Letters: Scott Morrison’s action on climate questioned

Today readers have their say on the Morrison Government’s commitment to climate action, teen activist Greta Thunberg’s campaign of climate fear, and the need for drought aid for farmers from the State Government.

WHEN it comes to climate change and Prime Minister Scott Morrison, the electorate has obviously made a terrible mistake.

While Morrison may have had some political success, his environmental record is very poor and his credentials in this area are virtually zero.

In fact, the Coalition’s climate change commitments are pathetic.

In 2016, Australia signed the Paris Agreement, promising to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 26-28 per cent from 2005 levels by 2030.

However, Australia is still one of the most carbon-intensive countries in the developed world, which is an indictment on the Government’s lack of real action since signing the agreement. Australia’s emissions are continuing to increase by 1 per cent every year on average since 2014.

Instead the Morrison Government continues to support and prop up the coal industry.

It can also be argued that the Coalition’s Climate Solutions package is not serious about climate change, partly because it relies on carry-over units to make it sound as if it has honoured its reduction targets, when it plainly has not.

Given the Government’s poor credentials in this area, Morrison has no right to ridicule teen climate campaigner Greta Thunberg by claiming the climate change debate is subjecting children to anxiety (C-M, Sep 26).

The Australian Government has shirked its responsibility in this area and, like the US, is an embarrassment when it comes to saving the planet.

Lee Bennett, Indooroopilly

THERE was a time when I thought those we elect were there not only to maintain a civil society but to ensure our environment was maintained.

However, when a Swedish girl had to front the United Nations in an attempt to embarrass the world things are at critical mass.

Our Prime Minister, who happened to be visiting the US, found it more important to absent himself from such a world-changing speech.

This raises the question, just how much importance does Scott Morrison place on global warming?

D.J. Fraser, Currumbin

POLITICIANS such as Scott Morrison are insulting the integrity of passionate young climate change activists by warning that they were having their anxiety over climate change fuelled by older activists.

History will ultimately prove who is right on this vital issue – the futuristic young climate change activists or a dinosaur like Morrison.

Eric Palm, Gympie

I DON’T want the Government wasting any more time or taxpayers’ money on this so-called climate change.

The amount already lost and wasted on it could possibly have built most of the dams we need now.

I think the greenies and all these fringe dwellers and hangers-on have had their go with it, with not a thing to show for all the interruptions and inconvenience they caused to traffic congestion and good people trying to get to work or their businesses.

The world just keeps rolling on as it has for millions of years and will continue to do so with no help or hindrance from you, me or anyone else.

Ray Evans, Beenleigh South

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Youth climate activist Greta Thunberg speaks during the UN Climate Action Summit. Photo: Johannes Eisele/AFP

FEAR, LOATHING AND THE CLIMATE CULT

IT’S not often that I agree with columnist Andrew Bolt but his summation that so-called global warming messiah Greta Thunberg is creating fear and hysteria to a generation of teens (C-M, Sep 26) is correct.

As Bolt correctly alluded, it is incumbent on the Morrison Government to call out much of this climate change balderdash that Thunberg and others are purporting as fact.

I remember in 1984, when I was a somewhat naive 19-year-old, I believed that the world was on a path towards the brink of nuclear destruction.

At that time, Midnight Oil lead singer Peter Garrett, who I worshipped as some kind of musical savant, publicly attempted to enter Australian politics as a senator for the quickly established Nuclear Disarmament Party.

Garrett, through his music and passionate words for the NDP, had somehow convinced me that the US under the leadership of then president Ronald Reagan was on

the brink of nuclear war with the Soviet Union.

I recall feeling extremely anxious that I had no future.

In hindsight, the folly of my paranoia was egged on by Garrett and his passionate belief that the NDP could halt a possible future nuclear armageddon between America and the Soviet Union.

Now, a new band of green alarmists headed by the young and impressionable Thunberg are falsely peddling climate change hysteria that is clearly scaring the hell out of many young, naive minds. Global warming fearmongering falsehoods need to be called out for what they are, hysteria-driven panic for panic’s sake, and irrational and exaggerated misleading statements about a future no one can predict.

Not even a 16-year-old, pony-tailed child messiah-style savant who has been foisted into the global warming hysteria limelight can predict the future as much as she wants us to believe.

Paul Henderson, Wynnum

ANDREW Bolt has never written truer words than “doubting the global warming scare is social suicide”.

I committed “social suicide” just this week by disagreeing with a group of my friends in regard to the emotive Greta Thunberg.

The mob turned on me immediately, demanding that our government do “something” about reducing carbon emissions, and that the coal industry, according to them at least, was already obsolete.

Of course, what that “something” was, apart from the destruction of the coal industry, was an issue they appeared very vague about.

That the “something” might well wreak havoc on the Australian economy was of little consequence to them.

I never set out to offend anybody. I, naively it would seem, have always assumed that to have a different opinion to anybody else does not necessarily consign you to being a pariah of some sort.

What I found to be astonishing though was that not so long ago this same mob was greatly relieved that Labor’s Bill Shorten and the Greens’ Richard Di Natale had not been granted a licence to impose their climate change lunacy on the nation’s taxpayers.

But along comes a clearly deluded 16-year-old from the other side of

the world and the values of the majority of the Australian electorate are somehow able to be suddenly cast aside.

Crispin Walters, Chapel Hill

ANDREW Bolt keeps repeating his list of proofs that global catastrophe is not happening but he has never cited his authorities for those proofs.

For example, he says that polar bear numbers are increasing.

Who did this research and where was it done?

He states that low-lying Pacific islands are not drowning and that nearly half are actually growing. It would be helpful if he named the islands that are growing.

Also, why are a number of Pacific island leaders frantically pleading for urgent action on greenhouse emissions?

Bald statements without proof are not science.

Paul Scott, Ellen Grove

IT’S no wonder Greta Thunberg is so frustrated.

What a pathetic attempt by Andrew Bolt and your letters contributors to discredit her, while missing the point.

It’s not Thunberg these denialists have the argument with, it’s the majority of Australians, a majority of the world, and virtually every scientist on the planet.

Bolt raves on every time his precious self-interest is challenged and calls scientists conspirators.

No matter how many times denialists tell you otherwise, there is scientific accord on climate science.

The dissenting voices exist, but that doesn’t mean there is any further need for debate on the issue.

We are at a tipping point. That’s fact, not hysteria. We are not doing enough to stop further climate degradation.

If all you can do is beat up on a 16-year-old girl, you’ve lost the scientific debate and you’ve surrendered any moral standpoint you might ever have had.

Stephen Morgan, Carina Heights

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HELP FARMERS INSTEAD

I AM an 85-year-old great-grandmother who spent the first few years of my life on a farm on the Darling Downs and 10 years in a small country town near Dalby.

I have never forgotten the worry and distress caused by drought to the people in these districts.

I even remember my father, who became a baker, having to buy water to keep his business going.

It disgusts me that the Palaszczuk Government is recklessly throwing away money on unwarranted bonuses to public servants (C-M, Sep 25) who already enjoy generous salaries and benefits.

I am not including our hardworking frontliners, such as police, paramedics, child safety workers and firefighters, many of whom are volunteers.

It also brings to mind the amount of money wasted by this Government on the spiteful and unnecessary renaming of the Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital.

I would also like to know how many more overseas jaunts are planned by our leader as thinly disguised “trade” missions.

If our Queensland coffers are so full, why are our farmers having to beg for help?

Has this Government forgotten the saying “Every time you sit down for a meal, thank a farmer”?

A.I. Henderson, Ormiston

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