E3G

Australian Media: National Climate Change Summit

By Quentin de Molliens

And then, in respect to the politics of climate change, the role of European leadership was reinforced:

European leaders were debating legislation that would ban building new fossil fuel power stations by 2020 if they were not carbon-neutral. “That is a political signal,” Professor Burke said.”

Moreover, the Age newspaper in turn looked in depth at how the world can become carbon neutral, approvingly quoting Tom’s comments at length.

To start with, economics editor Tim Colebatch introduced Tom to the Australian readership:

Tom Burke is an old hand on climate change. A veteran environmentalist, he has advised British governments on both sides of politics, and companies such as BP and now Rio Tinto. And he is one of those guys who makes his case with startling clarity.

Amid the wealth of interesting and valuable points made at Labor’s national climate change summit in Canberra on Saturday, one of his comments cut to the heart of the issue…[that]… “This is an issue on which we can’t afford policy failure. There is no rewind button. We won’t get a second chance to fix it.”

After reflecting on the inevitable uncertainties of climate science, Colebatch returned to Tom’s speech:

But after you’ve had the million arguments, when all is said and done, the ultimate truth left is the one stated by Tom Burke: this is an issue on which we can’t get afford to get it wrong.”

Burke drew a parallel with the 1930s, when the democracies failed to face up to what Churchill called “the gathering storm”: the threat from Nazi Germany.”

Bad as climate change has become, it is still a manageable problem, within the envelope of our technical and economic competence” he said, “But it is clear that in the near future, it will become an unmanageable problem, unless we act decisively.”

Then, to focus attention on what this means in terms of action, Tom’s analysis was again quoted:

Burke puts the goal simply: “We need to get carbon out of our energy system, and keep it out forever. We have to make our energy system carbon-neutral by the middle of the century.”

The full transcript of Tom’s speech has also been published here on the E3G website, with a pdf version available for download.