Wed, Jun 24, 2009 - Page 4 News List

INTERVIEW: Climate expert cautiously optimistic

Ian Lowe, the President of the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF), has contributed to the UN’s Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change and worked on the framework for the UN report on the Global Environmental Outlook. During a visit to Taiwan in late April, Lowe sat down with staff reporter Meggie Lu and suggested that with sufficient development of renewable energies such as solar and wind power, and wider public awareness of the urgency of the problem, the pressing climate change crisis can be addressed

BY MEGGIE LU  /  STAFF REPORTER

Governments are more likely to respond if they think the people are worried about it, so the ACF has trained about 200 people to give the Australian version of the Al Gore slide show, and so far about 300,000 Australians have seen it.

TT: Do you think the climate change problem can be resolved?

Lowe: I’m cautiously optimistic. The reason I’m cautiously optimistic is that there is historical evidence that things can change very rapidly in human societies when enough people are aware of the problem and are determined to have change.

For example, the end of slavery, votes for women, or the end of the Berlin Wall and the end of apartheid in [South] Africa. Once the change had been made, it was very difficult to believe that people were prepared to accept the old way of doing things, or that it was so hard to change. I’m cautiously optimistic that enough of us are aware of the problem. Even if our efforts fail, I want to be able to tell my grandchildren that at least we tried.

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