How will they explain themselves to their grandchildren?
It is hard to understand the stupidity of Australia’s political leaders when it comes to the climate catastrophe. It is a given that the likes of Barnaby Joyce and Tony Abbott will ignore the facts as they unfold, but even they must have noticed what’s going on.
Maybe the political class don’t watch television, or read newspapers, or have relatives living overseas, but the rest of us do.
Two years ago there were horrific floods in Germany and Belgium, in mid-July 2021, which killed more than 220 people. Damage was widespread and was seen as far away as the Netherlands, Austria and Switzerland. In Europe, in summer.
In Australia we know the lasting devastation of floods, and the impossibility of future proofing. The only solution is to re-build, if re-build you must, on higher ground.
Is a flood more real if it happens in Germany rather than in Lismore, or Shepparton? Are wildfires more devastating when they happen in Canada or Greece? Does total destruction of a town in Hawaii mean more than if it happens in Mallacoota?
Ask Matt Canavan why he chooses to ignore the facts of climate destruction in Australia. What does he think of the lack of sea ice in the Antarctic this year? Some scientists think the rise in sea levels, caused by the undermining of the ice in Antarctica, could range from between 2 metres to 10 metres.
Imagine the harm to our coastal cities if it comes in closer to 10 metres. Well, they won’t be there anymore, so it’s not difficult to imagine the damage. It won’t make it hard to get onto the West Gate Bridge, because the West Gate Bridge will be an abandoned arc of empty roadway, and what would be the use of driving to Geelong, because Geelong won’t be there anymore.
Kardinia Park will be an empty reservoir. But enough imagining, already. For our intellectually challenged leaders, the plight of our civilisation is at stake.
Droughts and bushfires will alternate with flooding rains, as the seasons change. Mass starvation will lead to mass migrations, from those lands most affected, to those less affected.
If you think living in the mountains, far away from the mass populations of cities, will make you safe from the changes in the climate, think again.
Towns in the Andes mountains in Peru have reached 38°C or more, while in Argentina’s capital, Buenos Aires, temperatures above 30°C have been recorded; this month. It is winter there now.
Peter Dutton wants to fix the climate crisis with nuclear power. Does he know how long it takes to arrange for a nuclear power station to be approved, planned and built? Does he not own a clock, or a calendar?
On the government’s side of the ledger, more than 2,000 medical professionals have demanded that the Albanese government withdraw $1.5bn funding for the Middle Arm industrial development, in the Northern Territory.
The funding is a handout to assist the development of the huge Beetaloo Basin gas field. Labor is struggling to disguise the funding. Are votes in the short-term worth wrecking the climate?
We have been told that the earth is reaching, and in some cases, passing through “tipping points” for the climate.
It doesn’t take much imagination to recognise the utter failure of almost every government on earth to react to the crisis.
See the piss-ant state governments as they legislate to criminalise the actions of climate activists. Jailing them won’t achieve anything. It is as effective and as ridiculous as trying to stop the tide.
See how the so-called leaders of governments world-wide baulk at the difficult conversations they need to have with their citizens, to convince them that time has almost run out.
Believe it or not, but the scientists need to change their language, from calm reason to barely suppressed terror. We are facing Armageddon, and politicians are worried that people will either panic, or vote them out of power.
They need to get to the front. Show some leadership. Make change. Don’t worry about plans for fifty years in the future, your rubbish plans for nuclear subs and inland rail.
Worry about the end of civilisation as we know it. Worry about our children and their children. I don’t want my grandchildren starving because we had a leadership which valued the chance of a directorship with a gas company over the survival of humanity.
And the leaders of today need to know there is nowhere to hide if it all turns to manure. They were warned, and there is not a mountain high enough to escape to.
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11 comments
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Win Jeavons -
Harry Lime -
Canguro -
Christina Macpherson -
Harry Lime -
Barry -
Max Gross -
Terence Mills -
GL -
wam -
Canguro
Return to home pageMy thoughts exactly . I studied and pondered climate change for 40 years , but l never thought it would hit so fast.
I detest ‘f’ words , but here are some l thought today
Flame, flood ( l’ve experienced both where l live ), famine and fear . For our future .
Excellent article, Mark,but those of us that take the time to examine the pathetic operation of politics in this country have worked out that politicians in general seem to operate on the fringes of what they think they can get away with, without upsetting their puppet masters or cruelling their future employment prospects.Comes back to the same old chestnut…money rules.I know this is a generalisation,but we have run out of time.
Our current Labor government are going to great lengths to make the right noises,but those noises are increasingly hollow.
The coming summer is shaping up to blow all the bullshit artists out of the water.
The shit has barely begun to hit the fan…what will it take for these elected representatives to act,urgently in the interests of our children and future generations?
