As climate change quickens, so must action to halt it

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Proponents of fossil fuels as “transition fuels” would be hard-pressed to justify their actions given the graphs accompanying the article “COP28, do oil and climate mix?” (2/12). The 30 warmest months on record globally, global surface air temperature anomalies and yearly global surface temperature and atmospheric carbon dioxide are all on a steep upward curve. The fourth graph shows projected peak fossil fuel use occurring in the 2020s. It assumes “recent pledges” would cause a steep decline in fossil fuel use, but even in the unlikely event of such pledges being genuinely adhered to, the “gap to a 1.5-degree path remains very large”.
As UN climate chief Simon Stiell told COP28: “Climate action needs to accelerate everywhere. Systems transformation, from energy and transport to our relationship with nature and our social systems, is essential to rapidly reducing emissions and building resilience.” “Accelerate” means no more fossil fuel mining, no greenwashing, no more promises of carbon capture and storage or the use of offsets. And for Australia, no more false promises about nuclear power – there is no time. With wind, solar and storage, we have far better ways of doing the job. Fiona Colin, Malvern East

Australia can be renewables superpower
Words spoken by world leaders at COP28 about cutting greenhouse gas emissions are hollow unless they are supported by action. Whatever we might say about record financing of renewables, Australia’s standing at COP28 is threatened by our continued willingness to expand fossil fuel production in coal, oil and gas. It’s like having our cake and eating it too. We can be a renewables superpower, but not while we remain wedded to fossil fuels.
Nick Toovey, Beaumaris

Will cockroaches inherit the Earth?
Humans are the only species that have altered the environment to suit their own requirements and, in doing so, have caused a population explosion so large as to be unsustainable. Nature has a way of dealing with such a problem and that answer appears to be a climate change so severe that our species will not be able to cope. As long as governments put their parochial interests above the common problem affecting all of humanity, we are doomed to failure. One can only hope that cockroaches will do a better job. Les Aisen, Elsternwick

Note to government, this is an emergency
The article “Minister rejects call for fossil fuel bans” (1/12) states that “households will be spared a national mandate” on gas connections and electric vehicles. Spared from what? The wrath of the fossil fuel lobby? We are in a climate emergency and Australia’s emissions are still rising. Both gas in the home and vehicle exhaust fumes are significant climate and human health hazards. Healthier households with all-electric zero-emission appliances have lower running costs. It is absurd that Energy Minister Chris Bowen refuses to plug into the future and support us to electrify everything.
Amy Hiller, Kew

This existential problem on backburner
David Crowe’s warnings about the political dangers involved in not going ahead with the stage 3 tax cuts (″⁣Meddling with stage 3 spells danger″⁣, 1/12), and the Labor government’s reluctance to break an extravagant promise, shows the extent to which Australian politics and the seeming attitudes of the electorate have declined over the past two decades. This is the only conclusion that can be drawn from the government’s timidity on this issue and on the electorate’s apparent disregard of economic inequity. Tax cuts and national security have now become the default concerns of both major political parties and demonstrate really how close they have become. Even an existentially important issue such as climate change is put on the backburner. All this shows how successful have been the forces that render Australian society so immature in many areas.
Greg Bailey, St Andrews

FORUM

Law needs review
The recent Federal Court finding and the correspondence from Jane Morris, president, Dying With Dignity, Victoria (Letters, 2/12) highlight the need for a review of the law regarding voluntary assisted dying. It is clearly discriminatory to prevent the use of telephone, email or other non-face-to-face advice for people seeking or undergoing this process. This is particularly so where the person is in the country and may be distant from a suitable practitioner or where the person is frail and not readily able to visit or be visited.
Moreover, the law should also be altered to enable practitioners to discuss voluntary assisted dying as part of the general package of end-of-life care. Practitioners are permitted to discuss all other aspects of such care whether it be powers of attorney, advanced care directives, the withholding of all treatment, giving only essential treatment, under what circumstances the person might be admitted to hospital or the provision of any or all levels of palliative care and so on.
If voluntary assisted dying is legal, why then is discussion of it not permitted?
Dr David Dammery,
Malvern East

