Excerpts of Address by General Peter Cosgrove (Retd) at Climate Alliance Launch

Wednesday 18th November 2009, Sydney

“Of course part of the skill of being a leader and bearing responsibility is to know who to consult, who to trust, sometimes even the experts you consult are predicting rather than announcing certainties. That his life and another responsibility of leaders is to act prudently and positively to protect against future dire outcomes and to seize opportunities that may arise. Very rarely if ever in my military career and so far in my corporate life has ''masterly inactivity'' been the most attractive option.”

“lf there is a truly modern business challenge, it is the spectre of climate change of such a profound nature as to threaten livelihood and even lives.”

“The climate change debate is probably more rigorously based than the usual military intelligence estimate because the forward projections are based on some widely agreed formulae whereas military intelligence estimates have to try to get into the mind of the potential adversary (always very tough). But with climate change we are left with a preponderance of scientific opinion pointing to dire outcomes and presently a minority who might be called ''climate change sceptics".

“I come at this from the viewpoint that while I really don't know if all that I have been told is true but if we are at risk of quite catastrophic climate change outcomes, say during the life of grandkids who might come along for my wife and I, then I am very uneasy about dicing with their future. I am very conscious of the huge change in direction and the expense and the turmoil and the impact on jobs, entailed in a radical move to non-carbon energy for Australia. But if we don't do it, a country with our values, a country presently in the top 20 wealthiest countries in the world, a country depended on by millions of people who are our powerless friends and neighbours, how can we expect other nations to act and thus offset our lack of action. So let's not muck about any more, let's start now to solve the problems that we own.”