Lesley Hughes wrote an article in The Guardian titled “The climate crisis is an accelerating calamity of our own making. So what would it take to turn things around?” Lesley is a professor of biology at Macquarie University and a spokesperson for the Climate Council of Australia. She was a lead author on the IPCC’s fourth and fifth assessments.
Read the full article here.
Here is an excerpt of Lesley’s top 10 things to do to turn around the climate calamity (Mr Morrison, the first three are for you):
1. Electrify everything – energy, transport and manufacturing.
2. Power it all from renewables, obviously.
3. Remove all fossil fuel subsidies (more than $10bn from taxpayers per year) and use this money to transform the grid.
4. Stop, or at least greatly reduce, eating the products of methane-belching cows, the farming of which is also responsible for most land-clearing in Australia.
5. Plant trees – still the best way to draw down CO2.
6. Stop buying so much stuff – everything has a carbon cost.
7. Reuse, retain, recycle. You know the drill.
8. Move your money out of banks, insurance companies and superannuation funds that invest in fossil fuels – it only takes a few clicks.
9. Give your time, your talent or your treasure to organisations that are fighting the good fight – there is power in the collective.
10. And most of all, ask yourself: is my elected representative threatening the lives of my children and grandchildren, either by actively blocking climate action, or by simply delaying in the hope that some uninvented technology will fall from sky? You can help save the world with a pencil. Vote. Them. Out.
Humans can be dumb, greedy and selfish, but also smart, innovative and caring.
Desmond Tutu once exhorted: “Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.” The IPCC report tells us we can, collectively, put our bits of good together and find a way out of this mess.