source : the age
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CLIMATE SOLUTIONS
Thank you for your recent articles about climate change and the need to adapt to it (“Ready or Not”, Good Weekend, 8/8, and ″Fire, flood and wishful thinking: Why we’re not ready for Victoria’s climate future″, 9/8).
I have never really wanted to ″accept″ adaptation because it clearly means we have not reduced emissions satisfactorily, despite decades of warning.
Sadly, Australia has not done nearly enough about reducing emissions (think of Scope 3 – the emissions we export), nor nearly enough planning or enacting adaptation schemes.
This is simply poor governance. We have been led by political parties that either do as little as they can plausibly get away with, or by being downright climate change deniers.
We will pay an extremely heavy price for this inactivity that I do not believe we truly understand. This could, or will, get ugly.
Phil Labrum, Trentham
We’d rather chuck another prawn on the barbie
Your Climate solutions series including “Fire, flood and wistful thinking” (9/8) is already a damning indictment of Victoria’s political leadership over decades – and, because climate impacts don’t stop at the Murray, of Australia’s, too.
From Mooroopna’s 2022 flood to underfunding of identified resilience strategies; from this year’s report warning of more than $300 billion coastal damage this century to the cost-saving
abolition of the advisory council which made it; from West Kinglake’s 2009 devastation to a rebuilt enclave – with the state “spending vastly less on preparing for the future than on responding to natural disasters”.
But tales of past “violent weather, sea-level rise, flood, fire and drought” – and woeful preparation for more – no longer shock.
Nor do they just condemn our leaders. We, the voting citizenry, have been effectively seduced by both blatant and insidious siren songs of endless consumer prosperity to the extent that it is now regarded as a right.
Thus, we have resisted and rejected options to build safer communities, the equitable (and considerable) taxation it requires, and any politician or party foolish enough to propose them.
Measured across the nation, our democratic priorities have been bigger houses, flasher and more powerful cars etc – and increased inequality and the freedoms to go with them. We’d rather chuck another prawn on the barbie.
So we bid fair to become metaphorical prawns ourselves.
Ken Blackman, Inverloch
Australia, world leader in gas expansion
Unfortunately for all residents of the planet, our governments seem quite able to ignore the “enormous and unconscionable impact” of our coal and gas exports (Letters, 9/8).
How else can we explain the fact that for the years between the 2015 Paris Agreement and 2024, Australia, the world’s 55th most populous nation, ranked fifth in the list of 15 countries responsible for nearly 80 per cent of global oil and gas extraction? We actually led all 15 for rate of gas and oil production increase – up 77 per cent, including a doubling of gas production.
We’re in a climate crisis and a cost-of-living crisis.
But Australia is leading the world in its rate of gas expansion, and still not getting paid for a lot of it. Talk about please explain.
Lesley Walker, Northcote
Earth, a people-less future
Your correspondent (Letters, 8/8) states that Earth has existed for billions of years and the climate continually changes. That is correct, except this time it will in all probability survive for billions of years without humans.
We will disappear and become extinct like the other 99.9 per cent of all species that have lived on our fragile planet.
Greg Lawes, Dingley Village
THE FORUM
Melbourne survival plan
Oh, how things have changed. In the 1990s, I would think nothing of spending time in the City of Melbourne without fear or worry of danger. I would wander the city looking for restaurants and cafes to relax and spend time and just sit watching the night life, and catching up with friends.
This coming weekend, I am reluctantly travelling into Melbourne to see a theatre show and will stay overnight in a hotel.
My new survival plan is to see the show on Saturday at 2pm and head back to my hotel room (collecting takeaway on the way back to eat in my room) and not leave my room until the next morning when I will catch the train and return home.
So much lost opportunity to explore and revisit the city I used to love.
Yes, I have lost my nerve when I visit Melbourne and some other urban areas.
Alan Parker Jones, Sunbury
Uni cancel culture
What a shame that academics cannot tolerate scholarships at Melbourne University from the Ramsay Centre, (“Scholarships worth $35m go begging at university”, 9/8) because its perspectives and philosophy clashes with their preferred world views. This is a lost opportunity for spirited discussion and debate.
