Issue 7 SJC News 2021

Year 10 Politics students Jaeger Fawcett and Colby McCallum recently accompanied Mr Bertino to take part in a schools community Climate Forum with Federal Shadow Minister Chris Bowen.

The following is a summary of the event from Jaeger Fawcett:

Chris Bowen who is the Labor, Shadow Minister for climate change and energy and Libby Coker, the member for Corangamite facilitated an open forum around climate change. They both unquestionably displayed their individual passion for climate change and the environment when undertaking their speeches. Chris expressed Labor’s ambitious target of 0% emissions by 2050 with a strong vision backed by planning and the hope of technological advancement that would support this imperative goal. The floor was open to questions and issues such as media bias, sources of renewable energy and the funding and subsidisation of fossil fuels were put to the Ministers. Bowen and Coker both agreed that it is up to government and media to put aside political agenda to enact real action to combat this issue and to look to investment in renewable energy and other sources of sustainable infrastructure such as an upgraded power grid to foster the uptake of renewable energy and the incentivisation of electric vehicles. Emissions under the current government are going up and it may be up to a change of government and policy to ensure Australia does its part to halt the impacts of climate change and transition to a more sustainable and climate-friendly nation.