Understorey: Climate Emergency 2019~ Rising Temperatures and Issues Papers

Western Australia’s Shadow Minister for Environment Dr Steve Thomas MLC is an advocate for action on climate change, in the community and within his own Liberal Party.  The upper house MP does not condemn young people going on strike on Friday - as long as they are not catastrophising the future of our planet; he says he hopes they will act respectfully, follow the science, and find a lot of reasons to be hopeful.  Steve Thomas is enthusiastic about individual and corporate action, like BHP aiming to go carbon neutral, but he is not as enthusiastic about the McGowan Government's new "issues paper" on climate change, which he regards as "inconsequential," and he finds the Premier's treatment of the Environmental Protection Authority wanting. Australian politics hasn't managed climate change well, Steve Thomas acknowledges: the democratic deficit is a problem still unsolved. (Photo - A Glamorgan; inset - Parliament of WA)