“Among all the tests President Obama faced in his first term, his biggest failure was climate change.”
Tip: press → for another quote, C to copy, S to share.
The biggest tab the public picks up for fossil fuels has to do with what economists call 'external costs, ' like the health effects of air and water pollution.
The coal industry is an even larger part of the Australian economy than it is of the American, and it has an enormous amount of political power.
Australia is the only island continent on the planet, which means that changes caused by planet-warming pollution - warmer seas, which can drive stronger storms, and more acidic oceans, which wreak havoc on the food chain - are even more deadly here.
In any crass political calculation, drilling for oil will always win more votes than putting a price on carbon. But if I recall what I was taught in fifth-grade American government class, we elect presidents to do more than crass political calculations.
