Monday 19 November 2007

John Howard, master of the dimwitted remark

It must have been something he caught off a White House toilet seat. On the same day Australia learnt the contents of the latest UN synthesis report on climate change, John Howard told us all that climate change may be serious "but the world will not end tomorrow because of it".
 
An Australian prime minister may have been able to say something like that twenty years ago. John Howard himself may have gotten away with such a remark even eleven years ago. But not today. The time to go slowly-slowly has long since past.
 
Many worlds may end tomorrow because of climate change.  A farmer's world may end because long-term weather changes and water scarcity have meant that crops failed for years on end.
A sea-change retiree's world may end because their retirement home was destroyed by severe storms or is now being lapped by seawater due to sudden coastal erosion.
A worker in the city's life may end because all the money in the world can't put enough food on the family table anymore due to increasing world-wide food shortages and famine.
 
It has to be said. Howard's head is now burrowed so far into the sand that even his ar*se is beginning to disappear.
 
Copy of IPPC Fourth Assessment Report:

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