The teabaggers and anti-change crowd may have found their soul mates in Australia.
Even faced reality, they still deny the world around them.
Of course, plenty of the deniers also are more than happy to accept government handouts to keep going.
Even faced reality, they still deny the world around them.
Of course, plenty of the deniers also are more than happy to accept government handouts to keep going.
To save the Murray River, though, the government has moved quickly and aggressively. Without partisan bickering, politicians have set aside $11.8 billion for a science-backed program that, among other things, pays irrigators not to suck the river dry.
Yet along the Murray, there is a climate-change conundrum that responsible politicians and smart scientists have yet to solve: Most farmers, the biggest losers as the river shrinks, simply do not buy the notion that southern Australia's climate is changing in a way that is probably irreversible. Their skepticism has withstood nearly 13 years of unrelenting drought, falling incomes and daily encounters with a river that is dying in front of their eyes.
Skepticism?
Not the term we'd use.
Not the term we'd use.
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