ABC fails to ask questions on climate change to Tuvalu PM
Tuvalu's Prime Minister Enele Sopoaga was interviewed on the ABC’s Radio National this morning.
Scott Morrison was mocked last month for asking whose side Labor was on. Voters expect our federal politicians to be on Australia’s side.
But it doesn’t always look like that is the case. We see this playing out now in the absurd and transparent climate politics of the Pacific with small island nations trying to blame their climate woes on Australia, while taking our aid and cosying up to China.
It is as silly as it is insulting. With an annual contribution of more than $1 billion, Australia is by far the largest aid donor to the Pacific, providing more than the US, China, Japan and New Zealand combined. So we should, as a former colonial power and the strongest regional economy it is our responsibility and in our interests.
And when it comes to climate change, we are not the culprit. We are pledged to meeting Paris emissions reduction targets, wearing enormous economic pain to do so.
On the other hand, China’s carbon dioxide emissions are growing each year by about our annual total, producing roughly 20 times our emissions this year, 21 times next year and so on. If Pacific island nations are worried about carbon emissions, then it is their Chinese suitors that deserve their ire.
Instead, they snap at the hand that helps them; a country responsible for 1.3 per cent of global emissions. The Prime Minister of Tuvalu appeared on ABC Radio National this morning and scoffed at Australia’s latest $500 million climate change package for Pacific Island nations.
Enele Sopoaga said it seemed like “an excuse not to stop coal mining not to reduce greenhouse gases into the atmosphere” — seemingly asking Australia to shut down our largest export industry. “It is just immoral,” Mr Sopoaga added, “it is almost like giving money to people to shut up, not to talk about their rights to survive, it is the right of the people of Tuvalu and small islands to survive.”
The fact is that while scientists warn about the risks of rising sea levels, the climate stubbornly refuses to behave in accordance with climate modelling. And regardless of steady sea level rises over the past century, scientific studies have shown the low-lying islands of Tuvalu have grown in their land mass by three per cent over the past four decades, with three quarters of all islands growing rather than shrinking.
None of these facts about what is happening on Tuvalu, or what Australia is doing to reduce its greenhouse emissions, or how this contrasts with China’s massive emissions growth, or how even if Australia was shut down, global greenhouse emissions would continue to rise and therefore there would be no benefit to Tuvalu, none of these facts were put to Tuvalu’s Prime Minister by the ABC. Then Labor’s foreign policy spokeswoman Penny Wong called a press conference and supported the Pacific island nation attacks against Australia.
Why do the facts not matter? Whose side are these people on?
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