Contrasting ideas could be explored rather than being crushed. Students could be taught both how to agree and disagree in thoughtful ways.
However, it seems that cancel culture has its claw-like grip on academia.
Perhaps these academics think they have no choice, or they will be demeaned and cancelled by their rigid colleagues. This has an unfortunate resonance with totalitarian societies.
Pia Brous, Armadale
Trigger warning
When universities continue to complain about their financial straits, how short-sighted and hypocritical not to accept the good faith largesse of the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation scholarships for students.
Universities should not be run along ideological paradigms.
They are meant to be bastions of higher learning and that might mean – trigger warning – learning about events, philosophies and ideas that are contested or conservative.
True scholarship is about unearthing facts you may not like even, or especially, if they are irrefutable.
This is the point of intellectual discourse.
The University of Melbourne – my university – should not be afraid to award scholarships that advance knowledge, understanding and the nuanced study of context in different times and places.
University should be the place where minds remain open to differing worldviews, not closed by the pettiness of ideological intransigence.
Ann Rennie, Surrey Hills
Hanson’s Uber cut
Pauline Hanson, in her drive to cut migration, wants to target Uber drivers among other classes of employees. As a person who doesn’t have access to taxpayer-funded Commonwealth cars and who hasn’t been gifted an aeroplane, I find Ubers not only extremely useful but I also often find chatting with the drivers an interesting and rewarding experience.
Jan Downing, Hawthorn East
Liberals never young
Under Ben Carroll, Victorian Labor has renewed policy and management to benefit it at the November election (“Carroll faces battle for seat as Libs’ treaty pledge falls flat″, 9/8).
Against One Nation, the Liberals need a similar policy upgrade both at the state level and nationally.
The Liberals have sidelined young people in particular, by the outright rejection of climate change nationally plus Treaty and conservation in Victoria. Treaty is in place, climate change will be determined by scientific research not politics, and conservation enjoys high support. So, it’s time to be more adventurous.
Malcolm Cameron, Camberwell
Sewerage and the city
There is much talk about the debt that Victoria has incurred to fund the infrastructure Big Build to secure the future of Melbourne.
It has reminded me that when the Labor lord mayor of Brisbane, Clem Jones, was elected in 1961, most of Brisbane was still unsewered.
The city was served by backyard dunnies and a large workforce of dunny men. Jones immediately set about to sewer the city and went into debt to do so.
At the time, the conservative opposition cried foul and argued that he was creating a debt burden for future generations. Jones ignored them and got on with sewering the city, arguing that future generations should help pay for the work as they would be the ones who would most benefit.
By the end of the 1960s, most of the city was sewered. With Brisbane now hosting the Olympic Games, I have visions that but for the leadership of Clem Jones, the venues would have rows and rows of little dunny houses with dunny men running in and out all day.
Ronald Harper, Camberwell
Insiders job
Congratulations to the ABC’s Insiders program which celebrated its 25th birthday yesterday.
This celebratory program was a wonderful look back on the past
25 years of politics in Australia.
The quality of the journalism, analytical thinking and the coming together of different political views on this show’s panel over the past 25 years shows us how rational discussion can take place.
We don’t have to agree with each other but we do need to listen and accept that there are a variety of views in politics.
Marilyn Hoban, Mornington
Ups and downs
Some Age journalists appear to have embraced the “uptick”. I must be a grammatical Luddite, but is an uptick the same as an increase? If so, then why not use increase, which I think many readers of my age would understand?
After all, an increase has an opposite – decrease. Does an uptick have an opposite, like a downtick?
Then how does one draw a downtick? To my understanding, ticks always went up!
Then, they were just – wait for it – ticks. And the opposite was a cross.
And don’t get me started on the use of “going forward”. Doesn’t that just mean, in the future?
Could someone please help me understand why it is necessary to complicate simple, understandable English terms?
Eugene Docherty, Bentleigh East
Defence overspend
It is scandalous that the United States, China and Russia spend so much money on offensive and defensive weapons.
