Tuesday, December 23, 2008

An inconvenient strewth

Gotta love the Aussie way with language. This is from an Age story about farmers’ scepticism about global warming:
Climate change was the feature exhibit at this year’s Elmore Field Days, north of Bendigo, complete with school kids offering to calculate visitors’ carbon emissions at the door — until one farmer told a year 3 student to “f--- off”.
Field days treasurer Frank Harney — who last week housed a new load of 10-week-old piglets in RSPCA-accredited eco-shelters next to his grain crops — says farmers should see the opportunities offered up by climate change, such as potentially earning credits by sequestering carbon in the soil or by planting trees.
“There was one bloke on the field days committee who helped me put up the sign for the feature and he said, ‘You know, I’m dead against this climate change’. And I said, ‘It’s not about climate change, it’s about having an awareness of what’s going on in the world around you,” Mr Harney says. “They can argue the cyclical thing, but something has changed that’s stretching the parameters. Let’s accept that and be smart about it. Otherwise you might as well stick your head in the sand and park a bike up your arse.”

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