Sluggish Response To Environmental Issues? Could Be a Great Deal Worse

Many of us complain bitterly about the U.S. government’s lethargy re: mitigating climate disruption and embracing clean energy solutions. Yet we live with frequent reminders of how much worse it could be.

Take the Land Down Under, for instance. Pictured below are some of the 400 people who protested Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s unwillingness even to discuss the subject of climate change; he’s refused to put it on the agenda of the upcoming G20 summit this weekend. (They’re sticking their heads in the sand to make a point, in case that’s not clear from the photo.)

“Obama’s on board, Xi Jinping’s on board, everyone’s on board except one man,” an activist bellowed into a megaphone on the Sydney beach.

Under Abbott, Australia repealed a tax on greenhouse gas emissions in July, the only country to reverse action on climate change. Abbott called climate change science “crap” in 2009 and said coal is “good for humanity.”

Holy cow. I sympathize with you, mates.  In the U.S. we have a great number of people making our laws who are either pawns of the oil industry or complete morons–or both, I suppose.  They’re capable of, what I had thought to be, some of the most asinine remarks imaginable.  But we don’t have a single soul sufficiently dimwitted to say that coal is good for humanity.