The US is developing its
$262 billion Golden Dome defence shield (″Space-based missile shield″, 9/8) at the same time as it jointly expends vast sums with Australia on AUKUS nuclear submarines.
The US is also spending
$560 million to develop a mine in Australia to produce scandium, a rare mineral which is vital to its defence industry (″Pentagon in $560 million Aussie mine deal″, 9/8). What a shame these sums of money could not be used for peaceful endeavours.
John Guy, Elsternwick
Thanking medicos
Ruby Atkinson’s moving article (″I’m alive today thanks to strangers who don’t even know my name″, 9/8) about her leukaemia diagnosis and treatment is a timely reminder that modern medicine is never the work of one remarkable individual. Behind every outcome stands a team of people — doctors, nurses, pathology and radiology technicians, pharmacists, cleaners, technicians, ward clerks, and countless others, most of whom patients may never see or know by name, as Ruby notes.
When we are at our most vulnerable, these strangers bring not only knowledge and skill, but kindness, reassurance, and hope. They work long and taxing hours, often without public recognition, united by a common purpose: to help another person.
Ruby’s gratitude reminds us that healthcare is built on teamwork, compassion, and quiet dedication.
To every member of those healthcare teams: thank you.
Bryan Walpole, retired emergency physician, Sandy Bay, Tas
Football brain health
There has been an outpouring of opinion – mostly highly critical – about Geelong Football Club’s handling of their player in regards to his future brain health. But I have yet to hear any significant discussion about what they actually should do in such cases.
Should they make him wear a helmet, or coach him to protect his head even if it means avoiding a contest for the ball, or expose him to risk and pay him compensation later? Or, should they simply not select him to play?
It’s easy to criticise the action someone else has chosen; far
more challenging to recommend an alternative.
David Francis, Ivanhoe East
Perfect day
The drive from the Yarra Valley into the MCG took us just over an hour. My disabled parking permit afforded us four hours in a two-hour bay with a short walk to the ground.
The complimentary mobility shuttle took us to the gate. And, thanks to the generosity of a family member, our tickets to the game were gifted to us.
The predicted rain didn’t fall, and instead we were treated to blue skies. We had a close-up view of Harvey Langford’s possible mark of the year.
And to top it off, the Melbourne Demons beat top of the ladder Fremantle Dockers by four points.
A perfect Saturday afternoon in Melbourne. And just for the record, no Range Rover, no cheese board at half-time and no annual trips to the snow!
Sophie Sadowska, Don Valley
AND ANOTHER THING
Treaty
That Jess Wilson still wants to remove the treaty with Victoria’s Indigenous people shows she is out of touch and unelectable.
Paul Thomas, Essendon
Jess Wilson’s stated aim to repeal Victoria’s Indigenous treaty legislation within her first 100 days in office just demonstrates how unsuitable the Liberals are for office.
Reg Murray, Glen Iris
I listened to the Welcome to the Country message (9/8) before the South Sydney v Parramatta NRL game and thought how simple and beautiful it was. I found it more meaningful than the other introductions to most high-profile sporting games.
Rick Whitelaw, Anglesea
Furthermore
Is it just me who has absolutely no interest in ever having a humanoid robot? I’m fine with something that folds my washing and does the dishes (and all manner of other household chores), but why on earth does it need to look like a human?
Sam Branigan, St Kilda
Did the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference discuss how expensive religious schools are contributing to growing social division? No, I thought not.
Paula O’Brien, St Kilda
Long may television programs such as the ABC’s Insiders exist – 25 years of discussion from various viewpoints, political foibles skewered, a show worth more than its parts. Political parties that wish to curtail funding for the ABC should be put on notice.
Peter Roche, Carlton
AFL
Considering Geelong Football Club’s position on concussion, it would be appropriate if
Kardinia Park’s name was changed to Dangerfield.
Garry Adams, Corio
As an Essendon Bombers tragic, I have now asked for the intercession of the patron saint of “impossible causes” to come on board. Nothing on the human
level seems to hold weight. Welcome aboard, St Jude!
Tris Raouf, Hadfield
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