Wise Response press release 18 April 2021. Full briefing to government attached.
BUBBLE WITH OZ REVEALS THE REALITY GAP IN TACKLING IMPACTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE.
Wise Response urges Government to create a Commission for the Future
The travel bubble with Australia opens just as its Climate Council announces that keeping global temperatures under 1.5 degrees is a lost cause and we are on track for two degrees of warming.
Wise Response chair Liz Slooten says, ‘It’s natural that tourism businesses see the bubble as excellent news. But the reality is that in hosting a new wave of tourists, means more pollution in the atmosphere, in landfills and in the ocean.
‘The digits on computer screens will show people getting richer. But this is at the real expense of consumption of the finite resources of the world we live in and accelerating CO2 emissions’.
In its quarterly Briefing to Government, the Wise Response Society urges it to take a co-ordinated systems-based approach to all its actions. ‘We need a Commission for the Future – with teeth,’ Slooten says. ‘One that could oversee the integration of all legislation, past and future’. It could also encourage the government to refrain from facilitating actions which result in the continuing depletion of planetary capacities.
Contacts: Wise Response chair Prof. Liz Slooten
Deputy chair: Dr Jim Salinger
Wise Response is an association of scientists and engineers expert in their fields, dedicated to drawing public and government attention to the urgent need to plan for resource limits rather than exponential consumption. Patrons are Sir Geoffrey Palmer and Sir Alan Mark.