Why I threw my hat into the ring as an independent candidate on the platform of action on climate.
Australian voters must hold Scott Morrison accountable for his lack of leadership at the G20 Rome meeting which has failed to agree on climate goals ahead of UN summit in Glasgow. He could have made a difference but he chose not to.
Every person on the planet is now affected by climate change. Its devastating impacts will intensify with more extreme and dangerous weather events. A warming world will make us sicker, hungrier and more vulnerable.
The 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow is ringing the alarm bells and warning us that planet Earth is now in “code red” facing climate collapse. Ice will melt, sea levels will rise, and heat waves will fuel uncontrollable wildfires. Much of the planet’s unique biodiversity will be lost forever through mass extinction. The impacts of climate change will be far worse than anything we experienced during the Covid pandemic. We are now dangerously close to the point of no return and that is why climate scientists are imploring us to heed the science and rapidly reduce our carbon emissions.
The Glasgow conference is one of the most important meetings in the history of human civilization because it will decide our fate. Yet the news is not good. The recent annual UN Emissions Gap report predicts the world is on heading for 2.7 degrees Celsius of warming by 2100. If we want to avoid this apocalyptical future we need to effectively halve global emissions by 2030 and keep our warming to 1.5C.
Many Australians remain deeply disappointed with our political leaders — particularly our prime minister and the minister for emissions reduction — and their abysmal failure to commit to ambitious net zero emissions by 2030. They only decided to attend the Glasgow conference at the very last moment. Then their net zero by 2050 emissions reduction target “plan” was secretly “hobbled” together under pressure from their recalcitrant National Party partners. This Morrison “plan” has no new policies, no modelling and has no mechanisms to increase Australia’s weak 2030 Paris Agreement targets.
Australia’s emission reduction plan is all spin with no substance and continues business as usual — meaning more coal and gas exports. Instead of grasping bold, imaginative and ambitious emission reductions Australia continues its international reputation as climate “laggard”.
This is why I am standing as an independent in the next federal election for the seat of Bradfield in the northern suburbs of Sydney, currently held by Paul Fletcher, Liberal Minister for Communications, Urban Infrastructure, Cities and the Arts.
I can no longer abide his or his government’s wilful refusal to tackle the existential crisis of climate change and legislate emergency measures to get the planet off death row.
Sometimes I wonder if I could have made a difference by writing more letters to my local member? Or tried to meet with him? Maybe I could have persuaded him to look me in the eye and be honest about his government’s flagrant indifference to the future of the planet? Yet every time I thought about engaging with him, I just could not do it. For me it was a pointless. I knew I could do better putting my energies elsewhere.
So over the years I attended meeting after meeting listening to experts talk about the precipitous crises of our times — overpopulation, ocean acidification, biodiversity extinction, deforestation, peak oil. I went to forums to listen to world leading environmentalists including Vandana Shiva, David Suzuki, Bill McKibben and Tim Flannery.
I carried my placards and marched in climate rally after climate rally. As early as 2009 I attended a Canberra climate conference where we linked arms and circled Parliament House hoping to bring the nation’s attention to the climate emergency. I wrote about the climate crisis in my regular articles and book reviews published in the NSW Teachers Federation’s newspaper.
I am proud to say I protested against the Adani coal mine in the main street of Tenterfield opposite Barnaby Joyce’s electorate office and received enormous support from his constituents. When you stop and have a conversation with country folk they actually listen. They understood why opening up a mega polluting coal mine was not a good idea.
When I retired as a primary school teacher I kept teaching about the environment — but this time to older life-long learning retirees. I threw myself into running course after course on the history of the environment movement. I ran “Politics at Lunchtime” courses on saving the Great Barrier Reef and the Murray Darling Basin. I ran evening courses on why we needed to save Sydney’s last remaining pristine wild rivers that are threatened by the NSW government’s plan to raise the Warragamba Dam wall. As well, I lectured about saving Lithgow’s spectacular Gardens of Stone landscape that has the potential to transform the historic coal mining town of Lithgow into a must see ecotourism destination through a plan known as “Destination Pagoda”.
And then I wrote submission after submission asking governments not to allow habitat destruction from land clearing, tree removals, forest logging. And then one morning I woke up thinking I could not possibly write yet another submission that was to be ignored.
The thought came to me — how much easier it would be if I threw my hat into the ring as an independent candidate on the platform of action on climate. And of course standing up for the ABC, that is the heart of our culture and the arts, and against a local member who is doing everything to destroy it.
It is so important that the Glasgow climate conference makes a difference. If we don’t make strong commitments to removing our carbon emissions we are creating a hell of a future for our children and grandchildren. The time of prevarication is over. Decisive action is needed — but this time it must be at the ballot box.
Janine Kitson is a former councillor on Ku-ring-gai Councillor, director of the National Trust (NSW), deputy chair of the Colong Foundation for Wilderness, vice president of the Friends of Ku-ring-gai Environment and inaugural convenor of the northern suburbs of Sydney branch of ABC Friends. She has worked as a teacher, writer and consultant for the NSW Department of Education. From 1996-2000 she was appointed as the English adviser for a federal government overseas education aid project in Samoa. In recent years Janine Kitson has been a regular contributor to the NSW Teachers Federation journal Education.
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