The greening of Rupert Murdoch is warming up globally, a U-turn apparently masterminded by his son James.
In May, James Murdoch announced that his bit of the News Corporation empire, British pay TV broadcaster BSkyB, has achieved carbon neutral status. Then came News Corp’s “Imagining the Future” conference in California in late July, which featured Leftie former US Vice President Al Gore promoting his move An Inconvenient Truth. That speech, as Tim Blair in The Bulletin put it, “might be remembered as the moment News went green.”
Now the archly conservative Sydney Daily Telegraph has contributed to the News Corp Climate Change with a competition that gives high school students the chance to meet Al Gore when he visits Sydney this weekend:
The Daily Telegraph is inviting secondary students from NSW to apply attend the exclusive youth forum on Monday, wherein they will have the opportunity to pose a question to the former Vice President.
The winner would attend the premiere of An Inconvenient Truth on Sunday evening.
But while The Tele toes the new News Ltd line on climate change, someone forgot to tell The Australian. In its “It’s not the end of the world” Saturday editorial, The Oz shrugged and urged us all to remain relaxed and comfortable:
Australia’s approximately 20 million residents are responsible for just 1% of the world’s annual emissions; a 50% reduction would be barely a drop in the bucket.
Then there’s Herald Sun columnist Andrew Bolt. Not usually one to bite the hand that feeds him, he got stuck into James’s pal Gore at the Pebble Beach event. According to Blair:
Bolt opened his comments by congratulating Gore on his performance, then began to attack claims made by Gore in his film. Soon, according to one onlooker, the pair were involved in “a full-on barney”. Gore ended up shouting at Bolt. “It was brilliant,” says one onlooker. “Embarrassing,” recalls another.
Climate change is real. Geddit.
Crikey is committed to hosting lively discussions. Help us keep the conversation useful, interesting and welcoming. We aim to publish comments quickly in the interest of promoting robust conversation, but we’re a small team and we deploy filters to protect against legal risk. Occasionally your comment may be held up while we review, but we’re working as fast as we can to keep the conversation rolling.
The Crikey comment section is members-only content. Please subscribe to leave a comment.
The Crikey comment section is members-only content. Please login to leave a comment.