David Attenborough Has Slammed Australia’s Lack Of Action On Climate Change
Attenborough says richer countries have a "moral responsibility" to do more.
Sir David Attenborough is trending on Twitter but don’t freak out, he’s not dead — he just called out Australia’s awful net-zero policy.
Earlier this week, Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced Australia’s official plan for reaching net-zero carbon emission by 2050. However, the plan was noticeably vague and was far from what many Australians wanted to hear.
Just days after the plan was announced, everyone’s favourite natural historian David Attenborough blasted wealthy nations — namely Australia and the United States — for not taking the issue of climate change seriously.
“There are still people in North America, there are still people in Australia who say ‘no, no, no, no, of course, it’s very unfortunate that there was that forest fire that absolutely demolished, incinerated that village, but it’s a one-off,’” he told the BBC.
“Particularly if it’s going to cost money in the short term, the temptation is to deny the problem and pretend it’s not there.
“But every month that passes, it becomes more and more incontrovertible, the changes to the planet that we are responsible for that are having these devastating effects.”
Attenborough even went so far as to assert that wealthier nations (see: us) have a “moral responsibility” to pick up the slack for developing countries, which simply do not have the funds or infrastructure to do as much as we can.
“Whole parts of Africa are likely to be unliveable — people will simply have to move away because of the advancing deserts and increasing heat, and where will they go? Well, a lot of them will try to get into Europe,” he said.
“Do we say, ‘Oh, it’s nothing to do with us’ and cross our arms?”
The historian’s comments come after the BBC accused Australia of “dragging its heels” on the issue of climate action.
Meanwhile, Scott Morrison slammed the criticism, asserting that critics like Attenborough don’t understand Australia.
“Everyone else who doesn’t understand Australia, our economy and the challenges we have here are entitled to their opinions,” he told Channel 7 on Wednesday. “But I will do what is right for Australia and we are getting results.”
Under Australia’s net-zero plan — of which we are still yet to see the actual modelling — the government has pledged to create 62,000 new jobs in mining and heavy industry, and asserted that Australians will be $2,000 better off. But it simply cannot be stressed enough that this should all be taken as wishful thinking until the Morrison Government can actually provide us with the data to back up these claims.
Scott Morrison is set to fly to Glasgow for the United Nations COP26 climate change summit next week.