Lateline - 30/06/2009: Tim Flannery [bemoans the rise of climate realism in Australia]

[Flannery] ...You come back to Australia and it's like going back to the Precambrian period. It's like stepping way, way back, because here, industry is still disputing the facts of the science, and that's highly corrosive.

TONY JONES: It's not only industry, it's certain key politicians. Senator Steve Fielding had a very important potential vote in the Senate, is now being described by the 'Wall Street Journal' as something like a prophet, which is quite unusual to see, and beyond that, there's a view that Australia is emerging as a sort of epicentre of the new scientific scepticism.

TIM FLANNERY: Australia's climate dinosaurs are a lot bigger and uglier than the climate dinosaurs elsewhere, that's for sure. And it is depressing, because it's just so counter-productive. And, you know, the amount of time industry will waste disputing the science and not getting on with the job of adjusting to the future and a new energy economy in this country is just dismaying.

More 'green' scam promotion: "How to reduce a billion tons of CO2, add millions of jobs, ensure energy independence"

In a presentation before national policymakers and analysts this month, leading clean energy CEOs, venture capitalists and academics unveiled the "Gigaton Throwdown," an assessment of the nation's clean energy potential that identifies seven industries capable of creating 5 million clean energy jobs and reducing CO2 emissions by 5-7 gigatons by 2020. The report, and the content of this press release are the results of a collaborative effort between leading researchers at UC Berkeley, MIT, University of Michigan, Stanford, and Drexel University, and clean tech leaders, challenges Washington policymakers to remove obstacles that keep billions of capital investment dollars sitting on the sidelines.
...
"The Gigaton Throwdown sets our collective sights on game changing combinations of science, technology and policy that can turn the needed levels of climate protection and energy security into a roadmap for laboratory-to-industry partnerships," said Dan Kammen, of the University of California-Berkeley. "Quite frankly, I am tired of watching the exceptional technology advances in the renewable energy field become big business in Europe or Asia when they could just as easily become multi-billion dollar companies here. The Gigaton Throwdown can be a catalyst for academia-government-industry synergies to make these innovations in U. S. green businesses."