It's so good to have this happening at the moment. It has been an awful week with news that the Liberal/NP government is to fund $4m for an influential climate change sceptic to operate from the University of Western Australia in the same 12 months that it abolished $1.5 m for our own excellent, scientifically rigorous Climate Council headed by Tim Flannery.
Things have happened this week which have made me wonder whether Malcolm Turnbull can sit authentically in a Liberal/National Party government any longer. He surely understands the rationale underpinning the challenges now being made by the international community to Australia.
I never thought that I would find myself caught up in a 'flat earth' like, 'creationist' like political context; that my supporting climate change could be seen by others, including our government, as subversive, and yet at times this is how it's starting to feel.
Our opposition Labour Party, our Greens, our academics and climate scientists, are doing their best, but somehow seem to be crying in the wilderness, to act as irritants to the Abbott government, stirring them on to defensively take an even more sceptical, climate denying position which they then enact through regulations if they can't do it through policy. As they do so, they create a sense of doubt in those who are almost at the point (according to Prochaska, in 'late contemplation) of making behavioural changes in relation to climate change, delaying the process.