Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Make him squirm
Tim Flannery – author of The Weather Makers – has received the award for Australian of the Year Award at this year’s Australia Day celebrations.

With wonderful irony, the arch-Kyoto-refusenik, John Howard, had to present the award to the person who has probably done more to convince Australians of the necessity to tackle global warming, bar Al Gore.

The Weather Makers was one of 2006’s best sellers and carefully but urgently documented the evidence supporting global warming and the impacts of both committed warming and of business as usual.

Needless to say, Flannery took the opportunity to fire-off a salvo at Howard’s record and subsequent volte-face on global warming.

He said "The award […] means I have an obligation to the people of Australia to continue the quest to create a sustainable future for our country and for our children.

"We can only call ourselves Australian if we have a long-term future in this country and that means to live sustainably."

More directly, he later spoke critically of Howard’s $10 billion plan to address the water crisis. He said the nation's lack of water is a symptom of a much larger problem and "unless we address the overarching issue of climate change, [it] will be for nought, so we need to address climate change in order to build us that longer-term security."

Howard claimed he had thick skin and wasn’t at all embarrassed by Flannery’s comments.

Of course he wasn’t. It is the style of this government to be brazen about its policies and to only confront contrary arguments obliquely, or in this case, simply ignore them.

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