Anonymous student from University of Canberra:
I would like to give you an update of the lecture that was delivered for our University of Canberra, Sustainable Environmental Technology lecture. This is an Architecture unit within the faculty of Arts and Design. I have attached a recording of it along with a recording of the lecture performed by our convenor David Flannery immediately afterwards.
This unit is supposed to talk about how to build/design sustainably with materials that take advantage of things like thermal mass etc. We were subjected to a blatant political pitch selling climate change and a push towards the political party 'The Greens'. Will Steffen showed charts on a PowerPoint explaining how the worlds waters are warming and how the ice caps are melting and that it is all human induced because (according to their charts) it all started around the industrial age and accelerated within the past 30 years. He stated that 97% of real scientists agreed with these figures. We were told at the end of the talk that statistically, the major opponents to this sensible approach are older men and people like the 'shock jocks'. As well as people who only thought about their immediate financial needs.
Questions were encouraged and they were applauded by certain students who commented 'Why isn't this shown to all the youth of Australia? This talk simplified all the issues and made it so clear to understand" The reply by Will Steffen was that he was travelling to as many universities as possible and encouraged everyone to talk to their parents about it and explain it to them. A condescending remark was made about the Convoy of No Confidence by our convenor. We were then given a brochure titled 'The Science of Climate Change, Questions and Answers' which had many of the charts that were shown on the PowerPoint' and a questionnaire' to fill in to compare how our answers today correspond with our answers at the end of the unit. It asked for a name and student number stating that this was optional to reveal. It would be quite easy to identify each student whether you chose anonymity or not I did not return mine. I kept it.
This was blatant scare mongering, reiterating that our grandchildren will have to deal with living temperatures at astronomical deathly levels if we did not act now.
The lecture delivered by David Flannery showed a PowerPoint (he did not supply that on the university website) which had images of the leaders of the major political parties,indicating that Tony Abbot was getting in the way of doing the right thing. Flannery also glossed over the real origin of the modern environmental movement in 1930s Nazi Germany. The hostility to Tony Abbott was palpable. Flannery is the lecturer for this subject so the threat is quite clear- toe the line given in this political lecture or expect to get terrible marks.
After leaving the auditorium my friend and I both were appalled at how inappropriate it was to attempt to convert people to The Greens. within a school lecture. It was crystal clear that people with sceptical scientific objections to the propaganda forced on us would suffer academically and socially at our course. This is emotional blackmail and Nazi style soft fascism- pushing people into a viewpoint. It was horrifying how young students in the class were swayed so easily, I suppose because they lacked the education and life experience to be sceptical of this appealing idealistic but false ideology.
There were also several unfamiliar faces in the lecture - a youngish man in a suit stood out as did a morbidly obese older lady and several others. I suspect at least some were GetUp astroturf and dare I say it spies- to see how this going over with the audience. This is part of a structured approach to indoctrinating people at University where we are at their mercy if we want good marks, and good marks are crucial in my industry to getting a good job.
I showed the material to my husband when I got home and he explained how each one of these tables had been disproved long ago and that there are websites directly disproving all of Will Steffen's information.
This sort of totally one sided political speech is in total breach of the conditions of funding for the University and is a breach of its charter too.
