Australia 'most at risk' from Global warming
Pastor Dale Morgan
Australia 'most at risk' from Global warming
*
September 10, 2006 07:58pm
Article from: AAP
AUSTRALIA faces greater risks than any other country on earth if it does
not do more to tackle climate change, former US vice president Al Gore
has warned.
In Sydney to launch his documentary about the dangers of global warming,
Mr Gore urged Prime Minister John Howard to join the fight against the
growing environmental problem.
In the film, An Inconvenient Truth, Mr Gore singles out Australia twice,
along with the US, accusing both countries of lagging behind the rest of
the world on climate change.
Both the US and Australia have refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol,
which aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Mr Gore said given Australia was the driest inhabited continent on earth
and already had problems with bushfires, water shortages and cyclones,
further increases in global warming could prove devastating.
As a result, political leaders including Mr Howard had a "moral
responsibility" to address climate change.
"Nobody is going to have a legacy if we don't solve this climate
crisis," Mr Gore said.
"Australia is in many ways the nation more at risk than any other
because you have climate extremes already.
"The fact is, if Australia acted and changed and joined the world effort
to solve this problem, you would put enormous new pressure on the US to
do the right thing to act."
Mr Gore said he would speak with Mr Howard on the telephone tomorrow and
hoped the prime minister would change his position on signing up to Kyoto.
"As for Prime Minister John Howard, I like him, he is a friend, I
disagree with him on this issue but I hope he will see the movie," Mr
Gore said.
"If he is sceptical about the science, you should all ask him, why?
Because there has never been a stronger scientific consensus then there
is on this question."
But Mr Howard said he did not take policy advice from films, even
documentaries based on fact.
"Our policies are based on fact, too, and the fact is that if we signed
the Kyoto protocol we would destroy a lot of Australian industry and we
would send Australian jobs to countries like China and Indonesia and
India," he told reporters in Sydney.
"The answer is for us to invest a lot more resources and a lot more
effort into technology, to reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the
use of fossil fuels, investigating nuclear energy, which is a very clean
fuel source," he said.
Australian Conservation Foundation executive director Don Henry said
Australia was an international laggard when it came to climate change.
"Our children will judge us very harshly if we fail to heed the warnings
of An Inconvenient Truth simply because we thought real action would be
an inconvenience," he said.
At the star launch of his film in Sydney tonight, Mr Gore described his
film as a "labour of love".
"We are facing planetary emergency, I know the phrase sounds shrill to
many ears but unfortunately it is accurate," he said.
"Even though this crisis is by far the most dangerous we have ever
faced, it is the only one that carries with it the risk of ending all
human civilisation if it goes unchecked."
An Inconvenient Truth opens at cinemas on Thursday.