Political Climate

As we continue to see in the North Coast sky reminders of forest fires still raging, there are a couple of unexpected political changes internationally in advance of the Paris meetings on the climate crisis, with perhaps more to come.  What they may mean is unclear, but they do offer interesting possibilities.

The biggest news so far is the ouster of one of the world's biggest climate crisis denial blowhards, Australia's Prime Minister Tony Abbott.  In Australia's parliamentary system, the PM is the leader elected by the majority party, in this case called Liberals.  In what was essentially a party coup, they replaced Abbott with Malcolm Turnbill.  He'd probably be considered a liberal Republican in pre-1980s US.  He is not a global heating denier, and specifically opposed Abbott's position.  He's announced however that for now he's staying with the enacted policies backed by his party.  But he is likely to be more open to negotiations in Paris.

Another surprise was the Labor Party in the UK electing a new leader, Jeremy Corbyn.  Initially given no chance of winning, Corbyn ended up with a nearly 60% majority.  He is considered far left, harking back in some ways to Labor's post-WWII roots, but in other ways his views are not so easily classifiable.  He stood out among the Labor candidates by speaking clearly and directly about the issues.

 Right now Corbyn is given no chance of leading Labor to a majority and himself to Prime Minister, but where have we heard that before?  In any case, there's no UK election before Paris conferences in December.  But he supports efforts to address the climate crisis, and his voice may help push the UK conservative government to a stronger role.

A more directly meaningful change could come from October elections in Canada. The current PM, Stephen Harper, has pretty much taken Canada out of real action to address the climate crisis.  He's been the PM of Oil.  Mostly for other reasons he's become vastly unpopular, but it's not clear what kind of policy will result from this election, since, as the Toronto Star noted, in this country with the longest Arctic coastline, global heating has not been a campaign issue for anybody, and the candidates are quiet or coy about their proposed policies.

  But the timing is such that a saner approach to the Paris meetings may result, from Canada as well as Australia.  That seems to be the view of this Washington Post article.

It must be added that in both Australia and Canada, as in the US, efforts outside national policy are being made to confront climate crisis challenges.  These include major progress in clean energy in Australia, and grassroots and organizational advocacy and action in Canada.

Politics is in many respects an unreal world that can markedly affect the real world.  The news in that real world continues to be urgent: a widely reported study outlines the very dire consequences of burning the fossil fuel known to exist, especially in rising sea levels that would inundate the world's major cities, and the growing speculation that this year's El Nino and other factors are triggering and will trigger a big jump in global temperature.

All this in the waning days of the summer that is almost certainly to be declared officially the hottest on record globally and in the US.  A summary of the summer's climate news in a new column at the Atlantic.