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David Attenborough has highlighted Australia as an “extraordinary” example of a country where people in power remained climate change deniers despite the country facing some of the worst effects of global heating.

Appearing before the UK parliament’s business, energy and industrial strategy committee on how to tackle the climate emergency, the celebrated broadcaster and natural historian was asked about claims people were overreacting to the threat of a climate emergency.

He replied: “I am sorry that there are people who are in power … notably, of course, [in] the United States but also in Australia [who are climate change deniers], which is extraordinary because Australia is already facing having to deal with some of the most extreme manifestations of climate change.

“Both [in] Australia and America, those voices are clearly heard and one hopes that the electorate will actually respond to those.”

Asked to recall his most vivid impressions of humans’ impact on the planet, Attenborough said it was returning to the Great Barrier Reef, where he had first dived in the 1950s.

“I will never forget diving on the reef about 10 years ago and suddenly seeing that instead of this multitude of wonderful forms and life that it was stark white. It had bleached white because of the rising temperatures and the increasing acidity of the sea,” he said.

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/jul/10/david-attenborough-...

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Fantastic Angus has been so busy with explanations about the poisoning of endangered grasslands on a family spread that he’s taken his eye off the ball. Both carbon emissions and power prices have gone in the opposite direction to that promised by Schmo Morrison’s junta.

Emissions are up, up, up, and so too are power prices. Fantastic. Great move. Well done, Angus.

Emissions tracking outfit Ndevr Environmental says for the year to March 2019, emissions increased by seven million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent to 561 million tonnes, with far less renewable generation than in the March quarter the previous year.

One of the contributing factors was the rise in “fugitive emissions” from the liquefied natural gas sector. You’ll recall last month Taylor concocted the brilliant claim that LNG exports were reducing emissions in our overseas markets, so what’s all the fuss about? With the worries about endangered grasslands on his plate he must have forgotten the contribution that our coal exports make to more than offset these wonderful reductions.

Further, the emissions reduction fund is running out of puff, with fewer projects and less abatement. Scratching around for elaborate and implausible justifications is what happens when government hucksters are left to hawk fake policies.

And don’t get Gadfly started on power prices. This is one of Angus’s pet projects, with promises that the wholesale price of power on his beat would be cut by 25 per cent – a fall to $70 per megawatt-hour by the year after next.

The energy sector wonders what Angus is smoking. The wholesale price is heading towards $100 per megawatt-hour in New South Wales and is more than $100 in Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania. Overall prices rose 14 per cent in the second quarter.

As for the critically endangered natural temperate grasses of the south-eastern highlands, they definitely look greener after a good squirt of Agent Orange.

Read more:

https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/opinion/diary/2019/07/13/gadfly-guss-power-play-defused/

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