Aus. PM Rudd - Dealing With Anti-Climate Policy Opposition "As If We're Back In Trial Of Galileo"

[hatrack]

CANBERRA, Nov 19 (Reuters) - Australia's government demanded on Thursday that conservative rivals stop opposing carbon trade laws, citing a heatwave searing the country's biggest cities as evidence of Australia's vulnerability to climate change.

With Australia on bushfire alert, the government said record temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) across three states this week showed the need to act urgently against climate change. "November this year has seen a long and intense heatwave across much of southern and eastern Australia. The trend is absolutely clear, the climate is warming," Assistant Climate Change Minister Greg Combet told parliament.

The opposition is negotiating changes to the government's carbon trade laws, which will be voted on next week in parliament's upper house Senate, but some opposition members are not convinced that human activity is driving climate change.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said negotiating with the opposition was like dealing with a mediaeval court. "It is as if we are back into the trial of Galileo or something and they are simply arguing somehow that the science is fiction and that they alone, in their own prejudiced universe, occupy fact," Rudd told parliament. The government wants carbon trading to start in July 2011, covering 75 percent of emissions in what could become the second domestic trading platform outside of Europe.

EDIT

http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSSYD210619

[xxqqqzme]

1. down under has a rabid right as well.

They have my empathy. Does the left in Australia compromise key points away to them? Just curious.

[Chulanowa]

2. Well, my knowledge is extremely limited...

But I understand that Peter garret was (is?) a pretty big disappointment for the left in Australia...

And that's about as much as i know. :shrug: Helpful, I know