Harry Lime, wrt the shit hitting the fan, we’ve already had the 2020 fires that burned up the southeast of this country… what more do we need to sharpen the alertness of the political class? Shades of Nero fiddling… actually I think it was a lute, fiddles hadn’t been invented at that time, but still. I was in touch with a mate today on the Hawaiian island of Maui… he’s about an hour away from Lahaina, spot fires in his region but not like the total conflagration to his west. The town of Paradise in California was similarly razed in 2018, along with adjacent communities. Many examples from southern Europe as well. I hate this laissez faire attitude that seems to be the order of the day here in this country, waiting until the horses have bolted and then trying to shut the stable doors. Not good enough.
Indeed. And how will they explain the climate, environmental, financial and social effects of all the stupid wasteful militarism going on – Talisman Sabre, live munitions in Sydney Harbour, AUKUS, AUSMIN ……………………?
If anyone has any doubts about Labor’s climate change commitments,check out the article in today’s Saturday Paper by Ben Abbatangelo..There’s little doubt the gas wallahs have taken over the running of the country from the coal merchants.It beggars belief that Albanese has continued the horror started by the smirking Liar…ditto AUKUS.Chris Bowen…Minister for ensuring climate change is, like a Showbag,full of shit.
It’s way past time to jettison the political duopoly of time serving hacks,humanity’s very existence hangs in the balance.
I’ve been watching weather for 50+ yrs. As a child I was shown how to read the sky, how consistent high level cirrus clouds crossed west to east mainly in winter like clockwork. In those days there were few commercial flights. Today I see high level cirrus clouds almost every day.
Commercial flights, from what I read, are responsible for about 1/3 of thermal influence on global temps. That is, high altitude cirrus clouds caused by commercial flights are creating a kind of heat blanket. The 2 years of covid airline shutdowns resulted in a dissipation of that frozen water vapor layer to such a degree that heat, built up during the day, was allowed to ‘escape’ the planet over night. Clearer skies overnight results in cooler days.
Now commercial flights are back near normal. Add to that background pollution, the extra activity of NATO super-high altitude flights, with their special aviation fuel that is even more injurious to the balance of nature, is it any wonder Chief Fool at the UN, Antonieo Gutteres, describes this lunacy as ‘global boiling’? Antonio, a former electrical engineer, is the same genius who was unaware that microwaves can be dangerous.
An apology is in order for the next generation, people could have adjusted their lifestyles.
The whole thing is a façade of pretending to care about the environment.
It is going to be interesting to see what happens when the climate change lockdowns kick in. The price of giving away rights to the UN, WEF or WHO is yet to really happen. I don’t think the next generation is going to thank us for the mess we all have deliberately left.
When enough human beings perish, the planet will begin its recovery
All of a sudden the coalition are supporters of nuclear power and are demanding that the Labor government [who have been in office for fifteen months] do something about it – this after ten years in office when they did nothing. What’s going on ?
Terence,
The LNP is a policy and brain free zone. There’s not enough room left over to do anything that vaguely resembles being an effective opposition after you remove the petty, vindictive, childish petulance, and just plain nastiness we have come expect from them over the last 10+ years. I also reckon that a lot of their current behaviour is coloured by the the fact that they copped a hiding at the last election.
Oh yes, almost forgot to mention the now curtailed and deeply entrenched corruption that was the high(low?)light of their being in power has probably put a lot of them offside as well. The damage caused by Saint Scummo of the Dodo puts him in a whole category of his own.
good one max
africans
south americans
asians
whites
thankfully with women and children first??
Copied from the link… “Government agencies are now required to protect citizens from climate change in one US state, following a landmark legal victory for environmental activists.
A Montana judge found state agencies were violating their constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment by allowing fossil fuel development.
The policy being used for evaluating requests for fossil fuel permits — which does not allow agencies to evaluate the effects of greenhouse gas emissions — was ruled to be unconstitutional.”
The ruling adds to a small number of legal decisions around the world that have established a government duty to protect citizens from climate change.”
But here’s the kicker…
“…state officials have pledged to seek to overturn the decision on appeal.”
I wish it were so, that I could say, yet again, only in America, but no, this idiotic position taken by politicians who are cravenly attached to the fossil fuel revenue stream and the incapacity for them to look over the horizon and recognize the looming catastrophe for what it is – fer Chrissakes, half of Maui Island in Hawaii just burned down! Don’t these people have the capacity to join the dots? – is front and centre of the problem facing humanity at large. If the so-called leaders are so obtuse and obdurate and unwilling to do the right thing… where does one turn to for hope in getting the right actions taken? If it was a business, the boss would be sacked for incompetency. If a military organisation, the top brass removed and demoted. But somehow, for the oddest of social reasons, we have politicians who act like alpha lemmings, leading the rest of the community over the cliff, and there seems nothing can be done to stop them. So wrong, and so frustrating. And the likelihood of a popular uprising or people’s revolution is about as probable as finding icicles inside a volcano.