The recent COAG meeting had recycling on its agenda, but predominantly in the context of requiring the states and territories to stop shipping waste overseas, and with no commitment by the Commonwealth government to mandate a reduction of use of plastic in packaging.

I fully appreciate that the States were established before federation, and that only some of the powers of the states were ceded to the Commonwealth. But – and it is a very big BUT – we are a large country in area and issues like recycling and reducing emissions would be seen by anyone with an iota of commonsense as being a national issue. After all, as a nation, we have the greatest per capita level of emissions in the world, so the whole nation must be involved in national action!

As long as our government remains in love with coal, continually subsidising fossil fuel entrepreneurs – thanks to all their donors – and refuses to recognise the urgency of the need to slow, stop, and (hopefully) reverse the effects of the emissions which are creating this climate emergency, we are dooming future generations to a planet which is in self-destruct mode.

The rate of loss of biodiversity is alarming and it is a moot point whether any other species (apart from the insects!) will survive until mankind is wiped off the face of the earth. And, without urgent effective action, we are talking decades, not centuries or millennia!

Many communities are taking action but this is not universal and is not enough. We need to be put into wartime mode, with caveats on waste of all sorts. We need national laws in relation to use of fuels and their derivatives, phasing out or converting vehicles using fossil fuels, rapidly moving to using renewable energy through rooftop installations and solar farms, with battery storage development accelerated to ensure continuous supply.

There are jobs galore to be created if the government took its head out of the Bible and read the scientific literature!

We need recycling plants which can handle all forms of waste without producing harmful emissions.

If we are put into wartime, national emergency mode, everyone will be required to forget nimbyism and join in the effort.

I know – Australia cannot save the world. But every country that starts to make a genuine and substantive effort will help to incentivise other nations.

Greta Thunberg is rubbished by those who put money before well-being, but her research is supported by many, including the specialist climate scientists.

We are in unexplored territory in predicting what is to come, because we have a welded-on belief that we can predict the future based on the past. But examination of weather patterns since the Industrial Revolution makes it quite obvious that the pattern is now continually and more rapidly changing as the years go by, with severe weather events occurring increasingly in both frequency and severity.

Anyone who cannot accept that the whole world needs to take action is living in a fool’s paradise – or doesn’t give a damn about future generations of life on earth!

#Temperature anomalies 1880-2017 by country 🌡. No matter how you visualize it, it looks scary! #GISTEMP #dataviz #climatechange #globalwarming
Download / watch hi-res 🎞: https://t.co/ZdGPVTM5yO pic.twitter.com/cAn9wG8FPU

— Antti Lipponen / @anttilip.bsky.social (@anttilip) August 25, 2018