Access must change
How unfair is the court ruling for those patients who live in remote country areas or the outer suburbs who are unable to travel to a face-to-face consultation with their doctors because of terrible end-of-life suffering, when it is not an option to physically get into a car.
How awful for the doctors who are stymied by the decision to know that patients who suffer are denied their wish to access voluntary assisted dying, a legal choice in most states, but prevented to apply by an outdated law. It means more huffing and puffing by doctors, politicians and us in the community to get the law changed to match voluntary assisted dying legislation.
Robyn Anastasiou,
Black Rock

Poor behaviour
A behaviour curriculum (“Time to teach students how to behave”, 2/12) that focuses on upskilling teachers and rearranging learning spaces is tantamount to placing a Band-Aid on a broken leg. Classrooms are a microcosm of society. Students bring into the classroom the behaviours they see and experience outside the classroom.
Unlike some other countries and cultures, in Australia our culture places little emphasis on respect, courtesy and kindness, and more on individual freedoms and entitlements. It is no wonder that Australia sits at 69 out of 76 on the OECD disciplinary climate index.
While we as teachers can foster better listening and more appropriate responses from students in our classrooms, the values that underpin antisocial behaviour need to be acknowledged. If charity begins at home, then so do all the most desirable behaviours, and also those least desirable.
Claire Merry (retired teacher),
Wantirna

The declining results
A Senate inquiry has realised that some students misbehave and has recommended the development of a “behaviour curriculum” to improve things. Maybe it could also be used to help improve parliamentary behaviour.
The report also recognises that bad behaviour disrupts learning, which is then reflected in international testing including the declining PISA results. That is a real concern, the declining results, not the naughty kids.
It could be odd to have to tell students to behave so that they can learn how to behave. The cause of the problem could be parents who have let their children get away with anything, especially during the difficult COVID times and laissez-faire is easier than discipline.
Of course the problem is not new. Socrates said: ″⁣The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders.″⁣ But there was no mention of him developing a “behaviour curriculum”.
There is a need for something more substantial than the latest educational catchphrase and, yes, it is again thrust onto teachers to do the real work.
Dennis Fitzgerald, Box Hill

Bad examples
Pardon me for pointing this out, but isn’t there something of a ″⁣glass houses″⁣ aspect to politicians pontificating about classroom behaviour?
Has anyone watched politicians’ parliamentary antics lately? Yelling, speaking over the top of each other, finger pointing, wedging, sledging and tantrums are regular occurrences.
Poor example if you ask me.
Jane Ross, San Remo

I want to see red
I believe the designer of this year’s CBD decorations is colour blind. Why are the decorations in pink? Red and green have been the accepted colours forever. Pink is a lovely colour, but it gives a ″⁣soft″⁣ feel, not the excitement of red.
Sue Sweetland, Melbourne

Bring cheer for homeless
While walking along Swanston Street last Friday, I admired the lavish and extensive Christmas decorations festooning the Town Hall and the surrounding pavement area. I did wonder, however, what the significant number of homeless people in Swanson Street and surrounding areas made of this vast expenditure. Perhaps the money could have been spent to ensure the homeless had a home for Christmas.
Geraldine O’Sullivan, Hawthorn

Planning at crossroads
It is true (″⁣The Home Front″⁣, 2/12) that housing densification is a political strategy both rich with opportunity and fraught with danger for the government.
Victorian planning sits at a fork in the road, with a two-tier system emerging from government changes made over the past five years. This favours large private developments and state projects by waiving key planning requirements, removing the decision-making role of local government and reducing public input.
The other tier has local councils continuing the day-to-day role that largely retains third-party objector and review rights and the independent role of VCAT.
As well as facilitating major developments, the government has now turned its hand to precinct and structure planning all around Melbourne, replacing a strategic planning role carried out by councils.
On Premier Jacinta Allan’s side is the urgency to act on housing issues and the recommendations of the IBAC report into Casey Council. Some nurturing of the planning system and respect for other players will also help to meet targets on housing supply and affordability.
Greg Buchanan, Surrey Hills

