Waleed Aly Calls Out Andrew Bolt For Misleading Comments On Climate Change

Australia’s favourite caller out of idiocy, Waleed Aly, has once again used his “Something We Should Talk About” segment on The Project to call our attention to some difficult truths the rest of the media would rather ignore, with the government’s climate policy in his sights this time and Andrew Bolt also getting caught in the cross fire.

Specifically taking on fossil fuel subsidies, and our government’s recent refusal to sign a draft agreement that would seem them fazed out, Aly’s once again well reasoned argument included a rebuttal of Andrew Bolt’s inevitable disagreement.

Rebuttal might be a bit soft a word though really, as Aly essentially destroyed Bolt’s long running argument that the climate hasn’t warmed in the last 18 years by tracking down Carl Meares, the author of the study Bolt has been holding up as proof of his point, who pointed out to The Project‘s viewers that “it’s pretty clear that the globe has warmed over the last 18 years.”

Yep, you read that right, the man whose research Andrew Bolt has been using to prove the globe hasn’t warmed over the past 18 years, believes it has. Why the statistics Bolt has been using seem to indicate otherwise is also explained, with the graph in question only measuring surface temperature and failing to take into account the whole picture of how our climate is changing.

This is but a small part of Aly’s argument though, with the newscaster spending the first half of the segment laying out how much money fossil fuel subsidies cost Australia and the world. And the picture is a dire one with Australia’s diesel fuel rebate alone costing the country over $6 billion a year, meanwhile the world’s industrialised nations pour $40 into fossil fuel subsidies for ever $1 spent on renewable energy with a total of $80 billion are year being spent on the fossil fuel subsidies.

With those subsidies largely to going to farmers and mining companies here in Australia however, the issue is, as Aly describes it “a political nightmare for our PM”. And despite the fact the Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull had originally been a passionate advocate for action on climate change – even crossing the floor and voting against his party on the Carbon Tax in his brief first stretch as Opposition Leader before Tony Abbott won the leadership – it seems this is a nightmare Turnbull can’t wake up from, having walked away from the draft agreement signed by over 40 countries seeking to end fossil fuel subsidies.

As Aly explains, this decision that has seen Australia ranked 57th of 58 countries in how we are dealing with climate change, making us the worst performing industrialised nation in the world when it comes to climate change, with Saudi Arabia the only other country of the 58 highest emitting nations to be ranked worse than us.

The short shortsightedness of our government aside, at least we have commentators like Aly willing to speak to difficult truth. Watch the video in full here below.