Twenty years ago, on this day, August 26, 2003, another “announceable” plan was launched. People who want to believe it can. Those who don’t can be dismissed as malcontents and trouble-makers…
Kemp Acts to Protect Australia’s Biodiversity from Climate Change – 26 August 2003
Federal Minister for the Environment and Heritage, Dr David Kemp, today announced a new nationwide strategic approach to protect Australia’s biodiversity from the impacts of climate change.
“The Australian Government, together with the States and Territories, is developing a National Biodiversity and Climate Change Action Plan,” Dr Kemp said.
“Together we have appointed an all-governments task force to work on the Plan as a matter of urgency. Their first step is an Australia-wide consultation process which will kick off in early September, with the draft Plan to be submitted to the Natural Resource Management Ministerial Council in April next year.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly xxxppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the Howard government by this stage had ruled out an emissions trading scheme (twice), it had also ruled out Kyoto ratification. So its one green pretend thing was a biodiversity strategy – nevermind that 20 years previously a National Conservation Strategy for Australia had been created. At least this would create working groups and workshops and task forces and interim reports and draft reports and press releases which would keep everyone occupied while the planet was being turned into a denuded barren wasteland of s***.
What I think we can learn from this
That when they are needing to gild the turd governments will announce the creation of new strategies/task forces/workshops etc and this will seduce enough willingly-ignorant or just plain thick and naive people as a substitute for doing anything. Works every time.
What happened next
I don’t know. Did such a strategy get created? I haven’t bothered to look. Doesn’t matter, because the natural world is getting turned to a crisp by us. What a species we are.
UPDATE – A strategy did get created. You can read it here. Thanks to Georgina on Twitter for the link.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
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