Tag: climate change

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So, who’s for Chairman Rudd’s Australia 2020 Summit?

Chairman Rudd’s got a clever strategy going, unless it’s just a coincidence. The usually-secret Red Book warns of approaching “challenges” like climate change, an aging population and the economic growth of India and China. Then we announce the Australia 2020 Summit.

As any management consultant will tell you, develop a shared vision and folks will endure short-term pain — like interest rate rises and having to change the light bulbs.

Actually I’m not that cynical about it. I’m quietly enthused. After a decade of Howard’s backward-looking short-term thinking we seriously need to look to the future. Fast. Of course, back when Barry Jones was science minister we had a permanent organisation to keep watch, the Commission for the Future. Maybe I’ll read Lessons from the Australian Commission for the Future: 1986-1998 [PDF file] when I get the time. But I digress…

If Chairman Rudd wants 1000 of our “best and brightest” in Canberra on 19-20 April, who should they be?

It’s flattering that Nick Hodge and Peter Black nominated me, bless their sycophantic little hearts. And I’ve already gained four votes at Bloggerati. I’d love to be part of this Summit, sure, because I’d be Fighting the Hallucinating Goldfish hands on. However I have a few more modest suggestions…

Continue reading “So, who’s for Chairman Rudd’s Australia 2020 Summit?”

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Global Warming: analysing the risk

Frame grab from Most Terrifying Video You’ll Ever See

Yesterday Crikey reminded me about this video. I’d seen it before, but it’s worth seeing it again — particularly during the election campaign — and showing it to as many people as possible.

The message is simple. Perhaps we can never be 100% sure that global warming is primarily caused by human activity. However the risk of this being the case and us doing nothing about it far outweighs the risk of changing our behaviour and then finding out it wasn’t necessary.

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“Clever”, but too late?

Photo from government Climate Clever campaign

The government’s Climate Clever campaign is, apart from a wonderful subject for satire, apparently a nice attempt to re-associate the word “clever”.

As Possums Pollytics explains, it’s trying to re-frame the word away from “John Howard is clever” as in “tricky” to “clever policies on climate”.

Word association is a powerful propaganda weapon. Think Beazley and ticker, Keating and elitist, Latham and learner, and now Howard and clever. If the Libs could disassociate the word clever from Howard and re-associate it with climate change policies, not only would they neutralise the ALP attack, but would reduce the power of any residual word association with Howard.

A shame it’s probably way too late to make a difference. Possums also reports on the latest AC Nielsen polls with a simple “Business as usual. Nothing to see here folks, please move on.”

Mr Howard, please just call the bloody election. The longer you leave it now, the more you’re going to piss off the very people you’re trying to impress.

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Climate Clever-er

Climate Clever-er TVC

GetUp! has raised over $200,000 to show this spoof TV advert during the AFL Grand Final tomorrow. It’s a send-up of the government’s glossy promo which tries to give the impression they’re doing something about climate change.

While it may not be screened many times during the game, I reckon the fact that “ordinary Australians” have chipped in to make it possible is newsworthy — which will in turn get the advert shown for free all over the place. Sweet.