Tag Archives: Great Barrier Reef

ABC reports Julie Bishop’s criticism of Obama

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julie bishop president

From Radio Australia of all places. They must have thought criticising Obama is a bad thing:

Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop criticises US president Barack Obama for a speech in Brisbane last weekend in which he claimed climate change threatened the Great Barrier Reef. It is highly unusual for an Australian foreign minister to openly criticise a US president.

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has criticised US president Barack Obama for a speech in Brisbane last weekend in which he claimed climate change threatened the Great Barrier Reef.

Speaking to 7.30 from New York, where she is attending a meeting of the United Nations Security Council, Ms Bishop said “there was an issue regarding [Mr Obama’s] statement” and she could “understand the Queensland Government’s concern”.

In a speech at University of Queensland, Mr Obama had said that: “Here, a climate that increases in temperature will mean more extreme and frequent storms, more flooding, rising seas that submerge Pacific islands … The incredible natural glory of the Great Barrier Reef is threatened.”

Ms Bishop told 7.30: “We are demonstrating world’s best practice in working with the World Heritage Committee to ensure that the Great Barrier Reef is preserved for generations to come.

“I think that President Obama might have overlooked that aspect of our commitment to conserving the Great Barrier Reef.”

I also like the picture, not from RA, projecting forward, no doubt, to the day we become a Republic.

Obama knows so little about so much

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This is what you don’t get in the mainstream press in the United States:

THE Queensland government, as host of last weekend’s G20 ­summit, is incensed over what it sees as an ill-informed, insulting speech from Barack Obama about climate change, the Great Barrier Reef and coal.

The idea that there might be an ounce of honesty in what Obama says or does is one of those myths that will not die. He has only one ambition, which is to do down our way of life and wreck it as comprehensively as he can. His mentor was Saul Alinski, his closest associate was the “weatherman” Bill Ayers, and he sat in the front pew of Reverend Wright’s church for twenty years. And if that doesn’t convince you, why don’t you just look at his economic, immigration, defence and foreign policies. Is it just chance, do you think, that every single thing he has done has made matters worse?

I only wish that being insulting and ill-informed was the worst of it. It is also interesting to see the issue of climate change and energy come up in this same story.

Tony Abbott told the G20 session that the “four-fifths” of the ­developed world that had used fossil fuels for economic growth could not now deny “the other fifth” ­access to coal to generate electricity for the hundred million people who were without it.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi picked up on the theme yesterday in his speech to federal parliament, calling for new-generation energy “that does not cause our glaciers to melt”. . . .

French President Francois Hollande, the host of the Paris climate change conference next year, spoke for eight minutes exclusively on climate change. Mr Modi talked of the need for access to electricity for the world’s poor.

Meanwhile the ill-informed President of the United States brought this message with him:

Mr Obama said on Saturday that climate change “here in ­Australia” means “longer droughts, more wildfires” and “the incredible natural glory of the Great Barrier Reef is threatened”.

He knows so little about so much.