We consider Victoria's future from amid the wreckage of the recent federal election

Looking about from among the wreckage of a recent federal election, we must now decide who we want to best administer Victoria.

Times are somewhat unpredictable, but what has been predictable is the public response to those difficulties.

Most people, understandably, want the good times handed down by cheap and easily-accessible fossil fuels to continue uninterrupted and any disruption to that paradigm is greeted by the embrace of whomever, or whatever, promises the continuation of business as usual.

Subsequently we see a rise of those who pine for the good old days and so vote for those who promise a return to that way of life, ignoring the human and ecological cost, and opposed to those who trumpet a government that puts long-term concerns ahead of short-term satisfactions.
A fellow who understands long and short-term implications – in geological terms long is millions of years, short is hundreds – will speak tonight at Shepparton School of Medical Health in Graham Street.
Professor David Karoly (above right) from the University of Melbourne’s Faculty of Earth Sciences will give a free lecture about climate change from 7:30pm.
A Professor of Meteorology and a Federation Fellow with the Australian Research Council Federation, Prof Karoly was involved with the preparation of the Fourth Assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
He will discuss the world’s weather in general and focus, in particular, on what is happening in Victoria. Issues of why our weather is changing and how, subsequently, we should behave will also be discussed.
Tonight’s lecture is a coup for Shepparton as Prof Karoly is recognised as one of the world most powerful thinkers about the reasons for and the implications of climate change.
Recently, I listened as science historian, American Naomi Oreskes, talked about her new book, Merchants of Doubt, which explains how the same people, a few scientists addicted to growth ideologies, proffered theories that raised doubt in such things as smoking, acid rain, the ozone hole and climate change.
Prof Karoly introduced Professor Oreskes and his naturally pleasant nature pervaded about 300 at Melbourne’s State Library to transform an evening with a rather brutal message into a satisfying encounter.