Now when someone posted a comment about Scott Morrison saying that anxiety was the work of Satan, I misread it and thought that he’d said Santa, which given all those anxious moments I’d spent on Christmas Eve trying to assemble something on Santa’s behalf when all I really wanted to do was sample some Christmas cheer and go to bed, the idea had a certain appeal to me.
At this point, I am wondering how many people are arguing that Santa doesn’t exist and whether they are greater in number than those who argue that Satan doesn’t exist. Both Satan and Santa can cause a lot of disagreement and it’s hard to argue that this does cause more anxiety than Santana.
Whatever, I’m actually writing about the 43% emissions target and how it’s going to cause an enormous amount of anxiety and there will be people who believe that Labor is Satan, while there are others who’ll argue that The Greens are Santa, and then you’ll have various Liberals who’ll argue that none of them should exist at all.
That’s Labor, The Greens and emissions target. They have no problem with Satan having elected one of his chief disciples in the creation of anxiety as the leader… which one? Well, the fact that you need to ask that says something in itself.
Anyway, now that the Liberals have largely announced that they feel that the reason they lost the election was because they’d strayed from their core principles of having only one core principle and that is, if it’s profitable, it should be privatised and if it’s not then it shouldn’t exist, and if it does exist and is necessary then we should still privatise it and pay someone to run it even if that costs more than when the government used to be in charge…
I mean, remember when Qantas was an inefficient government-owned enterprise which charged too much for getting you and your bags on the one flight.
But back to the emissions target and the looming showdown between Labor and The Greens. I must say that I’m in two minds about this because I can certainly see both sides of the argument.
- The first argument: We’re better off doing something rather than nothing and 43% is better than nothing.
- The second argument: 43% is not enough because this is an emergency and we’ve already left it too late so we really need to start taking it seriously.
There is some appeal to the idea of legislating a target because the very fact that you’ve set a target gives industry some direction, as well as ensuring the government has to actually take some action on things like modernising the grid and ruining the weekend by getting us all to drive electric cars. And it’s true that if you set any target, then you don’t have to stop at that. If a government decides that it’s going to introduce measures to cut the road toll such as more speed cameras in dangerous areas, it doesn’t decide to switch them off because they’ve hit their target and we can afford to lose a few more this month.
On the other hand, 43% may not drive the sort of changes we should be making and it may not lead to any significant action. Various projections have suggested that we’ll hit that target with action already being taken, so we could easily do more.
Whatever happens over the next few weeks, I think it’s important to remember a number of points:
- However the media choose to emphasise the disagreements between Labor, The Greens and the so-called Teal MPs, it’s worth remembering that they’re all in some sort of agreement about taking action to save the planet because unlike Hollie Hughes and Matt Canavan, they’re all still on it.
- Setting a target is all well and good, but it’s the path to get that target and the action that one actually takes that matters. I could set a target to lose five kilos by 2023, but unless I have an action plan to go with it, nothing will change. And while my action plan of going to the nearby gym twice a week may seem like a good start, the fact that they won’t let me in because I’m not a member may mean that I don’t get anywhere near my goal.
- It’s wrong to compare Rupert Murdoch to Satan because there’s no evidence that he’s responsible for all the evil that exists in the world and in fact, even many religious people don’t even accept that Satan exists at all.
- Unemployment is now so low that even Josh Frydenberg was able to get a job.
- Numbers can be manipulated to make anything appear true. In particular, political polling is always suspect. However, most people want some sort of action on climate change. This has been clear from both the polling and the recent election where seats that normally be a walkover for Liberals went to independents because the electors got sick of voting for people who sounded stupider than Uncle Barry after too many glasses of port.
Finally, I’d just like everyone to remember the basic strategy that the Coalition will adopt over the next few weeks. If Labor and The Greens reach any sort of compromise, then it’ll be because they’re a coalition and if you vote for one it’s the same as voting for the other, but if they can’t agree, then Peter Dutton will move a motion of no confidence in the government because they can’t get their legislation through the Senate.
Ok, an Opposition leader would have to be pretty stupid to do that. So how long do you think it will be before he does?
[textblock style=”7″]
Like what we do at The AIMN?
You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.
Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!
Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be gratefully accepted.
You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969
[/textblock]
