POLITICIANS, PUBLIC OPINION AND CLIMATE POLICY IN THE 2016 FEDERAL ELECTION

Climate change has not featured as a major issue so far in the federal election campaign. 

Both major parties have targets for emissions reductions which both claim can be achieved.  The Coalition target is a 26-28% reduction relative to 2005 levels by 2030 and Labor’s is a 45% cut over the same time frame.

Despite the politicians’confident claims, the effectiveness of their policies in meeting their targets is debatable.The Climate Change Authority saw a need for much stronger action, recommending 40-60% reductions relative to 2000 levels by 2030.

Political policy is obviously developed with community attitudes in mind.  Just how much community support is there for strong action on climate change?

Sydney University of Technology lecturer Deborah Cotton, who conducted a survey of community attitudes to climate policy in 2011, recently conducted another survey to see whether attitudes had changed.

Cotton says results suggest that concern about the climate is more widespread now than it was five years ago.  Now 75% of people believe it is an important global issue and 74% believe it was an important issue for Australia.

She says, “As to what we should do about it, we found that 57% of people want Australia to act on climate change irrespective of whether other countries do or not. This is significantly more than in 2011, when 50% of people were in this category.”

Many of those concerned about the need for urgent and much more effective climate action would like to see the profile of this issue raised in what is left of this long and tedious election campaign.

Recent events which have already raised the profile of climate change include the coral bleaching and along the Great Barrier Reef and elsewhere and the recent ferocious east coast low storm.

Effective and urgent climate action is not something we can put off.  It is vital for future generations of humans and other species.  It is also vital for our economic future that we implement strong measures now. Not doing so would lay an enormous economic as well as environmental burden on our children and grandchildren.

           

 - Leonie Blain

AUSTRALIAN FEDERAL ELECTION: ENVIRONMENT GROUPS CALL FOR STRONG CLIMATE ACTION

A marked absence of any real focus on environmental matters by either of the two major political parties in the current drawn-out federal election campaign prompted a strategy meeting to be held by NSW North Coast environmental groups recently.

At the head of the list of concerns is the almost total lack of any proposal for meaningful action on climate change.

Carbon emissions need to be reduced urgently. Protecting forests is an important and effective form of carbon sequestration that the government could act on immediately.

It was pointed out that the 20 million trees program, promoted under the current government's Direct Action policy, would be more than offset by the number of trees being destroyed by the Pacific Highway upgrade in the Clarence Valley alone.

The dumping of the NSW Native Vegetation Act and proposed relaxing of restrictions on land clearing in NSW, under the State Government's new Biodiversity Bill, will further exacerbate the problem, and positive actions to promote revegetation of the landscape were identified. 

In particular, the meeting reminded all political parties that, “Forests are the lungs of the earth.. They take in the carbon dioxide we emit, store the carbon and give us life-giving oxygen in return. They are vital to mitigate the impacts of climate change with the urgency required to halt the demise of the Great Barrier Reef”.

The meeting agreed that an effective way to achieve immediate positive results would be to:

• stop logging of native forests on public land.
• stop clearing of native forests on private land, and
• stop proposed burning of forests to generate electricity.

At the same time politicians were urged to support the imposition of a carbon trading scheme that would provide landowners with an alternative income stream to logging, Furthermore, landowners should be rewarded for protecting and rehabilitating native forests, protecting biodiversity, and restoring wildlife corridors and stream buffers.

Actions that reduce atmospheric carbon would not only help the Great Barrier Reef, and other ecosystems under threat from climate change, but also help replace the habitat of hundreds of threatened species already facing extinction through habitat loss, including Australia's iconic Koalas.

-          John Edwards