Big Oil Big Bight
While the planet strains under global warming and sea level rises, acidification and extreme weather patterns who can ever forget then Prime Minister of Australia Tony Abbott’s bold claim that ‘coal was good for humanity?’ In essence this is what we are hearing from the oil industry. Oil is good for developing nations, oil is good for local and national economies, oil creates jobs. According to US presidential hopeful Donald Trump ‘climate change is a hoax…folks’ Is it any surprise that people are confused about climate change and what our response should be?
Only months after signing the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, Australia is now considering whether to embark on a process that could lead to the massive expansion of fossil fuel production.
BP’s proposal to drill for oil in the Great Australian Bight seems at odds with this historic turning point in the world’s efforts to reduce global warming. One commentator who warns that the fossil fuel alliance will go to any extreme to sway public opinion against taking action on climate change is Professor Naomi Oreskes from Harvard University in the US.
Naomi Oreskes, Professor of the History of Science and Affliated Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University, USA
She was recently in Australia for the Earth Talks series at WOMADelaide and was astounded to see that members of our Federal Government were still openly questioning whether the science of climate change had been settled. Her book with Erik Conway, ‘Merchants of Doubt’, exposes a deliberate and sophisticated campaign carried out by the fossil fuel industry to undermine confidence in the scientific rationale for action on climate change.
Professor Oreskes says that this campaign has set the political and economic program for tackling global warming back by 20 years.