Australia ‘under old management’ on climate change, renewables

By Cam Walker, Friends of the Earth’s campaigns coordinator.

As an environmentalist, it’s easy to say that the election of the Coalition to power is akin to the country being ‘under old management.’ The modest steps forward on environmental protection and climate change achieved under the previous government are already being swept away, back to the days of John Howard, when Australia was a pariah amongst the global community as one of the worst actors in the UN climate negotiations.

As an old school conservative, his primary focus was the culture war around the ideas that frame the national political debate. He was astute enough to make noises on the need for action on climate change towards the end of his time as PM, even though he has recently announced his scorn for the “alarmist” scientific consensus on climate change in a speech to a gathering of British climate sceptics.