The Greens disappoint

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The Greens disappoint

How disappointing to see Adam Bandt and the Greens prepared to vote down a bill proposed by the Labor government to enshrine a minimum target of 43 per cent reduction of carbon emissions.

Is this decision, replicating the negative vote on the carbon reduction scheme of 2009, designed to continue the “climate wars” and maintain some sort of relevance for the Greens?

Will it again result in undermining the only party of government determined to act on global warming and usher in a government of climate denialisms led by Peter Dutton?

Have they learnt nothing?
Ken Rivett, Ferntree Gully

No room to move
So, there are four or five people sitting in a train carriage, all of them wearing masks.

The train stops at Richmond and 100 or so maskless people pile in and pack the carriage, talking at the top of their voices about the game. And the masked people are expected to move if they don’t like it (Letters, The Age, 15/7)?
Greg Walsh, Black Rock

Nice, but not sustainable
The recycling of former industrial areas for residential use is progressive thinking (“Melbourne city goes west with new suburbs vision”, 16/7), but the statement that a bigger inner Melbourne will be greener and more sustainable is incorrect.

Sure, the plan includes more street trees – a good thing – but the added environmental impact of the quoted additional 144,000 residents is enormous. Their need for food, water, energy and waste disposal, together with the massive quantities of materials in constructing new houses and infrastructure will further burden our declining natural environment.

The CSIRO has calculated that the ecological footprint of the average Victorian is more than six hectares. This suggests that the planned development will consume almost 1million hectares of nature. That is not what I call sustainable.
Ian Penrose, Kew

Give them a gong
Further to your story “Lanes get better heritage protection” (The Sunday Age, 10/7), I’d like to see some additional renaming of Melbourne’s laneways.

Flinders Way in the CBD is adjacent to the former CBC Building at 251-257 Collins Street.

This is the building on which Skyhooks filmed (on the roof) the video for the song This is my city in 1976. Let’s rename Flinders Way “Skyhooks Way” in honour of arguably Melbourne’s most influential and culturally reflective rock/pop band of the 20th century.

I mean we have AC/DC Lane and they’re not even from Melbourne.
David Burt, Traralgon

Tap the private schools
Julie Szego (“For kids’ sake, we need to make amends”, Comment, 13/7) recalls for us the impressive social equity emphasis in John Brumby’s 2010 proposal that all 14 to 15-year-old students should have an “away from home learning experience”, the type of program offered by many private schools.

Presumably it’s been shown what young people learn in these programs has value beyond what they learn in their usual school situation.

Could the private school facilities (to which our taxes contribute) be shared more widely? Perhaps a share system could be developed: private schools could be required to make their “away from home learning experience” facilities available for a number of weeks a year to students and their teachers from government schools.
Jenny Barrett, Apollo Bay

A reassuring move
The naysayers (like Parnell Palme McGuiness, (“Ditch it: no need to follow NZ’s model for ‘wellbeing’ budget”, The Sunday Age, 10/7) should do more research before offering their criticisms.

The concept of a “wellbeing budget” is not unique to New Zealand: it has also been adopted by Canada, Finland, Scotland, Wales, and Iceland, and other countries are following suit.

The OECD recommends this perspective after recently declaring macroeconomic statistics, such as GDP, “do not provide a sufficiently detailed picture of the living conditions that ordinary people experience”. How reassuring that this federal government is not as myopic as the previous one and is prepared to benchmark this.

Or, as the OECD has publicly stated: “We need to rethink how to place people’s needs at the heart of policymaking.”
Sally Davis, Malvern East

I’d join you if I could
What a marvellous letter from Rob Buckingham (“We need to own this”, The Sunday Age, 10/7).

Here is a Christian who believes in the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, rather than using the church as a means to persecute others and pursue personal wealth and ambition, not to mention power over children.
Were I not a Muslim, Rob, I’d be in your church.
Ian Usman Lewis, Kentucky, NSW

You can’t do both
If you’re heading towards a cliff, hitting the brake is ineffective if you’re still hitting the accelerator.

So it is when addressing climate change. We can’t stabilise greenhouse gas levels if we’re still approving new coal and gas projects. We must keep fossil fuels in the ground.
Jasper Lee, Norwood, SA

No pleasing some people
People complain when the government does what they think is too much. Lockdowns, mask mandates, etc. But now they’re complaining the government is not doing enough in relation to COVID.

No pleasing some people. The pandemic has proved that a lot of people like whining.
Claire Cooper, Maldon

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