[Forum]Lucy Wicks is absolutely right when she says that “setting climate policy … should always be the responsibility of the elected government of the day” (Coast Community News edition 230).
That is why we so desperately need the government to come up with a policy to match the rhetoric.
However, this means a real policy and not just playing magic tricks with numbers to prove that emissions are being reduced when all the data show that emissions are increasing.
Ms Wicks’ government is fond of playing semantic games, e.g. every project was eligible or we shall meet our Kyoto target, that have no relationship to reality, but it’s past time for some serious action to achieve a sustainable carbon neutral society.
I recall reading the first articles about the dangers of the greenhouse effect back around 1950, so, if we had been paying any attention to our global environment, we could hardly say that the current crisis comes as a surprise to us.
Scientists have been warning us about it for about 70 years, which one would have thought, should be long enough to penetrate even the boneheads in our current Cabinet, but the best response so far is the promise that “the Government is developing a Technology Investment Roadmap” which will, eventually, “set up an enduring strategic approach”, although to what, is far from clear.
This is just NIMTOFF bafflegab, designed to put off any decision making until safely after the next election, at the very least.
This Government managed to win the election on the strategy of having no policies about anything, and hence, no basis on which it could be criticised: General Greatauk would have been proud of them.
However, this might not work a second time.
Let us hope that the electorate demands a little more substance at the next ballot box.
Email, Feb 26
Bruce Hyland, Woy Woy