Want a sneak preview of America-2008? Australians are voting today on 11 years of John Howard’s ghastly ungreen rule and Kevin Rudd is predicted to become Australia’s leader—a man who’s declared the fight against global warming to be his main priority. The Telegraph reports:
The Labour Party leader said that he would immediately sign the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, describing it as the “number one” priority. “Australia needs new leadership on climate change. Mr. Howard remains in a state of denial,” he said. He would personally represent Australia at a United Nations climate change meeting next month in Bali to discuss the next stage of the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. He also promised that by 2020, a fifth of Australia’s energy needs would come from renewable energy sources. Until a partial conversion this year, Mr. Howard has been a climate change skeptic [sound familiar?]. . . the latest poll indicates that Mr. Rudd is set to win with 54 per cent of the vote compared to Mr. Howard’s 46 per cent.
If true. Well, halle-bloody-lujah. It will be no small victory. Aussies are the highest per capita greenhouse emitters on the planet. They’re our fellow anti-Kyotoers, and likewise suffering hellacious droughts and wildfires. Where they lead, we can follow.
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones’ environmental correspondent. You can read from her new book, The Fragile Edge, and other writings, here.