No fan of Britpop
A headline in The Age (1/12) makes the bold claim that Teenage Fanclub, not Oasis, were Britpop’s greatest band. There’s one glaring problem with that claim. Neither Teenage Fanclub nor any other band hailing from Scotland were part of the overhyped, bloated mess we know as Britpop. It was purely an English phenomenon.
Gordon Duncan, Traralgon

Send in the drones
The news that the AUKUS partners will ″⁣ramp up co-operation on underwater drones″⁣ (3/12) is welcome. Submersible drone technology has made considerable advances in recent years. Drones now have greater range and more carrying capacity for defensive or offensive weapons should they be needed.
Thousands of drones can be bought for the price of one conventional-sized submarine. Drones can operate in much shallower water, and are far more manoeuvrable, allowing them to penetrate much farther into foreign or enemy territory. Perhaps most importantly, they do not put the lives of navy crew at risk.
Douglas Mackenzie, Deakin, ACT

Oversight wanted
Why are The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and 60 Minutes being left with having to expose apparent inadequacies and incompetence in professions such as podiatry and cosmetic surgery (″⁣Regulator probes podiatric surgeons″⁣, 2/12). Where is the oversight from government regulators and professional guilds?
Rob Hocart, Tyabb

Not so smart
The evolving world of the media used by young women is a smart editorial choice of subject (″⁣Chicks and clicks: The problem with smart women’s dumb stuff″⁣, 3/12).
More appropriate adjectives need to be found for ″⁣smart″⁣ and its objectionable opposite ″⁣dumb″⁣. The way they are applied is hugely subjective, and in any case, every human being cannot help but be both, sometimes inadvertently, and other times by choice.
Ruth Farr,
Blackburn South

Tracking the kids
Kerri Sackville’s article ″⁣I track my daughters with an app. Weird?″⁣ (3/12), while entertaining, is a real wake-up call to the true addiction of having everything at your fingertips and not being able to resist ″⁣just one more look″⁣.
As she points out, she would have been incensed if her parents did that to her. Sometimes ignorance is bliss and kids need to know that they are trusted to be sensible and careful. Are we bringing up an entire cohort of kids who cannot think for themselves?
Marie Nash, Balwyn

That’s a negative
The US has become a gerontocracy (Comment, 3/12). Post-referendum Labor struggles to counter the bad vibes of the negatocracy
Greg Curtin,
Nunawading

AND ANOTHER THING

Behaviour
Oh the irony, a Senate report urges that ″⁣children should be explicitly taught how to conduct themselves in a classroom″⁣. Pot, kettle, black methinks.
George Djoneff, Mitcham

“Time to teach students how to behave: Senate report” (2/12). How about leading by example?
Lindsay Donahoo, Wattle Glen

Furthermore
A community march calling for peace in the Middle East? (Letters, 2/12). I’d be in that. We need to stop the endless inhumanity, death and destruction.
Anne Sgro, Coburg North

The English might, just might, return the Parthenon sculptures to Athens when they realise that they, the English, are no longer a colonial power. So, not happening soon.
Graeme Gardner, Reservoir

That’s not a pothole! Our pothole was so big we had to put a ski lift in to help us climb out.
David Baylis, Drouin East

We were so poor that on garbage days they delivered it to us. (Also, apologies to Monty Python.)
John Varley, Abbotsford

Some quips (Letters, 2/12) reminded me of a sign I once saw on a country road in South Gippsland: “Cattle, unaccompanied by drover, not permitted on this bridge.“
Alastair Pritchard, Templestowe

With a greater presence of police cars on the roads to dissuade speeding motorists, perhaps the police should take industrial action more often.
Phil Alexander, Eltham

The world is on fire while COP28 fiddles.
Jerry Koliha, South Melbourne

Finally
Is it a great question to ask why so many people begin to answer a question by saying: ″⁣It’s a great question″⁣?
David Price, Camberwell

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