It would appear that political loyalty to the current policy of one’s party and the thickness of one’s pocket book are perhaps more important to former Australian prime minister and paid celebrity speaker John Howard than the future environmental, economic and social well-being of this country.
2006
Andrew Darby in St Helens, Tasmania
December 14, 2006
December 14, 2006
THE Prime Minister, John Howard, last night embraced a key climate change forecast, warning Australians to prepare for more extreme weather events such as the current bushfires.
Visiting north-east Tasmania, he repeatedly made the point that the region was not normally associated with bushfires, and neither were they usually so common early in the summer.
On his last stop in St Helens, Mr Howard was asked if he accepted the scientists' predictions of more extreme weather events.
"Let me put it this way," he said. "I think the country should prepare for a continuation of what we are now experiencing … I think the likelihood of this going on is very strong."
2013 (almost 7 years and 11 months later)
Nick Miller Europe Correspondent
November 6, 2013
London: Former Prime Minister John Howard has poured scorn on the "alarmist" scientific consensus on global warming, comparing those calling for action on climate change to religious zealots in a speech to a gathering of UK climate sceptics.
Mr Howard said he was an “agnostic” on climate science and he preferred to rely on his instinct, which told him that predictions of doom were exaggerated.
He also relied on a book written by a prominent climate sceptic – which has been attacked as ignorant and misleading by scientists.
And he called on politicians not to be browbeaten into surrendering their role in determining economic policy.
Nuclear power – a “very clean source of energy” - shale oil and fracking were solutions to the world’s energy needs, Mr Howard said.
Mr Howard gave a speech in London on Tuesday night to the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a think-tank established by Nigel Lawson, one of Britain’s most prominent climate change sceptics, former chancellor in the Thatcher government and father of TV chef Nigella.
One wonders how much those UK climate sceptics at the Global Warming Policy Foundation paid him for his keynote speech on 5 November at the Institute of Mechanical Engineers in London?
Or what Tony Abbott may have promised him come March 2014?
Or what Tony Abbott may have promised him come March 2014?
2 comments:
Saw a clip of Howard talking to the GWPF on TV News. Now don't know if it was actually filmed at the GWPF or it was archival but there were less than a dozen people in the audience in what looked like the back room of the local School of Arts!
Bigger audience than he deserved anyway!
How sad it is that Howard has only read one book on climate change.
Still .... its one more than "Slick" Abbott has read.
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