
In a recent opinion piece for online magazine, Pearls and Irritations, Dunlop and his Australian Security Leaders Climate Group colleagues note the Albanese government’s obsession with militarisation, and the fudging of the most direct threat to organised human existence; namely, climate breakdown.
‘Any government’s primary responsibility’, say the authors, ‘is to ensure the real security of the people’.
‘That means international climate emergency mobilisation now, built around unprecedented global cooperation, not militarisation.
‘We’re staring at planetary disaster’, say Dunlop et al, and on current trends, there’s little prospect of avoiding this outcome.
Time has run out
‘Time has run out’, they say, ‘mass community action is now essential to force leaders to face reality. Climate change can no longer be treated as just another item on the political agenda. If we are to have a future, it is the agenda’.
In conversation with academic, climate activist and Plan C CEO, Jean Renouf, Ian will reflect on his time in the fossil fuel industry, his shift to climate activism, and how we might live in a transformed world.
Join them on Wednesday, August 30, at the Brunswick Picture House from 6pm. Tickets: events.humanitix.com/facing-up-aug.
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