Abbott Strikes Again

“Nature supports our lives, livelihoods and our quality of life. Every single thing we need to live comes from nature: our rivers, climate, soils, oceans and forests,” said Kelly O’Shanassy, chief executive of the Australian Conservation Foundation. Unfortunately not all Australians are in agreement, perhaps none more sceptical than Prime Minister Tony Abbott. Abbott’s views on climate change are well known but the Australian Coalition government went further than most thought it would recently in attempting to strip the world heritage status of 74,000 hectares of Tasmanian forests. Thankfully (and unsurprisingly) Unesco’s world heritage committee took very little time at all to reject the proposal. Without this rejection the forests would quickly be lost to the logging companies and any biodiversity lost since following the initial destruction of the forest monocultures would replace it. Australia is likely to be one of the most affected by the changes brought on by climate change. It remains baffling how its own government seem completely averse to protecting the environment within its borders. Short term thinking needs to switch away from first generation greed towards a long term approach to protect the rights of posterity.