Kevin Rudd: "I Don't Know How Malcolm Turnbull Faces His Grandchildren"
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In his current life as peripatetic statesman, Rudd says he takes every opportunity to criticise the Australian government over its “inertia” on climate change. “I don’t know how those guys face their kids and grandkids in the morning. I really don’t. I just genuinely don’t,” he said.
To the climate policy failures of the Liberal-National government, Rudd suggests adding the neutering of the national broadband network he introduced while in power. Without economic alternatives for people in rural areas, he said, there was no way Labor could oppose significant rural developments, such as the massive coal mine proposed by Indian billionaire Gautam Adani in Rudd’s home state of Queensland.
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The Carmichael mine (located by the map above) has become a defining environmental issue in Australia. Both major political parties back its construction despite the prospect of it emitting 4.6 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide over its lifetime. “You can’t just push [the Adani project] aside as a piece of good politics in the cities and marginal politics in the regions,” said Rudd. “There’s a policy reality here which shapes the politics, which is people don’t have economic opportunities anymore in this part of the world and it threatens their sense of local identity, legitimately.”
The former prime minister spoke to Climate Home News near Oxford University, UK, where he has spent the past several months researching Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Rudd is an expert on China and head of the New York-based Asia Society Policy Institute. China’s relationship with the world is changing rapidly, he says, with important consequences for climate change.
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http://www.climatechangenews.com/2017/12/03/kevin-rudd-i-dont-know-how-malcolm-turnbull-faces-his-grandkids/
