Fair dinkum on climate change
The message was not lost on newly elected Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who told British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in a celebratory phone call he would work to have Australia quickly ratify the Kyoto protocols. Labor Party candidate Rudd also pledged to work on binding agreements at the international climate-change meetings next month in Bali.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard was widely seen as out of touch on environmental issues as the topic of climate change becomes less and less esoteric. Rising ocean levels are a threat to Australia’s island neighbors. Australian greens took credit for almost two dozen seats in the landslide that not only swept Howard from office, but denied him a seat in Parliament - only the second such political humiliation in the past 106 years.
Voters did not see tension between action on climate change and future prosperity. The point was reinforced across the globe by 18 leading British companies. They published an initiative Monday to reduce carbon emissions in their fields - from petroleum refining and manufacturing to retail and finance.
They were motivated by a government report that said spending a bit more now on controlling emissions would avoid making much-larger investments later.
Climate change is a topic that has gone mainstream, and that includes politics. An Australian prime minister was blindsided by what he failed to see.
And that is the truth, fair dinkum.