The climate is now personal for all of us

“When the last tree is cut, the last river poisoned, and the last fish dead, we will discover that we can’t eat money.” Attributed to a Native American chief, the source is disputed.

Like most non-scientists with an interest in knowing the facts about the world around me, I defer to science, which is derived from the Latin word “scientia” meaning knowledge.

So when serious groups of scientists join together, and tell us that the earth’s climate is changing, very much for the worse, I believe them. I know I am not alone, and I know that the majority of informed people also believe them.

I also do not fear a conspiracy wherein all the climate scientists have forged an unholy alliance, and are busy buying shares in renewable energy companies.

I cannot understand much of the science, but I know that insurance companies worldwide accept that sea levels are rising, as are temperatures and severe storm events. Insurance companies are not hippie environmentalists – they are hard headed businesses, and they see the damage climate change is wreaking.

It is not only statistics – it is how we feel the change

I know the Arctic and Antarctica are both losing ice at an alarming rate, and that the average temperatures in Australia are going up, year on year. We know because we have records going back, officially to 1910, but informally to 1838. We all know something is not right with the climate.

We know that drought and extreme heat is causing famine and disease throughout Africa, and we see the surge of climate refugees. We see the hardening of the hearts of the developed world against the desperate and the hungry. And now it is striking the rich countries. This won’t stop until we stop using fossil fuels.

This year it is impossible to ignore the heatwaves which have caused out of control bushfires in France and Spain, Canada and California. They have caused thousands of excess deaths, whether due to catastrophic, once in a thousand year floods, or this northern summer, by wildfires which are actually so big and so out of control that they create their own local weather conditions.

I am writing this in Australia in mid-winter, and we have been warned that there is an El Nino forming over the Pacific right now, and that we will experience an exceptionally hot and dry summer. To those who do not know about Australia, we have vast forests of eucalyptus trees, which burn like hell, fuelled by the oil in the trees’ leaves.

This confounds many critics, but the main thing to note is that we were talking about 1 degree, on average, over the space of years, and more days of extreme temperatures were to be expected. That figure is now being broken, worldwide, by days and nights which regularly exceed known records by as much as 12 degrees Celsius.

Of course the idiots on the right will dispute the figures, and it has even been attributed to a conspiracy by these crackpots. A conspiracy of meteorologists, believe it or not, and we have yet to discover what they all hope to gain from such a plan. But for the rest of humanity, we see, and we feel, the heating of the planet.

This will inevitably lead to societal collapse, if we don’t act

Similarly to the tobacco industry in the past, energy companies have been sitting on the facts of climate change for years, for the basest of reasons – profit. So when I am faced with what appears to be a looming catastrophe I turn to my government for solutions. One cannot rely on the good will of for-profit multi-nationals.

Australian Governments, like every other government you can name, have, almost universally, failed us. As far as I can remember, Julia Gillard is the only leader of this country who ever actually put a price on carbon, which is believed to be the most effective method of reducing carbon use. And we know that the forces of climate denial repealed that initiative.

But let us take a look at the other, so-called leaders. Remember that this is an existential threat to our country, and our planet:

John Howard: “… I instinctively feel that some of the claims are exaggerated.”

Kevin Rudd: “… the greatest moral, economic and social challenge of our time”. That was before he retreated from the challenge at the first hurdle.

Tony Abbott: His description of the relevant science in 2009: “absolute crap”?

Malcolm Turnbull: Has been rolled as leader of the Liberal Party twice because he is a believer in the science, but allowed the climate science deniers to dictate policy to him, and when he tried to appease them, he was deposed.

Scott Morrison: Considering he came to power twelve years after John Howard left office, he plenty of time to become informed about climate change, and as a marketing person he is aware of the concerns held by a majority of Australians.

Anthony Albanese: His election in 2022 was going to turn it all around. He has continued to open new gas fields, some of which will produce and supply gas to the world for up to fifty years.

While Albanese touts his government’s efforts to transition to renewables, he walks both sides of the street, by continuing the huge and, quite frankly, illogical subsidies to multi-nationals, who suffer from such short-term thinking that they have not themselves transitioned to renewables, but continue to supply fossil fuels, while knowing that those fuels are leading to catastrophic climate change.

That is like feeding yourself a daily dose of poison, because it feels good at the time, but you know it is killing you. Clever!

Albanese does not even have a credible opposition arguing against taking steps to finish fossil fuels for good. The opposition parties in Australia are a rabble, and they have a pathetic grab-bag of ‘solutions’ such as a nuclear future which would take thirty years to get up and running, and forget about the costs. They are huge.

Albanese has the parliamentary majority to effect change, overnight

This government does not even tax the extraction of the gas he sells to the highest bidder. He argues that he is keeping our petrol supply constant in the Trump fuel crisis, with a quid pro quo – a sort of swap for the (liquid) gas supply.

These choices are not only morally wrong, they are dumb. Australians know we have to act soon, but there is nothing as sickening as the sight of a once progressive politician getting a taste of power, and deciding he likes it too much to risk it by doing what is right for the future generations.

He would never admit it, but the troglodytes who inhabit the Murdoch media empire are assisting him, by providing cover for his lack of will. By assisting the fossil fuel giants he makes himself, and his government, more acceptable to the lunatic right, and the great Australian apathy kicks in.

When the full effects of global heating become evident, where will these people hide? I for one, want my government to do the decent, sensible thing, follow the expert advice, and deliver solutions. But what we get is smoke and mirrors, and a bunch of old white people in power, too blinded by their own importance to heed the will of the people.

We are discovering just how degraded the political system has become, since Trump’s arrival on the scene. When no-one leads, the status quo looks comforting. It won’t be when the people rise up, and revolt.