Anthony Albanese’s speech to the United Nations during “climate week” revealed just how out of touch he and his government is with the widespread community concern over runaway climate change.

Albanese delivered a sort of homily in New York. He said scientists have “warned” us about climate change and that Australia “understands the dangers of global warming and the urgency of climate action”.

He went on to praise firefighters and special emergency service workers for showing the “best of humanity” in the 2019-20 Black Summer bushfire crises and various devastating floods.

With hand on heart, Albanese said: “There’s no avoiding the scale of our responsibility — or the cost of inaction”, before going on to praise Australians for “choosing to electrify” with “clean, reliable, more affordable energy”.

While rooftop solar energy powers at least 13% of our energy, and Australia is on track to meet its rooftop solar targets, it is a wrong to argue, as Albanese essentially did, that the climate can be “saved” by individual households choosing to go green.

As long as the big polluters — fossil fuel corporations — continue........

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