Another federal budget has passed without the barest effort made to speed up our transition from fossil fuels or to do something about climate change-induced disasters like the east coast floods.
At what point are we going to start treating the lack of action on climate change as outright hostility?
The budget had no money for renewable energy — a climate change mitigation measure so obvious that we should be throwing however much cash is required to reach zero emissions as soon as possible. Nothing about electric vehicles, either.
In his budget speech, the Treasurer mentions war machines more than climate change.
Our communities are already being destroyed by coal and gas.
The real enemy is the climate crisis.#budget2022 #ausvotes2022
— Adam Bandt (@AdamBandt) March 29, 2022
OK, so maybe the horse has bolted. We already know some warming and the associated consequences are locked in. Some places and people are fucked (which is no excuse not to reduce emmissions btw).
But you know what would make them less fucked? Some effort to bolster or create services that would respond to these frequent and brutal natural disasters. If there is work to be done, there should be jobs.
It’s not enough that we burden locals and volunteers with cleaning up their own destroyed homes. It’s not enough that we get police and soldiers to do it, especially given they don’t really do a crash hot job. Establish a climate corp, you cowards. Or maybe just spend a few million to explore the possibility of founding one. Something, fucking anything.
It’s also not enough that residents in flood-hit towns are still homeless a month later. It’s not enough money set aside for disaster relief isn’t being used.
But when decades of warnings, repeated disasters within weeks of each other, ample time to prepare a response and a politically convenient time to launch it have passed without policy makers lifting so much as a finger, it’s obvious they do not feel any inclination to do so.
The government set aside $6 billion for the recent flood disasters. None of that money will deal with the acute issues communities are facing. It doesn’t put any thought towards future disasters. So really, it doesn’t amount to much.
The lack of action is no longer an expression of incompetence or ignorance, it’s malice. It’s a clear signal that the government doesn’t care if you live or die in apocalyptic disasters.
The lack of action is killing people, ruining lives and leaving the rest of us for dead. It’s time we all treated it like a matter of life and death. Because it is.
