Evidence stacking up on climate change
I would like to refer Labour DLP candidate Chris McCormack to some sources whereby he may remedy the fact that he is “still to read any evidence … that burning fossil fuels causes ‘dangerous’ climate change’ ” (Letters to the Editor, September 29).
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Just for starters, the following Australian academies, agencies and peak bodies can provide plenty of peer-reviewed evidence: the Australian Academy of Science, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, the Australian Coral Reef Society, the Australian Institute of Marine Science, the Australian Institute of Physics, the Australian Medical Association, the Australian Meteorological and Oceanography Society, the Australian Marine Sciences Association
After that, Mr McCormack would also be well advised to consult all, or any, of the more than 200 international and intergovernmental scientific societies and bodies which constitute the 97 per cent consensus of actively publishing climate scientists who agree that climate-warming trends over the past century are likely due to the human activity of burning fossil fuels.
Coal mines must be phased out, and quickly, to guarantee a safe climate, and it must (and can) be done in a way that supports people and communities. Our energy market is broken because it is dominated by a few big companies who are pushing up prices and holding back a jobs-rich transition to renewable energy for their own profits. Politicians, political parties and political candidates with no vision and no plan for a future which does not rely upon fossil fuels, a finite resource, the extraction and burning of which devastates the natural environment which sustains us, simply have no place in a 21st century parliament.
Michelle Goldsmith, Eaglehawk
Children trapped on Nauru running out of hope
The 95 children still trapped on Nauru are running out of hope. There is no future for them. They have limited access to health services and education, must play in tropical weather on areas of unshaded hot phosphate rock, are displaying alarming disillusionment leading to major suicide attempts and life-threatening failure to thrive. Doctors believe some of these children will die if left on Nauru.
Conditions in their homeland were so treacherous that their parents were willing to take the risk of long dangerous journeys with unknown outcomes because it was safer than the prospect of death and rape at home.
Stopping the boats is a complex issue, but there is no justification for trying to solve one problem by creating another.
Especially when it requires political expediency to be put ahead of children’s safety and rights to a childhood. What we are doing is not Australian. We cannot turn our back on these kids.
Read more: Refugees on Nauru have few options
So, many Australian organisations and everyday Australians are calling on the Government and Opposition to get all 95 children and their parents currently on Nauru to Australia or an alternative safe country by Universal Children’s Day, November 20. They are joining the campaign #KidsOffNauru www.kidsoffnauru.com
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