Liberal PM Tony Abbott can't abolish the truth, but he is trying. Whether it is his new government's attempt to keep refugee boat arrivals secret or the abolition of the Climate Commission, Abbott has moved quickly to keep the public in the dark.
Former Climate Commissioner Tim Flannery warned after the commission was disbanded: "As global action on climate change deepens, propaganda aimed at misinforming the public about climate change, and so blunting any action, increases."
The Climate Commission has been pumping out the facts about the climate change crisis. Powerful vested interests did not like that.
Imagine the fury of the coal, oil and gas corporate chiefs when the Climate Commission released a report in June this year which stated the blunt truth that most of the world’s known fossil fuel reserves will need to be “left in the ground” if the world was to avert catastrophic climate change.
“The current amount of carbon embedded in the world’s indicated fossil fuel reserves (coal, oil and gas) would, if all were burned, emit an estimated 2,860 billion tonnes of CO2,” the report said.
“This is nearly five times the allowable budget of about 600 billion tonnes to stay within the 2°C limit …
“Australia’s coal reserves alone represent about 51 billion tonnes of potential CO2 emissions.”
The truth, in this case, was corporately unacceptable. Powerful corporate interests wanted this truth buried and Abbott offered to be the undertaker.
Who knows what evil deeds will be carried out behind the new official veils of secrecy? But that's the point of official secrecy, isn't it? So the government can do bad stuff out of the public eye.
Abbott can try to suppress the truth but it will still come out. The truth on climate change will come out in more frequent and more extreme weather events. More people will die and have their livelihoods destroyed in huge mega storms, floods and bushfires.
The grim new climate records will continue to be broken, whether there is a Climate Commission to report them or not.
Stock And Land says that over the past 12 months we recorded:
* Australia’s hottest summer day on record (7 January),
* Australia’s warmest winter day on record (31 August),
* Australia’s warmest month on record (January),
* Australia’s warmest summer on record,
* Australia’s warmest January to August period on record,
* Australia’s warmest 12-month period on record,
* The warmest January to August period on record for South Australia and Victoria,
* The warmest 12-month period on record for South Australia,
* The warmest winter day on record for the Northern Territory.
The truth will come out on climate change. Independent publications like Green Left Weekly will continue to help not just to get the truth out but also to raise the solutions that society will one day have to embrace to deal with the climate change crisis.
Green Left Weekly will also continue to tear through the new veils of official secrecy that the Abbott regime is trying to draw around asylum seekers and other victims of oppression.
You can help Green Left Weekly keep fighting to get out the truth by making a donation online to our fighting fund.
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