Australia's climate change election (Howard may be out due to the drought?)

John Howard has been prime minister of Australia for eleven years, and by normal political standards he has done almost everything right. The country is having an unprecedented economic boom thanks to China's limitless demand for Australian natural resources. Unemployment is at a 33-year low, and Howard appeals to the underlying racism of many Australians by severely restricting asylum for refugees and subtly signalling that he will limit immigration from Asia. Yet he is probably going to lose the national election on Saturday.

The latest opinion polls give Labour a lead of eight per cent over Howard's Liberal (i.e. conservative) party, and Howard might even lose his own seat in suburban Sydney, which he has held for almost 34 years. It's not over yet, because under Australia's compulsory voting system a third of the electorate usually make their minds up only in the last few days before the election, but it looks like Howard has contrived to throw away a seemingly unbeatable hand. If so, the main reason will be global warming.

Like many climate change deniers in politics, Howard has been frantically re-adjusting his stance over the past couple of years in an effort to stay abreast of public opinion. (Even George W Bush has been heard to utter the phrase "global warming.") But he still refuses to sign the Kyoto accord, and he still insists that "technology" will solve the problem without any need for major changes in the lifestyle of countries like Australia.

It used to work, but one huge fact has turned politics around in Australia. The country is in the seventh year of the worst drought since European settlement began over two centuries ago, and very many Australians have begun to fear that it is permanent. Droughts are cyclical events and will eventually end. But if this is really an early example of what climate change will do to countries in the mid-latitudes, then it's never going away again.

http://www.trinidadexpress.com/index.pl/article_opinion?id=161238681

I hope we don't need to go through seven years of drought before the flat earthers in the U.S. get the message.

On a side note, you've got to love this reply from his opponent.


Howard is talking about climate change now, but he may have left it too late. Labour has fielded former diplomat Kevin Rudd against him, and at 50, Rudd is 18 years younger than Howard. He's not a very colourful character, but he's learning fast: when he was accused of going to a lap-dancing club in New York during a visit to the United Nations four years ago, he replied that he was too drunk to remember what had happened.

In most countries that would be the end of a political career, but in Australia it was the right answer.


:rofl:

Thanks for the thread, Robbien.