By Allan Richardson
Few would disagree that right now the world is a pressure cooker of aggression, despair, discontent, bitter disappointment and fear.
Australia, being geographically isolated, is at least free from cross-border incursions by hostile forces, but as we’ll soon discover in Ukraine, hand-to-hand combat has become yesterday’s war-mongering, and adolescent gamers may become the silent aggressors with the most sophisticated toys ever!
But Australia’s security won’t be determined by surveilling 34,000km of mostly irregular coastline, boasting over 1,000 estuaries. We’d quickly spot attackers should they attempt an incursion in a populated area, and for those choosing less hospitable entry points, may the desert take the hindmost.
Like so many other politically polarised nation States, the danger is in internal conflict. Not only do we seem unable to respectfully recognise our original inhabitants (despite the comforting assurances by bigoted racists), we seem unable to agree to implement policies of mutual benefit to warring political parties. And there’s the rub.
What potential we have here in Australia! Our moderate climate makes for comfortable living conditions, yet we enjoy the enviably ideal environment for generating renewable energy. First, this can make us potentially energy self-sufficient, a critical factor in mitigating global warming. As well, we can create a timely energy export hub without resorting to the extraction of fossil fuels!
But we currently have an insurmountable problem! Our national conversation is monopolised by two major political parties, both in thrall to the fossil fuel industry.
Despite the removal of the party responsible for the decade of neglect, we are not seeing Labor’s reforms in energy policy, central to their last Federal election campaign.
It’s not drawing too long a bow to suggest that the only long-term solution is to eschew the two-party system. The LNP makes no secret of promoting continued steaming coal and gas extraction, with the highly questionable prospect of building our first nuclear energy plant. Expected to be completed at about the same time as the non-arrival of our third-of-a-billion-dollar virtual submarine joint defense agreement. Labor does make a secret of continuing to approve fossil fuel projects but does it anyway! How can this even be a possibility in the face of international scientific condemnation?
The surveys I’ve seen indicate that the majority of Australians want to see an orderly energy transition from fossil fuels to renewables. Regardless of the influence exerted by the Greens, they’re not going to be able to radically change Labor’s platform in time to abate the existential threat of climate collapse. Timing is everything.
No political party in power is ever going to sacrifice the status quo and ‘void’ itself, but we do need political parties to be dissolved sooner rather than later, and Independents to be elected to represent the views of their constituents. You know. Like in a democracy.
The world is in extremis. Yesterday’s solutions just won’t cut it. Everything is at stake and we’re sleepwalking into extinction.
As Metallica would say:
Never cared for what they say
Never cared for games they play
Never cared for what they do
Never cared for what they know
And I know …
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