THE challenge Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull faces to convince his party to finally take meaningful action on climate change has been laid bare in a new report.
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The CSIRO this week released with little fanfare the findings of its four-year study into the attitudes of Australians towards global warming.
The research showed that just one in four Coalition voters accept the role mankind is playing in the rapidly changing climate.
Furthermore, more than half of Coalition supporters surveyed believe increasing temperatures are a natural phenomenon.
In contrast, 59 per cent of Labor voters and 76 per cent of Greens supporters consider climate change to be human-induced.
Few global debates in recent decades have been as emotion-charged as the one surrounding climate change.
This is despite some 97 per cent of published scientists agreeing that humans are responsible for the rising temperatures and unpredictable weather we are experiencing.
The Liberal-Nationals coalition has rarely been fair dinkum about addressing what has been dubbed the “greatest moral challenge of our time”.
It has clung doggedly to the doubts raised by just 3 per cent of scientists who, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, maintain climate change is merely a natural cycle.
In fact, the only time the Coalition got serious about tackling global warming was in 2009 when Mr Turnbull backed an emissions trading scheme.
However, the move proved so unpopular with his right-wing colleagues that he soon lost the Liberal leadership to Tony Abbott.
A renowned climate change denier, Mr Abbott raised eyebrows when he famously stated that coal, despite its catastrophic impact on the climate, was “good for humanity”.
If Mr Turnbull is to lead the nation through a difficult but gradual transition away from fossil fuels, he must first convince his own party and its supporters of the consequences of failing to act.
It will not be an easy task, if the CSIRO’s aforementioned study is any indication.
But if Mr Turnbull succeeds, then he will go down as one of this country’s most significant political figures.
- Ross Tyson, deputy editor